₦airaland Forum

Morning

bloodofthelamb:
YOU ARE STRENGTHENED BROTHER.

Amen bro .. Thank u.

bloodofthelamb:
SO TRUE..SIR, GRACE AND PEACE TO YOU FROM GOD AND OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST.

Amen my bro amen!! The Love of Christ has consumed me.... People need to know the truth.

Religious people often complain that we grace preachers don’t emphasize repentance sufficiently. It’s true. I hardly emphasize it at all. But then neither did the Apostle John.

Here’s something that will fry your mind: Repentance is one of the most important things you’ll ever do but John never mentions the word. Not once. Not in his gospel or in any of his three letters. I guess John must’ve been a grace preacher.

Repentance matters a great deal, but you don’t get people to repent by preaching repentance.

“How can you say such heresy Paul?”

I’ll answer that question in a moment. But first, let me ask you which of the following is the best definition of repentance:

1. Repentance means to turn from sin

2. Repentance means to change your mind

As we saw in the last post, repentance is a lot like football. It means different things to different people. But Biblical repentance simply means “change your mind.” It’s what the word literally means. You can change your mind about anything, but Jesus calls us to change our mind and believe the good news (Mk 1:15). True repentance is evidenced by turning to God.

Your definition of repentance will reveal whether you are living under grace or works. In the Old Testament, sinners repented by bringing a sacrifice of penance and confessing their sins (Num 5:7). But in the new we bring a sacrifice of praise and confess his name (Heb 13:15).

We don’t do anything to deal with our sins for Jesus has done it all. Our part is to believe the good news and say thank you Jesus! It is when we receive his gift of no condemnation that we are empowered to go and sin no more.

No matter how much I preach on grace, some people just can’t see the cross for their sins. They write to tell me I’m under-selling repentance. What they mean is, “Paul you’re not telling people to turn from their sin.” It’s true. I seldom do. I’d rather talk about God’s goodness than your badness.

Yet often the message we hear is this: “God is holy and he won’t accept you unless you turn from sin.” It’s sold as a message of repentance and it appeals to our Adamic sense of “I can fix what I broke” but it’s utterly false. It’s a lie to promote the flesh and keep you from coming to Jesus.

The fact is God is holy and he won’t accept you no matter what you do. His acceptance and favor come by grace alone. Got a sin-problem? Turn to the cross and behold Christ. Come boldly to the throne of grace to receive mercy and find grace. His grace is your only hope.

Here are three reasons why you should reject any message that defines repentance as turning from sin:

1. It puts people under law

Preach “turn from sin or you’re not saved” and you are preaching pure law. You are prescribing sin-rejection as a means for salvation. This false gospel actually leaves sinners worse off because it empowers the sin that enslaves them while scorning the grace of God that might otherwise save them (1 Cor 15:56, Rm 11:6).

The righteousness that God offers is not conditional on your ability to perform. Neither your good works nor your bad works enter the equation. The gospel of grace reveals the gift of righteousness that is received by faith from first to last (Rom 1:17).

2. It doesn’t lead people to salvation

Let me give you a picture to illustrate true repentance. Suppose I call you up and give you an invitation to come to my house. You’ve never been here before so you need directions. There are two ways I could direct you. I could give you my address and provide an accurate picture of where I live. Or I could say, “flee from your house – just drive from your house as fast as possible and don’t look back.” Do you see the difference? In both cases you’re going to leave your house. That’s guaranteed. But only by trusting my directions will you arrive at my house. Repentance is just like that. It’s not fleeing from sin like a Pharisee. It’s turning to God in faith. In both cases you will leave your sin. But only by trusting God will you actually arrive someplace better than where you started.

To get people to repent (change their minds) Jesus preached the good news of the kingdom. He painted a picture of where God wanted them to be (with him here and now) and he gave them clear directions on how to get there (have faith in God).

It was the same with Paul. He didn’t walk into Corinth, one of the world’s most depraved cities, and preach “turn from sin.” Instead he resolved to know nothing but “Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor 2:2).

People need to hear how much God loves them. They need to hear about his unconditional favor and grace. The best way to tell them is to reveal the finished work of the cross. When the Corinthian Christians fell into sin, Paul still didn’t preach “turn from sin.” Instead he reminded them of their identity in Christ. He understood that grace, not dead works, is the cure for sin.

