God Predestintates All Things, Including Evil

Act 4:25  who through the mouth of our father David, your servant, said by the Holy Spirit, "'Why did the Gentiles rage, and the peoples plot in vain? Act 4:26  The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers were gathered together, against the Lord and against his Anointed'-- Act 4:27  for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, Act 4:28  to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.

I would recommend listening to the Dec. 9^th edition of “The Dividing Line” found on the link to the right entitled “Alpha and Omega Ministries”.  On it we get to listen to Dr. Steve Gaines, pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church, explain why he doesn’t believe God predestined all things.  His basic position is that if God ordains all things then he ordains sin and is therefore responsible for sin.  His conclusion is that when a rapists rapes, since God predestined that to happen, God is a rapist!  It is disturbing that one can go to seminary and receive a doctorate and yet have no real idea what the Bible says about this subject. 

In part I can understand why this is the best he can come up with since he went to an Arminian Southern Baptist Seminary.  If you go to his church’s website you will find a list of his “accomplishments” which include leading the state of Alabama in baptisms for several years and responsible for a large increase in the attendance of his church.  I find it interesting that in the book of Acts these things are attributed to the work of the Holy Spirit not Peter and the Apostles, “And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved”.  This does give us an idea of where he is coming from, but I digress.

There are a couple of problems I wanted to address with his position and there are many more that could be pointed out.  First of all just because we can’t fully understand how God can predestinate all things including sin and yet not be responsible for the sin that we commit is not proof it can’t happen.  This is especially true since the Bible very clearly says that God does predestinate all things including sin.  The above passage in Acts couldn’t be clearer.  Those that crucified Jesus Christ did what God’s plan had predestined to happen.  To say that God only predestines good things and not the evil things is not only unbiblical but couldn’t happen.  God couldn’t have ordained the cross unless he ordained someone to actually crucify Jesus.  The Lord of Glory wouldn’t have been crucified unless someone sinned!   God can’t ordain only some things unless he ordains everything.  He can’t assume or hope that sinners are going to cooperate with his plans. 

Not only did Dr. Gaines ignore this passage which says the opposite of his position, he also ignored all passages that one would immediately think of when considering this subject and that is just dishonest.  What about Gen 50:20  As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today?  The “it” of this verse is the sin of Joseph’s brothers in selling him into slavery (read vs. 17).  Joseph says that God meant or ordained their sin to accomplish good things even while it also accomplished evil things and the brothers did this of their own free will with evil intentions.  What is equally clear is that God didn’t force them to do this even while it was all part of God’s predetermined plan.

This brings me to one last point.  It is a copout to say that just because God ordains that sin will happen that he must force us to sin.  Dr. Gaines over and over again kept saying things like, “if God predestinates sin then he forced that man to walk into the movie theater and kill all those people”.  Now on one level since the Bible teaches that God does ordain all things and not some things and yet is not responsible for their sin then the statement alone is unbiblical and naïve. 

But this also shows a fundamental misunderstanding of total depravity.  What he misses entirely is that we do not have to be forced to sin because we are sinners by nature and so can only sin unless God intervenes.  Sin never has to be forced and can’t be forced because the very nature of sin is rebellion; it is to disobey God.  If God forces you to do something then that is called doing his will and is no longer sin.  The only thing God does with sin is restrain it.  Because God graciously restrains us from our love to disobey him we aren’t as evil as we would be.  When we see particularly horrible actions by sinners it is merely because God didn’t hold them back from their sin to accomplish his will.  Dr. Gaines' position assumes that someone like Hitler didn’t want to do what he did and wouldn’t have done what he did if left alone but God forced him to be that way and this just shows a dysfunctional understanding of the nature of sin and the nature of fallen man.

In my next article I will deal with a couple of other problems that come with denying the total sovereignty of God in all things.

Rethinking What it is to Love the Lord, Part 2

Mat 22:36  "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?" Mat 22:37  And he said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. Mat 22:38  This is the great and first commandment.

