Posts in persecution
Story 54: The Terrible Beauty of the Beatitudes

When we read the Beatitudes, we see a picture of the qualities a disciple of Christ is meant to grow in. The descriptions are of a people so full of meekness and mercy that it is hard to imagine anyone would want to persecute them.

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Story 55: Salt and Light

In the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord Jesus started by describing the qualities of those who are blessed in His Kingdom. They are very different from the things that receive respect and honor in the eyes of the world. They look like Him.

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Story 61: Social Justice in the Kingdom of God

The next thing Jesus tackled in His Sermon on the Mount was a law that Moses gave in the book of Deuteronomy. It said: “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” I've know some people to find this repulsive and brutal, but my guess is that they hadn't thought it through very deeply.

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Story 79: The Turning Point: Blaming Satan for the Work of God

Jesus and His disciples went out once again to the cities around the Sea of Galilee. He proclaimed the Good News of the Kingdom of God to everyone who came to Him. There was a group of women who came along with them as well.

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Story 80: The Turning Point: True Fruit

Jesus had spent His days travelling around Galilee, teaching the deepest, richest truths that humanity had ever heard, and healing the broken. He started out teaching in the synagogues, giving the religious leaders a chance to recognize their Savior.

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Story 81: The Turning Point: Demanding a Sign

Jesus and His disciples were in Capernaum, surrounded by the crowd. They were all packed into Peter’s house as Jesus preached. Religious leaders had come up from Jerusalem to challenge Jesus. The Lord had already cast out a demon and healed a man of blindness right in front of everyone.

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Story 83: The Message Veiled: The Parables Begin

The multitudes of crowds came to follow Jesus and see His amazing miracles. These were the powerful signs God had given in the Old Testament about the coming of His Kingdom. But as Jesus travelled to the cities and villages of Galilee, many of the people did not repent of their sins.

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Story 84: The Parable of the Harvest

Jesus had begun to speak to His disciples in parables about the Kingdom of Heaven. The rest of the crowd was still there as Jesus preached from the boat, but for most of them, these stories would be a mystery.

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Story 85: Parables of the Kingdom: For Eyes that Will See

When Jesus started His preaching ministry, He warned the people about the Day of the Lord, the final stage of The Great Battle over human history. It is the time when Christ will return to complete His total and utter victory against the curse that Adam and Eve had brought into the world.

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Story 86: Parables of the Kingdom: Hidden Treasures and the Heavenly Vision

Jesus continued to teach parables to help his disciples understand how the Kingdom of God would work in the world as true believers waited for Him to return.

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Story 88: From Devastation to Transformation

The Lord Jesus calmed the mighty storm. Imagine it. All the winds and waves raging, creating a terrifying howl, filling your boat with water…and then up He rises… commands…and everything slows to calm.Jesus and His bewildered disciples sailed their boats to the other side of the Sea to the region of the Garasenes. Many Gentiles lived there.

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Story 90: The Healing in His Hands

In this story, Jesus was continuing to give His faithful witness of the Gospel in the region Galilee in spite of the hard-heartedness of the people. Where was the repentance that should have marked the children of God when their Savior came?

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Story 92: The Commissioning of the Disciples: On Becoming Harvesters

You may have noticed on these blogs about the life of Jesus that the stories from Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John get a little mixed up. For example, when in the book of Matthew we read from chapter eight before we read chapters 5 through 7, which are the Sermon on the Mount.

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Story 94: Commissioning the Disciples: Take Up Your Cross

Jesus continued to prepare His disciples for the task ahead.They had been given the breathtaking honor of being the messengers of God to a dying world, but it wasn’t going to be easy. In a world full of toxic sin and rebellion, God’s holy truth brings anger, rejection, even violence.

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