| Author |
Message |
Max
| | Posted on Thursday, January 11, 2001 - 3:21 pm: |     |
Shereen,
Remember Christís parable of the evil spirit
that ìcomes out of a man.
ìIt goes through arid places seeking rest and
does not find it. Then it says, ëI will return to the
house I left.í When it arrives, it finds the house
unoccupied, swept clean and put in order.
Then it goes and takes with it seven other
spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in
and live there. And the final condition of that
man is worse than the first.î (NIV Matthew
12:43-45.)
You are like the house. When you were an
Adventist you were ìbewitchedî (Galatians 3).
But by pure grace alone our Sovereign Christ
has removed the evil spirit. If you do not now,
by faith alone, take up your cross and follow
Him, then ìseven other spirits more wickedî
than the Adventist spirit will come and live in
you.
Youíve come this far, Shereen. You ARE
saved. You ARE a citizen of the Kingdom of
Heaven. You are walking along the straight
and narrow road with your Lord and Master
Jesus Christ.
Now hear Scripture:
NIV Luke 9:5757 As they were walking along
the road, a man said to him, "I will follow you
wherever you go."
58 Jesus replied, "Foxes have holes and birds
of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has
no place to lay his head."
59 He said to another man, "Follow me." But
the man replied, "Lord, first let me go and bury
my father."
60 Jesus said to him, "Let the dead bury their
own dead, but you go and proclaim the
kingdom of God."
61 Still another said, "I will follow you, Lord;
but first let me go back and say good-by to my
family."
62 Jesus replied, "No one who puts his hand
to the plow and looks back is fit for service in
the kingdom of God."
Remember, God loves you more, Shereen,
than you love yourself.
Enjoy the kingdom of heaven here and now!
Max of the Cross |
Max
| | Posted on Thursday, January 11, 2001 - 3:30 pm: | |
Shereen,
I have a question. Do you think you have a
responsibility to the Adventists to prove them
wrong about tithing, Sabbath-keeping and the
state of the dead?
Did someone put a bug in your ear telling you
that you cannot accept Scripture for what it is
saying? That you MUST prove Adventism
wrong before you can accept the truth as it
really IS in Scripture?
Remember, the people who have walked in
darkness have seen a great light -- the
Sonrise!
You do not need "the lesser light" -- Ellen G.
White the Flashlight -- to find "the greater
light"!
Ever try to find the sun at noon by using a
flashlight?
Max of the Cross |
Valm
| | Posted on Thursday, January 11, 2001 - 3:44 pm: | |
Shereen, I will be praying for you daily. I know where you are at. I am pressed for time for the next few days but will have to get back with you to support you.
A few years back I spent alot of time on various web sites that had stories of people who left SDAism. One of the stories I read was from one of the early pilgrims of the church who left. He was early enough that he personally knew EGW. I was amazed at how well he articulated the PSYCHOLOGICAL HOLD SDA had on him and how hard it was for him even though he had studied his way out. I will search for it and get back to you.
I am JUST STARTING to read the Bible daily without anxiety. Before I was very sporadic with my Bible study. I was too afraid that SDAism would be confirmed and I would have to "go back to jail". The only thing I had to help me spiritually was the desire to sing all of these wonderful hymns. They gave me comfort and I saw that other people thought differently about GRACE, SALVATION and the like. These hymns kept me going for a long time. They were my connection until I healed enough to go forward and study.
My Aunt told me once that my biggest problem was that I read the Bible like and Adventist and went into reading the Bible with preconceived notions of what it was telling me. I am slowly coming out of this.
Once again I promote that little online book NEW COVENANT CHRISTIANS. The author suggests that people read and study the New Testemant Thoroughly before the Old Testemant. This way they will view what happened in the OT in light of the new covenant message. Read that little book. It has been the most therapeutic thing I have done this past year.
Dale Ratlaff's books are very helpful too. Shereen, do not be afraid. You are God's own FREE WOMAN. You will find peace and joy in this message. And your body will catch up to the faith you believe in
Shereen keep coming and asking for our support.
Valerie |
Valm
| | Posted on Thursday, January 11, 2001 - 6:31 pm: | |
Shereen, I snuck in a few minutes here and found the web site that was helpful to me:
http://web2.airmail.net/billtod/sdarsrch.htm
Two autobiographies very helpful to me are the ones by Cantwright and Albion. They both were around during the early history of the church and although they have FIRST hand experience with the deception they experienced many of the emotions both of have described.
Also there is alot of stuff about the Sabbath on this site to help you out.
