Old Jerry

I think that the Holy Spirit makes it so that we can hear the true word and that is what prepares us for salvation. The Spirit helps us understand what faith is. I have heard of people being drawn to Christ when they heard the true word. He will also draw them to himself especially when they are trying to prove that He doesn’t exist. After we hear the truth then we have to decide if we want to follow Christ.

The idea of earning salvation by being good enough for God distorts the account that Jesus died for our sins and that we could never be good enough to face God on our own. If we could do it on our own then that would be self-righteousness. We think that we can do all thing by ourselves and we don’t need any help. If we work had enough, God will be obligated to us. That isn’t true because salvation is by grace and has nothing to do with what we have done.

We have been rescued from eternal punishment by God’s grace. It was Christ that rescued me from my situation. He died on the cross for me. God’s favor sent His son for my salvation.

Jesus died on the cross for us. He was the perfect lamb for our sacrifice. Jesus went though a lot of pain for our sins. They were laid upon him even though we could not put our hands on him like they did when they sacrificed the lamb. We would not be able to have eternal life if it weren’t for his sacrifice. This is why he is called the Lamb of God.

We have been freed from the punishment of our sins with the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Therefore, we have been redeemed from slavery. But we are still slaves to Jesus Christ because we have a load that is not a burden.

No, humankind is not basically “good” because of the image of God in us. It might be that the image of God in us that can help us with our deceitful heats and corrupt nature, but that is only because of God’s grace.

The story of the rich young ruler shows that money can’t buy everything and that faith is the only thing that will get us to heaven. The faith that only Jesus can forgive us fort our sins and then graciously give us salvation.

The thief on the cross hadn’t done anything to deserve be saved but because of the man’s faith Jesus for gave him. This shows that grace is more powerful than any sin can be.

The Parable of the Prodigal Son teaches that God is a merciful God. He will forgive us for our sins if we just return to him.

The way that the king shows grace in this parable is by forgiving the man’s debt. The forgiven servant withholds grace by not forgiving the person that owes him. No, we can’t call ourselves Jesus’ disciples if we withhold grace.

I think the reason that Jesus sets up the hero as a Samaritan is to shock the Jewish audience and to keep their attention. He showed the undeserved favor by taking care of the man that was beat up. As far as I know there aren’t any “neighbors” that are hated in my community. I’m sure that there might be some I am just not aware of it.

The way that John 3:16 displays “favor that is neither earned nor deserved” is by telling us how much He loves us. Grace is not earned where giving is something that could be earned. Love is what motivates the gift in this verse.

The attitude that will cheapen the understanding of grace is we are not his disciples. We do not work for grace because it is a gift of God. It is costly because we have to follow Jesus and we have to ask for it. The thing that is costly about grace is that God gave his only begotten son for it.

Without the help of God there would be no good in humankind. So, humans are basically bad. We can sometimes be both. Our deceitful heart will tell us something is good when it isn’t. If it weren’t for God, we would all be running around doing bad things.

These verses tell is that we have fallen and we are still falling away from God. We think that we have to control everything and we can see that we are doing if terrible job of it. The thing that we see and do motivates us and it is the things in this fallen word that is leading us away from God. After we come to Christ, we can see that what we have been doing was wrong so we have repented and turned to God.

These verses say that we are sinners and there in nobody that hasn’t sinned. Christ died for us while we were still in our sins. This shows that He loves us very much.

To me in a state of grace means we are forgiven and there was nothing that we did to deserve this. Faith is what lead us to this grace because we have the faith in Jesus Christ. The opposite of “peace with God” is to be in tune with the devil.

I think that Yahweh told the prophet to marry a girl of ill repute to show him the kind of people that he was dealing with. This story teaches us that we can be forgiven for all of our sins if we just repent and return to God.

Yahweh will forgive all those that repent. When we see a temptation and don’t stay away from it is the way that we sin. God doesn’t forgive those who refuse to repent because they will keep on sinning.

We have learned that God is a loving God. He is not loud and loves us enough to protect us. This has to do with grace because He is gracious to us by watching out for us.

Grace is something that is given to you and you may not have deserved it where wages is something that you have earned. A helpful working definition is “Grace is favor that is neither earned nor deserved.” God is always giving us things that we don’t deserve.

I think that Elijah’s primary mission was to turn the people’s hearts back to God. He had a few successes but he wasn’t able to turn everybody hearts back to the Lord. Usually, self-assessment doesn’t see all the good or bad that you are doing. You might think you are getting over to people when you’re not. The only accurate assessment that will be done will be done on judgment day.

God does use me in extraordinary ways, it just isn’t as extraordinary as the way that he has used Elijah. He has got something extraordinary for all us to do. If we stick together and count on God to help us we can perform these thing.

Elijah’s ministry and John the Baptist’s ministry were similar in that Elijah was trying to call the people to repentance and John ministry was the same. Elijah and John were both in the wilderness and wore rough clothes. I do not think that John the Baptist was Elijah reincarnated.

I think that Elisha was asking for a double portion because he wanted to be recognized as being the first born son of Elijah. I don’t think that he was greedy for power. We should all be longing for a greater presence and power of the Holy Spirit. We should seek this by staying connected to God just like Elisha was connected to Elijah.