Salvogesis

God is sovereign. Do we know what that means? It means that in any situation God is in charge. God is the boss … and more. The job He wants done will get done. His business is always successful. The question is simply do we work for the boss or not?   The Salvation Army Doctrines 6 and 9 read: ·         We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ has by His suffering and death made an atonement for the whole world so that whosoever will may be saved. ·         We believe that continuance in a state of salvation depends upon (is evidenced by) continued obedient faith in Christ.   Monday, I heard these two stories from two different people within moments of each other. First, Rena came to chat with me. She shared that on a particular day, she was able to pray with a friend about their family member whom Rena did not know. Later in that same day she met that very family member! God then used Rena to connect with...

Let me tell you three stories. These are all true stories; they all happened this week and they do have some other things in common too. They all have a rope in the story. They all have peril. 2 of them have water. 2 of them have happen endings.   One evening this week Susan suggested that I should take Heather kayaking for a couple of hours before dinner. She said be home at 7pm. Dinner's at 7pm. Be home at 7pm.   I threw the kayaks in the back of the vehicle. Heather and I quickly drove out to Sproat Lake. We didn’t have that much time. We got out there. Heather was already a little tired, I think. I asked her where we wanted to go on the lake; she said, she wanted to go to Manitoba Island. (There is this small private island that you can reach from the boat launch and whoever owns the island has a Manitoba flag that they fly from it, thus Heather and I call it Manitoba Island.)   It was pretty choppy out there. The waves were pretty high and the wind was blowing quite ...

Israel is in a bit of trouble here. Ezekiel has just put on this big show so that the exiles at the time and the rest of us now might learn from it. Remember that Ezekiel is not in Jerusalem, Judah, or even Israel as he is acting out this prophesy. Ezekiel is a  thirty-year-old  man who would like nothing more than to be a priest in Jerusalem instead he is sitting by the probably very dirty water near his refugee camp and then spending much of his time lying on his side eating food cooked on animal dung and doing everything else mentioned in this book.   The message Ezekiel seems to be giving the people in the refugee camp  with him  is this: It seems that the people were comforting themselves in their exile by  saying  that God would never let anything happen to Jerusalem and that He would never let anything happen to the temple  in Jerusalem ; some people even believed that  God   actually lived  just there  – even though...