3. We’re called to preach the gospel, not repentance

Should you repent? Of course! I actually think there needs to be more repentance, particularly from believers. Repentance should be our life-style. You cannot renew your mind without repenting for repenting means to change your mind. When I discover something new about the goodness of God, I repent – I change my way of thinking so that my life lines up with what is true. I repent every day and it’s wonderful. I’m not the same person I was even six months ago because I am in the habit of repenting.

Repentance is one of the most important things you’ll ever do but you don’t get people to repent by telling them to repent. Instead, give them a good reason to repent and they’ll repent.

Paul said repentance comes as a consequence of learning about the goodness of God (Rom 2:4). So if you want people to repent, tell them how good God is. Preach the good news, which is this: God loves you, he died for you and he offers you his righteousness. Do you believe it? God’s power for salvation – for your forgiveness, healing, deliverance and provision – is revealed in the good news of grace. Do you believe it? All the blessings of God come to us by grace alone. Do you believe it?

Faith and repentance are two sides of the same coin. Repentance, like faith, is a positive response to something God has said or done.

John says little about repentance but he talks about believing over and over. He said that he wrote so “that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (Joh 20:31). The key to life is not in turning from sin but trusting in Jesus.

You want others to repent? Then preach the gospel that reveals the goodness of God: Jesus has done it all!


https://escapetoreality.org/2011/11/28/3-reasons-why-i-dont-preach-on-repentance/

Evening

bloodofthelamb:
THE SCRIPTURE SAYS AS WE BEHOLD[SEE, LOOK,] THE LORD AND GOD CHRIST JESUS; WE ARE CHANGED FROM OUR IMPERFECT NATURE TO HIS PERFECT AND INCORRUPTIBLE NATURE.. SO BRETHREN, LET'S LABOUR TO KEEP OUR INNER EYES[MIND] ON HIM AND WE WILL EXPERIENCE THE HEAVENLY POWER.. HALLELUYAH!

Amen!!

Yeah

Morning

“For godly sorrow worketh repentance…” (2 Cor 7:10). What is godly sorrow? Apparently it’s when the Holy Spirit makes you sorry for your sin. “God grieves over you, you sorry excuse for a Christian. You have become an enemy of God!”

There are some who insist you must weep and wail when you repent. “You need to show some godly sorrow,” they insist. “Repentance must be marked by regret, tears, and grief-stricken anguish.”

In other words, if you don’t weep, your repentance isn’t genuine.

Spurgeon had a different view:

A curious idea men have of what repentance is! Many fancy that so many tears are to be shed, and so many groans are to be heaved, and so much despair is to be endured. Whence comes this unreasonable notion? Unbelief and despair are sins, and therefore I do not see how they can be constituent elements of acceptable repentance; yet there are many who regard them as necessary parts of true Christian experience. They are in great error … To repent is to change your mind about sin, and Christ, and all the great things of God.

What is godly sorrow?

The “godly sorrow” that Paul refers to is the sorrow the Corinthians felt when they read his letter. It’s the sorrow we all experience when we realize we have made a hash of things, missed the way, and grieved our Father.

Is there pain and discomfort involved with the Holy Spirit’s conviction? Often there is. But this pain is not inflicted by the Holy Spirit. It is the regret of realizing we have missed the mark.

No doubt Paul had some experience of this when he learned that he had been persecuting the Lord (see Acts 9:5). With that revelation – that he, a man of God, had actually been opposed to the things of God – came the realization that everything he had done up to then was but dung (Php 3:. His years of study and religious activity were nothing but wood for the fire. What a waste!

But the distress itself wasn’t wasted because it led to a change of mind; it produced repentance and Paul became a new man. This why is he was happy when the Corinthians went through a similar distress:

Now I’m glad – not that you were upset, but that you were jarred into turning things around. You let the distress bring you to God, not drive you from him. The result was all gain, no loss. Distress that drives us to God does that. It turns us around. It gets us back in the way of salvation. We never regret that kind of pain. But those who let distress drive them away from God are full of regrets, end up on a deathbed of regrets. (2 Cor 7:9-10, MSG)

Don’t ever fall for the lie that says repentance without tears is worthless. When you encounter the goodness of God in an unexpected way, the important thing is not whether you laugh or cry but that you repent – that you embrace what God is showing you and allow his grace to change you.

