Hello Family...

My wife has struggled with various health issues over her soon to be 77 years on this earth.  Her latest issue is a struggle with significantly lowered kidney function and high blood pressure that has been creeping up over the range her doctor would like to see.  She had her left kidney removed 13 years ago due to renal cell carcinoma and praise the Lord has had no further recurrence.

The doctor recently ordered a chest x-ray and echocardiogram as she suspected some lung and potential heart issues that may be related to the increasing blood pressure (She is currently on three medications for that).  We met with the doctor today and are Praising the Lord that both tests came back with normal results!  The doctor wants to swap out one of her meds for another to see if she can fine tune her BP.  This new med has the potential to raise her potassium levels out of range so we are trusting the Lord to care for that and bring her BP back into a normal range while improving her kidney function.  Please pray with us for His continued care.

Blessings to all this Christmas Season!!

We are participating in our weekly prayer time at 5pm EST. Check out the prayer request forum for some prayer topics, but feel free to lift up your own.

You may also fast. There's no obligation or guidelines to how you should do it, or if you should do it at all. Just fast as the Lord leads and speaks to your convictions.

The previous chapter ends with Paul contrasting his ministry against that of the hucksters. Did that sound like a sales pitch? Those same hucksters were fond of pieces of paper that recommended them to the next church they visited: letters, certificates, and other memorabilia. Paul had no need of such things; he was a church planter, not a roving preacher. He needed no introduction in Corinth, especially to the church there. Everyone knew him as their founding apostle.

The members were the only letter he needed. Christ's word was written on their hearts and in their lives. They were living letters, not written in ink. It was not like Moses coming down from Sinai with stone tablets, either. Paul walked into Corinth with confidence and began sharing in the synagogue there. It wasn't a question of competence in Jewish rhetoric, but the power of the Holy Spirit witnessing to His own message: the New Covenant in Christ.

Paul reviewed the teaching he surely offered there in Corinth, claiming that the written code of law delivered by Moses served one purpose -- it painted all flesh as quite clearly sinful and deserving of death. But it left you there. It could not raise you up to a new life in the Spirit; only God could do that. Yes, the Law left you prostrate at God's feet. That in itself was a marvelous thing; glorious, indeed! Without the Law you would not know anything about God's requirements. But only by His Spirit could you then be raised to a new life.

The Law is not gone, but it has been brought to life in Christ, and Christ it brings life. The written Law couldn't do that. He is the purest form of God's revelation.

Paul offers a comparison. When Moses returned from the Lord's Presence, his face literally glowed with heavenly glory. It was a spectacle. People were shocked by that, so Moses would wear a veil on his face until the effect wore off. Christ's glory shining in your heart will not fade away, because He is the Living Law of God in Person. So, if the written law code, which only kills, came with such glory, how much greater the glory that brings eternal life!

That veil was a symbol. To this very day, says Paul, when Jews hear the words of Moses, they cannot see the true glory. Their hearts are veiled inside, so they cannot approach the death we all need in our flesh. Only when we turn to Christ is that veil removed. His Spirit invades our open hearts. And where He is, there is liberty from death and law.

Instead of a fading glory behind some veil, we face the world with a glory that actually increases as we kill off more and more of our fleshly nature. We are transformed from glory to glory.

We are participating in our weekly prayer time at 5pm EST. Check out the prayer request forum for some prayer topics, but feel free to lift up your own.

You may also fast. There's no obligation or guidelines to how you should do it, or if you should do it at all. Just fast as the Lord leads and speaks to your convictions.

Again, the church came very near to being ostracized from the other churches. They would have been denounced and no longer see an apostolic visits. Instead of rejoicing with them in their victories over sin, Paul would have been obliged to cut them off if they didn't correct the problem.

The first eleven verses are rather obscure in this chapter. Our best guess is that someone in leadership at the church at Corinth was refusing to excommunicate the fellow who had married his father's cast-off wife. Instead, there was a substantial party defending this man. If Paul came, he would have no choice to dissolve the body.

