Once I accepted Christ I immediately had peace. I still didn't have a place to live, I still didn't have a car, but I had peace.
Christmas is a Christian holiday, and any self-respecting person of another religion should not celebrate a holiday that they don't believe in. Clearly, Christ is in the name of the holiday, so there should be a belief in Him.
Rather than allow themselves to be separated from the love of Christ, they submitted cheerfully to every privation, to contumely and disgrace, and to death itself.
Many Christians have so busied themselves with programs and activities that they no longer know how to be silent and meditate on God's word or recognize the mysteries that are in the Person of Christ.
I always believed in God and Christ, but I was in rebellion - trying to make my relationship with God fit into my life instead of making my life fit in with him. I was stubborn.
To be Biblically balanced is to let our theology and preaching be proportioned by the Bible's radically disproportionate focus on God's saving love for sinners seen and accomplished in the crucified and risen Christ.
When we imply that our works are for God and not our neighbor, we perpetuate the idea that God's love for us is dependent on what we do instead of on what Christ has done.
Participation in the blessings of the union with Christ comes when the faithful have all the things needed to live well and blessedly to God.
And as the circumcised in the flesh, and not in the heart, have no part in God's good promises; even so they that be baptized in the flesh, and not in heart, have no part in Christ's blood.
The unworthy successor of Peter who desires to benefit from the immeasurable wealth of Christ feels the great need of your assistance, your prayers, your sacrifice, and he most humbly asks this of you.
I'm still going to make mistakes, but I don't have any problems with publicly professing my faith now. It just took me a long time to get to the right place in my relationship with Christ.
The paradox of faith is that when we conform our lives to Christ then we gain our true freedom. And its fruit is profound and lasting happiness.
I've got deeper journeys to take. Metaphysical journeys. Journeys to see Christ. Shaman journeys. It's what I've been elected by God to do.
Repenting and coming unto Christ through the covenants and ordinances of salvation are prerequisite to and a preparation for being sanctified by the reception of the Holy Ghost and standing spotless before God at the last day.
God requires his people to shine as lights in the world. It is not merely the ministers who are required to do this, but every disciple of Christ. Their conversation should be heavenly.
I am God's wheat, and I shall be ground by the teeth of beasts, that I may become the pure bread of Christ.
However, as the Eastern churches have always maintained, through Christ creation is intended eventually to share in the life of God, the life of divine nature.
Think of how dark that Friday was when Christ was lifted up on the cross... It was a Friday filled with devastating, consuming sorrow that gnawed at the souls of those who loved and honored the Son of God.
When grace happens, we receive not a nice compliment from God but a new heart. Give your heart to Christ, and he returns the favor.
There the union of Church and State tends strongly to paralyze some of the members of the body of Christ. Here there is no such influence to destroy spiritual life and power.
No one is guaranteed their next moment, or their next breath; yet, humanity has a habit of thinking of its existence on the earth as eternal. Those who are rooted and grounded in Christ know that life is just a vapor.
