Old Jerry

The meaning of being “in Christ” is to know him and study him all the time. We are to pray and stay in touch and we have the Holy Spirit to help us. This union with Christ is so important because we can’t do the things that the Holy Spirit puts on our hearts. We are to imitate Him and we can’t to that unless we are in Him. Christ is the only way to heaven.

Jesus was with God and was God and He demonstrated the importance of humility to forego his rights in order to do God’s will by becoming a human. He suffered and died and was resurrected for our salvation. As a rule when we try to exalt ourselves we are making a mess of things but when we wait for God to exalt us we become more powerful. I call this tendency pride.

Death is “gain” to Paul because he know that he is going to be with the Lord. Probably death was the better choice because he was going to be going through a lot of pain. I don’t think that Paul decided life over death he is letting the Lord do it for him. He knows that if he sticks here on earth that he will be able to convert more people but to die he will be with the Lord which is much better.

When we appear before Christ as Judge the things that will make us fearful is the things that we had done that would have gone against God. We will not be condemned at that judgment because Jesus had died for our sins. Our works will be judged on the merits of what we have done.

The way that heaven is like my “home” is that I am in a temporary body and when the time comes I will be put in my permanent home. My eternal home is Heaven and my temporary one is here on earth. I hope that the faith I have is walking and living with this belief.

I think that we are quieted so quickly is because we want to accepted by our peers. Enduring hardship “like a good soldier of Christ” would make us unaccepted by our peers. In order to “fight the good fight” I would stand out and be watched all the time for anything that they think that I did wrong.

Paul is here on earth to teach us about Jesus and to stand up to Jesus’s teachings. We need to share our testimony because we need to let other people know that there is place much better than this and the only way to get there is through Jesus Christ.

If we value our lives for its own sake we will be an inward person and never going out and doing things that need to be done like evangelizing for God. I think that the meaning to “take us his cross daily and follow me” means that we should be studying the scriptures and then going out and trying to bring people to Jesus. There isn’t anything that is keeping me from doing that. The meaning of “I have been crucified with Christ” means that we have turned our lives over to Jesus and that we will follow Him. No we cannot follow Christ if we are actually trying to hang on our own lives.

The prophecies about imprisonment in Jerusalem is not in conflict with Paul’s leading from God. The prophecies came true and Paul’s mission was also accomplished. There was no conflict with Paul’s leading to go to Jerusalem. It is just that he was going to be arrested. Paul knows that if it is the Holy Spirit leading them then they should prophecy. I think that the reason that so many Christians despise prophecies today is that we have been hood winked to many times by false prophets. We have a tough time discerning true prophets.

Faith gives us the ability to be praiseful and thankful for we know who has got our back. We know that God is protecting us and that is always praiseworthy. Probably praise and thankfulness is one our more powerful weapons in our warfare.

I think that anger and unforgiveness gives Satan an opportunity to damage me because for one thing I think about the situation and probably lose sleep over it. I think bad thought about the person so that Satan an opportunity to do his best. For me I think that most difficult person to forgive is one that has been at my side all the time and then they hurt me. The unforgiveness is more damaging to me than to the other person who hurt me because though I might be mad about it the other person doesn’t even know about it. Therefore he goes about business as nothing had ever happened.

One of Satan’s chief tools to keep people under his control is to prevent us from spreading the gospel. The spreading of the gospel is so threatening to him because we will be able to see the light. We will be able to see his lies. I think that it is so difficult to share my faith to our outside world because we are trained not to offend others but others don’t mind offending us.

I think that most of Paul’s overwhelming pressure was due to spiritual warfare. That would be hard to separate out the spiritual warfare from everyday life. But I have a feeling that most of his trouble was spiritual warfare. Intercessory prayer for leaders and for one another is important because it seems like God listens more closely to the group. But it also means that they are in agreement and the Bible say that where there is two or more are in agreement then He will provide.