Once again, the theme of this study is the continuity between the Old and New Covenants. Paul is most certainly enforcing the Mosaic prohibition on two men in the same family having sex with the same woman. This must be regarded as a moral absolute, something rooted in the nature of Creation itself. Among the pagan Greeks, it was simply not an issue. This reminds us that local culture cannot be the guide; we must insure we grasp how certain measures of the Law represent universal moral truth.

The man in question was certainly welcome back into the full communion once he repented. The ostracism wasn't a life sentence. The man's sorrow was suffering enough. Whatever position he previously held should be restored. Legalism is not a feature of any of the Covenants; legalism is just Satan exploiting human passion.

Some in the church seemed to think Paul was without any feelings about this whole mess. That would be a lie. Once ejected from Ephesus, Paul traveled up the coast to Troas. To his surprise, the Lord had opened a door there for ministry. Paul would normally have stayed much longer, but he was very antsy about Titus coming back from Corinth with good news. So, despite having such a strong response there at Troas, he crossed over to Macedonia, hoping against hope that Titus would come back soon.

Titus wasn't supposed to leave Corinth until things were on the right path again.

To reinforce his point about how much sleep he lost over this problem with Corinth, Paul ends the chapter with effusive praise to God, celebrating that the Lord had granted a healing of the church. He was ecstatic.

There was a whole herd of hucksters whose preaching sounded like the apostles, but they were actually trying to avoid any real work. They always disappeared with things got tough like they did at Corinth. Unlike the hucksters, Paul was heavily invested personally in seeing the Corinthian church get right. To those who remained spiritually dead, there was no difference between Paul and the hucksters. To those who truly served Christ, the difference was painfully obvious.

We are participating in our weekly prayer time at 5pm EST. Check out the prayer request forum for some prayer topics, but feel free to lift up your own.

You may also fast. There's no obligation or guidelines to how you should do it, or if you should do it at all. Just fast as the Lord leads and speaks to your convictions.

Brief reminder of the chronology here: Paul was in Ephesus building up the church there when he got alarming news about Corinth. So he wrote a brief message we do not have, and someone responded, perhaps several people, from Corinth. It was not good news, as at least a portion of the church was resisting his warnings. So, he wrote again, and that letter is our 1 Corinthians. They responded again, but during that time, Paul had been run out of Ephesus. Thus, he wrote another note to them that we do not have. Finally, he gets word back that the Corinthians are once more on the right track. This fourth message we have as 2 Corinthians precedes his personal arrival by a few days.

The whole point in refusing to come was not hard feelings on his part, but on theirs. Then again, it also was a warning in itself that the church was outside the covenant boundaries, and at risk of losing their association with all the other churches. We have some hints here and there that some first century churches did break off from the flock and slipped so far away that they became a byword for apostasy. The apostles as a whole refused to visit those churches, so it was important for Corinth to understand their situation.

This letter begins with conciliatory words. One of those words is translated into English as "comfort" (paraklesis). We have nothing close in the English language; it refers to the supplication of a higher power, and the thing received in response. Paul also mentions the word parakaleo, a related Greek word referring to approaching that higher power and being accepted. Thus, there is a strong emphasis on seeking the Lord in our time of suffering, of seeking to rise above the fleshly level of sorrow.

God's response is to call us into His Presence, implying that we are drawn up out of ourselves. The whole opening of the letter is a doctrinal statement about how suffering works in Christ's Kingdom. It is God's wrath on sin; we are supposed to flee that sin. Not just a particular sin, such as Paul pointed out in the Corinthian church, nor even the broader sinful tendencies he also wrote about. Rather, it is the fleshly nature itself that we must flee. If God sends a little suffering, and it provokes you to cry out, He empowers you to separate from it. But then, He reveals more of His wrath on that fleshly nature, because it's for sure you have not fled enough yet so long as you live in this world.

The point is that you are continually drawn up out of your fleshly nature, farther and farther, as your faith grows in strength to handle mortification. This is how Paul faced the high risk of death in the riot in Ephesus. He was ready to die, and only God's purpose kept him alive. The whining and carping from some of the Corinthians was the wrong way to handle the tension with Paul and his coworkers. Those at Corinth who were praying for Paul had a better response.

