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To: Mad Dawg
If you learn nothing else this year, please learn this: Jesus loves you. He loves you enough to turn the universe upside down for you. If you were the only human sinner that ever existed, He would still turn death into life and evil into good to save just you. All of us here teaching this class are here because we believe that. And all of us are here to share that joy, that faith with you, in hopes that if you don't have it, you will 'catch' it somehow, and if you do have it, it will grow stronger in you. There is nothing, NOTHING, you need to do and nothing you can do to make God love you any more than He loves you right now.

How is one to 'catch' that joy somehow??? Do you not teach that as well??? Why would people NOT leave your religion if they couldn't find out how to get the joy that comes from being a child of God???

11,962 posted on 10/17/2010 7:05:28 AM PDT by Iscool (I don't understand all that I know...)
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To: Iscool
How is one to 'catch' that joy somehow??? Do you not teach that as well??? Why would people NOT leave your religion if they couldn't find out how to get the joy that comes from being a child of God???

I have always (where "always" means "since 1974" when I wrote an essay about it) considered, "What must I do to be saved?" to be a very delicate question. I think "How is one to 'catch' that joy?" falls in that class. It suggests that the joy depends on something done by the beloved. And that sure sounds like "works righteousness" to me.

Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God, right? when allowed, I try to put it out there, chumming the waters, so to speak. The same grace which opens the ears of my hearers will tell them what the next step is.

When, in the summer of 1976 I ran a "beach ministry" on the Gulf Coast (last time I had a good tan, last time I got to use my first aid training -- well, except for the guy I Heimliched -- who did NOT thank me; he was angry!) I had a running joke with the guys who ran the "Jesus is Lord Surf Shop" (No kidding!)

They'd ask, "How many people did you save today?" and I'd answer, "I don't save people. GOD saves people."

I know my place, sometimes. It is to be forgotten. He must increase; and I must decrease. If I increase at all, I blew it.

11,999 posted on 10/17/2010 9:43:55 AM PDT by Mad Dawg (Oh Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.)
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