The White Stone Zone

3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. (Ephesians 1) The believer in the gospel of Jesus Christ has much to be thankful for even if circumstantially everything seems to be falling apart. Ephesians says that we have already been blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ, and then he goes on to outline these blessings. Let's take a look: 1. We have been made holy and blameless We have been made holy and blameless in God's sight: " 4 For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight." We all have an idea in our minds of what it means to act holy, but what does it mean that we have been made holy? Hebrews 10 tells us that "we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all." It would not be a spiritual blessing if we were told we have to act holy, but i...

When I was growing up, being a man was very important to me. I remember as a very young boy hearing my parents’ Four Seasons record singing, “"Walk Like a Man",” and thinking, “I want to be a man...I am going to be tough.” I grew up around football, booze, war heroes and a dad that worked hard labor every day. Dad was my first hero. I thought he could do anything. He was athletic, hard working, and clean cut. My earliest memory is my dad crawling on his knees to play with me. Sometimes we would play football, and I would have to run around him. He would grab me with one hand and lift me off the ground. We would laugh, and I knew I was loved. I remember my mom had to pick him up somewhere, and the street was deserted, and he took off running, like he was racing the car, and I thought he ran so fast, almost superhuman. General George Patton was my next hero, the first man I imitated. I remember walking the beach with my cousins, quoting Old Blood and Guts by cussing up...

24 "Then the man who had received the one talent came. 'Master,' he said, 'I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. 25 So I was afraid and went out and hid your talent in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.' Jesus tells a parable in chapter 25 of Matthew about the talents. A leader gives three men talents and tells them to put it to use. After a long time, the leader comes back and wants to see what the men do with the talent. The first two put the talents to use and got a return. The third came with the following report. "I was afraid....." Fear. If you read the verse, the servant believed something about the master that was not true. There is nothing in the parable that says the master was a hard man. He actually accused the Master of stealing, and again, there is nothing in the parable that says the Master was the way the servant portrayed him. In fact, he wa...

26 From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. 27 God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. 28 'For in him we live and move and have our being.' (Acts 17) I moved to Florida 16 1/2 years ago; I was born and raised in NJ; outside of a 3 month stay in Central America, I spent my whole life there, even attending college at Kean. God came crashing into my life n 1983, and I responded to Him by becoming religious; it put me in bondage rather than setting me free. I married into a co-dependent relationship and eventually left NJ for Florida. I was running from a failed marriage and the tension that it caused with mom, dad, sister and brother. I was running from my failed marriage, my sense of failure, and myself...the only thing was i brought my failed marriage and me w...

" Those who wait on the Lord will renew their strength; they will mount up on wings as eagles." Romans chapter 7 records Paul's struggle and misery of trying to live the Christian Life in his own strength by trying to obey the law. He found that this approach of trying to "live for God" brought death, misery and made him feel like a prisoner. The Holy Spirit is not mentioned once in Romans 7, and by the end of Romans 7, Paul cries out, "Oh wretched man that I am, who will rescue me from this body of death!" Paul had come to an end of himself; his resources, his coping strategies and his facade. (Step 1) Paul answers the question in the next verse: "Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord."(Step 2) Notice that Paul did not say, "what church, what book, what 7 point plan will rescue me". He asked "who?" We are personal beings and external things like a church organization, a self help book, or even God...

"25 Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit." (Gal. 5) The lifestyle of every believer is a dependence on the Spirit of God. Since we are new creations in Christ, and our true identity lives, moves and has its very being in God, it is not something we make happen--we live by he Spirit. Keeping in step with the Spirit is a process of each child of God learningto follow the leadership of the Holy Spirit. Divine love is initiating, and God has always initiated a relationship with us. Jesus brought the disciples into the upper room to initiate a warm, intimate interface where He promised to send the Holy Spirit. He said that the Holy Spirit wold comfort us, lead us into all truth, and testify of Jesus. So keeping in step with the Spirit is a faith walk. Sometimes we fall behind like a little child. I teach at the same school my daughter attends, and every morning we walk in together; sometimes she falls behind, and when i look back, sometimes s...

16So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. 17Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! (2. Cor. 5) The New Creation is you, believer in Jesus Christ; the New Creation is me; The New Creation is the spiritual reality that a believer in Jesus Christ has been made alive spiritually, and this brand new person is joined to Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit inseparably. The problem with New Creation is that it lives in the same sin cursed body in a sin cursed world with the selfish habits and bent toward self centeredness the Bible calls the flesh. Now, Jesus told the Pharisees of his day that "you belong to your father, the devil. It is safe to say that the nature of our flesh is the nature of the devil. Now, just as satan attacked God's creation right away, so, the flesh attacks the New Creation. Yes, that is the enemy within. Sata...