All tagged Church

Where are the Modern Day Tables of the Money Changers set up?

Richard Forbes
Christian, Daily Devotion, The Church

Are we ready to live, and defend, our faith with zeal? If a group who calls themselves believers wants to come into our place of worship, set up a table, and use it for what we know to be a sinful activity, would we stand idly by as they did so? Jesus was a man who had a zeal for God and His house, and when He turned over the tables of the money changers in the Temple, His disciples witnessed this. But, where do we worship today, and where are the tables that should be offending us being set up?

Pandemic, Holy Week, and where do we Worship?

Richard Forbes
Christian, Daily Devotion, God’s Church, True Faith

Yesterday was Palm Sunday, and via a live broadcast, my pastor spoke of our Holy Week expectations this year in the face of the Coronavirus Pandemic. Then he went on to lay out our church’s online services this week, and how we would go about celebratIng each of them from our homes given the quarantine we find ourselves under. This is not to be a year like any other we have experienced, but though we are separated from one another, we are not separated from Jesus. This is the year we hit the reset button on our spirituality, and sift it, seeing it for what it should have always been... a deeply personal relationship.

Is there Holy ground in your Home? How about a church?

Richard Forbes
Christian, Daily Devotion, Church

Have you ever attended church in a house? Is there a church that meets in your house? Over the millennia we have grown so accustomed to holding our services in buildings dedicated solely to our faith, that we seem to have forgotten that the early church typically met in someone's home. Even in times of persecution the modern church still retreats to the privacy of homes. Perhaps if we did this every so often it would take the feeling of formality, and place, out of our worship, and put the intensely personal sense of maintaining a close and loving relationship with God back into it. Inviting someone into your home is a very intimate gesture, and hosting Jesus, and God makes it Holy.

Fixing a broken heart, and adding new Oil... the Two Sides of Salvation

Richard Forbes
Restoration, Salvation, Redemption, Holiness, Daily Devotion, Christian

There are two parts to spiritual salvation, and there are two parts to the salvation of countries, churches, and peoples. The first part changes who we are, and the second part fills us with God’s essence. We find Jesus Christ who renews us, and then we receive the Holy Spirit which is the understanding of God. Do you have both? Is your country prepared to be fixed and restored to God?

Are our Lives of Faith Contained within the Walls of our Humanity?

Richard Forbes
Christian, Contained, Holy Spirit, Life, Daily Devotion, Church

Is the church we attend living in the full power of Christ, and the Holy Spirit, or have we let our own humanity take it captive? That is a very big question, and one which Paul asked the church in Galatia, but let’s make it a bit more manageable by asking ourselves... “am I living in the full power of Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, or is my flesh determining the direction of my faith?”

Reclaiming the Raging Flame of The Lord’s Church

Richard Forbes
Church, Communal Worship, Daily Devotion, Christian

Do you regularly go to church, and if you do, how do you worship God? More to the point is this... do you worship God together as a church body? Do you lift up your praise, worship, and prayers as one, and then wait on Him? Congregations that don’t worship together might contain specks of brilliant faith scattered within the pews, but never really meet God as He desires.

Wresting the Church from the hands of man

Richard Forbes
Belief, Forgiveness, Doctrine, Hope, Church, Daily Devotion, Christian

So we have recognized that we were wrong in a practice or belief; perhaps we find that we have practiced something in faith that was of man, and not of God. What should we do? How should we face this, our failure, our material heresy? Are we doomed to a life of suffering, or to exist in a fallen state? No, we must pray for forgiveness, and then listen to Paul as he writes to the Philippians about himself.

Come Out of the Cave Elijah!

Richard Forbes
Faith, Daily Devotion, Church, Not Alone, Christian, One

Are you a loner in your faith? Do you feel like you can take the Bible and journey to a mountaintop on your own without regard for the Church or the body of Christendom? Do you look at bible characters such as Elijah the prophet who was sent to the mountain to wait in a cave for the Lord God to appear and say “this is me! I am meant to be alone!”; do you think that is what Jesus did? Well if so, you had better rethink your position of faith, and your approach to religion. We are all meant to be one, just as God calls us to believe as one, He then joins us to the body of faith to become one with it... one Church.

Body, Church, Calling, but are we really of One Spirit?

Richard Forbes
Church, Christian, Conflict, Prayer, Daily Devotion, Jesus, Oneness, Humility

How many churches are there within your congregation? How many groups of different mind, and various agenda, are milling about one another, and often find themselves at loggerheads? This is what happens when we lose focus on maintaining ourselves in the image of Jesus Christ. This is what occurs when a marriage ceases to be of one flesh.

God’s House of many Rooms

Richard Forbes
One Faith, Christian, Daily Devotion, God, One Church, Jesus Christ

Princes and principalities, customs and countries, circumcised and uncircumcised... these, and many others, are all things we have used to separate ourselves from one another, and to secure God and Jesus Christ for ourselves alone, but that is not God’s will, nor what Jesus meant to happen; it was meant for the Holy Spirit to bring us together through the Cross... one Church.

Making a Difference, and the DNA of the Christian, and the Church

Richard Forbes
Christian, The Church, Profession of Faith, Daily Devotion, The Bride, Jesus

The world is comprised of approximately 6.9 billion people, and of those, 2.2 billion are Christian, or to simplify this a bit... over 30% of all the people in the world are Christian. This is an amazing statistic, especially if you listen to the press on the subject. However, the press corps is not the only detractor or naysayer when it comes to the state of the Church... Christians also preach the demise of the Church from the pulpit. Why is this so? Why are we so self deprecating?