Dr Paul Allen

Christianity is a religion of joy. Real joy comes from God , who has invaded us, conquered us, and liberated us from eternal death and sadness —who has given us hope and joy because He has poured out His love within our hearts by the Holy Spirit whom He has given us (Rom. 5:5). Joy comes from God, not from within. When we look within, we just get sad. We have joy only when we look outside ourselves to Christ . Without Christ, joy is not only hard to find, it’s impossible to find. The world desperately seeks joy, but in all the wrong places. However, our joy comes because Christ sought us, found us, and keeps us. We cannot have joy apart from Christ, because it doesn’t exist. Joy is not something we can conjure up. Joy isn’t the absence of sadness—it’s the presence of the Holy Spirit. And although the Holy Spirit produces joy within us, He often does so by humbling us so that we would take our eyes off ourselves and fix our eyes on Christ. Real joy exists even amid real sadness, an

To some, the concepts of love and law contradict one another. While love conjures images of warmth and family, law conjures images of coldness and isolation. In our contemporary culture, loving others and believing in objective moral standards are often seen as mutually exclusive commitments. But love and law are not opposed to one another. In fact, according to the Bible , love and law fit together by faith. Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, ‘ You shall not commit adultery , You shall not murder , You shall not steal , You shall not covet ,’ and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. Besides this you know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. The night is far gone; the day

A local church is not built by one man, or even a few men, but by every believer being actively involved in ministry through evangelizing the lost people in their lives and serving their fellow Christians . A quick glance at the practice of the New Testament church reveals that they thought very little about programs and very much about relationships. Consider the disciple-making that would naturally take place in the life of a local church if every believer would practice the loving, one-another ministry that the early churches first read about in the instructions they received from the apostles: Be devoted to one another ( Rom. 12:10 ). Give preference to one another ( Rom. 12:10 ). Be of the same mind toward one another ( Rom. 12:16 ). Accept one another by withholding judgment ( Rom. 14:1 ). Accept one another by showing deference ( Rom. 14:1–5 ; 15:7 ). Esteem [highly regard] one another in love ( Rom. 14:5 ; Phil. 2:3 ). Build up one another ( Rom. 14:19 ; 1 Thes. 5:11