salvation

People are content to wait a long time for salvation, but expect dinner to turn up within the hour.

We seek salvation through religion. But more often than not, religion fills our head with hatred and empties our heart of love.

It is now time for us to ask the personal question put to Jesus Christ by Saul of Tarsus on the Damascus road, __hat shall I do Lord?_ or the similar question asked by the Philippian jailer, __hat must I do to be saved?_ Clearly we must do something. Christianity is no mere passive acquiescence in a series of propositions, however true. We may believe in the deity and the salvation of Christ, and acknowledge ourselves to be sinners in need of his salvation, but this does not make us Christians. We have to make a personal response to Jesus Christ, committing ourselves unreservedly to him as our Savior and Lord _ At its simplest Christ__ call was __ollow me._ He asked men and women for their personal allegiance. He invited them to learn from him, to obey his words and to identify themselves with his cause _ Now there can be no following without a previous forsaking. To follow Christ is to renounce all lesser loyalties _ let me be more explicit about the forsaking which cannot be separated from the following of Jesus Christ. First, there must be a renunciation of sin. This, in a word, is repentance. It is the first part of Christian conversion. It can in no circumstances be bypassed. Repentance and faith belong together. We cannot follow Christ without forsaking sin _ Repentance is a definite turn from every thought, word, deed, and habit which is known to be wrong _ There can be no compromise here. There may be sins in our lives which we do not think we could ever renounce, but we must be willing to let them go as we cry to God for deliverance from them. If you are in doubt regarding what is right and what is wrong, do not be too greatly influenced by the customs and conventions of Christians you may know. Go by the clear teaching of the Bible and by the prompting of your conscience, and Christ will gradually lead you further along the path of righteousness. When he puts his finger on anything, give it up. It may be some association or recreation, some literature we read, or some attitude of pride, jealousy or resentment, or an unforgiving spirit. Jesus told his followers to pluck out their eye and cut off their hand or foot if it caused them to sin. We are not to obey this with dead literalism, of course, and mutilate our bodies. It is a figure of speech for dealing ruthlessly with the avenues along which temptation comes to us.

God doesn't stop crisis from coming, as He didn't stop Christ from coming. Things have their reasons for happening, we need not to faint, but rather have faith that we are never alone.

There is tremendous relief in knowing His love to me is utterly realistic, based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst about me , so that no discovery can disillusion him about me , in the way I am so often disillusioned about myself, and quench his determination to bless me.

You will never know love's depth, until it is gone.

Accepting Christ" is only the beginning, not the ultimate goal. Likewise, evangelism is vital, but so is discipleship. To go no deeper is to risk being like the seed that fell not on good soil but on rocky ground, sprouting up but bearing little or no fruit. Focusing solely on God's gift of free salvation is focusing on the minimum.

Let not him who accepts light in an instant despise him who gropes months in shadows.

What God did for Jesus in standing up for Him, standing behind Him in life and in death, and in standing in communion and solidarity with Him, the Father also does for us, here and now, in our lives.

One does not surrender a life in an instant. That which is lifelong can only be surrendered in a lifetime. Nor is surrender to the will of God (per se) adequate to fullness of power in Christ. Maturity is the accomplishment of years, and I can only surrender to the will of God as I know what that will is.

The true religion is to be posited not in the knowledge or confession of what God allegedly does or has done for our salvation, but in what we must do to become worthy of this.

You must make love to him like his touch is your salvation.

it__ hard to tell whether ornot hell__ flames are gettingcloser

Hell is a choice because salvation is available to anyone who seeks it.

La mu__xsa, but I think I__l just keep sliding down this greased pole to hell?

Here is the tragedy of theology in its distilled essence: The employment of high-powered human intellect, of genius, of profoundly rigorous logical deduction__tudying nothing. In the Middle Ages, the great minds capable of transforming the world did not study the world; and so, for most of a millennium, as human beings screamed in agony__ecaying from starvation, eaten by leprosy and plague, dying in droves in their twenties__he men of the mind, who could have provided their earthly salvation, abandoned them for otherworldly fantasies.

No man that ever lived, not John Calvin himself, ever asserted either original sin, or justification by faith, in more strong, more clear and express terms, than Arminius has done.

The angels heralded the birth of the Savior, John the Baptist heralded the coming of the Savior, and we herald the gospel of the Savior.