#Power of the Gospel

[madewithonerib]

3.] Success & Sex-Oriented Culture

Over top of Corinth was a mountain & on the top of the mountain was a Temple of Aphrodite; and every single night 1K Temple prostitutes came on down into the city to ply their wares.

     It was the most success-oriented, & sex-      obsessed city, these were corinthianizers      no rules. Nobody came to Corinth to live      —nobody came there to have a life.

     They came to make it, they came to do

Now if you don't see any parallels between Corinth & NYC—you're a tourist all right, and I'm glad you're here. But now you know

This is absolutely true, you go to other cities of this country, you go to Boston or Philadelphia, there's a tradition, there's an aristocracy.

The people go there to live.

People don't come to New York to live.

     People come here to make it, they come      here to do. When Paul came to Corinth he      was beaten, he had a bad time in Athens      and he'd been beaten up actually almost      within an inch of his life in Philippi.

And he was so low that GOD had to come to him in Acts 18:9 & particularly appear to him & say I am going to show you that I'm still with you & I'm going to do a major work. I'm going to plant a Church in the biggest baddest wooliest city in the world.

………………………………………………………………… I'm going to show you the Gospel can change anybody. …………………………………………………………………

   •  I am going to give you a bunch of converts.    •  I'm going to give you a Church in this place

3.1] The Power of the Gospel

The last place in the world you'd think people would turn to the LORD. I'm going to I'm going to take Corinthianizers and you know in the early part of this book 1 Corinthians, Paul writes something that's pretty interesting..

Paul was extremely amazed.

     I think the Church at Corinth was a unique      Church in his Ministry — because it was a      sign to him the Gospel can change anybody

And at one point he writes in CH6 & he's making a long list: adulterers, idol worshipers, homosexual, prostitutes, greedy thieves, drunkards, & then he says “such were many of you”

     but you were sanctified, you were      justified by the Name of our LORD      JESUS CHRIST & in the SPIRIT of our      GOD & FATHER.

What Paul is saying is the Corinthian Christians are not bourgeois, straight arrow moral people—these were people who had done every [sinful] thing.

     They had been everywhere & when they      became Christians, the Corinthian Church      was unique in Paul's Ministry—because      when corinthianizers become Christians

     When this kind of person becomes a      Christian, you get one of the oddest      things & that is Churches that are more      brilliant than the other Churches

     And more troubled, & that's exactly      what you have in Corinth—& if you      want to understand that..

All you have to do is look at CH 13:1-3, which you have printed there.

You've got a picture of the Corinthian Church.

Better Than Miracles P1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 | Timothy J. Keller [1 Corinthians 13:1-3]

[bajoop-sheeb]

Meditation by Yoong Bae

[raks777]

Cease Worrying! God's Got You

[woobosco]

Afro Culture (My culture)

@woobosco

[apenitentialprayer]

In Christ, YHWH Himself Becomes the Accursed One, by Christopher Powers.

According to the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, nothing good happens to Jesus once he is put on the cross. All the signs are against him. He has been mocked, and the mockers have asked for a sign that he is the Son of God. Well, the sign has been given. Here is the sign that Jesus is the Son of God: darkness. God has pulled back.

Reader, do not miss the point. Everything turns against Jesus: the cosmos, the political world, his compatriots, his fellow religionists, his chosen companions, nature itself. There is no mercy. There is no grace. There is not even a fragrant breeze.

And have you ever thought about this? There is no silence.

One might hope to come to one's death in peace, to have a calmness and quiet about you within which you could compose yourself to face your end. Jesus had no peace. Not only did he have the pain from the nails and the agony of suffocation; he had the horror of screams. A crucifixion scene is a scene of screaming. Raymond Brown says that crucifixions were "particularly gruesome" because of "the screams of rage and pain, the wild curses and the outbreaks of nameless despair of the unhappy victims." There was screaming around Jesus for hours from the others, only a fragment of which is recorded in the Gospels (their taunting of Jesus). And finally, in the end, Jesus himself screamed.

Yes, Jesus screamed out in the midst of his pain, not in rage, not in a curse, but in a loud cry. The Word of God incarnate does not merely speak; it is a screamed-out question, and it is his death cry. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? What does it mean?

It means, I think, the obvious thing: that Jesus died in the worst way possible, that he died in unimaginable pain, and that his physical pain was accompanied by the mental and emotional pain of being abandoned by God. He entered into our human condition; he came down from heaven and was begotten by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary and was made man. And then he went down further. He entered into the saddest and lowest human conditions; he entered into griefs and degradations and betrayals and tortures. He entered into them, he went down, and then he went down further. Jesus plumbed the absolute and literal depths of what it is to be human. He wept, sometimes with us and sometimes over us. He visited our tombs. And —it sounds trite but it's literally true— he shared our pain.

