Mathew 3-4

Only after Jesus was validated by His Father was He then tempted. He received approval from His Dad. And in that having been baptized and approved He had all the internal strength He needed to withstand the fiery darts (and downright onslaught) of the enemy. We too have approval – maybe not from our earthly dads – but certainly from our heavenly Father.

Matthew 1-2

Joseph saw in a dream to leave Bethlehem for Jesus’ life was at stake. Apparently after the first dream proved real I would believe them too. But then again, aren’t we all to be able to hear God’s voice so clear?

Romans 15-16 (The Message)

Knowledge can puff up – but what is the purpose of knowledge? To grow and to know God. And to take that knowledge to serve and love others.

^1-2 Those of us who are strong and able in the faith need to step in and lend a hand to those who falter, and not just do what is most convenient for us. Strength is for service, not status. Each one of us needs to look after the good of the people around us, asking ourselves, “How can I help?”

Romans 13-14 (The Message)

I wonder why some people believe some of the things they do – and I wonder why I believe the way I do. We all have our history, the story of our past. Things that have caused us to grow, and things that have hurt us. We are to just be gentle with one another.

^13:1 Welcome with open arms fellow believers who don’t see things the way you do. And don’t jump all over them every time they do or say something you don’t agree with—even when it seems that they are strong on opinions but weak in the faith department. Remember, they have their own history to deal with. Treat them gently.

 

Romans 11-12 (The Message)

From chapter 12

^1-2 So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

Its so easy to NOT place life as an offering to God. But that is when we start living on our own and then life gets so hard. Give it to God and the best comes out!

Romans 9-10 (Message)

All those people who didn’t seem interested in what God was doing actually embraced what God was doing as he straightened out their lives.

Its a process. He straightens us out and as we straighten we embrace even more.

Romans 7-8 (The Message)

I love how this reads. The end of Romans 8. It captures the thought so beautifully and passionately. If we had a clue at all as to how much God loves us we would never be the same.

Check it out…

^{Rom 8:31-39}So, what do you think? With God on our side like this, how can we lose? If God didn’t hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own Son, is there anything else he wouldn’t gladly and freely do for us? And who would dare tangle with God by messing with one of God’s chosen? Who would dare even to point a finger? The One who died for us—who was raised to life for us!—is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us. Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ’s love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture:

They kill us in cold blood because they hate you.
We’re sitting ducks; they pick us off one by one.
None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us. I’m absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God’s love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us.

Romans 5-6 (The Message)

This is so well put. We think freedom is doing what we always want. But it actually enslaves us. Only in not sinning do we really become free. Check out these verses from Romans 6

12-14That means you must not give sin a vote in the way you conduct your lives. Don’t give it the time of day. Don’t even run little errands that are connected with that old way of life. Throw yourselves wholeheartedly and full-time—remember, you’ve been raised from the dead!—into God’s way of doing things. Sin can’t tell you how to live. After all, you’re not living under that old tyranny any longer. You’re living in the freedom of God.

What Is True Freedom?

15-18So, since we’re out from under the old tyranny, does that mean we can live any old way we want? Since we’re free in the freedom of God, can we do anything that comes to mind? Hardly. You know well enough from your own experience that there are some acts of so-called freedom that destroy freedom. Offer yourselves to sin, for instance, and it’s your last free act. But offer yourselves to the ways of God and the freedom never quits. All your lives you’ve let sin tell you what to do. But thank God you’ve started listening to a new master, one whose commands set you free to live openly in his freedom!

Romans 3-4

^{(From the beginning of chapter 3)} So what difference does it make who’s a Jew and who isn’t, who has been trained in God’s ways and who hasn’t? As it turns out, it makes a lot of difference—but not the difference so many have assumed. First, there’s the matter of being put in charge of writing down and caring for God’s revelation, these Holy Scriptures. So, what if, in the course of doing that, some of those Jews abandoned their post? God didn’t abandon them. Do you think their faithlessness cancels out his faithfulness? Not on your life! Depend on it: God keeps his word even when the whole world is lying through its teeth.

God always remains faithful even when I don’t!

Rom 1-2 (The Message)

(from ch 2:1-2) Those people are on a dark spiral downward. But if you think that leaves you on the high ground where you can point your finger at others, think again. Every time you criticize someone, you condemn yourself. It takes one to know one. Judgmental criticism of others is a well-known way of escaping detection in your own crimes and misdemeanors. But God isn’t so easily diverted. He sees right through all such smoke screens and holds you to what you’ve done.

How often do we hide from our own guilt by pointing at someone else’s?