What I am sharing with you here is a personal testimony from a Christian woman. To give you some background, she has been in and out of church (mostly ‘out’ in adult years) and recently (at the time this happened) had come back into a close relationship with God. She was attending a Baptist church, studying the Word fervently and had come to a point of doing a complete turn-around in her lifestyle…

This personal testimony was written down and then reprinted here in obedience, as she felt compelled (by the Spirit) to share this with anyone who would listen… in hopes that it might enlighten and encourage them as much as it did her.

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The Scripture in Matthew 28:18-20 is often referred to as the Great Commission. These were Jesus’ last words to his 11 disciples before he ascended into heaven:

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded of you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (NIV)

While this is the more popular version of the Great Commission, you will also find it in Mark 16:15-18. The Scripture in Matthew though is often referred to in teachings regarding witnessing, sharing testimony, evangelism and mission work.

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A close friend of mine loaned me her copy of Your Best Life Now by Joel Osteen. I read the front cover, flipped through the book for a second… and thought, ’sure, this looks like it will be right up my alley’.

I cracked open this book with a positive attitude and an open mind. Right away I liked the basic concepts that Joel taught in regards to enlarging your image and developing a healthy self-image.

Knowing that Joel has a large following, I thought how great it would be if he could encourage Christians to take hold of faith and love and live lifestyles that caught the attention of people everywhere - making them think “boy, I want some of what they’ve got!” (ie peace, love, happy marriages, obedient children, etc) and compelling the masses to fill up the churches and devote their lives to serving God.

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The ‘Seven Deadly Sins’ - Is it biblical?

There is no formal listing of these 7 sins (pride, envy, gluttony, lust, anger, greed, and sloth) in the bible, though it is said they are mentioned throughout. And interesting to note is that the word gluttony doesnt actually appear in the KJV Bible at all.

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While most Christians agree to seek purity and save sex for marriage, few have been given a blueprint for how that should affect their view of dating and love. In I Kissed Dating Goodbye, Joshua Harris exposes the “Seven Habits of Highly Defective Dating” and offers a realistic outline of how to have a biblical vision of marriage.

Joshua Harris’s I Kissed Dating Goodbye turned the Christian singles scene upside down…and people are still talking. More than 800,000 copies later, I Kissed Dating Goodbye, with its inspiring call to sincere love, real purity, and purposeful singleness, remains the benchmark for books on Christian dating.

Joshua Harris follows up his bestselling I Kissed Dating Goodbye with Boy Meets Girl, the story of how he met and married his wife, Shannon. Where Harris’s first book encouraged readers to throw off modern ideas of romantic fixation, Boy Meets Girl goes to the next level and urges single Christian men and women to pursue courtship, and ultimately marriage, thoughtfully and prayerfully.

The last section of the book is particularly practical, discussing forgiveness of past sexual sin, questions to ask before tying the knot, and how an understanding of our sinful nature can lead to conflict resolution.

See Boy Meets Girl

 
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The bible speaks much on love, and tells us that it is the greatest of all gifts: And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love. (1 Cor. 13:13 NKJV)

The more that I study on love, the more I realize why it is the greatest gift. It is the source from which we draw strength to make use of other gifts. It is what enables us to make commitments… and keep them. It is what guides us and helps us to make the right decisions for ourselves and others. True love is what makes us feel so incredibly happy from the inside out that nothing else can bring us down. 

Love is a gift from God. We must remember (and appreciate) this in all that we do, and use the love within us accordingly. To use this gift in the wrong way means that we bring negatives upon ourselves: greed, heartache, pain, sickness, hardship and more.

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Nicodemus is mentioned three times in the bible, all three in the book of John. The most popular story about Nicodemus is told in John 3:1-21 where he asks of Jesus, “How can a man be born when he is old? Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb to be born!” (NIV)

Nicodemus was a Pharisee and a religious leader and he was a member of the Jewish council - the same Jewish council that convicted and crucified Jesus Christ. Prior to those events, he set up a private meeting with Jesus to speak with him personally. Nicodemus met with Jesus at night, perhaps because he feared what the other Pharisees would think of his speaking with Jesus. This meeting is the setting for the story told in John chapter 3, verses 1-21.

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