Clothe ourself

Colossians 3:12

Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.

Read https://raymcdonald.wordpress.com/2019/07/12/clothe-ourselves-in-christ-2/

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We Drift…

“People do not drift toward Holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.” ~ D.A. Carson

10 Things We Reveal About Ourselves Based On Our Prayers

In Luke 18:9-14, Jesus tells the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. His point is to show the fallacy of trusting in one’s righteousness while looking down on others, but it’s striking to me that Jesus places the story in the context of prayer. We learn the heart condition of the two men by listening to their prayers—and we, likewise, reveal some things about ourselves by the way we pray. By the content of our prayers over the course of time, we reveal:

1. The depth of our burden about non-believers. If we are deeply concerned about their spiritual condition, our prayer and heart’s desire will be for their salvation (Rom 10:1). In fact, we’ll usually pray for them by name.
2. Whether we feel a need to remind God of our faithfulness. Even when we know better, we sometimes pray like the Pharisee did. We too often default into self-righteousness.
3. The degree to which we’re genuinely broken over our sin. In this case, we too seldom pray like the tax collector did. Rarely do we beat our chest in agony and dare not look toward heaven because of our sin.
4. Whether we recognize the greatness of God. When we do, we’ll spend significant time just praising Him for who He is.

The rest: http://chucklawless.com/2019/10/10-things-we-reveal-about-ourselves-based-on-our-prayers/

Heartache Crushes the Spirit

Proverbs 15:13 A happy heart makes the face cheerful, but heartache crushes the spirit.

Read the blog: https://raymcdonald.wordpress.com/2019/10/02/heartache-crushes-the-spirit/

Are You a Practical Atheist?

“If a time-traveler from the early Church secretly followed you from Monday till Saturday evening, would they be able to tell you’re a Christian?”

This question raised by John Stonestreet and G. Shane Morris from breakpoint.org caught my attention early yesterday morning.

In a post entitled “Practical Atheists: Living as if God is Irrelevant,” they suggest that for many professing Christianity the answer isn’t really clear.
This is a not a new question or novel topic, but one I haven’t thought about in quite a while.

“Practical atheism,” wrote Rubel Shelly is “holding an intellectual commitment to belief in God but thinking, feeling, and behaving as if there were no God.”

Craig Gay in his book, “The Way of the Modern World,” said the problem isn’t atheism. The problem, he said, is “practical atheism.”

“It’s not that people do not believe in God, it’s that they live as if God is largely irrelevant,” observed Stonestreet and Morris. “That’s what secularism does to us. It doesn’t disprove our faith, it dismisses it. It makes faith an issue of personal, private belief, disconnected from the outside world.”

“The most dangerous type of atheism is not theoretical atheism, but practical atheism — that’s the most dangerous type. And the world, even the church is filled up with people who pay lip service to God and not life service,” opined Martin Luther King, Jr. in a 1950’s sermon.

“There is always a danger,” King said, “that we will make it appear externally that we believe in God when internally we don’t. We say with our mouths that we believe in him, but we live with our lives like he never existed. That is the ever-present danger confronting religion. That’s a dangerous type of atheism.”

Consider these five comparisons.

https://thepreachersword.com/2019/09/27/are-you-a-practical-atheist/

How You Can “Let Not Your Heart Be Troubled”

~ Frank KIng

https://frankking.net/2019/09/how-you-can-let-not-your-heart-be-troubled/

Wise to the Ways of the Worldly: 4 Ways Worldliness Sneaks In, and the Scriptures to Slay It

Lately, every time I turn around, I keep bumping up against the same biblical concept. It’s showing up in my personal Bible study time. In Sunday School. In sermons. Even in a revival my husband and I served at this week.

Worldliness, and the need for Christians to be set apart.

https://michellelesley.com/2019/09/26/throwback-thursday-wise-to-the-ways-of-the-worldly-4-ways-worldliness-sneaks-in-and-the-scriptures-to-slay-it/