Posts from 2010 (Page 3)
Behold Your God!
Join us at SYPC in this series of Discipleship Seminars as we will be looking at several chapters of JI Packer’s Knowing God
Elijah (25) Elijah’s Enduring Concern (2 Kings 1)
What do you want to be remembered for? That seems to be a thought common to people as they get older, increasingly wanting to make their last days count.
It is now towards the end of Elijah’s life, and here we find his last recorded public act. There is still a private act to go, but as far as…
Father, glorify your name. John 12:28
We can admire the wisdom and power of God, who can make his people better by their sufferings. Behold, I show you a mystery: sin brought affliction into the world, and God makes affliction carry sin out of the world. God has never intended more good to his children than when he deals most severely with them. He would rather fetch blood than lose a soul. A suffering…
James (26) The Power of Prayer Unleashed (James 5:16b-18)
James gathers all he has been saying on prayer to declare that prayer has great power, and that this is not the prerogative of a select few believers or ‘super saints’ but for all believers.
Of prayer James says that it “avails much”. There are two things we should notice here.
Firstly, these…
Repentance Basics (1 Kings 21:27-29)
What does it mean when a person says they are repentant? The word means to turn around and hence to have a change of mind. In particular in the Bible and for Christianity it is a change of mind not about individual plans, intentions, or beliefs, but rather a radical change in one’s attitude about God and is inseparably linked to faith in Christ and obedience to God’s…
What Is True Repentance?
A proper love for God necessarily involves a hatred for sin that leads to repentance.
James (25) The Power of Prayer: Confession (James 5:16a)
So far, as we have been considering prayer, James as stressed the Place of prayer, and has moved on to the Power of prayer using the real life example of illness. Here he gives us another, and more clear cut demonstration of the Power of prayer – that relating to forgiveness.
The former dealing…
Sin’s Exposé (1 Kings 21)
Last week we saw what God reveals about Himself in this chapter in terms of understanding His ways in evil days. We saw that God sees every detail of all the sinful deeds of people, even those done in the secret places, including the secret places of the heart; that God often permits the triumph of evil over good for a time, but only for a time; and that God is…
James (24) The Prayer of Faith (James 5:14-15)
‘Few passages in Scripture have been more extensively misinterpreted and misunderstood than these verses’ (Frank E. Gaebelin). We might add, and as a result more neglected by the church throughout the centuries. Yes we must approach cautiously, yet not with a sense of the impossibility of…
Elijah (22) God’s Ways in Evil Days (1 Kings 21)
As we look at the world with wrong often prevailing over right, where the godly are persecuted and some are even killed, don’t we at times wonder what is happening? Are we not tempted to ask ‘Where is God?’ If God is a righteous God why does He allow sin, why not stop it?
The world certainly…