Category Archives: Culture
The Expedition
Ps. 63:1 “O True God, You are my God, the One whom I trust. I seek You with every fiber of my being. In this dry and weary land with no water in sight, my soul is dry and longs for You. My body aches for You, for Your presence.” (Voice).
To position himself for God’s blessings, Joseph cooperated. Are you cooperating with God’s Word and with God’s plans for your life? Are you cooperating with God? To position themselves for God’s blessings, the shepherd celebrated. Read the rest of this entry
Nothing!
Rom. 8:35&39 “Can anything separate us from the love of Christ? Can trouble, suffering, and hard times, or hunger and nakedness, or danger and death?… and not powers above or powers below. Nothing in all creation can separate us from God’s love for us in Christ Jesus our Lord! (CEV]
John 9:30-34 “The man answered, “Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships him and obeys his will. Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing. They answered him, “You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?” And they drove him out.” (NRSV]. Read the rest of this entry
Man’s Way vs. God’s Way
Mark 7:7-8 “Their worship is a farce, for they teach man-made ideas as commands from God.’ For you ignore God’s law and substitute your own tradition.”
John 9:16 “Some of the Pharisees said, “This man Jesus is not from God, for he is working on the Sabbath…” (emphasis added). It is interesting that as part of their laws, the Pharisees actually forbade spitting on the Sabbath. Read the rest of this entry
Two of Four
John 5:44 “No wonder you can’t believe! For you gladly honour each other, but you don’t care about the honour that comes from the one who alone is God.”
Jesus shows us four different kinds of testimony that validate Him, called The Four-Fold Witness.
#1. Self-Testimony: John 5:31 “If I were to testify on my own behalf, my testimony would not be valid.” Jesus says the first of the four-fold witness is self-testimony. However, if I were to testify about Myself the testimony will not be valid. Read the rest of this entry
Source Principle
John 5:17-18 “But Jesus replied, “My Father is always working, and so am I.” So the Jewish leaders tried all the harder to find a way to kill him. For he not only broke the Sabbath, he called God his Father, thereby making himself equal with God.”
Why would Jesus saying that God is His father make them conclude that He was, “making Himself equal with God”? For people who are educated in the Semitic or Middle Eastern region, they would not struggle with understanding this concept. Read the rest of this entry
Compass
John 5:9-10 “Instantly, the man was healed! He rolled up his sleeping mat and began walking! But this miracle happened on the Sabbath, so the Jewish leaders objected. They said to the man who was cured, “You can’t work on the Sabbath! The law doesn’t allow you to carry that sleeping mat!”
When the Bible says this miracle was done on the sabbath, you know that there is trouble coming. Telling the man that, “The law doesn’t allow you to carry that sleeping mat!” was a lie. It was actually a Pharisaic oral law, not the Mosaic Law. Read the rest of this entry
Stand Out
Dan.1:8 “But Daniel was determined not to defile himself by eating the food and wine given to them by the king. He asked the chief of staff for permission not to eat these unacceptable foods.” [with emphasis]
A lot of us would agree that even in our present-day culture, the word defile is a strong word. Why then would Daniel use such a strong word in talking Read the rest of this entry
Your Identity
1 Peter 2:9 But you are not like that, for you are a chosen people. You are royal priests, a holy nation, God’s very own possession. As a result, you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light.
What names do you feel pressured by culture to accept or what names do you see people accepting from culture? I had a nickname when I was in secondary school. My friends had appended the word “scorpio” to my Read the rest of this entry
