Passion 4 Him

By John MacArthur We’ve reached the end of our series on spiritual formation and sanctification, but before we close the discussion, I want to encourage you with some practical ways to evaluate your own spiritual growth. Yesterday we discussed the true, biblical nature of sanctification—that it’s the work of the Lord in the lives of His people. However, each of us bears some responsibility for our own spiritual growth, as well. I can’t tell you what percentage of the responsibility falls on you, or exactly how your disciplined life cooperates with God’s work in you ( Isaiah 55:9 ). But I can tell you that faithful Bible study, prayer, and self-discipline play a vital role in your sanctification. As we’ve seen over the last several weeks, we can’t manufacture spiritual growth on our own, but we can certainly hinder it through unchecked sin and spiritual laziness. With that in mind, I want to help you take accurate, biblical stock of where you are in your spiritual gr...

T he Social Gospel, Right And Left-Excerpts from Religious Trojan Horse by Brannon Howse Should Christians promote righteousness within our nation and be concerned about the worldview our various levels of government and education promote? Of course. After all, it is God Himself Who drew the borders of nations and chose the very nation in which each man and woman would be born. God created government. Because we are Christians, we must judge everything against the Word of God, which is a reflection of God's character and nature. Therefore, Christians should support legislation and initiatives that reward the righteous and punish the wicked, purposes for which God created government (Romans 13).  The two institutions are to complement one another, according to God's plan, but the Church is not to become the government, and the government is not to become the Church. The Religious Right of the 1970s and 1980s has drastically changed and is now a New Rel...

By Jesse Johnson Is it possible to live a faithful Christian life without being a faithful part of a local church? I've heard many people make the argument that it is indeed possible-especially if there are no good churches around. I disagree. At the bare minimum, there are forty different commands in the New Testament to live life in some sense with other believers. While certainly it is possible to do some of these with Christians in general, the weight of this list should convince you of the necessity of having on going relationships with other believers. And those relationships are only strengthened by the fellowship of the local church. In fact, I submit that some of this list is simply impossible to obey if you do not have the kind of ongoing and ever increasing fellowship with other believers that only comes through ministry in a local church: Stimulate one another to love and good deeds ( Heb 10:24 ) Confess your sins to one another ( James 5:16...

By John MacArthur Sanctification isn’t easy—it takes faithfulness, hard work, and self-discipline. And even then, it’s not purely a function of your will, but the work of the Holy Spirit in you. It’s not manufactured overnight. As with anything that takes time, effort, and patience, people are prone to look for shortcuts. Some people substitute a mystical, subjective feeling of closeness to God for actual spiritual growth. Others cling to outward expressions of godliness while sin still makes a home in their hearts. But that’s not true spiritual growth—it’s counterfeit. If you truly love the Lord, you can’t be willing to move the goalposts on biblical sanctification. There are many varieties of counterfeit sanctification. Some are easier to spot than others, but all lead to the same kind of spiritual shipwreck. Here are a few to be on the lookout for in your own life. Moral virtue can often pass for true spiritual growth. Some people, for varying reasons, are fa...

  Who takes the greater leap of faith- the atheist or the believer?

Question:   One of my favorite books has been The Power of Positive Thinking. In it, the author says that “positive thinking” is just another word for “faith.” I notice that his chief disciple says much the same thing: that “faith” is what he calls “possibility thinking.” He has called Jesus Christ “the greatest possibility thinker of all time.” Something about that bothers me, but I don’t know why. Can you explain?   Response:  We have already noted that Jesus said, “Have faith in God” ( Mark:11:22 ), and that faith can only be in God because He alone is worthy of complete trust. Yet an atheist can teach “Positive Thinking” seminars, and many atheists do so. Obviously, then, positive thinking has nothing to do with faith. It is, in fact, the exact opposite of faith. The theory of positive thinking is that one’s thoughts, whether “positive” or “negative,” influence one’s own body and personality and thus health. Moreover, one’s thoughts are believed e...

Be sure to watch the whole thing!!!!

"People will go to hell not because they merely had a theological point wrong, but because they had a real disease (sin) and never got the only effective cure." "Christians often say that anyone can get forgiven if they believe in Jesus, but if they don't believe in Jesus they're not forgiven at all.  When this issue comes up, the question of forgiveness isn't discussed too much. The notion of forgiveness is collapsed into another kind of statement that I think Christians are guilty of saying by itself, and it creates confusion as a result." Read entire article here:  http://www.str.org/site/PageServer?pagename=PL_article_jesus_the_only_cure

With all the talk about the huge debt we are in financially in this country on an economic scale, there is a debt that every person in this world should know about. This debt is far more serious than any financially debt we could be in. This debt effects our eternal destiny! It is simply the debt of sin. Each one of us has amassed a huge debt of sin against God. Every time we sin, we keep adding to this debt. It has become so big, that there is no way any person can pay it off! But there is a person who has done it for us: Jesus Christ. God is holy and righteous, and cannot simply wipe away our sin debt without a true payment. But the payment that was required by his justice was made on the cross 2,000 years ago. Jesus Christ being completely sinless as God's Son, died a death you and I deserved. He took on the full payment of sin's debt on himself by enduring God's wrath. In John 19:30 before Jesus died, He said it is finished or "Paid in Full." Jesus paid o...

If you've followed John MacArthur's teaching for any length of time, you know he rarely says much about politics, culture, or society. It's not that he's uninformed on those topics. It's that they're often an intrusion upon the teaching of God's Word. Evangelical Christians are already too easily distracted from the Great Commission in order to engage in partisan politics. Our corrupt culture will not be transformed for the better by political movements or pop culture anyway. That is the work of God's Word-the gospel in particular. That's what our ministry is devoted to (cf. 1 Corinthians 2:1-5 ). In this current campaign season, however, politicians have stepped- overstepped -into spiritual and moral areas, promoting horrific wickedness and blasphemous immorality. As John MacArthur made clear on a recent Sunday morning, these are not areas where God's Word is silent or ambiguous. Here's an excerpt: Listen to this 4-minut...