Abiding in the Lord
NOT QUENCHING THE SPIRIT OR NEGLECTING THE LORD’S WORD
Scripture Reading: 1 Thes. 5:17-21; Col. 3:16-17; Eph. 5:18b-20
Prayer: O Lord, we thank and praise You from the depths of our heart for gathering us once again. Your Spirit dwells in us, and also Your word is in us. We truly offer up our worship to You from the depths of our being because You have drawn us to seek You and Your word. Cleanse us again with Your precious blood. We trust in Your presence and the moving of Your Spirit; we do not trust in what we can do. Lord, we pray that You bless every one of us. We can sow and plant, but we cannot give life to others or cause them to grow. Lord, only You can do these things. For this reason, we really look to You to take care of the needs of everyone, especially the newly saved ones, that we may be full of light within and have Your word as a base to know assuredly that we have been saved, and that every one of us may become living to flow out Your life from within us.
O Lord, give us the utterance and pour out Yourself again upon us so that Your thought, Your feeling, and Your rich word may dwell in us. May what we speak be only Yourself. We pray that You come to every one of us that we may gain You right now.
O Lord, we can never forget Your enemy, Satan, the evil one. We ask You to crush him, even crush him now from within us. We bind him in Your name; we plunder his goods and release those who are bound by him. O Lord, set every one of us free—from sin, from the bondage of the world, and from the oppression of Satan. O Lord, glorify Your own name. We give You all the honor and glory. In Your own lovely name. Amen.
ABIDING IN THE LORD BEING A MYSTERY THAT CAN BE EXPERIENCED
In the previous chapter we clearly saw that a living way for us to abide in the Lord is to pray unceasingly and to give thanks in all things. The phrase abiding in the Lord is truly a mystery to the Chinese, but I believe that from the previous chapters we all must have gained some understanding.
First of all, I just want to say that I am so grateful to be a disciple; I am grateful that my wife and I are a part of Gods great kingdom now. It’s been two years since my wife and I got baptized, and since then, God has done so many great things in our lives.
Why hast Thou come now to hinder us? For Thou hast come to hinder us, and Thou knowest that... We are working not with Thee but with him [Satan]... We took from him what Thou didst reject with scorn, that last gift he offered Thee, showing Thee all the kingdoms of the earth. We took from him Rome and the sword of Caesar, and proclaimed ourselves sole rulers of the earth... We shall triumph and shall be Caesars, and then we shall plan the universal happiness of
There is a specific meaning to race and how its role impacts society and shapes the social structures. Race is a concept that “symbolizes social conflicts and interests by referring to different types of human bodies” (Omi & Winant 55). In other words, Omi and Winant get down to the crux of the issue and assert that race is just an illusion. Race is merely seen as an ideological construct that is often unstable and consisting of decentered social meanings. This form of social construction attempts to explain the physical attributes of an individual but it is constantly transformed by political struggles. The rules of classifying race and of identity are embedded into society’s perception. Therefore, race becomes a common function for comprehending, explaining, and acting in the
While the belief in Jesus Christ as a divine being, God himself come to earth, is a core belief of Christianity, in his book, How Jesus Became God, author Bart Ehrman seeks to disprove this. Focusing on answering the question of who Jesus thought he was, Ehrman argues that Jesus himself did not believe he was a divine being, and he illustrates his point by discussing how divine beings were common around Jesus’s time, and by exploring biblical texts to back up his claim that Jesus saw himself as a messiah rather than God. With these arguments, Ehrman paints a clear picture of the time period, while using historical and biblical references to prove his point.
In the past, races were identified by the imposition of discrete boundaries upon continuous and often discordant biological variation. The concept of race is therefore a historical construct and not one that provides either valid classification or an explanatory process. Popular everyday awareness of race is transmitted from generation to generation through cultural learning. Attributing race to an individual or a population amounts to applying a social and cultural label that lacks scientific consensus and supporting data. While anthropologists continue to study how and why humans vary biologically, it is apparent that human populations differ from one another much less than do populations in other species because we use our cultural, rather than our physical differences to aid us in adapting to various environments.
Go tell Mankind, that there are Devils and Witches; and that tho those night-birds least appear where the Day-light of the Gospel comes, yet New-Engl. has had Exemples of their Existence and Operation; and that no only the Wigwams of Indians, where the pagan Powaws often raise their masters, in the shapes of Bears and Snakes and Fires, but the House of Christians, where our God has had his constant Worship, have undergone the Annoyance of Evil spirits. Go tell the world, What Prays can do beyond all Devils and Witches, and What it is that these Monsters love to do; and through the Demons in the Audience of several standers-by threatned much disgrace to thy Author, if he let thee come abroad, yet venture That, and in this way seek a just Revenge on Them for the Disturbance they have given to such as have called on the Name of God.
