THREE PRINCIPLES
OF THE
WALK WITH GOD
OPEN: Hey, good morning, and welcome to STAG. I'm Jack. This morning I want to lay out the three principles of the Walk with God. You'll find these all over the Bible. But first....
DISC: The views you hear will be mine and not meant to reflect.....
UW: The following hour of RCR is being ....
I have a web site, a YouTube page, a radio show and a book. These have all grown out of my relationship with God and the Bible.
As a result, I get a lot of mail from people who visit my site and have questions or "answers". One retired Pastor contacted me offering to help me improve the look, etc of the site. He came back with the following question.
I think I should be asking you one question. What are you trying to accomplish here? What is your goal in maintaining your website? If you had to list the top three things you are hoping your web presence to achieve, what would they be?
That was a very good question. and I have a ready answer. I regularly get mail about the site and usually wind up telling people what I want to convey.
First, God is real. (and faithful to His word)
Second, the Bible is True.
Third, is a little more complicated, but rests on "Faith is a Verb." That will include getting/staying "saved." The implant of the HS. Dependence, in ALL decisions, on what God has said concerning the subject/event/action. Taking Ego out of all we do.
A little background: When I came back to God, through Dr. Scott's teaching, I started writing everything down. I've had a lot of theater training and that helped me put things in a natural way and one of my "gifts" is taking things apart to see the underlying principles. Philosophy is in there.
So, some God-Thing would happen, some "lucky coincidence" and I'd analyze it and pull it apart to see why I acted in a certain way, or where the thing was leading and would end. Pretty soon I had an unplanned for book of essays. I self-published and dedicated it to Dr. Scott.
I went the route of queries and rejections. Even when one publisher told me that my writing was in the top 20% of the stuff he saw, the subject matter wouldn't sell.
The ideas and '"solutions" of my Walk I knew to be universal and wanted to share them. l couldn't get my book out there, except for the local book store. When I replaced my old IBM double 5" floppy PC, used to type the book, with a "real" computer, I went on line with the book. On my Home page, way down under the Study list, you'll see Fifty Pieces.
But I had done so much important study with Dr. Scott that I started putting up pages. Resurrection, Communion and Faithing were the first ones up. Then God allowed a back problem that had me down for six months, literally on the floor when not propped up in a chair. Well, propped up in front of the computer filled that site with a lot of pages on the different teaching subjects. And again, you'll find my pages dealing with two things, either God's reality or Faithing.
My focus has always been making what I've learned available to others, but aimed at Believers. CS Lewis paraphrased Paul in Ephesians 4 when he said that our job is "to show off God to each other."
That's what I do, and that's where the elimination of Ego comes in. I try my best to separate myself from the site. People regularly write me that they don't know my name. They couldn't find it. It's up there in a couple places but only because it has to be. This policy gives me great peace of mind. The less attached to the site I am, the less rejection affects me. I'm not attached to anyone taking or rejecting the work. I don't know what people are doing with my work. I don't ask for comments. The only thing I do is an email link at the bottom of each page. As Dr. Scott taught on evangelism, it's the Holy Spirit's job to "draw" people, not ours. That's what Ego wants to do. Ego wants to be the Big Drawer, lead someone to the Lord." And "he" gets so hurt and frustrated and even angry when people laugh in "his" face or slam the door.
Lastly, why is God's reality of first importance? If I am directing my work at other Believers, what need have they of proving God is real? Don't they already profess that and more? Unfortunately, that's true. Also, unfortunately, their behavior to the contrary is right out there for everyone to see. Lip service is what dominates Christianity. Alongside the hypocrites are the tens of millions of sincere people who have been hoodwinked by the erroneous teaching passed down from the elite foundations, to the seminaries, to the Theologians, to the soon to become Pastors and teachers of those tens of millions.
I'll only mention faithing. Those deceived Believers think they are OK because of John 3:16. They believe in God, and think that's enough. They haven't been taught that the Greek word for believe is a verb, just like "faith."
