My personal belief, wino, and I believe it is biblical, is that we cannot snatch ourselves from Christ’s hands.
My recourse, then, for explaining those whose lives simply deny they are Christians, is that they never really believed in the first place.
Paul calls it “confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the death.” It is talking about a sincere faith that both outwardly acknowledges Jesus as Lord and inwardly clings to Him in the deepest part of our being.
Is there another kind of “believe” that doesn’t meet that standard? I think there is. I tend to view it as “cognitive assent to a notion.”
Good answer. It came about because I was questioning the actions of another friend.
His point was the Lord has me right where he wants me or can use me. Its hard to be used by the Spirit to do good works if one is not humble
I agree with you...
I am with you Chaplain, because when you truly surrender all of your life to Christ, it changes you from the inside out. The way you look at life is different, and the value of everything is different, what you want to do with your time, your life, how you want to be in response to God’s word and everyone around you.
The danger to me its that we can all have that change but we can all have varying degrees of growth. That is why it is dangerous, and in my opinion, when you get people judging other people as to their success in living a Christ-like, Christ-centered, life. Undoubtedly, the people advocating and judging will see themselves at a higher percentage rate than others they judge. And I just don’t think it works that way. Moreover, I believe that is reserved for the BEMA, the Judgement Seat of Christ.