A New Creature. . . an Apostolic Pentecostal blog

I'm learning so much in our Wednesday morning Bible study.  We are looking at the gospel of Matthew line by line. In our latest meeting we studied Matthew chapter 7.  In it Jesus warns us: Matthew 7:15-16 NKJV  "Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves.  16  You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles? There will be those who dress in the clothing of sheep, but who are actually those whose purpose is to kill and devour sheep. In the immediately preceding passage, Jesus tells us: Matthew 7:13-14 NKJV  "Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it.  14  Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it. Narrow is the gate, and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are FEW who find it. ...

A compelling thought has been bouncing around my head for about a week or so. . . That anything and everything that damages my pride helps me to grow spiritually.  My pride is my worst enemy.  My pride kept me from worshipping God for the first 45 years of my life.  I was too proud to bend my knee. . . too proud to admit that there was a God superior to me in every way. . . too proud to admit that I was a sinful person who needed redemption. In my pride I thought that the few little good things that I did somehow outweighed the many terrible things that I did. . . giving a bag-lady $20 somehow counterbalanced the lies I told. . . the other awful shameful things I did. . .  Today I was listening to 2 Corinthians: 2 Corinthians 12:10 NLT  That’s why I take pleasure in my weaknesses, and in the insults, hardships, persecutions, and troubles that I suffer for Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong. Insults. . . persecutions. . . other humbling troubles. . ....

Years ago a friend at work gave me my first bee hives.  I had always been interested in beekeeping, and when I found out that he, Milt Fair, had bee hives I was so intrigued.  I asked him so many questions, and began reading everything I could find about them. Sometime later he offered to give me a couple of beehives.  I lived in a residential neighborhood, north of Mishawaka.  We had a large 1¼ acre lot.  I chose a spot toward the back of the lot in a little grove of wild cherry trees in which to put the hives. My next door neighbor at the time,  was an older man, probably my age now.  He had an above ground swimming pool behind his house.  One day he came over and complained to me that my bees were landing on the swimming pool ladder, and his grandkids were getting stung. I told him that I thought that was unlikely, as I had a large oval shaped galvanized tub, filled with water right outside my hives, with bark floating on top for my bees to get...

  We are so careful. . . so thoughtful when we buy a house.  We look at the neighborhood.  We consider the schools our children will attend.  In our minds eye we rehearse the daily drive to our job.  We have the house inspected for mold, termites, the soundness of the roof, electrical system, plumbing, heating and cooling system.  We look at the cost of the taxes, utilities, insurance.  Can we afford the payments? How well will the house age?  What will the neighborhood be like in 10 years.   All this for our physical abode. . .  What thought do we give to our spiritual abode?  How much planning and consideration do we give to it?  Preparing for our weekly Bible study.  This week we're studying Matthew chapter 7.  I ran across this passage: Jesus speaking: Matthew 7:24-27 NKJV  "Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock: ...

  Yesterday in our Wednesday morning Bible study, we were going through Matthew chapter 5. Jesus was addressing commandments written in the Law of Moses. I mentioned that there were 613 commandments in the Law, and someone in the group asked if I had a list of those 613 commandments. This is something that I had thought of doing previously, but had never gotten around to. This morning my computer is tied up running a large engineering problem, so I spent a few minutes looking this up. There are many websites which list the commandment in differing ways of sorting them. I took the following list from Wikipedia. The order is by when they first appear in the Bible. A person could try to follow all these 613 rules, and still not be living a life pleasing to God, if they, like the Pharisee's forgot about the foundation of these rules. Jesus said: Matthew 22:34-40 NKJV But when the Pharisees heard that He had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35 Then one of them, a ...

Someone recently asked me how to do a Bible study on their own. The beginning place for me is my e-Sword Bible software. I've used this software for more than 20 years. It was free when I started using it, and it's still free. No ads, no hidden fees, simply free. That being said there is a charge for some of the Bible translations, charged by the publisher. I have downloaded: 31 commentaries, 28 Bible translations, 21 dictionaries, of those 28 Bible translations I paid for NLT, NIV, NKJV, and the Amplified set of 3. Other features, dozens of books in the reference library, graphics, devotionals. I love to do word studies, and e-Sword has a wonderful search tool. I can search all the Bible, or any portion of it. I can search for Strong's numbers, partial matches, synonyms, exclude words, match case. Most often I will do a search on an English word, and then I will look at what Strong's dictionary numbers are used for that word, and then do a search for the Hebrew...