Again, why is God's reality of such importance and must be reinforced over a person's whole life? Because the way we get/stay saved is so very, very hard to do by ourselves. In fact, it's impossible. Without a very solid belief in God's reality, you won't be able to give God $2500 out of some unexpected $10K gift that came in the mail. Your guilt might let you give a couple hundred, but not what God has called for in the Bible. The more real God is for a person, the easier it is to Walk with Him.
But if one is to walk with God, one must be perfect, sinless. When sin comes in contact with God's perfection, it explodes.
Luther said that all sin was caused by unbelief. I agree, but that has to be extended by finding out the object of that unbelief. Didn't have enough belief in what?
Another way I've heard sin defined is that it is breaking God's law. Adam and Eve are well known examples. They only had one Law from God, "don't eat of the tree of Knowledge." They made up their own law that said it was OK to eat that fruit.
You see, sin can't be specified by action. If that were the case, people would be sinless if they just didn't commit murder, rape, robbery, and the other BIG sins. We'd all have little check boxes for all the different sins. I know you can see that doesn't work. It's not Godly. Anything Godly MUST be universal. It must cover everyone.
When it comes to a relationship with God, we aren't at liberty to make up the rules. God dictates the rules of the relationship. This isn't some casual thing with God. He treats it as a contract.
He doesn't grab someone by the collar and drag them along. He makes known to Everyone that He's got something going on and if you want to get in on it you have to sign the contract and do things God's way. You want the job or not?
So, all that goes to say, sin is acting any other way than what God has told us is the way He needs us to act.
Again, we can't have a relationship with God if we aren't sinless. That's why He gave us certain rules to follow. These guidelines will help us assume a position of sinlessness in God eyes.
This gets back to faithing. Something very special happens when we faithe. We establish a relationship with God, through the Holy Spirit. God gave us all those guidelines to make it possible for our sins to be ignored. He told us that if we go against negative circumstances in a difficult situation, and act the way He has told us to act in that situation, then He will help us out by putting a bit of His Spirit inside our bodies. Then, when He looks our way, He sees Himself and not our real selves.
Again, Luther said that the sinner doesn't have enough belief in God to join in, trusting what God said, and does it the way the Ego has decided is best for the body of the person.
So, we're back to the three main principles of the walk with God.
Establishing God's reality, as a basis for confidence in what He's said. God is Real.
Putting into action God's way of dealing with life. Faithing.
Then getting to work participating in What God is bringing about with the Body of Believers. Supporting God by edifying other Believers, and helping others who are doing the same for us, our teachers. It's called the "Ministry" by Paul in Ephesians four.
Paul says that we are to do this edification of other Believers until all the Believers become just like Christ. I'm sure that you can see that this is a lifetime pursuit. Believers won't end up like Christ until they are glorified, and their bodies changed. So, our work continues until we die or Jesus comes back.
God is Real.
Faithe.
Support the Ministry.
That's why I'm here today. To help Believers understand God and His way. On the way out, let me ask, "Have you double checked the teaching you got at Church? Have you looked up some of the Greek words that were in the latest sermon? What are you being taught at Church? Are you being taught things that will make you more like Jesus? Are you being taught things that will make God more real to you and give you the confidence to trust What He says? Are you being taught how to participate on your own level in the work of the ministry?" I wonder how many hands went up?
You know, the Bible isn't the whole story. Some people act like it is. Maybe that's because it's inspired and therefore infallible.
But any serious look, even cursory, shows that there are things missing from the Bible. This can cause frustration in some and needless volumes of research in others.
What we really need to do is get up on God's level. You see, one of the most instructive methods of living life is to get up on God's level and see if we can figure out why God included this particular thing in our reality. Specifically, the Bible.