Click on Janet Brown's site and there is infor on the Sabbath and a second book by Cantwright.
Good luck with your research. The more you read refuting the deceptions you lived under the more you will be able to believe and even FEEL the Gospel message.
I say feel because there was a time between my aknowledging and accepting grace and actually sensing the emotional security of it.
I think when I get back from a weekend excursion I will try to revisit Cantwright's book myself. I recall him saying very thought provoking things about the abusive nature of SDAism which I would like to bring to the thread on abuse and addiction.
Happy surfing the web!!!!
Bslrtir
OOPPs, I typed my name in tongues. Is that a gift or what?
Valerie |
Denisegilmore
| | Posted on Thursday, January 11, 2001 - 7:19 pm: | |
Hello Valerie,
When you said something to Shereen about reading the New Testament first, then the OT, that one struck home here.
When I first opened my Bible, less than two years ago, for the first almost year and a half of it, I read only the Old Testament.
It never occurred to me to read the New Testament.
Then one day a lady from the Nazarene Church came to my home. They all knew that I was into prophecy. She made a comment to me that was a whole new concept! She asked me if I had read the Gospels yet!
I kind of looked at her with this look of 'why would I read the Gospels?'...she smiled and told me to start in the Gospel of John and go from there.
Wow..what a new world opened up before me!
To this day, I thank God for that woman.
God Bless all,
Denise |
Colleentinker
| | Posted on Thursday, January 11, 2001 - 10:33 pm: | |
Hi, Shereen! I totally relate to your confusion and fear of being deceived about the truth.
Here are some things that helped me:
1.Read something from the Bible (especially the New Testament) every day AFTER asking God to send the Holy Spirit to help you read it for what it says without pre-set distortions in your background warping its words.
2.Ask God to direct you to the books and to the parts of the Bible that he wants you to read next. I can't tell you how many times books came to my attention at EXACTLY the time I needed to read them during my exit from Adventism. God is so faithful!
3. Read Dale Ratzlaff's books "Cultic Doctrine of Seventh-day Adventists" and "The Sabbath In Crisis".
4. Do some internet research--the sites Val suggested are good. Richard did a lot of internet research when we were coming out, and there are so many documents online written by people who lived during the early days of Adventism.
5. Ask God to protect you from deception and from evil. Ask him to fill you with his wisdom and knowledge and to bring the gifts of the Spirit to life in you.
6. Ask God to help you to be willing to act on truth as He reveals it to you. There is risk and trust and vulnerability involved in following Jesus out of a cult!
7. These suggestions are not necessarily in any order of sequence. Ask God to guide you according to his will, and be willing to know and follow when he does!
I will continue to pray for you, Shereen! God is completely faithful, and he will bring you peace and certainty.
In His love,
Colleen |
Shereen
| | Posted on Friday, January 12, 2001 - 6:48 am: | |
Max,
You asked me the following:
"I have a question. Do you think you have a
responsibility to the Adventists to prove them
wrong about tithing, Sabbath-keeping and the
state of the dead?"
I don't want to prove the adventists right or wrong. I think I was misunderstood here. I can't shake "my" belief in these things. I am trying but everyone here knows how hard it is to shake off something that is so ingrained that it is part of your being. I want to rid myself of the guilt over these things. Intellectually I understand but in my heart and soul I am unsure. God knows me and my thought process and to be hypocritcal wouldn't fool God. I could just go along with everything because intellectually I get it but I want to feel it. I have so much trouble writing things down. If I could verbalize it you might see where I am coming from.
Everything I learn here makes so much sense but to get rid of the gut feeling seems a huge mountain to climb. I will go to the site Valerie was talking about and I will do as Colleen says. I want to "feel" not just "know". I can read and pray but for some reason, God has made me the type of person that talks things out. Lots of times I talk and talk and talk until the answer comes. I don't know why I am like that. We do that at work too, we talk and create and talk about it again until it is perfect. Now, if we just created, it wouldn't be any where near the end product we desire. AAAGGGHHHH, I wish I was more articulate. Very, very frustrating.
The long and short of it is that I really want to feel in my heart what I believe in my head.
I want the doubts to go away, vanish, decease.
Shereen |
Cindy
| | Posted on Friday, January 12, 2001 - 7:02 am: | |
All... Hello from cyberspace! :-)) The suggestions above are very good...There is so much good stuff out there to look into!
A study of the Old and NEW Covenants was probably the place where I really understood that the Sabbath pointed to and was fulfilled in Christ! The contrasts are brought out so much in texts saying that the New Covenant...
