Names of God

Psalm 8:9
O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!

Names are important as they reveal who we are.  They are a personal connection and unique part of us.  However, in the Bible names serve much more than a means of identification; they are declarations.

As we read through Scripture we learn God has many names and each one reveals Him in a different way.  Because these names describe God’s attributes, character and nature toward us, it is important that we know Him by His many names.  By learning these names of God we gain more understanding of who He is, which then increases our faith and trust in Him and expands our capacity to praise and worship Him in spirit and in truth.

“Great Is The Lord”

Psalm 48:1-2
1 Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised in the city of our God, in the mountain of his holiness.
2 Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, is mount Zion, on the sides of the north, the city of the great King.

Great Is The Lord

Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise
In the city of our God, the holy place
The joy of the whole earth

Great is the Lord in whom we have the victory
He aids us against the enemy
We bow down on our knees

The Need To Persevere

All of us battle discouragement at various times in our lives.  Perhaps things have not turned out as we had expected and with every step one takes, the road becomes more painful and difficult to travel.  While others around us receive answers to prayer, we seem to be the only one who is stuck in the desert and it looks as though God has passed us by.  When disappointment sets in and weariness takes hold, the heavy boot of discouragement then cruelly steps down in an effort to crush all of our hopes and dreams.

“It Is Well With My Soul”

Horatio Gates Spafford

Born: October 20, 1828, North Troy, New York.
Died of malaria: October 16, 1888, Jerusalem, Israel.

This song is one I often sing quietly to myself when going through difficult things and it always brings great comfort to me.  I had not known the powerful story behind this hymn until Kim from The Incredible Gift brought it to my attention a while ago.  Thank you Kim.

We often think, or at least I do, that those who minister to us deeply are individuals whose lives are relatively free from pain and suffering when in reality, the opposite is true.

If you are presently going through painful and difficult trials in your life, I pray these words strengthen and encourage you in the Lord today.  “It is in the quiet crucible of your personal private sufferings that your noblest dreams are born and God’s greatest gifts are given in compensation for what you’ve been through.”  Wintley Phipps

Forgotten Victims of The Holocaust

Holocaust Remembrance Day is tomorrow, April 19th, and many will take pause at this time to remember the six million Jews who perished.  However, seldom is it mentioned that an estimated five million additional people died at the hands of the cruel Nazi regime; many of them Christians.

Cindy By The Sea recently learned she may have family who are among this number; perhaps others of you do.

Remembering the forgotten victims of the Holocaust…

Why Do We Allow Non-Jewish Victims To Be Forgotten?

By Dr. Richard C. Lukas – Author of The Forgotten Holocaust
Source:  Holocaust Forgotten

When it comes to the history of World War II, the American media has developed a black hole concerning the genocidal policies of the Nazis against Christians. Everyone should know by now that not all of Nazism’s victims were Jews. Millions—we do not know and probably will never know the precise number—were Christians, mostly civilians selected for destruction for ethnic, religious, social, cultural, or political reasons. When Christians of that era are mentioned in the media, their victimization is either ignored, trivialized or distorted. Too often false generalizations about pandemic Christian collaboration with the Nazis against the Jews are made to deflect attention away from the huge numbers of Christian victims during the most destructive war in history.

“Grace Greater Than Our Sin”

Hymn History

GRACE is one of the hardest lessons for us to learn about God.  Some show their ignorance of God’s grace by working hard to be good enough.  They pay lip service to the idea of God’s grace but cannot stop trying to earn their own way.  Others display their misunderstanding of God’s grace by concluding it’s inaccessible to them.  They know they cannot be good enough for God, so they despair of ever having a relationship with Him.  It is this second group that Julia Johnston was writing for.  She knew how important it was to understand and experience the simple, yet difficult, truth of God’s gracious forgiveness. 

Johnston was a Sunday school teacher herself and became a noted expert in Sunday school curriculum.  Though she penned texts for more than five hundred hymns, this is the only one widely known.  It powerfully teaches this essential Christian truth: You cannot out-sin God’s grace.

Islam – The Fourth and Final Beast

Part 2 of 2

Daniel 7:7
After this I saw in the night visions, and behold a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly; and it had great iron teeth: it devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with the feet of it: and it was diverse from all the beasts that were before it; and it had ten horns.

I still remember the tingles that ran down my spine at the forming of the European Union.  This was it, wasn’t it?  Prophecy scholars were abuzz that we were witnessing the rebirth of the Roman Empire.  The pieces were coming together, or so it seemed, and we watched in wonder as more countries joined the EU, bringing it closer to that prophetically significant number of 10 kingdoms from which the Antichrist would arise.

But then the unexpected happened… The European Union did not stop at 10 nations.  Rather, it continued to grow and grow and grow.  Prophecy experts were left scrambling and various scenarios were put forth to explain this turn of events, but I found that none of them Biblically explained how Europe (Rome) still fit the Bible’s model for Antichrist’s kingdom which specifically mentions 10 kings, whereas the EU had now grown to 27 member states.  Did God forget to tell us something?

Instead of Europe rising as a dreadful and terrible beast with strong iron teeth, it is more aptly seen as toothless and is in fact being devoured by another kingdom which IS very dreadful, exceedingly strong and has iron teeth; Islam!