Thanksgiving


 

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Listen

 James 1:19 ESV  Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger;  As the Turkish proverbs goes, if speaking is silver, listening is golden. Speaking is easy; listening is hard. James calls us to be quick to listen and slow to speak. We have two ears and one mouth. This suggests that we should listen about twice as much as we speak! We have a good record of Jesus's words, but he is the ultimate listener too, to respond appropriately to his hearers. James isn't just telling us to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, or even to seek to emulate Christ. He reminds us that we're brethren. We're adopted into God's family through faith in Jesus. Anger isn't necessarily wrong. In our anger we're not to sin. We're not to be quick tempered. 'Abba God, we praise you for adopting us into your family. Please help us to display the family characteristics: to be good, temperate listeners. For the glory of your name, a...
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Love

but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8 (ESV) Cynics question how God loves us. They point out all the wars, famines, plagues and so on in the world and question how God can exist. It could well be questioned how atheists make sense of suffering, because without our Creator, life is meaningless, and therefore who cares about suffering? Thankfully, God demonstrates His love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. It's not like we can earn God's salvation. It's only by His grace that we can be saved. The implication of this verse is that if we trust in Christ, we no longer become defined by our sinfulness. Instead, the perfect righteousness of Christ is credited to our bankrupt spiritual accounts. We can be blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ. The reformers used to describe us as simultaneously sinful and yet justified. Yet a day will come when we will be like Christ, for we will se...
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Listen!

  Therefore, thus says the Lord, the God of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I am bringing upon Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem all the disaster that I have pronounced against them, because I have spoken to them and they have not listened, I have called to them and they have not answered. Jeremiah 35:17 ESV In the context, the Rechabites were better at keeping their family traditions than the Jews were at obeying the word of the Lord. God respected the Rechabites nomadic teetotalism. His temper was frayed with His people as a whole however. We don't have to be nomadic. Yet we should remember that this world is not our home, we're just passing through. We shouldn't get too comfortable. We don't have to be teetotal. Yet we must never get drunk on alcohol. We should be sober minded as we consider the eternity to come. Thankfully, salvation is available to us in Christ crucified. Yet we must listen to the way of salvation. If we close our ears to calls to ...
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