The following is an UPDATE of an early Talk of Jesus post about Roger, his Christian Social Witness & specifically being born again in the Lord Jesus Christ on a Good Friday ~30 years ago.
The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Isaiah 40:3 KJV
And the seven angels which had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound…
Prepare to witness JESUS
You’ll recognize the Prophesy of Isaiah as an announcement fulfilled by John the Baptizer shouting a warning in his day: Prepare to meet Christ Jesus who IS God with us!
Those of you familiar with my writings and witness over the years know well that I have generally acknowledged the preparatory seasons of Christmas and Easter with appropriate writings during Advent and Lent. A brief glance at the 2014 calendar will reveal that the traditional 40 days of preparation for Easter liturgically known as Lent remain several wintry weeks away.
http://talkofJesus.com currently [A.D. 2014] posts daily 6 days/week & is searchable by topic or scripture
So as not to discourage any who might regularly read my exhortations of scripture without understanding the context, I thought to prepare your hearts by pointing even through the darkness of these days to the Light of Life in the resurrection of Jesus Christ and our certain assurance of hope in His coming again to resurrect a new and fresh life out of the grave of these present days.
Just a bit of background about my faith experience.
I was raised in the Methodist Church, which had several set ‘methods‘ of worship.
Later, for many years I was a member of the Episcopal Church which generally followed a very catholic liturgical calendar typical of the Anglican communion.
I continue to have many dear brothers and sisters of the Roman Catholic faith.
I became an active member of a Southern Baptist church and have remained a faithful worshiper in Presbyterian and other Protestant churches as moves to other towns necessitated.
[At the time of the launch of Talk of Jesus .com in 2014]
I am now a member of the Mennonite Church, which like all other denominations of Christ reflects many facets of Christianity.
As always, I am first and foremost a servant of Christ Jesus as Lord and obligated to the full command of God through all scripture of the Bible.
Roger’s condensed Vitae
I have a Bachelor of Music degree; have taught instrumental music of all types; directed bands, orchestras, small ensembles and choirs, as well as performed as in instrumentalist and sung in many church choirs; and I have mixed and recorded sound for contemporary worship.
The Lord has given me teaching, preaching and writing gifts.
I love the exegesis of scripture and can never get enough. Whatever I do for Christ is not so important as what He might do through me for you and for others. This is why I generally provide dynamic links in my writing to some of my favorite resources.
Why Talk of JESUS?
The Lord has given me a passion not so much for evangelism (to which every Christian is called) as for teaching my fellow dear believers the necessity to grow up in our faith.
Prepare yourself for SOLID FOOD.
In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.
Warning Against Apostasy 11 About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. 12 For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, 13 for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. 14 But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.
For this reason I have sought to make it easy for you to read your Bible daily, even through posts from Scripture on talkofJesus.com
-Do you read scripture every day?
-Do you read your Bible every day?
-Do you pray to God (at least once) every day?
This is the milk of my posting scripture to this easy to SHARE, easy to COMMENT, and easy to read site of Christian Social Witness.
Post content on TalkofJESUS.com as the Spirit leads may not always be as easy to digest as milk.
Roger@TalkofJesus.com
I invite you to COMMENT & offer YOUR thoughts about God and Christ, as well as your personal convictions, repentance, applications and witness of Jesus Christ to chew on long and hard with the seriousness of your own salvation.
The Lord has pointed me toward this witness as a result of an upcoming book [*] of importance also about growing up in our faith. It is a contemporary retelling of a Christian serial story with 149 brief episodes.
[*] note: not pubically available at this time + TalkofJesus.com has published several serial stories with brief post episodes.
I have also written a much shorter serial story based on Genesis, which I would have published on this site by now, except for the lack of current interest by lack of any comments of yours expressing any interest in following a serial story here for five or six days a week over a month. If you are interested, just add a comment to this post.
from a liturgical 2014 calendar
in order to prepare our hearts for Lent & Easter
Observe (if you like) that I had intended to begin and continue in Genesis in January 2014, however the Spirit led me to Psalm 119, which concluded just recently.
