Faith is like radar that sees through the fog.
Corrie Ten Boom
Tag Archives: Faith
The Most Excellent Way
January 11, 2014 
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1 Corinthians 12:31 The Voice
Pursue the greater gifts, and let me tell you of a more excellent way—love.
1 Corinthians 13 The Voice
Gifts of the Spirit, which are intended to strengthen the church body, often divide the body because members of the church elevate those who possess the more visible gifts over those whose gifts function in the background. In fact, this is the very problem facing the Corinthians. So while talking about the importance and function of these gifts in chapters 12 and 14, Paul shifts his focus to the central role love plays in a believer’s life in chapter 13. Love is essential for the body to be unified and for members to work together. Members of the body that are very different, with little in common, are able to appreciate and even enjoy others because of the love that comes when a life is submitted to God.
What if I speak in the most elegant languages of people or in the exotic languages of the heavenly messengers, but I live without love? Well then, anything I say is like the clanging of brass or a crashing cymbal. 2 What if I have the gift of prophecy, am blessed with knowledge and insight to all the mysteries, or what if my faith is strong enough to scoop a mountain from its bedrock, yet I live without love? If so, I am nothing. 3 I could give all that I have to feed the poor, I could surrender my body to be burned as a martyr, but if I do not live in love, I gain nothing by my selfless acts.
Paul boils it all down for the believers in Corinth. Religious people often spend their time practicing rituals, projecting dogma, and going through routines that might look like Christianity on the outside but that lack the essential ingredient that brings all of it together—love! It is a loving God who birthed creation and now pursues a broken people in the most spectacular way. That same love must guide believers, so faith doesn’t appear to be meaningless noise.
4 Love is patient; love is kind. Love isn’t envious, doesn’t boast, brag, or strut about. There’s no arrogance in love; 5 it’s never rude, crude, or indecent—it’s not self-absorbed. Love isn’t easily upset. Love doesn’t tally wrongs 6 or celebrate injustice; but truth—yes, truth—is love’s delight! 7 Love puts up with anything and everything that comes along; it trusts, hopes, and endures no matter what. 8 Love will never become obsolete. Now as for the prophetic gifts, they will not last; unknown languages will become silent, and the gift of knowledge will no longer be needed. 9 Gifts of knowledge and prophecy are partial at best, at least for now, 10 but when the perfection and fullness of God’s kingdom arrive, all the parts will end. 11 When I was a child, I spoke, thought, and reasoned in childlike ways as we all do. But when I became a man, I left my childish ways behind. 12 For now, we can only see a dim and blurry picture of things, as when we stare into polished metal. I realize that everything I know is only part of the big picture. But one day, when Jesus arrives, we will see clearly, face-to-face. In that day, I will fully know just as I have been wholly known by God. 13 But now faith, hope, and love remain; these three virtues must characterize our lives. The greatest of these is love.
Everlasting Life
November 22, 2013 3 Comments
John 3:16-21 The Voice
For God expressed His love for the world in this way: He gave His only Son so that whoever believes in Him will not face everlasting destruction, but will have everlasting life. Here’s the point. God didn’t send His Son into the world to judge it; instead, He is here to rescue a world headed toward certain destruction.
No one who believes in Him has to fear condemnation, yet condemnation is already the reality for everyone who refuses to believe because they reject the name of the only Son of God. Why does God allow for judgment and condemnation? Because the Light, sent from God, pierced through the world’s darkness to expose ill motives, hatred, gossip, greed, violence, and the like. Still some people preferred the darkness over the light because their actions were dark. Some of humankind hated the light. They scampered hurriedly back into the darkness where vices thrive and wickedness flourishes. Those who abandon deceit and embrace what is true, they will enter into the light where it will be clear that all their deeds come from God.
Jesus makes the point clear: stay connected to Him, and have no reason to fear. Jesus doesn’t mean that at the instant someone has faith, fear simply vanishes or only good things happen in that person’s life. In fact, the blessings that come with eternal life often have nothing to do with present or future circumstances, but they have everything to do with the individual’s connections to God and others. That is John’s message to his listeners. God came to earth embodied in flesh, and then He reached His greatest acclaim through a torturous death. If this is all true, then believers will find strength and beauty in places never imagined. Abiding in Jesus the Anointed is the good life, regardless of the external circumstances.
Through The Eyes Of God
November 10, 2013 11 Comments
The army of Israel looked at Goliath through the eyes of man and said he’s too big to beat. David looked at him through the eyes of God and said he’s too big to miss.
Wally Carter
Let Us Pray
November 3, 2013 2 Comments
Let us pray for the Church and for the world, and let us thank God for his goodness:
Almighty God, our heavenly Father, you promised through your Son Jesus Christ to hear us when we pray with faith.
We pray for your Church today, gathering all around the world in tiny churches and great cathedrals, to praise you, to hear your holy word, and to meet with you in bread and wine. Give us a sense of expectation as we come and inspiration as we go. Help us to put our differences behind us and to behind the great commission of Jesus to make disciples of all nations.
We pray for a world which struggles to live justly and in peace. We pray for those who have to search for daily food or walk long distances for clean water. We remember with sadness those whose live are cut short by preventable diseases and malnutrition, and those who have fled their homes for fear of violence. May Your kingdom come and Your will be done as it is in the heavenly places.