The beginnings of racial difference can be traced back to the Age of Exploration, during which England was expanding its trading routes and was highly involved with trade in Africa. The English traders noticed distinguishing differences between themselves and the African people, both in physical appearance and cultural primitiveness. It was not until the 18th century when the word race began to enter languages and vocabularies, and this idea of a difference between peoples was prodded further into existence through the work of Carolus Linnaeus. Linnaeus composed a list of subspecies of human beings based on racial differences. There were several other scientists, such Georges Cuvier and Charles Darwin, as who created subspecies of man. Social Darwinism, alluded to the concept that eventually one greater subspecies of man would prevail and be the most elite of all of human kind. These lists often categorized the order of species with the white, European man at the top of the list and the darker skinned, African man at the bottom. An example of a concept of categorization was the Great Chain of Being, through which all things, including man and the subspecies of man, are given ...
Although we often use race to classify, interact, and identify with various communities, there is a general consensus among scientists that racial differences do not exist. Indeed, biologists such as Joseph Graves state, "the measured amount of genetic variation in the human population is extremely small." Although we often ascribe genetics to the notion of race, there are no significant genetic differences between racial groups. Thus, there is no genetic basis for race. Our insistence and belief in the idea of race as biology, though, underlines the socially constructed nature of race. Racial groupings of people are based on perceived physical similarities (skin color, hair structure, physique, etc.), not genetic similarities. Nevertheless, we are inclined to equate physical similarities with genetics. Sociologists also use a temporality to argue that race is a social construct. The notion of race results from patterns from the signification of certain traits to different groups of people. However, these patterns (and societal notions of race) change over time. For example, the 20th century belief that "In vital capacity… the tendency of the Negro race has been downward" is certainly not commonplace among individuals today. Notions of race also differ across societies. Racial attitudes towards blacks, for example, are inherently different between the United States and Nigeria. These arguments all suggest that race is socially constructed. The lack of a universal notion of race means that it is not a natural, inherent, or scientific human trait. Rather, different societies use race to ordain their respective social
Broadly speaking, race is seen or is assumed to be a biologically driven set of boundaries that group and categorize people according to phenotypical similarities (e.g. skin color) (Pinderhughes, 1989; Root, 1998). The categorical classification of race can be traced back to the 16th century Linnaen system of human “races” where each race was believed to be of a distinct type or subspecies that included separate gene pools (Omi & Winant, 1994; Spickard, 1992; Smedley & Smedley, 2005). Race in the U.S. initially began as a general categorizing term, interchangeable with such terms as “type” or “species”. Over time, race began to morph into a term specifically referring to groups of people living in North America (i.e. European “Whites”, Native American “Indians”, and African “Negroes”). Race represented a new way to illustrate human difference as well as a way to socially structure society (Smedley & Smedley, 2005).
People have different physical characteristics, for example skin, hair or eye color, tall or short stature, and other ways evolution has adapted humans to be able to live and thrive in different areas of the world. For hundreds of years race has been a factor in how people have categorized each other. Race is defined as “a group of persons related by a common descent or heredity, characterized by supposedly distinctive and universal characteristics” (“Race”). Race is part of what makes us unique as individuals, however it has not been scientifically identified in the physical make up of what is known as the human genome. There is no scientific proof that gives race the ability to be a social construct, yet it has been a large part of American history and society in history and still has a presence today. Race is a reality.
The Lord's Prayer Our Father in heaven, Hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread.
...s Online - Harvard Theological Review - Abstract - The Social History of Satan, the "Intimate Enemy": A Preliminary Sketch. Harvard Theological Review, 1991. Web. 21 Mar. 2014.
The diction Satan employs in this sentence also illuminates his intense perturbation at the thought of acknowledging God as superior. Words such as “wrath or might”, “extort”, “bow and sue for grace”, and “terror of this arm” depict God as an overbearing tyrant (I.110-113). This conveys Satan’s despondency with God’s failure to reciprocally acknowledge Satan as God demands to be glorified.
THESIS: Scientists and other intellectuals recognize the modern concept of "race" as an artificial category that developed over the past five centuries due to encounters with non-European people. Even though people still attempt to organize humans into categories according to their race, these categories have been shown to have no scientific basis.
Mankind lives in a physical, tangible, material world, which is influenced by the invisible, spiritual world around us. The present day spiritual world is just as existent as it was nearly two thousand years ago when Lord Jesus walked the earth. The Old and New Testaments reveal to us from time to time, glimpses of this spiritual world. These Testaments provide us with the most factual information regarding Satan. Unfortunately, many have been misinformed and do not thoroughly comprehend Satan’s origin and what his purpose concerning the spiritual and physical world. There is a great need to set the record straight regarding Satan especially in our hour with its present angel craze, channeling and a belief in spirit guides. I chose Satan as the subject of my paper because I am one who does not thoroughly comprehend who he is and what his purpose in both the spiritual and physical world is.