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WALK IN HIM

“ As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in Him : rooted and built up in Him, and established in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving.” (Colossians 2:6, 7).   I am forever amazed at just how ready I was to receive Christ as my Savior.   I had been brought to a point in my life where I knew I’d messed up and couldn’t fix things or go back and change the choices that I had already made that had brought me down the road that I was on.   I needed help, but more than that, I needed mercy.   I didn’t need a theologian to tell me I’d offended my Creator.   What little I knew about God was enough to tell me I’d blown it.   That’s when someone found me and told me about Jesus.   I was amazed to hear that my past could be forgiven, and that I could have a clean slate to write the rest of my life on.   It wasn’t difficult – I simply believed it.   As a gift from heaven, I just accepted it an...
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LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION

" And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil ..."  (Matthew 6:13)   Growing up, I was taught to recite the Lord's Prayer in Sunday school, and I committed it to memory at an early age.  It wasn't until years later, however, that the words began to sink in, and then only little by little as the Lord opened my understanding to what I had learned.  Most recently, though, I was brought up short by the words quoted above.   I have always considered that temptation was an inevitable part of life, and that there was nothing that I could do to avoid it.  These words promise something altogether different than I had ever considered.  They indicate that the Lord is willing to lead me in such a way that I will not walk into temptation blindly, and that He is able to deliver me from the evil that would seek to divert me from following Him.   When Jesus went to the garden of Gethsemane to pray before His betrayal and ultimate crucifi...
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JONAH

"Now the word of the LORD came unto Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before Me.  But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the LORD." (Jonah 1:1-3).   As much as we hate to admit it, there is, at times, a little bit of Jonah in all of us.  It's that carnal, selfish side of us that rises up and says, "I want to do what I want to do!"  Even when we know it's not a good choice, we choose it anyway.  Paul experienced it, and wrote about it in his letter to the Roman believers.  He said, "For that which I do, I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I." (Romans 7:15).  In other words, the things that he hated doing, and in his mind he wouldn't allow himself to do, he did anyway; and the things that he knew were right and good, he found that he had trouble doing.  It's sort of like our New Year's r...
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