YOUR DESTINY, YOUR CHOICE - RICK WARREN

“For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.” (Ephesians 2:10 NLT)

Your life isn't an accident. You have a destiny, one that only you can complete. The Bible says, “All the days planned for me were written in your book before I was one day old” (Psalm 139:16 NCV).

God knows everything that’ll happen in your life. He’s not surprised by anything. And he knows your days have a destiny. We all get about 80 years, the Bible says. In the scheme of eternity, those 80 years are insignificant. So the Bible says this life is preparation for the next. God wants you to practice on Earth what you’ll do forever in eternity.

And he has given you a destiny —

something to do in this life, something only you can do . Before you were born, God wired you with certain ambitions, desires, and drives to play a particular role in history — one that only you can play.

The Bible says in Ephesians 2:10, “For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago” (NLT). Before you were born, God gave you a unique mixture of spiritual gifts, passions, abilities, personality, and experiences. There’s no one like you in the entire universe because, in part, there’s no one with your unique mix of talents. It’s why your destiny is so unique. It’s your destiny. Not your mother’s, not your father’s, not your pastor’s. It’s your destiny.

FACTORS AIDING CLOSED OR OPEN HEAVEN

"And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water: and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him" (Matthew 3:16). 

We have evidence in the Scriptures that there is a general heaven and there is a personal heaven. Thus the heaven over a nation or a congregation could be open while the personal heaven of a particular individual in that nation or congregation could be closed. In the same vein, an individual may experience a personal open heaven while the communal heaven remains closed. Elijah and the widow of Zarephath were examples of people who experienced open heavens at a time when the rest of the society were under a closed heaven. In our Bible verse for today, many people were there for baptism, but it was only Jesus whose heavens were opened. 

HANDLING IRRESISTIBLE TEMPTATIONS prt 1

And the king of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives, of which the name of the one was Shiphrah, and the name of the other Puah: 

And he said, When all of you do the office of a midwife to the Hebrew women, and see them upon the stools; if it be a son, then all of you shall kill him: but if it be a daughter, then she shall live. 

But the midwives feared God, and did not as the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the men children alive" (Exodus 1:15-17, Updated King James Version).

JUST BREAKING: THE WAR AGAINST THE CROSS IN CHINA

By IAN JOHNSON

SHUITOU, China — Along the valleys and mountains hugging the East China Sea, a Chinese government campaign to remove crosses from church spires has left the countryside looking as if a typhoon had raged down the coast, decapitating buildings at random.
In the town of Shuitou, workers used blowtorches to cut a 10-foot-high cross off the 120-foot steeple of the Salvation Church. It now lies in the churchyard, wrapped in a red shroud.
About 10 miles to the east, in Mabu township, riot police officers blocked parishioners from entering the grounds of the Dachang Church while workers erected scaffolding and sawed off the cross. In the nearby villages of Ximei, Aojiang, Shanmen and Tengqiao, crosses now lie toppled on rooftops or in yards, or buried like corpses.
On a four-day journey through this lush swath of China’s Zhejiang Province, I spoke with residents who described in new detail the breathtaking scale of an effort to remove Christianity’s most potent symbol from public view. Over the past two years, officials and residents said, the authorities have torn down crosses from 1,200 to 1,700 churches, sometimes after violent clashes with worshipers trying to stop them.

ARE YOU LIKE JESUS?

Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven. - Matthew 5:16.
Each time we go to church, we hear the message of Jesus. We are humbled at the message, and declare we are the light of Jesus. Monday morning finds us perhaps going to work, and that person pulls his car right in front of us, almost side-swiping ours. What do we do? Are we shining our light - asking Jesus to take care of him on his way this morning, or do we quickly drown him with our words? Then, we get to the office and things aren't any better. Someone does something or says something that we doesn't set too well with us, and what do we do? Do we open our mouth without thinking and speak the words we want to speak? Or do we take a moment to ask God to give us the words to speak, so that we won't offend?

THE PAIN OF A GOOD MAN

"A good man leaveth an inheritance to his children's children: and the wealth of the sinner is laid up for the just" (Proverbs 13:22).

We often hear about generational or foundational curses that need to be broken, but we hardly hear about generational blessings that has to be inherited. However, it is right to suppose that if there is something called generational curses, there must also be something called generational blessings. If there are foundational curses, there must be foundational blessings as well. Ishmael, Isaac, Esau, and Jacob were all beneficiaries of generational blessings.

YOU NEED TO GET IT RIGHT

excerpt from the pulpit
John 4:19-26
Jesus reveals that questions over where we worship are not as important as how and why we worship. Toward the end of the Book of Hebrews the writer explains, let us be grateful and worship God in a way that will please him (Hebrew 12:28 TEV)    .
That is our objective this morning. To discover from these words of Jesus how to worship God in a way that will please Him. We can observe from this passage that the kind of worship that pleases God has our characteristics:
- GOD IS PLEASED WHEN OUR WORSHIP FLOWS FROM BEING SAVED
- GOD IS PLEASED WHEN OUR WORSHIP IS SCRIPTURAL
- GOD IS PLEASED WHEN OUR WORSHIP IS SPIRITUAL
- GOD IS PLEASED WHEN OUR WORSHIP IS SACRIFICIAL