Recent & upcoming posts are an intense call to repentance of professing christians.
(You CALL yourself a christian or CLAIM you ‘go to church.’)
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.
Matthew 7:21 ESV A caution of Jesus to believers who later cautioned [v.23] And then will Ideclare to them, ‘I never knew you
a traditional Repentance of Lent to prepare for Easter
These preparations from scripture, often from the Prophets of the Old Testament, are more typical to the liturgical requirements of repentance to dust and ashes from the time of Ash Wednesday (this year: March 5, A.D. 2014) through the Crucifixion of Lord celebrated on Good Friday in the year of our Lord 2014 on April 18.
about Roger receiving the Holy Spirit!
On a personal note:
I was born again in the Lord on a Good Friday during a contemporary ‘Stations of the Cross’ remembrance about twenty years ago [now ~30 years].
The little Episcopal church where we were members had a powerful moving of the Spirit for a time that could make a Pentecostal service look conservative!
(So much for tradition… for a brief unexpected time at that time.)
Roger’s ‘teaching’ style
I hesitate to say that the ‘easy grace’ message so attractive to bring in the crowds of marginal christians is all too prevalent and undeserving of the call of Christ Jesus to become like Him, obey Him, and be born again in Him.
You should find the Easter to Pentecost liturgy and probably my writing after Easter will reflect more of the importance of the love and grace and forgiveness that we have through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
If you need a nice encouragement of Jesus – the friendly, nice, lamb-holding, child-welcoming teacher; read the Gospel.
He IS the same Jesus who will return on the clouds (perhaps soon) with fire and vengeance and judgment.
NO, not everyone will be in heaven just because we mention Jesus or say we are christian or go to church once in a while or every week and don't let scripture convict and change us.
The upcoming months leading up to Easter, [A.D. 2014] for the most part are meant to convict each of us to:
a stronger faith, a weaker self, a humbler obedience, a truer witness
and a God-given, Christ-centered, Spirit-driven daily life
to do the Lord’s will on earth, as it is in heaven.
Please add your COMMENTS or questions to this or any post and share our Christian Social Witness liberally on your ‘other’ site where unbelievers watch what you do and say is important to you.
I pray for you, that the Lord may somehow use our witness through this. Pray also for me.
May our Lord, Christ Jesus, continue to grow you in your faith and knowledge of scripture in preparation for His return to reign as King of Glory and Lord of all over the earth and heavens and every soul of His creation.
I want to tell you a story of an old woman and one of a young woman; a story of relationship and temptation.
2 Samuel 5:7Nevertheless David took the strong hold of Zion: the same is the city of David.
Scene I is in Jerusalem, about a thousand years or ten centuries after this record of Samuel from scripture.
Luke 2: 36 And there was a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was advanced in years, having lived with her husband seven years from when she was a virgin, 37 and then as a widow until she was eighty-four. She did not depart from the temple, worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day. 38 And coming up at that very hour she began to give thanks to God and to speak of him to all who were waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem.
The woman was married as a young virgin to a man named Phanuel (which means: the face of God). After seven years her husband dies and she has lived several decades as a widow. She was known to be a prophetess. She would not have been allowed at the Temple in the City of David as a Jewish widow had her prophecies not been shown to have been from God. As a Priest might speak at the bidding of God and as a male Prophet might obediently convey God’s words to God’s people, Anna spoke prophesy.
The Lord had spoken through the Prophets of old during the time of the 1000 years (these 10 centuries before Christ), but God had kept silent while a captured people (conquered this time by the Romans) awaited God’s long-sought redemption once more.
Jesus is brought to the Temple and Anna also confirms the identity of the Redeemer of God.
Scene II is in Jerusalem at the same Temple not centuries later, but just three decades, only 30 years.
