1. Look at other people as those for whom Jesus died.
2. Pray for three specific people by name every day, asking God to use you to draw them to Christ.
3. Tell people how being a Christian gives your life meaning and purpose.
4. Build friendships with non-Christians. Watch for opportunities to help them and their families.
5. God is the great evangelist. You only sow the seeds, but He makes them grow. Do what you can to tell others. God will bring the harvest, for He has promised that His Word will not return to Him void (Isaiah 55:11).

“But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear.” 1 Peter 3:15

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It would have been nice if God had offered a detailed account of the rearing of some godly man like David or John the Baptist. Did Jesse approve of David’s music? Did Zechariah set a curfew? However, God didn’t record such a comprehensive account because I’m not raising David or John. I’m raising Haley (and beginning in August, The Lord willing, her sibling).
Consider two families — Noah’s (Genesis 5:32, 6:9-10, 5:32-10:32) and Lot’s (Genesis 19:8, 19:1-38). Interestingly, there are a number of similarities. Both dwelt in ungodly environments. Both had righteous men at their head. God delivered both from cataclysmic events. Yet Noah’s boys and Lot’s girls appear far dissimilar in the end.
Spiritual wisdom is important. In Genesis, Lot focuses upon the cities of the plain of Jordan. The citizens of Sodom were “exceedingly” wicked in God’s eyes, and Lot was personally appalled at their lawlessness (2 Peter 2:7ff) Yet he took his wife and children into such a godless place simply because it was a good business move. He was motivated more by temporal wisdom than by spiritual concern. Some of his daughters died in Sodom Genesis 19:14-15); his wife died looking back (Genesis 19:26); his two surviving daughters sacrificed their virginity to and bore children by their father after they enticed him to drunkenness (Genesis 19:30ff). What happens to this family had Lot been more spiritual in his choices?
Active faith makes an impact. Noah spent years proclaiming righteousness and preparing to save his family from an event absolutely unimaginable (Genesis 7:11). His boys saw a father who trusted God so completely that he built an incredible boat to receive an unbelievable menagerie. Imagine the ridicule and scorn they must have endured. Yet Noah was resolute and his faith must have inspired some trust in young Shem, Ham, and Japheth, for God delivered the boys and their wives as well. Contrast Noah’s active faith with Lot’s fear and hesitation. Granted, Lot was righteous (2 Peter 2:7ff) but he gravitated repeatedly toward men (Genesis 13:12; 14:12; 19:20ff), attempted to appease the Sodomites with his virgin daughters, hesitated to leave Sodom, and begged God not to send him to the mountains “lest some evil take me, and I die” (Genesis 19:19). God delivered him, yet his faith was far from monumental. It is little wonder that his wife and daughters did not appear to share his abhorrence of ungodliness, and that his sons-in-law ridiculed him. We must do more than simply despise evil.
Parents must guard their character constantly. Lot’s girls seem to have been exposed to a pattern of inconsistency. How would you feel if your father offered you to a mob of sexual perverts? His sons-in-law considered his warnings a joke. He hesitated to leave. He couldn’t stop his wife from looking back. He was afraid of the mountains though God had delivered him. He allowed himself to become drunken before his girls.
Perhaps their incest and sinful reasoning shouldn’t surprise us. But Ham, in Genesis 9:18ff, manifests contempt and disregard for Noah in response to one mistake. No doubt Ham already harbored some dishonor for his father, yet Noah’s intemperance offers the opportunity for him to display his irreverence and mockery. Perhaps Ham was looking for inconsistency in his father, but Noah had apparently offered no ground for such criticism — until now. Parents, we must guard our character constantly. Our kids are watching.
A child eventually chooses his own character. It’s difficult to tell whether Noah’s boys, before the flood, were righteous like their father, Perhaps God saved them for Noah’s sake, though I believe otherwise. Shem and Japheth appear to imitate their father’s godliness in their reverence in Genesis 9:18f. Ham is another story. He is over 100 years old, with at least four boys of his own when he revels in his father’s sin. His character is now his own to pursue, and he pursues ungodliness on this occasion. Perhaps this is an indication of his moral fabric as a grown man. Though Noah was wrong in his drunkenness, Ham was old enough now to choose his own path. Noah had provided a godly example for his boys. “God saved my Dad from the flood.” Who else could make such a claim? But as with Noah and Ham, parents can only provide their children the foundation of faith, instruction, evidence, examples, and admonition. There are no guarantees that they will trust God. We can’t give them our faith. How frustrating! Yet my little girl needs to love God by her choice, not by mine.
There are other lessons here and elsewhere. God knows that parents need help with their children and that children need help from their parents. Let’s work hard to offer our boys and girls every opportunity to survive this world. We owe it to them. We owe it to our folks. We owe it to God.
Russ Bowman

