Now, what is Jesus Christ? The fruit of the spirit is a good example. Jesus is total love, total joy, total peace, total patient, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, and self-control.

Your birth was no mistake or mishap, and your life is no fluke of nature. Your parents may not have planned you, but God did. He was not at all surprised by your birth. In fact, he expected it.

Use "breath prayers" throughout the day, as many Christians have done for centuries. You choose a brief sentence or a simple phrase that can be repeated to Jesus in one breath: "You are with me."

God made every one of us a sexual being, and that is good. Attraction and arousal are the natural, spontaneous, God-given responses to physical beauty, while lust is a deliberate act of the will.

I believe that the purpose of influence is to speak up for those who have no influence. And fame is not for our own benefit, or notoriety is not for our own benefit, it's for leverage to do good.

A disciple is one who thinks, feels and acts like Jesus Christ. It is being conformed to the image of Christ as Romans 8:28-29 states-that God's No.1 purpose in our lives is to make us like Jesus.

Three enemies that will weaken your ministry over time: Self-indulgence, bitterness, and carelessness. Strong people discipline their desires, restrain their reactions, and keep their commitments.

It is impossible to do everything people want you to do. You have just enough time to do God’s will. If you can’t get it all done, it means you’re trying to do more than God intended for you to do.

The Bible teaches that we are to love people and use money, but we often get that reversed and you start loving money and using people to get more money. Money is simply a tool to be used for good.

God wants to use you to make a difference in His world. He wants to work through you. What matters is not the duration of your life, but the donation of it. Not how long you lived, but how you lived.

Jonathan Edwards is without a doubt the most brilliant mind America ever produced. I'm not talking about theologian; I'm talking about mind and everybody. I put him above Einstein and everybody else.

Longing for the ideal while criticizing the real is evidence of immaturity. On the other hand, settling for the real without striving for the ideal is complacency. Maturity is living with the tension.

What is the glory of God? It is who God is. It is the essence of His nature; the weight of His importance; the radiance of His splendor; the demonstration of His power; the atmosphere of His presence.

Since God intends to make you like Jesus, he will take you through the same experiences Jesus went through. That includes loneliness, temptation, stress, criticism, rejection, and many other problems.

If Jesus is king in heaven then the Kingdom of God is in heaven. If Jesus is king, reign on earth then the Kingdom of Heaven is on earth. If Jesus is king in my heart, then the Kingdom of God is in me.

There is nothing you can do that will make God stop loving you. You could try, but you simply can't do it - because his love for you is based upon his character and not on anything you do or say or feel.

I think everyone does selective reading. Everybody has a filter, and that is real easy for critics to see things from their perspectives, and I'm going, I didn't mean that at all. And believers do the same.

The more you care about the powerless, the more power you have. The more you serve those with no influence, the more influence God gives you. The more you humble yourself, the more you're honored by others.

I'm not looking for peace on earth through a political solution. I'm a pastor. The Bible talks about three kinds of peace. There is peace with God. There's the peace of God. And there's peace with each other.

Being successful and fulfilling your lifes purpose are not at all the same thing; You can reach all your personal goals, become a raving success by the worlds standard and still miss your purpose in this life.

I really do feel that these people are brothers and sisters in God's family. I am looking to build bridges with the Orthodox Church, looking to build bridges with the Catholic Church, with the Anglican church.

We're going to fellowship in eternity. We know that because that's all who's going to be there - is believers. What does God want us to do here? Practice - learning how to love, learning how to fellowship here.

I could imagine God saying to a lot of us, "Hey, I'm God, and you're not. You're not the general manager of the universe." And the greatest stress reliever is take God seriously, but don't take yourself seriously.

The mission of Tom Peterson and Catholics Come Home to bring souls home to Jesus and the church is critically important during this challenging time in our history. I fully support this New Evangelization project.

On Thanksgiving we do just everything except give thanks. We eat, we watch football, we have a good time with family. Almost nobody gives thanks to God at Thanksgiving, unless there's a short prayer before we eat.

Jesus says in Matthew 25, no man knows the day nor the hour, neither the angles nor the son but only the Father which is in heaven. Now if Jesus didn't know when he was coming back, it's crazy for me to try to think.

