ecglotfelty

Unless Jesus is Lord of everything in your life, then He is Lord of nothing. He can't just provide our salvation and then have us say, "Gee, thanks for the fire insurance, pal. Well I guess I'd better be going now. Gotta lot more sinning to do." I belive it was said that living life by doing our own way after we've accepted Jesus' free gift of grace would be like crucifying Him over and over again. Grace isnot supposed to be freedom to sin; it's freedom FROM sin. Because of all that Jesus has done for my life, sin suddenly becomes unthinkable. Like in marriage, thinking about another woman is out of the question. When we submit to God's will, that means He has total say over everything in our life. Otherwise, His salvation means nothing to us.

Forgive me if sound like a liberal, but here goes... We recognize that God is King alone and that we owe our allegiance to Him alone. Regardless of whether or not governments acknowledge Him, He is still sovereign. The New Testament church florished despite the fact that not only did the Roman gov't not recognoze Yahweh, but they required their citizens to worship Caesar. Because Christians refused to do this, they were severely persecuted. Paul was persecuted far more than most Christinas were, and eventually was beheaded for his faith. But it was he who wrote in Romans 13:1, "Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God." If the people of the United States don't recognize God as King, then the words "One Nation Under God" are just useless words taking up space on paper. Jesus said in Matthew 7:21, "Not everyone who says to me , 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of God, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven." Look at the church in China. Their gov't is atheist. They arrest and kill Christians. Yet there are so many people coming to Christ in that country, they're experiencing Pentecost on a daily basis. Maybe we should learn a thing or two about faith from these people. Don't get me wrong. If they decide to eliminate God from money and pledges, it will be a dark day in America. I love my country. But my allegiance is to Yahweh the Father, Jesus Christ the Son, and the Holy Spirit, AND TO HIM ALONE.

It all boils down to one word: pride. Pride, more than any other disease, is the deadliest because the whole time you have it, you feel invincible. Pride makes you think that everything is up to you, so that when everything appears to be slipping away from you, you try and work even harder. You become your own self-fulfilling prophecy, that everything is up to you, whether you win or lose. IT'S NOT UP YOU!!! God alone has that decision, and until we come to know Him as our all in all, He will allow us to lose all until all we have is Him. You were so right, Dr. Wilson, about how we come to Him when we have royally fouled up everything, but make it harder to find Him when life is good. One of these days, I'm going to write a book, playing off the title of a bestseller: "When Good Things Happen to Good People: How Christians Need to Handle Success."

I don't know about you, but I was always taught that "thou shalt not take the Lord's name in vain" as using it in a curse word. I thought, "well, that's too simplistic; there's gotta be more to it." Then I thought about how we as Christians are taking Christ's name for ourselves. 2Chron 7:14 starts with, "If my people, who are called by my name..." Even the word "Christian" means like Christ. That's a tall order!! If we take the Lord's name for ourselves, we need to reflect what the Lord is like. By the way we live our lives shows whether we bring honor or dishonor to his name. Our "hallowing" the name of the Lord is only as good as the way we honor it ourselves.