Test of Lust
Topic: Living Life
One day at about this time Potiphar’s wife began making eyes at Joseph, and suggested that he come and sleep with her. Joseph refused. “Look,” he told her, “my master trusts me with everything in the entire household; he himself has no more authority here than I have! He has held back nothing from me except you yourself because you are his wife. How can I do such a wicked thing as this? It would be a great sin against God.” (Genesis 39:7-9 KJV)
We all have lust something for ourselves. It could be desired to buy a new vehicle for your family, multimillion dollar of home, going to Hawaii for your summer vacation, or whatever your heart is desired, you’d want to fulfill your goal. Most of us may have learned that the word “lust” seem to be related to bad thing. It only seems to be bad thing if we would look the thing in wrong way. God wants let us to have lust to something in our lives. He didn’t make us as robots, but as mankind that could have the freedom of choices.
In Genesis 37, we see that Satan is trying to use Potipher’s wife to tempt Joseph with sexual lust. Even though God created sexual relationship between one man and one woman, it can be ugly if we’d try to us in a way of this world. The world tells you that you can have safe sex with anyone at anytime, but God says that it must be within marriage with one man and one woman. Although sex may seem to be testing us in surprising way, we must remember that we need to control our lusts by examine what the Scripture tells us.
King David failed to control his lust (II Samuel 11). Instead of going with his armies to fight against the Ammonites, David stayed at his palace and fooling around with Bathsheba, Uriah’s wife. It’s hard to control our lusts when we’d move away from the main focus. For David, he lost his focus to settle his people’s land when his flesh took over his spirit.
I believe that the most of American churches may struggle with controlling lusts. We see that many ministries may have made themselves multibillionaire rather than spreading God’s messages to the lost souls. Here at MGJC Web Ministry, this ministry’s goal is not about making this web famous and making multibillionaire, but sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ and His free gift of salvation with people like you through their home computers. This ministry doesn’t sell anything for money. Instead, it contains FREE inspirational messages and resources that people can use to educate themselves and others to know Jesus Christ and build relationship with Him personally.
Posted by MGJC Web Ministry
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Battle of Jealousy
Topic: Living Life
And Jacob dwelt in the land wherein his father was a stranger, in the land of Canaan. These are the generations of Jacob. Joseph, being seventeen years old, was feeding the flock with his brethren; and the lad was with the sons of Bilhah, and with the sons of Zilpah, his father’s wives: and Joseph brought unto his father their evil report. Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age: and he made him a coat of many colours. And when his brethren saw that their father loved him more than all his brethren, they hated him, and could not speak peaceably unto him. (Genesis 37:1-4 KJV)
Have you been compared yourself with the other people? We all may have been jealous to something or someone. Like Esau and Jacob, we sometimes to create argument with one another by just being jealous. Even though it’s an emotional stress, we have no reason to jealous about in life.
In Genesis 37, we see that Joseph’s brothers hated him because their father, Jacob (Israel), only favored his youngest son, Joseph. Israel’s pass memory still has corrupted him. He cannot let go why his father made him the second class and not to Esau. The battle begins within the family and not from the two foreign countries. Since Cain killed his brother, we have so divided up with lands. Why? We learned that the other foreign countries hated us.
Let’s look to Islamic religion for a moment. Although the word “Islam” means peace, we cannot have a peace with them until we’d surrender our Christianity heritage. They decide to fight against Christians because we are helping our brethrens, Jewish nation—Israel. Because Satan hates to see us to helping our Jewish brethrens, he is trying to use the Islamic nations to try to wipe the lands of Israel and United State from the global map.
Jealousy is a sin and it can be destroyed our relationships with our people. We cannot let God be jealous by astray from Him. The Bible says that He is a jealous God. This means that there is no room for other gods to join with Him to govern the universe.
As we read through Genesis 37, his brothers hated him even more, because Joseph blabbered his visions to them to show-off. We should try to untie with each other through the love of Jesus Christ rather than to tearing apart.
