I will exalt you, my God the King;
I will praise your name for ever and ever. Every day I will praise you
and extol your name for ever and ever. Psalm 145
I will exalt you, my God the King;
I will praise your name for ever and ever. Every day I will praise you
and extol your name for ever and ever. Psalm 145
During this most wonderful time of the year, let us turn our hearts upward as we focus on the glorious majesty of our God. This month I want to provide you with a daily attribute of the Lord on which to meditate throughout your day. May this give your heart a reason to rejoice and your mind an opportunity to praise His glorious name throughout the holiday season.
For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given,
and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
7 Of the greatness of his government and peace
there will be no end.
He will reign on David’s throne
and over his kingdom,
establishing and upholding it
with justice and righteousness
from that time on and forever.
The zeal of the Lord Almighty
will accomplish this. Isaiah 9:6-7
I hope you have a wonderful Holy-Day season. May these verses lift your spirits and turn your heart toward Almighty God. Starting on Dec 26, I will begin posting specific attributes we see in Jesus, as we worship Emanuel, God with us.
Follow me on Instagram as I provide a colorful reminder of these daily attributes – @karolladd
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The holidays are a time of cheer and joy as we gather around the table and enjoy festive food and delightful fellowship – right? At least that’s the way it looks on Instagram, but the reality is that sometimes the holidays can be hard. There may be strained relationships and different ways of viewing life, politics and God. So how do you make it through both Thanksgiving and Christmas with more love and less tension?
Recently, I read the following passage from the apostle Peter. Although written many years ago, these words seem to be a wonderful antidote to some of the rough spots in relationships. Think about how you can apply these words.
Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms. If anyone speaks, they should do so as one who speaks the very words of God. If anyone serves, they should do so with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen.
Just think if we followed these few positive principles penned by Peter. Simply put:
I love how Peter calls us “faithful stewards of God’s grace.” That’s what we should be! We ought to be conduits of His love and grace with every person we encounter, whether it is the person next to us in line or the person sitting next to us at the dinner table. Since we have received God’s grace, then by the power of His Spirit within us, we can freely reflect His grace toward others.
God is glorified when we practice these things. Ultimately isn’t that what the holidays are about anyway? It’s not about us, rather it’s about celebrating the goodness of God and glorifying Him. Our fervent love for one another shines the light on Him and the powerful, grace-filled work He has done in our lives. May this season be filled with forgiveness, grace and love as we honor Him in what we say and do!
Want to share a holiday gift that focuses on God and His glorious attributes? Check out this month’s $5 special, Pursuing God in the Quiet Places. Limit 10 per household. Click Here for more info.
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If I challenged you to cut out complaining and arguing from your life for an entire week, could you do it? What about for a month? Now we are getting a little difficult. What if I challenged you to stop complaining and arguing for the rest of your life? Wait! Don’t stop reading this blog! I’m serious. Let’s just take a look at the possibilities here. The apostle Paul actually wrote to the Philippians that they should do “everything without complaining, grumbling or arguing.”
Now perhaps you are thinking, Aren’t there times when we need to stand up for ourselves? Surely God doesn’t intend for us to never talk about our difficulties. Yes, there is a time and a place for wisely and respectfully sharing our concerns, but the bigger issue we need to consider is how do we handle life when it doesn’t go our way. Here’s what Paul wrote:
Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life. Philippians 2:14- 15.
Paul is encouraging us to shed some bad habits, so that we may shine Christ’s light more brightly in this dark world. Often complaining and grumbling are born out of pride, anger or a lack of faith. We think we know what is best and when things don’t go as planned, we tend to get our feathers ruffled. Sometimes issues of unforgiveness or bitterness are lingering in our heart, causing us to complain and argue.
Is it really possible to live without grumbling? To be honest, we all have a tendency to grumble and complain – it is our basic human nature. But God can do a mighty work in our lives through the power of His spirit within us. He can transform our grumbly heart into a grateful one. Here are three ideas to put into practice the next time you feel a need to complain.
Every opportunity to complain is actually an opportunity to grow in our faith and trust in the Lord. Ultimately, when we truly believe God loves us and has a good purpose for our lives, then grumbling, whining and bickering tend to dissipate. May we be bright shining lights as we show an unbelieving world that we trust a big God.
This is an excerpt from my book, A Woman’s Passionate Pursuit of God. Click the link below for more information about the book and DVD based on Philippians. https://positivewomanconnection.com/books/#biblestudy
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With Christmas decorations crowding the aisles of most stores, it’s sometimes hard to focus on the beauty of the Thanksgiving season. I believe a heart filled with thankfulness is one of the best ways to prepare us for the Christmas season. It’s not about how we decorate on the outside that matters, it’s what is happening on the inside that really makes the holiday season beautiful.