This, to be honest, is good news for us. There are no depths to which we may have to descend that Jesus has not already descended. However bad your life gets, Jesus will be with you. He can be with you, because he has gone down even further.

[... A]ll of us know that we have untested limits. For Jesus there were no untested limits. And with trembling in our bones we can voice the sacred truth, that it is . . . good . . . that Jesus was so completely tested. For when Jesus screamed, it was, as I said, not in anger, not in rage, but in: a prayer. Although screamed out, the words My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? are a prayer.

Jesus feels nothing but abandonment from God, and yet nonetheless he prays to God. He no longer feels any intimacy with God — less than twenty-four hours earlier he was praying to his "Father" that he be spared of all this; now he cannot pray to his Father, but he can still pray like any human being can pray, to "God," to indeed "my God." He screams, yes, he cries out, yes, but it is a question that he cries, and a question rests upon a relationship, on the reality of one to whom a question is addressed. Jesus goes all the way down to the very bottom of human existence, and even at the bottom, even in the midst of all the pain in the universe, even in the absence of any sign at all that he has a divine Father, even there at the bottom a human being can still pray to God, can still ask, if nothing else, why this God, to whom he is speaking, why this God has forsaken him.

We find God by going down this road, down the road that goes down. Leonard Cohen, in his song "Suzanne" (which Susan used to sing to me), saw deeply, if not perfectly, when he said Jesus realized "only drowning men could see him." Jesus saw this from the cross (I think this is what Cohen means by "his lonely wooden tower"), where, Cohen says, he was "forsaken, almost human."

No, that last modifier is wrong: forsaken, fully human is the point. Yet it may be true that only drowning people can see Jesus. We who have suffered the depths can catch sight of him, I think, because Jesus was fully human all the way down: in the darkness, beyond the darkness, forsaken, fully human, he sank (as Cohen almost says) beneath God's wisdom like a stone.

Rev. Canon Victor Austin (Losing Susan: Brain Disease, The Priest's Wife, and the God Who Gives and Takes Away, pages 135-136, 137-138). Italics original.

There is no pit so deep that He is not deeper still.

Betsie ten Boom, as recorded by her sister.

[snakeplantships]

Jokes on them, the more they keep Luke and Din away from each other, the more we are going to ship it.

[wiirocku]

Romans 1:16 (NKJV) - For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek.

[traegorn]

The Bullshit-Free Witchcraft Podcast: 55. Lucky Girl Syndrome and the Law of Attraction

This month we're taking a look at one of New Age spirituality's most toxic philosophies: The Law of Attraction. We talk about the history of it, where it came from, and how it's come back in a major way to a whole new generation as "Lucky Girl Syndrome." What sometimes looks like a harmless TikTok trend can actually incredibly dangerous. (And, of course, don't forget this show is part of the Nerd & Tie Podcast Network, and funded by listeners like you via Patreon. Consider joining our Discord!) Music: "So I Said It," "The Man With One Eye" (Trae Dorn) / "Jaracanda," Random Loops (Apple Music Library) Portions of TikTok videos made by users emilieleyes.hypnosis, lawofattractionvision3, kaitlinvillatoro, lauragalebe, tamkaur_, hothighpriestess, and skzzolno were featured in this episode

Listen to the episode / Subscribe on iTunes

[golden-gospel-poet]

Because he is…everything 🌊

[incesthemes]

soulless sam should have drunk demon blood. it's a logical means to an end and makes him infinitely stronger which in turn makes him a better hunter, and he doesn't have anything stupid like morality or a conscience to get in his way. also it means that when sam got his soul back with no memory of how he got there he'd have to deal with sudden and inexplicable addiction and withdrawal, and of course the guilt and shame that comes with it

[akkivee]

anyone who says this simply doesn’t have honobono in their lives

[thelordismylightandmysalvation]

Verse of the Day - Romans 1:16

[raz-b-rose]

Me Everytime I watch the Chronicles of Narnia and just get reminded again about how beautiful salvation and sanctification is and how truly blessed I am to have a Father who loves me as deeply as He does.

[raks777]

Best is yet to come! Those who put trust in the LORD will never be ashamed

[woobosco]

Afro Culture (My culture)

@woobosco

[singeratlarge]

MONDAY MATINEE MUSIC VIDEO “Daydream Believer” + “It’s Going to Be Different” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4biM3K_QCX8 Two songs I did as host of an Open Mic at San Francisco Lighthouse. I shared a memory about the many times I've played "Daydream Believer" with Davy Jones and The Monkees. The second song (my original composition) is getting a lot of interest and will be released on my next album, WE’RE GETTING CLOSER TO THE SUN. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4biM3K_QCX8

#johnnyjblair #singeratlarge #monkees #davyjones #singersongwriter #sanfrancisco #powerpop #artrock #gospel #americana #lighthouse #sanfranciscolighthouse #neilfinn #paulmccartney #beatles