JRFuller

[JRFuller @JRFuller13]

@iamrodneysmith Congratulations!

[Greg Stier @GregStierSpeaks]

Four teenagers changed the world.

Not pastors. Not kings. Not military leaders.

Teenagers.

Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were likely only 13-15 years old when they were ripped from their homes, marched into Babylon, and immersed in one of the most pagan cultures on earth. Yet instead of compromising, they stood firm.

They learned the culture without bowing to it.

They engaged the world without becoming like it.

They influenced Babylon instead of Babylon influencing them.

Their passion for God grew deeper.

Their convictions grew stronger.

Their courage became contagious.

Three stood before a blazing furnace and refused to bow.

One stood before kings and refused to be silenced.

And through their faithfulness, even Nebuchadnezzar, the most powerful ruler on earth, was humbled before the one true God.

Think about that.

An empire was impacted because four teenagers decided that God was worth living and dying for.

Today’s teenagers face a different Babylon, but the challenge is the same. They are surrounded by confusion, compromise, and constant pressure to blend in. Yet God is still looking for students who will stand out.

Students who pray boldly.

Students who love deeply.

Students who share the Gospel courageously.

Students who refuse to compromise morally.

Paul told Timothy, “Don’t let anyone despise your youth, but set an example for the believers in speech, conduct, love, faith, and purity” (1 Timothy 4:12).

The next great spiritual awakening may not start with a celebrity preacher, a viral podcast, or a massive event (actually, it probably won’t.)

But it may start with two, three or four teenagers who decide to live differently.

Never underestimate what God can do through a few students who are fully surrendered to Him.

Four teenagers changed the world then. A handful of teenagers can change the world again.

“And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above; and those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever” Daniel 12:3

[JRFuller @JRFuller13]

@w_bitterman Ezekiel and John

[Pastor Rich Bitterman @w_bitterman]

Somewhere on your calendar is an appointment you may never keep. Maybe it’s a vacation that you have been looking forward to. As humans, we tend to assume that there wil always be another weekend, another candle on the birthday cake.

Hayden Panettiere had a birthday coming this Friday and she would have turned 37.

Instead, the actress was found unresponsive Sunday, August 16, in Greenville, South Carolina. First responders tried to revive her and she died at 36. Her official cause of death has not yet been determined. Tragically, she leaves behind an 11-year-old daughter.

Maybe that is why a death like hers stops us. For a few minutes, the subject we spend most of our lives keeping at a comfortable distance walks right into the room. Death is a fact, the clock ticks as the years go by. Somewhere along the way, one ordinary day will be the last day we have on this earth.

I think people used to live closer to death. Ozark tradition was that families sometimes laid out the body themselves. In fact, the undertaker might not come for days. Then people stood around the humiliation of the grave, watched the coffin lowered into the earth and walked away. They knew death was for real. We know it too except we have simply become better at hiding it.

Think about this, medicine can tell us when the heart has stopped and science can describe what happens to flesh when life ends. But, the world cannot tell me what happens five minutes after I die.

The Bible begins answering that question by telling us what we are, “The LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living person” (Genesis 2:7, NASB).

There is more to you than the chemicals which make you up. The instant after death, nearly all the material that formed the body is still there. Yet everybody beside the bed knows the person is gone. What happened?

Death is the separation of body and spirit. As the body returns to the dust…the real you continues.

For the Christian, the next moment is almost too wonderful to take in. Jesus told the dying thief, “Today you shall be with Me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43). Paul spoke of departing this life and being with Christ, which he called “very much better” (Philippians 1:23).

Immediately! The believer does not wander through some dark corridor trying to find heaven. Christ loses none of His people somewhere between the hospital room and eternity. The moment the spirit is separated from the body, the Christian is with the Lord.

Still, heaven immediately after death is only part of the Christian hope.

God has not forgotten the body. Job said, “Yet from my flesh I shall see God” (Job 19:26). Jesus said an hour is coming when “all who are in the tombs will hear His voice, and will come out” (John 5:28–29).

There is not a cemetery on earth Christ has forgotten. One day every grave and every body reduced to dust will answer the voice of the Son of God. Paul says the believer’s body is sown in corruption and raised in incorruption, sown in weakness and raised in power, sown in dishonor and raised in glory.

How can anybody believe something that enormous? Because one grave is already empty, “Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who are asleep” (1 Corinthians 15:20).

The first fruits were the beginning of the harvest and the guarantee that more was coming. Jesus Christ walked out of His grave. His resurrection is God’s pledge that death will not keep those who belong to Him. Resurrection gives us hope after death. The gospel answers the question that comes before it.

How does a sinner come to belong to Christ?

Scripture says our deepest problem begins before the coffin. We are spiritually dead in our trespasses and sins. We were made for God, yet sin has separated us from Him. We have disobeyed the One who gave us life. We carry real guilt before a holy God and death is the terrible wage of that rebellion.

Then God did what we could never do for ourselves. Jesus Christ, the sinless Son of God, came for the guilty.

At the cross, He stood in the place of sinners and bore the judgment sin deserves. God did not pretend our rebellion was small or sweep our guilt aside. It was judged fully in Christ. The verdict that should have fallen upon us fell upon Him.

Our sin was laid upon Jesus, and He carried it completely. The righteousness we could never produce is credited to those who trust Him. Every charge against the believer has been answered. The debt is paid. A guilty sinner can now stand before a holy God forgiven, received, reconciled, and made spiritually alive because Jesus Christ has done everything necessary to bring him home.

Think of the wonder of that.

The One we sinned against came to save us.