Personally, I have found that an attitude of thankfulness changes the way I handle difficulties and walk through challenges. Every morning I take a moment to write down at least five blessings that happened over the last 24 hours. Sometimes it’s easy, but to be honest, there are days that I have to think hard about those things for which I can be grateful. The practice is a great discipline that helps me start my day with a positive perspective. I highly recommend it!
What are the benefits of being thankful? Here’s 30 reasons to ponder – one for each day this month!
“Give thanks to the Lord for he is good, his love endures forever” Psalm 118:29
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This is the last entry in our series on “How Did We Get The Bible?” It has been fascinating to see how God used the Jewish scribes to accurately preserve the Old Testament, and God’s hand in preserving the New Testament as well. It is estimated that between 4000 and 6000 handwritten copies of the Greek New Testament have been discovered today, not to mention thousands in other languages. Some of these are entire Bibles, while others are books or pages. Some of the oldest fragments can be dated back to as far as AD 130. So the question is, how close are they to the Bible we have in our hands today?
Bible scholars and experts who have examined these ancient manuscripts conclude that although there are variations between some of the manuscripts, the vast majority of the variations are relatively insignificant, such as updated spellings, syntax, and misspellings that do not affect the original content. Only five variations have ever caused a concern, and each of these is typically noted in your Bible footnotes. And no major doctrine is in dispute in any of these variations. (The passages are Mark 16:9-20, Luke 22:20, 43-44, 23:24, and John 7:53-8:11.) Nonetheless, Bible scholars agree that what we have in our Bibles today contains in essence the same content as the early manuscripts written almost 2000 years ago.
It is exciting to see how God continues to confirm the accuracy of His Word even in modern times. From 1896 to 1906 numerous papyri manuscripts were discovered in Egypt and other sites. Papyrus comes from a river plant called cyperus papyrus and was specially processed to be used as a durable writing material by the ancient Egyptians. Many of the papyri discoveries contain portions of the New Testament, and these fragments have been helpful in confirming the text of other biblical manuscripts and provide information about the historical context of the New Testament.
The oldest existing New Testament fragment is the John Ryland Papyrus, which dates to AD 125 to 150. One of the neat things about this fragment is that is lets us know that the Gospel of John was read in Egypt (far from where it was written in Asia minor) within 50 years of John’s writing of it. The Chester Beatty papyri, dating to about AD 200, are almost as old as the John Ryland Papyrus and are more extensive. They include portions of the Gospels and the book of Acts, the letters of Paul including Hebrews, and the book of Revelation.
Discoveries for both the Old and New Testament continue to unfold. In May of 1975, workmen making repairs in St Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai Desert discovered a walled-up room containing 70 boxes with some 3000 manuscripts. Many were nonbiblical, but there were a few leaves and fragments from Codex Sinaiticus among the discoveries. Codex Sinaiticus (originally found in 1844 by Constantin von Tischendorf) is the oldest complete copy of the New Testament, although only portions of the Old Testament survived—because monks used pages from the manuscript to light their fires in the 1800s! The Codex Sinaiticus dates back to AD 350. The word codex means “book.” The Christians were some of the earliest writers to use the form of a book instead of scrolls. This is one case where Christians were on the cutting edge of technology!
More recently, in the summer of 2007, a team from the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (based in Dallas, Texas) traveled to the National Archive in Tirana, Albania, hoping to photograph 13 biblical manuscripts (including some dating back to the sixth century). Not only did they find the 13 manuscripts that they were looking for, but they also discovered 17 other manuscripts that were thought to be lost. They also found an additional 17 that were previously unknown to the scholarly community. They continue to discover more manuscripts all the time.* The accuracy of God’s Word continues to be strengthened and confirmed with each new discovery.
As more and more biblical manuscripts are discovered, scholars are able to continue to learn more about the biblical text we study. Biblical and classical scholar Frederic Kenyon wrote, “It is reassuring at the end to find that the general result of all these discoveries and all this study is to strengthen the proof of the authenticity of the Scriptures, and our conviction that we have in our hands, in substantial integrity, the veritable Word of God.”** My friend, if we know that this Bible we have now contains the very words of God, shouldn’t we be willing to build our whole lives on it? How can we ignore or brush aside the holy words of Almighty God? Our response to knowing the accuracy of the Scriptures can be nothing less than to listen, learn, and obey.
* You can view some of their latest discoveries online at www.CSNTM.org. I encourage you to visit their website and see some of the photographs of early manuscripts. It’s fascinating!
** Frederic Kenyon, The Story of the Bible (London: John Murray Publishers, 1935), p. 113.
This series is an excerpt from my book, Becoming a Woman of the Word – Knowing, Loving and Living the Bible. For the next few weeks I am offering the book as our $5 special for the month. Click Here for more details.
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