This lesson is a character study of the Apostle Peter. There is something that maybe in our traditions we may not always do a terrific job at. That is pointing out and reminding ourselves and helping ourselves to remember that the people we read about in the Bible, in the Old Testament and in the New Testament were, real people. They were very much like ourselves, and not very much different than ourselves. In this lesson I want us to think about Peter, I want us to really put ourselves in the shoes of Peter. Remember he was a very real person!  

In this lesson brother Williamson expounds on the issues facing Christians and social media. Is it good, is it bad? What image are you portraying, is it the light of Christ or the the image of worldliness? There are many things to think about before you hit “Like”, and before you hit “post”.

In what way does baptism save us and in what way does it not save us.  we may rattle off that fact and it is absolutely scriptural from 1 Peter 3:21 where Peter says “baptism now saves us” . At the same time in some ways we know that the water itself doesn’t do anything for us and the action itself is not something that we can earn anything.  And some of it circles around this whole debate about the concept of faith and works and we’ve touched on that a little bit too. I’m not going to delve deeply into that discussion though it figures into what I do want to talk about. I want to talk about the specific word that is used in some of these verses and that word is justified. We sometimes gloss over this word and we may replace it with something else but this is the word is used in some of these passages for example Romans 3 and 4 which we are going to read. Understanding this word I think can be helpful for us. It is something that when I dug into it and tried to find out what it means, and what the import of its meaning is and our understanding of the new testament I found some things I hadn’t previously heard, or previously understood, or the points hadn’t been made to me so hopefully you find these interesting and helpful in understanding its concept. So, what does it mean to be justified?

Emotion in Christianity can be a touchy subject. There has been a lot of energy has been spent and expended in trying to train us out of having our emotions being a part of our Christianity. There are a lot of good reasons for that, very valid reasons that say, you need to keep your emotions out of your religion. However, for all of the reasons that say that is a good thing, to over react to, to over apply that, to take it completely out our religion, to take it completely out of our Christianity, and to take it out of our relationship with God is not what the scripture asks us to do. In this lesson we will examine what emotion is not, what emotion is and show by the scripture how it belongs in our worship. We will begin by reading Mark 12 verse 30 which reads, “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ [a]This is the first commandment.”  Let us begin…

In this lesson brother Matt will help us learn how not to sin. His premise it that when we do sin, one of two conditions exist. Either we know what we are doing is wrong, and we lie to ourselves thinking it is ok, therefore our sin is willful, or we don’t know what we did was wrong, but it is still sin. But most often the later is the case. Listen as he outlines examples from the scriptures and offers directions to help us all live godly lives…