The art of cooking has always included using varied combinations, but it seems like food culture has taken an accelerated interest in unlikely food pairings:
So awesome and amen!!
Loved the article, thanks.
Quoting Paul, Carmen reminds us of this –
We are to come to God’s Throne, come to His presence, sit down in front of Him with no Sunglasses on. And to contemplate the Lord’s glory, and by doing so be joyfully transformed into His image [become in character like God].
This harkens back to Exodus 34:6,7. Merciful, gracious, longsuffering, abounding in goodness and truth, forgiving of iniquity and sin.
Edited:-- IN or OUT
God so loved the World — the billions of humans before A.D 31 and the billions of humans after A.D 31.
That He gave His only Son.
This says that EVERYONE IS IN in God’s thinking. Everyone is potentially Saved. People just need to be made aware of the fact that they ARE Saved.
What we need to be doing is assisting with promoting saved behaviors — Gal 5:19-22. Giving up sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry [paul says GREED is idolatry], sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and similar sins.
Embrace love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.
Romans 14:17-- The Kingdom of God is righteousness, peace, and joy with the Holy Spirit."
[if one notices the list of “sins” – they are pretty much in the category of Lack of Self-Control, and/or under the control of the EGO] In the writings of Paul his use of the word “FLESH” can be interchanged with the word “EGO”.
When one REALLY thinks about it, ALL the sins of the 10 Commandments revolve around the EGO. Lack of self-control, lack of self-constraint, being First. Killing is the final form of anger, rage, hatred, revenge, lusting after what someone else has that EGO gets one into.
It is SO EASY to be “God-Like”, to be “Perfect”, but it is also very hard, very difficult, almost impossible.
Amazing writing with concepts so clearly articulated washing away divisiveness. Thank you
This is one of the most beautiful Spirit-filled “sermons” that I have read in a very long time, Carmen.
Thank-you so much and you have given a lot of “dichotomy” to reflect upon for those of us who claim to be:
“Christ followers”…Yes!
Matthew 25 gives the mission statement to the forgiven. Sheep follow the Shepherd. But we need to Remember also the thief on the cross, no time for being a servant. Certainly you point to the source of our redemption and the overflowing of Grace that continues to flow from His side. A timeless story of Divine Love. Should not the church exude that same love? This election season demonstrates the selfish retaliational attitude of most evangelical leaders on the net. Now grim for those without the assurance of Grace. tZ
What a beautiful reminder of how Jesus’ viewed the “foreigner.”
For those who saw the Muslim father and mother at the DNC telling the story of their son, also a Muslim, who gave his life to save his American
soldiers was a demonstration that love has no religious boundaries. The true Muslim and true Christian will demonstrate the same love for his neighbors. This can equally be said for all the immigrants to America who only want what our ancestors who wanted when they came here: freedom to worship and work without fear.
Today, even Christians talk of fear of letting in “hordes” of immigrants from the South and East; fear they are bringing diseases and terrorism and the nation’s inability to vet and house them and provide work, so their answer is to Lock the Gates. We in the US have not begun to have the huge numbers of immigrants from the Middle East war zones and yet are fighting against only a very few in comparison to what these countries have absorbed.
As an aside: the fear of terrorist from immigrants is highly exaggerated: the home-grown terrorists far exceed those who have come to this nation. Judging a man by his religion or ethnicity is very unlike Jesus.
Many writers on this website, and I think Carmen is one of them, want both to simplify how we express the Gospel and to assure that what we say comprehends the Gospel’s most fundamental meaning.
If this tendency continues, it is going to help us confront the distraction of proposition clutter that so often turns Adventist energy to divisive quarreling.
Thanks, Carmen.
Chuck
Profound article that leads to thought-provoking questions.
Until the organized church makes fundamental changes to rewrite her DNA history of claiming to be the “remnant church” and “chosen people” her default should be and will be at all times to decide “who is in and who is out.” How does one preach self destruction without being schizophrenic is the “sixty-four-thousand-dollar” question for the church leaders to answer.
Thank you, Carmen, for reminding us to “turn our eyes upon Jesus.” Especially in this bitter election season,it is a temptation to focus on the arguments over candidates. I have been guilty. But that does not uplift the beauty of Jesus’ character, who loves each one of his children and came to show us how we can have that love, too.