"will NOT be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt."
(read this all in Jeremiah 31 and Hebrews 8. It is so good!!!)
What were the word of that covenant? Look at Exodus 34:28 where it says:
"and he wrote on the tablets THE WORDS OF THE COVENANT--THE TEN COMMANDMENTS." !!!
The heart of the Old Covenant, the sign and symbol of it--the Sabbath, pointed to Christ!
The limited DAY of worship and rest is now an UNLIMITED 24/7/365 time of REST...in a PERSON, a HOLY God!
Hebrews 8:13 says:
"By calling this covenant "new" he has made the first one OBSOLETE; and what is OBSOLETE AND AGING will soon disappear." !!!
These texts alone are why I believe it is WRONG for ANY church to put the Ten Commandments on a higher pedestal--or even equal footing--as Christ and His PERFECT and FINISHED work for us...
He has accomplished everything needed for us to be reconciled to a Holy God; we have ACCESS into God's Presence and we can REST in this glorious Good News!
The Substance has come! We don't need the Shadow!
And as far as motivation and admonition in godly living, we have PLENTY in JESUS' life and words and in the apostles' writings.
Along with Scriptures and the above books recommended, I loved Chuck Swindoll's "The Grace Awakening". He was so good to read years ago and realize there was sincere and and even joyful Christianity outside of Adventism!!
Max Lucado's "In the Grip of Grace" was very good...
Also, Phillip Yancey's "The Jesus I Never Knew" and "What's so Amazing about Grace?" I've just finished his newest book, "Reaching for the Invisible God", another good one.
A more studious type book I've loved is "The Cross of Christ" by John Stott; he discusses the meaning and absolute necesssity of the Cross...to me, it is wonderful!!
And I I have appreciated Oswald Chambers' "My Utmost for His Highest". At first he seemed somewhat of a perfectionist to me, but I have been reading it since 1996 and see now that he really goes "beyond legalism"...
It's hard to explain, but I think there really is a PLACE of REST beyond the rules and regulations of "religion"!
As C.S. Lewis writes:
"I think all Christians would agree with me if I said that though Christianity seeems at first to be all about morality, all about duties and rules and guilt and virtue,
yet it leads you on,
out of all that,
into something beyond.
One has a glimpse of a country where they do not talk of those things, except perhaps as a joke. Every one there is filled full with what we should call goodness as a mirror is filled with light. But they do not call it goodness. They do not call it anything. They are not thinking of it.
They are too busy look at the source from which it comes."
That's what I want to do--always be looking at the SOURCE--Jesus, the Author and Finisher of my faith...
Grace always,
Cindy |
Valm
| | Posted on Friday, January 12, 2001 - 7:02 am: | |
I am singing again this morning. The lyrics were written in the 1600 by Paul Gerhardt and have been added to in the 1800s by a Robert Bridges. They are sung to an adaptation of the most familiar part of the Passion Chorale by J Bach.
O sacred head, sore wounded, defiled and put to scorn; O kingly head surrounded with mocking crown of thorn; what sorrow mars thy grandeur: Can death thy bloom deflower? O countenance whose splendor the hosts of heaven adore!
Thy beauty long desired hath vanished from our sights: thy power is all expired and quenched the light of light. Ah me! for whom thou diest hide not so far thy grace; show me, O Love most highests, the brightness of thy face.
In thy most bitter pasion my heart to share doth cry, with thee for my salvation upon the cross to die. Ah, keep my heart thus moved to stand thy cross beneath, to mourn thee, well beloved, yet thank thee for thy death.
What language shall I borrow to thank thee, dearest friend, for this thy dying sorrow thy pity without end? Oh, make me thine for ever! and should I fainting be, Lord, let me never, never, outlive my love for thee.
My days are few, O fail not, with thine immortal power, to hold me that I quail not in death's most fearful hour; that I may fight befriended and see in my last strife, to me thine arms extended upon the cross of life.
I will be on a short weekend holiday and will look forward to catching up when I get back. God Bless all of you.
Valerie |
Shereen
| | Posted on Friday, January 12, 2001 - 7:14 am: | |
This is one of my favorite songs and it has helped me alot in times of trouble and uncertainty
This is a song called Jesus Knows by The Mighty Clouds of Joy
He knows and cares for you.
Inside you seem to be deeply troubled
And your laughter sounds a hollow ring
There is no sparkle in your eyes
And everytime you bow to pray you cry
Perhaps you don't believe God will hear you
Maybe you think you're simply not His kind
Do you believe He died to save you?