The reason Paul didn't really answer the objections of the rowdies in Corinth was because they were operating in the flesh. There is no remedy for flesh other than the Cross. They needed to learn about convictions and pure sincerity of heart, not human reason. Had they been working from their hearts, none of this nonsense would have gotten started in the first place. It was necessary to write to them on a level of law for the flesh, and he was hoping they would see through that to a higher level.

He goes on to explain that the plans he first announced about coming straight to Corinth, then up into Macedonia, then back down through Corinth, was simply not possible. They were not ready to see him. He didn't blame them directly, but if they didn't humbly take the blame, they would never understand. That church as a whole had a serious need to climb up out of their fleshly selves.

Dad died yesterday in hospice care, nearly a year after mom passed. We had just moved him into a new place, too, and was just getting settled in, although I don't think that was a major factor in him passing. The last time I saw him was the 28th last month, for a little get together for my daughter's 18th, and he was alert and aware of everything (as much as he could be at 88, with dementia). He's been on constant oxygen for a few weeks leading up to dying, and just slowly deteriorating...what's called "transitioning" in care terms. So it wasn't a total surprise for anyone, but he did transition rather quickly.

My sisters are getting things ready with the funeral home and church. I'm writing the obituary and making a memorial video, just like I did with mom. So, lots of work to do in the coming week.

That's all. Thank you for the support, family

We are participating in our weekly prayer time at 5pm EST. Check out the prayer request forum for some prayer topics, but feel free to lift up your own.

You may also fast. There's no obligation or guidelines to how you should do it, or if you should do it at all. Just fast as the Lord leads and speaks to your convictions.

It was part of the arrogance of Greek philosophy that some would mock Paul's teaching on the issue of resurrection. They asked how it was possible, and asked sarcastically if Paul could describe what kind of body one would have after rising from the grave. The folly here is the reliance on human wisdom to assess revelation.

Can anyone explain how a seed grows into a plant? At that time in history, the study of biology only got so far as to recognize that a seed must die; it must be completely disconnected from that which gave it life. The form you see when you put it in the soil looks nothing like what springs up. God is the source of all things; what springs from a seed is whatever God determines. Each kind of seed produces something different.

We have no problem recognizing that the flesh of various animals are quite different. Just so, we should easily recognize that our mortal bodies would be different from the eternal ones. With Greek philosophical assumptions making so much of human perfectibility, Paul points out that the concept of "glory" (i.e., perfection) would be quite different for an eternal body. We can't possibly understand how things work in the heavens in simple terms of sun, moon and stars; we won't be able to grasp the nature of eternal bodies while still in our mortal frame.

So it is with resurrection: You cannot understand it with your fallen mind. You'll have to wait until it happens to possess faculties capable of grasping it all. We take this on faith as a revelation from God. It will be different, so different that we cannot imagine -- death becomes life, shame becomes glory, weakness becomes power, mortal becomes immortal. The one defines the other. Returning to the image of First versus Last Adam: the first came to life (quoting from Genesis 2:7), but the second gives life.

In God's plans, it is necessary that we first endure this awful mortal life in order to rise to eternal life. We must be dust before we can be spirit. All of us will be a First Adam before we can join the Last Adam in Heaven. The whole point is the distinction and boundaries between the two. The Heavenly Kingdom will take your reservation, but it will not be yours until you die.

Granted, there will be just a few who don't have to face death, but we all must change and shed this human form. When Christ returns, those who are still alive will be changed where they stand. That will happen when the heavenly trumpet sounds, and that's when the dead will also be changed. Paul quotes from Isaiah 25:8 and Hosea 13:14, both mocking the power of mortality to hold us imprisoned. The Giver of Life will return and vanquish mortality. There will be no more goading and suffering.

The goad that death uses against us is how powerless we are against our sinful nature. We deserve to die. And the power of our sinful nature points to the presence of moral law in all of Creation, condemning us by a standard we are unable to meet. But God is not going to leave us like this. He has offered a triumph over sin and death through His Son, Jesus Christ.

Don't be shaken by the doubts of human intellect. God's promises do not fail. Face the sorrows with aplomb; keep working with overflowing excellence in the assurance that you aren't wasting effort.