Hope In This Spiritual Battle

  

Quotation

          But we do have hope in this spiritual battle, this hope is with Jesus. When we have faith in Jesus, believe He is the Son of God, and believe because of His work on the Cross, we are saved by grace through this faith, then we have the power of the Holy Spirit to fight our battles against Satan and his army.

 

Barry Denzil Haney, MD

 

Scripture

 

And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions:

 

Joel 2:28

 

Reflection

            

Our bodies are made up of trillions of cells. Most investigators today believe our bodies recycle most of these cells every ten years, therefore most of your body is not the same today as it was ten years ago. Interestingly, none of my thirty to one hundred trillion cells know they are alive, even if I do. 

 

How can that be? The traditional answer is Cartesian interactionist dualism. It is the view that the mental and the material comprise two different classes of substances and each other can have causal effects on the other. The mind is not just the sum of neurons and their function, but something else is in play to give us conscious experience. There is “some unifying, nontemporal, non-spatial component to provide the unity required for a conscious subject having any experience.” That something else is a Creator God.  

 

God no longer judges you based on your behavior, instead, he judges you based on your belief in Jesus Christ. The day you were born again, your sins were no longer recorded. There is no longer any requirement for performance-based Christianity. Our sins have already been credited to and paid for by Jesus Christ.

                                                                                             

Illustration

      A cartoon once showed two Eskimos fishing through holes in the ice. One of the Eskimos had made a hole like you might expect to see about the size of a manhole cover. The other had dropped his line in an immense hole that seemed to reach to the edge of the horizon, in the shape of a whale!

Vision that looks inward becomes duty.

Vision that looks outward becomes aspiration.

Vision that looks upward becomes faith. (Green)

 

Prayer

 

Our Heavenly Father,

 

Help us to forgive those who have trespassed against us!

Although we may have been hurt and betrayed by others,

Help us to break the mental chains separating us from God,

Help us to be chain breakers!

 

Although we cannot understand why you allow us to suffer,

We are comforted by the knowledge that through our suffering

You allow us to turn to You in repentance allowing for us

To spend an eternity with You in a loving relationship!

 

In precious name Jesus our Lord and Savior,

 

Amen!

 

 

Worship

 

Be Thou My Vision – Steph McLeod

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiukM6WHQEQ

 

God Bless You,

Barry

 

Green, Michael P. 1500 Illustrations for Biblical Preaching. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2000. Print.