"Without ADORATION/VENERATION it is impossible to please HER!"
Man: The Dwelling Place of God – Chapter 1
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/3242797/posts
The Call of Christ – Chapter 2
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/3244492/posts
What We Think of Ourselves is Important – Chapter 3
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/3246397/posts
The Once-born and the Twice-born - Chapter 4
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/3247452/posts
On the Origin and Nature of Things-Chapter 5
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/3250352/posts
Why People Find the Bible Difficult - Chapter 6
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/3253131/posts
Excellent read ... there are so many that think of faith as Dorothy clicking her heels together .. no saving faith is a gift from God and is born in our new heart
To believe that God gives us faith would blame those who are faithless on God. To say that those finding proof of religious “fact” are faithless and looking for something to give them reason for believing is also not necessarily so.
We all start our faith with proof, perhaps not much proof but some. We usually start with the stories of Christ, His life, His Miracles and His resurrection.
Faith is not based on nothing. Faith starts out as a very small thing in us, as we exercise our faith in The Lord Jesus Christ and experiment with living the ways of His teachings we see that it works and our faith is strengthened. As our faith becomes stronger we see more and more the truth that our faith allows us to see, truth that from outside the vantage point of faith we would not see.
As our faith grows in some ways it decreases at the same time because it turns into knowledge. We no longer believe the stories of Jesus, the apostles and God Himself, we “know” them to be true because we have put them to the test and seen the results. When unbelievers shame us and make fun of us and present proof of the fallacy of Christian doctrines we are unaffected in part because of our faith but also in part because of our knowledge. For new Christians whose faith is frail these trials are very difficult and many will fall away. Likewise those who are new to the faith can be more easily tempted to do evil than those who have learned the truth of the gospel not by faith alone but by faith tried and found to be true.
Humans don't earn any reward from God, by Grace God's Son has bought us, we are His not because He made us have faith, not because He loved us and gave us faith but because we accepted Him and allowed faith to work in us. It is the relationship between our spirits and the Holy Spirit that allows us to accept The Savior and therefore gain faith and knowledge.
I have learned by practice that if I jump up into the air that gravity will pull me back down to the ground. Before I understood gravity I had faith everyday that I would not go flying into space. I don't have to have faith in gravity anymore, now I know about it, I have tested and know its limits to me.
I have tested my faith in The Lord Jesus Christ and know Him to be The Son of God and I have enough faith to do my best to follow Him and His ways. I don't require knowing which Tomb of many claimed to have been His, I don't have to search for blood stains on a rock that may have been used for His crucifixion, I don't need to know that some cloth may have stains from His face to Know He is, but, those things are in no way bad to know. The problem is that when your faith is based on tangible items if the items are later proven to be wrong what happens to your faith?
I don't know about the Shroud of Turin, I don't know about the Tomb of Jesus of Nazareth, or where Golgotha is but I know that Jesus is Christ.
"Without ADORATION/VENERATION it is impossible to please HER!"
I have read works by the Catholic Mother Teresa, the Evangelist Billy Graham, and his son Franklin. I have read things about William and Catherine Booth, the founders of the salvation army. I have read about Maximillian Kolbe and Bonhoeffer.
They all seem like really decent people, why is there such a difference between them and what I see here? Don't Christians believe in turning the other cheek anymore?