Exhortations for The Soul

  Do you want to know more about how to conduct yourself as a Christian? I do. I believe we all do.   Do we want to just merely say we are Christians or do we really want to be Christians? Again, I really want to be a true Christian, and I believe you do too. The book of James in the New Testament of the Bible gives us some pointers. Let’s read what it says and then dissect the key points a little.   James 4 : 1 - 17 NLT “What is causing the quarrels and fights among you? Don’t they come from the evil desires at war within you?   You want what you don’t have, so you scheme and kill to get it. You are jealous of what others have, but you can’t get it, so you fight and wage war to take it away from them.   Yet you don’t have what you want because you don’t ask God for it. And even when you ask, you don’t get it because your motives are all wrong—you want only what will give you pleasure.   You adulterers! Don’t you realize that friendship with the world ma...

Straightaway, I want to say thanks be to God that He does in fact hear the prayers of sinners. You and I certainly would not be here today if God didn’t hear our prayers when we were deep in the valley of sin.   For it is one thing to have somebody pray for us, but certainly we need to speak to the Lord for ourselves, after we would have gained an understanding of who God is and how far we are from doing what He asks of us. It is only then that we can benefit from His forgiveness, His grace, and His mercy. Romans 10:9-10 NIV says “If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.” So when people suggest that God doesn’t hear a sinner’s prayer, and quote scriptures too, we have to be careful to examine what the Bible says and understand the context in which it is written. When...

  The question has been asked in many circles: if God knew that man would be disobedient to Him and sin, why did He still make man? After all, God knew how everything would turn out in this world. He knew what He was doing when He created this world. He knew that when He created man that they would exercise their free will and choose to disobey His command in the Garden of Eden.   God also knew that as a result of that, there would be pain, hard labour, destruction, violence, sickness, and death. He knew that He would have to send His Son, Jesus Christ, into the world, to die for our sins, so that we can be saved. And He also knew that some people would accept Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross and some would not. Yet He still made man. And so the question is why? The answer is in The Bible. John 3:16-18, reading from The Message Version. ““This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in...