Probably the reason that many contemporary churches don’t effectively evangelize in the 21st century is that don’t believe in sign and wonders that God has provided for them. They are probably afraid of being laughed at for believing such things. If you can’t see it then you don’t believe it. We might identify people in our congregations whom God had gifted with ministries of healing and faith and miracles as being crazy because we don’t believe that they can do these things. There has been too many people who made money on these types of things and they didn’t have the spirit to do them. But I have seen it happen so I believe in it but I am still very caucus in believing these miracles.

The Jews and Greeks who lived in the province of Asia heard God’s word because the disciples that were being taught by Paul was then going out and spreading the word. The people were receptive to the teaching of the word. Just like in Paul’s day if we don’t evangelize then the people will not hear the word of God.

Apollos was preaching the baptism of John and Paul was preaching the baptism of the Holy Spirit. But they were both teaching about Jesus. This created competing allegiances in Corinth because of differ stiles of preaching. Some liked what Apollos was saying and some liked what Paul was saying. Paul addressed the issue by saying one planted one watered and only God made them grow. There is all kinds of division over style within the Christian Community in all regions of the community. We have got to remember that is God that makes us grow and not our different worship styles.

The importance of the belief in the bodily resurrection to the gospel that Paul taught was one of the main themes that he believed in. The other was the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We know that Jesus is not dead and we have to have faith in that. When we die I think that our spirit is going to be with God in heaven and when Christ comes again we will be raised up with him.

I think that the house churches were very economic because they didn’t have to build buildings to meet together. Probably even the neighbors came to the house church. Bi-vocational ministries were needed so that they could support themselves and not have to rely on the newly converted people to make an offering. The advantage of a house-church model is that you get to know everybody in the church. You can a better fellowship with each other. The weaknesses is finding a leader and the congregation has to stay small.

Paul was earning his living by skilled labor because he wanted to be an example to the church that they should not me lazy and they should earn their living. I think that Christians believe that “full-time Christian ministry” is better than bi-vocational ministry because then they think that it is the preacher job to evangelize and not theirs. I think that Paul was teaching them by example of working for his living that they should be humble and do any work that comes around.

God is close to all no matter whether they are believers of not. All we have to do is just reach out and accept it. God works with non-believers by showing them the everyday things like the birds of the air and the plant life and everything in the universe. God shows forbearance for sins of non-believers and Christians act judgmental because we are trying to bring them under God’s wing. But we are to love them and try to bring the good news to them. Jesus says that He is the only way to the Father so yes, Jesus is necessary for salvation.

The Substitutionary Atonement is that Christ died for our sins and the animals that we use to sacrifice is no longer needed. We have had the one and only sacrifice that is needed to be saved. This was good news because we don’t have to make weekly sacrifices with the animals. This assures us that our struggles with sin have been atoned.

I think the reason that Paul might underemphasize the “crucified Messiah” is because they were the ones that put Him on the Cross. He probably didn’t want to rub it in. We are sometimes tempted to tell other how great it is to follow Christ but not tell then the other aspects of the gospel because the need to get their attention on how Christ saved us. Then at a later date we can tell them the other aspects of the gospel. It is important that we are honest about the gospel because we are talking about Jesus who saved us from our sins.

We are to “Rejoice always” because we know that God has always got our back. Sometimes he doesn’t answer us the way that we think He should but if we look back it was probably a good thing that He didn’t. Our natural tendency, when we are under stress, is to find somebody to blame and go around complaining. When I am really down and seem to have a heavy burden is when I have a difficult time praising God.

Paul circumcised Timothy because he didn’t want any controversy of Timothy not being circumcised. He wanted to compromise so he could get the word out about Jesus. Paul “become all thing to all people” so he could teach them about Jesus. The path of serving Jesus requires humility rather than demanding our rights because we want to be able to get through to those who not believe in Jesus.

The sense that believers in the Messiah the “New Israel” is that we all believe in the Son of God. He has called us all and not just the Jew. It is God who makes the believing Gentiles with the believing Jews. And it is God that makes believing Protestants one with believing Catholics.