One quick example,. Who was Melchizedek? Volumes of discussion, but all on the human level. We must ask, not who, but why was Melchizedek? Why did God choose to insert this little encounter with Abram into the historic stream of God's chosen people? It has no visible or consequential action. It could have easily been left out.
I mean, the guy only shows up for a few verses, out of the blue, and then disappears from the whole Bible, except for a mention by Paul. What did God want us to know, by showing us this little play?
To make the story short, I'll tell you that Melchizedek was Shem, and that Abram had lived and studied God with Shem and Noah for 39 years, starting at age ten. Shem was Abram's old teacher. The evidence included in the account implies all this.
Melchizedek brings Abram bread and wine and credits God with Abram's victory. Abram gives Melchizedek tithes. End of story. Abram's story could have easily omitted this brief encounter. But God wanted us to know something.
I'm going to leave you with that thought and step aside to mention the purpose of the Bible. Nay, the purpose of everything we see in our physical reality.
The premise, of course, is that God created everything we see, and sustains it. He must have had a reason to create the earth, solar system etc. The only starting point I trust is the Bible. I know that everything in the Bible was put there by God to help me understand. Unfortunately we can only guess at the reason why God created everything in Genesis 1:1. We have to start at Genesis 1:2.
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Genesis 1:1 says that God created everything, the heavens and the earth; our known universe, so to speak. I won't try to explain, but Genesis 1:2 happens many eons later, after a great cataclysm rocks the solar system and wipes the earth clean. Genesis 1:2 begins the re-creation process. The earth itself was not destroyed, just devastated.
From the beginning of the recreation process we can deduce some reasoning that God might have had for recreating earth, at least the surface thereof. We have to go to the subsequent history outlined in the Bible. We must always ask, WHY did God include this?
I mentioned above that the Bible was there for my understanding. God gave us the Bible as an instruction book. Everything in the Bible is there to help us get into God's kingdom. This, by the way, is the reason why the Bible is incomplete.
The Bible doesn't have to be complete. It only has to teach us what will get us into the Kingdom. That's why the Bible is full of stories about how people trusted or denied God. It's full of stories of God's Kingdom. The Bible tells us what it's like, where it will be, when it will arrive, who will preside over it and many of its parts, and how long it will last.
God also gave us Jesus, as a living witness to God's Kingdom. That's the only thing the Jesus preached as he made the rounds. It's what he told his Apostles to preach, and lastly gave that same mission to Paul.
The Bible is repetitious on three basic subjects.
Respecting God.
Acting in trust of something God has said, faithing.
Helping support the dissemination of the word about the Kingdom.
That's God's outline for us to live by. That's why those three principles are repeated in every little corner of Scripture. It's God helping us get into the Kingdom.
Remember Melchizedek? These same three principles are contained in these three little verses, Genesis 14:18-20.
What happened first in the story? Melchizedek blesses God and Abram, giving God the credit for the victory over the four kings.
1-God's reality and deserving of respect.
Melchizedek brings Abram bread and wine. This is the first communion in the Bible. It is an act based on God's word that it represents the Messiah's sacrifice and bodily harm. And by the way, the second communion was the Passover in Egypt. Blood and the lamb=wine and the bread.
This is what I call faithing. It is an act, based on something God has said, against any negative circumstances, carried out to the end with the confidence that the belief is true.
Faithing. We have to put the "ing" on faith to make sure we know that some action is involved. Our English idea of the word faith is a far cry from any action. It's most about belief, or a belief system. Greek "faith" comes directly out of a primary verb called PEITHO.
2-Abram faithed with communion. Two down, one to go.
Abram gave him "tithes of all." Look anywhere you want in the Bible and you'll always find God telling His people that they are to tithe to their teachers, the Levites and Priests. They had their charity work, but the people's tithes and certain mandated offerings went to the Teachers that ran the Temple.