1Co 6:12  "All things are lawful for me," but not all things are helpful. "All things are lawful for me," but I will not be enslaved by anything….1Co 10:26  For "the earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof." …1Co 10:31  So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.

In my last article we looked at the fact that we can’t help but look at, study, listen to and just be consumed with to one degree or another those things that we love.  Disinterest proves a lack of love not love.  So one way we show our love for the Lord is to be careful students of his Word to us.  In this article I would like to carry this principle over into how we are to live under the New Covenant.  Few doctrines have been debated more than how we serve the Lord in the New Testament era compared to how God’s people served him in the Old Testament while under the Law. 

For many, the Christian life is mostly just trying to obey the commands of God whatever they may be.  So one of their great concerns is what are the things God wants us to do and what are the things we are not supposed to do.  Of course there is an element of this in Christianity, even Jesus said, “If you love me keep my commandments”.  The question though is what are his commandments. 

I believe the NT teaches that merely trying to obey a law as a Christian undermines true godliness.  Even a lost person can outwardly keep law.  Every time Paul speaks of keeping the law and starts to list some of them, he always stops short and finishes by saying that no matter what commandment you can think of,“Love fulfills the Law”. 

I understand why Christians have always struggled with the concept of turning converts loose by telling them that the way to serve the Lord and be holy is not by keep rules but by just loving the Lord with all your heart and your neighbor as yourself.  Certainly many have lived ungodly lives in the name of love.  Living by love instead of rules is difficult because we can’t just mindlessly follow rules but we have to think about why we do what we are doing as the above verses suggest.  But just because it is difficult and some abuse it doesn’t mean that we can rewrite godliness to suit us.

And this goes back to my previous article and what it is to love God.  The reason we can turn each other loose and simply say live by love is because true Christians love God.  And as we said, if you love God you will seek to “do all things for the glory of God”; for the good of the one you love.  This is obviously more difficult than just being told how to live and what to do but it is the only way that demonstrates true love.  If the law of the land required that I get up every morning and go to work to provide for my wife I couldn’t prove my love for my wife by getting up every morning and going to work.  She wouldn’t know if I did so out of fear or out of love.  It is only in freedom that we can prove that we love the Lord because we do what we do because we want to not merely because we have to.  Thus I prove my love to my wife by doing what I do even when I don’t have to because I care for her good not because I am afraid of what the Law might do to me.

One last way to illustrate this is the difference between the lost and the redeemed.  We might say the lost are those who are living in the freedom of doing whatever they want and what they want to do is their own will and to live for their pleasure and their glory and their interests.  But a Christian is not someone who has just decided to obey the Lord and do his will instead of what he would rather do.  A Christian is one who continues to live life free to do what he wants to do but his “wanter” or his heart has been changed.  A Christian is one whose whole nature has been changed so that he loves God more than himself and so freely gets up every morning seeking to please the Lord and not himself. 

So the New Covenant has turned us loose; we have been told that the whole earth is ours to be used in whatever way we can glorify the Lord.  Yes, we are given some overarching principles to help us define that but we are not told every move to make, neither are we told that we will be punished if we don’t do what we should.  We don’t have to be kept in line with threats because we love the Lord.  I don’t have to be threatened to love my wife because I do love her. 

Yes, our lives don’t often live up to our professed love and this is because our love is so weak and imperfect but legalism isn’t the answer because only in freedom can we demonstrate true love. 

Rethinking What it is to Love the Lord

SoS 2:3 As an apple tree among the trees of the forest, so is my beloved among the young men. With great delight I sat in his shadow, and his fruit was sweet to my taste. 2:4 He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love.

