We are on a thematic journey through flowery colors with Cee in the Fun Foto Challenge folks! This week Cee has asked us to show her WHITE FLOWERS.
Check out all the contributions at the link above.
Here are mine:
It is 2016 and time once again to SHARE OUR WORLDS. This is week one of the sharing and you can find out all about folks in the New Year by clicking on the underlined link. OK maybe you won’t learn everything but you will learn something and as they say “that is something at least!” 🙂
Ready? Set? HERE WE GO……
As a child, who was your favorite relative?
My favorite relative as a child was my cousin Michael. He was imminently cool. He was closest to my age among the cousins (at least the ones I knew well) and I saw him quite often. I don’t think he felt the same. I was four years his junior definitely not cool and his mother had to baby sit me and my sister. So I guess looking back there were times he didn’t appreciate me as much as I appreciated him but that has changed over the years. He and his wife are now members of the church where I pastor and his daughter is one of our church pianists.
If you could be a tree or plant, what would you be?
I would be a date palm. Big and sweet.
What would be your preference, awake before dawn or awake before noon?
Oh gosh I am usually awake before dawn now and that is most definitely not my favorite…. but awake before noon? 😦 I guess if that could include waking up between 8 and 9 A.M. I would choose that. Sleeping until like 11 feels like such a waste of day light.
Would you like to sleep in a human size nest in a tree or be snuggled in a burrowed spot underground?
Oh underground please. I have always wanted to live in a Hobbit Hole!
photo by: http://www.backpackingearth
Bonus question: What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?
I am grateful that I got the 20 pages of back story done for my publisher!
This week I am looking forward to helping at Special Touch REACH New England’s outreach service and I am also looking forward to helping my friend Deb Maciorowski from http://debbestillandlisten.com/ move into her new apartment. Hopefully she will be back writing again soon.
This is asparagus…or…green. I will try my hardest to match this palette but admittedly shades are not my forte. So this is really a COLOR CHALLENGE FOR ME.
See how others met the challenge by clicking the underlined link!
Here are my aspargus choices 🙂
Hmm. Sort of
Fields of cows in Cashel….closer?
Now that’s pretty close.
So we are delving into Romans 1:16,17 yet again. If you missed our previous devotional thoughts they can be found on THE ROAD THROUGH ROMANS PAGE.
Today I really want to begin looking at the bold faced words in these two verses.
For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. 17For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”
These words are the launching pad for what is perhaps the major theme for Paul’s letter to the Romans. I guess you could say the theme can be summed up thusly, The way to eternal salvation AND a lifestyle of actual holiness is by faith… OR…the way to the God-approved state is through faith.
Paul develop this theme greatly throughout the book. Honestly, it was pretty radical thinking for his readers back when it was written. Even for us this thought is pretty radical.
When most people think of Heaven they usually think of it as a place of reward for good people, something to be worked towards. When asked why a person should go to Heaven most reply that a person gets to Heaven by doing good or by having his good deeds outweigh his bad deeds. But Paul’s message throughout Romans is that salvation (Heaven) is not obtained by what we do but by who we put our faith in. In fact here in verse 17 Paul even mentions that the ability to be righteous or do good works is based on who we put our trust in. The intimation is that if we do not put our faith in the right person not only will we not attain Heaven we will not even be able to do the things that are truly good.
This is a pretty serious allegation for a world that by and large does not put its faith in Jesus.
I would love to hear your thoughts about Paul’s words here.
We continue our discussion through Paul’s letter to the Romans. Today we are discussing Romans 1:16,17
For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. 17For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”
My fellowship, the Assemblies of God has 16 fundamental truths that every one of our churches adhere to. Of those 16 fundamentals there are four cardinal or primary doctrines.
Each of these doctrines speaks of an incredible, miraculous manifestation of God’s grace and presence in the lives of men and women across the face of the globe.Of all those miraculous interventions into the lives of people the most miraculous is the salvation of man from his sin. Jesus died and rose again to perpetuate this miracle in our lives. That alone is an incredible thought.Yet one of the most miraculous things about the miracle of salvation is the way it is applied to the life of a man or a woman.The power of salvation is applied to a person’s life through the gospel. A person gets saved when someone else tells him the story of Jesus and he chooses to believe it.
Paul said it this way, “21For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. 22Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, 23but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. ” 1 Cor. 1:21-24
Preaching the gospel as we have said in earlier posts is not just a job for professional ministers. It is the job of every Christian.You may not feel qualified to share Jesus with other people. Honestly who is? We are sharing GOD with people! What ex-sinner could ever be qualified for such a job? That’s part of the miracle, don’t you know? God could have chosen angels to preach. He could have chosen to use supernatural visions or dreams to proclaim the gospel. He could have made the mountains sing it if He so desired. Instead He chose to use sinful people to proclaim righteousness to other sinful people so that righteousness could be formed in them all!
Ain’t that a hoot?
If you have missed any of our previous conversations they can be discovered on THE ROAD THROUGH ROMANS PAGE
This week Ailsa has asked us to show her WAVES WE HAVE MET IN OUR TRAVELS.
She has come up with some really unique ways to display waves so check out her post and those of her contributors at the underlined link above.
Here are my thought on waves
There are traditional waves of course.
Then there are banners that wave.
There is the waving of hands,
And of course
There is the wave of relief that comes when a job is done.
Nancy Merril has asked us to give her a VINTAGE LOOK IN A PHOTOGRAPH.
I am not sure I really captured it. But I tried. See how Nancy and others did it by clicking the link above.
Cee has challenged us to bring her our black & white BRICKS AND STONES this week. You can check out the stonework of Cee’s contributors by clicking the underlined link.
Here are mine…
There is little else besides stonework at this part of Trinity College in Dublin.
Ancient Stone steps lead away from Torc Falls in Killarney
Stone breakwaters in Doolin
The stone walls of Cabras Castle’s stable yard.
I know this post was expected four days ago but it got holidelayed (see what I did there?). Today we are moving on from Romans 1:11 to Romans 1:12. We are however continuing our discussion regarding the Gift of the baptism in the Holy Spirit.
If you have missed any of our previous discussion on spiritual gifts you can find them on THE ROAD THROUGH ROMANS PAGE.
Romans 1:11,12 reads, “I long to see you so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to make you strong— — that is, that you and I may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith.”
Whatever you may believe about the spiritual gifts: how they come upon a person, when they come upon a person or what the first evidence of their arrival is there is one thing that cannot be questioned; That is the purpose of those gifts.
The purpose of the gifts of the Spirit is to encourage those who experience them in the faith. The purpose of the baptism in the Holy Spirit is to strengthen the force of love in the lives of those who are baptized.
Paul says in effect that the reason he longs to impart the spiritual gift to the Romans is so that they and he may be built up in their mutual faith.
The baptism in the Holy Spirit must make a palpable difference in the lives of those who are baptized. It should also make a powerful difference in the lives of those around the one baptized otherwise the baptism is all for nothing.
In 1 Corinthinas 13:1-3 Paul says it this way, If I speak in the tongues[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing.
The long and the short of it is that a person can be baptized in the Spirit and still miss the point. The gifts: tongues, interpretation of tongues, prophecy, healing, working of miracles…all of these things are just the method, not the point. If the gifts are manifested but they do not increase the three things which will last forever (faith, hope and love) then it is all just so much useless noise and wasted energy.
I don’t know about you but I have no time or energy to waste! I must let the baptism in the Holy Spirit drive me deeper into faith, hope and love!
It’s the last post of the year for Ken and then we are into 2016. Read on….
http://artistdayapart.com/a-prepositional-truth/#more-3142
Lillie-Put 