Luke 4: And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness 2 for forty days, being tempted by the devil…
9 And he took him to Jerusalem and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, 10 for it is written,
“‘He will command his angels concerning you,
to guard you,’
11 and
“‘On their hands they will bear you up,
lest you strike your foot against a stone.’”
Again, this is thirty years after the Prophetess Anna had thanked God for this same Son of Man, Jesus.
Satan took Jesus, a man, human like you or me; born to Mary, descendant of David, to the pinnacle of the Temple and said (in effect), “Jump. God will protect you.”
Jesus is hungry and has already refused to turn stones into bread as Satan tempted him to do as the Son of God, not just a righteous son of man. Satan had already asked this Son of Man to bow down to him and promised Jesus power over the Kingdoms of the world IF only he, Jesus, the Son of Man would worship the fallen angel of God. Again, Jesus did not seek the power of this world, as many of us do.
We will return to Jesus’ answer to Satan (which you may know); but first we fast forward beyond the Cross of the Hill of Calvary and the grave and the Resurrection and the Ascension back to the glory of God the Father and the early days of the church and His several appearances to many sons of men to the present.
Scene III takes place in Mount Zion National Park, USA, twenty centuries later, 8 February, in the year of our Lord 2014.
The young woman tempted at the pinnacle is just two years younger that the Son of Man of our earlier scene. Her relationship to her new husband is not one of a virgin to a man of God’s leading, but rather a relationship of sharing in his sport of tempting God for the temporal experiences of living life to its fullest.
She jumped from the pinnacle of Mount Zion. Her parachute did not open. Angels did not catch her. Her body and life were broken on the cold stone below. Her husband witnessed her choice to tempt God, as he so dearly loved to do; and now he is a widower.
On this very day (10 Feb. 1999) fifteen years ago, I, too, became a widower; yet not by my choice or by intentional choice of my godly wife. As God tears many a wife from her husband and many a husband from his wife, I became a widower when the Lord took my wife after a many month struggle against cancer to hold onto this precious life.
Though God has joined many a man to his beloved help-mate, his wife; in almost every instance one will die before the other. A wife will become a widow, as had Anna; or a husband will become a widower, as has the poor husband who just witnessed the death of his wife.
What does it mean that this man who did not jump would later willingly allow Himself to be lifted up on the Cross to die for you and for me?
Jesus Christ, in fulfillment of the scripture (by which He would answer Satan, Pharisees and those who would manipulate God’s word to their own ends) became our redemption. What does that mean to you personally? What does it mean when Satan has lead you to the pinnacle of the choice of your action of life or your action of death?
It is a question of slavery.
God chose Abraham. God chose Isaac (and not Ishmael). God chose Jacob, who He named Israel.
Jacob had twelve sons, sons (tribes or families) of inheritance of the land of the promise to Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob. However they betrayed their own brother, Joseph, and sold him into slavery for a price.
Joseph was bought and sold into Egypt, where the Lord saved him and lifted him into the office of Prime Minister only under Pharaoh. Yet Joseph remained faithful to God. He asked his father Jacob’s blessing on his two Egyptian-born sons for his share of the promise of Abraham in a land now ruled by Pharaoh.
Joseph’s land, given to the Israelites in Egypt, was not paid for or an inheritance. In fact, the price of redemption for Joseph had never been paid and by the generation of Moses, sons of Abraham; and the sons of Joseph (descendants of God’s promise) were once again slaves in the land of Egypt with no man to pay the price of their freedom.
God saved them and forced Pharaoh to let His people go. Moses did not save them, but spoke for God, obeyed God, and gave God’s own people God’s own Law to obey; as they had once had to obey every law of Pharaoh. Still, even in the time of David and Solomon centuries later, God’s Chosen People had not had the price of their slavery paid. God’s Chosen were not yet redeemed in any way.
