Ephesians 2:11-22;

Paul says something here, that we need to hear:

Those people on the streets, those people on those shows, singing that music, in that bar, in that night club, that teenager with the child... You were there once. You have only one difference from them, you have Jesus. Why do I like this little bit? Because it is humbling, we realize, we are not above them. But, we have been brought near to Christ' blood.

Now, where Paul says that Christ is our peace, in this context he does not mean peace in troubled times (though Christ is our comfort and peace in those times).
At the fall, peace between God and man was destroyed, the Priest had to go to God for us. In fact, in the temple there was a physical barrier that separated where the Priest' could go and where "commoners" could not.
Christ restored this peace, broke that middle wall, and gave us direct relation to God. Christ is our peace, with Christ, we are "cool" with God.

 To God, we are no longer strangers and foreigners, we are citizens and Saints... in the house of God. And we, in our faith have been built by the Apostles, Prophets, with Christ as our cornerstone.

Christ is our cornerstone, we are built, like a house, in our faith, with the Gospel (the Apostles and Prophets)
 as the materials, so that we can be a dwelling place for the Holy Spirit.

Thanks for reading,

John Mark,

Ehpesians 2:1-10;

I love the beginning words, for every Christian these are like gold!

And He made you ALIVE.
You are alive, you are a living creature, you are not some machine having to be pushed to and fro, you have a choice. You are alive and kickin'! You may not be kicking very high, but at least you are kicking!

Then he goes on to say, exactly what God took you from, and what your former death really looked like. Remember just a bit ago, how I said that you were not a machine being pushed to and fro?? Well, that is what your former death was like. You had no choice, at first, Satan told you to do something, and you did it. Afterwards, it was natural, he barely had to nudge you. You saw sin, and you knew nothing but that sin, so to it you went. So he mentions all of these things that we as Christians were, and it looks pretty bad.

But, God jumps in. God, He who is rich in mercy because of His love. Not just any love. His GREAT Love. Now, where Paul says that He made us alive with Christ. I don't know if that is simbolisiom, or if he meant that when Christ rose from the dead that the Sacrifice had come to completion. So, we were made alive with Christ. I honestly don't have any other theories on that. Let me know what you think!

God raised us up, we are, in truth, vile disgusting people. But God raised us up, and made us righteous in His eyes. He did this, as we saw in the last chapter, because it brings Him pleasure. He wants to show us His grace, and how far it abounds. For we have been saved by Grace, and NOT by works. Because if we could have achieved Righteousness by works, then why in the world, would we even care about Jesus???

I love this next verse:

For we are, HIS WORKMANSHIP. We are His, He made us! We are His masterpeice, the pinnicale of creation. We are His image bearers. We were created for good works.

So, here is my challenge to you, and myself. Start living your life, striving for those good works. Not to earn your way to heaven, please no! But because it pleases God. We are His image, and if we let that image become more vivid, then more people might come to Him.

As David Platt said in His book Radical, bringing someone to Christ is "A cause worth living for, and a cause worth dying for."

Thanks for reading,

John Mark,

Ephesians 1:15-23

Now, before I begin again, you must know that I do not claim to be some great Bible Scholar, I am not super wise and what not. In all truth, what I write, is just what runs through my head as I read.

I love how Paul begins, and when he talks about the first time he heard of their faith; he doesn't just say: I did give thanks. He says; "I still do! I give thanks and always pray for you."
Then he gets more specific.

When he makes mention of them he asks God to give them wisdom, and revelation in the knowledge of Him.
The eyes of our understanding. When you look at the Scriptures, do you always understand everything?? I do not, I look at it sometimes and it blows me away. I just don't get it sometimes, that is what Paul was praying about. That the Christians in Ephesus would have more understanding, of God and His word.
The Hope of God's calling, the hope that not only is Christ coming back as King of ALL. But also, that He is going to bring us home. To Him in heaven, and not tossed aside, as trash. (If you want, I'll elaborate on this in a later post.)
Not only the hope of His calling, of our reward, but of His power! Exceeding power which He demonstrated, when He raised Christ from the dead. He raised Him from the dead. Jesus had been dead for 3 days, where was He while He was in the grave???? I have no idea. I have heard it said before that during those three days He was in hell, I will not say yes or no to that, for I do not know.

