Tag: Purity

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Time and Mercy

JANUARY 21

MATTHEW 5:7_Blessed are the merciful…

What will you look like if you become merciful? Suppose someone has ridiculed and scorned you because you made a choice for moral purity. When that person falls into immorality there is depression, possibly despair. Will you come with mercy? Will you offer a kind word? Words of hope? Will you lay aside the pain done to you? 

There is no bondage quite like immorality. Immorality afflicts the heart and soul. The damage can cause deep destruction. The damage inside the heart and soul spell b-e-t-r-a-y-a-l. This is more than betrayal to someone else’s heart, but includes betrayal to your own heart. Most of all God’s purity plan has been betrayed. People in moral bondage need mercy. Immorality comes with guilt. Guilt causes that heart and soul destruction.

True mercy, like that of Jesus, brings with it freedom. To offer mercy without freedom is to place a Band-Aid on a deep wound which requires stitches. A Band-Aid will not stop you from bleeding to death. 

Mercy involves giving lots of something we tend to hoard for ourselves—time.

PRAYER

Merciful Jesus, Help me be merciful and give my time. In the powerful name of Jesus, Amen.                    

Christ is true mercy—Mercy requires my time!

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You Must Act

DECEMBER 7

MATTHEW 7:24_and doeth them…

Jesus’ masonry skills move to the next step—doing. Doing requires action. Get up and do something! Do what? Obey Jesus’ teachings you have studied the past year!

You can heed every teaching of this sermon, but until you act upon those teachings—they are powerless. This requires dedication. Doing, trusts God to help when you can’t help yourself. Doing, requires time in prayer: asking, seeking, knocking on how to live Jesus’ teachings—not just read them. 

If you make rules, but never enforce them, they cannot achieve their purpose. If you mix together all the ingredients for a cake but never bake it, it’s not a cake..

Knowing and believing are only part of the process. You must act. You may believe there are rewards for attitudes of humility, meekness, mercy, purity, and peacemaking, but believing is not doing. You can believe anger is as deadly as murder, but until you curb the anger it still controls.

You can believe in sexual purity, inside and outside of marriage, but if you are not living purity, your belief is powerless.

Remember, to have power—connect to the Source!  

PRAYER

God of Power, Please give me the power to live what I believe. In the powerful name of Jesus, Amen.          

Christ wants me to act on His teaching—He helps me!

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All the Time!

 JUNE 14

MATTHEW 6:12_our debts…

Your sin debt is too great. You will never be able to pay. It will remain in God’s ledger for eternity. To pay the debt according to the law keepers, you will have to keep every law, on your own—no indwelling Holy Spirit’s power. Humanly impossible!

To pay the debt according to Jesus, you will have to have a pure heart—likewise impossible! This looks like some kind of double jeopardy. You need a solution that can overcome the impossible! Where can you find that? Oh, wait! You have a key!

Use the key, unlock the treasure chest, and discover something incredible. The Messiah Savior has already solved the problem! He gave His life to cover all your debts. Only Jesus could do it because only He is the perfect Son of God. 

To make things even better, Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to dwell in your heart. The Spirit draws you further and further away from sin and causes you to hunger for holiness. Your taste for sin diminishes. When you do sin, the Spirit sends conviction. You humbly ask the Father for forgiveness. 1 John 1:9 (KJV), “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

God is good all the time, and all the time God is good!

PRAYER

Holy Savior, Thank You for paying my sin debt which I could never pay.  In the powerful name of Jesus, Amen.

Christ is the Savior—He saves me!

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Covenants of Your Youth

MAY 23

MATTHEW 6:6_But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet…

There are times when it is appropriate to talk with your loved one publicly. Those conversations are not from the depth of the heart.

Private conversations build love. The more private the conversation, the stronger the love.  The more private the conversation, the better you get to know each other—the more trust builds. Falling in love with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit follows the same path. 

Falling in love with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit follows the same path. 

For true love to develop between people you need to be of the appropriate age. You also need to be in the appropriate circumstances in life. It requires a man and a woman—not a boy and a girl. 

For true love to develop with the Savior, the younger you get to know Him, the better. I Timothy 4:12 (KJV), “Let no man despise thy youth; but be thou an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity.”

Make a covenant with God in your youth. Ezekiel 16:60 (KJV), “Nevertheless I will remember my covenant with thee in the days of thy youth, and I will establish unto thee an everlasting covenant.”

God remembers the covenants of your youth.

PRAYER

King of Kings, I praise You that I am not too young to make a covenant of love with You. In the powerful name of Jesus, Amen.

Christ loves children and youth—He loves me!

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The Perfect Plan

APRIL 9

MATTHEW 5:32_and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.

Is Jesus too harsh on divorce? He brings adultery into the picture after the divorce! Why?

In Mark 10:5-8, Jesus went back to the beginning—to creation itself—the original marriage— God’s perfect plan. The Garden of Eden was perfection and everlasting life. Adam and Eve blew the whole plan by their disobedience to God. All life reaped the consequence—sin. Life will continue to reap sin consequences until an end comes, and all things are made new.

God’s perfect plan for marriage is one man and one woman for life. Their physical union causes them to become one. Perhaps Jesus adds adultery to re-marriage because no piece of paper (divorce contract) can sever God’s design of the physical union. The divorce contract can sever the legality of the marriage, but it cannot sever the oneness of flesh. This is why sexual sins are so devastating.

Why is purity marriage insurance? Foremost, it is God’s plan. His plan builds love by denying the flesh and bonding spirits—two people for each other. It builds respect for each other. It builds loyalty for one and only one. Aren’t those things you want in marriage?

We discussed before how impurity spells betrayal like no other sin. It is definitely one of the hardest to forgive. The Great Hope can give power to forgive. He asks you to do no more for your betrayer than He has done for you.

This is not to simplify the devastation. It may require a time of separation, and the key word in this sentence is time. Running straight to the divorce court does not give The Great Surgeon time for the surgery—including the time for healing and recovery. The basis of any decision has to be what action you believe will please Jesus.

When the marriage is broken beyond repair (one spouse has re-married), The Great Hope has good news: An individual life is not beyond repair.

Jesus repairs broken lives. Jesus wants to bring His love into all families.

Let Jesus use you to shine His love in your family.

PRAYER

Dear Jesus, Some of Your teachings are very difficult and hard. I know they are all designed for the very best life. I want that! In the powerful name of Jesus, Amen.                                    

Christ loves God’s original plan—I want to love it!