In the Song of Solomon the bride constantly expresses her love for her beloved by describing all his wonderful attributes. We understand this book to describe the love between the Lord and the church or his bride.  In Ephesians we are exhorted to love our wives as Christ has loved the church and gave himself for her.  We know how he loved us in the cross and so we know what our love for our wives should look like.  But the quoted text above is speaking of our love for the Lord.  What I would like to do is to use human love as an illustration for how we are to love the Lord.  I believe a case can be made that we can easily fail to understand what it means to love God as we ought and often love temporal things more intensely than we do the Lord.  If the sum of our duty to him is to love him with all our heart then understanding how to do that is rather important.  So let me offer a few thoughts on loving Christ as we should love our wives.

Think about those things other than God for a moment that we really love.  Hopefully this will include our wives but my example will work for any object.  What do we do with those things that we really love?  We will get one if we can and we study it and get to know it. If it is a sport or musical instrument we will practice and get as good as we can.  If it is a hobby we will read every book on the subject so that we can understand it as well as possible.  We display it; we want others to enjoy it like we do; to see the beauty in it in the way we do.  We certainly speak about it when given half a chance.

If we are speaking specifically of our spouses then true love is seen in that we love to converse with her and get to know her.  I think of the hours we spent on the phone when my wife and I were first getting to know each other.  You care about who she is and what she loves and how she thinks about things.  Love isn’t displayed by only caring about what she can do for you but what you can do for her.  Simply put, you find her interesting.

This is sometimes illustrated in gift-giving.  A good gift for your loved one is not one picked up at the last minute with no real forethought.  A good gift is one that you get based on what she would like.  You take the time to understand her and find something that you know would please her, not yourself.  Suppose I get her a wok for her birthday because I like Chinese food and so I get her a wok so she can make me Chinese food?  It isn’t hard to see that it is my love for self that is my motivation in “celebrating” her birthday.  It is completely backwards.  It isn’t her person that I am in love with but myself.

Now let’s use that to examine how we love the Lord.  As with the betrothed in the Song of Solomon, she is caught up in the loveliness of her beloved and can’t get enough of him.  If we love God we should want to know everything about him well beyond whatever hobby or object and activity that we might love on earth.  But it is right here that we often see a problem. 

I am always puzzled by those who claim to love the Lord but say things like, “We don’t need to be concerned with doctrine or emphasize it; we just need to experience the Lord”.  Does this not sound a lot like I don’t really want to get to know him in the main way he has revealed himself, his Word, I just want to have an emotional, light relationship with him.  In another context we would call this a one night stand, no commitment, just a cheap thrill.  Knowing and experiencing and serving the Lord is more than just getting an emotional high during the church service.  We are exhorted to grow in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior, not just to seek momentary “thrills” that aren’t based on solid truth.  Our Lord is far too glorious to just get emotions and feelings from him.

It is like some marriages that I have the misfortune of seeing now and then.  Here is man who is quite content to live in the same house with his wife, go to work and provide for her, keep up with household repairs, take out the trash and maybe even sleep with her but is just as content to never have a real conversation with her.  He doesn’t care about her thoughts, dreams, desires or how her day went.  As long as she has dinner prepared and is ready in bed when he is then he is content.  That isn’t a biblical marriage, let alone a satisfying one and it won’t work with the Lord either.

A Christian who isn’t interested in careful, thorough, life-long Bible study can’t really be all that interested in getting to know the One he claims to be the love of his life.  Those things that we love, we love to be around and learn about and talk about.  To be content to have a relationship with Christ as long as you know he will be there for you when you need it or just one that is based on feelings and emotional highs but not on carefully listening to what he has to say is really missing the point. 

In my next article I will try to show how all this is related to living in the New Covenant. 

The Necessity of the Virgin Birth

The following is my message for the Nursing Home this Sunday and I thought it would be a good post for this time of year.

Mat 1:18  Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Mat 1:19  And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. Mat 1:20  But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, "Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. Mat 1:21  She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins." Mat 1:22  All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: Mat 1:23  "Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel" (which means, God with us). Mat 1:24  When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him: he took his wife, Mat 1:25  but knew her not until she had given birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus.