Of course, Paul would have instructed his converts to do the same, seeing it was God's plan, not the Priesthood's. In every letter but two, or one, Paul tells them to support the teacher of God's word. Jesus even told the Pharisees that they were right to tithe. The principle of giving that God laid down hasn't changed.
So, with Melchizedek and Abram we have again the Walk that God tells us will result in our participating in His Kingdom when He comes to install Jesus as King of the earth.
3-Abram supports the efforts of his teacher, Shem.
Just application of God's Principles to the story of Melchizedek and Abram sidesteps the volumes of debate over what that meeting was all about. They are more worried about proving who Melchizedek was or wasn't than seeing how God was using the story for our edification.
The Bible definitely isn't the whole story. But God gave us enough of the story to helps us follow Him. Dr. Scott used to say, "When God repeats Himself, pay attention." He took 66 books to teach us three simple Principles.
God is real.
Trust Him.
Support your teacher.
Let's take a look at the Faith of the Passover.
We have heard the story of the Passover in Egypt. We could repeat the fundamentals to our children or friends.
Here's the outline:
It was time for the Israelites to go back to the promised land. God sent Moses to Pharaoh to tell him to release the Israelites. He says no, so God sends the ten plagues. After nine more "No's", God sends the death angel to kill the first born of each family.
The Israelites are told to put the blood of a lamb on the door and eat the lamb in the house.
The first born are killed and the Israelites go out of Egypt.
God has set up the fundamentals of life for us. He's told us how to live in this reality. He's told us what He's doing and how we can participate.
In short, God has set up three fundamentals of life for Him.
Knowing God is real.
Faithing.
Participating in/supporting God's work.
Find any of the stories you can, any lessons being taught, and you'll see that they are grounded in those three principles.
The Exodus out of Egypt is no different.
Another principle laid out by God is that His word is Universal. Remember the places where it says "God is no respecter of persons?" All are equal in God's eyes. Nobody gets a break. His judgment and salvation applies to everyone.
Have you ever thought about the people in the house at the Passover? Who were they? What kind of people were they? Four hundred years after Jacob, his kids had lost almost all their touch with God. Sure there were many out of the two and a half million that were close to God. Moses' parents were among them.
What did the others worship? All the idols of Egypt.
How about the sin factor? How many of those millions were thieves? How many adulterers? How many corrupt leaders, using their position to advance themselves in the eyes of their Egyptian taskmasters? How many murderers, prostitutes, rapists? How many people with physical ailments?
Those were the people in the houses on Passover night. Some very bad people. It's a good thing God didn't start specifying who would die that night. Even so, I'm sure that there were those who didn't put the blood on the door and were one less in the family. They could still go out of Egypt in the morning, but their first born stayed there, dead.
What saved them? The second God-Principle. Faithing. What is faithing?
Action, based on something God has said, carried out to the end with the confidence that the saying is true. Action, based on belief, sustained by confidence, as Dr. Scott used to say.
What does faithing do for the faither? We are promised the Spirit when we faithe. It gives the faither the appearance of being righteous, when no human being can really be God-righteous. But when we faithe, God looks at us and sees Christ's Spirit.
All the sins of those Israelites were covered by their faith act of putting the blood on the door. And same is true for eating the lamb. They were given very specific instructions about the lamb. Roast it, don't boil it. Don't break any of its bones. Eat it with your cloak, shoes and staff on and ready for a trip.
Well, we know what the result of the blood on the door was. They were saved from death. But what was all that about the lamb? The lamb symbolized the body of Jesus. Remember that no bones of his were broken. He was already dead when they came to break the legs of the other two men. But there's much more than just that to the lamb. Psalm 105 says that when they came out there wasn't a "feeble on in their midst." When you look up the original Hebrew for "feeble," you find it pertains to leg ailments. How many of the millions had problems with their legs, and it would have been very difficult for them to travel for three months on foot to the promised land? Isaiah and Peter confirm this by telling us before and after the resurrection that "by his stripes ye are/were healed." As the lamb was killed and eaten, Jesus physical hurt was for receiving all our maladies. The blood saved their lives and the lamb gave them healing of their bodies. I'm sure that it wasn't only leg ailments that were healed that night.