But He raised Him from the dead, and this, this next part is our hope! He placed Christ above all things! Above Satan, above the Demons, above the world, above all that beats us down! God is in control!

How do we know this? The scriptures, that is exactly what Paul prayed, that these people, would understand this, so that they may have hope. But how can they understand, if they don't read?

Here's my prayer, that each of us, would not only read, but that we would understand. And that through reading, and understanding, that we come closer to Christ, and we set our hearts to fulfill His mission!

Ezra 7:10;
"For the Lord had prepared his heart to seek the law of the LORD, and to do it, and to teach statutes and ordinances in Israel."

Pray to God to prepare your heart to seek His law. And when you seek it, do it. After you do it, teach it.

That verse is something I need to work at. Seeking after God. There are somethings I need to do differently, and that is my goal. To grow more in Christ this year than last year. And last year was Spiritually the best year of my life. God can outdo that, He is God.

Thanks for reading,

John Mark,

Ephesians 1:4--14;

This is pretty much what goes through my mind as I read these verses:

He chose us, He chose us before the foundation of the world. This passage is mostly on Predestination, for me it can be a very edgy subject. It says that He chose us.

Here is how Salvation works: We are all born in condemnation. We are headed to hell, yes for our sin, but more specifically, for our rejection of God. We all know God. A common question is; Will people who have never had the chance to hear the Gospel, will they go to hell? The answer, yes.

Harsh? No, they are receiving the same punishment, for the same thing that everyone that goes to hell is being punished for. Rejecting God. But how can they reject a God of whom they have not known of? Well, in Romans 1:19--20, Paul nails that. Of course they have heard, God reveals Himself in creation, these things he has made known to us that we may have no excuse. We have rejected God! We have no excuse, all who are created, have a knowledge of God, and have rejected God.

So that is the second step to Salvation, first we are born condemed but God reveals Himself to us.

The third step is our choice. You see, God, in all of His infinite wisdom and power, has predestined that He would show Himself to us, but in all of this predestination, He gives us the choice, to accept or reject. Accept God, through Christ, or Reject God and Christ.

In the debate of freewill versus complete predestination, I am in the middle. There are certainly several things predestined, but how God made love, love is a choice. And Jesus said that we must love Him with all our heart, love cannot be forced, but, it can be inspired.

So He chose us, He chose to save us.
He chose to save us because pleased Him, it brought Him pleasure. It glorifies Him, because of His grace, and it is because of His grace that we are redeemed. It's His blood that washes us, It doesn't paint over our sins in order to hide them, It washes us!
We have been predestined us, according to His purpose, so that we could live lives that bring praise to Him.

After we have heard, we accept, and we are sealed, and that glorifies God.

So, we are born sinners, God has revealed Himself to us, we hear, and we either accept or reject.

Romans 10:14--15;

Thanks for reading,

John Mark,

Idol Worship

When the book of Haggai was written, the Israelites were in this cycle of: Turn from God, go into captivity, repent, come home and rebuild... restart. And they were in the rebuilding stage. These people were lucky like nothing else! The guy that had captured them, King Darius, this guy would let his prisoners practice their own religion and beliefs. And then, when they were out of captivity, he gave them money and resources to build their temple. But they didn't, they starting building their houses and neglecting God, and God was tired of it. Because they did that for 10 years.
Now, fast forward to us: God's temple is us, we are His church. Are we building our own houses spiritually? Think about the things that take your time: TV, Video Games, Internet, what ever it may be. But do we neglect God? Leave Him out of our lives?? God should have a place in us.

