V is for Virtue

Well, I am running behind, but I vow to finish. So let me start by catching up with V.

A to Z Challenge

Virtue:  Behavior showing high moral standards, goodness, virtuousness, righteousness, moral excellence, integrity, dignity, honor, decency, nobility, rectitude, purity, conformity of one’s life and conduct to high moral and ethical principles, uprightness, rectitude

Where is the virtue today? Where are the high moral standards, standards of goodness and excellence, righteousness, honor? Have they died as we negate God in our world? Without God, where does virtue come from anyway?

In a search for ‘virtue’ on the internet, I found many organizations attempting to recreate the virtuous that has been lost. There are some that admit religion plays a role. There are others that identify other mechanisms to instill virtue like sports, work, or stable relationships like families or schools. However, this neglects a deep question. Why should anyone desire to be virtuous? Who defines virtue and where does the idea of virtue originate?

To have true virtue, we need a standard by which to measure that virtue. We need a definer of virtue. That standard definer is God.

Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful.

Colossians 3:12-15(NIV)

Here are a few websites to check out to:

Voices for Virtue 

The Character of Virtue 

What is the Biblical Value ofVirtue? 

God bless, Maria

Reality

A to Z Challenge

Reality: The quality of existing; the state of being real; something that is true.

So is God reality? Is Jesus real? Did he live? The evidence is there to examine. If one is looking for reasons to reject God, one will find them. However, if you truly are seeking truth, seeking to find God, clearly the God of the Bible says you will find it if you are seeking it. What are you looking for?

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.” Matthew7:7-8 (NASB)

Reasons to Believe in the Reality of Christ 

 God is a Reality 

The Reality of Supernatural Faith 

Quality

Participating in the A to Z Challenge is just that, a challenge. It is also a wonderful learning experience and a way to meet new friends, other cultures, and new ideas. Checking out the Blogging from A to Z homepage is a great way to keep up with all the latest goings on in the challenge, but it's also filled with encouragement and tips to make it to the end. 

So here's my 'Q'.

A to Z Challenge

Quality 1. Essential characteristic of a thing.  2. An attribute 3. A high level of value or excellence.

Each man’s work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man’s work.

1 Cor 3:13 (NASB)

… Let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the imperishable quality of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is precious in the sight of God. 

1 Pet 3:4 (NASB) 

To grow in the qualities of Christ is to be a quality Christian. The Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit grows those qualities of Christ in the Christian who seeks to follow Jesus Christ.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. Galatians 5: 22-23 (NASB) 

Qualities of a True Christian 

49 Qualities of a Christian 

60 Charater Traits of Christ 

Identity

A to Z Challenge

Identity – How I define myself, who I am, where I find my value and meaning.

Where do I find my identity? Is it in my job, in my roles as wife or mother, child, sister, friend? As a Christian, my identity is  something that is not limited by the constraints of this world or by my success in a role. I know that I have value as a sacred creation of God, and as a child of God, that I am loved and precious to Him. Pretty awesome for all those who accept God's invitation to be in His family through faith in Jesus Christ.

  

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

Genesis 1:27

Yet to all who received [Jesus], to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God. 

John 1:12

For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Galatians 3:27-28

Here are some websites to explore what it means to find one's identity in Christ.

Who we REALLY are - Our identity in Christ 

My identitiy in Jesus

Who Am I?

Equip

A to Z Challenge

Equip – the preparation and providing of what is necessary and essential to perform a certain work.

He who descended is Himself also He who ascended far above all the heavens, so that He might fill all things.) And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. 

Ephesians 4:10-13 (NASB)

All Scripture is [a]inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for [b]training in righteousness; 

2 Timothy 3:16 (NASB)

The things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. 

2 Timothy 2:2 (NASB) 

There are many sights, some provided in earlier posts, which can provide the essentials for equipping the Christian to understand and give an apologia for one’s faith. There are also plenty of websites that you can find which attempt to equip against the Christian faith. 

