• Starting today August 7th, 2024, in order to post in the Married Couples, Courting Couples, or Singles forums, you will not be allowed to post if you have your Marital status designated as private. Announcements will be made in the respective forums as well but please note that if yours is currently listed as Private, you will need to submit a ticket in the Support Area to have yours changed.

  • CF has always been a site that welcomes people from different backgrounds and beliefs to participate in discussion and even debate. That is the nature of its ministry. In view of recent events emotions are running very high. We need to remind people of some basic principles in debating on this site. We need to be civil when we express differences in opinion. No personal attacks. Avoid you, your statements. Don't characterize an entire political party with comparisons to Fascism or Communism or other extreme movements that committed atrocities. CF is not the place for broad brush or blanket statements about groups and political parties. Put the broad brushes and blankets away when you come to CF, better yet, put them in the incinerator. Debate had no place for them. We need to remember that people that commit acts of violence represent themselves or a small extreme faction.

How much of your income are you willing to have taken for taxpayer funded healthcare.

The medical arts have long been a place where ordinary (albeit brilliant) working-class and middle-class folks could matriculate into the UMC and higher.

With the promise of robotics and AI (any day now), physicians will be like “plumbers” now.
Good, hardworking people, making tens of thousands a year.

Thirty years from now a physician will be seen like a blacksmith or a cooper. Necessary if only to remind us how far we’ve come!
The AI effect could and most likely will be negative with regard to doctors in the same way that it is in a number of other fields.

Many fields take time and experience to mature competent practitioners from "apprentice" so-to-speak to "master." AI tends to reduce the number of positions for "apprentices" and leave only positions for "masters." It's okay for the current masters if these corporations fill the apprentice slots below them with AI.

But if you don't have any apprentice positions, how do you get future masters? What we see actually beginning to happen right now: Cronyism and nepotism. We get people don't become the new supervisors of AI by experience and maturity but by who they know.
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Hell doesn't exist and there is no eternal suffering, instead bad peolle just cease to exist

Well it does actually since the same people wrote it. They wrote the Hindu, Norse and American religions, too.
View attachment 371131
Maybe I'm not the sharpest knife in the block, but I don't understand what you are trying to convey.
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Can we talk about ADHD... and such ?

As far as science is concerned, the brain and mind are synonymous. Because science only deals with empirical questions, not introspective ones.
Yes, absolutely, science is only applicable to to the mind if actually the mind is the brain.

Faith however, allows for a mind/soul/spirit and an ever present loving God, alive as Jesus Christ, hence the relevance of our faith to "mental health". I do not say this by way of blaming anyone who faces mind/emotional challenges, just because I believe faith is relevant, I do not mean it is an instant cure, or should be, but that Jesus (who by any scientific standard is no longer with us, but by the truth of the gospel, actually is) cares what our minds and brains are suffering from.

You seem to be misunderstanding what it's saying there, because it's stating that these mental illnesses are often missed and given different diagnoses.
Yes, I totally get that, no misunderstanding, I found a web site which supported mainstream mental health perspectives deliberately. I also looked for a place which presented the point in plain english, so anyone could read it, the articles in the BMJ and scientific reaearch papers about it prove the same point, but I am no scientist, and I did not want to limit the thread to something only people with fancy PhD's could read.
Improving awareness of the associated symptoms of various mental health conditions among general practitioners to improve accurate diagnoses is far removed from what you seem to be trying to argue.
What I am saying is there is a shortage of science in the realm of mental health, and if there was not then these clear numbers of errors would not exist. You are entirely correct that the article I linked to is not saying that, but then I was only trying to show that the proffessionals themselves know that there is an major problem with diagnostic accuracy.
From what I can gather, you're speaking on things which you have little personal experience
My mother was a victim of valium, I have an Aquired Brain Injury (so brain and mind are kind of relevant to my whole life), my wonderful grandparents, who lead me to faith in Jesus, lived one with long term depression, one with military combat related PTSD, my active addict brother has ADHD, my husband has cPTSD. I work facilitating visual art at a small local charity for addicts in recovery, where we see people whose addiction struggle began with a proffessional prescription all the time.
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Trump plan would limit Social Security disability benefits for older Americans

That's exactly what you have to do to raise the retirement age and still save money. The higher up the age goes the more people will need to go on disability. So now they want to reduce disability for those older? Not really a good priority. I'd raise taxes on capital gains or raise the social security caps. Alternatively, you could have those aged 85 and up turn over assets if they still need to collect. This would be extremely fair. Some simply get far more out of social security than others. If they have no assets then SS benefits could remain to death.
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The law, the commandments, and Christians.

