Church

Mr. Suave’s Purity Performance

Posted on March 12, 2023March 15, 2023 by RKM in Church Practices

As I mentioned previously, interactions among Christians are significant to the spiritual health of a believer and further our fellowship together is a manifestation of our unity. These interactions are to be guarded and be pleasing to the Lord. We are sometimes so preoccupied in delving into political and social wars especially against the sexual revolution with the expectation to change the direction of the wind that we forget about cleaning our own room first. If we are going to push the sexual purity narrative against the sexual immoral, it needs to first happen within your heart and the walls of your local congregation.

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Fire Starters

Posted on March 8, 2023March 8, 2023 by RKM in Church Practices

Experiencing the great bride of Christ on earth is a wonderful encounter that has enriched me in many ways in my life. I’ve been a churchman for many years and take pride in partaking in the beauty of God’s assembly especially its head. The body of Christ is an ongoing growing body that has yet to reach maturity and let’s face it, it has a long way to go. When we consider the local church, there are many ways which it has matured since the days of the apostles, but in other ways it has stayed the same. But the survival of a local church relies upon maturity, or we end up with a nursery rather than a church! Some need to be more spiritually grounded than others or else how do we exercise the great commission? I say spiritually here because this is not about age, but about wisdom and scriptural/spiritual soundness. When Paul wrote to the local churches (and to some of his helpers), he didn’t do so to convey to them a bunch of trivial slogans but wanting to share the inspired wisdom of his age. He understood human interactions well enough to write a manual on ecclesiastical comportment in 2023. The apostle wrote for his day and God knew it would apply for the rest of history.

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The Book of Hosea: Chapter 2 (1)

Posted on February 17, 2023 by RKM in The Book of Hosea

It is always good to remember that chapters and verses in the bible were not included in the original autographs. This is an example where it could affect the context if we depend too readily on these divisions. The first verse in Hosea’s 2^nd chapter is a good example of the significance of this. The passage is interlinked with 1:10-11 rather than introducing a new segment. Previously, the prophet spoke of a future reversal for the nation in Yahweh’s dealing with them. The great day of Jezreel (1:11) demonstrated the renewal of the first son of Hosea. Now, in 2:1, the same is said of the 2^nd & 3^rd child. In this instance, Jezreel seems to be the one addressing his siblings, Lo-Ruhamah and Lo-Ammi. The two will experience a similar reversal in their state going from being shown no compassion and not my people to receiving mercy and being transformed into “my people”. This is to be taken symbolically of the renovation of the nation since note that the prophet uses the plural “brothers and sisters”.

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Putting Your Pistols Back in Your Holsters

Posted on February 3, 2023February 3, 2023 by RKM in Church Practices, Guest Posts

Guest Post by: The East Side Monergist

Recently, I read a piece by Carl Trueman titled Yes I am a Christian, just like those over there that really hit home in terms of the mindset among evangelical/protestant circles. So much of what I’m reading and seeing happening these days in Christendom is just reinforcing and incentivizing a need to be more gracious with each other as Protestants. We need to really look at different traditions with more focus upon unity rather than distinctives simply for the sake of solidarity and unity and strength based on first order issues. Over and over again, we’ve been spoiled or sinful or graceless enough to splinter ourselves and have become foolishly divided by secondary and tertiary order issues that we can’t even truly claim to be a part of or include others in the same faith. We spend so much time treating our brothers in the faith as though they are heretics and maybe even unworthy of the title Christian altogether all the while we see agnostics, atheists, wiccans and satanists grow in unity and solidarity. We are fighting our way into being arguably the smallest and most divided faith system in the world.

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An Intro to Discipleship

Posted on January 5, 2023January 5, 2023 by RKM in Church Practices, Discipleship

Through my many years of church membership, I’ve taken the bait to address internal hot topics with my brothers and sisters in Christ which at times have created a few fires that almost consumed my precious soul. While I never intended it to, it often blew up in my face! This is often the case because people are either a little too edgy when confronted with a different view or they see you as an intellectual windbag who they’re not going to let you get away with pushing your views. Of course, it could also be that I rub people the wrong way, but I’ll leave it with the Lord and pray that perhaps I’ve matured. The essence of these theological conversations was significant and, in my mind, worthy of address. We need to be concerned about what we believe and discuss amongst ourselves especially those items that have ecclesiastical significance.

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The Christian Identity

Posted on November 7, 2022March 1, 2023 by RKM in People of God

I’d like to take time to consider further address our identity in God’s promises as Israel by reviewing some key passages in the New Testament. As we’ve seen, the recipients of the promises are Israel and few question this reality. We’ve been contemplating the question of the identifying attributes of Israel on a number of angles and have come to the conclusion that Christ is the true Israel. The same can be said of Christians since we’ve seen that we are identified as an expansion of the recipients of these promises. Christ’s death and resurrection fulfilled the promises to Abraham concerning his descendants and the nations and as we’ll see below, creating one man of the two. We can’t attribute this identity of Israel simply to a circumcised ethnic descendant of Abraham since these promises belong to those who find their ethnicity in a new creation in Christ by faith.

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Identity in Worship

Posted on October 24, 2022October 24, 2022 by RKM in People of God

The uniqueness of those who are in Christ is manifested in the important reality that only they are the true worshippers of Yahweh. Divine adoration is a fundamental marker of the people of God and we shouldn’t diminish this reality! The scriptures use concepts and identifiers to communicate that which is to be accepted as authentic worship. These include the place of worship, the worshippers and the offerings.

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Our Identity & Inheritance

Posted on October 17, 2022 by RKM in People of God

Finding our identity as a people in Christ means that we should have a good idea of God’s promises to Christ and how we receive this promised inheritance through Him. Receiving the promises of Abraham as the children of God through Jesus requires a little further examination. As we endeavour, we also need to keep in mind the pattern throughout the New Testament of a fulfillment in Christ and then an expansion into greater blessings bursting forth from Him. If the OT was a shadow and had revelatory limitations, the NT certainly brings them to light without limits! I want to take a moment now to write about the most controversial of these ancestral promises mainly the promise of the land inheritance.

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Beavers & Deceivers

Posted on August 9, 2022August 9, 2022 by RKM in Church Practices

One of my work colleagues was the proud father of two very nice boys. While they were growing up, they had a close relationship and part of what created this family tightness was their ability to play tricks on each other. One day, when the two boys were young, they were working on a school project on curling. My friend, a proud Canadian, decided to help them with a little historical insider content. He went about explaining the history of curling in quite some detail. He persuaded them that when the game was created, they didn’t use stones to slide on the ice because those weren’t invented yet. Instead, these innovative men from the north used to trap beavers, freeze them, and use them for their curling matches. He persuaded them that our curling forefathers would flip the frozen beaver on its back and use the tail as a handle to launch the beaver to the set goal. The next day, they presented their dad’s edition of the history of curling at school and things didn’t go quite so well. Let’s say that when they came home with death glares, their dad knew they’d taken the bait.

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