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Heaven without first forgiveness is not a possibility.

And no one has shown us forgiveness as has Jesus of Nazareth who called Himself the Son of God. “If you have seen me,” said Jesus, “you have seen the Father.”

Knowing that we have sinned is easy enough, so is asking Him for that forgiveness. First trusting Him, is easier that continually trusting Him.

Only as our lives develop we hear Him saying, “Return unto me.” The same issue rises: “But I cannot live it,” we say. “I don’t want to be a hypocrite,” we might think.

I would rather be an honest hypocrite than a person left struggling in his own cesspool of sin. “How can there be such as an honest hypocrite?” He would be a confessing one.

And the Bible says, “If we confess our sin, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sin, and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
We can confess our sin. He will cleanse us, is He not the Savior? Trust Him.

To repent, “heaven rejoices when one man repents,” is to change our mind. Can we change our mind from claiming the inevitability of continuously sinning, to trusting our Savior to actually save us from our sin? That would take a miracle, wouldn’t it?

In our flawed understanding, the human race continuously invents religious ways which, if we do them well enough, we will be “good” people. We won’t even need a Savior. Christ will be of no use to us – a waste of God’s time. This is: “Our own understanding” of which the Lord says, “Trust it not.” And this is the main issue of powerless lives in the church. It is why we need the revival about which nearly everyone in the church world knows the need.

To this need the Lord said, “Return to your first love:” Jesus, the Savior. “Lean not on your (own) understanding.” Trust trumps answers we invent as to why: Why this? – trust Him. What must I do? “Trust Him: He is leading you.

We will find a word – we will hear a small voice – peace will lead us: trust in the Lord. The Savior saves. He is our Healer and He heals. He is our deliverer and He delivers.

All that was done in Old Testament heroic lives of faith are our examples. We are to nearly blindly trust and that is because we cannot understand the details of our adventure.
And we will know, when important, which steps to take. They will be steps of following, steps led by the lamp of God – His word; they will not be steps of self-direction and of rebellion: He will lead us home. We’re not there yet.

In the more difficult struggles, consider the cross upon which He died and what came from this.

Courage is faith. Trust is faith. Affirmation of the promises of God is faith. And without faith we cannot please God our Savior who is saving us all the way along.

The ultimate choice is to trust; the ultimate fact is that we are not (on) our own in this life-journey.

“Then sings my soul, my Savior God to Thee,
How great thou art; how great thou art.”

Buddy

Faith involves a battle in the mind. Faith is asking: that is no battle. We can join multitudes of other religious efforts: we can even join: “A moment of silence” which is popular today. It is prayer without praying: politically correct praying: but not faith.

Faith in the Lord involves believing. Believing what? That His answer is ‘Yes,” that as care-giver, He gives care:
He intercedes in our lives.
He that once healed; heals yet.
He that once set us free sets us free yet.
He who began a work in our lives will continue to the end. God intercedes. And it pleases Him when we open the windows of heaven through faith.

“Ask, seek and knock” is what we often do: we call this – prayer, but is our praying earnest and effectual prayer? The windows of heaven do not open. We do not experience the outpouring of heaven with signs and wonders following. We invent disclaimers and even write about “When God says – ‘No.’”

Then we sing, “I prayed: God answered.” Are we here saying that His answer was, ‘No?’

It does not please the Lord that we ask but do not persevere in believing. Faith is asking – and- believing. He said “Ask and it shall be given you: seek and you shall find knock and it shall be opened unto you.” He continued: “For every one that asks receives, and he that seeks finds; and to him that knocks it shall be opened.”

Faith is a battle position where the saints of God prevail such that “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” becomes an actuality.”
We must not let the scripture “If we ask amiss – that we may consume it upon our lusts” – stop our faith. (James 4:2)

We are allowed no excuses or disclaimers concerning the Lord answering our prayers. We don’t pray as an exercise that will please God and grant us His favor. We pray to overcome: we pray as the Lord’s allies in the battle for souls: we pray out of that compassion which is born in His heart: we pray because the love of God is burning in our inner being. God is faithful: we are to battle to be full of faith in Him – that He will do for His earth-bound (temporarily) children.

We “ask amiss” if we are pleading with God as though He is reluctant to move on our behalf. “Every one that asks receives” is a promise directly tied to our praying.

