Joie de Vivre A Wretched Man’s Quest To Follow Jesus Christ

I am going through a bad case of bloggers’ block at the moment, but with so many thoughts on my mind I’d really like to share, I thought this a la carte series would be a good way to do so without having to kill too many brain cells trying to conjure up a decent post.

There Is A “The Other Side”

This video reminded me a lot of the time when my maternal grandpa passed away when I was very young. I still vividly remember the conversation that an aunt had with my mom when the latter asked what his last words were (we lived a distance away and wasn’t there when my grandpa passed on).

Continue Reading

Not many pastors that I know of, except perhaps for a handful like Paul Washer, preach like this anymore in this day and age.

Our generation has gone soft, preferring to be consoled by lies like “Jesus-shaped hole in your heart” or “God wants you rich”, instead of discovering for ourselves the true nature of God — the God who never changes, the God who calls Himself the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

If you are a Christian who has never read this sermon before, I beseech you to please do so, and I hope it will turn your Christian life upside down for the better as it did mine at one time.

Their foot shall slide in due time

– Deuteronomy 32:35 KJV

In this verse is threatened the vengeance of God on the wicked unbelieving Israelites, who were God’s visible people, and who lived under the means of grace; but who, notwithstanding all God’s wonderful works towards them, remained (as ver. 28.) void of counsel, having no understanding in them. Under all the cultivations of heaven, they brought forth bitter and poisonous fruit; as in the two verses next preceding the text. The expression I have chosen for my text, Their foot shall slide in due time, seems to imply the following doings, relating to the punishment and destruction to which these wicked Israelites were exposed.

Read the full sermon.

Foreword: I thought I’d give a little background into how this testimony came about, because it simply demonstrates how often God works wonderfully in us and there’s only goodness when we submit to His will.

For some days now, my wife has told me that she hasn’t been able to sleep well because God has prompted her time and again to write her testimony down.

She asked me why, and I told her testimonies were a good way for us to glorify God through telling others what He has made anew in us. As to why God is telling her to do so I am not sure, yet we need trust that the Lord has need for her to do something that has not been revealed, but it’s all good (Romans 8:28).

We had retired rather late to bed last night. Just 15 minutes later, she was out of bed, and the study light came on while her computer whirred to life. When I popped into the study to ask why she wasn’t in bed, she was quite in tears, telling me that God had admonished her for not submitting to His will, right after prayers.

She had been fighting the burden in her heart to write her testimony down, believing wrongly that it’s rather pointless.

It was the first time she had experienced such a prompting, so I gently told her that that’s what God does with me many, many times over — a feeling so heavy in one’s heart that you go on your knees and cry out saying, “Father, Lord, I’ll obey and do it!”

I made coffee for us and stayed up with her while she completed her testimony which we are now sharing with you. May it encourage and bless you as it has us.

Continue Reading

It was expected that He should come in pomp. Instead of that, He grew up as a tender plant, silently and insensibly. He had no form nor comeliness, nothing extraordinary which one might have thought to meet in an incarnate Deity. The manner of His appearing in the world had nothing of outward glory.

His gospel is preached, not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but with plainness. He was a man of sorrows acquainted with grief. His whole life was not only mean but miserable. Being made sin for us, He underwent the sentence sin had subjected us to. His condition was, upon many accounts, sorrowful. He was unsettled, had not where to lay His head, lived upon alms, was opposed and endured the contradiction of sinners against Himself… We never read that He laughed, but often that He wept.

…

Carnal hearts see no excellency in the Lord Jesus, nothing that should have induced them to desire an interest in Him… Men whom He came to save rejected Him, and His sufferings mean nothing to them. Christ, having undertaken to satisfy the justice of God for man’s sin, did it, not by divesting Himself of the glories due to an incarnate Deity, but by submitting to the disgrace due to worst of men and malefactors. Thus He glorified His Father… But alas, by how many is He still despised in His people, and rejected of men as to His doctrine and authority.

– Matthew Henry (October 18, 1662 – June 22, 1714)¹

¹ Extracted from: Rev (Dr) Tow, Timothy. The Gospel Prophets — An Applied Commentary On Isaiah and Micah. 120.

The empty hallway with its closed and heavy steel doors on either side have always made you uncomfortable, but as chaplain at a high-security prison where inmates headed for execution as punishment for the heinous crimes they have committed are held, you know it’s your duty to minister to those 24 hours away from death.

You walk up to a cell where such an inmate is held in solitude. He looks up at you as you enter, sneers, then resigns himself to the moral preaching (as he calls it) he knows he has to listen to shortly before his time on earth is up.

Without a word, you press into his hands a book by a famous author in Christendom and exit the cell.

The prisoner looks down at the title, and it says “Your Best Life Now!”.

Continue Reading

I have just finished watching this really interesting seven-part series that illustrates the evolution of evangelism methods from pre-20th Century to the watered-down versions of altar calls and pre-made repeat-after-me “sinner’s prayers” that we today experience.

The series is a video presentation based on the book of the same title by Patrick McIntyre. By explaining the evolution of the altar call and salvation prayer, McIntyre identifies why most Americans (and many others around the world who became Christians through such methodologies) think they are born again.

I strongly encourage you to watch this and examine if indeed you have Christ in you (truly born again), or did you just make a decision to believe in God.

Continuation:

• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4
• Part 5
• Part 6
• Part 7

Shalom Aleichem.

There are many who don’t believe that December 25 is the day on which Christ Jesus was born more than 2,000 years ago in Bethlehem, Israel.

They are not wrong.

For even many discerning Christians recognize this, and know that Christmas was birthed out of a pagan winter observance.

So when was Christ Jesus’ birth?

Continue Reading