JoanG

People will sometimes do volunteer work. Work that helps others. Missionary work. They feel that doing this good thing they will be rewarded. But Jesus tells us that the most important thing is that we need to believe in Jesus. We need to learn his words and we need to follow his examples.

These believers were possibly the type of people that love a good show. It could be compared to going to a circus and watching a magician. Others were there to see what Jesus could do for them. They might want him to do his magic on them. True disciples will seek Jesus to have their souls filled with a special type of seed. They will want to hear all he has to say. They need to hear all of his words. They want a new type of life that only he can offer. They want to know the Father and they want to live the life that God wants them to live.

Jesus does require obedience. We need to listen to his words, understand his words and live his words on a daily basis. I believe that new Christians are true Christians but they do not obey because they are too new to the word to know what is really being said by Christ. Jesus wants us to obey and live by his word. He gives us salvation as a gift. he forgives us our sins by we need to turn our lives around to be considered his followers. Living a Christ filled life is a life filled with love for our fellow man. But Paul is talking more that that. He is talking about the extras that a person might do over and above the daily Christian life. Going that extra mile for someone does not give us any more salvation than someone else. It only builds up rewards for us in heaven.

People are able to deceive themselves by only listening to the word. They go to church on Sundays. They read their bibles. They do bible studies. They even have a very strong prayer life. But they do not follow the path of God at all. They keep the word of God to themselves. They do not share or live what they hear. Just uttering the name of Jesus Christ is a very strong and powerful deterrent for evil. However, the person that used this to drive out demons or perform miracles were not spiritually attached to the Lord. They did not have him in their hearts or souls. They were book smart but they had no common sense about them.

They have egos that portray that they feel they have all the answers and no one is as good as they are. They will pick and choose bible passages that cover their thoughts. They ignore those that they do not want to hear. Everything has to be done their way. You have to plan a worship service so that it does not upset them. They feel that they have to control all aspects of the church. They feel that they have the last financial say in everything because they give the most money each week. They need everyone to tell them how great they are. They constantly need someone to validate their worth.

I feel that I have made great strides to study the words of God and to try to bring that message to the people I can reach. I want to let people know that there is so much more to life. I try to bring the idea of justice to all people. I am not afraid to tell people when ideas are wrong. I have been able to walk away from some people who I feel were bringing me down spiritually. I try to let people know that I will help them but I will not let people take advantage of my willingness to help. I do not feel that all Christians will go to heaven. I feel that there will be some who do not get there because of their actions on earth. I feel that God would not consider a murderer the same way as he would a child that was murdered.

Abraham is not afraid to continue to drop the number of good people that God would save the city for . He is going to try to save the city with the least amount of worthy people as possible. I feel that persistence prayer is important for a few reasons: 1) God needs to know that we are serious about our requests. He wants to know that this is what our heart is really into. 2) With persistent prayer, we can decide for ourselves what we really need versus what we only want. It gives us a time to reflect on our requests. 3) persistent prayer will allow us time to get our prayer right. We can work through all the improper words or less than honoring words or thoughts.

I feel that God was pleased by Abraham's willingness to come to him and talk to him as a child to a parent. He did not bring God down, but he boldly asked for a fairness based on some simple facts. Abraham felt that he understood God enough to know that he is a very just God. I feel that God would find joy in our prayers if we would be very honest with him and if we approached him with great respect. We need to honor God with our requests. We can not demean God by making a bargain that we know in our hearts that we will never keep. This is really disrespectful.

Abraham notes that he is just a mere human. He acknowledges that he may be speaking out of line or our of turn. He states that he doesn't want to anger the Lord with his prayers. He does not want his intercession to have the opposite effect. I feel that we can approach God with bold ideas, but we need to do so very humbly. We need to remember that we are his creation and his children. We must be respectful at all times.

Abraham feels that even though the city of Sodom is so evil, he feels that he can help his family. He wants to protect Lot. He goes to God with the idea of presenting justice for those few people that are still good. God is a God of justice and righteousness. So Abraham uses an intercession of appealing to a fair sense of judgment from God.

We want to hurt those who hurt us. We want to believe that by withholding forgiveness we are hurting them. We do not want to let them off the hook. We might feel that they deserve the punishment. However, we are only keeping ourselves from healing if we do this. We keep the pain alive within ourselves. However, we need to look to Christ and learn to let go. We need to be kind and compassionate. We need to allow ourselves to grow in maturity and to let go of the pain and heal our hearts and souls.

I feel that as Christians there is a lot of gossiping that gets done. People are very critical of how the church is run. And people will find a scape goat to blame each time something goes wrong. There is a lot of false judgment that goes on in a congregation. People love to belittle the beliefs and actions of those around them. We should determine if our words will build up the other person. Will it make them feel better. We need to be certain that the person has to hear what we are going to say to them. If not, we should just keep it to ourselves. We should make sure that there are benefits to the person we are going to talk to. We need to make sure that we are doing this in a very loving way. We are very critical people. we have been known to lie about the character of other people to make ourselves look better. Slandering is an all too common practice in congregations. We talk behind the backs of people all the time in churches. To stop all of this negativity, we need to always remember to talk in love.

