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Showing posts from November, 2011

The Common Faith of All Christians

All throughout my college years, Christians on Campus has taught me to contend for the common faith . I've heard rumors before about members of Christians on Campus being exclusive, but whoever has come to their gatherings would quickly realize that Christians on Campus receives all genuine Christians. Yes, all genuine Christians who believe in the common faith (this term is used in Titus 1:4 and Jude 3 ). The common faith is not a doctrine that someone wrote. I didn't come up with it, nor Christians on Campus, nor Martin Luther. It's the Bible, it's God Himself, who defines our faith. Thus, I simply appreciate the fact that I was given the opportunity to learn how we need to fight for the faith and not fight for anything else that is not part of the common faith. According to the Bible, there are eight items in our common faith: The Bible is the complete divine revelation inspired by God, word-by-word, through the Holy Spirit. ( 2 Peter 1:21 ; 2 Timothy

The Rich Young Man Entering the Kingdom

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Cherry picking God's Word is definitely faulty, yet it seems impossible for me to apply God's Word in its entirety. For instance, the Bible tells me not to covet but "Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?" ( Romans 7:24 ). I continuously fail in fulfilling this matter of not coveting. So what then shall I do? There is a particular fellowship from one of the Christians on Campus gatherings that has greatly helped me. I can't remember exactly which gathering but at that time, one of the speakers mentioned about the passage of a rich young man trying to enter into the kingdom in Matthew 19 (please read Matthew 19:16-26 for context). This rich young man asked the Lord what good deed he must do to have eternal life. The Lord pointed out that there is only One that is good and that if he would enter into this life, he should keep all the commandments. Afterward the Lord showed him which commandment he should do, to sell his po

Joining Ourselves to God's Desire through His Word

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The question from my last post on Christians on Campus Fall 2011 College Conference - how can we join ourselves to God's desire through His Word? Many times our application of God's Word is a cherry-picking business. Yes, it's a fallacy indeed. Let me explain what I meant by that. Believe it or not, most of us have a hidden motive when we come to God's Word. That hidden motive varies with every person but usually it's in the form of expectations, hoping for certain things to be found in the Word. For example, a couple years ago a Christian man was sharing with me a story about his mother. His mother had to work hard to feed her many children. So one time, she told people that her favorite verse in the Bible was 2 Thessalonians 3:10, "... If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat." Actually I knew another hard-working person who appreciated the Bible's encouragement to labor for our living in a similar way. But a lazy person may take Psalm

Christians on Campus Fall 2011 College Conference (Part 4)

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The next message after the early rising session was entitled, Daniel and His Three Companions - God's move through Young People . Christians on Campus arranged this message to be "by-the-students-and-for-the-students" format.  Daniel and his three friends So we were given materials to be read together in small groups. The entire message was divided into sections. Each small group would focus on a particular section for the first thirty minutes or so. The group came together to fellowship based on that reading. Then the next event was to gather the small groups and present what we had learned from the section we read to this bigger group of audience. So when all the groups presented their sections, the audience ended up with an entire message, spoken by multiple people from the small groups. Continuing on with the message itself, I was blown away by the reading material that we got. It opens with a section, God calling young people to turn the age. &q