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Devotionals

HOW ONE LOSES THE POWER HE ONCE HAD TO DISTINGUISH BETWEEN TRUTH AND ERROR

August 13, 2020

FROM YOUR PASTOR’S DESK:

HOW ONE LOSES THE POWER HE ONCE HAD TO DISTINGUISH BETWEEN TRUTH AND ERROR

“Whenever the CAUSE exists, the same RESULTS will follow He who deliberately STIFLES his convictions of duty because it INTERFERES with his inclinations, will FINALLY lose the power to distinguish between truth and error.”

“The understanding becomes DARKENED, the conscience CALLOUS, the heart HARDENED, and the soul is SEPARATED from God. Where the message of divine truth is SPURNED or SLIGHTED, there the [generic] church will be enshrouded in darkness; faith and love grow cold, and estrangement and dissension enter. Church members center their interests and energies in WORLDLY pursuits, and sinners become HARDENED in their impenitence.”

E. G. White, The Great Controversy, 1911 ed., p. 379.
Categories
Devotionals

UPHOLDING ALL THINGS BY THE WORD OF HIS POWER

August 6, 2020

FROM YOUR PASTOR’S DESK:

‘UPHOLDING ALL THINGS BY THE WORD OF HIS POWER.’ Heb.1:3, A.V.

Take note if that. ‘Upholding all things by the word of His power,’ rather than ‘by the power of His Word,’ as we would quickly say, without much thought.

“Christ is said to be ‘upholding all things.’ The word for ‘upholding’ denotes MORE than merely sustaining something so that it will not collapse. It means ‘bearing forward to a destination.’ While it includes the idea of sustaining, it has the ADDED meaning of ‘movement, of guidance, of purposeful progress.’

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Devotionals

CHRIST’S CROWNING AND GREATEST GIFT TO MANKIND

July 20, 2020

FROM YOUR PASTOR’S DESK:

CHRIST’S CROWNING AND GREATEST GIFT TO MANKIND

“And I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He May abide with you for ever.”

John 14:16, A.V.

“Christ declared that, after His ascension, that He would send to His church, as His crowning gift, the Comforter, who was to take His place. This Comforter is the HOLY SPIRIT—THE SOUL OF HIS LIFE, the efficacy of His church, THE LIGHT AND THE LIFE of the world. With His Spirit, Christ sends a reconciling influence and a power to take away sins.”

“God has instructed me to tell you and all His people to be VERY CAREFUL not to resist the working of the Holy Spirit—the Comforter that Christ sends. FEAR TO TAKE THE FIRST PRESUMPTUOUS STEP OF RESISTANCE.”

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FMM

Understanding the Spiritual Kingdom of God

Friday Morning Manna July 3, 2020

Nathaniel Fajardo email:[email protected]

Understanding the Spiritual Kingdom of God

“And when He was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of should come, He answered them and said, ‘The kingdom of God cometh not with observation (outward show, margin): neither shall they say, ‘Lo here! or lo there! For, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.”

Luke 17: 20, 21, KJV, Authorized Version

According to the Bible a king is: “A male sovereign in whom is invested supreme authority over a tribe or nation. Generally, rule is for life and succession is on a hereditary basis. That over which he rules is called a kingdom.

“The kings of ancient heathen nations were often considered as deities or direct descendants of a deity. [The Egyptian kings, known as pharaohs, were worshipped as deities in the first atheistic world empire, ancient Egypt].

Brief History from Theocracy to Monarchy

Categories
Devotionals

ACHAN’S INDIVIDUAL SIN AFFECTED THE WHOLE NATION (THE CHURCH THEN)

June 18, 2020

FROM YOUR PASTOR’S DESK:
ACHAN’S INDIVIDUAL SIN AFFECTED THE WHOLE NATION (THE CHURCH THEN)
“To establish his guilt beyond question, leaving no ground for the charge that he had been unjustly condemned, Joshua solemnly adjured Achan to acknowledge the TRUTH. The wretched man made full confession of his crime: ‘Indeed I have sinned against the Lord God of Israel…When I saw a GOODLY Babylonian garment [high-fashion, expensive], and 200 hundred shekels of silver and a wedge of gold of 50 shekels’ weight [the currency then], I COVETED them and took them; and behold, they are HID in the earth in the midst of my tent’ [as in hidden in my heart and imaginations].
“Messengers were immediately dispatched to the tent,… and ‘behold it was in the tent…and they took them out of the tent and brought them to Joshua….and laid them out BEFORE the Lord.”

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FMM

Elisha’s Three Successive Different Prayers of Faith

Friday Morning Manna

June 12, 2020
Nathaniel Fajardo

email:[email protected]

Elisha’s Three Successive Different Prayers of Faith

(Based on: 2 Kings 6: 8-33; as told in Prophets and Kings, ch.21)

Before Elijah, only the second man after Enoch (the seventh of the godly patriarchs from Adam), was translated, God hand-picked Elisha to succeed, continue and expand on Elijah’s prophetic and reformation ministry. Elisha’s father was an affluent yet God-fearing farmer whose household were among “the seven thousand who had not bowed the knee to Baal during the time of well-nigh universal apostasy of Israel during the reign of king Ahab and queen Jezebel, his wicked and cruel heathen wife. See 1 Kings 19: 1-10, 11-20.

To underscore our focus today on faith versus fear, we cite the examples of two faith giants, Moses and Elijah, compared and contrasted to Christ’s temptations, who at their weakest moments, which were few were few and far in between yet momentous, allowed their faith to be temporarily overcome by fear. They yielded to the temptation to fear. Anytime and every time we yield t0 any temptation we sin against God. The following is quoted from Prophets and Kings:

Categories
Devotionals

THE SABBATH POINTS TO NATURE AND NATURE POINTS TO THE CREATOR

June 1, 2020

FROM YOUR PASTOR’S DESK:

THE SABBATH POINTS TO NATURE AND NATURE POINTS TO THE CREATOR

“All things were created by the Son of God. ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God….All things were made by Him; and without Him was not any thing made that was made.’ John 1:1-3,KJV.

“And since the Sabbath is a MEMORIAL of the work of creation, it is a TOKEN of the love and power of Christ.  The Sabbath calls our attention to nature, and brings us into communion with the Creator. In the song of the birds, the sighing of the trees, and the music of the sea, we may hear His VOICE who talked with Adam in Eden in the cool of the day.

“And as we behold His power in nature we find COMFORT, for the Word that created all things is that which SPEAKS LIFE to the soul. He ‘who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.’ 2 Cor. 4:6.

Categories
Devotionals

THE LAW WRITTEN IN THE HEART BEFORE IT WAS WRITTEN ON STONE

May 28, 2020

FROM YOUR PASTOR’S DESK:

THE LAW WRITTEN IN THE HEART BEFORE IT WAS WRITTEN ON STONE

Christ the Creator and Lawgiver wrote the law in the hearts and minds of Adam and Eve in their creation as the crowning act of His creative power.

“Adam and Eve, at their creation, had a knowledge of the law of God; they were acquainted with its claims upon them; its precepts were written upon their hearts.”