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Thanks for all the prayers! More later when I get discharged. |
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"Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.” LUKE 6:22-23
What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died--more than that, who was raised--who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, "For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered." No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
(ROMANS 8:31-39)
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Remember the former things, those of long ago;
I am God, and there is no other;
I am God, and there is none like me.
I make known the end from the beginning,
from ancient times, what is still to come.
I say: My purpose will stand,
and I will do all that I please.
(Isaiah 46:9-10)
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There is another side of doctrine that we very seldom, if ever, speak of. In Titus 2:1, Paul said to the young evangelist “I want you to speak of things that are proper for sound doctrine, but as for you” (as he comes out of chapter 1 talking about false brethren), he says “but now as for you, you speak things that become sound doctrine”. There is a side of doctrine that we very seldom ever talk about, that perhaps we should talk about. You know usually when Titus 2:1 is quoted, it is usually quoted in the context that goes something like this: that in Titus 2:1 Paul instructs young evangelists to deal with doctrinal matters and usually the application is this—that Paul tells young evangelists to deal with doctrinal matters like: the necessity of baptism for the remission of sins, the errors of pre-millennialism, the errors of Calvinism, the essentiality of acceptable worship to God, the erroneous nature of instrumental music in worship to God, issues like marriage and divorce and remarriage. Usually, those are the applications made from Titus 2:1 that Paul is saying to young preachers “be sure that you preach about those kinds of doctrinal matters”.
Let’s make no mistake about it at all, those things are important. They are all important and we ignore any of those to our detriment and ultimately to the peril of our own generation and generations to come! But may I also suggest to you that that is not what Paul had in mind in Titus 2:1. In fact in Titus 2:1 when he says I want you to speak things that become sound doctrine, he says in that I want you to speak to older men and older women and the young men and young women, and in essence he says I want you to talk to them about daily, Godly living. He says “I want you to speak to them about the doctrine that concerns things like dignity and self-control and reverence and helpful speech and family relationships”. I think it is important that we understand ladies and gentlemen that God refers to those kinds of things as doctrine as well, and we neglect those things to our peril, not only for our generation but for our children’s generation as well. Ironically, if I may make the observation, it is interesting to this writer, that these are the very things that those who seem to give all of their time to those other kind of doctrinal issues, these are the kinds of things that seemingly they neglect.
Here is the point: what good does it do, to be able to argue the most infinitesimally small matter regarding pre-millennialism or Calvinism or marriage and divorce and remarriage, if in your every day walking around influence-wielding life you are out-of-step with biblical teaching? I am just saying we can’t have it just one way. Doctrine involves all those critical issues that mentioned above, but Paul says doctrine also involves the way you live your life, and quite honestly it’s hard to listen to somebody talk about those other doctrinal issues and take them seriously when you can look at their life and see that it is out-of-step with this doctrine. So, whether it is daily Godly living or one of the great principles of New Testament faith, the issue is again not what I like and what I think, but what does God say. |
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