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What is Truth?
Pilate’s famous question to Jesus “What is truth?” suggests that truth can’t be known or doesn’t matter. His attitude contrasted with the words Jesus had just spoken: “For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice” (John 18:37). Jesus’s followers are to be of the truth—yes, truth about him, but also truth about everything. Paul’s well-known passage defining love says it “does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth” (1 Corinthians 13:6). We should rejoice in investigations to uncover the truth and wrongdoing—even when we…
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Teaching Children to Live Love
Obedience is one of the universal things that both parents and teachers seek to produce in children. As Christians obedience done with a wrong motive may look like obedience to us but it falls short. When it comes to obeying God, the heart attitude is as important as the action. A simple observation of their actions will not be enough to prove Biblical obedience. Sometimes a child gets it right by accident. They didn’t intentionally decide to obey but circumstances were such that without thinking about it they chose the right action. There are children who obey for fear of the punishment and with resentment in their heart. Other children…
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Choosing the Best BFF
The best BFF is one who will help you pick a life time of good ones! “A person who has friends may be harmed by them, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.” Proverbs 18:24 (NET Bible) Many of the children grow up in the church only to leave it as adults. Those who are true believers will return but what set them up to leave in the first place. So much lost time in lives wasted on frivolous friendship with the world. Can it be prevented? I think so. God created us in His image and because of that great gift we have the need for…
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STOP IDENTITY THEFT
I was recently given a list of 301 things I am in Christ. I was blown away by all the things God says about those who follow Him. Then I was reading Lysa TerKeurst’s Blog. She mentioned her favorite gift from a friend was a box of Scriptures typed out with her name in them, things that God has done for each believer. It got me to thinking about many people I know both young and old who suffer from identity theft. I am not talking about the financial kind either. Spiritual identity theft! Satan attacks daily beating down the most vulnerable with his lies about who we are. If…
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Rebellion and Exponential Evil
“For if God did not spare the angels who sinned, but threw them into hell and locked them up in chains in utter darkness, to be kept until the judgment, and if he did not spare the ancient world, but did protect Noah, a herald of righteousness, along with seven others, when God brought a flood on an ungodly world, and if he turned to ashes the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah when he condemned them to destruction, having appointed them to serve as an example to future generations of the ungodly, and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man in anguish over the debauched lifestyle of lawless men, (for while…
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Am I Who You Think I Am?
Have you ever read any statistics on how social media is affecting our sense of identity? In a world where we can post who we want others to perceive we are, we can end up with an online-induced case of plural identities. Not only does this create confusion, it also is exhausting to maintain. My daughter, Kari Ciliberti, recently in a paper on this very subject, cited “Mary Aiken’s, an expert in cyberpsychology, comments on the feedback loop of one’s cyber self, saying, “… The cyber self is always under construction, physiologically and digitally. Even when …sleeping, the cyber self continues to exist. It is always on- evolving, updating, making…
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What Did the Philosophers Know and When Did They Know it? Part 2
Jesus told Pilate, “For this reason I was born, and for this reason I came into the world – to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice” (John 18:37). “Therefore see to it that the light in you is not darkness” – Jesus (Luke 11:35). While skimming a book I’d previously read entitled “The Great Philosophers: From Socrates to Foucault”, a quick summary of influential philosophers, I was sometimes struck by the darkness and futility of their ideas. Yet I was open to seeing truths that might be found within the shadows so to speak. I gleaned what truthful ideas I could from…
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What Did the Philosophers Know and When Did They Know it? Part 1
“I should be much more afraid of being mistaken and then finding out that Christianity is true than of being mistaken in believing it to be true” (Blaise Pascal).[1] While revisiting a book entitled “The Great Philosophers: From Socrates to Foucault”, a short synopsis of many of the best known philosophers, I was struck by thoughts of meaninglessness. For thousands of years philosophers have been discussing questions like, “How do we know what we know?” “How can we know anything?” “How do we know we exist?” etc. What futility it is not to believe in God and to disbelieve in the possibility of life after death, to believe everyone eventually…
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NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS FOR TEACHERS
Many people make New Year resolutions. Some are personal goals but others focus on work and ministry. I would like to challenge us, as teachers, to make one New Year resolution that will empower our teaching. This new method will not only change the lives of our children but is guaranteed to change our lives too, as we hear, believe and live out the truth of our position in Christ. When I was being trained by Child Evangelism Fellowship, I was taught that every lesson should contain a PAS (personal application the saved) and a PAU (personal application to the unsaved). These thoughts are just one sentence of truth drawn…
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Photoshopping Life
When Ray and I visited the Galapagos Islands, one of my favorite pictures was the two of us with a gigantic tortoise. Unfortunately, my big ol’ red purse was on the ground in the picture too. So I photoshopped it out. At our son’s wedding, one of the ushers wasn’t wearing his boutonniere when it was time for the formal pictures. “Not to worry,” the photographer said. “We can photoshop it in later.” During my daughter-in-law’s holiday family picture taking, someone suggested photoshopping in a beloved uncle, since they were missing him. “No! He’s been dead for two years!,” someone else responded. “You don’t photoshop in a dead person who…
