Teaching series

I attended the last teaching sermon, in this particular series, this past Thursday at Bridgeway church.
Pastor Storms explained a common belief held by many people about the end times. It is called Dispensational, Pre- Tribulational, Premillennialism. It closely follows the Left Behind books.
To summarize:
Christ returns in the clouds of heaven and raptures/translates the church to Himself and then returns to heaven.
This occurs before the 7 year tribulation period, hence Pretribulationism.
This is Christ's Second Coming or Second Advent. It occurs after the tribulation when He returns with His church to destroy the Antichrist at Armageddon and establish His earthly Millennial kingdom; Christ's earthly rule of 1000 years.
Then, the release of Satan from his prison at the end of the Millennium, his destruction, the Great White Throne Judgement, the creation of the New Heaven and New Earth, the inauguration of the eternal state the eternity.

Then Pastor Storms described the view that he thinks is more accurate. It's called Amillenialism.

1. Death is swallowed up at Christ's Second Coming ( 1Cor. 15:22).
2. Who we are as Christ's people is made manifest and the natural earth will be set free at the second coming  ( Romans 8).
3. The Second Coming will bring the New Heaven and New Earth ( 2 Peter, 3).
For Premillennialism, the new heaven and earth happens 1000 years after the second coming.
4. There is one bodily resurrection of all. We get our new bodies at the second coming ( John 5:28&29).
Pretribulational Premillennialists believe there are multiple bodily resurrections spread out.
5. When the Lord Jesus is revealed at the second coming, Eternal Judgement happens.

Pastor Storms reminded us that this should not be a point of contention among believers. There is only One thing we must agree on about the end times, and that's that Christ is coming back.

Chapter 3

Here is an excerpt from chapter 3 of my book, "Not Mine Alone"

My junior year Homecoming dance was in March 1987. I went with a boy, named Billy Coleman.
There was a party before the  dance, and Billy and I drove in my car to the party. By this time, my eating disorder had significantly progressed, so I had not eaten anything for two days to make sure that I looked great in my dress.
At the party, I drank two large glasses of wine. Drinking that much wind on an empty stomach caused the alcohol to take effect very quickly and very intensely.
When the party was over, Billy , who was also drunk, but not as much as I was, drive us, in my car, to the dance. When we drove into the school parking lot, I told Billy I needed to throw up. He said he would take me to a residential area off school grounds so I could throw up.
Billy backed the car up, and hit what he thought was a speed bump, but in actuality was a curb that led into a very deep ditch. He pressed on the accelerator to go over the "speed bump," and we ended up in the ditch.
Little did I know that the school headmaster and the head of the English department had seen the entire incident.
In a complete daze, I looked out my window, and saw them standing outside my door. They opened my door, and the head of the English department took a hold of my arm, since I was so drunk I could barely walk at all, let alone walk up a very steep ditch.
They took Billy and I into the principles office and called our parents. As dramatic as ever, I started hysterically crying. I have no memory of what my parents said when they walked into the principles office. This was thirty years ago, and I was blackout drunk.
I got suspended from school for a week, and since Billy was driving, he got expelled.
The next day, I told my parents that I had drank very little wine, but since I had not yet eaten dinner, what little wine I had drank, made me very drunk. I had become such a good liar, that they believed every word of what I said.

Teaching series

I have been attending a teaching series on Thursdays at Bridgeway church.
This past Thursday was on death and hell.

Pastor Sam Storms addressed the argument that many people make about the injustice of hell.
Here is how he responded:
We humans are hardly the ones to assess the enormity of our sins. "Is the magnitude of our sins established by our own status, or by the degree of offense against the sovereign, transcendent God?" ( Carson, 534). As John Piper has pointed out, " The essential thing is that degrees of blameworthiness come not from how long you offend dignity, but from high the dignity is that you offend" ( Let the Nation's be Glad, 127).
In other words, our sin is deserving of infinite punishment because of the infinite glory of the One against whom it is perpetrated.

I have never thought about it in those terms before. We deserve eternal punishment not because of how much we sin or degree of sin,  but because of the holiness of the One (God) who we sin against.
I am so grateful to be written in God's book of life!

Genesis 25

I was reading a section from Lysa Terkeurst's book "Made to Crave."
She quoted Genesis 25:29-34:

"Once when Jacob was cooking some stew, Esau came in from the open country, famished. He said to Jacob, 'Quick, let me have some of that red stew! I'm famished!
Jacob replied, 'First sell me your birthright to me.'
'Look I am about to die,' Esau said.
'What good is my birthright to me?'
But Jacob said, 'Swear to me first.' So he swore an oath to him, selling his birthright to Jacob.
Then Jacob gave Esau some bread and some lentil stew. He ate and drank, and then got up and left
So Esau despised his birthright

By using these particular verses is to illustrate how much Esau gave up for just a few moments of physical satisfaction. Esau gave up his inheritance rights that favored him as the firstborn son of Isaac. Esau put immediate gratification before his long-term interests.

I think about how many times I have done the same thing and all the blessings I may have missed because of it.

Esau was meant for more and so are we!

1 Corinthians 6:12

Today, I was reading some Bible verses that are applicable to food related strongholds.
One in particular stood out to me:
"Everything is permissable but not everything is beneficial. Everything is permissible but I will not be mastered by anything." 1 Cor. 6:12

God has given me freedom but choosing to live a life void of boundaries is really not freedom at all. It actually leads to slavery and bondage.

Chapter 2

I just finished chapter 2 of my book and I thought i would post an excerpt.

"Around the age of ten, my Obsessive Compulsive Disorder started manifesting in different ways. I started obsessing about animal abuse. I had explicit thoughts that would mentally torment me. My mother bought tabloid magazines every week, and the Enquirer would regularly have articles about specific cases of animal abuse.
One of the first articles I saw was how they eat dogs in the Philippines. Along with the article, there were graphic photos. After I saw that article, almost every waking moment was consumed by thoughts of those images. Along with the grief I felt about the dogs, I was also terrified, because I couldn't stop thinking about it. Moreover, I felt obligated to think about it, because in my mind, I reasoned that if there are animals suffering this much, then why do I deserve to be happy? It was a kind of solidarity with something (animals) that I loved more than anything else. My rationalization was; if there are animals suffering, I needed to think about it constantly in order to join them in their suffering.

Teaching series

My friend, Shannon and I are attending a four week teaching series at Bridgeway church on church history and end times.  By the way, pastor Sam Storms is amazing!
Last night's teaching included church discipline. This is the first in depth teaching I have heard on this subject. It was so thought provoking!

Sam gave several points on why church discipline is necessary:
1. To maintain, as far as possible, the purity of the church.
2. Because Scripture requires it.
3. In order to maintain a proper witness to the world.
4. To expose unbelievers.
5. To facilitate growth and to preserve unity in the body.
6. To restore the erring brother/sister  to obedience and fellowship.
7. To deter others.
8. To avert corporate discipline.
9. Because sin is rarely if ever an individual issue: it almost always has corporate ramifications.
10. Evidently Paul believed that the willingness to embrace the task of discipline was a mark of maturity in a church's corporate life ( 2 Cor. 2:9).