Posted on 05/19/2013 12:21:32 PM PDT by HiTech RedNeck
Edited on 05/25/2013 2:44:13 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
If one is sincere, one can beg the Lord to conquer one’s closed heart. He will follow through, often with astonishing grace.
Like Job came to say, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.". What greater testimony to the lost than for a believer to get to that level of spiritual maturity! The lost world looks at suffering Christians and, like Job's unfaithful friends, say, "Why don't you just curse God and die!?". They marvel that we can still praise God even in the midst of suffering, but that is one of the purposes of the stuff He allows into ours lives - that ONLY a genuine faith in a genuine God can carry someone through it. It proves that there is a there there! It cannot be faked.
Had I relied upon your creeds I would have never found God. The answer to 'Believe what?' is found in His Word... As is the proof.
That seems too often the Roman Catholic approach in practice, whether that’s in theory too I am not privy to enough to say. Teach um some platitudes; don’t face them with a decision to accept the Lord, that’s too too PROTESTANT! (Many Roman Catholics DO come to personal faith though, and there’s not a one they have declared sainted that hasn’t, to my knowledge.)
Primary hyperparathyroid disease and hypothyroid disease are different things. I have both.
Very true - I have had to go to that well several times in my life. I seem to have a hard time maintaining a steady faith - It is all either match sticks or fireworks for me. And it is always ALWAYS a reception problem.
Calvinists do not teach that God forced salvation on us against our will. That makes God to be something less than the Creator, as if he were just one of many contestants for our attention. But if he gives a dead man life, and the man proceeds to live, what else could one expect?
As for analogies of salvation and God’s role in it, the only reason I mention the danger of reliance on extra-Scriptural analogies is that God has already given us a number of Scriptural analogies, such as life from death, new birth, blind receiving sight, etc., and those are the ones I do rely on, and can rely on, because they have been vetted by the Holy Spirit. And for those analogies, I would say not that the analogy is crude, but my understanding of it, and always subject to improvement.
Yet neither would I say such analogies are so fraught with the danger of misuse that God erred in selecting them as a way to show us His truth. Being awakened from the nightmare of slavery to sin is truly like a resurrection, and God in giving us this analogy has given a great gift to help us understand His love and power toward us.
This is the doctrine of perspicuity of the Scriptures, that God is a wise and effective communicator, and His word accomplishes the purpose he sends it out to accomplish. As in everything else with God, God does not fail. Ever.
Preach it, sister! : D ; )
Funny how that works, ain't it? Ya go in sayin, "God, I really need this thing fixed... It is so bad!" But when you get your answer, you find out the thing you wanted fixed was not the important part at all! There is such grace from God when we are weak! Such opportunity for praise! That is precisely what FReeper marysecretary (RIP) taught me, in the darkest hours. What a revelation!
'Fix me so I can get on by myself' is *not* the right prayer.
Such complaints continue to remind me of the type of shallow polemics i have too often seen skeptics employ and it seems are taught at liberal universities, and which rely on so much ignorance or miscontruance of Scripture that they are an argument against themselves.
Here, it is charged that rape within marriage is not addressed, and thus it is inferred that it must be sanctioned, a logic fallacy for sure, and it never is given any sanction.
Instead of sanction, what we see is contrary to rape and such ill treatment. Rape is referred to as "folly," that "no such thing ought to be done in Israel" (2Sa. 13) and vengeance being taken on a man (and his people) who seduced a single Hebrew women, (Gn. 34) and a hardhearted tyrant husband dying a hardened heart, (1Sa. 25) and consensual romantic martial love being what is glorified, (SoS) and with the marital relations of OT saints showing consideration and often yielding of husbands to wives, and the ideal wife is not chattel but a wife and mother who can engage in many things including commerce, (Prv. 31) while the NT requires a man to love his wife as Christ loved the church and sacrificially gave Himself for it - not rape it!
Moreover, mutual consent is taught as regards conjugal relations, though they are to normally engage in such. (1Cor. 7:1-4) Only by making the headship of the husband into a position that requires unconditional obedience can one argue the Bible sanctions forcing the wife to have sexual relations.
I understand that as an atheist your quest is to find some fault with Biblical law but selective proof texting, but those who seek to live by the word of God must consider all of what Scripture teaches, and in context, and what is reasonably warranted.
When I was a child, I used to hate the book of Job. I even tore it out of my Bible because, in my immature mind, it made no sense and didn’t belong there. How wrong I was. I have long since repented of my stupidity. How grateful I am that the book of Job is one of the God-breathed books that make up God’s Word. The closer God gets to me, allowing me to understand and know him, the more valuable his Word has become to me. Like a jewelry box full of secret compartments, each one holding a precious gem.
Amen.
Welcome to FR
He has other jewels to...
"Then they that feared the Lord spake often one to another: and the Lord hearkened, and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before him for them that feared the Lord, and that thought upon his name.And they shall be mine, saith the Lord of hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels; and I will spare them, as a man spareth his own son that serveth him" (Malachi 3:16,17)
And you get that from where?
Somewhere other than your imagination or reading more into the passage than is called for?
Look, if you're looking for excuses to reject God, nobody can stop you. You will believe what you want to believe and nothing showing otherwise will convince you.
No, God does not bless any of that nor does He condone it.
People's bad behavior is a reflection on God, especially when those people do evil in the name of God. I figure that's one of Satan's best tactics and he gets a lot of mileage in duping people into believing his lies about God.
All those incidents were recorded in the Bible, but not giving tacit approval to that evil, but rather as recording events as they happened. It's about the real messed up lives of real messed up people and God's power to restore and redeem.
God made His standards known and people simply don't live up to them.
So what's your problem with God showing mercy and forgiveness? Are you put out because HE didn't react to those situations the way YOU think He should have reacted?
What's your real issue with how God handles things?
Job 19:25-27 For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another.
There are people in worse shape.
It's not like nobody else in the world feels as bad as you. There are others.
Folks seldom pay any attention to the 'commentary' just two verses later:
John 3:18
When you're 'perfect'...
Ah...
The next time a 'Talking Ass' speaks - I'll ignore the message.
BOTH are members of the Whore of Babylon.
--MormonDude(Both Catholics and Protestants are nothing less than the 'whore of Babylon' whom the Lord denounces by the mouth of John the Revelator as having corrupted all the earth by their fornications and wickedness. Any person who shall be so corrupt as to receive a holy ordinance of the Gospel from the ministers of any of these apostate churches will be sent down to hell with them, unless they repent"
[The Seer, p. 255 Orson Pratt ] )
Oh?
Just WHERE are these facts recorded?
Your answer is a very gracious one to my somewhat snarky question.
There have been a lot of good answers as well as questions in this thread.
I’m sorry for being so jerk like in my first reply.
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