Bringing Scripture to Life

What do you get when you combine my favorite childhood Rock Band together with my favorite NFL Quarterback? You get KISS and TIM TEBOW! And a ccording to recent interviews with Radio.com  and the LA TIMES , the infamous Rock Star Gene Simmons, from the legendary band KISS, and now owner of the LA KISS Arena Football team (scheduled to join the league in 2014), has offered a three-year deal to my favorite NFL quarterback, Tim Tebow. Simmons told Radio.com that Tebow (who has been dropped by 3 NFL football teams, and harassed for his faith) has only been picked on because of his religious beliefs. Simmons then praised Tebow for his Christian convictions by saying, “He’s got religious passion, as well he should. We’re in America. He’s proud to be a Christian. What’s wrong with that? And yet, with sports media and pop culture media, they make fun of his religion. Really? In America? ...A guy who’s religious and has got family values isn’t cool? He’s cool to me.”

I was enormously blessed by this quote from Hudson Taylor this morning, and so I wanted to share it with you as well. What a great reminder to us that no matter what we are facing in life, our God is with us, and He will never leave us or forsake us. In fact, the last words Jesus said before ascending back to heaven was, "I will be with you always, even until the end of the age" (Matthew 28:20). What a great and comforting promise we have from our King.

What does it mean to be "joined together" by God?  In Matthew 19:6 Jesus says, “What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.” What God has joined together is an expression used throughout the Bible to describe the marriage covenant that God creates with each husband and wife (cf. Gen. 2:24; Mt. 19:6; 1 Cor. 6:16; Eph. 5:31) The term “joined together” refers to the husband and wife being joined together through sexual relations. It is this act that initially joins the two together. Because this is an integral part of the marital bond: "the two will become one flesh" (Gen. 2:24; Mt. 19:5), any breaking of that bond by having sexual relations outside of the marriage relationship is a permissible reason for divorce.  However, the depth of this union that has been joined together, is meant to go much further then just their sexual union.  When God joins a husband and wife together, He does so holistically. The marital relationsh

We have found ourselves in the middle of a divorce epidemic. Studies show us that over 50% of marriages (including Christian marriages), are ending in divorce (67% of all second marriages). With this rising epidemic taking place before our eyes, and dramatically impacting our culture, as well as the church, how is the Body of Christ to interpret the phenomena? The best way to interpret this is obviously through the lenses of Scripture. What does the Bible say about divorce? A similar question to this was posed to Jesus when the Pharisees asked him, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?” (Matthew 19:3) In other words, “Jesus, what is your interpretation of God’s Word regarding the subject of divorce?” Jesus’ responded to them by saying, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.

Would your spouse say that you have their back? If not, your marriage could be heading for disaster. This article will give you and your spouse some very helpful and practical tools to save your marriage from ending in disaster, and at the same time help you to begin doing the things that MUST BE DONE, in order to have a blessed and happy marriage. The very first mention of marriage in Scripture is in Genesis 2:24, when God says,  “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and he shall cleave to his wife.”  In the Hebrew language,  cleave  means “to stick like glue.” God has designed marriage so that a husband and wife would be super-glued together. Practically speaking, this means to be completely devoted and committed to one another, with God as a third member of the marriage, playing the role of coach and encourager, and providing supernatural strength to endure even the most difficult of seasons. In fact, the Bible tells us in Ecclesiastes 4:12;

Marriage is an institution that was created by God to be experienced by one man and one woman for the rest of their lives (Gen. 2:24). A Christian marriage, when done according to God’s plan, is supposed to be a blessing for each couple (Gen. 2:18), as the couple submits to one another in their marital roles to the Lord (Eph. 5:21). The wife is called to submit to her own husband in obedience to the Lord (Eph. 5:22-24), and the husband is called to submit to the Lord, by fulfilling his role as the spiritual, loving, servant-leader of the home (Eph. 5:25-31). When both husband and wife consistently strive to fulfill their marital roles in this manner, it blesses both partners, and paints a beautiful picture of what a relationship with Jesus is supposed to look like for others to see (Eph. 5:32). And yet, the reality of marriage, even Christian marriage, is that the only perfect individual was Jesus, and therefore marriage takes a lot of work, and needs a lot of grace

Dealing with Christian Marriage, Christians on the Brink of Divorce, Christians who do Divorce, and Christians who Remarry, is a very delicate subject matter, due to the fact that we are experiencing a divorce epidemic within the Christian community today, one that is impacting all fellowships everywhere. In fact, right before I sat down to write this article today, I received an email from a woman who use to go to a church I pastored at, asking for prayer, as her husband (a professing Christian) had recently left her because he had fallen in love with another woman. This horrific news is simply one more sober reminder of this terrible epidemic we are facing today. With the divorce rate in the Body of Christ being equal to that of the world, and some believers who have been married three or more times, we are introduced to an interesting dilemma in the Church: Can divorced Christians remarry?   The Bible is quite clear about God’s design for marriage, God'

Serving God in a remote corner of nineteenth-century England was a man who had made it his great aim “to live Christ.” He was a man of God that made such an impact upon the world he lived in that it was said he would have letters mailed to him from overseas, which included nothing more than, “R.C. Chapman, University of Love, England” on the outside of the envelope, and it would find its way into his hands. He became known as “The Apostle of Love” to the generation that God had called him to minister to.  This article is a lengthy one, due to the fact that it is an article on one of my heroes of the faith, R.C. Chapman. This man's life has greatly impacted my philosophy of pastoral ministry, and encouraged me enormously to follow his example as a man of God.  R.C. CHAPMAN’S ANCESTRY Robert Cleaver Chapman (1803-1902) was born January 4, 1803 in Elsinore, Denmark. He was born into a wealthy family who had made their fortune for many generations from the sea.