Building on the Foundation

Our primary goal and mission as Christians is our service and singular devotion to our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ. That's who and what we are, and it defines everything about our lives. We walk in a manner that reflects glory and honor upon His name, and when there is the darkness of wickedness, His light reflected through us reveals it.  Our highest mission is service to Jesus, who is YHWH. Once a year, however, it becomes abundantly clear that this mission has gotten confused in a lot of Christian's minds. We serve YHWH for 364 days of our lives, but one day a year, it's okay to go out and partake in the works of darkness. It's harmless and fun, so what's the big deal? As representatives of the kingdom, we are children of light. We cannot participate in evil things and expect God to be okay with that. We are to practice what is pleasing to God and do those things which are good, right, and true. That's a pretty good litmus test, and we find it repeated thro...

  Should We Worship, Praise, or Pray to Jesus? Is the Father the only one we should pray to? Well, to be completely honest, my view when I started this study is that we absolutely should only pray to the Father, and really, He is the only one we should worship and praise as well. That's what I was taught growing up, the conclusion I came to studying for myself, and the conclusion many pastors I respect have come to on their own and taught. Perhaps that was partially due to the over-Jesusfication of mainstream Christianity to the point where they exclude the Father pretty much entirely, but be that as it may, this was my viewpoint.  The Father gets ignored, but that also doesn't automatically mean we should then ignore Jesus either, to recognize the Father.  The purpose of this article, then, is to study and see what the example of the Apostles was, and indeed the very instructions we ourselves have been given, to see what we should actually be doing.  First, we're go...