Articles – Page 8 – ThrivingBranch

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The Blessings and Promises for You (#4): Guarding Your Treasure

July 25, 2021July 25, 2021Leave a Comment

Welcome to part four of our series about the blessings and promises of God for you. So far, we’ve seen quite a lot, ranging from our foundation in Christ, to a greater awareness of the the totality of salvation.

Now, with this information in mind, we will explore how to guard and keep these things. Knowing about your blessings and promises is the first step, but even that doesn’t mean much if you are being robbed of them constantly.

Fortunately, the scriptures have us covered in this regard as well, and today we will be looking at how to effective keep and guard your treasure of blessings in Christ.

The Blessings and Promises of God for You (#3): Receiving Your Blessings

July 18, 2021July 18, 2021Leave a Comment

Welcome to part 3 of our series on the blessings and promises of God. In the previous segments, we looked at the foundation for the blessings, and why you can have confidence in them. We then proceeded to look at what it means to “know” that you are blessed from a spiritual perspective.

Today we will explore how your blessings come, and how to receive them into your life. While this information is presented in scripture simply, it can be surprisingly challenging to implement for many believers in daily life.

The Blessings and Promises of God for You (#2): Knowing What’s Yours

July 11, 2021June 13, 2021Leave a Comment

Welcome back to part of our series looking at the blessings and promises of God.

In the introductory segment last week, we began by looking at the foundation of why you can be sure of your blessings in Christ. We also ended that video with an encouragement to start building your own personalized list of blessings.

Today we will continue from where we paused last week, and examine some blessings from the perspective of what it means to “know” them on a personal level.

The Blessings and Promises of God for You (#1): Certainty in Christ

July 4, 2021June 13, 2021Leave a Comment

The blessings and promises of God can be a touchy subject for some people. There are various ideas regarding God’s blessings ranging from saying they don’t exist at all today, to doctrines saying that God’s blessings are entirely ethereal, or claiming that extreme personal sacrifice and pain is necessary to attain them.

Amid the confusion, it’s easy to become lost and frustrated, and to want to simply give up on the entire topic of blessings. However, God is not the author of confusion, and the scriptures do not leave this topic clouded.

In this series we will be examining the blessings and promises of God available to us through Jesus Christ, how they are give, and how we receive them.

Join me in this introductory segment today, as we explore the foundation of why blessings and promises available to us in Christ.

How Jesus Conquered Your Sin (#6): Freed Completely

June 6, 2021April 19, 2021Leave a Comment

Welcome to the sixth and final part of our series on how Jesus has conquered your sin. Having laid the complete foundation from the previous five weeks, we are now ready to deal with the aspect of victory in Christ that most people get distracted with: your actions.

As I’ve alluded to in previous studies, it’s incredibly easy to become completely focused on your actions, to the exclusion of all else— including Jesus Christ.

Many Christians become myopic regarding their works, and use their works as a litmus test to judge their standing and the standing of others towards God. This kind of thinking opens the door to all manner of confusion and doubt, because it gets a person looking at themself rather than Jesus.

Today we will be examining how Jesus has conquered your sin, including sinful actions, through the redemption of Christ and the power of His Spirit in grace.

How Jesus Conquered Your Sin (#5): The Outward Demonstration

May 30, 2021April 12, 2021Leave a Comment

Welcome to the fifth part in our series on how Jesus has conquered your sin. It’s been quite a journey over the past month, as we’ve seen a number of different aspects on the victory over sin which Jesus has given to us.

Today we are going to look at the the outward demonstration of salvation, the things that people can see. People often become overly focused on that external, which can become a trap, but as we apply the principles of the previous parts of this series, along with what we will see today, it will bring clarity.

How Jesus Conquered Your Sin (#4): Total Salvation

May 23, 2021April 5, 2021Leave a Comment

Welcome back to part four of our series on how Jesus has conquered your sin. In the previous three parts, we’ve seen what sin is, and how it goes deeper than outward actions. We Laos saw how Jesus changes our spiritual identity through His sacrifice and the indwelling of His Spirit.

Then, last week, we saw how the Holy Spirit convinces us of our righteousness in Christ, confirming the status of our cleansed conscience— and that in Christ our conscience is free from the guilt, shame and condemnation of our old identity, and rightly focused on Jesus Christ.

Now, today, we will be focusing on the most crucial aspect of Jesus conquering sin, the Salvation, and what it means from a practical standpoint of daily life.

How Jesus Conquered Your Sin (#3): The Cleansing of Conscience

May 16, 2021March 27, 2021Leave a Comment

Welcome back again to the third-part of our series on how Jesus has conquered your sin. So far we’ve seen some powerful truths regarding how sin is far deeper than actions that we commit, but it is an identity. Likewise, righteousness is also an identity. We also began to examine how Jesus changed our identity from sin to righteousness, and has cleansed us and given us a good and clean conscience.

Today, we are going to delve deeper into the cleansing of our conscience by Jesus Christ, and what a good conscience truly means.

How Jesus Conquered Your Sin (#2): Changing the Tree

May 9, 2021March 21, 2021Leave a Comment

Welcome back to the second part of our series on how Jesus has conquered your sin. Last week we saw how sin is not primary a behavior or an action, but that sin actually goes much deeper; sin is an identity.

The basic understanding of identity is crucial to comprehending what sin is, and how to conquer it. This is something that I’m quite familiar with, as I lived on both sides of the spiritual isle. I struggled against sin for many years, going as far as to keep a daily log and diary of my sin and failure.

In this series, we are looking at a different perspective, and another way of conquering sin; a way not based on our efforts, but based on the finished work of Jesus Christ.

How Jesus Conquered Your Sin (#1) — The Nature of Sin

May 2, 2021March 13, 2021Leave a Comment

When discussing Grace, the topic of sin usually follows closely behind. It is difficult people to comprehend their new life in Christ, when sinful behaviors are prominently in view. This struggle leads many to embark on a war against sin; with the primary markers being:

– Focusing on sin and behavior
– Feelings of fear, doubt, and condemnation
– Often consumed with guilt and unworthiness

Those of you that are familiar with my testimony, know that I lived that way for many years. I was focused so greatly on my sin that I kept a daily record of each sinful action. Every day I felt worse, more condemned, and further away from God. And the more I tried to conquer sin, the more I failed, and deeper into the pit I went.

So what does this all mean? Is sin an unconquerable foe? Not at all! What I want to share with you today is a different perspective, on how sin can be conquered, and has been conquered in Christ.

Article previews are sorted by date (most recent first). Click on a title to read the full version.

Article previews are sorted by date (most recent first).
Click on a title to read the full version.