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Paul’s Weakness

Pardoned or Paroled? Escaping a Prison of Guilt to Find Freedom in Christ

Paul’s weakness was his learning and education, which he thought was his strength. The thorn in his side was not sickness but constant attempts to undermine his ministry by religious legalists/false apostles who came as messengers of Satan to churches he founded. The Thorn not being removed caused him to write many of the letters we have to day in response to these attacks upon grace and his ministry.

Being a Friend to God

Friendship is a covenant term

 Being a Friend to God

Gary has been preaching on Friendship.    The word friend in the OT and NT is a word that means a covenant relationship. 

2 Ch 20:7 Did you not, our God, drive out the inhabitants of this land before your people Israel, and give it forever to the descendants of Abraham your friend?
Jas 2:23  Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”—and he was called a friend of God.
Isaiah 41:8 But you, Israel, my servant,
Jacob, whom I have chosen,
the offspring of Abraham, my friend; 

What is a covenant relationship?    

Marriage is a good example:  you join bank accounts. Your debts become both your debts, your assets also theirs. You live together, you protect each other, and hopefully you would die for each other. 

Covenant relationships mean that you share whatever you have if the other person has need of it. If you are good in publicity, but they are good in finance, your promote their business while they finance yours. You would never let your covenant partner starve while you have food. You would die before you let anyone harm them. 

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Paul, Called to Be an Apostle – Ephesians 1

Ephesians 1: 1-14 Acts 9: 1-19 , August 10, 1986 Sermon no. 92, Jefferis Kent Peterson According to Plan Today, we are beginning a study of the grand and glorious letter of Paul to the Ephesians.  It is a  letter that is different from the other epistles of Paul.  Not written to deal with problems or disputes in a specific congregation, as is the case with most of his other letters, this letter is a theological treatise, and it has a theme that is broad in scope and wide in purpose.  The letter has to do with God’s eternal plan of salvation for the whole world.  And it brings the news that God has done something new for the benefit of heaven and earth in Jesus, the Anointed One.  In Jesus the Anointed, he has given the world peace.  This letter’s purpose is to announce this peace, which God has  planned  from the beginning of the world.  And to the wonder of it all, Paul proclaims the unbelievable good news that God is establishing this peace with us in spite of our resistance to his will! Paul begins to reveal this theme of God’s peace with the very first verse, when … Read more