Then rest assured you're on His mind
Jesus knows all about your heavy load
He is standing right by your side to wipe away tears from your eyes
Jesus knows how you feel to be all alone
When your way seems dark as the night and you can't see the light
Don't despair, He's there
Oh yes, I know that life ain't easy
Sometimes it's hard, so hard to carry on
When dark clouds turn blue skies to rain
Your family and friends have all walked away
You need somebody there who can hear you, listen to you and understand
Someone I know longs to be near you
Why don't you reach out and take His hand
Jesus knows all about your heavy load
And He's standing right by your side to wipe away tears from your eyes
Jesus knows how it feels to be all alone
When your way seems dark as the night and you can't see the light
Don't despair
When you're blinded by your tears and frozen by your fears
Jesus knows
So don't you worry
Don't you fret
Trust in Jesus, He's your best bet
He'll pull you out of the sinking sand
He's a rock and a constant friend
A wonderful councilor is He
A mighty fortress
A prince of peace
He's my joy
He's my strength
He's my hope
When trouble comes I feel Him near
When you feel like you are going down and there ain't nobody around
Call Jesus
He said, 'cast all your cares on him'
Because He knows and cares for you |
Valm
| | Posted on Friday, January 12, 2001 - 7:17 am: | |
Shereen,
You just keep talking and talking. You are articulating beautifully.
Practice your faith daily by repeating your favorite grace Bible texts. Keep a journal to write them in.
Faith is not a feeling. But the feeling will eventually take hold.
You do not feel because you have so long been programmed to feel a different way. And that will change by continuing to proclaim what scripture says.
When I went through this I also proclaimed that salvation and grace was NOT DEPENDED on how I felt. My feelings were not the meter on whether I was saved or had accepted this gift from God. The scripture does not say anything about feeling, it talks of professing, accepting, proclaiming etc....
Keep up the talking and claim those GRACE verses in the BIBLE that have been so long denied you. They will take hold in your emotions.
Valerie |
Max
| | Posted on Friday, January 12, 2001 - 9:00 am: | |
Shereen,
Looks as though you've come to the right
place. With people like Valerie, Coleen, Cindy,
Denise and Maryann to talk with, how can you
miss?
Blessings,
MC |
Cindy
| | Posted on Saturday, January 27, 2001 - 9:56 am: | |
Dear Friends, Hi! :-)
I'm coming back to post on this thread since the Cross of Christ remains for me where I start... and finish.
I definitely sense a "power" whenever JESUS is preached! Sermons on persevering in holy living and the "fruits of the spirit" can be encouraging, and yet...
if the message of the Cross is missing, they just leave a void...
Last evening I was sorting through some of the numerous magazine article clippings, sermon notes, poetry, ect. that I have collected some through the years... I have been so blessed by other Christian writers!
I'd like to share an sermon that was given in October 1998 by a young pastor, James Van Tholen, who had just retuned to the pulpit after battling with cancer for 7 months. This was printed in "Christianity Today, May 1999. (I don't know if this man has since died; his cancer was widespread at the time).
His words are ones I've read over many times. He starts with the text from Romans 5:6,8, NRSV:
"While we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly...But God proves His love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us."
"...we have to be honest about the world, and honest about the difficulties of faith within it And then we still have to hope in God"
"So let me start with the honesty. The truth is that for seven months I have been scared. Not of the cancer, not really. Not even of death. Dying is another matter--how long it will take and how it will go. Dying scares me. But when I say that I have been scared, I don't mean that my thoughts have centered on dying. My real fear has centered somewhere else. Strange as it may sound, I have been scared of meeting God."
"How could this be so? How could I have believed in the God of grace and still have dreaded to meet Him? Why did I stand in this pulpit and preach grace to you over and over, and then, when I myself needed the grace so much, why did I discover fear where the grace should have been?"
"I think I know the answer now. As the wonderful preacher John Timmer has taught me over the years, the answer is that grace is a scandal."
"Grace is hard to believe. Grace goes against the grain. The gospel of grace says that there is nothing I can "do" to get right with God, but that God has made Himself right with me through Jesus' bloody death. And that is a scandalous thing to believe."
"God comes to us before we go to Him...God came to Abraham when there was nothing to come to, just an old man at a dead end. But that's God for you. That's the way God likes to work. He comes to old men and to infants, to sinners and to losers. That's Grace, and a sermon without it is no sermon at all..."