I think God gave us the emotion of anger so that we have a way to fight for justice. He gave us an emotion that causes us to want to take action. However, we need to control this emotion. We cannot allow it to control us. We need to stay in balance. We need to act with all our senses when we are angry. We need to be able to make our point clearly without hurting anyone or anything. We cannot act or speak recklessly.

I feel that the non-Christian mindset is based on the fact that there is a major decrease in families going to church together. Kids are often split between parents on the weekends and never consistently go to the same church. Parent's also do not feel that a formal religion fits into their lives anymore. There are also too many scandals that plague all religions these days. The leadership seems to have lost their ways and this tends to cause people to not trust them or what they say anymore. At times I find myself shying away from the church when certain people are "on the pulpit". It would be easier to just give up and let things just happen.

There should be no difference in how we treat others and the way we want to be treated. They deserve to be treated with respect and honor. In Matthew 22:37-39, Jesus is upping the game. He is telling us not only to treat people fairly, but to love them as we love ourselves. This is one heck of a step to being more like Christ than the Golden Rule.

God is a very caring person that will give us what we need. He will not try to trick us or cause us any harm by our requests. God will treat us like his children. Sometimes, he will have to say no to us. Other times, we will have to wait until the time is right for our request to be answered. God does not want to harm us in any way, but just like with children, we need to learn a lesson the hard way. We need to know God just like we knew our own parents. We need to have the faith in God that we had in our own biological parents or those people that raised us as little children.

Both people were very persistent in their requests. They kept up their quest to get what they wanted and most of all needed. We need to keep knocking till the door is open and we need to constantly seek justice. We need to constantly be on the look out for satisfaction of our needs. God does not want us to sit around do nothing for ourselves. He wants us to be proactive.

These three words are action words. They require us to move and be involved. We need to act on them. We are not able to be passive in our search for God in our lives. The type of commitment on our parts distinguishes them. Neither of them is more important than the others. These need to be constant on going actions on our part. We need to be faithful in all of our quests to find God and to know what he wants us to do with our lives.

Believers should always be prepared for Christ's return. We need to have a soul that is clear and whole. We need to be right with God. We need to constantly pray and follow the examples of Christ. We need to love everyone as Christ did. We need to be above all those around us. Our light needs to be a shining beacon for all to see. We need to be the watch towers for the Lord's return to glory.

I feel that we will have no warnings at all when Christ returns to earth. He will sneak in at the designated time. However, Nobody will know when that time is going to be. People will actually feel secure in their lives. There will be no sense of anything wrong.

I believe that Christ with the help from God will return with all the believers from all ages back to life on the final days. I do not believe that they will be in the physical bodies that they had on earth when they were alive. A lot of these bodies have been completely destroyed from cremation or decaying in the ground. I also understand that all the angels from heaven will come down on that day.

It tells of the Son of Man returning on clouds. He is given the power to reign from the Ancient of Days. It gives a brief account of all the power that will be given to Christ. It stresses that he is here for all men in all nations. I feel that Jesus referred to himself as the Son of Man to tie the prophecy of Daniel to the teachings that he was making at the time. Jesus was saying the he was fulfilling the prophecy.

We should be willing to associate with non-believers who are open to the word of God, and also those that are trying to repent and do better. Non-believers cannot be held up to the higher standards of Christians. By associating with non-believers, we are in danger of following their ways of life. Unrepentant believers can cause us to look acceptingly on the ways of a sinful life.

Lets start with the fact that people will gossip about the person that is sinning. They will all try to point fingers or take the side of the sinner. This will cause a lot of conflict within the congregation. The people will start to judge the actions of the elders. They will talk about their abilities to be effective or where their hearts really are. They will question their effectiveness to really lead the church in a Christian way. People will compare their sins against the sinner and feel that they are not so bad. Sin will start to be given degrees of seriousness. More and more evil acts will start to be considered okay. People will start to soften their moral judgment. Paul was a stout Jew. He followed all the words of the law. he would have thrown away any dough with yeast in it on Sabbaths and feasts were yeast had to be avoided.

There should be a one on one conversation between the elder of the church and the sinner. If this does not do any good. Then, two or three other elders should be called into an intervention type of activity to try and help the sinner overcome the grips of the sin. If the sinner repents, there should be instructions and studying of the bible with this person. They should be given time with a counselor to learn how to say "no" to sin and how to strengthen their faith. There should be prayers said as a way of intervention for the person to God. When a person is proud of his sins, there needs to be action taken so that he does not poison others in the congregation. We need to isolate sinfulness from faith believing people. There needs to be a safe zone- in our churches were people can learn in a non- threatening way. I believe that people do not want to use excommunication in our days. We are afraid that they will leave the church and take their money with them. We can also feel that their supporters will also leave the church. There is also the fear of law suits against the church.