As a Christian, I want to be equipped to be an effective Ambassador for Jesus Christ, to examine and be prepared to explain the essentials of the faith and represent the kingdom of Heaven to those with whom I interact.

Here are a few websites which help equip Christians to do just that, to be Ambassadors for Jesus Christ and the kingdom of Heaven.

http://www.equip.org/about/

http://www.iequip.org/news/equip-at-a-glance/

http://evangelismexplosion.org

Christian Worldview

A to Z Challenge

A worldview is the comprehensive way we make sense of and relate to the world, touching every area and aspect of life. We all have one, but many of us don’t live a consistent worldview that is in line with who we say we are and what we say we believe.

What is a Christian Worldview? A Christian worldview would be the way a Christian should relate to and make sense of the world if he is living as a true follower of Jesus Christ and son of God through faith in Jesus Christ. In other words, if I am a Christian, am I walking the walk not just talking the talk?

Here are  a few websites that delve a little deeper into  Christian Worldview. Of course there are many others, but these are a few I have found reliable that start with 'C'.

http://www.christianworldview.net

http://thechristianworldview.com/

http://www.compellingtruth.org/

Maria

Biblical Studies

A to Z Challenge

What was once a staple of our learning in the USA, the Bible, has become more misunderstood and misinterpreted than studied today. I am not talking about the academic discipline pursued at the college level. What I mean is the daily intake of Biblical truth that was taught in homes and schools from before this nation’s beginnings.  

Yes the Bible may be the “Christian’s” book, where we believe the revealed Word of God can be found to answer the basic questions of life, but it also holds wisdom, culture, and history that has served mankind throughout the centuries. It is a sorry state of affairs that humanity at large has become so Biblically illiterate.

So here are a few websites where you can explore the Bible and also find answers to some of those questions which may be causing you some misunderstanding. Of course there are many others, but these are a few I have found reliable that start with 'B'.

https://www.biblegateway.com

https://www.biblicaltraining.org/

http://www.biblestudytools.com

https://bible.org/

Happy studying!  Maria

Y is for Yearn

 Yearning - to long for, to pine for, to passionately desire. 

 

                              "Yearn" (Shane & Shane)

 

A picture of Yearning:

 As the deer pants for the water brooks,
So my soul pants for You, O God. Psalm 42:1

 

How lovely are Your dwelling places, O Lord of hosts!  My soul longed and even yearned for the courts of the Lord;  My heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God.  Psalm 84:1-2

 

If you are yearning for God, check out the website:  desiring God.

A to Z Challenge

 

Q is for Questions

 

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We all search for answers to the big questions.  Not everyone realizes that they are looking for the answers.  Many of us don’t really want the answers, not the true answers.  We search for them in all the wrong places.  We find or we create confusion.  We are left with questions.  But there are answers if we look for them in the right places, or rather with the right person. 

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.   John 14:6

A to Z Challenge

P is for Purpose

We all have purpose.  Tied to my purpose are p words :  passion, prayer, peace, praise, and being the person God created me to be.  

This is Good Friday, the day we Christians mark the death of Jesus Christ.    On Easter Sunday, we Christians celebrate His resurrection from the dead.  My ultimate purpose is to point to Him, our Lord and Savior.  

A to Z Challenge

 

J is for Juncture

 

We all hit significant junctures in our lives.  We have insights that open our eyes.  We have experiences - emotional, physical, spiritual - that change our lives.  We do things that make a difference.

We think, we feel, we do.

Sometimes these junctures change us significantly, not just our thinking, feeling, or doing, but our very being.  Who am I?  Why am I?  Isn’t there something more than what’s here?

                            A juncture.  Questions.  Answers?

Jesus came with answers.  He said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”  (John 14:6)

Meeting Him, the Christ, welcoming Him is a significant juncture. 

