Our Lighted Path

  The New Testament is so much easier . Praise God.

  "But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell." Matthew 5:28-30, NIV Jesus' word is easy, only if you're willing to accept that word as true. And by true, that is to say true to Jesus' meaning and purpose. When it comes to hard-to-accept passages like Matthew 5:28-30 , we may need to search our hearts in prayer for a long while before finding ease and peace with the word. For many of us, Matthew 5:28-30 is more than hyperbole. We don't believe Jesus gave us this part of His ministry in order to justify mutilating anyone. But we believe the scripture, being m...

Some things are okay in day-to-day living, but are not okay for our table of communion at church. And this is coming from a soul who has seen cornbread and even French baguettes as symbols of Jesus's communion body. Until now, I haven't felt a call to say to a pastor that that is so wrong. I've just walked away discouraged. But I'm going to say this now: I'm someone who feels and feels that the first communion bread, at Jesus's dinner with the disciples the night He was betrayed, was a rolled up slab of flat bread, similar to the big slabs of flatbread still made in parts of the Middle East today - although, I believe Jesus's bread was a darker color than today's Middle Eastern versions; because bread during Jesus's first walk with us, didn't have today's bleaching process but was made of whole, stone-ground wheat. I know and I know it's no coincidence that God had in heart to compare His body to the bread of His "Last Supper." ...

  I believe my childhood baptism was a christening instead of baptism. I believe childhood baptism or christening worked to promise me to God's care, no matter what evil would happen in life. Then, in older years, I was baptized in whole. My whole life became God's through new faith in Jesus.  The day I was baptized in wholeness (fullness) of faith, there were a number of strangers who received the alter call at the same time I did, and who went on to be counseled a little. A few of those strangers made a Spirit-led decision, like I did, to be baptized. We received the Holy Spirit, like the first of the church at Pentecost. When I stood waiting at the baptism pool, a member of the church told me she sensed the Holy Spirit on the baptismal water. And, before that, an associate pastor had counseled us a long while, unlike the brief counsel after we had left the prayer alter. The pastor didn't only talk about simple faith in God through Jesus. He counseled against any hell an...

If anyone ever has wanted refreshing in Jesus, her thirsts have changed from whatever tears the body down, to pure thirsts: clean milk from cattle (for humanity, not so much for cats), not too much honey, purified waters from fresh streams, the unadulterated Bible word — all of which flow from the pure freedom Jesus offered all the world when He gave His life at Calvary. Some may waste all the faith they could have had on what isn't exactly the provision Heaven believed for us to have . When Jesus gave His blood, it was to alter men's appetite for murder among mankind. And don't some men put their own bodies to death through illicit sex, ungodly drugs, and sometimes drunkenness even today? ... I always remember fondly that my grandpa asked me if I drank [alcoholic drinks]. I know he knew the answer (even if it was only sometimes), and that I shouldn't, anymore. That was only one step toward recognizing the salvation Jesus paid for me at Calvary. Some may feel like Jesus...

  "But he answered and said, It is written, [Mankind lives] not by bread alone, but   by every word   that proceeds out of the   of the mouth of God." —  Matthew 4:4 When we each open a Bible, and we prayerfully want peace in heart, with all our soul, we're going to seek God in Jesus; and we're going to do that steadfastly, year after year. We may struggle with one problem or another, but, deep in heart, we never want to abandon the assembling of ourselves together not as tribes but as the body of the church. As His body, we look forward to saying, altogether, that we need everything Jesus finished for us on the cross at Calvary, the running water of His word and His spiritual giving of blood — everything of Him that helps us examine ourselves in heart ( 1 Corinthians 11:28-29 ) and cleanses away our sins. By the way, the symbolic taking of physical bread at Communion is not enough for physical hunger, and it may seem we each are eating of a separate layer ...