This Time of Pandemic -- God's Sifting

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This Time of Pandemic -- God's Sifting

It was sixteen years ago now ... that day when we unboxed the items my mother-in-law was discarding because of her need to downsize. Betty Jean Loyd was moving to a senior community, states away from where she had lived most of her adult life and where she had married a man and raised an only son.

At 80 years of age, Betty Jean, an only child herself, knew that she needed to be near us, her only family. So we helped her dispose of her discarded things.

And there it was -- her sifter!

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Learning from Jesus…the Father’s Perfect Child (a Bible Study)

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Learning from Jesus…the Father’s Perfect Child (a Bible Study)

The parent-child metaphor is perhaps the most tender picture of our relationship with God as believers. This is so movingly expressed in the Scriptures by the Hebrew term for Father God "Abba," meaning "Daddy." In our last post, we explored the truth that in reality we are all adult-children deep down who still really need a Father in order to do an adult life right here and now.

Let's look at Jesus, the perfect Son of our Abba Father God, and do a little digging into the Scriptures. Let’s ask the Spirit to speak to our child-hearts.

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Feeling like a "Child Incognito" especially Now

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Feeling like a "Child Incognito" especially Now

Helpless! Not in control of anything … the virus devastating our country and the world, our economy drastically in jeopardy, even our daily life changing every day. The good news is that our adult lives in this crisis world was never meant to be lived on our own. We have a Father with whom we can be needy and vulnerable so that we can face what is before us. So join me as we revisit what is means to be …

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Resurrection ZOE -- the Dance of LIFE!

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Resurrection ZOE -- the Dance of LIFE!

Easter isn't Easter unless it's Easter to YOU!

So declared a radio preacher early in Holy Week a few years ago. At first I said, "Yes!"  Then I thought about it awhile and said, "Not really! Easter is Easter whether I get it or not."

What is Easter anyway? Easter is the day we celebrate Jesus’ resurrection from the grave. He had conquered sin and death on the cross and then was raised, so that we could walk in newness of life. (cf. Romans 6:4)

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We Died to Sin in the Death of Christ . . . Count on it! (Part 3)

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We Died to Sin in the Death of Christ . . . Count on it! (Part 3)

Today is a Day of Reckoning...but not how you think! Usually we use that term to mean to give an accounting, a calculation, a settlement of accounts. In fact according to Wikipedia, it can mean a host of things from the final judgment day to heavy metal albums and Nintendo games.

But in the Bible sense, EVERY day is a Day of Reckoning. This word reckon in the Greek is often rendered consider. In other words, "count on something to be true". My reckoning doesn't MAKE it true. It already IS true, so I count on it and live from it. So each day is THE day to reckon to be true what God says is true...because it IS true…

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[Revised] We Died With Him . . . Caught in the Web (Part 2)

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[Revised] We Died With Him . . . Caught in the Web (Part 2)

Yes, He did and Yes, we truly did. Let me explain . . .

He died FOR us . . . for our sins, for the penalty that we deserve. He took our place on that Cross, suffering the eternal punishment that we deserved, so that we wouldn’t have to…So our forgiveness is total and complete and finished, because of HIS death FOR us…BUT what about the power of sin within that still harasses our souls? That’s where the second side of the Cross comes in…

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[Revised] Jesus Died FOR Us and We also Died WITH Him (Part 1)

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[Revised] Jesus Died FOR Us and We also Died WITH Him (Part 1)

Yes, He did and Yes, we truly did. Let me explain . . .

He died FOR us . . . for our sins, for the penalty that we deserve. He took our place on that Cross, suffering the eternal punishment that we deserved, so that we wouldn’t have to…So our forgiveness is total and complete and finished, because of HIS death FOR us…BUT what about the power of sin within that still harasses our souls? That’s where the second side of the Cross comes in…

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Words for Holy Week with Kingdom Winds

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Words for Holy Week with Kingdom Winds

For the past eight months, I’ve had the honor of sharing some of my writing on a new creative site called Kingdom Winds. I love their work and how they transform my humble thoughts and make them attractive in so many ways…

So for myself this Holy Week, I decided that I would read these sections fresh as if for the first time…right here from the Kingdom Winds posts. Maybe I’ll even forget that they are my own words led by the Spirit. And maybe those of you who have followed this Lenten series for all these eight years with me on A Branch in the Vine will read them again as if for the first time. And together we can melt under the weightiness of this beautiful Words of our Savior from the Cross.

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Lenten Meditation: a Word of Reunion

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Lenten Meditation: a Word of Reunion

Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.

So goes a traditional nighttime prayer taught by American moms to their children for generations. It may seem odd to us today that there would be the mention of death in a child's prayer.  But scientists say that sleep is the closest we come to death while still alive.  The Greeks even had a proverb,

Sleep and death are brothers.

However, in the first century, Jewish moms taught their children a different bedtime prayer...quoting Psalm 31:

Father, into Your hands I commit my spirit.

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Lenten Meditation: a Word of Completion

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Lenten Meditation: a Word of Completion

Tetelestai!* It is finished! The death of Christ on the Cross is the HINGE of human history...and nowbefore He breathes His last breath... a cry of victory,It is finished!

What's finished? It must be something BIG,...look at what happened when Jesus died:

At that moment the curtain in the sanctuary of the Temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. The earth shook, rocks split apart, and tombs opened. The bodies of many godly men and women who had died were raised from the dead.

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Focus on the CROSS: the Last 7 Sayings of Christ with B.C. 2001

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Focus on the CROSS: the Last 7 Sayings of Christ with B.C. 2001

How to refocus on Christ and the Cross during these unsettling, fear-filled days of the COVID-19 pandemic? I usually post a review of all of our Lord’s beautiful final words before His death on the Cross during Holy Week.

But I decided this year to share this post at the beginning of each of the remaining weeks of Lent. It will take us back “beneath the Cross” via links to each saying and also via an amazing “cartoon” from days gone by — B.C. (Johnny Hart).

I love this post because it was such a serendipitous delight to find this clipping in my file a few years ago. So I can't help but share it year by year.

Would you meditate along with me ... and revisit Christ's seven sayings for the Cross this week? [See links below] It's truly "holy ground" as we reflect on the Cross, what our Lord went through, but mainly, what He accomplished there. What a perfect preparation for the joy, freedom, and release of the Resurrection.

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