Sheryl

God chose me, I didn't choose Him. All I did was answer when He called. God's awesome Presence affect me in the sense that He is Supreme and Royalty. I bow in His Presence because He is God, Creator of everything. It gives me the desire to be pleasing to Him. It encourages me to be obedient and mindful of His awesome existence.

In order to know what God promises we have to know God. The only way we can grow through the knowledge of God is to have a ongoing relationship with Him through prayer, worship, and His Word.

It means that God has given us the same kind of faith as the apostles had in the old testament. Our faith, Peter's and mine, is a gift from God. It is the same faith from the same God.

Hello Saints, I'm Sheryl from Sacramento. This is my second study with Jesuswalk and I am fired up and ready to learn.

Jesus was finished with the assignment that God had given Him. His purpose had been fulfilled. His mission was accomplished. To obey God when he gives us an assignment. We all have a purpose in life that God wants us to fulfill to His glory and we need to be attentive when He is speaking to us.

We are not to forget to be hospitable to all of our Christian brethren, regardless if they are strangers of prisoners. The common thread that bind us together is our belief in Christ. I am strong in brotherly love when pertaining to strangers and the mistreated. I am weak when it comes to brethren.

Yes, a fear of God is healthy because God is worthy of respect and He should be feared reverently for who He is, He us sovereign. He deserves the utmost respect from us. Fear of God is unhealthy when you live in terror of God's judgment. If you fear Him in that way, you lack faith in your God who loves you. It becomes instead a fear factor that constrain you rather than a faith factor that sustain you. God is our Father who loves us dearly and want what's best for us. Our fear is not a carnal fear that the unsaved have of judgment, but a fear that is in reverence and respect for our King. We are in awe of His supreme power and majesty because we love Him and desire to please Him because of it.

No, you can't achieve salvation through works or what you do. Salvation is by grace through belief in God, acceptance of the sacrifice of the Son, and the receiving of the Holy Spirit. It is not what you do with your hands, but what is in your heart. Yes, it can deprive you of heaven because it can cause you to turn back to your present condition of unbelief in God. If you don't deal with sin immediately, it can infect the whole body as well as the mind and spirit to the point of no return.

God does punish us at times with consequences as a result of our sins, but He will make you recognize it for what it is. Just as a parent disciplines a child for disobedience or wrong doing, so does the Lord chastens us because He loves us and wants us to become obedient so He can use us for His service. The purpose of God's discipline is to teach us to obey the will of our Father and to grow in maturity as obedient children.

When I have storms in my life and I look at them as my Father's discipline and training, I can stay rooted and grounded in Jesus knowing that it is for my benefit. When God disciplines us, it is for our service to Him that He is refining us. He cannot use us if we are full of junk. He has to break us for use. He has to sift us for service before he can use us effectively.

Spiritual warfare is wearying because we are human and are in a constant battle with our sinful nature against our spiritual nature. It is an ongoing war with ourselves. We must remain steadfast in our faith and endure to the end so that we may receive the prize; our reward that God has promised us if we endure. Yes, I think we all have because we are imperfect, but God allows us to get back up when we fall. He sustains us.

The "great cloud of witnesses" are the martyred saints and the dead men of God who lived before us. The life of faith should be compared to a race ran by an athlete who's goal is to win the prize through endurance and victory. Jesus is the author and pioneer of our faith because He is the example that we are to follow. He is the original man of faith because of His victory at the Cross. Jesus lived by faith by not looking at His hardships and struggles but looking towards the goal to completion and accomplishment. He perfected faith when He endured on the Cross until the end and then sat at the right hand of the throne of God due to his perfect faith in God.

The motivating factor behind the actions taken by the women in these passages was their faith in the God of Israel. Their faith was based on God's word and His promises. At the Red Sea, the Israelites faith was strong because they knew God and what He was capable of doing. The Egyptian army were the enemy of God's chosen ones. They had no faith in God. Rahab the prostitute faith was real. She believed the God of Israel. When faith is based on trusting God, we all should be shrewd opportunist for Kingdom service.

Moses faith in God caused him to choose suffering for Christ sake over the momentary pleasures of sin. Moses vision was looking ahead to his reward. We, as Christians, also are looking ahead to our rewards.

The characteristics of one awaiting the return of Christ with extreme joy while busy being about our Father's business of bringing in the lost in order for God to draw all men unto Him which God has commissioned us for the building of His Kingdom. The balance is that we live in the world but we are not part of the ways of the world. We are strangers, non- citizens in a foreign country. The world is contrary to God; we are not partakers of worldly principles, practices, or ideals, but instead we are partakers with Christ of His principles.