"So I've tried to preach grace, to fill my sermons up with grace, to persuade you to believe in grace...I said that God goes to people in trouble, that God receives people in trouble, that God is a God who "gets" into trouble because of His grace. I said what our Heidelberg Catechism says: that our only comfort in life and in death is that we are not our own but belong to our faithful Savior, Jesus Christ."
"I said all those things, and I meant them. But that was before I faced death myself. So now I have a silly thing to admit: I don't think I ever realized the shocking and radical nature of God's grace--even as I preached it. And the reason I didn't get it where grace is concerned, I think, is that I assumed I still had about forty years left. Forty years to unlearn my bad habits. Forty years to let my sins thin down and blow away. Forty years to be good to animals and pick up my neighbors' mail for them when they went on vacation."
"But that's not how it's going to go. Now I have months, not years, and now I have to meet my Creator who is also my Judge--I have to meet God not later, but sooner. I haven't enough time to undo my wrongs, not enough time to straighten out what's crooked, not enough time to clean up my life."
"And that's what has scared me."
"So now, for the first time, I have to preach grace and know what I'm talking about. I have to preach grace, and not only believe it, but rest on it, depend on it, stake my life on it. And as I face the need to do this I remembered one of the simplest, most powerful statements in the entire Bible."
"You may have thought that the reason for my choice of Romans 5 lay in the wonderful words about how suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. Those are beautiful words, true words, but I'm not so sure they apply to me. I'm not sure I've suffered so much or so faithfully to claim that my hope has arisen through the medium of good character. No, many of you know far more about good character than I do, and more about suffering, too."
"It wasn't that beautiful chain with character as the main link that drew my attention to Romans 5; instead, it was just one little word in verses 6 and 8. It's the Greak word 'eti', and it has brought comfort to my soul. The word means 'yet' or 'still,' and it makes all the difference between sin and grace. Paul writes that "while we were 'still' weak Christ died for the ungodly." He wants us to marvel at the Christ of the gospel, who comes to us in our weakness and in our need..."
"I'm physically weak, but that's not my main weakness, my most debilitating weakness. What the last half year has proved to me is that my weakness is more of the soul than the body. This is what I've come to understand as I have dwelled on one question: How will I explain myself to my God? How can I ever claim to have been what He called me to be?"
"And, of course, the scary truth is that I can't. That's the kind of weakness Paul is talking about. And that's where "eti" comes in--while we were 'still' weak, while we were 'still' sinners, while we were 'still' enemies of God, we were reconciled with Him through the death of His Son. No doubt God has done it, because there's no hope anywhere else. I know. I've been looking. And I have come to see that the hope of the world lies only inside the cradle of God's grace."
"This truth has come home to me as I've been thinking what it will mean to die. The same friends I enjoy now will get together a year, and three years, and twenty years from now, and I will not be there, not even in the conversation. Life will go on. In this church you will call a new minister with new gifts and a new future, and eventually I'll fade from your mind and memory. I understand. The same thing has happened to my own memories of others. When I was saying something like this a few months ago to a friend of mine, he reminded me of those poignant words of Psalms 103:15-16: 'As for mortals, their days are like grass; they flourish like a flower of the field; for the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more.'"
"For the first time I felt those words in my gut. I understood that my place would know me no more."
"In his poem 'Adjusting to the Light,' Miller Williams explores the sense of awkwardness among Lazarus's friends and neighbors just after Jesus has resurrected him. Four days after his death, Lazarus returns to the land of the living and finds that people have moved on from him. Now they have to scramble to fit hm back in:
''Lazurus, listen, we have things to tell you.
We killed the sheep you meant to take to market.
We couldn't keep the old dog, either.
He minded you. The rest of us he barked at.
Rebecca, who cried two days,
has given her hand to the sandlemaker's son.
Please understand--we didn't know
that Jesus could do this.
We're glad you're back.
But give us time to think.
Imagine our surprise...
We want to say we're sorry for all of that.
And one thing more. We threw away the lyre.
But listen,
we'll pay whatever the sheep was worth.
the dog, too.
and put your room the way it was before.'''
"... Believe me: hope doesn't lie in our legacy; it doesn't lie in our personality or our career or our politics or our children or, heaven knows, our goodness. Hope lies in 'eti'."
"... I've told a part of my story today, because it seemed right to do it on the first day back after seven months. But what we must talk about here is not me. I cannot be our focus, because the center of my story--'our' story--is that the grace of Jesus Christ carries us beyond every cancer, every divorce, every sin, every trouble that comes to us. The Christian gospel is the story of Jesus, and that's the story I'm called to tell."