Well, we know that they acted in faith and it saved their lives and healed them. What we haven't considered is the fact that the second principle cannot exist without the presence of the first principle. Remember, it's God is real, then faithing. No person can faithe without a belief in God's reality. People don't act on things they don't believe.
This part is interesting. Has anyone ever asked why God sent ten plagues? Would five have done as well? I know the easy answer is that God was hardening Pharaoh's heart. Don't you think that Pharaoh's son dying was enough? Why didn't God tell Moses to tell Pharaoh that if he didn't let the people go, God would kill his son? He might not even have to kill everyone else's first born, just Pharaoh. And I remember it saying that God knew Pharaoh would say no, but Moses had to go again. I think God was doing this for the Israelites, not Pharaoh.
Remember the first principle? God is real. How many of those first few plagues could be put down to nature? Frogs, lice, locusts, hail, darkness could all be put down to natural phenomenon. But then toward the end, the plagues hit the Egyptians aub not the Israelites. OK, the wind was blowing the other way, NOT!
Those ten plagues built up to the first born being killed. They were increasingly difficult to pin on nature. They were proving that God was at work behind the plagues. Without the first nine plagues, how many of the people would bother to put blood on the door? I mean, look. They weren't rich landowners. How many sheep could they have had? One lamb would have been very valuable to them. "What, kill my only lamb and put the blood on the door? Go next door, ok?"
Those first nine plagues established God in the minds of the people to the point that they accepted this last directive. Now they believed enough that they were willing to go along with this last instruction. What does Paul tell us? "Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God." Those Israelites had heard what Moses has said to Pharaoh and they knew what God had told Moses. First principle was accomplished, allowing the second principle to be put into action. You see, God's reality is confirmed by His faithfulness to do what He says He'll do. He demonstrates His existence by keeping His Word.
So, in the Passover story we have the whole picture. We have all the types of Christ. We have the confirmation of God's reality. And we have the means of salvation shown to us. Of course, when the Passover hit Jesus' time, he showed us certainly that it was all about him from the beginning. He gave us Communion.
He changed the wine, which represented the blood of the lamb, to mean his blood being shed. Then he took the Passover bread, which that night represented the body of the lamb and changed it to represent his body, that would be beaten and killed, to take the place of the healing of the original lamb.
I'm not going to go into the participation principle in detail suffice it to say that their faithing and following Moses was their participation in God's plan. They did fall away, though.
Remember how they wouldn't go into the promised land? They still carried too much fear to faithe on God's promise to protect them and beat their enemies in that land. They wouldn't support their leaders. You know what happened to them. It's too bad that the one's who would have gone in had to stick it out for forty years, while all the dissenters died off in the wilderness.
The first thing a new Believer must do is confirm God's reality through studying what God has said He'd do, to find out if God kept that word. That study will help the person step out against negative circumstances and act on what God has said is the right way to go. This is really important because the true walk of the Believer goes against most of the circumstances in the Believer's life. A believer goes through a change of lifestyle. A big change. A scary change, fraught with the unknown.
How many so called Christians are willing to give up 25% of their total life? See what I mean? Jesus gave his whole life. We only have to give one quarter. Pretty good deal for salvation.
Romans 10:17 Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God.
There's a favorite verse that most Believers have heard and even may have used at times. But do they really understand it, or can they prove its truth? If the Bible is the inspired word of God, then the statement must be true. The question is, what is it in the Bible that will give a person "faith"?
The verse says that hearing what's in the Bible will give us faith. The whole Bible is said to be the word of God. What part of the Bible will gives us faith?
Well, the first thing we have to do is find out what the words in that verse really mean. What did Paul write? We have to go to the original Greek. The very first word tells a different story than we think we see, because Greek "faith" and English "faith" are different.
