Born.Again.Christian.

"What you think is what you say; what you say is what you do; what you do becomes habit; your habits become your characteristics; your characteristics define you." - Margaret Thatcher. Maggie caused alot of dissension through her policies and sometimes bull in a china shop attitude, but this phrase is true.  In order to sin, the sinful act must first enter your mind. In Genesis 3:1-6, Adam and Eve sinned against God. You will notice that the devil first put the thought of eating of the forbidden tree into her mind. Then after much deliberation and reason, Eve succumbed to temptation. In the same way in Matthew 4 when satan tries to tempt Jesus, satan shows Jesus what he could have. He TRIES to fill his mind with sinful thoughts, appealing to the natural man, expecting Jesus to fall. However, unlike Adam and Eve (and fortunately for us!) Jesus knew who He was and what His purpose was therefore He did not fall to satan's tempting. ("Inasmuch then as the childre...

Trusting God over trivial matters were the consequences are relatively small is easy. Trusting God in times of life and death is a lot harder. The world is a terrible place, yet compared to what it will succumb to in the future we should feel blessed to live in such a time. Of course I cannot speak for all, such as the underground church in China or the persecuted Christians in the Muslim countries or Africa, however generally, Christians in today's world experience freedom, albeit somewhat limited and rapidly diminishing. We must therefore not squander the time we have been given. We must learn to trust God with everything now, when it is easy to do so (or at least easier). If we do not trust God now, we will not trust Him later.  Human nature is self preservation, therefore it is against this nature to put our souls ahead of our natural bodily desires. It would be foolish in the worlds eyes to put God before food. It is because it is so foreign to our natural mind t...

Ever heard of the phrase 'you are what you eat'?... what about 'you are what you watch'? As BAC's we must be careful with what we fill our minds with and what environments we go to. Why? Because sin rubs off. Through Christ we are dead to sin and alive to God, known as justification. However, as Christians, what we quickly begin to learn is that justification is not the end product, it is in fact the beginning. In John 3 Jesus tells Nicodemus, a Jewish leader, that he must be born again to enter the kingdom of God. As new Christians we must grow in our relationship with God, beginning with what Paul refers to as 'spiritual milk' ( 1 Peter 2:2), just like physical babies must grow. This process of growth is known as sanctification. Once truly justified, always justified - that is God's gift of grace. However, sanctification is a continual process, and there is times in our lives when we are up and times in our lives when we are down. Sometimes it is...

Quite often we are led to believe that our gut instincts are the right ones, whether they are something from God, God-given, or just our own feelings of a situation based upon what we can see. Whilst these gut instincts may serve us well at times, they can also lead us to very foolish conclusions. We must be aware of this and use caution when faced with a situation. Just as we should test things against the word of God, so too should we test things in everyday life before we commit to a decision. Do not make decisions based solely on what one person has said. ( 1 Thessalonians 5:21 "Test all things; hold fast what is good.") A verse to remember: Proverbs 18:17  "The first  one  to plead his cause  seems  right, Until his neighbor comes and examines him." In other words, every story seems right until you hear the other side. There may be times when listening to the story of a person, you become enraged at the injustice of the situation and the wrongs commi...

If the book of Proverbs, the wise sayings of King Solomon, could be summed up in one phrase it would be this: ‘Shut up and listen’. By remaining quiet and listening you stand to gain more than lose. If you humble yourself and remain quiet before others, the only way to go is up. Only two things can come of talking: either you live up to the standards that you love to speak of (as expected by others due to your continuous chatter); or you fall short. Only one thing can come of staying quiet: you excel yourself in everything you do. The saying ‘the loudest person in the room is the weakest’ is quite often true. Pride leads to loss. Humility leads to gain. Proverbs 6:2 You are snared by the words of your mouth; You are taken by the words of your mouth. Proverbs 6:12 A worthless person, a wicked man, Walks with a perverse mouth; Proverbs 10:19 In the multitude of words sin is not lacking, But he who restrains his lips is wise. Proverbs 11:2 When pride comes...

It is safe to say that this phrase, found in Job 1:21 will be applicable to all of us at some time in our life, whether its the first half of the phrase or the second half. We live in a fallen world. The world is cursed ( Genesis 3 ). The world is full of loss, pain, sorrow, hurt, death, illness, injustice, fraud, deceit, lies, deception: the negatives are endless. Therefore it is inevitable that our lives will not always be rosy. Sometimes this is a consequence of our actions, sometimes this is the consequence of somebody else's actions, and sometimes it is simply a consequence of living on this earth. It is common to see what appeared to be at one time the strongest of Christians become deserters of God when things get tough. Oh, what an unbiblical and destructive way this is to live. When God allowed the devil to pour out evil upon Job, Job did not turn his back on God, even when his friends tried to assure him that he had a just cause to do so. Instead we read in Chapte...

Christians are subject to persecution all over the world, some countries worse than others. As in America and other Western countries; persecution of Christians in Britain is minimal, however definitely present. Rather than physical trials, persecution in the West has begun on the platform of freedom of speech. The call for equality and promotion of minority groups has seen Christians silenced in recent years. Many Christians are arrested for preaching the gospel in Britain and prevented from manifesting their faith. Although there is often outcry in the media at the systematic removal of religion from the public sphere, it continues to get worse. It is because of this current climate of hostility towards Christianity that we must be firm in what we believe. There is a tendency to class certain parts of the Bible as ‘not important’ and other parts as ‘important’. For example, the fact that Jesus died for our sins is ‘important’ to what we believe, however it does not matter if ...