Posted by MGJC Web Ministry
at 12:01 AM EST
The Spiritual WWF
Topic: Living Life
And let us arise, and go up to Bethel ; and I will make there an altar unto God, who answered me in the day of my distress, and was with me in the way which I went. (Genesis 35:3 KJV)
Have you watched the WWF Wrestling Match? Although I’m not into WWF, everybody, include myself, have been into the spiritual wrestling match ring. We all have been dealing with problems and there is none of us have lived without issues. Even Jesus went through the wrestling match while He was on the earth.
In Genesis, we see that Jacob was having a hard time to obey God and go to see his big brother, Esau. We have learned that Esau and Jacob had problems while they were in youthful ages. Although it was not easy for Jacob to forgive his brother’s sin, God commanded him to go to Esau. God cannot give him more blessing until he would deal his problems with Esau.
In the same matter, we cannot go closer to God’s presence until we’d go into the wrestling match ring and deal with our issues. We cannot keep having victory unless we’d need to learn how to be losers and get ourselves up again.
God wants us to be victorious, not just victory. If we read later part of Genesis 35, God gave Jacob a new name— Israel . Jacob means supplanter and Israel means God strives. If we want to have greater purpose for God’s kingdom, we must go through the wrestling ring and deal with problems first. Many of us may don’t like to hear this or go through fire to shape our characters. Just as Daniel’s friends went through furnace to shape their characters, God wants us to go through our problems with trusting upon Him.
Posted by MGJC Web Ministry
at 12:01 AM EST
Two Ways of Living a Life
Topic: Living Life
In the first chapter of Psalm, the psalmist tells us that there are two ways of life in this world—the godly life (vs. 1-3) and the ungodly life (vs. 4-6). How can this be? Of course, we understand that God created man, the heavens and the earth perfect within the first six days of His creation, but we see in Genesis 3, that the serpent came up to the world to tempt Adam and Eve in a calculated plan to defile everything that was pronounced “good.” Adam and Eve broke the covenant with God and decided to follow the serpent’s advice; this established an alternate way of life, giving man the choice of living a godly or ungodly life. Romans 3:23 declares that, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
If we compare history’s account in Genesis chapters 1, 2 and 3 to Revelation chapter 20, we will see that our human nature is still far from God. From Adam to today, we continue to sin against our Heavenly Father. Paul says in Romans 5:12, that through one man (Adam), sin entered the world, which resulted in death to all men.
As Christians, we don’t need to face death in the same way as unbelievers. Of course, we all have to die physically, because God limited human life as a result of Adam’s sin. The second death is for unbelievers, which is a separation from God forever, but it is an option for us to choose this death penalty. Remember this: the second death is banishing the unbelievers from God’s presence to the lake of fire and hell.
So, how can we be saved from the second death bed? What do we need to do to enter the Kingdom of Heaven ? There are so many people dying each day around the globe; and most of them might end up in hell. Unfortunately, many people choose to make hell as their permanent destination, because they refuse to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
Fortunately, the Book of Romans says that God is just and merciful, that He gives us every chance to be right with Him through His Son, Jesus Christ. In fact, Romans 5:8 says, “…God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” If Jesus Christ didn’t come to the world, we would be forever unrighteous. We can never justify our sins by any works; it is by faith in God alone. Without faith in Him, our work is considered spirituality dead. In other words, we need to have faith in God and to do His will to become the children of God.
Most people believe that Jesus died for every person’s sin in this world and that in this act alone, man is automatically justified for their sins. While it is true that Jesus died for every person’s sins, repentance of the sinner is needed to activate the power of redemption. If we believe that Christ died for the world just so we could keep sinning, it would mean that there is no justice or mercy in God. This dangerous mindset communicates that one could enter the Kingdom of Heaven and live forever with unrepentant sins. It would also mean that the Bible is a fictional book, which makes God a liar. Without the preaching of the truth, how will people know the eternal life? Believing a lie will result in a death sentence, making it too late to get right with God?
