Marloes

This shows that it is very important to teach others to become a good teacher too. Most of all, it is about the people.

1. In Jewish tradition, it has always been some kind of problem how to adress God. He tells Moses His name but... this name does not exist and therefore can not be spoken. In this place, we read Adonaj - i.e. our Lord. Now, Jesus tells us how to adress Him: We adress the Father as 'Father' - this name shows a personal bond. We don't have to call Him by His function or our interpretation of the unspeakable name. He wants to have a personal relationship and we have to honour this. 2. We desecrate His name by swearing and behaving bad. That we, we give opponents the change to say: he, those christians are just hypocrites. 3. We call Him Father because then we accept the relationship we have. Besides this, to a father you can tell everything. You don't trust your heart to a person you call Majesty or sir. That's to much of a distance. No, we call Him Father.

The real question is: was Jesus divine? Satan wants us to believe that Jesus was not divine but just a prophet/ a liar/ mentally ill. He had to come in the flesh to experience what it feels like to be human. He had to die to take our sins away. He had to resurrect to prove He is stronger than death. Muhammad really acted in the spirit of the antichrist. Because of him, moslims claim a. that Jesus was just a prophet and b. that He didn't die. (In stead of Him, God alledgedly put somebody else at the cross.) I.e. they neglect He was divine.

We have to pray to communicate with God. He already knows what we pray before we get started, but it changes us ourselves. If you never talk with family/friends you lose contact --> if you never talk with God you lose contact. If you tell Him about your problems, you can oversee them more clearly and better deal with them. If you tell Him what you did wrong, it doesn't press that hard on you anymore. He doen't send no angels to take disease away but His spirit gives comfort.

God is the Creator and we are the creation - therefore He does not owe us anything. We do owe Him, i.e. obedience. If He answers our prayers, that's because His grace. We just earn His not-favor (?) if we don't obey. Jesus already gave us everything we need.

If we pray/donate/fast, we have to do that for the Lord and not to make good impression on people. Pride is very bad so we have to do things in private. They make you feel guilty if you don't give them money. In my country, people come to the door to collect money and they most times have a list on which you can write youre name. That way, you can see how much the neighbours gave. No need to say that this method raises more money than just a box in which you can put money.

1. Cain and Abel both had an offering to the Lord who accepted Abel's offer but rejected Cain's offer. Here, we can see that it was because Cain was not sincere. Cain was exposed to his own failure

I like money because you can buy things with it. Sometimes, people are so fixed on getting more that they forget about other people. Than it can become a false god. We can escape by sharing? There is a story in Luke about poor man Lazarus, a rich man and Abraham. The richj man goes to hell because he did not help Lazarus.

The Bible tells us how to interact with other people in a christian way. The last chapters of the book of Judges tells us about life without law. It makes people sin.

In the Netherlands, there was a baptist referent who told the people to pay tithes. When he had enough, he moved to Africa where he lives like a king now. Jesus wants us to share what we can aford to share - and to do it with love. Many congregations have no problem with two married women or two married man. Only, the Bible is very clear about gays. In my country, it is considered to be discrimination if you say that. Most referents omit things in the bible that do not fit in politics.

QUOTE (Pastor Ralph @ Dec 20 2007, 03:26 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Q1. (Matthew 5:33-37) What does it mean: Let your "yes" be yes and your "no" be no? If we obeyed this command, what would be the result in our speaking?In our credibility? We have to speak the truth. We can not use tricks to make ourselves more reliable, like 'I swear it on my mothers grave and the eyes of my children' to make people feel guilty if they don't believe us. In my experience, to the people it doesn't matter what is true. They just believe the person with the most beautiful madeup story or who they like the most.

Q3. (Matthew 19:7-8) According to Jesus, does the Mosaic law command divorce? Does it allow or regulate it? Why does it allow divorce at all? What was God's original intention ("from the beginning") for marriage and divorce, according to Jesus? In Genesis we can read that God wants married people to be one flesh, i.e. connected forever. This means: no divorce. However, this was before sin came into the world. Moses allowed people to divorce but Jesus says that this was just to please the people. He also says that people can only divorce if a partner had sex with somebody else. In my country, a third of the marriages ends in a divorce. You can divorce for whatever reason. This leads to many emotional problems. Especially for the children, broken families are very painful. If you buy a cow, you also have to buy the veal - as we say in the Netherlands. Many stepparents let the children know they should not be there. Many people get financial problems after a divorce. And you estrange from the other parent. My father for example was not called Jan - if they really needed to talk about him, they said the name of his village like if it was his name. Many children completely lose contact. There are also some hundreds of children who are kidnapped by the other parent and live in Syria or Egypt for example. Their mama's will never see them again. I think that if people can not live together anymore, at least the law should tell them to do marriage counselling.