Godly sorrow is not something you have to manufacture to impress the Lord. Nor is it a work that has to accompany your faith. Godly sorrow is when God works through the aches and hurts of our mistakes to draw us to himself.

If your sorrow leads you to God, then it’s good and godly sorrow. But if it leads you away from him, perhaps because you have been told to focus on your unworthiness, then it’s not.

How to respond to sin

When you sin or miss the mark, the temptation will be to beat yourself up and vow to do better and religion will be only too happy to coach you through this. Faithless religion will condemn you as a sinner (“Look at what you did!”) and prescribe a course of remedial action (“Put on the proverbial sackcloth and ashes.”) Do you see how carnal this is? The emphasis is totally on your behavior. You did a bad thing; now do this good thing to make it right. This is the way of Adam, not Jesus.

When you sin it’s perfectly natural to feel bad and it takes no faith to reach for the fig leaves of dead religion. But if your sorrow is to be godly sorrow, then your focus must be on what Christ has done and not what you have done.

As Andrew Wommack says: “If you feel like you’re so sorry, then praise him for the fact that he loves such a sorry person as you! Instead of focusing on your unworthiness, thank him for his goodness.”

A faith-based response to sin is to look to the One who died for sinners, who loves you in your sin, and who speaks to the Father in your defense. Don’t listen to those who speak the words of the Accuser; listen to Jesus!

https://escapetoreality.org/2014/10/15/godly-sorrow/

Hello

arantess:
i know so, am sure science calls it "planet x" or "Nibiru"

alright

Rooted

Noted

Morning

Morning

arantess:
biblical wormwood

you think so?

Evening

Evening

Amberon11:
Exactly! Wishing for the world to get better is an exercise in futility. Things can ONLY get worse as prophesied.

My dear that's what i keep telling people, the world is not getting better and won't get better.

There's only one person that will come and make this world right and that is our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. All these things that are happening today are the fulfilment of Scriptures but most people here did not know. It's only we believers that know cos we are children of the light. We are alive and enlightened spiritually but to the others, it might seem as foolishness.

Morning

Immorttal:
certainly this is new to me, is this noetic science?

No

Morning

What about the “godly jealousy” that Paul had for the Corinthians (see 2 Cors 11:2)? Isn’t this a kind of good jealousy? No, this is a kind of bad translation! The Greek word which is translated jealous actually means zealous and this is how it appears in literal translations such as Young’s:

“For I am zealous for you with zeal of God, for I did betroth you to one husband, a pure virgin, to present to Christ…” (YLT)

Do you see the difference? Godly zeal makes sense, but godly jealousy is an oxymoron. If someone tries to seduce your wife, a proper response is not “righteous jealousy” (there’s no such thing), but righteous anger or godly zeal!

“You shall not make for yourself an idol… You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.” (Ex 20:4-6)

In my last post I presented seven pieces of evidence proving that God’s love for us is unconditional. How, then, are we to account for those scriptures that say things like “God loves those who fear him” and “God loves those who keep his commands”? What about the scripture at the top of this post where God Himself declares that He is a jealous God who loves those who love Him but punishes those who don’t?

Before we proceed, I hope you will agree that it is impossible to be jealous and love unconditionally at the same time. I’ve heard some interpret the verse above in terms of “righteous jealousy,” meaning jealousy is an ugly sin when you do it but when God does it, it’s okay. That makes as much sense as trying to justify “righteous adultery.” (See my note in the comments for more.) It’s difficult to put a positive spin on jealousy when God makes plain the frightening consequences of spurning His love:

“Do not follow other gods, the gods of the peoples around you; for the Lord your God, who is among you, is a jealous God and His anger will burn against you, and He will destroy you from the face of the land.” (Deu 6:14-15)

Let’s not play with words – jealousy is a terrible thing. It is pouty, bitter, resentment that stems from an insecure and anxious heart and is revealed in threats that seek to shackle the object of its so-called love. Jealousy will make you possessive and controlling. Is this how God is? If you look at the characteristics of love listed in 1 Corinthians 13, you will see that jealousy is the exact opposite of Godly love. Jealousy is impatient, unkind and envious. It is self-seeking, easily angered and keeps a long record of wrongs. Is this how you picture God?

Jealousy or agape – which is it?

