| Author | Message | ||
| Plain Patti |
George, I wish I could inject you with an anti-SDA mentality drug. It sounds to me like you are still looking for signs of your salvation inside yourself. As long as you do that, you will remain confused and insecure. Look to the Lamb, George. Do you believe that Christ has worked out your salvation for you? Then you are saved. Please turn off that little SDA/RCC voice inside of you that says, "Yes, but..." What any "good" SDA or RC would say to me right here is: "Yes, but even devils believe and tremble. Mere acknowledgment is not enough. Faith without works is dead." And I would tell them that they are (yet again)taking texts out of their context. First of all, the quotation about devils believing (James 2:19) says NOTHING about devils believing in Jesus Christ. Here is the often misquoted, seldom fully quoted quotation: James 2:19 You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that--and shudder. Do you see anything in that text about believing in Jesus Christ? Absolutely not! It mentions only that demons believe that there is one God. So do Moslems and Jews, for heaven's sake! So if that bothers you, just drop that argument from your mentality--it just will not hold water. Also, another thing to consider, which many Christians do not like to think about, is that the Canon was ultimately "canonized" by the Roman Catholic church. Martin Luther detested the book of James, called it a "strawy little book," claiming it had no substance. I think, rather, that James was assuming that his audience was one of believers. He was not "preaching the Gospel," as Paul was, but, rather, giving some good advice on Christian living. 2 Timothy 3:16 says that "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness," but it does not say that all Scripture was Gospel. Notice the wording: is useful. This in itself is rather lame compared to, "There is no other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved." And what is it useful for? For teaching, rebuking, correcting and training, but notice it does not even make reference to salvation. So, let go of those old SDA ghosts and live in the light of the Gospel. George, do you believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, and that He died for the remission of your sins, and that His life of righteousness covers your life completely? In short, do you believe that Christ is worthy? If so, then you can know that you are saved--not because of anything in you, but because of the perfect salvation of Christ. We cannot keep our eyes on Christ if we keep on looking at ourselves for an indication of our salvation. Christ is our Substitute (in life as well as in death). Because He is victorious, we know that we have likewise been accepted by the Father when we believe in Christ. God bless you in your walk in grace. Please post more. I enjoy talking with you. Patti PS I would like to hear your comments on my post to Ken and Bruce below on Hebrews 10. | ||
| Colleentinker |
Hi, George! I think we begin to go from knowledge to belief when we stop fighting what we know to be true. It's really scary to "give up control" and stop rationalizing and analyzing truth. It also means we experience emotional pain and a real sense of risk. But the rewards of "walking off that cliff" into belief, trusting the nudgings of the Holy Spirit that make us KNOW that the truth is really truth, brings unimagined rewards on the other side of the "leap of faith". Still praying for you and yours, Colleen | ||
| Bruce H |
George If knowledge and belief are two different things, how do we know when we have gone from knowing to believing. George Plain Patti and Coleen are correct. Let me put it in my words When you know that you cannot believe, when you know that you are doomed, when you stop trying to save yourself and say Lord I trust in you. Do not trust in your feeling, they will lie to you they will say you are nothing, you are doomed, you are a nothing, that has a hot Temper, but God say you are a child of God. If you find that you do not have faith and that you cannot believe then ask God. That is the point belief come's from God. How do you know this well the Word say so. Do not trust in what others say or what I say or what you feel. trust only in the WORD OF GOD. It is living water, Life, faith, Love. So die and ask the Lord to raise you up. go scream it out to the world let other's know that christ is alive in you, and I WILL SEE YOU on the new temple steps. AMEN When you do this and you start to read the Bible you will not believe that that is the same Bible that you have grown up with. You will see why the Bible says that it is spiritually discerned. Bruce Heinrich | ||
| George |
Patti Colleen Bruce, thanks for your answers. I think that what I have to do from what you say is just give up and believe. You are right it is scarry. Patti I think that I have as little SDAism in me as yu will find in anyone. I have argued this idea of when we know we believe foir years, and have been told that I must nkot look for a feeling etc. but there must be some way of knowing, some way to tell that something is different. Perhaps it is just a slow understanding that we come to. There is a lot more I want to say but I don't have the time now and wont have for a while. I will look into Heb 10 and comment in the future. George | ||
| Plain Patti |
