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THE INE YEAR BIBLE SEPTEMBER 7 "CHURCH AND MONEY DON'T MIX"

     WE'VE all met or heard of those people that "swear" they will never return to church because when they did visit, all the preacher talked about was money and giving.  "That's all the church wants, is your money," they cry out. If we falsely look at the church as simply a religious institution that teaches nice religious platitudes to make us feel better about ourselves and teaches nice principles such as "The Golden Rule" then maybe money should be left out.  However, if the church is an institution whereby God chooses to work through to help his people, to prosper them, to give them a future and a hope, then money better be a subject and a recurring subject, at that, because money is one of the areas that people struggle in more than anything else.  Any survey will tell you that couples (inside & outside the church) fight mostly about... money! The #1 cause of divorce is Money, not infidelity.  We have money problems and the church is the...
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THE ONE YEAR BIBLE SEPTEMBER 6 “DON'T AWAKEN LOVE BEFORE ITS TIME"

    The Song of Solomon is quite some sultry poetry, for the Bible, or for any other book, for that matter. While there's much that we could analyse from this book, I will leave that to you! But one theme, that does keep arising, in the book, is " don't awaken love before it's time! ".  It reminds me of the warning to Jack, in "Jack and the Bean Stock" don't awaken the giant!  Eventually Jack awakens the giant and Jack cannot put the giant back to sleep afterwards. The moral of the story, is that some things in life, once awakened, cannot be put back to sleep. We are sexual creatures and once sexuality has been awakened in us, it will not be put down. This is one of the greatest violations of sexual molestation, sexuality has been " awakened before it's time " and children that are molested are now altered and changed, from that day forth. However, it's not always sexual molestation that awakens someones sexuality too early, it coul...
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ONE YEAR BIBLE, SEPTEMBER 5 "BEST YEARS OF MY LIFE"

   Heard this lady say, after bitter divorce proceedings, "and I gave the best years of my life to that bum!" She is probably right and what can you say? ....Better luck next time??? I can tell you, nobody will ever turn to God and say, "I gave you the best years of my life and...".  What is the greatest lie that has been perpetuated to the human race? Ans: serve God when you're older. In other words, give the best years of your life to some woman, some man, some sinful pleasure and then live to regret it. If only every 15-25 year old would read Ecclesiastes 11.  Solomon emphasizes youth in our chapter today and is not shy to write that are youthful years truly are the best years of our lives; contrary to many trying to hype up the senior years. "young man it's wonderful to be young! Enjoy every minute of it".  It's sad to think that our 15-25 year olds are giving the best years of their lives to drugs, violence, immorality, basically sin, the ...
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THE ONE YEAR BIBLE SEPTEMBER 4 "WHAT KIND OF SORROW DO YOU HAVE?"

    "Godly sorrow leads to repentance and leaves no regret."  It's interesting that there are different types of sorrow. "Godly sorrow" as opposed to what? I guess...."ungodly sorrow".  As the saying goes, "are you sorry for what you did or sorry you got caught?"  Both will bring sorrow, no doubt! What is the sorrow you are feeling? What are you feeling sorrow for? The sorrow that comes from God and is accepted by the individual with a right attitude and/or heart, will leave that person, better off.  Ungodly sorrow can ruin and destroy, it can send you into depression, the pit of despair or worse, even cause someone to take their life. We can conclude then, that not all sorrow is good for the soul and not all sorrow produces the same results. Sorrow and guilt from God, will bring forth something better, condemnation, which comes from the enemy is not to bring you to repentance but to crush you. Sometimes we have to ask ourselves, is this guil...
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THE ONE YEAR BIBLE SEPTEMBER 3 “IS THE WILL OF GOD SMOOTH?”

 WE are a people that look "for signs" and try to base our assumptions on that.  If we have problems with weather and a flat tire on a road trip, only Christians begin to wonder, "should I have taken this road trip?" The unreligious person will just deal with the bad weather, fix the flat tire and move on.  We determine "the will of God" by omens or signs. When everything is out of joint and going wrong, we begin to think, "maybe this isn't the will of God?".  Is the "Will of God" always smooth and everything goes right; nothing goes wrong".  In our text today we read " For when we came into Macedonia, this body of ours had no rest, but we were harassed at every turn-conflicts on the outside, fears within. "       HOWEVER in the Book of Acts we had read this original story, how Paul describes to us the dream he had in which the Angel was calling him, beckoning him to go to Macedonia. Paul was going to another city, to...
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THE ONE YEAR BIBLE SEPTEMBER 2 “THINKING OF OTHERS”

 We have really digressed from Paul's admonition here to "live in such a way that no one will stumble because of us and no one will find fault with our ministry".  Today, starting at the top with Pastors and working our way down, we have totally let this scripture fall by the waste side and our famous line "nobody is perfect, get off my case". Paul admits he's not perfect in Philippians, Paul never claims to be perfect. Being perfect is not the issue. It's about thinking before you act, thinking before "you tweet" thinking before you speak, thinking before you "post". It's about THINKING, thinking of others, thinking of how your actions will cause others to stumble, even though you may receive forgiveness from God....what about the collateral damage? What do you do about that....answer is nothing! Today we have preachers unleashing tirades of profanity on the blogosphere, we have Pastor's divorcing their wives and marrying som...
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THE ONE YEAR BIBLE SEPTEMBER 1 “LET’S NOT TALK ABOUT MY ISSUES”

God asks a very good question, " would you condemn me, to justify yourself " For how many thousands of years have we been doing this already! "I can't believe in a God that would allow children to starve in Africa, sorry!"  Meanwhile, that same person has children he has never cared to father nor provide a $1.00 to the woman he impregnated, to help raise that child and keep that child out of poverty; we have a woman has a child she has aborted because it was convenient, immorality is rampant in our lives, but none of that matters, "because I can't believe in a God who would allow 3000 people to perish in the Twin Towers back in Sept 11, 2001"     " Would you condemn me, to justify yourself? " God is asking YOU that question, today!  It's actually a rhetorical question.  In Job 41:11 God follows up on this thought, " Who has a claim against me, that I must pay? "  The reason these two questions are being posed is for the obvi...
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