There have always been those who have denied the virgin birth and I would like to say a few things about it that might be of interest.  There are two things in particular that are most important to understand about the virgin birth of Jesus Christ.  1. The Bible unmistakably teaches it and 2. If there is no virgin birth, there is no Christianity; it is vital to understanding who Jesus Christ is and how he could save us from our sins.

1. Both here and in Luke we are told that Mary was a virgin at the time she had Jesus.  He was her first child.  Matthew tells us twice that the child formed in her was from the Holy Spirit, not Joseph.  It happened while they were only engaged.  And we are told that this was what Isaiah was referring to in his prophecies.  Luk 1:34  And Mary said to the angel, "How will this be, since I am a virgin?" Luk 1:35  And the angel answered her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy--the Son of God.

So if someone says that this is impossible I would want to ask them a question.  If God can make all that is why can’t he form a baby in a womb?  If God can’t do that then he isn’t much of a God.  Yes, it was never done before and will never be done again but that is no proof that it didn’t happen.  It is a one of a kind event because Jesus is a one of a kind person.  The fact of the matter is that if you believe the Bible, you believe in the virgin birth because it tells us it happened.  If you don’t believe it then you don’t believe the Bible.

2. But the virgin birth isn’t just something that we are to believe as a fact; there is a reason why it happened.  It isn’t just a neat miracle to impress us; it had to happen for Jesus to do his work of salvation.  And this is most important to understand and is another proof that it happened.

The first thing to keep in mind is what Jesus said in Joh 8:56  Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad." Joh 8:57  So the Jews said to him, "You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?" Joh 8:58  Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am." Joh 8:59  So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.  He plainly states that he existed in Abraham’s day and then refers to himself by the name given at the burning bush when speaking to Moses; he calls himself Yahweh, I Am.  The Jews immediately got this and so tried to stone him.

One reason Jesus had to be virgin born was because he did not just become a human but already existed as God.  In John 1 we read that Jesus is the eternal Word of God who came into the world, Joh 1:9  The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. Joh 1:10  He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. Joh 1:11  He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.  So the first fact is that Jesus existed as God before he was born into the world.

All this begs the question then, why did he take on human flesh and become the God/Man?  This is what Paul answers in Php 2:6  who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, Php 2:7  but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. Php 2:8  And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 

If he wasn’t formed by the Holy Spirit in a special way but was just the product of a man and a woman, then he would have been just a regular, sinful man like you and me.  But as God he took on human flesh so that he could do something that being only God or only man could not do.  Being God he was sinless and lived a purely righteous life.  Being man he could die for men, as a man on the cross.  He could pay the penalty of sin for us so that we could be forgiven. 

What the Bible teaches us is that God alone is righteous and he alone is the only one who could save us from sin and so he became a man so that he could suffer the wrath of God that was due us.  It had to be this way because God must be glorified in everything.  So salvation could not be something that we could do on our own or we would be able to boast in our works.  God took on human flesh precisely because we are unable to do anything to merit God’s favor.  Salvation is a free gift from God which is what the word “grace” means. 

We know that this is fully in line with all that the Bible says about our salvation from 1Co 1:28  God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, 1Co 1:29  so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.  One thing no man will be able to do when he stands before the Lord is to point to something he did to merit God’s favor.  

So the virgin birth isn’t just some sentimental story that should only be told at Christmas time; it is one of the foundational truths of our salvation.  If it never happened then there is no mediator to stand between us and the Holy God.

Do We Hold Ourselves Accountable For the Way We Live?

1Co 5:1  It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans, for a man has his father's wife. 1Co 5:2  And you are arrogant! Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you.

In Ch. 5 of 1 Corinthians Paul address the need for church discipline due to gross sin that was going on within the church.  Church discipline is not a pleasant subject and for this reason and others it is usually ignored or greatly modified today.  When sin is not dealt with biblically it is many times excused by saying something like, “Who are we to cast the first stone” or “We want to be tolerant of people’s problems and not cast them out and leave them to fend for themselves” and many more excuses.  But there are a couple of important problems with this kind of thinking.

