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Cessationism

I have a dear sister in Christ at chuch who was asking about cessationisn the other day. It was obvious that shw was leaing towards believing in cessationaim. I knew I disagreed but felt unable to present a cogent rationale. Thus this blog post. Cessationism is the view that the “miracle gifts” of tongues and healing have ceased—that the end of the apostolic age brought about a cessation of the miracles associated with that age. Most cessationists believe that, while God can and still does perform miracles today, the Holy Spirit no longer uses individuals to perform miraculous signs.  Argument 1 Why would God continue to do some miracles like healings, which I think no one will argue, but not do others? The biblical record shows that miracles occurred during particular periods for the specific purpose of authenticating a new message from God. Moses was enabled to perform miracles to authenticate his ministry before Pharaoh ( Exodus 4:1-8 ). Elijah was given miracles to authent
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On eagle's wings

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  I ws reading Psalm 91 about taking shelter uner God's wings and I started to think about eagles of course Isa 40:31 is one of my favorite verses but we hae also been sturpdying the book of Revelation and one of the four cretures around God's throne is eagle-like. The Eagle Analogy Eagles are born with big and heavy wings, and part of the survival mechanism they are born with is that they have to learn how to fly without actually flapping their big wings. Eagles have to learn how to do this in order to conserve energy. Eagles can literally die if they expend too much energy flapping their wings during flight versus soaring. As a result, what eagles have to learn to do very early on in order to be able to soar without flapping their wings, is to wait for what are called wind thermals to come up on them. A wind thermal is a big gust of wind that will rise up into the atmosphere.   Sometimes eagles will remain perched for days before they catch a good, strong, wind th
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Stay Sharp

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  You know when something happens that you know will be transformational, you just feel it in your bones? The day you were saved? A graduation? A wedding? Well for me in the last year I have had two. The first was 21 days of prayer and fasting which is a ministry of Church of the Highlands in Alabama, but a second was the purchase of a book called Fervent by Priacilla Shirer . I have already orderd copies for friends. This is a little break from recent posts about Living Water, soil and mountains but I feel compelled to share. God has been really working on my prayer life in the last 18 months. I often prayed Eph 6:13-17 about the armor of God but while reading today I realized I had missed the significance of vs 18.  "Pray in the Spirit at all times, with every kind of prayer and petition. To this end, stay alert with all perseverance in your prayers for all the saints. " I have often thought only the Sword of truth (the Bible) was our offensive weapon but that's no
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Mountains

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  It only seems natural to follow the Living Water to its head streams - mountains. Jesus likes mountains especially the Mount of Olives. He often retreats to mountains to be by himself, sometimes he will take a few disciples. (Jn 6:3, 6:15, 8:1) Mountains are often associated with God like the mountain where God gave Moses the 10 commandments or with faith as in faith to move mountains. (Matt 17:20) It is from the mountains that our soil and water come. You can learn more about those in previous posts. Where do mountains come from? The earth’s crust is made up of large plates called tectonic plates that fit into each other. These plates keep moving a few centimeters every year. Mountains form along the boundaries where the tectonic plates move towards each other converge (convergent boundaries). The tectonic plates collide, triggering deformation and thickening of the crust. This, in turn, leads to crustal uplift and mountain formation. This process is a horizontal compression t
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Living Water Part II

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  Today our guest speaker at church quoted one of my favorite verses. "Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them" Jn 7:38  Now we previously talked about living water especially SALTY water but today we are going to focus on the streams of living water. A river habitat is called a riparian habitat and it is incredibly diverse. Water melts in the mountains and moves down the moutain side. Every river has distinguishing features, as well as similarities.All flow downhill with regards to the law of gravity (they do so at either a high or low speed depending on slope, wind and water current). Every river has its source which include streams, springs, and others and mouth (drains like; sea, ocean, lake, another larger river, or a desert). The elevation of a river’s source and its mouth are factors that determine its size and speed. The Amazon River is one example, as it is the largest river worldwide (recorded to disch
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Rocky Soil

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 "The seed falling on rocky ground refers to someone who hears the word and at once receives it with joy.But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away. Matt 13: 20-21" The next type of soil we are going to look at is rocky soil. technically all soilss are rocky because they are formed from the erosion of the bedrock found on the bottom of their soil hoizon. But did you know that not all rocks are created equal? There are basically 4 different types of rock:         1, Magma - which is the melted rock found in volcanoes     2. Igneous - which is formed from the cooling of lava which is basically magma outside of the volcano that cools quickly or very slowly.     3. Metamorphic - which is formed from other rocks that have been pressed together with tremendous heat and pressure and is generally the hardest type of rock     4. Sedimentary - which is formed by the cementation of sand, p
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Hard Soil

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      "But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. " Matt 13:6  I have been reading about gardening again and was examining dirt once more. In Matt 13:6-8 God talks about four kinds of soil: hard, weedy, rocky and rich. Today we are going to talk about hard soil. I was born in Arizona so I know alot about desert soils, Deserts are typically composed of dunes, mountains and desert flats. Usually when we talk about dirt people are just referring to the top or O layer, but dirt has many layers.  The physical properties and appearance of deserts can depend on the type, location, climate, minerals, and other environmental factors. Desert soil characteristics, which generally apply to any type of desert soil, include (but are not limited to) a mostly sandy soil composition, v ery little moisture , and lack of nutrients. When it comes to deserts, 90-95% of their composition is sand. If you remember this means that is has a ve
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