*Transcript of the Sermon Pastor Chris preached on John 19:25-30...
Everyone deals with guilt. Why? When is guilt healthy and when is guilt harmful? Here is a Bible Study on the issue:...
This has been transferred from a PowerPoint Presentation Pastor Chris Durkin gave at Colts Neck Community Church. If you are interested in receiving a copy of the presentation, please email Chris@coltsneckchurch.com. Thank you! ...
Summary Notes from Pastor Chris' sermon, "Its Time to Get Out of the Judge's Chair," Romans 2:1-11....
As the summer ends and the school year begins, the Bible gives us principles to experience less stress and know more peace....
What is Peace? "What does the gospel of God offer us? If we say “the peace of God,” none will demur - but will everyone understand? The use of right words does not guarantee right thoughts. Too often the peace of God is thought of as if it were essentially a feeling of inner tranquility, happy and carefree, springing from knowledge that God will shield one from life’s hardest knocks. But this is a misrepresentation, for, on the one hand, God does not featherbed his children in this way, and anyone who thinks he does is in for a shock, and, on the other hand, that which is basic and essential to the real peace of God does not come into this concept at all. The truth is... that God’s peace brings us two things: both power to face and live with our own badness and failings, and also contentment under “the slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune"... The peace of God is first and foremost peace with God; it is the state of affairs in which God, instead of being against us, is for us... The peace of God, then, primarily and fundamentally, is a new relationship of forgiveness and acceptance - and the source from which it flows is propitiation. When Jesus came to his disciples in the upper room at evening on his resurrection day, he said, “Peace be with you”; and when he had said that, “he showed unto them his hands and side” (John 20:19-20). Why did he do that? Not just to establish his identity, but to remind them of the propitiatory death on the cross whereby he had made peace with his Father for them. Having suffered in their place, as their substitute, to make peace for them, he now came in his risen power to bring that peace to them. “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29). It is here, in the recognition that, whereas we are by nature at odds with God, and God with us, Jesus has made “peace through his blood shed on the cross” (Col. 1:20), that is where true knowledge of the peace of God begins." *Excerpt taken from J.I. Packer & Mark Dever “In my place condemned He stood” pages 48-49 ...
QUOTE: Help me, Lord, to remember that religion is not to be confined to the church or closet, nor exercised only in prayer and meditation, but that everywhere I am in Thy presence. -Susanna Wesley, mother of John and Charles Wesley Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I mak...
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"Is not my word like fire, declares the Lord, and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces?" -Jeremiah 23:9 God's Word is like a burning crucible, purifying us of worldly and unholy dross. God's Word is also like a hammer, demolishing mental strongholds as it renews our mind and builds us up. If God's Word has lost its fire and its power in your ...
Keep ReadingMATTHEW 27:45-46 Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, "Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?" that is, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" At the beginning of Jesus' public ministry in the Gospel of Matthew we behold God the Father's affection for Jesus in his b...
Keep Reading Everyone deals with guilt. Why? When is guilt healthy and when is guilt harmful? Here is a Bible Study on the issue:...
Keep Reading This has been transferred from a PowerPoint Presentation Pastor Chris Durkin gave at Colts Neck Community Church. If you are interested in receiving a copy of the presentation, please email Chris@coltsneckchurch.com. Thank you! ...
Keep Reading"And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors." (Matthew 6:12) By Pastor Chris Durkin At the time of writing this devotional, the current national debt of the United States of America is over 20 trillion dollars. The only reason twenty is shocking in this number is because of the word that follows it trillion. There are thirteen zeros following the t...
Keep ReadingThe first of eight devotionals on Jesus' prayer in Matthew 6:9-13...
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In the busyness of our life we are bombarded by information on a daily basis. Through constant advertisements, 24-hour news cycle, the incessant beeping of our smart phones, everything claims to be urgent. Today, as we study God's infallible and immutable Word, we are going to hear about what is most urgent. It will all come down to two categories: Death in Adam or Life in...
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