The way to love God is by being a doer of His character traits, such as the way to love justice is by being a doer of justice, the way to love holiness is by being a doer of His instructions for how to be holy as He is holy, and so forth. In other words, the goal of everything that God has commanded in the Law of Moses is to teach us how to love different aspects of His character, which is why the Bible repeatedly states in both the OT and the NT that the way to love God is by obeying His commandments. In John 15:10, Jesus used a parallel statement to equate his commandments with those of the Father, so I see no justification for limiting John 14:15 to a specific subset of God's commandments. Jesus quoted Deuteronomy three times in order to defeat the temptations of Satan, which included saying that man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God, so what Jesus gave to the Apostles is every word that comes from the mouth of God, which includes the Ten Commandments and everything else that God spoke to Moses (Deuteronomy 5:31-33).
What can possibly motivate you to want to be under the Law as were the Jews of Jesus' time? Surely it was not possible for them to obey the LAW so how do you think that you will obey it?
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Illegal Immigration

Evidence? Oh - and as we have shown - they might be undocumented - but they're not as criminal as American born citizens with half the violent crime, a quarter of the theft, etc. It might be fun to get all judgie and repeat 'criminals' because they fled some horrible poverty - but remember God's heart for the poor? How do you think God sees these people? They might have broken national boundary laws - but if you want to rate them by biblical standards of law - go ahead and check out how God asked Israel to treat the alien?

God definitely sees these people and he wouldn’t want them to sin by breaking a countries laws.

That fact is these people broke a law, so there should be a penalty for breaking that law. It’s that simple. The fact that these people commit less crimes than the rest of the American population is irrelevant.

Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly. Leviticus 19:15

There are several verses warning against showing partiality. You are showing partiality to the poor.


Using tautologies to hammer your point?

Ironic given that you keep finding different ways to bringing up the argument that these illegal immigrants are poor and commit less crime so should be allowed to stay.


In some countries the American embassy is watched by people who will do bad things to refugees trying to flee by proper means. By all means push the tired old meme of an orderly queue - but next time you have YOUR teenage daughter kidnapped by drug-gangs you couldn't pay your 'protection money' to - and she's sold into the sex trade - get back to us on the necessity of proper paper work!

Evidence? Meanwhile there is documentation of smugglers killing those they are smuggling.

Do you support raising the racial tensions in America,

That’s entirely the fault of the left, who make just about everything into a race issue. This is about illegal immigration not about race.

masked men pulling families apart, the extremely controversial and expensive harnessing of the National Guard for pointless political theatre, and raising the ICE budget 15 fold rather than just doubling the processing of the undocumented hardworking MAJORITY?

Tautology.


There's one thing behind all this - a fear from WASPs that they will not be the majority any more in America.
That's it.

If that was really the case then there would be a movement to stop legal migration too. And there’s nothing wrong with wanting to preserve one’s own culture.

And Trump sure knows how to blow that dog-whistle! "Proud boys stand back and stand by!"

I don’t see what relevance that quote has to illegal immigration.
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Morality without Absolute Morality

But some people do hold that even the most clearly egregious rape or murder is wrong just as a matter of social consensus. its not "intrinsically" wrong (whatever that really means). That judgement of "wrong" is not backstopped by anything we'd call "absolute".
When atheists on forums like CF talk about moral absolutism, they are trying to provide a foil to their own theory which they call "moral relativism." Both positions tend to be ill-defined, as we are seeing here (where, for example, @Bradskii is unable to differentiate a context from an act). Here is the more serious approach for the foil to moral relativism:

Metaethical moral relativist positions are typically contrasted with moral objectivism. Let us say that moral objectivism maintains that moral judgments are ordinarily true or false in an absolute or universal sense, that some of them are true, and that people sometimes are justified in accepting true moral judgments (and rejecting false ones) on the basis of evidence available to any reasonable and well-informed person. There are different ways of challenging moral objectivism...

