Jonathan Celaya > Recent Status Updates

"We do not drift into spiritual life; we do not drift into disciplined prayer. We will not grow in prayer unless we plan to pray."

This book is great so far!

Can't get enough of this book.. Challenging and encouraging in so many way. Read over this first section twice.

Direction 3: When you understand what it is in point of practice that the preacher
driveth at, observe especially the uses and the moving38 reasons, and plead them
with your own hearts; and let conscience be preaching over all that the minister
preacheth to you. (4.3)

The understanding and memory are but the passage to the heart, and the practice
is but the expression of the heart; therefore how to work upon the heart is the
principal business.

[Do] not [allow] in thoughts or drowsy negligence to hinder your attention. If a drowsy, careless preacher be bad, a drowsy, careless hearer is no good. Saith Moses, “Set your hearts unto all the words which I testify among you this day…For it is not a vain thing for you; because it is your life." (Deu 32:46-47)

"1) that you hear with understanding, 2) that you
remember what you hear, 3) that you be duly affected with it, and 4) that you
sincerely practice it"

The
ineffable joy of forgiving grace will swallow up all sorrow, and the
beauty of Christ will blind us to anything other than the splendor of
who he is and what he has, by grace, accomplished on our behalf.

Second, we must not be afraid that, with the exposure and evaluation
of our deeds, regret and remorse will spoil the bliss of heaven. If
there be tears of grief for opportunities squandered, or tears of shame
for sins committed, the Lord will wipe them away (Rev. 20:4a).

"Two closing comments are in order. First, our deeds do not determine
our salvation but demonstrate it. They are not the root of our
standing with God but the fruit of it, a standing already attained by
faith alone in Christ alone. The visible evidence of an invisible faith is the good deeds that will be made known at the judgment seat of Christ."

final manifestation
of his rule to bring in the new age, God has manifested his rule,
his Kingdom, to bring men in advance of the eschatological era the
blessings of his redemptive reign.3

Before the eschatological appearing of God’s Kingdom at the end of
the age, God’s Kingdom has become dynamically active among men
in Jesus’ person and mission. The Kingdom in this age is not merely
the abstract concept of God’s universal rule to which men must submit;
it is rather a dynamic power at work among men.  .  .  . Before
the apocalyptic coming of God’s Kingdom and the final manifestation

in the new heaven and new earth, the home of the righteousness. On that day the church will be presented faultless before God by the obedience, suffering and triumph of Christ, all sin purged and its wretched effects forever banished. God will be all in all and his people will be enthralled by the immediacy of his ineffable holiness, and everything will be to the praise of his glorious grace.

We believe in the personal, glorious, and bodily return of our Lord Jesus Christ with his holy angels, when he will be consummated. We believe in the bodily resurrection of both the just and the unjust - the unjust to judgment and eternal conscious punishment in hell, as our Lord himself taught, and the just to eternal blessedness in the presence of him who sits on the throne and of the Lamb, in the new heaven and

"Every fact in this world, the God of the Bible claims, has His stamp indelibly engraved upon it."

So true is this, that I propose to argue that unless God is back of everything, you cannot find meaning in anything.