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Kevin Carden, Creation SwapDid you ever notice what Jesus filled up on before he went into the wilderness for forty days? For that matter, did you notice why he went into the wilderness? In Luke 4:1 we get the answers to both of these questions:

Then Jesus, being filled with the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness.

Jesus was filled with the Holy Spirit before he went into the wilderness and it was this same Holy Spirit who then led him into the wi...

Photo Credit: Jason Stewart CreationswapA couple of weeks ago I talked about and why John the Baptist referred to him in that manner. One thing I didn’t touch on a great deal, was why Jesus was baptized. John preached a baptism of repentance, yet Jesus had nothing to repent of, so why would he be baptized?

There are several reasons why Jesus went through the process of baptism. We’ll start with the most obvious first. When Jesus approached John to be baptized, John tri...

Did you ever notice when Jesus met someone how he didn’t see them as they were at that moment, but he saw their potential, or he looked not at their actions but their character? Take for example the first time he meets Simon, the brother of Andrew (John 1:4-42). Jesus changes his name from Simon to Peter, which means rock. What was it about Peter Jesus saw that would prompt him to change his name? Of course, we know through the Scriptures what Jesus saw. Peter went from someone who denied Chr...

File:Agnus Dei (The Lamb of God) by Zurbarán, San Diego MuseumWhen John the Baptist came on the scene encouraging people to repent of their sins and be baptized he was like a throw-back to the prophets of old. The people of Israel had not seen a prophet like John in over 400 years, and suddenly there he was preaching repentance with baptism and announcing that “someone�� was coming whose sandals he was unworthy to untie (John 1:27). Servants would untie the sandals of anyone entering a home, t...

What was Jesus really like? How different were His teachings compared to that of His disciples? If we only used the four Gospels as our example to follow the Lord, would they be enough? For the next little while, we will look closely at Jesus�� sermons, His interactions with people, His take on the Scriptures and His views of the society and culture of His day. How He related to the people, politics, and issues in His world, plays a huge part in how we relate to them, as His followers, in our...

One tends to think of the gifts of serving as menial tasks in the church that no one wants to do. Nothing could be further from the truth. These gifts keep the church running at maximum efficiency. So what are the differences between the gift of helps, hospitality, administration and serving? Are they individual gifts or were the writers of the New Testament using different words, but talking about the same thing? Let’s look at the verses where these words are mentioned and figure things out...

The first time I became confused about the gift of tongues I had just finished singing at a Pentecostal church, where I had spent an hour giving a concert, praising Jesus and I thought, encouraging other Christians in their faith. When I finished my concert and was talking to people afterwards the pastor of the church approached me and asked me if I spoke in tongues. I told him I did not. He then patted me on the back in a conciliatory way and said, “Don’t worry Sister, some day you’ll be sav...

Everyone has a certain level of discernment. Some might call it intuition, or their “Spidey sense��, whatever you want to call it, we all have it. But, the spiritual gift of discernment is somewhat different. As 1 Corinthians 12:10 clearly says, it is the ability to discern or distinguish “spirits��.

But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the profit of all: for to one is given the word of wisdom through the Spirit, to another the word of knowledge through the same Spirit, t...

I have personally experienced three miracles in my lifetime. Two miracles are named Andrew and Sarah, my children. Their births were not without incident. With Sarah, I was ordered to bed for the first three months of my pregnancy because my doctor thought I was going to lose her. I was also ordered to bed for the last three months because I developed toxaemia. After twenty-four hours of labour, I had Sarah by emergency C-section, because the doctors thought I was going to have a heart...

Does the spiritual gift of healing still exist today? Or is it, as some people claim, no longer available because “only the Apostles�� had it? I remember once, after my mother had a stroke, praying that she would be healed and not die. She could not speak or walk. She had lost the complete use of anything on her left side. Things did not look good. So I put a call out for prayer that night and trusted God would do what was best. To my surprise He did more than that. The next morning when...