I understand, George. For now, though, I will not cease to remind you that you are a child of God; Christ has saved you. I am going to repost something I wrote a few months back. I hope it gives you some comfort. God bless! Patti | ||
| Plain Patti |
I was musing on the words of Luther this evening and started thinking about what grace has meant to me. The closest thing I can compare it to in a temporal sense is the difference between being in a good marriage and a bad one. Have any of you ever been in a bad marriage? No need to answer, of course. I do not believe that there is any situation under heaven more insidiously debasing than living with someone who is supposed to love you supremely, but who treats you as dirt under his/her feet by lying to you, mistreating you, abusing you, being unfaithful to you. I think that possibly the lowest self-esteem an adult can have is the result of a bad marriage. Let us speak in parables now. Suppose you are married to someone you love dearly. You are devoted to this person beyond any devotion that you have ever experienced. You try to please him/her. You do special things for him/her so that (s)he will be happy. At first, everything is bliss. You are quite certain that you little acts of love are striking their target directly in the heart, and you are happy and fulfilled. Soon, much too soon for you, the honeymoon is over. Your soulmate starts finding fault with you, getting angry at you for no real reason. (S)he longer affirms your love by responding to it. On the contrary, nothing you do seems to be good enough. So, you do what every human would do. You try harder. You work even harder to keep the house neat, keep the yard work done, make a good living, spend extra time/money with him/her. But it seems the harder you work, the less your spouse likes you. You try to change things about yourself that you know your spouse doesn't like. You lose weight, you color your hair, you stop working late hours, you turn off the TV and try to have romantic time with him/her. But no matter what you do, it isn't enough. You are lost and frustrated. You lash out at him/her. You are called all kinds of names for your reactions. You scream and cry. (S)he laughs at your hysteria, slaps you, calls you crazy, and walks out the door, only to come home hours and hours later with tousled hair and a foreign cologne on his/her clothing. The phone begins to ring at all hours of the day or night. A strange person calls and asks if your mate is home. When you ask who it is, (s)he hangs up. You ask your spouse about it; (s)he says you are imagining things. Your spouse says (s)he has been called out of town on business. You mollify yourself and decide to take yourself out to dinner. There you see your spouse dancing in the arms of another person. Angrily you confront your spouse when (s)he finally comes home the next morning, only to be cursed and told you are crazy. You persist; you are struck and kicked several times. (S)he calls help and throws you out of the house and locks the door. You are in so much shock that you actually believe that you are to blame, so the next day you come back to the house and beg forgiveness only to have him/her lock and bar the doors and call the police on you. You cannot imagine how this could happen. How could you love someone so much who treats you so badly? Have you figured out where I am going with this yet? When we are married to the law, we are in a bad marriage. The law will never do anything but mock, berate, condemn, and eventually destroy us. The law tells us that we are not worthy of it. What do we do then? Why, we try harder, of course. The law, then, only beats us harder, demanding more and more. The harder we try, the more abusive the law becomes. What should we do? We must divorce the law. Let me continue my parable: You came to the end of your rope. There was no choice but to remove yourself from this awful marriage and try to pick up the pieces. You divorce this abusive spouse. There comes a new Person into your life. One that loves you much more than you could ever understand. And because you don't understand, because you don't know what being loved feels like, you have a hard time believing that it is true. This person not only tries to make you happy, (s)he also makes excuses for your shortcomings. (S)he helps you with responsibilities that you have failed to carry out without chastising you or throwing guilt on you. (S)he comforts you when you disappoint yourself, (s)he never notices when you fail to give him/her the attention (s)he deserves. (S)he laughs and kisses you when you say that you cannot understand why (s)he is so good to you. (S)he is always near, touching you, caressing you, taking burdens off of your shoulders. When you ask why (s)he loves you, (s)he says, Because you are mine. Although you revel in his/her company, roll in his/her kindnesses to you, it is still very difficult for you to understand why (s)he would love you the way (s)he does. (S)he says, It is OK. You do not have to understand why. You just need to believe that I do. Not for My sake, but for your own. (Aside) This is what I mean, George. It is important for us to believe that God loved us so much that He Himself fully worked out our salvation for us. Our belief does not change God's regard for us in any way; He loved us before we existed. Our belief is very important to us, though. It brings the peace that truly passes understanding--peace with God, reconciliatioin with the Almighty. Our salvation has been won! We can relax and live as the chickens that we are, knowing that when Jesus