If we have a problem with God bring a God of judgment, thinking of Him being a God of wrathis even more troublesome. We don’t like to think ofGod in that light. We like to focus on what we consider to be His positive characteristics – love, goodness, kindness, mercy, grace and forgiveness. We put a negative connotation on the concepts of judgment and wrathand even more so as they might apply to God.
Many folks do not want to hear about God‘s wrath. Some may reject the very possibility that He would exercise wrath. Others have rejected God altogether because they think wrath is ungodly. But the scriptures repeatedly speak of God’s wrath. Considering the motivation behind Hiswrath, it is justified and right.
The apostle Paul speaks of God dealing with individuals with both “goodness” and “severity” (Rom. 11:22). Of course, the circumstances dictate which God will use in a given situation. “Forbearance” and “longsuffering” demonstrate His goodness and are intended to lead us to repentance (Rom. 2:4-11). Those who are faithful and obedient will be blessed with “eternal life” (vs. 7, 10). Those with hard, impenitent hearts will face God’s “wrath” (vs. 5, 8-9). His “wrath” demonstrates God’s severity; it is “against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men…” (Rom. 1:18).
God’s wrath is not such as would be demonstrated by a human being. It is not uncontrolled rage. It is not mean-spirited hatred. It is not seated in evil. God’s wrath is righteous and justified and deserved. It is focused upon the person who lives an ungodly life in spite of all of God’s blessings bestowed upon and His goodness displayed toward that person. It is God’s response to a person’s chosen life of unrighteousness and sin.
Paul wrote something quite telling in his first letter to the Thessalonians: “For God did not appoint us to wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thess. 5:9). The next verse notes that Christ “died for us.” That death was on the cross to pay the price for the guilt of our sin, and it was specifically directed by God. God did that for us, that we might be redeemed from the condemnation of our own sin. When we, in a sense, throw that sacrifice back in God’s face by continuing to live in sin, we deserve His wrath!
Someone might think that wrath is beneath a loving, merciful God ofgrace, that such a God would not resort to wrath. But that line of thinking ignores the reason that calls for and justifies the wrath – the terriblenessof sin! Sin is not incidental; it is not a minor matter. Sin sullied the unique, divine image in which man was created. Sin is eternally destructive. Because God recognized these facts, He devised the way, through the death of His own Son, for man to be cleansed, forgiven, reconciled. God’swrath is a reflection of the horrible awfulness of sin…

 ‎Devadas Prakash

Class 1 – The difference between the Old Testament and New Testament.  As a whole, those in the denominational world do NOT know the difference.  Many had just as soon go to the OT to prove a point for today as to the NT.  The New Testament went into effect in Acts 2.
Class 2 – Records of conversions.  There are about ten examples of conversion in the New Testament.  When all are studied it is plain that Faith, Repentance, Confession of Christ, and Baptism for the remission of sins is into the body of Christ and for salvation.  Acts 2:38; 22:16; Mk. 16:16.
Class 3 – Church history.  We study the establishment of the church and its spread all over the world, how denominations go started, and the basis upon which we claim to be the church of the New Testament. (The identity of the church).
Class 4 – The worship of the church.  The Lord’s Supper – Mt. 26:26-29; Acts 20:7; Giving– I Cor. 16:2; prayer-in the Lord’s supper – Mt. 26:26-29; prayer at other times also Eph. 6:18; I Th 5:17; singing Eph 5:19; Col 3:16; preaching.  In Acts 20:7, Paul preached until midnight.  We don’t when he started, but apparently it was a long sermon.  The context might indicate why.
Class 5 – The Nature of the church.  Jesus is Head of the body, the church Col. 1:18: and gave Himself up for it – Eph 5:25.  Jesus purchased the church with His blood – Acts 20:28.  And yet, some think the church is NOT essential?  If not, then the blood of Christ purchased the churs is not essential either??  How can any Bible student believe such?
Class 6 – The Organization of the church.  The Bible teaches there is ONE body – Eph 4:4.  And, Jesus is the Head of the body, the church – Col 1:18.  So, Jesus has the “preeminence” in all things --
Class 7 – The WORK of the church.  The basic work of the church is to reach the lost, and edify the saved.  In Mk 16:16, Jesus said, “Go ye into all the woorld, and preach the gospel to every creature.” V.16, “He that believeth and is baptized shall be save; but he that believeth not shall be condemned.”  Mk. 16:16.  Please note that in v. 15, God wants all in the world to hear the gospel.  We as Christians have a great obligation to carry out God’s will today as it was carried out in the first century.  In Col 1:23, “If ye continue in the faith grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope off the gospel, which ye have heard, and which was preached to every creature which is under heaven; whereof I Paul am made a minister.”
Class 8 – A LESSON ON MORALITY, how to tell what is right and wrong.  There are two parts to Christianity.  One part is DOCTRINAL, which includes how to become a Christian, the work of the church, worship in spirit and truth, and the organization of lthe church, et.  The other part is MORAL.  What is right and what is wrong in the moral realm?  God’s people are to be the best moral people in the world, and certainly faithful in worship, attendance, and spiritual growth.

• In studying morality, there are many things condemned.  For example: Gal. 5:19-21, lists quite a few.  “Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these, adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envying, murders, drunkenness, revelings, and such like:  of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the Kingdom of God.” (KJV)
• I Tim 4:16, teaches of two parts of Christianity.  “Take heed to thyself, and to thy teaching.  Continue in these things; for in doing this thou shalt save both thyself and them that hear thee.”  The two parts of Christianity are, (1) Take heed to self, your moral living, and (2) to thy teaching or doctrine.  Make sure you teach the truth.  Make sure you live a clean, moral life.  There are people who live a clean moral life yet know littlel about following the Bible in religion.  How sad!  There are also some who know religion and follow the Bible on it, yet know little about moral lives and are not following the Bible on such.
• Prov. 22:6 – “Train up a child in the way he whould go, and even when he is old, he will not depart from it.” Prov. 22:15 – “Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him.” Prov. 13:24.  He hat swarth his rod hateth his son…”

Truth In Love Vol 7, No. 1, January, 2014, David Bonner

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