According to 1 Corinthians 12-14, the Holy Spirit operates in nine different gifts to both evangelize the sinner and edify the saints. The apostle Paul says that these gifts are available to all Christians who will allow the Holy Spirit to operate through them.
If you would like to join us in person for this class, here is where you can find us. If you have missed any of the classes in this series, check them out here:
This is a weekly series with things I’m reading and pondering from Charles Spurgeon. You can read the original seed thought here, or type “Thursdays With Spurgeon” in the search box to read more entries.
Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Audible.
Froth Or Substance?
Many of you will read a novel from beginning to end, and what have you got? A mouthful of froth when you have done. But you cannot read the Bible—that solid, lasting, substantial, and satisfying food goes uneaten, locked up in the cupboard of neglect, while anything that man writes, as a catch of the day is greedily devoured. ‘I have written for him the great things of My law, but they were considered a strange thing’ [Hosea 8:12].
From The Bible
The Bible is the most important book anyone can read, contemplate, and apply to their lives. Yet far too many people say, “I just don’t have enough time to sit down to read the Bible.” Sadly, these same people take a lot of time on much less meaningful activities.
One thing that has been immensely helpful to me is the Urgent/Important grid Stephen Covey talks about in his book The Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People. Your Bible reading is never urgent—that is, an alarm will not go off to tell you it is time to read. However, your Bible reading is hugely important.
Covey discusses how we can put all of our activities into one of the four quadrants in this chart:
Your Bible reading time is definitely a Quadrant II activity, and the best place to find time for this activity is by eliminating things in Quadrant IV—the activities Spurgeon would call froth. In my book Shepherd Leadership: The Metrics That Really Matter, I discuss how leaders can use this grid to increase their leadership effectiveness.
The bottom line: We all must make sure we are eliminating the froth so that we have time for the great Substance that can only be found in God’s Word.
And then check out chapter 10 in Shepherd Leadership—“Can’t, Won’t or Don’t”—to learn how to use this grid to help you make the time for those important Quadrant II activities.
According to Romans 12, all Christians have been given a unique gift package by God. We are to use these motivational gifts to make God’s Kingdom more visible and more desirable.
This week we discuss the gifts of teaching and exhortation. You may download the participant’s notes and the gifts assessment I use in this lesson:
According to Romans 12, all Christians have been given a unique gift package by God. We are to use these motivational gifts to make God’s Kingdom more visible and more desirable.
This week we discuss the gifts of teaching and exhortation. You may download the participant’s notes and the gifts assessment I use in this lesson:
According to Romans 12, all Christians have been given a unique gift package by God. We are to use these motivational gifts to make God’s Kingdom more visible and more desirable.
This week we discuss the gifts of teaching and exhortation. You may download the participant’s notes and the gifts assessment I use in this lesson:
According to Romans 12, all Christians have been given a unique gift package by God. We are to use these motivational gifts to make God’s Kingdom more visible and more desirable.
This week we discuss the gifts of prophecy and serving. You may download the participant’s notes and the gifts assessment I use in this lesson:
This is a weekly series with things I’m reading and pondering from Charles Spurgeon. You can read the original seed thought here, or type “Thursdays With Spurgeon” in the search box to read more entries.
Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Audible.
Accepting It For What It Is
…For the mouth of the Lord has spoken (Isaiah 1:20).
In the Word of God the teaching has unique dignity. This Book is inspired as no other book is inspired, and it is time that all Christians avowed this conviction. …
Where are we if our Bibles are gone? Where are we if we are taught to distrust them? If we are left in doubt as to which part is inspired and what is not, we are as badly off as if we had no Bible at all. I hold no theory of inspiration. I accept the inspiration of the Scriptures as a fact.
During the summer months, I like to lead my congregation through a study of the Book of Psalms. Currently, we are looking at the psalms that contain the word Selah.
It is distressing to me to see how many “modern” translations of the Bible either relegate the word Selah to a footnote (like the NIV which says, “The Hebrew has Selah [a word of uncertain meaning] here”), or completely disregard this word (e.g. The Message, The Contemporary English Version, and The Living Bible, to name a few).
