Premise:  Attention spans are short, even worse if the subject is religion.  Having an interesting one-liner can be important for maintaining focus long enough to make an interesting point.

  • Blessed (noun or adjective): above the cares of this life.  Blessed (the past tense of “bless”): to have said good things about someone or something.
  • Commands:  Trust God; love people.  End of list.
  • Evidence:  Christianity is the only religion based on evidence.  The Bible is the best attested book in the world.  Nothing else comes close.
  • Faith:  Making decisions based on what God has promised – which implies you know what He promised.  A useful synonym is trust.
  • Faith versus Law:  Economics.  You can’t pay the price of admission with behavior just like you can’t use deutschmarks at Disneyland.  To God, faith is the most valuable commodity and the only valid currency.
  • Fear:  The Christian’s only fear is for those who aren’t.
  • Forgive: Literally, to push aside.  God pushes our history aside and trusts us anyway.  Redemption refers to paying our price.  Forgiveness refers to pushing aside our untrustworthiness.   Faith is us trusting God.  Forgiveness is God trusting us.
  • Fulfill: To use an Old Testament passage as an illustration of a New Testament situation.
  • Glory:  In general, one’s glory is whatever makes that person noteworthy.  When used of God, it is a parade of godly character traits.
  • Grace:  It’s not fairy dust.  You benefit from God’s gracious nature in that He hasn’t already toasted you.  You gain a gracious nature as He makes you more tolerant.  Grace is the integrated and consistent combination of God’s character traits like gentleness, kindness, patience, justice, and longsuffering.
  • Grace versus Law:  personal versus impersonal; laid-back versus hard-nosed.
  • Holy:  pure
  • Jesus: (John 1:1, 14)  The Word is God; the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.
  • Justified: declared debt-free.
  • Love:  Doing what is best for the other person without regard to the effect on me.
  • Mercy:  One step beyond compassion; an intense desire to fix what ails someone else.
  • Perfect:  In the Bible, it means consistent, not flawless.
  • Promises:  Character development, the importance of people to the plan, joyful life, adoption.
  • Redeemed: Everyone is redeemed because Jesus paid up the justice system (1 John 2:2).
  • Rejoice: at the successes of faith, seeing someone be more than they are.
  • Sacrifice: a celebration of forgiveness with family and friends in the presence of God.
  • Salvation:  to be healed, preserved, or made whole.
  • Sanctify:  to reserve for godly purposes.
  • Soul:  sometimes, it is synonymous with spirit.  Sometimes it refers to the life-force, which can die, in contrast to the spirit, which cannot.
  • Spirit:  The part of you that keeps going after you quit breathing.  Often, one’s spirit is that person’s character.
  • Sprinkled: Sprinkled blood was used to purify a thing or person. 
  • Word:  the body of thought concerning something.  In the Bible, the something is God.