Copy this questionnaire into the comment box and answer each one as if someone was asking you that question and truly wanted to know the answer to it. Answer as though this person knows very little about God or Christianity. I am interested in finding out how some of you would answer some of these. Have fun
#1 Who is God and what is He like?
#2 What is the Trinity?
#3 Who is Jesus?
#4 Why did He die on the Cross?
#5 How do I know He really rose from the dead?
#6 Who is the Holy Spirit and what does He do?
#7 How do I get plugged in to the power of the Holy Spirit?
#8 Is the Bible really God’s Word and does it relate to my life?
#9 What is truth and can I know it with certainty?
#10 What is sin and how does it impact me life and my relationship with others?
#11 Why does God allow evil in the world?
#12 What is a Christian and how does a person become one?
#13 If Jesus is the only way to Heaven, are all other religions wrong?
#14 What about the people who have never heard about the Gospel?
#15 what is The Great Commission and how does it relate to me?
#16 Is there a real Heaven and hell and what about they like?
#17 Is there a judgement day and what difference should it make in my life?
#18 Can I really be forgiven for all my sins, even the really bad ones?
#19 Will God ever leave me or forsake me?
#20 Who are satan and his demons?
#21 How do I engage in spiritual warfare?
#22 What is the Church and why should I be involved?
#23 What are Spiritual Gifts and how do I discover mine?
#24 How should the return of Christ impact my life?
#25 What is prayer and how do I do it?
#26 Why should I study my Bible and how do I do it?
#27 How do I defend my faith?
#28 Who am I, where did I come from, and what is my purpose?
#29 Which is true, creation or evolution, and why does it matter?
I want to challenge you all to read Jeremiah Chapters 7 and 8 and once your done i want you to post as a comment onto this blog your thoughts on this portion of Scripture. Warning: this is not an eazy portion to swallolw but i really want to hear what you all have to say. How it makes you feel? Why do you think God felt this way? Can you relate to this Scripture? Can you relate to both God and the people?
I just want to hear what you all have to say i’ll be waiting for answers!
Wow, i feel like i owe you all an apologie for not blogging in soo long. Things have been crazy around here with Encounter, Events, Fundraisers, Events Planning, Etc… (especially wedding planning haha)
As most of you know, OCC is following the ONE PRAYER series along with Craig Groeschel @ Lifechurch.tv and currently 1872 other churches all across the world in order to become Jesus’ answer to His prayer in John 17:20-24.
This year’s theme for One Prayer is: God is…
We have already looked, together as a church, at the fact that God Is: Able as well as God Is: Moving. On Monday of this week, i was working at the bakery and i was just thinking and meditating on this word of God Is… As i was pondering on this fact, something came to mind that was quite shocking to me, yet very true. I starting to think about how God Is… (in one way) UNable. Let me explain.
Though God IS very able to DO anything, BE anything and BECOME anything we need Him to be, (up to a certain extent of course), in a sense, God is very UNable as well. Numbers 23:19 clearly states that God is not a man that He should lie as well as stating the fact that He is unable to break promises.
In Joshua 9 we clearly see that God cherishes convenants and that He is a God of covenants. God is UNable to break covenant.
All throughout Scriptures we see that God is UNable to be unfaithful.
Here are a few more – God Is Unable:
To Sin
To Be Where Sin Is
To Deceive
To Go Against Free Will
To Be Unjust
To Be Unfair
To Ignore His Children
To Hate His Children
To Break Any Commandments
To Make Mistakes
And that is just to name a few. Let me know your thoughts!
So tonight, i am starting this new message series entitled, “Effective Growth”. I am super excited about this because we are going to be hitting a few different areas in each of our lives in which growth is required.
Growth is required in our spiritual lives.
Growth is required in our social lives.
Growth is required in our relationships.
Growth is required in our professional lives.
Our personal lives are not the only thing that needs growth, we are also going to be look at
How to effectively grow our influence.
How to effectively grow as a ministry.
How to effectively grow as a small group or life group.
Hope you come pumped and ready to receive tonight. All of our messages are all downloadable, streamable and also posted on podcasts which can all be found at www.getagripministries.ca
I was talking to a friend of mine last last, and we got talking about the Old Testament for some odd reason. We were pointing out how the children of Israel were always:
Stumbling
Falling
Failing
Backstabbing God right to His face
Turning to idols
Building themselves some idols
Talking trash about their leaders
Talking trash about God
Rebelling
And the list goes on and on and on.
You know, if you look at all those thing, and that was just to name the very least, it really is no different then what the world is doing today. So many people are saying, “Oh my, the world is so going to hell”, and so many people are commenting about how bad our world has gotten. Take a closer look at the sins, the attitudes and actions that the Israelites dealt with, it is very simular to what we are dealling with today.
What makes it worst is that these people saw God’s hand at work.
They saw the Egyptian army get annihilated right before their eyes
They saw the red sea crack open and were able to walk on dry ground
They saw Moses whack a rock and water randomly came out of it
They were miraculously fed in the desert every day
and they STILL complained and rebelled.
It’s not like they never saw God at work, they did first hand, but they still chose to go their own way and God STILL forgave them. If God forgave them while they were still under law, He can certainly forgive you, that are under GRACE!
There is hope for you and I. No matter how bad we fall and fail, we can get back up, repent and run towards Him. He will always accept you the way you are!
Last friday, i delivered my second message from my new message series called The Hot Pursuit. I talked about God’s love and love in general. I explained our need FOR love, TO love and TO BE loved. In order to try to explain the love story that God wrote to us know as the Bible, i wrote a little story my self and was told i need to put it on my blog. So here it is. Enjoy!
