What Makes Faith in Christ so different from other religions? What God would die in the place of his own people?

Loving the Difficult People.

Some people are like cactus plants, they have their prickly spines and rough edges, but many cactuses produce flowers too. Do not overlook someone’s GOD given good qualities just because they have a few prickly features.  

Lights in the Darkness.

What good is a candle unless you want to light up a dark room, and what good is a Christian if he wont light up a dark world.

(Matthew 5:14-16) “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.

The Company you Keep.

Proverbs 13:20 Walk with the wise and become wise, for a companion of fools suffers harm.

As the old saying goes, “birds of a feather flock together”- we are often known by the company we surround ourselves with. People might even judge us according to the crowd they see us with, if they do not know us personally then all they have to go by is first appearance. This becomes a problem when the characters we spend a lot of time with are bad apples.

Another reason it is important to choose our friends wisely is they will rub off on us and influence us in ways whether good or bad. Another old adage says it like this, “sleep with the dogs and wake up with the flees” and according to the Bible this is very true!

1 Corinthians 15:33 Do not be misled: “Bad company corrupts good character.”

When it comes to our friends we must choose carefully. Not all people are as quality as others and most everyone knows what it is like to be burned by someone or caught up in the wrong crowd.

There is no such thing as a sinless friend, except Christ, but a good friend and loyal friend ought to be pursuing the ultimate friend, Christ, so he or she can always keep growing in goodness, godliness and loyalty. We become like who we follow and spend time with. Spending time in God’s presence and reading His word will help us draw power from his life to pass on to others.

A Small Sacrifice from A Large Heart.

Do you ever feel dry in your walk with the Lord, and does your relationship with Christ seem less vibrant than it does at other times? The truth is loving God is not a feeling and loving God does not require only huge leaps of faith or great acts of service. Sometimes we feel like we have very little to offer the Lord, as we see in this story, the poor woman gave little but none the less from her heart!

Luke 21:1-4 Jesus looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the offering box, and he saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins. And he said, “Truly, I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them. For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.”

We really cannot offer God much at all, and even as Christians we must rely on who he is more so then who we are. Our loyalty and goodness are very minuscule in comparison but he still will receive our little acts of love if they come truly from a heart of love and worship.

Do not just obey or give God your time, love or energy only when you have a lot to spare and you feel super spiritual. We live by faith and not sight so everything done for Christ matters whether small or great.

Human Spiders.

(Human Spiders and the Webs They Create)

Has any body else picked up on sneaky questions people ask to snare them in something they say? Well you need not look farther then when a public figure who holds and unpopular belief goes on a TV show or is asked questions by a news anchor….it starts out with trivial small talk and pleasantries and then they say, “Oh by the way, what’s your opinion on ___________.” Fill in the blank, so what is really looks like a friendly interchange has guile and deceptive intentions from the get go.

Jesus faced similar opposition and the people at the time tried to drag him down the proverbial slippery political slope of his day. We see human nature has not changed much and people still practice these devious tactics in order to trap those they view as enemies or enemies of their causes.

Mark 12:13-17 Later they sent some of the Pharisees and Herodians to Jesus to catch him in his words. They came to him and said, “Teacher, we know that you are a man of integrity. You aren’t swayed by others, because you pay no attention to who they are; but you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. Is it right to pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not? Should we pay or shouldn’t we?” But Jesus knew their hypocrisy. “Why are you trying to trap me?” he asked. “Bring me a denarius and let me look at it.” They brought the coin, and he asked them, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?”“Caesar’s,” they replied. Then Jesus said to them, “Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”And they were amazed at him.

Basically these people were doing exactly what Psalm 28:3 speaks of.

Psalm 28:3-4 Do not drag me away with the wicked, with those who do evil, who speak cordially with their neighborsbut harbor malice in their hearts. Repay them for their deedsand for their evil work;repay them for what their hands have doneand bring back on them what they deserve.

These people do not want a wise and intelligible answer most of the time but rather to spin a little spiderweb to trap one in a situation so they look bad. So it really is not a friendly thing but a way to get someone to let their guard down to say something that presents them in a bad light.

Be careful what you say in front of people or how you respond to their questions. Jesus say through their flattery to their hypocrisy and confronted them square on. Then he responded with such a wide answer they were dumb founded.