We start out already behind in life.  No encouragement can conquer all doubts and uncertainties or solve the problem of the human condition. 

He can, the One Who has given His all.  Find out what it is to know Him.  Then hold on to Him. 

It’s the juncture that matters.

A to Z Challenge

I is for I AM

 

I am convinced it is often better just to let the Word of God speak for itself.  As it does, I hope you will be encouraged to find out more about the Christ, and let go of doubt.  Give it your all as you hold on to something oh so much better - the Great I AM.

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 God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I am has sent me to you.’”   Exodus 3:14

“As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you,”
                                        Genesis 9:9

“… Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.”  Genesis 15:1

And that very night the Lord appeared to him and said, “I am the God of your father Abraham; do not be afraid, for I am with you and will bless you and make your offspring numerous for my servant Abraham’s sake.”  Genesis 26:24

He said further, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.  Exodus 3:6

God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I am has sent me to you.’”  Exodus 3:14

Say therefore to the Israelites, ‘I am the Lord, and I will free you from the burdens of the Egyptians and deliver you from slavery to them. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment.  Exodus 6:6

He said, “If you will listen carefully to the voice of the Lord your God, and do what is right in his sight, and give heed to his commandments and keep all his statutes, I will not bring upon you any of the diseases that I brought upon the Egyptians; for I am the Lord who heals you.”                                                  Exodus 15:26

“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery;”   Exodus 20:2

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Jesus said to her, “I am He, the one who is speaking to you.”  
                                                                           John 4:26
                           
Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to Me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in Me will never be thirsty.  John 6:35

Jesus then said, “I will be with you a little while longer, and then I am going to him who sent me.”  John 7:33

So Jesus said, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I am He, and that I do nothing on my own, but I speak these things as the Father instructed Me.”  John 8:28

Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I came from God and now I am here. I did not come on my own, but He sent Me.”  John 8:42

Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, before Abraham was, I am.”  John 8:58
                              
So again Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep.”  John 10:7

But He was silent and did not answer. Again the high priest asked him, “Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?” Jesus said, “I am; and ‘you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the Power,’ and ‘coming with the clouds of heaven.’”           Mark 14:61-62

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in Me, even though they die, will live,”  John 11:25

            God bless, Maria

A to Z Challenge

G is for Giving it Your All

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As I limped home after walking my daughter to her babysitting job, my dog tugged at me to hobble faster.  I suffer with pain issues from arthritis in a small bone in my foot.  When it’s acting up, it feels like walking on a broken foot.  Tendinitis adds to the irritation and pain.  It hurts. 

“Stop Gooper.”  I yanked back at the leash.  “I’m giving it my all.”

After the words came out of my mouth, the questions flooded into my mind.  WAS I giving it my all?  What did that really mean?  Was I taking that term a bit too lightly?  After all, I was using it to chastise my dog.

A few weeks before this, I walked an 8K race with my daughter.  My foot was doing ok comparatively.  Though I had been working out, we hadn’t trained for the race, and it was a 2 mile jaunt just to get to the start.  I really hadn’t thought this was all that big of a deal, but plodding through that last mile, I was hurting.  It felt every bit as hard as the last mile of the marathon I HAD trained for several years earlier.  Oh boy, I was giving it my all just to crawl to that finish line. 

Was I though?  I thought I couldn’t walk another step, but I did; and another and another. 

So many times I’m dragging;  I can’t do one more thing.  I can’t…  I’ve given my all, but I know.  As hard as I may have pushed myself, as deserved as the rest might be, giving it my all, that’s something else all together. 

American soldiers are giving and have given their all.  People around the world dying for their faith are giving their all.  The one who most comes to mind as giving His all, is Jesus, the Christ. 

Jesus told us what giving it all looks like, and it’s all about love.  He said,  

“Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.” 

John15:13

He did.  He laid His life down for everyone who puts their trust in Him as the remedy for their human problem.  It’s a beautiful example of giving one’s all.  It’s worth finding out more about.  

