It is impossible to cultivate self-control unless one uses God's Spirit to reprogram the desires of the heart from self-centeredness to submission to God.

Numerous scriptures show the bad effects of impatience committed by ancient Israel, while the patriarchs, Jesus Christ, and the Father set examples of true patience.

The only tangible measures of faith is faithfulness, trust, and loyalty to God. We don't need to ask God for more faith, but rather work on being faithful.

Our Heavenly Father, the Vine Dresser, has provided His junior partners some valuable tools to assist in pruning and cultivating His emerging spiritual crop.

If we endure chastisement and discipline from God, we prove we are His children. Sanctification is an incremental process, requiring trials and chastening.

If we are not receiving God's correction or chastisement, we should be concerned! God's chastening is what He uses to sanctify His spiritual children.

Even as we are to personally count the 50 days to Pentecost, we also must think continually of the lessons these days teach us about our spiritual journey.

The Bible shows a clear pattern of how people leave the faith: looking back, drawing back, looking elsewhere, and then going backward and refusing to hear.

Dathan and Korah agitated for a democratization of priestly responsibilities. God shows that not everybody set apart is holy in the same way.

Any materialistic goal will decay and deteriorate, having a limited lifetime. Only spiritual treasures last forever. God demands undivided loyalty.

Ecclesiastes provides a testimony to the conundrum of life, showing the result of both bad and good choices, enabling us to effectively use time.

Jesus' message is certainly encouraging, but the adjective 'good has its roots in the word 'god,' suggesting that Jesus' message also possesses a moral quality.

The Bible makes it plain that salvation is by grace, but it is also clear that we are 'created in Christ Jesus for good works.' Grace and works fit together.

The holy days typify the steps in God's plan. What happens between Pentecost and Trumpets, the long summer months?

Works cannot earn us salvation. However, they play many vital roles in our Christian walk toward the Kingdom of God, especially in developing holiness.

Justification is not the end of the salvation process, but merely the opening to sanctification, where we bear fruit and give evidence of God's Spirit in us.

Where can we find the true religion, the true church, in all this confusion? Only the church Christ founded and heads today has the answers to eternal life.

Satan has attempted to obliterate the sanctification step from the conversion process. Sanctification is produced by doing works pleasing to God.

All people will be judged according to the quality of their works after they make the covenant with God. Works are required and rewarded.

The Feast of Unleavened Bread immediately follows the Passover. In it we see how hard it is to overcome and rid our lives of sin.

We have two conflicting natures: a downward-pulling carnal nature versus a divine nature imparted by God's Holy Spirit, continually at odds, seen in Romans 7.

We have been called, not just to believe in Christ, but also to overcome sin, which takes a great deal of effort. Justification requires a response.

It is quite rare to see a person who truly hungers and thirsts after God's way, but this is the kind of desire God wants us to have.

We must undergo a metamorphosis from a carnal, fleshly (relatively worm-like) existence to a glorious, dazzling offspring of Almighty God.

Contrary to the belief that most of the Christian professing world hold that we are saved by the death of Jesus Christ, in reality we are saved by His life.

Salvation is not merely self-identifying oneself as a saint, but it involves rigorously working with God in an arduous process of transformation.

Sanctification is an incremental process in which we systematically destroy the sin within us as our forebears were asked to destroy the inhabitants of Canaan.

Sanctification is both a state and a process—a time period between justification and glorification during which overcoming, purification, and holiness takes place.

The gestation or fetus analogy does not adequately depict the sanctification process in which there has to be volition, judgment, and conscious choice.

Because of Israel's sinful heart, God has made a course correction, namely crafting a new and improved Covenant with a lengthy heart transplant operation.

Purity before God is far more than just being clean. To Jesus, being pure in heart, described in the Beatitudes, touches on the very holiness of God.

Christ's resurrection was bodily. He will destroy death before returning control back to the Father, at which time the entire creation would be all in all.

Magic is always used as some kind of weapon, but not to build or develop moral strength or character. God chooses a life-long process of sanctification.

Even though everything we need in this quest has been given to us, our spiritual growth depends on believing in the promises of receiving the divine nature.

Daily reflection helps to identify areas in our lives that need to be overcome. Without self-reflection, overcoming specific faults cannot gain traction.

We must endure chastening and correction to grow in holiness and become priests. In the qualifications of a Melchizedek priest, zeal and holiness are mandatory.

The Kingdom parables allude to the process of spiritual maturity, depicting a planted and cultivated seed becoming a sprout, eventually bearing fruit.

We limit God through our willful sin and disobedience, pride and self confidence, ignorance and blindness, and our fear of following Him.

Christ's disciples are going through a rigorous training period to qualify for positions of leadership in God's Kingdom by conforming to Christ's image.

Adopting a revolutionary stance for the sake of change, variety, or relieving boredom will systematically destroy the faith once delivered.

The fault of the Old Covenant was with the hearts of the people. Christ took it upon Himself to amend the fault enabling us to keep the commandments.