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If It Were Possible

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There is something happening in our generation that makes me think about a warning Jesus gave His disciples nearly two thousand years ago. We have reached a point in our technology where people can manufacture images, voices, and videos that appear remarkably genuine. A person can look at an image and believe that he is seeing an actual person in an actual place, or hear a familiar voice and believe that the person himself is speaking, when in reality what he is seeing or hearing has been artificially produced. We are learning that an appearance of reality is not necessarily reality itself. We are also learning that what our eyes see and what our ears hear cannot always be accepted as sufficient evidence of what actually happened. That may seem like a problem created by modern technology, but the principle behind it is much older than technology. The Bible has been warning God's people about deception from the very beginning, and Jesus gave us a particularly sobering warning...
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A Heart That Seeks Him

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    There is a difference between knowing about God and actually truly seeking Him.  A person can know Scripture, know the stories, know what is right and wrong, and still not have a heart that is truly turned toward God.  We can have knowledge about Him without actually desiring Him.  We can know what the Bible says and still resist what it is saying to us personally.   “Blessed are those who keep his statutes and seek him with all their heart,” Psalm 119:2 .  Seeking Him is more than gathering information about God. It is wanting Him.  It is wanting to know His ways, understand His heart, hear His instruction, and live according to what He shows us. The Bible says, “Blessed are those who keep his statutes and seek him with all their heart,” Psalm 119:2.    Notice how those two things are connected. They keep His statutes, and they seek Him with all their heart. The Hebrew wording is especially interesting here. The word t...
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I Can, But You Can't

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  This teaching is intended for mature, responsible adults who are willing to consider some serious and even uncomfortable subjects with an open mind, a little common sense (even though, in my book, sense is far from “common”), and a willingness to think things through. ✝️✝️✝️✝️✝️ There is a particular kind of arrogance that has infected human society from the beginning, and it can be summed up in five little words: “I can, but you can't.” It is the attitude of the person who believes that whatever he wants is his to have, whatever he does is his business, whatever rules apply to everybody else somehow do not apply to him, and anybody who objects simply needs to know his place. It is the attitude of somebody who wants freedom for himself and restrictions for everybody else. He wants privacy while demanding access to everyone else's business. He wants his money protected while helping himself to everybody else's. He wants to speak while silencing anyone who disagree...
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God Knows What We Don’t

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  Sometimes God will tell us to do something, and we won't have the slightest idea why He is telling us to do it.  There may not be anything happening around us that would make the instruction make sense.  We may look at what He has told us to do and think, “What does this have to do with anything?”  But God knows things we don't know, and He sees things we cannot see. He can see what is coming long before it ever becomes visible to us. Let me give you a fictional example. Suppose there is a woman named Ruth who is helping her father with some of his business affairs.  One day, while she is going through some papers, she has a strong inkling that she needs to make a copy of one particular document and keep it somewhere safe.  At that time, there was no argument going on.  Nobody has questioned the document.  Nobody has asked her for a copy.  As far as Ruth can tell, there is absolutely no reason she needs to do this.  But she does it...
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What If God Is Still God?

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There is a lot of fear being stirred up right now about artificial intelligence. We hear people talking about what AI might become, what it might be capable of doing, and what could happen if it becomes more powerful than anyone expected. Some of the questions being raised are worth examining. We should have wisdom about anything that has the ability to affect people's lives, and we should not just blindly accept everything we are told. But as I listened to some of the fear surrounding AI, my thoughts went somewhere much bigger than artificial intelligence. I started thinking about what happens when people allow fear of what they cannot control to become greater than their trust in God. Fear has been presented to mankind in one form or another since the creation. The thing people fear changes with the times, but the pattern remains. There are wars, diseases, economic troubles, political problems, natural disasters, new technologies, and predictions about what might happen ...
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