Posted on 07/06/2021 9:58:59 AM PDT by jimfr
Is it pride when you determine that God is good enough to deserve your faith? or is it false faith when you accept God without thinking about it or evaluating if God is true and can be trusted?
I think you do not know what “faith” means.
There is a world and an eternity of distance between deciding if God is good enough to deserve versus evaluating whether He can be trusted or not.
God tells us to test Him and to try Him, but none of us are knowledgeable enough or privileged enough to decide if God is “good enough” or deserving.
If you are approaching the question in that way, you are not walking before God humbly and you are guilty of pride, very guilty.
Indeed. This isn’t something I think about. This isn’t anything I “weigh”. I trust God. I don’t try to justify it or verify it. I don’t “feel good about myself” because of it. I just Trust God. It starts there and it ends there.
In God We Trust
You should only come to God humbled and in awe. It is pride to not come to God.
For anyone to believe God cannot be trusted or is “true” is showing they do not know God at all.
What is true is that we all die after having human life and any belief we had solid control over our “realm,” or the next, is proven wrong.
First figure out which God (or god) that you are seeking.
Dear jimfr,
The gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. [Romans 1:16]
You’ve got to hear it or read it; your faith will come by the grace of God, Ephesians 2:22.
No room for pride, no room for false faith.
Correction on post #8, I meant to type Ephesians 2:1-22.
It would be like you saying the sun is no longer in the sky at noon. He will break you to the point you cannot have any pride. There is no "decision" left for you to make. If there is a decision left for you to make, you are not "born again" and not His.
>>In God We Trust<<
All others pay cash.
I have said for many years - faith is like a muscle, the more you use it the stronger it gets. Just use it.
The word in the Bible for faith has a two part meaning: to be trustworthy and to trust. As was Abraham and what James talks about.
"8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast.
When he says "not from yourselves" he is referring to the faith. God provided the faith. You did nothing, so you can't boast.
Reject this satanic formulation, which attempts to change places with God.
It starts with the premise that you are the ultimate judge of God, rather than He of you, and that you are the one who measures God's goodness, a task nobody assigned you but yourself, and for which you are not equipped in any way.
Could it not be, they do not know God and therefore do not know if God can be trusted?
God would rather us not be lukewarm but rather hot or cold.
God rewards those that seek Him and you can only evaluate Him by seeking who He is?
Do you recall what Christ said about becoming like a child to enter the Kingdom?
“And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” — Matthew 18:3
At this point the question becomes what are little children like that is that important?
I will propose that the relevant trait of small children is that they trust their parents.
You may have heard some folks accuse that Adam and Eve were essentially set up to fall, but this suggestion ignores that they did in fact have something by which they could have resisted the serpent and that was their relationship with the Lord.
Realize that whatever else was going on the temptation was about not trusting the Lord, to essentially think He had been unjustly holding out on them.
Now the substitutional atonement presents an opportunity crafted by the Lord to reverse that. Whatever protest or questions about it people might raise the Lord could reply something like: “Yes, I understand it may look dodgy to men but I say that my Son did actually take care of sin on the cross, that atonement actually works, and what I’m asking you to do is to trust me. Do you trust me?”
Again and again to each and every protest He can always ask “do you trust me?”
His children will trust Him. He rest … won’t.
And if you look back at small kids you’ll see it isn’t about not being a mess because small kids are a mess … and they trust their parents too.
Somehow not being a mess, that’s getting into sanctification and ultimately removal of this body of death … all of which only comes afterwards and is a fruit of trusting the Lord even when you think something else that the culture is claiming might make sense.
It is not pride to trust the Father and to receive faith on His terms. Demanding other terms (like accept me even though I’m gonna keep making some sin the cornerstone of my sense of self rather than me being your child that cornerstone) would be prideful.
It isn’t about being good enough, because no one is good enough.
> Is it pride when you determine that God is good enough to deserve your faith?
Your question indicates that you do not understand the Universe and your place in it. The Creator created the Universe for His own purpose. We only know what His purpose is by reading the Script(ures) He gave us. Those Scriptures say that He populated it with living beings who could chose to follow His commandments or not. They also say that a some point He will separate those who believe in Him from those who don’t and He will create a New Universe for only those people who believe in Him.
If you want to be among the those who go on to live in the New Universe, then you have to believe, ask the Creator to guide you life, and do what you are told to do, as best you can. Just remember: He is the potter, you are the clay.
The rest … not “he rest” … darn typos!
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