-Moral Relativism | SEP
So on this view if a person maintains that it is true that rape is universally wrong and there are not cases, cultures, or considerations which can make rape permissible, and that people are justified in accepting this truth about rape, then that person is a moral objectivist. There is a truth about the wrongness of rape that can be reliably known by any reasonable and well-informed person.

The CF merry-go-round is predictable:
  1. Oh, so you're a moral relativist?
  2. And yet you are telling me that rape/slavery/Holocaust/etc. really are universally wrong?
  3. (The person runs in circles for awhile and contradicts themselves)
  4. Rinse and repeat.
@Bradskii has here pursued a strategy where he employs a very strange construal of "moral absolutism" such that it is impossible for any absolute moral rule to exist even in principle. This "saves" him from admitting that he is a "moral absolutist," but only at the cost of making "moral absolutism" an utterly impossible position for anyone to hold. Bradskii uses "moral absolutism" as a pejorative label, and the confusions he is engaged in could be paralleled to a scenario in which he is trying to wield the pejorative "racist":

  • Bradskii: "You're a racist!"
  • Zippy: "According to the definition of 'racism' that you have provided, you're a racist too."
  • Bradskii: "No I'm not because [insert Bradskii's construal of his definition whereby it is logically impossible for anyone whosoever to be a racist, including himself]."
  • Zippy: "On that account you have avoided being a racist, but your initial claim fails: I am no longer a racist and no one in the entire world is a racist, because it is utterly impossible to be a racist. You've only dodged the tu quoque by turning the object of your own accusation to mush."

...Else, perhaps @Bradskii will claim that he was only trying to convince me to abandon the silly position of "moral absolutism," and that by providing his construal of the definition whereby no one could ever, even in principle, be a "moral absolutist," he has succeeded. This is of course sophistry. It trades on the falsehood which says that I was under the impression, for example, that rape was "absolute" and therefore did not require the "context" of coercion/non-consent. But neither I nor anyone else was under such an impression. The "moral absolutist" simply does not believe that rape can occur outside the "context" of coercion/non-consent. They believe that the act of rape is wrong regardless of the context one is in, where the act of "rape" has the traditional definition and "context" signifies the particular situation in which that act takes place. @Bradskii's insinuation that the "moral absolutist" erroneously believed that rape could occur outside the "context" of coercion/non-consent, and that he corrected their error, is just a strawman. But I think we all knew this already. It is insane to say that because rape necessarily occurs in the "context" of coercion/non-consent, therefore anyone who thinks rape is wrong is a moral relativist. :swoon:

  • Bradskii: "If someone is a 'moral absolutist' with respect to rape, then they must believe that rape need not occur in the 'context' of coercion/non-consent."
  • Zippy: "No, that's not even close. You don't even understand the definition you've agreed to."
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TikTok recommends porn and highly sexualised content to children, says report

Vote for us because we don't support the Right's ideas of sexualizing children.
Yep that too. It's just "progress". It's the new normal for little kids to know about being umpteen different genders and sexual orientations. "I'm an 8 year old non-binary gender-fluid two-spirit omnisexual".
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Israel-Hamas Thread II

Given the amount of time Benaiah468 devotes to writing so many words in this thread I really think he should be able to find away that explained that I didn't "say" this - this was part of a quote from a South African newspaper which I included in my post.
This is my only ignored account. They’re probably just killing time like the rest of us and aren’t a professional social media presence, at all.
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Were Andronicus and Junia apostles?

In the early days the young Andronicus and Junias were not yet distinguished and mentioned in Romans about 65 AD then they had become so. There were 11 surviving apostles, James had died. And the apostles could only confer through the ancient postal system. And there were ten thousand believers to sort through, across Russia, Greece, India, Egypt and Rome. We alive today should be able to bear witness to the fact of the resurrection. So I disagree.
The 11 surviving apostles were guided by God to choose Matthias as the replacement for Judas Iscariot. Later, God called the converted Saul/Paul to be an apostle. Yes, all Christians should bear witness to the resurrection, but that doesn't make us apostles.
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Ezra Klein: Charlie Kirk was practicing politics the right way

People don't accept concepts like gay marriage because of any activism. They accept it because they were told by some that it meant the end of western civilisation! That the sky was going to fall! That society would crumble! And then...it didn't.