We thank you God for your forgiveness and for revealing that you are Love. Thank you for those people who sustain us by sharing this love to us. Thank you for the network of people with whom our lives are inextricably linked and who make up the fabric of our family and community life. Make us alert to each other’s needs and quick to serve and encourage one another. May our gentleness with each other reflect your gentleness with us.
We pray for those who are laid low by suffering and those who are experiencing the outrageous assault of pain. We trust your love for us and for all people, and your deep desire for our well-being. As we name in our hearts those who are in the grip of suffering, help us so to pray and to act that they may know your comfort and healing, both now and in the coming days.
We thank you for those people who have tonight given us examples and models by which we try to live. We thank you for those who have lived and died in quiet holiness and whose prayers have helped to sustain the world. Help us to live in the light be which they lived, and to worship the source of that light, Jesus Christ our risen Lord.
Rejoicing in the fellowship of all people, we commend ourselves to your unfailing love. Merciful Father, accept these prayers through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
My Thoughts 💭
Tonight at our café style evening service we were lead through this lovely prayer above. Thought you might want to join in with us. 🙂
✞ Music “Always Been About You” by Fellowship Creative
November 1, 2013 2 Comments
It’s just gone 2am here in the UK and i’ve just saved Sarah from another nasty hypo (yay, i didn’t need to call the ambulance out!). This song was playing on the radio and helping me stay awake. I’ve never heard this song before so i thought i would share it with you now all is well! 🙂
A Living, Daring Confidence
October 20, 2013 0 Comments
Faith is a living, daring confidence in God’s grace, so sure and certain that a man would stake his life on it a thousand times.
Martin Luther
The Honest Seeker
October 16, 2013 2 Comments
Mark it down. God never turns away the honest seeker. Go to God with your questions. You may not find all the answers, but in finding God, you known the One who does.
Max Lucado
Childlike Faith
August 22, 2013 11 Comments
The more we know of God the more unreservedly we will trust him; the greater our progress in theology, the simpler and more childlike will be our faith.
John Gresham Machen
Are You Leaving Room For Faith?
August 13, 2013 0 Comments
There is no place for faith if we expect God to fulfill immediately what he promises.
John Calvin
Ask God For It!
July 28, 2013 9 Comments
James 1:2-11 (VOICE)
Don’t run from tests and hardships, brothers and sisters. As difficult as they are, you will ultimately find joy in them; if you embrace them, your faith will blossom under pressure and teach you true patience as you endure. And true patience brought on by endurance will equip you to complete the long journey and cross the finish line—mature, complete, and wanting nothing. If you don’t have all the wisdom needed for this journey, then all you have to do is ask God for it; and God will grant all that you need. He gives lavishly and never scolds you for asking.
Wisdom, as James understands it, is the ability to live life well and make good decisions. Wisdom doesn’t come from old age or hard knocks. Wisdom begins with knowing and depending absolutely on God, who is never stingy when it comes to wisdom for those who seek it. He supplies all the wisdom we need when we ask. But when we try to go it alone—without God—trouble is around the corner.
The key is that your request be anchored by your single-minded commitment to God. Those who depend only on their own judgment are like those lost on the seas, carried away by any wave or picked up by any wind. Those adrift on their own wisdom shouldn’t assume the Lord will rescue them or bring them anything. The splinter of divided loyalty shatters your compass and leaves you dizzy and confused.
Worry
May 9, 2013 4 Comments
You can’t change the past, but you can spoil the present, by worrying about the future. ~ Nicky Gumbel
💬 Another Quote 4 2day
Worry is a cycle of inefficient thoughts whirling around a centre of fear. Corrie Ten Boom
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Faith To See
April 19, 2013 2 Comments
💬 Quote 4 2day
Faith is to believe what you do not yet see, the reward for this faith is to see what you believe. ~ Augustine
Perfection
April 4, 2013 2 Comments
What is perfection?
This thing that we mention
This mode that we talk of
This ancient convention
It sits in our minds and assesses our actions
It looks at what’s out there and causes reactions
We want it, we crave it
Yet our senses are marred, can we trust our perceptions?
What is it……..?
Something exquisite
Or something of myth
That we never will visit
Or Maybe a path you can follow – a worthy direction
Or choices you make through some careful selection
Or is it chance
The hope of some future election
Or are they all aspects of this purest condition
This mindset beyond a pure human rendition
But something above us
The state that explains the creator’s decision
Something outside us but in us in seed
Something in flowers as well as in weeds
Something in process
The nature of the only one worthy to bleed
Love Story
April 4, 2013 1 Comment
Is love the story that underlines our life?
A story of husband and wife
But also of surgeon and knife
A story of cursed ground
Of people lost and found
Of little silence and too much sound
A story of shared and broken creation
Of relation against relation
And nation v nation
A story of confusion
Of many lies and evils intrusion
A story of pain – what’s your conclusion?
Does this story have a turn?
A Saviour who came to burn?
A Saviour who lives, dies, lives – and returns…?
So what about you?
Is this a story that’s true?
A story about your eternal life – your view….?
iChristian 
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