A to Z Challenge

C is for Christ

He lives! 

Christ came to bring deliverance, freedom, life abundant.  He claims to be “the way, the truth, and the life.” (John 14:6)  That’s difficult to grasp and can’t be completely understood, but it is worth taking the time to consider because if it is true, if He is who He claims to be, God incarnate, then what you do with Christ makes all the difference in your world. 

So let your eyes gaze upon Jesus.  I used to wonder what it meant to keep your eyes on the Lord.  I mean, isn’t being a good Christian about believing Jesus died for my sins and rose again to give me eternal life and then living the good moral life set forth in the Bible.  However, the longer I live the committed Christian life, the better I come to understand how its all about keeping my eyes on Christ.

Jesus Christ is central to the Christian faith.  Unlike other religions, Christianity can’t be separated from its founder, Jesus Christ.  Who He is and what you do with Jesus is what makes Christianity what it is.  You can’t take Christ out of Christianity and still have Christianity.  If you take other founders out of their religions, leaving only with their teachings, their religions could still function.  They are separate from what they taught.  Christ is integral to what He taught.  For the Christian, if Jesus isn’t who He says He was, the religion falls apart.  One could still live according to some of the moral principles He taught.  In fact a lot of people do just that without embracing Christ for who He claimed to be.  That isn’t Christianity though.  Christianity demands confronting Christ.

You see, as C.S. Lewis and other renowned thinkers have put it, Jesus was either liar, lunatic, or the real deal, God incarnate.  He can’t be just a good teacher, just a prophet, just a great guy.  He doesn’t leave that option open to us.  He claimed to be God.  He claimed to be the answer to man’s sin problem.  He made claims that don’t leave those other titles as possibilities.  What would you say to someone who claimed to be God if he wasn’t?   You see if Jesus wasn’t God, as He claimed to be, he was either deluded, or He knew He wasn’t God and He aimed to delude. 

As I spend time reading my Bible, praying, meditating on what I read, considering divergent thoughts and analysis, and conversing with skeptics, questioners, and those who have studied this in depth, as I consider the evidence for and against each of these propositions, deluded, deluder, truth, I am convinced of Jesus Christ’s authenticity as the Son of God.  His claims best fit the evidence and reality.  Christianity is not blind faith, but reasoned faith, yet faith none the less.  We can’t prove who Jesus Christ is, but we can, if we examine the evidence carefully, come to a reasoned conclusion to feed a confident faith.

Yes, Jesus was a great teacher.  He was a prophet and a good man.  He fulfilled many roles.  However, Jesus is so much more.  He was and is the Christ.  And if that is the case, does it make reasonable sense to ignore Him or treat Him as just one choice among many?  He doesn’t leave us that option either.  If His words are true and He says there is only one way to find the way to eternal life, shouldn’t we pay attention?  If He is God incarnate, then He has the answers to life’s big questions and other answers are just wrong.  If you have a disease that will kill you, you want the right medicine.  The wrong medicine won’t solve your problem.  Neither will the wrong belief solve a problem for which only Christ is the solution.

“Therefore, holy brethren, partakers of a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the Apostle and High Priest of our confession; He was faithful to [the Father] who appointed Him, as Moses also was in all His house.  For He has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses, by just so much as the builder of the house has more honor than the house. For every house is built by someone, but the builder of all things is God.  Now Moses was faithful in all His house as a servant, for a testimony of those things which were to be spoken later; but Christ was faithful as a Son over His house—whose house we are, if we hold fast our confidence and the boast of our hope firm until the end.”                                Hebrews 3:1-6  

If Jesus Christ is who He says He is, and the evidence certainly points in that direction, can you afford not to consider Him and what He had to say?  Consider Jesus Christ.  Even better, discover the delight:  the deliverance, the freedom, the life-abundant in knowing Him.

…“fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” Hebrews 12:2