Reading the Bible for all its worth

"Has it every bothered you, as it has bothered me, that not a one of the last judgment scenes in the Bible reads the way it is supposed to read! We expect the Bible to describe the last judgment this way: The Lord will say, those who have believed in me come stand on my right and hand and those who did not believe in me go to outer darkness. But the Bible never paints the picture that way. It is always, instead, the books will be opened and "each person was judged according to what he had done" (Rev. 20:12-13).

If I could challenge you to read one sermon, it very well might be the one from which this excerpt is taken. Check it out at: http://sermons.faithtacoma.org/Scripture/Introduction.htm

Part 2 is just as challenging: http://sermons.faithtacoma.org/Scripture/Introduction%20No.%202.htm

"The fact of the matter is, my brethren, it is as clear to me as can be that the redemptive-historical men and the law-grace men, had they been standing over Matthew's shoulder or James' shoulder, or the shoulder of many other a biblical writer, would have suggested that they put things differently than they did. We want, rather, to let God decide what we need to hear, how we need to hear it, and with what emphasis. And if that means that we must hold together convictions that are not easily held together, if it means we must work both in thought and in life to be faithful to truths that must be held together with might and main, well, then, so be it. It is the nature of reality that it should be so and so the nature of true faith in Christ and God."

Praise God for his grace which has freed us from the power of sin's consequence as well as the power of sins dominion in our lives today! We are no longer slaves to sin, but slaves to righteousness!

Perspective change

Ten car crashes every minute makes our heads spin. Start throwing out such statistics and our perspective become quickly grave. We can't comprehend the numbers of children starving to death today any better than we can comprehend our governments debt. When we look at those numbers it would be right to stand for a moment in the atheists shoes. Is this evidence of a good God? How do we change our perspective? The answer is by doing just that: change your perspective. It is the fool who says in his heart there is no God. The average person breathes about twenty thousand times each day, and not one of those breaths can be attributed to skill, talent, or even knowledge of how to breathe. Yet not one of those is taken aside from the grace of a loving Creator. Smarter men will tell me that the brain makes 100 million MIPS (computer instructions per second). For comparison, a nice 2011 personal computer with Intel Core i7 Extreme makes 177,730 MIPS. Look at those numbers people. Your brain has the capacity to... not to mention the creativity... Is it a holy paradox that your body is 65% water, but the minute we go under water and it enters our lungs we drown? What will it take for our words to be filled with praise and our thoughts to be overflowing in gratefulness? Every 44 seconds someone dies of heart disease. As for you, your heart will pump 1900 gallons today without your conscious thought. In fact, even with your incredible 100 million MIPS brain, you couldn't consciously stop your heart from beating.

"Great is Thy faithfulness!" "Great is Thy faithfulness!"
Morning by morning new mercies I see;
All I have needed Thy hand hath provided—
"Great is Thy faithfulness," Lord, unto me!