comes again, we will be changed into glorious swans. Continuing.... This person marries you without any regard for your past. (S)he does not care that you have failed at marriage or at life many times over. (S)he loves you no matter what you have done or will do. At first you feel awkward and selfish to be the obviously undeserving recipient of such powerful love. You feel like you must respond with some sort of love gift in order to maintain this love relationship. But the love coming from your spouse is so overwhelming that you know that nothing you do would influence it one way or the other. So what do you do? You try to show your spouse with your kindness and deeds that you love him/her also, but everything you do seems so small and insignificant in relation to the love that your lover has shown to you. This is very much like the Gospel. Jesus Christ marries Himself to His people regardless of their inward conditions. He knows that there is no way they can comprehend His great saving love; He merely asks them to believe. His commitment to His children is total--even to the death of the cross. He asks nothing of them in return except to accept and believe that He has paid the full price of their redemption. Oddly enough, there are those who choose to stay married to the law. And they loudly and openly condemn those who have removed themselves from a painful relationship. They boast of their fidelity to an abusive spouse. The problem is that, just as in marital love, some people believe that love for something is generated by the thing being loved. Thus the saying, I love him because he is ...(wonderful, kind, loving, etc.), is not an accurate representation of the source of love. Love springs from the heart of the lover. You love something because of what is in you, not because of what is in the object of your affection. Therefore, quite honest, kind and loving people can love the most selfish, vile, and corrupt people and things. People love the law not because of what the law is--a mean schoolmaster--but for what they are, or want to be, inside. They want to be pure and holy, and they believe that the law shows them how to become pure and holy. On the contrary, the law is an abusive spouse that constantly points out our faults and shortcomings to us. Jesus, in stark contrast, loved us before we existed. He loves us not because of what we are, but because of what He is. We cannot begin to fathom that kind of love, all we can do is accept it by faith. And we can know that, since this love is based upon what He is, and not upon what we are, it will not be taken away from us. But there is a problem here: You cannot be a bigamist. You cannot be married both to the law and to Christ. If you are married to the law, you must divorce yourself from it before you can become married to Christ. And if you are married to Christ, you divorce Him if you choose to return to the law. Bad marriage/good marriage. Why would anyone stay in a bad marriage if they had a choice in the matter? The Good News is that in Jesus Christ we can divorce that abusive spouse and can experience the wonder, the joy, the security, and the confidence of being truly loved, truly married to One Whose love has no bounds. | ||
| Richard, Jr. |
Plain Patti, I love your self-effacing moniker. It sounds by your posts that you are not very plain. I was deeply blessed and greatly encouraged by your last post. It was an acurate depiction of the new covenant. BTW, when you were in Boston were you able to get out to the cape. I trace my paternal roots to when one of my kin landed on Cape Cod in l638. They then went on to establish a tavern which is now a historic musuem. Richard, Jr. | ||
| Plain Patti |
Hi, Richard, and thank you! I didn't make it out to the Cape. :( I had more pressing obligations. Not really obligations, but more like a healing session. But I am going back! As soon as I can. This time with my husband and kids. How utterly cool that you can trace your ancestry back so far! That is just super-neat! It is quite a story about what I was doing there in the first place. Just more evidence that God can heal the deepest wounds. Thank you for your kind words, and for all of your insightful remarks! Grace and peace, Patti | ||
| George |
Patti, Some how I missed much of your repost the first time around. Very powerfull stuff on many levals. There is so much packed into what you said that I will pick only one little part that will show exactly what I was wantiing to know. When you said "when we begin to respond to the love" (or words to that effect) is what I guess I was looking for as an answer. It is only when we respond to Christ that we truly know that we believe. That is the evidence of belief, that is how we know when we have gone from knowledge to belief! Or as Colleen pointed out to me last night, it is when we can confess to Him that we believe. This morning I would add that it is when we can confess to Him that we believe, NOT out of fear or pride or shame or guilt but out of absolute wonderment for what He has done for us, actualy, for little old me, and that He would have done it for just me, that we know that we have gone from knowing to believing. Got to go to work---George | ||
| BRUCE H |
BIG AMEN GEORGE!!! YES YOU BELIEVE. | ||
| Colleentinker |
Georgeó I'm praising God for you and continuing to pray for you and yours! Colleen | ||
| Jeff H |
