SPCC Blog for Bryan tagged 'devotional-life'

How to fight for assurance that you are saved.

bryan@spcc-cma.org — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 01:00:00 +0100

Do you ever doubt your salvation? Do you ever wonder, "Am I real or am I just going through the motions?--am I really born again?" I do. It may not be comforting to you for you to hear a pastor say that.

But I read my bible and find warning after warning about not deceiving yourself. I remember an exerpt from a book by Jonathan Edwards that scared the daylights out of me: Are you saved or do the powers of your imagination have you convinced that you are?

My aim h [...]

Being a Discerning Movie Watcher

bryan@spcc-cma.org — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 01:00:00 +0100

A while back a friend of mine at another church posted an article on this important topic of being a discerning partaker of films. Read it...it is good. One of the sites he recommends is incredibly helpful. It is called Kids in Mind and is really helpful on telling you why a movie was rated the way it was. I will issue this warning, it does describe in candid detail the scenes in question.

What I like about this site and the other sites Ryan recommends in his blog is that [...]

Sin no more...

bryan@spcc-cma.org — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 01:00:00 +0100

After writing what I did last night, I awoke to read these short thoughts by John Piper on the Desiring God website .

What also came to mind was the verse in Mark 9:43 where Jesus says: "If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off."

Sin is serious, and the thoughts that Piper shares should give us not simply hope to cope with the problem, but joyful confidence to want to.

Why I cherish and despise community

bryan@spcc-cma.org — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 01:00:00 +0100

In Romans chapter 7, Paul talks about the division he feels in himself as a Christian. At one point he says (vv 22-23), "For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members."

On one hand there is his mind that delights in the Word, but his flesh yearns to sin. I was thinking about this this evening when thinking about the community that [...]

Delightful and Dangerous Disruptions

bryan@spcc-cma.org — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 01:00:00 +0100

With summer around the corner, it won't be long until our routines are disrupted. School is out. The sun is out. There are vacations to take. Things get turned upside down for awhile. How do we keep our faith right side up in the midst of these temporary disruptions?

There is both a delight and a danger in disruption.

DELIGHT
The delight is that some of what gets disrupted is the steady stream of things to do that seem to control our lives. Kid's schedules [...]