The word that Paul wrote was PISTIS. That Greek word is the one that's always translated, in ALL Bibles, as "faith." Pistis is derived directly, one step away, from PEITHO. Peitho is a primary verb. That means that pistis contains action of some kind. Pistis is a verb.
Even when it's used as a noun, it contains the idea of action. Just like the word bath. Bath is a noun, but it contains the idea of bathing. The is an action implied in the word bath. What does that mean, then?
It means that every time we see the word "faith" in the Bible, Old or New Testament, some action is involved. In other words, "faith" is a verb. This is easily seen by looking at what Jesus said when he healed folks. Most always he says, "Your faith has made you whole." When we substitute the word "action" for faith, we can see that Jesus was saying that the persons' action was what allowed their healing. Let's break that down further.
It's easy to find what action the person did. Most always we find that the person called to Jesus, or sought him out. Jesus didn't go door-to-door healing people. They started the process by making the first move. What was the action of the woman that had internal bleeding for 12 years? She made her way through the crown and touched the hem of Jesus' garment, believing that this action would heal her.
A very interesting thing is that in one account of this incident Jesus says the word "whole" twice. But the translators used the same word "whole" for two different Greek words. The first one had to do with the woman's healing. she was made whole from her malady. But then Jesus also tells her that her "faith" (action) made her sozo.
Mar 5:34 And he said unto her, Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whol(sozo)e; go in peace, and be whole(hugies) of thy plague.
While sozo can be translated "heal", the definition of the word is, From a primary word s??? so¯s¯ (contraction for the obsolete sa´?? saos, "safe"); to save, that is, deliver or protect (literally or figuratively):
After the definition, we find the translated words preserve, save (self), do well, be (make) whole.
If Jesus wasn't talking about two different "whole" conditions, he would not have used two different words. The woman's action, her faithing, accomplished two things; her healing and her salvation.
In other words, salvation comes from acting in trust of God, against apparent circumstances.
This is born out by how Greek uses pistis. They say that pistis is some action, based on a belief. If we apply that definition to the woman, we see clearly what she did. She believed in Jesus' healing power. She had obviously heard about Jesus and his miracle healing of others. On this evidence, she figured that she could get healed too. But she had to perform some action, faithing, in order to gain that healing. If she had stayed home, believing in Jesus, she wouldn't have been healed.
So faithing pertains not only to healing, but to salvation. As Paul says, we are saved by grace, through faith. It's God's grace, but our faithing action that completes the process.
Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God.
Now we can say that acting in trust of something God has said, comes by hearing the word of God. Something in the Bible will gives us the strength to act in trust of God. But what part of the Bible contains that information? The historical narratives? The stories of the New Testament? The Prophecies?
What will give us the courage to faithe? We only act on things we trust, even if that trust is misplaced. We act only on things we believe in. The more the risk in some action, the stronger our belief must be.
We can read and hear that the Bible is the word of God, but how do we prove that word? How do we know that God is real? If God isn't real, then we aren't going to take any risk on what is claimed to be spoken by Him. We don't act on things we don't believe in.
Using the Bible to prove the Bible will not help us. Even if the whole Bible is called the word of God, all that is written can't by produced as evidence of His existence.
So, looking in the Bible for things that will prove God's reality is our first job. Prophecy is the first place to look. If God is real, then the things He said would happen will prove His existence or not.
Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God, to Abraham.
Abraham will give us the method for proving God's reality. Then we can apply that method to the rest of the prophecies we can find. First, what was said and to whom. Second find those people in history and see if the promise was kept. Simple.
God gave Abraham three clear promises. He said that Abraham's decedents would be so many they can't be numbered. God said that those descendents would form nations and have kings, all existing at the same time. Thirdly, Abraham's descendents would possess the gates of their enemies.