First of all it basically suggests that we are more holy than God when we disobey under the assumption that we know better than he does.  If he tells us that there are certain sinful lifestyles and actions that cannot be tolerated within the church then that is the end of the conversation.  It would seem that we are indeed capable of understanding that there are times in which we must judge certain sins and sinners as in need of censorship even by other sinners.  In the next chapter when addressing taking each other to court Paul says that Christians are going to be judging the world and angels and so suggests that we have enough light and wisdom to be able to recognize sin and sin’s destructive power and do something about it even in this life.  Only those with light have the ability and right to make judgments on moral issues.

Then we have the idea that we are just as bad as the offender and so shouldn't point the finger.  This sounds humble and spiritual but it is full of problems.  Church discipline as it is set forth in the NT is to be used for gross public, divisive and damaging sins that must be dealt with for the good of the church and the reputation of the Lord.  The problem with such a pseudo-humble attitude is that it fails to take into consideration that all saints have been given a new nature that loves righteousness and hates evil. 

Yes it is easy for us to be self-righteous and to see everyone’s sin but our own, but we are not speaking of merely finding faults with others.  Paul is addressing public, obvious, divisive sins that are demeaning the name of Christ and dangerous to the life and reputation of the church.  Putting all this together Paul is saying that Christians should have enough spiritual sense to recognize activity that cannot be tolerated from the everyday remaining sin in our lives and to love Christ enough to do the hard thing and remove those who will not repent from the church lest we all become party to the same sins.  The Bible teaches that all saints have been changed and that this will lead to a different kind of life than they led before.

If we don’t hold ourselves accountable to the Word and hold each other accountable on serious issues either because we are too lazy (and by that I mean our love for the Lord is so shallow) or with the excuse that we are no better than they are, then two options are available to us.  Either we had better get right with the Lord and get our lives under his control as we are commanded in Scripture or we need to quit pretending that we are saved and disband the church. 

Either we have been transformed and are capable of living lives that honor Christ and can be held accountable by the church to do so or everything the Bible teaches about the Holy Spirit is a lie.  But if God’s power can change us and produce some level of purity in the church then we need to pursue that and not make excuses for lives that offer little to no evidence of salvation.  

A Favorable Disposition in Prayer

Neh 2:1  In the month of Nisan, in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was before him, I took up the wine and gave it to the king. Now I had not been sad in his presence. Neh 2:2  And the king said to me, "Why is your face sad, seeing you are not sick? This is nothing but sadness of the heart." Then I was very much afraid.

As I was meditating on Nehemiah as he approached his king with a problem that he was greatly troubled over it seems this account has some parallels with the way we should approach the Lord in prayer.  In those days it could mean the displeasure of the king or even worse to come into his presence looking sad or we might say in a bad mood.  We see this in Esther 4:2 He went up to the entrance of the king's gate, for no one was allowed to enter the king's gate clothed in sackcloth.  When they were around the king his subjects were to look happy assumingly because they were to be happy to be in his presence.  They were to be consumed with him, his rule and doing his will and they were to look happy doing it. 

It was clear to the king that Nehemiah was bothered by something and in this case Nehemiah had the favor of the king and so he asked him what was the matter.  There are a couple of things to see here when it comes to prayer.   I think a case can be made that we pray amiss when we habitually approach the Lord in prayer all out of sorts about our problems but have not started with being focused on the kingdom of God.  One reason earthly kings didn’t allow such displays in the throne room was because their subjects were in essence saying their problems were at least as important as the king.  They were living in their own world with no thought of the greater good of the kingdom.

We are to approach God consumed with his glory and how we can serve him and when we take our concerns to him it is to be in the context of service in his kingdom.  It should not be in the context that we don’t like what is going on and so we are going to complain to him and get him to focus on us and not the other way around.  The Lord has brought us into his kingdom to serve his interest and our needs are met as we do that.  To put it more simply, we are here for him; he is not here for us.  In the grand scheme of things creatures are for the pleasure of the Creator, they were not created to become the focus of the universe.  And this is even more so true when we consider that he is also our Redeemer who has extended grace to rebels and made peace.