Psalm 49 speaks of the sons of Korah (of the rebellion against God and Moses) stating:
5 Why should I fear in the days of evil, When the iniquity at my heels surrounds me?
6 Those who trust in their wealth
And boast in the multitude of their riches,
7 None of them can by any means redeem his brother,
Nor give to God a ransom for him—
8 For the redemption of their souls is costly,
And it shall cease forever—
9 That he should continue to live eternally, And not see the Pit.
To rescue a sinner
You must pay the price.
Who can redeem the sinner? (And we are all sinners, you and me and all sons of men of every time and place.)
If you stand at the pinnacle of choice between life and death, what is the answer?
Scene IV Returning to the Pinnacle of the Temple and the answer of the Son of Man two hundred centuries before this year of our Lord, 2014.
Luke 4:12 And Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’”
And Christ Jesus began His three-year mission on earth as the Son of Man, calling men and women to repentance and grace, living and breathing the love of God our Father for His chosen family of the promise and of His chosen Bride, the church.
Luke 4:
17 And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written,
18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
20 And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21 And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
“Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
And of His fulfillment of scripture, this is what Jesus said: I AM the price paid for your sin and for the sins of all who are joined to Jesus as our Lord, our Savior, and our Redeemer.
Satan will tempt you before God until the day your flesh will die.
Who will you bow down and worship? What is your answer:
I will gladly follow your worldly temptation, lord satan…
OR Jesus IS LORD?
Do NOT put the Lord your God to the test. Trust ONLY JESUS CHRIST, who paid the price of redemption for your sin and for mine. He IS the one who taught us to pray (Luke 11:2-4):
Our Father
Who IS in Heaven,
HOLY IS your Name.
Your Kingdom will come.
May Your will be done on earth, as it is in Heaven.
Your further study through these dynamic links on most posts on http://talkofJesus.com are highly encouraged, along with your comments to any and all posts on this site.
Is this not our very need to understand God through Scripture?
170 Let my plea come before you;
deliver me according to your word.
171 My lips will pour forth praise,
for you teach me your statutes.
172 My tongue will sing of your word,
for all your commandments are right.
173 Let your hand be ready to help me,
for I have chosen your precepts.
174 I long for your salvation, O Lord,
and your law is my delight.
Though the Lord chooses us to be His, even by adoption, He does not coerce us to follow Him. As Adam, we may choose obedience or choose sin.
As Christ Jesus, the new adam, a second son of man who was before the first; He does not coerce our Christian life, either; though He laid down His Life for our sin.
Choose Jesus as Lord or choose death and punishment for your sins.
175 Let my soul live and praise you,
and let your rules help me.
Genesis 2:7 KJV And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. H5315
1 Chronicles 29:13 KJV Now therefore, our God, we thank thee, and praise H1984 thy glorious name.
Jeremiah 20:13 KJV Sing unto the LORD, praise H1984 ye the LORD: for he hath delivered the soul of the poor from the hand of evildoers.
176 I have gone astray like a lost sheep; seek your servant,
for I do not forget your commandments.
Isaiah quotes this last verse of Psalm 119 in prophesying the coming of our Savior, the Good Shepherd.
Look upon the Cross of our Savior and upon your own sin.
6 All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have turned—every one—to his own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
yet he opened not his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
so he opened not his mouth.
8 By oppression and judgment he was taken away;
and as for his generation, who considered
that he was cut off out of the land of the living,
stricken for the transgression of my people?
9 And they made his grave with the wicked
and with a rich man in his death,
although he had done no violence,
and there was no deceit in his mouth.
10 Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him;
he has put him to grief;
when his soul makes an offering for guilt,
he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days;
the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.
11 Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied;
by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant,
make many to be accounted righteous,
and he shall bear their iniquities.
And be also comforted by the last verse of the Psalmist; for our Lord, Christ Jesus also quoted it, and He knows well your soul.
Matthew 18: 12 What do you think? If a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? 13 And if he finds it, truly, I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray.
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