Our sin nature loves “religion” (church Bible study on Galatians)

Sunday was a unique service at Good News. We spent the day studying the Scriptures together. Over the last couple of years, a new wave of false teaching has been creeping into the Evangelical Christian world. The teaching is that Jesus Christ is the sacrifice for our sins that gives us salvation but in order to experience true salvation, people must keep certain aspects of the Jewish Law. Because of this teaching, many people have stopped eating pork, not necessarily for health related reasons but as a critical point for salvation. Also, debates have sprung up about which day is the best day to celebrate the Lord’s day, Saturday or Sunday. In other words, which day should church services be held on? In order to clear up these false teachings and end much of the debate, as well as to protect the members of our church, Pastor Vasile decided to dedicate the day to studying the Apostle Paul’s epistle to the Galatian churches. This same false teaching was a problem during the 1st Century and Paul had to address the issue. I would like to share some of the main conclusions from what we learned. It was amazing to spend and entire Sunday dedicated to studying the Scriptures as a church family.

Why is the pro traditional marriage discussion needed in churches?

I would like to begin this article with a few quotes from my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

13 “You are the salt of the earth ; but if the salt has become tasteless, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled under foot by men. 14 “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden ; 15 nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. 16 “Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven. (Matthew 5)

Fix your eyes upon the Lord

As you go through the daily activities of life, do you have your eyes (your heart, your focus, your perspective) fixed on the things of God or on the quickly fading things of this earth? What are you living for, to eat, drink, and be merry because you never know how much longer you have or are you living with eternity as your perspective setter? What do you spend the majority of your time focusing on, the things that are here today and gone tomorrow or the things that will last all throughout eternity. The things of this world are fading away so if you are focused on them, you and your perspective on eternity will fade away along with them.

Breaking addiction’s devastating grip

This Friday night’s theme for the youth group is about addictions among teens. I want to focus on the psychological addictions such as “being in love”, eating disorders, body image problems, sports addictions, addictions to television and internet, exercise addictions, and sexual addictions. Many times, when addictions are presented and solutions are given, drugs and alcohol, the physical dependencies, are the central focus of the discussion while the more psychological addictions remain in the background.

First of all, we must understand that as fallen people, born into the bondage of sin, we have a tendency to succumb to addictions. The Bible teaches this in several different passages.

Passionate for God, passionate for success

This Friday night, I will be leading a study on accomplishing great things for the Lord during your teen and young adult years. We live in an age of extreme selfishness, where most people are trained to be successful for themselves. We teach our children that the world revolves around them and they carry that idea into their teen and young adult years. They are ready for great accomplishment and many of them are successful yet they end up being unsatisfied with their accomplishments because their motives and priorities are not correct. This generation does what it does for selfish reasons because that is they way that they have been trained. Or, others, unfortunately many more that I would like, end up being so self-centered that they become apathetic to life and end up accomplishing nothing because they are so self occupied in what makes them “happy” or brings temporal pleasures. I see this among the “gaming” crowd. They sit around all day or all night, playing virtual games, attaining temporal pleasure but really accomplishing nothing useful. The entire world revolves around them, their wants and desires. As people, God created us for greatness, under His guidance and leadership of course, yet so many young people do nothing for the Lord and very little to help their fellow man. This should not be the “norm” yet that is the status quo of the day. I really believe that this can be changed if we “train up our children” the way that God teaches us. It is not too late. God wants to use us, the older generation, to invest in the younger generations to train them in His ways so that their character and attitudes will change and they will be passionate for God and passionate for success in this world, success that will leave them satisfied instead of disappointed.

Resolving Conflicts God’s way

I am preparing to teach lesson two tonight at our Romanian Bible study near St. Louis, MO. The lesson comes from “Lord, give me a heart for You“. It is an important lesson because it teaches us how to resolve conflicts among friends. As we live life with the people around us, conflicts will inevitably arise because we are all flawed people living in a fallen world. The question is not whether or not you have conflicts, the question is how do you react in the midst of one? Do you blow up in anger and give the guilty party what he or she deserves? Or, do you seek to resolve the conflict while maintaining the relationship? This lesson will teach us how to value the relationship enough to resolve the conflict.

5 days in the life of a missionary

I want to write a short blurb about what all I have been privileged to be part of over the past 5 days. It is an honor to serve the Lord no matter where you are, especially in the place where He has called you to be. I want to share a little of what life is like on the mission field and will use the past 5 days in my life in the ministry.

How to have an impact in the lives of others

Elena and I are preparing to teach a lesson this Saturday night at another church’s youth group. We want to encourage them to be good students of the Scriptures and apply what they learn so that they can have a positive impact in society, especially in the lives of their classmates. As Christians, we are called to change the world because that is what our Savior did. He calls us to be like Him. He calls us to be salt and light in this world. The essence of these two things is to overcome darkness and decay. Sin causes individual lives as well as society as a whole to decay and believers are called to stop it. Darkness keeps people ignorant of where they are and where they are going. That is what sin does to people. It deceives them into not understanding how they are destroying their own lives and the lives of others. As light in this world, we are to drive out the darkness and show people the reality of sin, stopping it in its tracks. This lesson is going to teach us how to do that.

Are you totally committed to following Jesus?

This is the article for the next lesson at our youth meeting this Friday night. We are looking at lesson 4 of “Counting the cost of discipleship”. Here is a quick review of what we have learned.

• Lesson 1 – The call to follow Jesus
• Lesson 2 – The cost of following Jesus
• Lesson 3 – Difference between a genuine follower of Christ and a false “follower”

The Church: The Purpose (1) Training Ground

We saw in the last article that the reason that we have the church is because people are broken, needing a place of refuge where they can learn to reestablish their relationship with God and with man. God sent Jesus Christ to reestablish the relationship between God and man and then form the Church so that those people who have their relationship with God restored can learn how to build relationships with one another. Now that we are in the church, what do we do?