Those little children have not yet any understanding to desire His blessing; but when they are presented to Him, He gently and kindly receives them, and dedicates them to the Father by a solemn act of blessing.
God brought me to Himself at about the age of 4. My parents were devout believers and my Dad was in Bible College at the time. I remember hearing the gospel in Sunday School and I talked to my Mom about it one night before bed. It was clear to me that I was a sinner and I was not going to heaven if I died without accepting Jesus Christ and what He did on the cross for me. I was brought to Christ out of fear of going to hell. I didn't want to go there if I died and there was only one other choice in my mind as a 4 year old. I wanted to go to heaven. It was and is that simple.
Have not all theists painted their Deity as the god of love and goodness? Yet after thousands of years of such preachments the gods remain deaf to the agony of the human race. Confucius cares not for the poverty, squalor and misery of the people of China. Buddha remains undisturbed in his philosophical indifference to the famine and starvation of outraged Hindoos; Jahve continues deaf to the bitter cry of Israel; while Jesus refuses to rise from the dead against his Christians who are butchering each other.
The most extraordinary of all the things called miracles, related in the New Testament, is that of the devil flying away with Jesus Christ, and carrying him to the top of a high mountain; and to the top of the highest pinnacle of the temple, and showing him and promising to him all the kingdoms of the world. How happened it that he did not discover America? or is it only with kingdoms that his sooty highness has any interest.
The shepherds - simple souls - came to adore the Infant Savior. Mary rejoiced at seeing their homage and willing offerings they made to her Jesus. . . How happy is the loving soul when it has found Jesus with Mary, His Mother! They who know the Tabernacle where He dwells, they who receive Him into their souls, know that His conversation is full of divine sweetness, His consolation ravishing, His peace superabundant, and the familiarity of His love and His Heart ineffable
No man can sincerely resolve to apply to his daily life the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth without sensing a change in his own nature. The phrase, 'born again', has a deeper significance than many people attach to it. This changed feeling may be indescribable, but it is real.
I use the word "god" a lot, and I'm not sure if I know what I believe god is. I don't believe that when we die, that's it. It's almost like a logical faith. I logically don't believe that all this stuff [surrounding us] is generated from dust. But I'm also not like "Jesus Christ came down to save us. " It's almost selfish to think that human beings, on this plane of reality, are the end of it.
Throughout human history, countries rise and fall. But not America-we continue to rise and rise, like dough, until Jesus bakes us in the fiery Afterscape of the Rapture.
I'd once heard a spiritual "riddle" that went like this: "What's the only thingin heaven that's the same as it was on earth?"The answer: the wounds in Jesus' hands and feet.
Even as we seek to be meek and to avoid contention, we must not compromise or dilute our commitment to the truths we understand. We must not surrender our positions or our values. The gospel of Jesus Christ and the covenants we have made inevitably cast us as combatants in the eternal contest between truth and error. there is no middle ground in that contest.
Every person, young and old, has had his own personal experience with falling. Falling is what we mortals do. But as long as we are willing to rise up again and continue on the path toward the spiritual goals God has given us, we can learn something from failure and become better and happier as a result. My dear friends, no matter how many times you have slipped or fallen, rise up! Your destiny is a glorious one! Stand tall and walk in the light of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ! You are stronger than you realize. You are more capable than you can imagine. You can do it now!
Two radical ideas have been introduced into human thought. One of them is that energy and matter are pretty much the same sort of stuff. That's Einstein. The other is that revenge is a bad idea. Revenge is an enormously popular idea but, of course, Jesus came along with the radical idea of forgiveness. If you're insulted, you have to square accounts. So this invention by Jesus is as radical as Einstein's.
Christianity is actually "true Truth," as Francis Schaeffer used to put it. God really does exist, Heaven actually is real (along with Hell), Jesus really did live and He did the things the historical records - the Gospels - say He did, the resurrection of Christ really happened, and there really is hope each of us can count on for "the kind of perfect world our hearts have always longed for. "
For seven years ancient Israel could not be stopped in the Joshua book. I have found this to be a great imagery and analogy for the Christian life. As Christians, we have the same images. We've come out of Egypt (been saved) we've crossed over, and Jesus Christ is our Moses and our Joshua.
I'm the son of a pastor and evangelist and I've described many times how my father, when I was a child, was an alcoholic. He was not a Christian. And my father left my mother and left me when I was just three years old. And someone invited him to Clay Road Baptist Church. And he gave his heart to Jesus and it turned him around. And he got on a plane and he flew back to my mother and me.
It's just after I walked away from my addictions and the things that I struggled with, that's when I chose Jesus Christ and now he helps me and guides me through the rest of my life.
We are children, perhaps, at the very moment when we know that it is as children that God loves us - not because we have deserved his love and not in spite of our undeserving; not because we try and not because we recognize the futility of our trying; but simply because he has chosen to love us. We are children because he is our father; and all of our efforts, fruitful and fruitless, to do good, to speak truth, to understand, are the efforts of children who, for all their precocity, are children still in that before we loved him, he loved us, as children, through Jesus Christ our lord.
I serve a higher power, Jesus Christ. I make no apologies in saying that.
I'm a huge fan of Jesus Culture. I absolutely love them. I listen to them a lot. My wife loves them as well. I'm unashamedly a Jesus Culture fan. I love the spontaneity. They'll play a song and it will go for like 25 minutes. That kind of worship, and how they lead people into the presence of God, is just awesome.
The evangelization of the person and of human communities depends totally on this encounter with Jesus Christ.