Let's put it this way, imagine a cabinet with several shelves, and each shelf has a certain amount of compartments. Now put a word in each compartment to represent what you devote your time to. TV, Computer, Family, Friends, Phone, Video Games, hey! Let's even put God in one of those. And whatever else you may spend your time on. What do you see wrong with that?

Well, God should not be in a compartment, He should be the entire shelf! Whatever you do in life, should be judged by God's standard, if it does not line up, is it worth it?

Don't get me wrong, I do believe that every Christian should spend time with God. Just them and God, studying God's word. Not just reading, studying. I am not perfect at this. But I have a method to keep me in line. This Blog. I have made a promise to whoever reads this, that I will do my best to have something every week... at least. My deadline is Thursday. I absolutely have to have something up by then, it keeps my accountable. This is why I write this, so that I must read my Bible, because if I don't, then I would probably have an extremely hard time to read consistently. I still do. I don't expect anyone to be perfect in this. But all throughout the Bible it is clear that time spent with God is essential for a Relationship with Him. Read through the Gospels, Jesus went into the Wilderness several times. And when He was tempted, He used verses to fight Satan, do you have a way better than what our Savor used? There are a few others who did the same, I cannot remember who though.

Read Philippians 1:9, it backs me up. That our love may abound more in knowledge and discernment. Our love in and of Christ, may abound more in knowledge and discernment of the word.

So give God some time, and build upon your relationship with God.

We degrade God a lot. We are given Scripture so often, that it has gotten "casual" to us. I hope you don't put something before God. You can correlate that video to so much more than Football.

Well, next week, I am going to start a study in Ephesians.

Thanks for reading,

John Mark,

Christmas Story: Retold...

It was no silent night, that is what I am going to talk about. You see, if you read Revelations 12, it talks about a Spiritual war between the Angels and the "Christmas Dragon" as I have recently heard it referred to as. That is the Spiritual picture of Christmas day. A huge fight, Satan--the Dragon--literally threw stars down from the heavens. What happens after that, kind of confused me. Satan is thrown from heaven. But as I began to think about it, I realized something. You see, the Spiritual world does not perceive time as: Past frozen, Present only to pass, and the future to come, it must be anticipated. Christmas happened for them, at the same moment in time (as we perceive it) when Satan was thrown out, the same time as now. They wanted so badly to stop what they knew was happening. But God stepped in, He cast Satan out. Now you may be saying that physically it was a silent night. Not exactly.
Let's back up a few months ago.
An Angel of God comes to Mary and says: "Hey, you are favored in God's sight. So you are going to give birth to the Son of God." (Paraphrase)
Can you imagine her reaction to that? How she felt? We actually get to read it:
"Whoa, wait, what?? I am going to be pregnant?? How? I have never done something like that with any man." (Paraphrase)
So the Angel reassures her:
"No, don't worry about that. That is part of why you were chosen. This conception is of the Holy Spirit." (Paraphrase)
So she decides to trust God on this. And this, is where the silence ends. I mean, people found out.
"Did you hear?? Mary is pregnant!"
"What? Are you serious! Ugh! What a prostitute, you know what I think! I think she should be stoned. I mean, she is betrothed already to Joseph."
I bet that is the kind of slander that she felt and heard. And that was the law! If someone had been caught in Adultery by law they had to be stoned. (In fact, a woman caught was once brought before Jesus, and the Pharisees questioned Him here.)
But according to the law, she could only be stoned if she was accused by either her father, or husband/fiance. And her being betrothed, the only person who by law, could accuse her, was Joseph. And that puts him in a hard position.

"What do I do? I mean, I love her. But she betrayed me! I cannot believe she did this to me! I could have her stoned. No, no, that is not the right thing. I will not stone her. Okay, here is what I'll do! I will divorce her quietly, I won't make a big deal about it. After that, I guess she will take care of herself."