Why? Do we think we are so much smarter now that we know which words the Holy Spirit truly inspired, and which ones we can leave out?
Once we start down this path, what is to stop us from modifying any word in the Bible? Many liberal-minded people want to tell us “what God really meant” in some passages, or to water down the inspiration so much to try to make it “culturally relevant” that they end up destroying its very meaning. This is not only a slippery slope, but it is something that God has already warned us against doing:
I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this scroll: If anyone adds anything to them, God will add to that person the plagues described in this scroll. And if anyone takes words away from this scroll of prophecy, God will take away from that person any share in the tree of life and in the Holy City, which are described in this scroll. (Revelation 22:18-19)
Let us accept the Word of God for what it is: Words that the mouth of Almighty God has spoken, not words that we think can be modified, improved, or eliminated.
According to Romans 12, all Christians have been given a unique gift package by God. We are to use these motivational gifts to make God’s Kingdom more visible and more desirable.
This is the introductory lesson in this series. You may download the participant’s notes and the gifts assessment I use in this lesson:
If you would like to join us in person for this class, here is where you can find us. If you have missed any of the classes in this series, check them out here:
The word Selah appears nearly 70 times in the Bible, almost exclusively in the Psalms. Although it is primarily a musical term, it applies beautifully to our summer series.
Selah can mean…
a pause from the noise to reflect;
a preparation for an exciting accent; or
a reflective time of consideration
Throughout the Psalms, Selah appears at the end of a verse, at the end of the psalm, or sometimes even mid-sentence. But each one of them is perfectly placed by the Spirit-inspired authors to get us to take a breath and deeply contemplate what we just read or sang.
Summertime is typically a time for us to pause from our regular routine. Perhaps it’s a vacation, time with friends and family, driving around with the windows down and the music blasting, or just a quiet walk through woods or along a beach. In any case, whether we realize it or not, we’re actually doing Selah in these break-from-the-routine activities.
Join me this Sunday as we continue our summertime look at each of the Psalms that ask us to Selah. I think you will find that this Sunday summertime pause will be both refreshing and encouraging. You can join me either in person or on Facebook or YouTube.
Since this is a continuation of our summer series, you can check out the Selahs we discussed by clicking here for the 2018 messages, here for the 2019 messages, here for the 2020 messages, and here for the 2021 messages.
Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Audible.
I just love it when science catches up with what God has already pronounced in the Bible!
I’ve blogged previously about psychology, archeology, and astronomy uncovering truths that have already been stated in the Bible, but there are also numerous recent medical discoveries that confirm what Scripture has already been telling us.
Like the fact that there is a healthy way to relieve stress, and that retaining the stress hormone cortisol in our bodies for too long has serious implications. The apostle Paul tells us to not “be anxious about anything” but to enjoy “the peace of God which transcends all understanding” (Philippians 4:4-7).
And then there is this finding that my YouVersion friend Shelly pointed out. “A happy heart is good medicine and a cheerful mind works healing, but a broken spirit dries up the bones” (Proverbs 17:22 AMP).
In a WebMD article, medical science confirms this truth of dried-up bones resulting from depression. They wrote, “Even mild depression may significantly increase a woman’s risk for developing osteoporosis. … The level of bone density loss attributed to depression in the study was similar to that previously associated with other well-known osteoporosis risk factors, including smoking cigarettes and getting little or no exercise. … Bone mineral density testing revealed that 17% of the depressed women showed evidence of bone thinning at a particularly vulnerable area of the thigh bone, compared to 2% of women who were not depressed.”
The Bible is God’s inspired Word to humankind, which means it is never out of date. The principles God has shared with us stand the test of time and are continually verified by the brightest scientific minds.
So here is my challenge to you: Take God at His Word, and apply the principles He has given you. I think you will find how much better your life will go when you live God’s way.
According to 1 Corinthians 12-14, the Holy Spirit operates in nine different gifts to both evangelize the sinner and edify the saints. The apostle Paul says that these gifts are available to all Christians who will allow the Holy Spirit to operate through them.
Craig T. Owens 