Messenger: Adam Hopkins

All of us have caused harm to someone during our lives – even our new lives in Christ – either intentionally or unintentionally. Our sins can harm not only ourselves, but often have widespread consequences for those around us – especially our loved ones. Likewise, the sins of others can have unforeseen impacts upon us. Every Christian needs to seek forgiveness for our sins not only from God, but also from those whom we harm through our sins. Even more importantly, we need to be committed to offer grace, mercy, and forgiveness to those whose sins hurt us. In this we model Jesus’ own love, grace, forgiveness, and mercy.

Our Father seeks those who are lost – apart from Him despite His infinite and enduring love. When the legalistic leaders of Jewish society condemned Him for consorting with sinners and outcasts, Jesus told three parables illustrating God’s diligent outreach to His lost children. Perhaps the most well-known of these… read more

After the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem, he tried to change four young Hebrew captives Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah from being servants of the true God as reflected in their Hebrew names into being servants of the Babylonian’s false gods – by renaming them with Babylonian names and trying to make them conform to a Babylonian lifestyle and diet. But Daniel and the other three young Hebrew captives remained true to the God of Israel. Similarly, the sinful worldly system symbolized by Babylon in God’s Word tries to make us leave the service of God into which He has called us and return to a worldly life apart from God. From this story of the four young Hebrew captives, we can take encouragement and strength in our daily lives to remain true to our godly calling and resist the temptations and call of the world.

God’s Word tells us that peacemakers are blessed. He also promises that He will give His peace that surpasses human understanding to those who live our lives for Christ. But we must always remember that His peace, and our abilities and opportunities to share that peace are gifts from God – not anything we should take our own pride in. Instead, we should rejoice that He has called us, and that He has rescued us out of death to write our names in His book of life.

The full context of Philippians 4 tells us that Christ strengthens us not to accomplish our own goals, but to live out our Christian calling with joy even in the midst of difficult challenges. This is extremely important because the unsaved people in the world will observe how professed Christ followers deal with adversity to discern whether we truly can “do all things through Christ.”

Many people aren’t aware that the often quoted John 3:16 is part of a nighttime conversation between Jesus and one of the Jewish leaders of that time – Nicodemus. Nicodemus didn’t understand what Jesus meant when He said we must be born again to enter the Kingdom of God. Jesus gently explained His meaning using an example from the Old Testament with which Nicodemus was very familiar – the story of God’s command to Moses to make a bronze serpent and hang it upon a pole so that any Israelite who looked upon it would be healed of the deadly venom after they were bitten by the snakes that God had brought into the Israelite’s midst following their complaints against Moses and against God. Jesus told Nicodemus that just as the Israelites had been healed from the poison of the snakes, all mankind would be healed from the poison of our sin when Jesus was lifted up (on the cross).

Nicodemus finally understood and believed, but it was only the beginning of his journey of faith. He remained a secret believer until he actually saw Jesus lifted up on the cross. After Jesus died, Nicodemus and his fellow Jewish leader Joseph of Arimathea performed the Jewish rites of burial for Jesus’ body.

As Christ followers we must honestly examine our motivations for our service to the Gospel. If we find we are not following the Lord for the right reasons, we must confess this sin before God, and seek His strength and guidance to bring us back into truly godly fellowship.