Then Joseph goes to sleep, and an Angel appears to him, and tells him that what Mary said about her conception was true! It was from God.
Mary was probably feeling extremely stressed about it all. Everyone there was gossiping, slandering, giving her looks. Probably refusing to service her at the market, or marking up prices for her. And not to mention! Since he will not stone her, nor divorce her, so he now is losing business!! So, she decides to visit Elizabeth to relax. After awhile, there is a census across the land, each man must take his family to his home town. Now Mary and Joseph have to travel several miles to Bethlehem. And she is several months into the ordeal. Who knows what they had to go through on the way there!
But alas! They get there, and this town probably doesn't know their story. They look around for a place to stay, and they come upon the last inn, and they ask the guy for a room.
He turns them away. But as he is about to shut the door, either he notices, or more likely, his wife notices that Mary is pregnant. So he says; "Hey, this is probably not much, but, I have a place. Where, well, animals stay. If you would like, I guess you could stay there. It might be warmer in there for the night."
Then Mary gives birth, the battle, the Shepherds come, and they cannot believe that they of all people were shown where the Savior was!!
After that, a few more things go on. But that is the event we celebrate! We don't celebrate the same Christmas that is so commercialized that it holds no message, or the one that makes a fictional character the god we worship.
WE CELEBRATE JESUS CHRIST BEING BORN SO THAT HE COULD DIE TO SAVE US FROM OURS SINS. His name was, and is, Immanuel, meaning: GOD WITH US.

And He truly is with us. He is Immanuel.

Mary and Joseph are two great examples of how Christians should live. They followed God when nothing made sense. And Joseph was faced with a huge task. Not only to take care of the mother of Christ, but to take care of the Messiah Himself!

Could you do that? Would God ask you to take care of His Son?

...Well... He did. He said that if we follow Him, He will dwell in us. And He asked us to take care of Him in another sense. To tell about Him, to share the Gospel, to live a life that would shine the love of Christ. Are you taking care of Christ? I truly hope so, I am not where I need to be. But I intend upon trying my absolute best.

Thanks for reading,

John Mark,

Times get tough:

Life is going to be hard, you are going to be brought down. Just as you laugh, so I assure you, you shall cry. It's really hard to go through tough times in life, and it is even harder to keep your head up when you go through them. Lately, I have come across a chapter that is extremely encouraging. But I am only going to write a few verses:


2 Samuel 22:5-20;
5 "When the waves of death surrounded me, The floods of ungodliness made me afraid.6 The sorrows of Sheol surrounded me; The snares of death confronted me. 7 In my distress I called upon the Lord, And cried out to my God; He heard my voice from His temple, And my cry entered His ears. 8 "Then the earth shook and trembled; The foundations of heaven quaked and were shaken, Because He was angry. 9 Smoke went up from His nostrils, And devouring fire from His mouth; Coals were kindled by it. 10 He bowed the heavens also, and came down With darkness under His feet. 11 He rode upon a cherub, and flew; And He was seen upon the wings of the wind. 12 He made darkness canopies around Him, Dark waters and thick clouds of the skies.13 From the brightness before Him Coals of fire were kindled. 14 "The Lord thundered from heaven, And the Most High uttered His voice. 15 He sent out arrows and scattered them; Lightning bolts, and He vanquished them. 16 Then the channels of the sea were seen, The foundations of the world were uncovered, At the rebuke of the Lord, At the blast of the breath of His nostrils. 17"He sent from above, He took me, He drew me out of many waters. 18 He delivered me from my strong enemy, From those who hated me; For they were too strong for me. 19 They confronted me in the day of my calamity, But the Lord was my support. 20 He also brought me out into a broad place; He delivered me because He delighted in me.


He delivered me, because He delighted in me.
I just really like these verses. I don't really have anything else, sorry. I will have something a bit more thought out next week though.




Thanks for reading,


John Mark,