Here’s a quick rundown of the top stories on charismamag.com:
6 Ways to Prepare for Spiritual Harvest
Last week I preached at Freedom Point Church, a small congregation in Carrollton, Georgia, 50 miles west of Atlanta. Two years ago the church had shrunk to 12 people, and it was at risk of closing. But when I went there last Thursday, 103 people came for a regular midweek Bible study. On some Sundays, people sit in the church’s basement because there isn’t room in the sanctuary.
What happened? In 2021 a young pastor named Jason White moved to Carrollton with his wife, Leslie, and their two children. Jason not only preached on Sundays but he started taking a mobile stage into neighborhoods to evangelize. A homeless couple found Jesus, and the church helped them find a place to live. Teens and younger kids started coming to the church, but older people also found Christ.
When I went to Freedom Point last week I met an 83-year-old woman who told me she found Jesus for the first time just a few months prior. She had never heard the gospel until she was 82. “I’m just so glad I met Jesus toward the end of my life,” she told me.
The Ignorance That Will Cost People Their Soul
As we move through 2023, we will continue to see more shaking in the world. We are living in the last days, and the Bible says that perilous times will come.
It is more important than ever for every Christ follower to know and believe the Bible. Have you taken the time to research the origins and validity of the Bible for yourself?
To start with, the Bible is a collection of 66 books, written by 40 authors, over a 1,500-year period, on three continents, in three different languages. These 40 men all wrote about the coming Savior. Forty men who lived years apart, told about the same person. There are no discrepancies or disagreement between them. In addition, they wrote over 300 prophecies or predictions about one man 800 years before He was even born, and every one of those prophesies was fulfilled by Jesus Christ.
7 Spiritual Consequences From Breaking God’s Boundaries
When Adam and Eve ate the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they separated themselves from God and became semi-autonomous (Gen. 2:15-17; 3:1-8). This sin opened up the proverbial “Pandora’s box” since their actions created an innate propensity for humans to cross forbidden boundaries.
To illustrate, one of the words for sin is “transgression,” which has to do with trespassing or crossing a boundary established by God’s command. In 1 John 3:4, John the apostle defines sin as the transgression of the law for this reason.
Another word used in the Scriptures to depict sin is to “trespass” (Matt. 6:14; Eph. 2:1). Trespass is to violate a boundary or a law. When we trespass on someone’s property, we violate the legal and physical borders which are in place. This classification of sin as a trespass indicates crossing a divine moral boundary when people break one of the ten commandments.