"I'm dying. Maybe it will take longer instead of shorter; maybe I'll preach for several months, and maybe for a bit more. But I am dying. I know it, and I hate it, and I'm still frightened by it. But there is hope, unwavering hope. I have hope not in something I've done, some purity I've maintained or some sermon I've written. I hope in God--the God who reaches out for an enemy, saves a sinner, dies for the weak."
"That's the Gospel, and I can stake my life on it. I must. And so must you."
Grace always,
Cindy |
Patti
| | Posted on Saturday, January 27, 2001 - 10:56 am: | |
Wow, Cindy.
I am moved to tears, beyond words. My silence will have to speak for me.
Thank you. Your words have blessed me yet again.
Your sister in immeasurable debt to the grace of God,
Patti |
Denisegilmore
| | Posted on Saturday, January 27, 2001 - 1:58 pm: | |
" |
Maryann
| | Posted on Saturday, January 27, 2001 - 10:59 pm: | |
Hi Cindy,
Quite a sermon that pastor James gave!
There was a flood of memories for me. I really can relate to the thoughts of inability to straighten out the wrongs in certain things like the raising of my kids. (nothing to do with works to get to heaven!!!)
Cancer has never been a particular worry of mine as I fully believe in the natural stuff. In particular when a tumor is still encapsulated. I know a lot of people that have been cured with diet and herbs. My cancer was different though. Mine was an ulcerated area that had not healed in 5 years.
The doctor that diagnosed it, sat George and I down and told of things he figured could be in the future. One doctor to remove existing dental work, another to do this and that and so on. He explained how I could loose most of my tongue and basicly skin me from the ear to mid-chest and peel everything off to the left side and scrape everything to the bone. The removal of the dental work was for the main purpose of sawing off part of the jaw and what ever else took the surgeon's fancy. Then the skin would be drapped back over the scraped bones and zig-zagged back together. He then told me that re-constructive surgery could do wonder's and so on.
Well, I had about 10 days to think about all this!!! I already knew that what ever the case, a filleting off of the ulcerated area was all I was going to authorize!
This doctor got me an appointment with the surgeon the next day and after squeezing my neck, figured that the cancer most likely had NOT spread past the ulcerated area. She wanted a CT-scan and I told her I could get one in the next day or so in Las Vegas to determine this. At the end of 10 days, I finally found out that it was still localized and all that needed to be done was the filleting off of 20% of my tongue.
During this time was "REALITY CHECK" big time!! It crossed my mind that I was such a rotton Mom that God was going to see that my kids got raised by someone else. Yet I knew that the religion of their father is, in my opinion, worse than SDAism! My Mom was back in SDAism, so there was NO hope for my kids should I die.
During this time, I don't remember a time that I ever feared hell. I knew where my home was and was just visiting hell for this human lifetime. My faith was strong and He, the Holy Spirit, made it that way.
I just can not describe the feelings that I went through. What about my kids? I had failed them so miserably, so they would be better off without me. It was the religion of their Dad, his WHOLE family and my mom that was eating me up.
What about the surgical proceedure. If I refused radical surgery and died, my kids would blame me. If I did have the radical surgery, I would be a disfigured person that my kids would be embarrassed to be seen with. Then there was the pain in recovery....ouchy ouchy!
So yeh, when death looks you in the eye, you see, think, say, hear talk about different things!!
Well, on that note, I think I will crash
IBC |
Max
| | Posted on Saturday, January 27, 2001 - 11:35 pm: | |
God bless you, Maryann,
You are saved. You are in the heaven that is
under our feet and will be in the one that is
over our heads. Eternity belongs to you here
and now. You are sinless in Christ Jesus. May
he strengthen your faith. We all love you.
Max of the Cross |
Cindy
| | Posted on Sunday, January 28, 2001 - 10:35 pm: | |
I like how Eugene Peterson describes the security we find in worshipping God:
"...the relaxed stance of one who knows that everything is all right because God is over us and for us in Jesus Christ. It is the security of being at home in a history that has a CROSS at its center. It is the leisure of the person who knows that every moment of our existence is at the disposal of God, lived under the mercy of God."
Grace always,
Cindy |
Denisegilmore (Denisegilmore)
| | Posted on Tuesday, February 18, 2003 - 12:35 pm: | |
Here is another interesting article on salvation.
What are your thoughts on this particular article?
The site is: http://www.prophecyinthenews.com/WhatMustI.htm
Thanks.
Denise |
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