Does God love us unconditionally or does He love us with a jealous love? Does He love us regardless of what we do or does He love us because of what we do? You cannot have it both ways. It’s one or the other. I hope it’s clear from my previous post and 1 Corinthians 13 that God is not a jealous God at all! He is not insecure, He is not anxious, and He does not use threats to make us love Him. In truth, He is patient and kind, He is not easily angered, He does not delight in evil and He keeps no record of wrongs. Indeed, He is the very definition and Personification of love (1 Jn 4:16). We would not know what love is except that He’s shown us His love.

So what’s with these threats in Exodus and Deuteronomy? Was God playing with words when He told the Israelites that He was a jealous God? How are we to account for these contradictory images of His nature? As always, the answer is to interpret scripture through the finished work of the cross. If you fail to read your Bible through the lens of the cross, you’ll end up confused and believing all sorts of nonsense about the character of God.

One nature, two covenants

The cross basically divides the Bible into two covenants, the old and new. Under the old covenant (the 10 commandments), if you did good you got good, but if you did bad, you got bad. Everything – even the love of God – was conditional on your performance. But under the new covenant we are blessed with “every spiritual blessing” because of Jesus (Eph 1:3). Everything – forgiveness, righteousness, holiness, and health – is given to us by grace and is received by faith.

The cross really did change everything, but – and this is the important bit – it did not change the nature of God. He is eternal and unchanging and He did not have a change of heart after the cross. He did not think, “Well that first covenant I came up with was a disaster, so I’d better try something new.” No, the new covenant was God’s plan from the very beginning. This is why the Bible refers to the new covenant as the “eternal covenant” (He 13:20) while describing the old covenant as temporary and now obsolete (2 Cor 3:11, He 8:13). The old covenant was not a practice run while God was still figuring things out. It was a temporary arrangement whereby He deliberately restrained His heart of loving-kindness toward the Israelites so that they might become aware of the magnitude of their sin and their dire need for a Savior (Rm 3:20, Gal 3:24). When Jesus came He fulfilled the requirements of the old covenant law on our behalf and offered Himself as the one-time sacrifice for the sins of the whole world. For the Israelites who lived under the old covenant, the cross was something to look forward to. But for us who live under the new, the cross is 2000 years in our past.

Read your Bible through the lens of the cross

When you read scriptures that seem to say, on the one hand, that God is jealous and controlling, but on the other, that He loves us with an everlasting love and died for us while we were yet sinners, you have to ask yourself, which covenant is this describing? The jealousy statement at the top of this post comes right smack in the middle of the 10 commandments so there should be no doubt that it belongs to the old covenant. This statement does not describe the true nature of God at all. Rather than frame our understanding of God’s character through an old covenant scripture that says God is jealous, we need to interpret scripture through our understanding of God’s heart as revealed first in Jesus and then in the new and eternal covenant under which we live. Do that and you will get a consistent picture of your heavenly Father who loves you unconditionally. Do you know how many times God is described as jealous in the new covenant? Not once. Like the prodigal’s father, your heavenly Father loves you regardless of your behavior. Indeed, He loves you more than He loves His own life. How do we know? Look to the cross!


If you’ve been told that God is a jealous God, you will always wonder whether you’ve done enough to merit His affection. You will hesitate to love your spouse and kids for fear of making Him envious. If you think God is anxious and insecure, it’ll make you anxious and insecure and before you know it you will be a jealous lover too. But God is not jealous and He is not schizophrenic. He set His love on you before you were born and He draws you even now with His loving-kindness.

https://escapetoreality.org/2011/05/19/is-god-a-jealous-god/

Evening

Are you talking about The Second Coming of Christ or The Rapture of the Church? The Rapture is imminent, it can happen at any time. The Second coming will happen Seven years after the rapture.

The earth needs a makeover..... Scientists who are not Christians are saying that this earth wont last beyond 2039. Russian scientists have envisioned an outer planet that will crash with the earth in 2032.

And with the way things are going, 3rd World is inevitable and it is estimated to kill more than 2 Billion of the world's population. But our Lord Jesus Christ is still holding everything in place, pending the rapture of His Church, then all hell will break loose on earth.

So if you think this world will get right, you are dreaming. The worst is yet to come but before then, Christ will rapture His church.

Come O Lord Jesus!!

Throw beeeck

Throwback

Throwback

Throwback