The answer to the above question is a resounding “No.” No, religion does not help us in tough times. It never has and it never will because religion (not based on the Bible) has no idea why “tough times” exist in the first place. Tough times exist, according to the Bible, [...]
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How important is the Spirit in a human life? In Romans 8 it is hugely important, for seven reasons: 1) The Spirit sets us free from sin and death (verse 2) 2) “Live according to the Spirit” and we can fully meet the righteous requirements of God’s law (verse 4), [...]
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Paul had a unique definition of “life.” Life, for instance, was not what he was experiencing in his physical body. His body was merely a vessel for his sinful nature, and his sinful nature only “bore fruit for death (Romans 7:5).” To Paul, a body controlled by its sinful nature “is dead because [...]
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What frustrated Paul so much was not being able to do what he so desperately wanted to do – and isn’t that the problem that frustrates all of us? In our inner beings, we’d love to do good and make our world a better place. Barack Obama’s stirring call “Yes, we can!” struck [...]
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In John 17:3 Jesus said, “Now this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God.” That’s quite a statement. I remember the “Love is…” buttons, well here Jesus is saying “Eternal life is…” – but who would have thought that “eternal life is….knowing God?” But if anyone knew that for a [...]
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The monster within us, this sinful nature we’ve got that has us completely captive to “sin and death,” was in for a shock when God sent Jesus. Up to that moment, it had complete freedom to do whatever it wanted with us, because anything we threw at it was useless. Our determination to [...]
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Paul talked as if he was two people with two separate minds that could think completely different thoughts. “I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law,” he wrote in Romans 7:25, “but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.” He was in two minds, each working totally [...]
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It would do us all good if, today, right now, in one great universal cry of anguish, we could cry out as Paul did in Romans 7:24, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” – because at least it would be admitting our problem, that [...]
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