Once there was a man named Joe. He was in love with this one girl. Her name was Tina. His whole entire life he was trying to get her attention. One day she noticed him but she didn’t think much about him. He really loved her. He would buy her flowers, bring her chocolate, take her to the movies but she wouldn’t change how she felt about him. On the other hand though, she really liked the attention so she kept going to the movies with him. She always loved that he would bring her flowers but still, she wouldn’t give in. Soon enough, you could say that she was just flat out using Joe. Joe felt really hurt because he knew what she was doing but his love for her was so grand that he just couldn’t help it. He did everything he could to try to make her happy and to be there for her even if he knew that she didn’t want anything to do with him.
One day, Tina got really sick and she had to be hospitalized as there was something wrong with her heart. Everyday Joe would come and see her. He would buy her gifts and write her poems and cards to try to make her feel better. All this time, Tina was wondering why Joe was doing all this, but she never said anything. The doctors said that Tina needed a heart transplant but because of her rare blood type and heart tissue, it would be nearly impossible to find a match. It was as if she was already dead; there was no hope. Tina started to cry. The next time that Joe came by, she told him everything. A few days had gone by since Joe’s last visit. though she didn’t love him the same way he loved her, she started to wonder where he had been but she didn’t think much about it after that. Later on that same day the doctors stormed in to Tina’s room saying “Ma’m We have found you a new heart. It’s a miracle.”
A few short days after that, the surgery went on as planned and was a success. Tina came out of the operation as healthy as before. On her way out, the doctor stoped her and said that there was a note that came in for her. He said it was from a man named Joe. Tina quickly opened the note and began to read. By the time she got to the end, she was crying uncontrollably. The note went as follow.
Tina, How should I begin? My whole life, all I wanted was you. You meant more to me then you will probably ever know. I know that in your heart, you did not feel the same way as I did, but all the things I did for you, was in hope that one day you might. My love was never along the lines of, “as long as you love me, I will love you”. My love for you was unconditional. When I came in that day to your room and I saw the grief, pain and hurt on your face when you told me what was going on, I knew what I had to do. I left your room and got tested for my blood type and heart tissue to see if it was compatible and it was. After much thinking, I knew I had to do it. Your life meant a lot more to me than my own. I truly hope that you live a life with as much love as i currently feel for you. Hope you like your new heart!
I have been reading a book by Dave Earley called “The 21 Most Affective Prayers Of The Bible”, and i just came across something awesome. One of his chapters refers to Matthew 9:27-31, talking about the blind men that followed Jesus and begged “Have mercy on us, Son of David”.
That really rose up something in my heart… What is YOUR motivation? Dave Earley talked about “Desperation” being the blind men’s motives! Think about it this was. These men were blind, probably from birth, though the Bible does not specify, and they have lived their whole lives blind up to this point. Nothing but utter darkness day in and day out. Night 24/7. These men probably heard about the miracles of Jesus because the reality was that if Jesus came to your town, you would hear about it! I mean, come on… the guy that is casting out demons and healing people right left and center, trust me, the word got around. So sure enough it reached these 2 men and the Bible says that they followed Him and SHOUTED, ” HAVE MERCY ON US, SON OF DAVID”.
What are you dealing with today? What is your “infermity”? What is your “thorn in the flesh”?…. Better yet… is it driving you TOWARDS God? What is motivating you towards God?
God has been on my case about something for several years now and I really am dealing with it now. I love how God does things the way He does, and in HIS timing, not in ours. Ever wondered why God was wanting to deal with you in one area when YOU think/want to deal with something else that YOU think is more important?
I love the story of the Exodus, How God took His people out of the land of corruptin order to get the corrupt out of them. See, God is a God of order and process. If He makes us deal with everything at once, we wouldn’t be able to handle it. If God made me deal with everything that is wrong and messed up about me at once, I’ll probably kill my self haha. The reality is that we bury things within our hearts so deep sometimes because we are hurting so much and don’t want to let it be seen or want to see it our self. God had to Get them out of Egypt in order to take Egypt out of them.
A lot of times we surround ourselves with so much crap and take in so much junk that it’s what becomes of us. If i eat junk food everyday then my body will be filled of junk food and I’ll end up getting sick and all sorts of diseases will take over my body. Some of us do this very things and ask, “What do you mean I’m sick?” Sounds ridiculous right? Unfortuanately we do the very same with God.We Pay for lies, watch movies that deny Christ and use his name as swear words, we buy magazines that has nothing good in it unless you think junk is good. we listen to music that does NOT glorify God in anyways, and in fact it might even encourage to do the become part of the very behaviours that the Bible tells us to FLEE from. We feed ourselves all these things and then wonder why our devotional times are dry or just flat out suck! What you take it is what you’ll put out. What are YOU feeding your mind? Think about it!
I find it amazing that God is like He is! I mean, like I previously mentioned, I just started a new series on the power of your words and it just so happens that God makes me practice what I preach. For the last 3 days now (starting on Tuesday) I’ve been having this pain in my bowels. I went to the doctors and got a bunch of tests done and they can’t give me a straight answer to what it is. Now the Doctor has told me that he thinks it’s a stomach flu which WOULD affect my bowels. The reality is that God started to speak to me. He asked me, in a reminding tone, what was I starting to preach about and so He told me, well start to act what you preach! Sure enough, all I needed to do was to speak over it and I’m doing a lot better now!