God did not ask us to climb our way back to Him. In Christ, He came down to rescue people who could never rescue themselves. Jesus took the condemnation that belonged to us. Through faith, we receive a righteousness that belongs to Him.

We come with empty hands and Christ fills them. A Christian therefore does not arrive before Jesus hoping his good deeds outweigh his bad ones. He comes resting on the same Savior who held him while he lived. His hope of being received then rests upon exactly what it rests upon now: Christ died for him.

The Savior who is enough today will be enough in that hour.

I had heard the gospel hundreds of times. Then one day I saw, believed,and trusted. Christ became real to me and God made me spiritually alive. What He has already done for my soul, He will one day do for my body.

Perhaps you fear death. You would be a strange person if you felt nothing at all. Maybe death itself does not frighten you, though dying does. Christians still grieve and graves still hurt. An 11-year-old girl has lost her mother. Parents have lost a daughter.

The gospel never asks us to call death beautiful, it tells us death has been beaten. Paul could stare toward the grave and ask, “Death, where is your victory? Death, where is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:55).

Death does not have it all its own way. There are plans on my calendar I may never keep. The same is true for you. One day somebody else may close our calendar, cancel the appointment, return the phone call and stand beside the place where our body is laid. For those who are in Christ, that grave will only be waiting for a voice.

The sky, not the grave, is my goal.

[Pastor Rich Bitterman @w_bitterman]

Contentment…I have caught myself looking at something God gave me and feeling grateful for it then seeing what someone else has and suddenly wondering why mine feels so small.

The strange part is, God had not taken anything from me. I had simply started measuring it against someone else’s life.

Comparison can do that. It can make me forget that some of what feels ordinary now was once something I prayed for.

Paul wrote, “I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am” (Philippians 4:11). I keep coming back to that word 'learned'. Contentment did not come naturally to him. He knew what it was to have plenty and what it was to go hungry. Somewhere along the way, he learned that his circumstances could change without changing the faithfulness of Christ.

“I can do all things through Him who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13).

I have wasted too much time looking sideways while grace was sitting right in front of me. Christ has forgiven my sin, yet I can still look at another person’s life and somehow convince myself that I have been given less.

Maybe you have done that too. Lately I have been trying to look at my life differently. Some of the things that feel ordinary today were once things I desperately wanted….some were prayers I wondered if God would ever answer.

Some of His sweetest gifts are sitting right in front of me and I want to see them while I still have them.

Because one day I may look back and realize that these ordinary days were some of the richest ones God ever gave me.

[Eric Metaxas @ericmetaxas]

"WE HAVE FORGOTTEN GOD." That's how Solzhenitsyn said evil came to the Russians under Marxism. And it is how the current spate of evils has come to America. We have forgotten God. But God has not forgotten us. These women should TREMBLE at His judgement.

[Pastor Rich Bitterman @w_bitterman]

Paul writes that as we behold “the glory of the Lord,” we “are being transformed into the same image” (2 Corinthians 3:18).

We already know how voices shape us. Anger from the morning news can follow us to breakfast. Cynicism heard often enough can slip into our own conversations. Comparison can quietly steal the joy from a perfectly good life.

Then Paul gives us somewhere better to look.

Look at Jesus washing the feet of men who would soon abandon Him. Hear Him speak gently to frightened disciples who should have understood by then. Stand near the cross long enough to hear mercy coming from the mouth of the One being crucified.

Following Jesus is deeper than copying His behavior. The Holy Spirit changes us as we keep looking at Christ.

Slowly, the sharp edge in our voice softens. Forgiveness comes where resentment once lived. Joy begins returning to rooms bitterness occupied for years. Grace reaches places in us we had almost given up on.

Stay near Jesus long enough and one day someone may hear His voice in yours.

[JRFuller @JRFuller13]

@SteveLovesAmmo 🤣

[JRFuller @JRFuller13]

@feelgoodtale 🙏🙏

[Libs of TikTok @libsoftiktok]

Attention everyone in Flower Mound, Texas area

The Hive Bakery apparently hates Conservatives and our country. This was their message for the 4th of July:

“We refuse to observe this holiday. F*** this fascist regime”

Would be a shame if everyone in the area saw this!

[Megan Basham @megbasham]

I followed this account today. I would recommend others do the same.

[Carol M. Swain, PhD @carolmswain]

Most people are taught a very simple story about American slavery.

But history is messier.

Anthony Johnson, a Black man from Angola, arrived in Virginia in 1621 as an indentured servant. He gained his freedom, became a landowner — and in 1655 won a court case to keep his

Black servant John Casor as his slave for life. This helped set an early legal precedent for chattel slavery.
In 1830 there were 3,775 free Black slave owners holding ~12,760 enslaved people.

Did you know this part of the story?
Does it change how you see the “simple” version we’re usually taught?

Share it if you’re tired of slogans and want facts instead.

Tag someone who needs to see this.
Facts > slogans.

#Virginia #slavery #HistoryMatters #enslavedpeople #AnthonyJohnson

[JRFuller @JRFuller13]

@mattvanswol Beautifully written!

[JRFuller @JRFuller13]

@Joeinblack Scriptural basis, please?

[JRFuller @JRFuller13]

@Simi_2210_ 18

[JRFuller @JRFuller13]

@Ellie_0790 1

[JRFuller @JRFuller13]

@Dussyme 4

[JRFuller @JRFuller13]

@shouq_al90149 14

[JRFuller @JRFuller13]

@zakiaonsol 157

[JRFuller @JRFuller13]

@Roweirdo184295 1