And so when we approach the throne room for help let us come before him full of joy and thanksgiving and looking for help in our needs so that we can serve faithfully in the kingdom.  I imagine that too often we come to him having never given a thought to how we can honor him in our situation.  Instead, we find ourselves hurting or in need and run to him with no thoughts of anything but immediate relief. 

But the second thing I see here is a reminder that even though we often are selfish in our prayers, yet because of Christ we find favor and help anyway.  Obviously the king has a favorable disposition towards Nehemiah and so hears and answers his request anyway.  I don’t take this to mean that it really doesn’t matter how we pray but that in Christ we have access and blessings even though we don’t deserve it. 

Verse six might be the reason why Nehemiah gets a favorable response, Neh 2:6  And the king said to me (the queen sitting beside him), "How long will you be gone, and when will you return?" So it pleased the king to send me when I had given him a time.  I find it interesting that for some reason we are told that the queen was sitting next to the king.  I don’t think this is ever mentioned elsewhere in the biblical accounts.  Why on earth does this matter?  Some believe that this is none other than Queen Esther.  If this is true then the book of Esther has told us that she was the instrument of salvation, the meditator, between God’s chosen people and the king.  We cannot know for sure if it was her but it reminds us of the fact that because Jesus sits exalted on the right hand of the God of glory we have an advocate.  He is the one who has given the Holy God a favorable disposition towards us to hear our prayers, selfish as they sometimes are, and to answer them for our good and for his glory.

Living By Faith

Rom 1:5  through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations,

Rom 10:17  So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.

Hab 2:4  “… but the righteous shall live by his faith.”

It seems that a lot of teaching on faith centers on trusting God.  Of course, I don’t have a problem with that but I do have a problem with separating faith from obedience to the Word of God as if you can trust the Lord even if you aren’t following the Word.  The first two passages above specifically link faith to obedience and the Word of God.  I think a lot of times we just think of it as the Habakkuk passage refers to it.  We speak of living by faith but not by obeying the Word but by simply trusting the Lord.  While biblically they should be seen as the same thing, I think often they are seen as different things entirely.  Let me explain.

Often when some one speaks of living by faith they mean that they are trusting the Lord to take care of them, to lead them, to provide for them, etc.  I am afraid that often that is all they mean.  What we sometimes find is that they make little effort to study God’s Word and so understand God’s will for them.  In other words they are not growing in faith but assume they can live by faith.  They assume that they can trust the Lord to take care of them while they are to some degree ignoring him.  My point is that if this is the case, you aren’t trusting in him to begin with.  At best you are presuming upon him to take care of you while you are busy doing what you want to do.

We see from Romans 10 that faith comes by hearing, or learning, the Word of God; this is growing in the faith of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  I think a more complete way to think of living by faith is to believe God’s revelation and his wisdom and to live accordingly even when this world tells us something differently.  How can I trust in a God I know little about?  How can I obey commands I don’t know?  How can I do all things for the glory of One I know so little about that I cannot love as I ought?

Our faith is proven by living in the eternal truth of God’s revelation to us.  It is to see the wisdom of God and realize that he knows better than we do.  The more we know of God, the bigger he is in our estimation and the more we will trust him and not ourselves.  We trust what he says because of who he is.

Those that mostly see life as something they are to do and then expect God to take care of any messes they make, who take “leaps of faith” that are really foolish decisions based on their desires and will but not on the principles of God’s Word are not living by faith, they are presuming upon the Lord.  

I know that there are many times in my life where that better describes my life rather than living by faith in a biblical sense and I suspect I am not alone.  I want to trust God fully to use me and protect me and strengthen me as I am doing his will; not running behind me cleaning up after me like a parent would a small child who is only doing what he wants to do.   So living by faith is not simply trusting the Lord for help but actively living by his Word regardless of the consequences because we know the Lord will make all things right to them that love him.