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Seven Keys to Biblical Prosperity (7)

Front Page Spiritual Health

This post is part of a series. You can read them all by clicking here

So far, we have considered these keys to biblical prosperity:

  • Cultivate a Trust and Obey Perspective on the Bible
  • Steward with Generosity
  • Eliminate Greed
  • Watch your Entourage
  • Invest in People
  • Keep Your Eyes Open for Spiritual Prosperity

We have finally come to the seventh key to biblical prosperity, and it is the hardest one for us to grab in our world today because our world is far more about getting rich quick than it is about slow patience, and the seventh key requires the greatest patience ever. Continue reading

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Seven Keys to Biblical Prosperity (5-6)

Front Page Spiritual Health

This post is part of a series. You can read them all by clicking here

So far, we have considered these keys to biblical prosperity:

  • Cultivate a Trust and Obey Perspective on the Bible
  • Steward with Generosity
  • Eliminate Greed
  • Watch your Entourage

Today, we move on to keys 5 and 6.

5. Invest in People

Three amazing passages in the Bible give us a perspective on using money to invest in people.

First, there is the passage that Paul wrote to the Corinthian church. For a while, Paul had taken up the cause of the Jerusalem church. There had been a famine and some economic hardship in the Jerusalem church, so Paul was making appeals to the churches he started to give aid to him so he could send it to the church in Jerusalem. Writing to the Corinthians about this offering, he says:
Continue reading

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Seven Keys to Biblical Prosperity (3-4)

Front Page Spiritual Health

This post is part of a series. To view all the posts in this series, click here

Yesterday, we considered the first two keys to Biblical Prosperity:

  • Cultivate a Trust and Obey Perspective on the Bible
  • Steward with Generosity

Today, we will be looking at numbers 3 and 4.

3. Eliminate Greed

In some ways, this is a no brainer. The Bible talks so much about the sinfulness of greed and our culture itself sometimes recognizes the evils of greed so it almost goes without saying that to please God, we need to get rid of greed. Continue reading

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Seven Keys to Biblical Prosperity

Front Page Spiritual Health

Yesterday at LCC I had the privilege of talking about a topic that is just as controversial and unbelievable as it is true. I discussed the Biblical promise that God wants his people to be prosperous.

Nevertheless, I am not one of those preachers who proclaims that God wants his people to be Wealthy and Healthy and all we need to do is jump on the bandwagon of positive thoughts, so it was important to me that we dig into what the Bible actually has to say about prosperity.

In light of that, I wanted to post here what I’m calling the Seven Keys to Biblical Prosperity. We’ll take a few days to get through this. Each day we’ll address a few relevant passages from the Bible and a few principles learned from those passages. To see all the posts in this series, check out the SKTBP tag.
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Feeling Spiritual Can Be Idolatry

Front Page Spiritual Health Stuff I Find


Gleaned From: That Worship Feeling.

“Sometimes, contemplatives think that the whole end and essence of their [spiritual] life is to be found in meditation and interior peace and the sense of the presence of God. They become attached to these things. But recollection and meditation are just as much creatures as an automobile. The sense of interior peace is no less created than a bottle of wine. The experiential ‘awareness’ of the presence of God is just as truly a created thing as a glass of beer. The only difference is that recollection, meditation, and interior peace – and the sense of the presence of God – are spiritual pleasures and the other are material. Attachment to spiritual things is therefore just as much an attachment as inordinate love of anything else. The imperfection may be more hidden, more subtle, or seemingly more ‘excusable’; but from a certain point of view, that only makes it all the more harmful because it is even more difficult to recognize or deal with.”

-Thomas Merton, Seeds of Contemplation

This is one incredible quotation and it is a challenge to all of us who long for spiritual experiences and spiritual feelings.

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How to Teach Busy Kids about God

Front Page Tough Questions

On that day tell your son, “I do this because of what the LORD did for me when I came out of Egypt.” — Exodus 13:8

“My kids are too busy!”

Our world is putting increasingly large burdens on our children. Whatever happened to the days when children would come home from school at 2 or 3 in the afternoon and play baseball together in the park, build forts in the woods, or explore the wonders of a nearby creek? These days, it seems that children are busy from sun-up to sun-down. Continue reading

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You need a foundation not feelings

Front Page Spiritual Health

I’ve been doing some thinking recently about where spiritual beliefs come from, and just recently, I had a kind of epiphany. Let’s see if I can explain it:

It all came about because I was having a conversation with a man who was telling me about his faith journey. His story is that he had done a lot of research into all manner of different religious schools of thought. He had been raised in a Methodist home, but had explored Eastern religions and such. At any rate, he settled into a faith that is mostly about “going with the flow” of life and finding harmony with nature. But what intrigued me the most about his journey was the fact that at key moments in his journey, he picked the path that “felt right” to him at the time. Continue reading

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Questions About The Secret

Front Page Tough Questions

Recently, I got this question from a member of our church and thought my response might help others too. Here’s the question:

Jeff-

I received an email from a Ukrainian student that was my roommate.
She was on the border of accepting Christ but she recently wrote me
about how she saw this movie called the Secret and how it changed her
life. Do you know what the teachings are of “the Secret”? I don’t
know how to respond to her.

I’m familiar with the teachings and I have watched the movie… Here’s the gist of it. Continue reading

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2009 Commitment Sunday

Front Page Lafayette Community Church

(Cross-posted at lafayettecommunitychurch.com. )

Yesterday was one incredible Sunday! For those of you who want to get the bullets first, here are the statistics on Lafayette Community Church’s 2009 Commitment Sunday:

  • 13 people were baptized.
  • 3 children were dedicated.
  • 152 people were in attendance.
  • $2500 (roughly) was donated.
  • 59 people signed the Community Commitment
  • 8 people signed the Associate’s Commitment

Now for the details. Continue reading

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Only four logically defensible spiritual paths.

Front Page Spiritual Health

As far as I see it there are only four logically defensible spiritual paths a person may walk.

  1. Accept yourself as the highest authority and pursue whatever interests you, including perhaps the rejection of all religious thought whatsoever.
  2. Accept your logic as the highest authority and rigorously study every single religious system in depth to determine which is most likely, plausible, or important.
  3. Accept your parents or your culture of origin as your highest authority and give yourself completely to their worldview.
  4. Accept one single authority and follow it relentlessly.

Which one is yours? What is your authority? How do you follow it?

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