"For He says to Moses, 'I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion'. So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy" (Rom 9:15-16).
Showing posts with label chris cunningham. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chris cunningham. Show all posts
It has been determined by the doctors that our friend and brother Tommy Robbins has cancer in his brain and bones and many other places in his body in addition to the liver and spine lesions already identified. It is being determined whether any treatment is worthwhile other than to just alleviate his pain. Again, I ask you to pray for the family and church there. We sorrow, but not as others who have no hope. We worship God along with Tommy in this and praise Him Who doeth all things well.
Romans 8:18 For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. 19 For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. 20 For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope, 21 Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.
Just as “it doth not yet appear what we shall be (1John 3:2),” we, having never experienced anything like this “glorious liberty,” can only wonder at it. I do not say that we have not experienced something just as wonderful, though different, because we have. Paul speaks here of liberty from any and all presence of sin and its temporal consequences. We still endure this bondage of corruption, but we have already been delivered from the terrible penalty, the eternal consequences and true punishment of sin. This is how Paul began this chapter. “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus . . .”
Yes, there are present-time sufferings, but they are not worth talking about compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us.
Yes, there is vanity, but even as we are steeped in the vanity of our own hearts and surrounded by the vanity of this world and its religious madness, we are rejoicing in hope and earnest expectation that “when He shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is (1John 3:2).”
Yes, there is bondage, but not the bondage of the law. We are yet in the bondage of corruption, not yet delivered from the body of this death (Rom 7:24), but we are delivered from that hopeless yoke, that bondage of despair that had us laboring without rest and without reward. That endless heavy burden of trying to satisfy the holy God by the performance of our unholy flesh. Bless God, to be unburdened of that yoke! Free from the law, O happy condition!!!!
And though now, there is yet this bondage of corruption, though this child of God is chained within the corruptible that must yet be put off (1Cor 15), we rejoice right now in the glorious liberty that is ours in Christ. He Who has begun this good work in us, shall perform it. He Who has purchased us and finished the work of redemption, shall possess us, and finish the work of salvation, the completion of which is described in this chapter in these various forms of this one beautiful word: glory, glorious, glorified.
I don’t know much about glory except that it is not a place, but a Person. The glory of God is Christ. And my glory, is Christ. Chris Cunningham
Faith is not believing that God will do what I want him to do, or what I think I need him to do. Faith is believing that God will do what he said He would do. Faith in Christ is an abandonment of our own thoughts and ways, and a complete, unreserved trusting of him as our Righteousness, Sin-offering and Sovereign.
Pastor Chris Cunningham
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Phil 1:8, "For God is my record, how greatly I long after you all in the bowels of Christ".
He places "the bowels of Christ" in opposition to carnal affection, to intimate that his affection is holy and pious. For the man that loves according to the flesh has respect to his own advantage, and may from time to time change his mind according to the variety of circumstances and seasons. In the meantime he instructs us by what rule the affections of believers ought to be regulated, so that, renouncing their own will, they may allow Christ to sit at the helm. And, unquestionably, true love can flow from no other source than from the bowels of Christ, and this, like a goad, ought to affect us not a little—that Christ in a manner opens his bowels, that by them he may cherish mutual affection between us.
John Calvin
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Preaching with Passion
by G. Campbell Morgan
IN THE TRUE SERMON there must always be passion. Our Lord’s testimony concerning John, His forerunner, was this: “He was a burning and a shining light” (John 5:35). It is one thing to shine; it is quite another to burn as well.
Half the sermons today—may I be forgiven if I am cruel—are failing because they lack the note of passion. A man was formerly said to “handle his text.” If he handles his text he cannot preach at all. But when his text handles him, when it grips and masters and possesses him, and in experience he is responsive to the thing he is declaring, having conviction of the supremacy of truth and experience of the power of truth, I think that must create passion. I am not arguing for mere excitement. Painted fire never burns, and an imitated enthusiasm is the most empty thing that can possibly exist in a preacher. Given the preacher with a message from the whole Bible, seeing its bearing on life at any point, I cannot personally understand that man not being swept sometimes right out of himself by the fire and the force and the fervor of his work.
The preacher should never address a crowd without remembering his ultimate citadel is the citadel of the human will. He may travel along the line of emotions, but he is after the will. He may approach along the line of intellect, but he is after the will. When preaching becomes merely discussion in the realm of the intellect, or—forgive my use of the word—fooling in the realm of the emotions, and when preaching ends in the intellectual or emotional, it fails. It is successful only when it is able to storm the will, under the will of God.
The preacher comes with good news; but he does not come with something to be trifled with. His message has an insistent demand, because he comes on behalf of a King.
Romans 7:21 I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me. 22 For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: 23 But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.
Men have complicated this and argued over it for many years, but all believers have experienced this very thing and the word here clearly describes that experience. The inward man, the new man (Col 3:10), loves God’s law, delights in it and desires to keep it. This is not the old nature, which despises God’s law, is enmity against God and cannot be subject to His law: Romans 8:7Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.
This new man is, well, let’s let God describe him: Ephesians 4:24And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. This is why he loves and would keep God’s law. But, we are all familiar (all believers that is) with this “other law.” It is the old man, the law or principle of sin, the old nature that cannot be subject to the law of God. It is rebellious and wicked; it is the “me” in which dwelleth no good thing (Rom 7:18).
There is warfare raging within each child of God. We love God, but that love is all but quenched at times by the lackadaisical, lukewarmness of the old heart (Rev 2:4). We would worship, and yet we cannot watch with Christ for even one hour, because “the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak (Matt 26:41 ).” We believe, and yet our prayer must ever be “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief (Mark 9:24).”
We would do good, but evil is present and continually is bringing us (the tense here is present and active), perpetually drawing us away from Christ, His worship, our first love of Him and our most holy faith (Jude 1:20).
No one who has not experienced this can understand it or believe it. This seems a tragic circumstance, a sad and terrible place to be and it is in a sense. It is what caused Paul to cry out the way he did in the last two verses of this chapter. Yet thank God that we are not complacently dead. Warfare is brutal and disturbing, yet it is preferable to unrestrained and comfortable rebellion and evil. Paul thanks God for deliverance in Christ from this body of death, but he also, calls this warfare “a good fight (1Tim 6:12).” And though we are in this body of death now, yet, in Christ Jesus, we are bound always to give thanks. 1Thessalonians 5:18In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.