Fortunately, God is just and merciful; He can save us from our sins and darkness. Although God loves every person that He created, He cannot let sinners enter His place unless they repent of their sins and ask for forgiveness and do His will.
We were considered enemies of God before we came to Him. Before we realized that we were astray from our eternal Father, we were arrested under the law of sins. We were slaves to sin instead of slaves to righteousness. There was no way out from the darkness. Our release from Satan’s prison came when we realized that we were sinners and accepted Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior.
Although our flesh will not live forever because of sin, our spirits will live for eternality; we must choose the right Master for our lives. There are so many people who are in prison because of sin and need Jesus Christ in their lives. We can see these people in the news and media. For example, many young adults commit suicide by taking drugs to end their lives. Or, seek sexual pleasures to find happiness. No matter what activities he might do outside of God’s standard, he is a servant of Satan and will end his life in hell if there is no repentance.
Even though we have a relationship with Jesus Christ, it doesn’t mean that we don’t deal with sin anymore. We all face problems in our lives, whether we are Christians or not. Because we are not the perfect image of God, we will struggle with our moral flesh everyday. We make mistakes in the process toward perfection. We like to do the things that are not good in the eye of God. Remember, we cannot justify ourselves. If we try to justify ourselves, we will make more mistakes in our lives.
Apostle Paul says that we are saved by the grace of God through Jesus Christ. Does this mean that God just covered sin in us through His grace? No! We are saved by the grace of God with a price that we cannot ever pay back. We don’t even deserve His gift of grace, He did it through His love for a lost and dying people, by dying on the cross 2000 years ago and being resurrected from the grave on the third day to prove that we have a Savior, who loves us and cares for us.
So why do we have law in our lives? Do we need to have law in order to accept God’s grace? We first need to understand that God’s free grace has nothing to do with law, but we still need the law in order to understand what sin means to us. There are at least 613 laws in God’s Word and we don’t need to memorize them all in order to define God’s standard for us, except only one law, agape love. If we understand what it means to have agape love, we will follow the remaining 612 laws. In the same matter, we need to understand the law in order to understand what we do wrong in God’s eye, so that we can understand why God gives us a free gift.
Romans 2:12 says, “For as many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law; and as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law…” The law has an important role in our lives. If we lived without any law, we would have a miserable life. Every person would have the right to kill each other, because there is no law to protect us from murders. This is why our country has a court system and police on the streets—to protect us from harm. In the same manner, God’s laws reveal our sins to protect us from going astray.
His laws are greater than the laws of any country or nation, because God has the final authority over everything in this world. Our Supreme Court system had been leading us into many wrong ways over the last several decades. Our Supreme Justice has excluded God from the public community, because of other religious beliefs and people who hate Jesus. Our Supreme Justice voted for the right of gay marriages, because the people were asking for it, thus pulling themselves from God. As we can see, our country is becoming s Sodom and Gomorrah each day.
Although many of us believe that our country was founded by Christian principles, we can see the mistakes we’ve created for our own pleasure. Recently, we’ve seen many people terrified by the tragedies the world has experienced, causing some to turn back to God.
Do we know why our country has been faced with so many natural disasters and religious rebellion over the years? Some of us believe that they are the part of World War III, or a New World Order Plans, or that we are in the partnership with to help them to avoid from their enemies to take over their land. All these play a part of causing disasters in our country, but they are not the main cause of terror. Our country has many terrors because of our sins. God will let suffer until she realizes that she is far away from God. We need to tune our hearts into the right frequency to avoid any other terrors. The frequency of our hearts I’m talking about is God’s righteousness.
We need to learn how to be God’s holy children in order to live with Him eternally. We cannot continue to live like Sodom and Gomorrah without God. The Bible says that we will all face God’s judgment before we enter our eternal home. Some people will make their eternal home in heaven; others will choose the punishment of hell.
God wants everybody to make heaven as their eternal home and gives everyone a second chance to have their names written in the Lamb’s book of life.
Posted by MGJC Web Ministry
at 12:01 AM EST
