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THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE

"Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die. Believest thou this?" (John 11:25, 26).  Jesus spoke these words to Martha before He raised her brother Lazarus from the dead.  His words reveal two profound truths: that Jesus is the resurrection , and that He also is the life .  These two truths are very closely related, and are easily confused as the same thing.  They are both products of the Spirit of life that is in Christ Jesus, and are both dependent on faith in order to be effective, but in application they are quite different.  The one can be described as passing from death to a new life, while the other could be described as staying alive.    Jesus says of resurrection, "... he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live ."   Faith in Jesus is the means by which we achieve resurrection....
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BUILDING ON THE FOUNDATION: 1 CORINTHIANS 3

OVERVIEW The author of the letter to the Corinthians is the Apostle Paul.  Paul visited Corinth during his 2 nd missionary trip and planted a Christian church there around 52 A.D.  In Paul’s day Corinth was the capitol of the Roman province of Achaia.  The Apostle remained with the newly formed church for nearly two years teaching and ministering to their spiritual needs in order to provide them with a firm foundation upon which they could build.    Corinth was a city of about 500,000 people and was situated on the narrow Isthmus of Corinth in what is today modern Greece.  It was situated on major land and sea travel routes and commanded two harbors, one leading to Asia and the other to Italy.  With its extended trade, it was a very prosperous city and was known both for its luxury and its immorality.  To be called a Corinthian woman at the time was synonymous with being called a whore or a strumpet.  The city had at least 26 sacred pl...
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THE MAN OF GOD

It could be that the Apostle Paul wasn’t at all who we thought he was.   Our general impression of Paul may be based more on what he accomplished than by who he was at his core.   Many would perhaps think of him as a great orator, able to preach mighty sermons that would move his hearers to repentance and drive them to their knees.   We could assume Paul to have been super self-confident in his own abilities, accomplishments, and talents that he possessed.   Because of his ministry and the important call that God had on his life, we may think that the Lord would have kept Paul from trouble and from sickness, guarding and healing him just as he prayed for protection and healing over others.     These things are based on assumptions that we have about Paul, and not on what the Apostle tells us about himself.  If we take a deeper look into Paul’s life and ministry, we will perhaps find some surprising facts about this mighty man of God.   PAU...
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