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3 Great Miracles of the Christian Life: Off to War — Spiritual Battle
This is the 2nd part of The Three Great Miracle of the Christian Life. Part 1 “New Creatures in Christ” is here. So accepting Christ is the first of the great miracles of Christian faith. The second one – – and this may sound a little surprising – – is war. All out, violent, life-and-death spiritual battle. Peter – you know, the Rock on which God built the Church — wrote, “Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” (1 Peter 5:8) It doesn’t do any good to pretend that you’re not in the thick of it. If you…
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3 Great Miracles of the Christian Life: New Creatures in Christ
This is Part 1 of The Three Great Miracles of the Christian Life. Part 2 “Off to War: Spiritual Battle” is here. The Christian life is full of times and seasons that can feel very ordinary. We have a lot of time to practice the quality of perseverance, or as I prefer to call it, the utter slog. Don’t get me wrong. We absolutely grow in those times. But something else is true too, a big fat miracle: we are new creatures in Christ. Just because the Christian life sometimes feels ordinary does not make it so. Christianity is the glittering banquet hall, the castle, the royal procession, the treasure! Why…
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The Bathroom Prayer Circle
I teach the women’s Bible study group at my church and have for over 10 years. We have prayed for each other weekly during all that time and have seen miracles. But there is one recent miracle that I will never forget. Alice is one of our long-time members. A delightful, feisty, funny, fighting daughter of God. She’s in her 80s but always had great physical health and is still a caretaker for the sick. But then she got sick with severe altitude sickness — which is ironic since she’s lived in the mountains for years. One of her symptoms is severe nosebleeds. A couple of Tuesdays ago she came…