People thought 'Hey, life just goes as it always did. So Dave in accounts got married to Pete and...nothing changed. Everything is just the same. We were lied to'.
And yet Dave & Pete are the evidence that it’s all just going to heck! (Somehow)
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Emergency abortion denials by Catholic hospitals put woman in danger, after her water broke at 17 weeks, lawsuit claims

As someone else has stated, the example that you're presenting doesn't relate to the issue at hand.

I hate to generalize, but this seems to be a very common theme among Christians who support the far right. It is all about your grievances against American society, and nothing about the issue which is actually at hand. The goal is to create and perpetuate an "us vs. them" mentality, instead of addressing the merits of the case which is actually in front of them. It's a diversion tactic.

Addressing a situation such as this requires you to lay down your pride and any notions which you have of perceived superiority over the rest of society. But you can't (or don't want to) do this, so your response is to play the victim. It's all part of the hero-victim complex, which is just a means by which to try to maintain control and avoid accountability.
The defense against the accusations in both cases is freedom of religion. How convenient is it to just exclude all talk of any defense. Contrary to your assertions, I am doing just the opposite, I am honing in on the defense. In my country a defense in court is supposed to be allowed. I understand in these days statues of Madison and Jefferson are not popular, but the Bill of Rights is a reality.
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Three ICE detainees shot, 2 dead, at ICE facility in Dallas; suspected shooter committed suicide.

I'm talking about immigrants like dreamers who have built productive lives that contribute to the community.
Irrelevant. The laws are written to allow good people in and that they have to prove that before they come. The laws are not written to allow everyone to come in and then sort it out later. Obey the laws.
And I'm talking about asylum seekers who genuinely seek asylum
The majority of them do not meet the requirements.
And I'm talking about a president who says those types of immigrants are poisoning the blood of our country,
Those arent rhe ones hes referring to.

Here's the what he said:

"That’s what they’ve done. They poison mental institutions and prisons all over the world, not just in South America, not just to three or four countries that we think about, but all over the world. They’re coming into our country from Africa, from Asia, all over the world."

He also clarified his remarks on Truth Social.

asserting on Truth Social that "illegal immigration is poisoning the blood of our nation. They’re coming from prisons, from mental institutions — from all over the world.”

Now I know its not nice language and Trump has tendencies not to be precise. But he has used this type of language when talking about criminals and rapists who are coming over rhe border. Which of course we have learned is true. There are murderers and rapists and other criminals, traffickers etc coming over the border. If YOU arw not referring to those people in your comments the Trump isnt referring to nice illegals in his, especially when clarifying.

So let's just get off rhe bandwagon here.
There are decent people coming as well as bad people coming. But ALL if them rhat are coming illegally are coming illegally regardless. And they should be sent back if caught no matter how long they've been here. This is not a olley olley oxen free country. No country is.
How exactly is my suggestion that you don't experience the dehumanizing oppression that immigrants do, proof that I don't think in dichotomies?
I shared why.
The bottom line is God sees what's happening, and He knows what He's doing.
Yes he does. And he wants us to not ignore the weightier measures of justice and mercy.
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Born again morality as opposed to the worlds morality.

I notice he takes all thoughts and if one pops up about different things and urge to do, it is taken it is gone poof just like that. Then I get a scripture in my mind or what God wants. It is automatic. I do not even have the desire to do what is wrong or what was coming. none. I get an instant strong dislike against everything that is unbiblical. then the same process follows. Then I fall over teachings about it. and bible verses. it just happening .it literally feels like you are sitting there on the tree and getting pruned. very gently though. and yes he pops the good thoughts about what he wants in your head and about his work
Yes and I think also we come to realise, but there for the grace of God go I. We see the weakness and depravity of our fallen human nature and frankly it scares us to God. We thank God that there is such a Father God who loves us that hHe knows us through Christ and that by grace we can overcome ourselves and the lies, and hate and evil in the world.

But it is an ongoing transition. I actually heard someone say the other day that no one person can go without sinning at some point even when saved. I am sure some live near perfect lives. But I also think to some extent because of our fallen nature we are blind to some and we can become aware and do better. It may be one of omission rather than commission.

But its the (state of being) and the disposition that we are sinners and without God we are by nature going to practice sin that keeps us in fear and respect for God as well. Which at the same time we are transformed more fully that we become Christ like and want to obey God out of returned love even sacrificing our lives as Christ did.