Many people spend their lives trying to create a lasting legacy on earth. They want to be remembered when they're gone. Yet, what ultimately matters most will not be what others say about your life but what God says.

America was built on rugged individualism, and today that has evolved into a culture of narcissism. But God didn't create you to live for you. If you want to follow Jesus, you have to put aside your selfish ambition.

It is very clear that the heavens declare the glory of God. We learn a lot about the glory of God without even Scriptures. We know God is organized. We know God likes variety. We know God is powerful. All these things.

The greatest gift God gave us is also our greatest curse, which is the free will. We are made in God's image, the Bible says, which means we have the ability to love him or not love him, to reject him or not reject him.

To make the best use of your life, you must never forget two truths: First, compared with eternity, life is extremely brief. Second, earth is only a temporary residence. You won't be here long, so don't get too attached.

One of the ways we reflect God's love and bring him glory is to accept each other just as he accepts us. This means we accept others' quirks and look past their faults in order to see a person created in the image of God.

Your most profound and intimate experiences of worship will likely be in your darkest days - when your heart is broken, when you feel abandoned, when your out of options, when the pain is great - and you turn to God alone.

When you get to heaven God won't ask you why you weren't more like Billy Graham. He may ask you why you weren't more like you. Get in touch with who you are. Lead with your own unique style. Be yourself and let God use you.

I forgive. First, because I've been forgiven by God. Second, unforgiveness makes me miserable. And third, I'm going to need more forgiveness in the future. So we don't forgive for their benefit. We actually forgive for ours.

Great leaders inspire. They maintain a hopeful attitude, even in the face of discouraging setbacks, constant criticism and abundant opposition. People don't follow discouraged leaders. They follow those who persist with hope.

We take ourselves way too seriously, and we don't take God seriously enough. It is not by accident that humor and humility come from the same root word. If you can laugh at yourself, you'll always have plenty of good material.

When God wants to make a mushroom, he does it overnight, but when He wants to make a giant oak, He takes a hundred years. Great souls are grown through struggles and storms and seasons of suffering. Be patient with the process.

Character is both developed and revealed by tests, and all of life is a test... You will be tested by major changes, delayed promises, impossible problems, unanswered prayers, undeserved criticism, and even senseless tragedies.

We're going to serve in eternity. We're not going to sit around on clouds; you know this whole idea of heaven is wearing white robes with angels and play a harp. To me, that would be hell. I can't think of anything more boring.

Then Jesus changed the situation. When he paid for our sins on the cross, the veil in the temple that symbolized our separation from God was split from top to bottom, indicating that direct access to God was once again available.

In the end we must be merciful to the fallen, show grace to struggling, and be patient with the doubting. But when God's Word is clear we must not-and we cannot-back up, back off, back down, back out, or backslide from the truth.

I don't believe my interpretation's inerrant. I don't believe anybody else's interpretation is inerrant, but I do believe the scripture is inerrant. I believe in the plenary, verbal plenary inspiration of scripture, without a doubt.

In God's eyes, the greatest heroes of faith are not those who achieve prosperity, success, and power in this life, but those who treat life as a temporary assignment and serve faithfully, expecting their promised reward in eternity.

You drift through life and let things happen to you, or go by design and say, 'This is what I'm intended to do.' The Bible is very clear that God has a purpose. But even if I know that purpose, I can't fulfill it if I'm out of shape.

You may have done some really nifty things in life, but if you think they're going to get you into Heaven, forget it. The only way any of us are going to get in is by receiving God's gift of grace, which is available to every person.

The first thing that we need to say is that God is grieving, too. Uh, a lot of people try to make it sound like 'well everything that happens is God's will.' That's nonsense. God allows everything, but God does not choose everything.

Two thousand years ago, in the Middle East, an event occurred that permanently changed the world. Because of that event, history was split. Every time you write a date, you’re using the Resurrection of Jesus Christ as the focal point.

The test of your worldview is not how you act in the good times. The test of your worldview is how you act at the funeral. Having been through literally hundreds if not thousands of funerals: ... It makes a difference what you believe.

Help us, oh God, to remember that we are Americans. United not by race or religion or by blood, but to our commitment to freedom and justice for all. When we focus on ourselves, when we fight each other, when we forget you, forgive us.

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