Every day you will face things that are bigger than your wisdom and deeper than your spiritual maturity. Not only do you need daily forgiveness; you need daily assistance.
When I was Muslim, I would argue & say we had the same prophets as Christians.
But this one broke me:
Surah 17:101: Allah gave Moses 9 clear signs.
I knew the list. The staff. The shining hand. The drought. The flood. The locusts. The lice. The frogs. The blood.
I held onto those 9 signs like proof I had the real story.
But bro, you know what shook me?
There’s a night missing.
After all nine signs, right before Israel walks out of Egypt, something happens that the Quran goes completely silent on.
A lamb is slaughtered.
Its blood painted on the doorposts.
And death passes over every house covered by that blood.
The Passover.
I grew up hearing the whole Exodus story. But nobody ever told me about the blood on the door.
Islam just skips it.
And here’s what wrecked me.
The Bible, the book I was taught was corrupted, mentions the Passover over 70 times.
Exodus. Leviticus. Numbers. Deuteronomy. The Psalms. The Prophets. The Gospels. Paul.
70 times.
So I had to ask myself the honest question:
If men corrupted this book, why would they obsess over the same story for 1500 years? Across dozens of authors who never met?
You don’t forge a document 70 times.
That’s just not corruption.
That to me is preservation.
And then I read the line that finished me off.
1 Corinthians 5:7.
“Christ our Passover lamb has been sacrificed.”
That’s when it hit me.
The whole story was never just about Moses.
It was always pointing to a King.
The final lamb. Whose blood, when applied to your life, makes death pass over you.
Forever.
The Quran gave me 9 signs but hid the one night that explains why any of them happened.
Because the moment a Muslim understands the Passover…
he’s one step away from the cross.
God's most significant objective in my life, from salvation until Jesus returns, is sanctification. We want our lives to be comfortable, successful, and predictable, but God is willing to compromise all of these in order to deal with our deepest difficulty: indwelling and remaining sin.
Achievement is a very dangerous place to find identity. You will disappoint yourself, others will disappoint you, and your list of successes won't satisfy the craving of your soul. Only the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ will.
So much of the Christian life can be boiled down to two simple truths.
1. You are no longer your own. You belong to Christ.
2. You are no longer 𝘰𝘯 your own. He gave you the church.
A few encouraging truths:
1. Nothing in the cosmos is on our shoulders.
2. We are not able or asked to heal our fallen world.
3. Only Jesus can make all things right.
4. Our normal call is to simple and ordinary faithfulness.
5. God gives us all the grace we need for this.
If you truly care about the truth you will want people to believe it. Say it in the most hearable way possible without compromising in the slightest. Don't say it in an unnecessarily abrasive way and then, when rejected, pat yourself on the back for being valiant for truth.
Men become much more interesting after they've been humbled.
After Jacob wrestled with the angel, he walked with a limp.
So it is with us men after God humbles us.
The bravado is burned off.
The delusions of grandeur have dimmed.
You're a different man.
And a better one.
The more you meditate on your problems, the bigger and more insurmountable they seem to be. But meditating on God in the midst of your trouble reminds you that He is infinitely greater than any problem you could ever experience!
Mainers ruthlessly boo News Center Maine's @PHirschkorn, as he asks VP Vance: "What else do ya got? What else has your task force flagged that we should be concerned about, because those [fraudulent] amounts are a lot, $46 million, $1.7 million, but they don't really compare to CA or MN, what else should we expect from your task force?"
"We've got biased reporters in all states, it's ok, trust me," jokes Vance, as the crowd continues to boo loudly. "I can handle it."
Now think about this:
It's the anger of God as an expression of his love;
it's the anger of God as an expression of his holiness;
it's the anger of God as an expression of his justice;
it's the anger of God as an expression of his mercy and the desire to right wrong that sent Jesus to the cross.
You see, Jesus was not on the cross just because of the grace of God, but because also of the anger of God with sin.
On the cross, the anger of God and the grace of God embrace, and in that, we get forgiveness, reconciliation to God, the defeat of sin, and an eternal destiny where those things are no more.
You see, God's anger guarantees that evil will not win! Anger is one of God's beautiful characteristics in his holiness, his justice, his mercy, and his love!
#5minutebiblestudies #exodus
What we lose when the Bible is only on a screen:
1. You remember where the verse lives on the page and aids memorization.
2. The page shows you much more at once. You see the context, not just a few verses at once.
3. The page keeps your notes. Years from now they will still be there, in your own hand.
4. The page cannot distract you with a notification. It only asks to be read.
5. The page is something your children watch you open and they know it’s the Bible.
The screen gives much. The page gives more.
I thank God for how He moved at the Love and Hope in Shikoku Celebration in Japan. Over 3,000 people heard the Gospel, and many responded by accepting Jesus as Lord and Savior of their lives. What a privilege to witness lives being changed by the Gospel!
https://t.co/fURvKEmyKG