I’ve been doing it wrong! Prayer, I mean. I’ve been asking God for help, trying to listen to him, I learned the A.C.T.S. acronym for prayer (adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication), but one thing it leaves out is seeking to know God. I wasn’t spending time in prayer seeking to know God better, and I have […]
Category: Theology
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The sinner’s prayer?
“The following is a suggested prayer” is found in many a tract, and after many a sermon, but it’s not in the Bible! Notice that Jesus never said the same thing twice, when people came to him asking how to have eternal life. To one he said “sell all you have, give to the poor, […]
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Can all be saved?
I believe that the end will be unexpected! We will all be right, and we will all be wrong. There will be destruction that ends, eternal punishment, and God all in all. And I would not make the usual qualifications of “eternal” that the universalists tend to do, or the qualifications of “all” that those […]
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Repentance after death?
Is it possible for people who die in unbelief to repent? We may ask “What about those who have never heard the gospel?” Even J.I. Packer has indicated that they may have a chance to hear and believe, after dying. And then we may consider verses such as we read here: MT 11:21 “Woe to […]
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Capital punishment
As far as the death penalty is concerned, we are all under the death penalty, as a result of sin: GE 2:17 “You must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.” Rom. 5:12 “Therefore, just as sin entered the world […]
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Forgiveness
Luke 6:37 “Forgive, and you will be forgiven.” If we do not forgive, our thoughts will inevitably be drawn to the person towards whom we harbor resentment, our focus will be kept off of Christ, and therefore our hearts will turn from God, and this is sinning. So how can he forgive us, if by […]
It is important to mention that temptations are not sins, even in such a high-voltage area: “The Catholic Church teaches that homosexuality is not a sin but that homosexual acts are: ‘Homosexual persons are called to chastity,’ one section of the Catechism which addresses homosexuality reads. It also says Scripture calls homosexual acts ‘acts of […]
The command in Scripture is certainly clear: Lev. 19:11 Do not steal. Do not lie. Do not deceive one another. So that would include all types of lying, without any exception. Now as far as a quarterback doing a fake handoff, I don’t think pretending (as in acting) is lying. I think “bearing false witness” […]
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Overcoming sin
James puts a paradox together in one verse: James 3:2 For we all stumble in many ways. If anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to bridle the whole body as well. We all stumble … he is a perfect man. Now James did not get distracted halfway […]
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Masturbation – Is it a sin?
Maybe one place to start would be in the places where the Bible does speak clearly about various sexual behaviors, as for example, in Lev. 15:16-18, 22:4, some indications may be found there. And as C.S. Lewis put it, the main problem with masturbation is that it is trying to take something that was intended […]