Our faith seems small in our eyes. The thing about which we pray is huge, beyond our natural abilities. David said, “My enemy is stronger than me,” and He acted on the fact of divine intervention whereby he slew Goliath.

David also said, “I’m leaning on a Rock that is higher than I.” That is what we are doing when we pray, and the Lord will never let us down.

So we go back to our praying, this time believing and asking. The miracle hand of God is now able to move through His mighty army, the church – His family here – “brethren” of the Son of God – Sons too who have been privileged to begin saying and believing; “Our Father.”

And we are engaged in His quest for reaching the lost, healing the sick, comforting the battling warriors of God. Once again in the church signs and wonders cannot be held back; for petition is asked with faith believing.

As it was when the church first operated, so it must be as we join the host of witnesses stemming back to Calvary. Then were the first “believers;” then began the church of Jesus Christ and miracles in ministry.

Thousands were added to the church, sometimes daily. The word of God was “published” in the land – word of mouth. Church members were excited as they worked hand-in-hand with the Lord to touch the word with love and mercy. No literature has since outperformed the scriptures as many, many people made or obtained whatever fragments they could of the message of the Apostles: this was the birth of what is called the New Testament. Thousands of fragment then written, and in the years following have since been recovered.

Oh people, don’t believe as credible those scholars who have missed in the Bible what has amazed millions as they come to know the Lord. The Bible is a living book: it speaks because the Teacher of it is the Holy Spirit. One famous scholar wrote, “I know it is God’s word when it speaks to me.” We can’t know for ourselves unless we too have heard from the Lord through its pages: preached by others or read on our own.

God gave us preachers and teachers and He gave us His word. Jesus said, “Thy word is truth.” All who have come to believe – dating back to the first believers – are then able to pray and believe: that is faith.

Through faith we stand on a truth; we trust in God; He comes mightily.

When we taught our kids to say, “My God is great, my God is mighty; there’s nothing that my God can’t do;” we were saying what scripture promises.

Probably all of us need to get back to the basics, to pray believing and therefore believing we receive of Him. “Faith, nothing wavering,” and that takes determination.

The Lord has not changed. Faith always involves a praying one who is standing on a promise for results which only the supernatural can accomplish. It is to Him that we pray. It is to us that He gives – “pressed down, running over – shall – men give unto you.”

Yes, “We are more than conquerors through Him. . .” “By faith, we read in the Book of Hebrews, our forerunners – changed the world. Their watch – now our watch – the same faith; the same faithful God: “Even so, come Lord Jesus. . .” Amen!

Buddy

Worry has to do with me looking for solutions. If I perceive there is a pending train wreck, worry has in me the urgency that I must solve it.

How does God deal with us? He knows the list of possible results to every step we take. He knows the checks and balances He has put into play with the purpose that we might “come to ourselves,” so-to-speak; as with the parable of the Prodigal son. The Father waited, not in indifference, not without hope. What does the Father know, and what can I learn from Him? My heart too pines for the best for those I know.

Prodigals play the fool. I have done that too much to ledger. “If I had only known” could be my epitaph. I could advise myself today, that a person should develop himself; that is the primary role. Some work at what they love nearly to the day they die. So they “had a life”- all their life. Viewed from this side of the grave; not too bad!

We tend to see tomorrow from today’s lenses. Our plans are mostly built on that of which we are familiar, and less on wisdom.
Or on advise: thousands of college graduates are finding that government funded jobs have not kept pace. Thousands of senior citizens are finding that their “nest egg” spoiled. Hoping to downsize at the end, millions have lost the value they had hoped would be there for the final days: the homes they worked a lifetime to make really their own now taxed so high that were they to divide by twelve, their monthly property tax is more that their house payment forty years ago. The scene forty years ago did not give an accurate of the future. This is but one example.

But we can look into our tomorrows from another vantage point. Jesus called it the truth. The Old He said He fulfilled and He established the New. We can choose to read it, ignore it, reject it, or embrace it. It is the Book on worry. Its theme anticipates the end from the beginning. Everyone has each. From cover to cover in it we read of God’s remedy for our mistakes, blunders, and outright wrong doing.

We definitely do not see the end from the beginning; not even for some of our most miniscule choices. “To err is human;” to completely care is Divine. He is love; and we desperately need to be loved; especially when we’ve gotten into a mess.

Buddy