If two leaders do not agree, the Gospel has to be the reference to check who is right. If the Gospel is not clear about the details, that means that they just do not matter. It is necessary to make a formal accusation because otherwise, it can be a battle of too big ego's. Than it is just about who can have the power annd not about Him. In my country, we have had many church schismas because the leaders can not agree. For example, if it is alowed to dance! Church discipline is more difficult nowadays because modern people do not accept authority and want to do as they please. They want to choose witch law to obey and witch ones not. For example, many churches accept two married women (with eachother) even though the Bible is very clear about this.

Q3. (1 John 2:20, 27) In what ways is the Holy Spirit an internal Guide for us? In what ways does he teach us? In what ways does he point us to Jesus' teaching? The Spirit inspired the apostles when they wrote the Bible. As an internal Guide, he can acts as an alarm bell when we want to do something wrong. He can also get our attention to relevant Bible verses. Maybe He can also gives us special thoughts? The Spirit acts on behalf of Jesus. Therefore He will always point us at Jesus’ teaching.

Hillel school says that a man can divorce from his wife for whatever reason. Shammai school says that divorce is only justified in case of inchastity. Jesus says in Matthew 5:32 that divorce is bad and that it is only allowed in case of inchastity. This shows He agrees with Shammai. The Mosaic laws makes it easier to divorce. In case of inchastity, however, people were stoned to death. This means that divorce was not in question! Once, they brought a woman to Him for this reason. He said not to stone her.

* What responsibilities do we have to help aging family members? Exodus 20:12 says we have to honour our parents. This means that we have to take care for them. Besides this, Jesus told us to take care for EVERYONE in his story about the good Samaritan. * According to Paul, in what way is this our Christian responsibility? In my country, there are special shelters for old people. In Rumania, many old people are left to themselves. We have to take care for them. * In what way is this a "repayment" of a debt? When I was a baby, my parents took care for me. When they are old, I have to take care for them. * To what does Paul compare to those who refuse this responsibility? They are "worse than an unbeliever". Matthew 25. When I come to Him, I do not want Him to ask me: "Why did you give Me no food?"

Many people in history have acted in the spirit of the antichrist - just like christians have to act in the Holy Spirit. Muhammad for example denied that Jesus is the Son and this is just one of the evil things an antichrist can do. There are also false teachers within the church (the pope, respectfully) or people who deny there is a God (Richard Dawkins and many others). In my country, 'ryki' is very popular now, in which you can study in order to get more and more supernatural powers. In the last days, the ultimate antichrist will come, who is a servant of Satan (Revelations 13). We do not know him yet but we will recognize him when he is there.

My computer has EO Filternet. It blocks subjects like sex and violence. Yesterday, I had to make a special request not to block this topic. On my TV I can block senders or for a special time.

- things that you want for your body, like to much food 'gula' - things that you want to look at even though it is forbidden, like **** which is leading to 'luxuria' - pride or 'superbia' It is difficult to see because Satan lies to us it is good for us or not harmfull. We have to choose whether we want to be in the world or in Him.

He wants to show us that Jesus was a person in history. He is not a myth, like 'long long ago in a country far away...'

A bad leader can throw the whole group in the (eh, vernieling). They are to be tested on several qualities, like not having mistresses or being drunk most of the time. They have to show they can carry the responsability.

Hebrews 10:26-27 10:26 For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, 10:27 But a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries. In this letter, John tells us that we have to convess our sins. We can lie to ourselves but He knows everyting so we can not lie to Him.

Well, the apostle Paul wrote many times about believing so deeply that we become one body in Christ. I think that John means something like that too. We just do not care about other people as if they were our own flesh. Besides this, many christians are hypocrite and only pretend to be christians so they can burn non-christians to the ground. In the Body, they are the limb with gangreen... Guess we have to pray that the Spirit helps us in this.

The problem of man is that they explain the rules for women as they like it. They tend to forget about their own duties. Do women always have to obey their husbands? If my grandmother had not left her husband, she and her children would probably have been killed. So people who say that women always have to obey their husband are *** Paul writes things that can be explained in many ways. If we look at Jesus' behaviour, we can see that women and men are to be treated equally. He talked to women in public, things like that.

1. Some people claim to be christians. They believe in Him but are 'too busy' to take care for people who are hungry, thirsty, naked, etc. They lost their saltiness. 2. I think it is difficult to detect your own faults because we tend to talk to ourselves untill everything is justified... 3. It is negative advertising. Other people say: o, look at her, some hypocrite christian. 4. In my first church the people were 'only christians on Sunday' as we say in Dutch. Many of them I knew from my neighbourhood and I can tell you some communists are more 'salt' than those people. 5. People can 'resaltify' by giving up an hour of watching TV and go to visit an oldpeople's shelter or something.