Consuming Fire 2 of 4

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Consuming Fire 2 of 4
welcome to community church
march 30 2008
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Consuming Fire 2 of 4
10 The thiefs purpose is to steal and kill and
destroy. My purpose is to give them a rich and
satisfying life. I came so they can have real
and eternal life, more and better life than they
ever dreamed of. (Message) -
John 10
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Consuming Fire 2 of 4
1 And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with
you to give your bodies to God because of all he
has done for you. Let them be a living and holy
sacrificethe kind he will find acceptable. This
is truly the way to worship him. 2 Dont copy the
behavior and customs of this world, but let God
transform you into a new person by changing the
way you think. Then you will learn to know Gods
will for you, which is good and pleasing and
perfect. - Romans 12 (NLT)
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Consuming Fire 2 of 4
23 The man said, This is now bone of my
bones and flesh of my flesh she shall be called
woman, for she was taken out of man. 24 For
this reason a man will leave his father and
mother and be united to his wife, and they will
become one flesh. 25 The man and his wife were
both naked, and they felt no shame.
- Genesis 2
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Consuming Fire 2 of 4
23 The man said, This is now bone of my
bones and flesh of my flesh she shall be called
woman, for she was taken out of man. 24 For
this reason a man will leave his father and
mother and be united to his wife, and they will
become one flesh. 25 The man and his wife were
both naked, and they felt no shame.
- Genesis 2
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Consuming Fire 2 of 4
28But if you do marry, you have not sinned and
if a virgin marries, she has not sinned. But
those who marry will face many troubles in this
life, and I want to spare you this. 29What I
mean, brothers, is that the time is short. From
now on those who have wives should live as if
they had none 30those who mourn, as if they did
not those who are happy, as if they were not
those who buy something, as if it were not theirs
to keep 31those who use the things of the world,
as if not engrossed in them. For this world in
its present form is passing away.
- 1 Corinthians 7
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(No Transcript)
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Consuming Fire 2 of 4
13 Look here, you who say, Today or tomorrow we
are going to a certain town and will stay there a
year. We will do business there and make a
profit. 14 How do you know what your life will
be like tomorrow? Your life is like the morning
fogits here a little while, then its gone. 15
What you ought to say is, If the Lord wants us
to, we will live and do this or that. 16
Otherwise you are boasting about your own plans,
and all such boasting is evil. 17 Remember, it
is sin to know what you ought to do and then not
do it. - James 4
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17Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the
Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom
- 2 Corinthians 3
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Consuming Fire 2 of 4
22 Plans fail for lack of counsel, but
with many advisers they succeed.
- Proverbs 15 25Therefore each of you must put
off falsehood and speak truthfully to his
neighbor, for we are all members of one body.
- Ephesians 4
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Consuming Fire 2 of 4
The Christian way is different harder and
easier. Christ says, Give me All. I dont want
so much of your time and so much of your money
and so much of your work I want You. I have not
come to torment your natural self, but to kill
it. No half-measures are any good. I dont want
to cut off a branch here and a branch there, I
want to have the whole tree down. Hand over the
whole natural self, all the desires which you
think innocent as well as the ones you think
wickedthe whole outfit. I will give you a new
self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself my
own will shall become yours. Both harder and
easier than what we are all trying to do. You
have noticed, I expect, that Christ Himself
sometimes describes the Christian way as very
hard, sometimes as very easy. He says, Take up
your Crossin other words, it is like going to
be beaten to death in a concentration camp. Next
minute he says, My yoke is easy and my burden is
light. He means both. And one can just see why
both are true. - C.S. Lewis,
Mere Christianity
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Consuming Fire 2 of 4
It is like that here. The terrible thing, the
almost impossible thing, is to hand over your
whole selfall your wishes and precautionsto
Christ. But it is far easier than what we are
trying to do instead. For what we are trying to
do is remain what we call ourselves, to keep
personal happiness as our great aim in life, and
yet at the same time be good. We are all trying
to let our mind and heart go their own
waycentered on money or pleasure or ambitionand
hoping, in spite of this, to behave honestly and
chastely and humbly. And that is exactly what
Christ warned us you could not do. As He said, a
thistle cannot produce figs. If I am a field that
contains nothing but grass-seed, I cannot produce
wheat. Cutting the grass may keep it short but I
shall still produce grass and no wheat. If I wan
to produce wheat, the change must go deeper than
the surface. I must be ploughed up and resown.
- C.S. Lewis, Mere
Christianity