I read this short story last weekend and it really hit me, so I thought I would share it. It was by Billy Graham. "I have a friend who during the Depression lost his job, a fortune, a wife, and a home. But he tenaciously held to his faith--the only thing he had left. One day he stopped to watch some men doing stonework on a huge church. One of them was chiseling a triangular piece of stone. "What are you going to do with that?" asked my friend. The workman said "See that little opening away up there near the spire? Well I'm shaping this down here , so it will fit in up there." Tears filled the eyes of my friend as he walked away, for it seemed that God had spoken through the workman to explain his ordeal through which he was passing, "I'm shaping you down here, so you'll fit in up there." | ||
| Maryann |
Hi Jeff, And that chiseling hurts, doesn't it? Maryann | ||
| Cindy |
Jeff, thanks for the story! I guess if we can alway remember that God is working all things for our GOOD when we trust in Him, despite what the external circumstances are, it will give us that peace that passes understanding. It is not always easy to do, though! "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrectrion of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade--kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith--of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire--may be proved genuine and may result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed." 1 Peter 1:3-7 By His Mercy and Grace alone, Cindy | ||
| Bmorgan |
Colleen and Richard, I want to publicly thank God for giving you foresight, talent and the effort it took in developing and continuing this ministry. I admire the godly wisdom, keen insight, humble attitude, and sweet spirit of encouragement you demonstrate continually. I find this place to be a haven. My visits here have brought much healing to my soul. I get needed theraphy that is assisting my recovery and rescue from deception, without bashing sda. Having Christ Alone is worth any heart break leaving Ad-ism. I know God led me to this site. I found more than I ever thought I would. I feel empowered and constantly encouraged/edified. So many of you have ministered to me in unique and personal ways. Your posts are all valuable. George, Maryann, you are much loved. Cindy, where are you? I miss you. Patti, I hope you are safely back home. Steve, may God continue giving you His peace. (I like Dan Quayle and I like George W. too:>). Max, hurry up and get back on Board. Where's Bruce? Wendy, someone recommended a book "Spirit Crisis-Surviving trauma to the soul" by J LeBron McBride It is worth reading. He is a former SDA. Grace Ambassador, LoneViking, BillTh and BillTw., I appreciate the depth of knowledge you share and the spirit you allow to flow through you. There is uniqueness about our roots and it certainly helps when one "beggar" can lead another to find food-spiritual food for the soul. We can live the Abundant life. When our shackles are broken. May God be Praised. BMorgan | ||
| Maryann |
Hi Morgan, And you were worried about your writing? I think you do awesomely! (hey, I like that word!) On the informative side: I found that when you are moving and constantly going to the store for apple boxes you should, because of the hot weather, always make your way out of the store by stopping in the ice cream section! Results: You gain back a good part of the 20 lbs you lost when you were sick because the heat "forces" you to eat 2 large bowls of the stuff with milk poured over it each time you get to hot! Try it, you'll like it;-)) I'm really glad you have found this forum to be a haven. Maryann | ||
| Colleentinker |
And let me say, Bmorgan, what a wonderful part of our forum you are, too! Thank you for your depth and insight. I am grateful to God for this site and for everyone who posts (and lurks) here. I continue to pray for us all. Colleen | ||
| Breezy |
Maryann, Isn't it terrible when those ice cream bins just reach out and grab you? I know those 20 lbs. I thought I wanted to lose them, then learned that I didn't really want to lose them after all. :) God bless! Wendy | ||
| Maryann |
Hi Wendy, I'll tell you a secret if you promise not to tell a soul (oops, a person). When I had my mouth surgery in May, I had ALL these WONDERFUL FRIENDS from a FORMER SDA forum that I wont mention the name except in a whisper (shhhhh FAF). You know what they would do to me???;-(( They would invite me out to eat and the whole gang would order the most wonderful smelling foooooooood and wave it infront of me and under my nose and say yuuuuuuuuuuuuuhm! ;-(( I had to hold my tongue perfectly still for a week and could not even talk much less eat! Do have even a foggy clue as to how starved and hungry I was?;-(( Those meanies!!!! Now the bright side;-)) Now that I'm moving down there, I have some very well remembered targets! And will I ever blast them every chance I get! In fact one of my targets had a birthday a couple weeks ago and it was open season and I led the attack! I'm hoping he recovers from his wounds and lives another year so I can re-open the wounds!;-)) :-))..Maryann..;-)) | ||
| Breezy |
Hi Maryann, Hhmmmm, Max? Your experience sounds like when I had my first child. He was born on Thanksgiving day and I had a c-section. Couldn't eat for 48 hours cause no bowel sounds. Anyway, everyone I mean everyone came by to tell me about the roast turkey, the smoked turkey, the stuffing, the potatos and gravy, etc. ad nauseum. I'm telling you, that is suffering. :) I'm sorry about your mouth. What was wrong? |