The first two promises can't be pinned down fully. We can't determine, 100%, which nations or which group of today's people are those descendents. We see that there are four major population groups in the world; black, brown, yellow and white. These could be said to be like the stars or sand, as said by God. But the third promise can be pinned certainly to two world entities.
When the world contains that innumerable population, with kings and nations existing at the same time, these people will possess the world trade gates. So all we have to do is find out who controls the world trade entrances, gates. For instance, who controls Gibraltar, or Suez, or Panama Canal, or the Cape of Good Hope or the Falkland Islands?
It's not coincidence that all the main gates of the world are controlled by Britain and the United States. It would be easy to imagine that these two countries only controlled a couple, while other nations, like China controlled some, too. But no. It's Britain and the US.
Taking that sure information, we can then find if the other two promises to Abraham apply to them also. The allies of Britain and the United States are the traditional Christian nations of northwest Europe, the Western Allies, so to speak. And that group of nations totals some two billion people.
We have just proved God and His word to Abraham, given 4000 years ago. This is the method by which we can use other prophecy to prove God. We just determine which prophecies are given to the northern ten-tribe kingdom of Israel. There are at least eight different name used for those people. Then we just hit the history books to find out if those promises came true for them. Once we know that Britain and the US, plus northwest Europe are the Israelites of prophecy, just our schoolroom history will show that the promise came true.
Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God.
Studying the sayings of God, the prophecies, in the bible will prove that God is real AND does the things He says He will do. Once we have a firm belief that God is real and keeps His word, we have a basis for acting in trust of what He has said concerning what ever current circumstances we find ourselves in. We stop for a second and compare our decision with what God has said should be our action. We overcome our fear of the risk and do it God's way.
The easiest risk to understand is tithing. I know tithing to be around 25% of what comes in. If a person only makes $10,000 a year, it is very hard to give $2,500 back to God.
The Believer's Walk is based in three principles. God's reality. Faithing. Participation in God's work.
Well, faithing, as outlined above is simple to understand, but we must recognize that faithing is impossible without belief in God's reality and faithfulness. Participation in God's work is a big stumbling block for Believers. This is because people don't realize or understand what God is doing and why He gave us certain tasks.
The Believer is to participate in the edification of the Body of Christ. That means two main areas of action, tithing and publishing the Truth that the Believer has found, so that other Believers have access to the information. SC Lewis said it this way, "Our job is to show off God to each other."
Our tithe is to support those who teach us about God and to help us make our study available to other Believers.
You see, God isn't in the business of saving people. He is gathering those who will take the place of the fallen angels. When He has filled that void, He will get back to His original plan of creation in the universe.
The whole plan is based on Trust in God. Eventually, Believers will trust God 100% of the time. Not 98% God and 2% self. 100% of the time. As you may have figured, this won't happen until the Believer has been changed to a 100% God-being. That's what is meant by Paul when he says that we are to be better than angels.
We are saved by God's grace, given to us when we take Him at His word and do things His way, not out own. Faithing.
Romans 10:17--Isn't it interesting that the number of that verse also tells the Believer's story. Ten is the number of human responsibility. Seventeen is the number for both "victory" and "resurrection." We humans act responsibly by faithing. For that, we get the victory of salvation, which results in our ultimate resurrection from the final death.
WRAP:1-Again, I don't know what you've been taught at your church, but if it isn't making you more like Christ or giving you a better and stronger belief in God, it's time to get out of that pew and find a new teacher.
2-If you want to talk about these three Principles of God, or anything else, STAG is a comfortable place to do that.
3-We're at 88 Briceland Rd. in Redway, the number is 707 923 ALLY(2559), or on the web at stag.ws. 50 videos up on YouTube, and over 300 radio shows in the archive.
4-I'll be here again on Aug 2nd. I hope you can make it too.
5-Faithing is, trusting what you know God has said, with your life. That's what Jesus did.
This is Jack, Bye.
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