Which for humans is a radical and hard thing to become on their own I think. At least as far as any human made idea of reason to do so. Which is sort of testiment to God as with the disciples and early Christians I think. As Christians will be called to be today and in the future.

That I believe is the transformative power of Christ. That it can be all things, in all times as things change that it will speak the truth of Christ and that when the time is needed, or that faith is tested it will shine through and people will see this in reality and look to Gods truth inn Christ.

But as with the battle truth and good and evil there is a spiritual battle brewing and a change in the season and the figs are beginning to fall.
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Another liberal judge injects her politics into law...

If every case in law is unique, then decisions wouldn't often be based on precedence. Either a president can order troops into a city or state to put down insurrection; enforce the law; or to preserve order or a president cannot.
We all agree that these are “extraordinary times”, what we disagree on is what makes them so.
The President sure seems like he really needs to invade (some of) the several states to “save” them, after some fashion, for no other reason than he wants there to be peace across the land…once he’s finished. If he got some sort of “Prize” for that, I’m sure that he’d accept it with dignity and grace.

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Trump Calls For Ilhan Omar’s Removal From Congress

But not to the Christian right. But neoliberal is what I meant.. Neoliberalism is authoritarian, but it is an authoritarian economic system. Fascism is an authoritarian political system. As far as I can tell, Trump is trying for something different. Democratic neoliberals are globalists--think Bill Clinton and his NAFTA--but Trump, having stolen neoliberal influence and campaign money from the Democrats--wants to be a nationalistic neoliberal. He seems to be making heavy weather of it now, who knows if he will succeed. So far he has kept the working class divided and distracted with the culture war--that's what he uses the Christian Right for. But that won't last. Pretty soon the working class will realize that he means to do no more for them than the Democrats did. I'm all for bread and circuses, but the glitter goes off the circus when there is no bread.
And nobody’s talking about the Epstone files, neither!
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Kimmel is Back


What do you think?
Agree or disagree?
Just on Kimmels return. I never really watched him. I don't always get American humur though some of it is side splitting when I do get it. Like the Adam Sandler or Jim Carey comedy and some of SNL with Chevy Chase and all that ect.

But from what I have seen of Kimmel he always seemed too serious when telling the jokes. The body language didn't match the humor. Anyway that may have ben because I did not get the humor. But I sense theres more to this than just humor.

I am not sure people will believe him now. But its not just Kimmel. Its the general humor at the expense of others or spreading lies. Or just making comedy about politics. I have always thought that entertainers should stay right out of politics as far as letting their personal opinions influence their art.

If they are going to make fun then do it to both sides. Just joke about life and issues in general. Make a commentry on life as it is. Thats what comedy use to be about. Not injecting some poisonous political message that actually ends up not being funny lol.

I see these celebs like De Niro who I love as an actor and looked up to, their reputations and legacy and bank accounts go straight down the drain as soon as they open their mouths on political issues today. Stick to acting Bobby please.

And Snow White, Roger and Emma well lol. Roger what are you doing. You are the Floyd don't tarnish that for the many who grew up with your music lol.
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There’s a Giant Flaw in Human History

I am not saying a vase with similar precision could not have been done in the mid 20th century. I am saying it would have taken our best tech at that time and arguing that it was expensive and hard to access that equipment and totally unnecessary when no one worried about precision.
It wouldn't. Standard lathing by a skilled stone vessel maker would do the trick in 1950 or whenever.
Its a far fetched arguement to claim that someone would even bother. We would expect to find fakes with less precision as no one would know and be bothered with that precision. They could make one less precise and still get away with it as no one was measuring the vases down to the micron level.

This is actually one of the problems with faking artifacts generally: making them too good. In this case: too round. too smooth.
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Tithing. What are first fruits in a non agrarian society?

I have been unemployed for a long time now (19 months) due to the AI dessimation of the IT job market. Honestly nobody really saw that coming nor prepared for it. But not the point I need to make.

To make ends meet I am driving ride share, doesn't matter which one, but I am hustling my tail off, working 12 hour days to make less than 1/4 of what I was earning before just so I don't have to end up on the streets.

I know I should tithe, but on what amount?

Let's assume I earned $5,000.00 in fares, and tips last month. That number is high, but let's go with it anyway.
Now let's assume that I spend $250.00 each week on gas and toll road tolls to do this, so my net is $4,000.00, and the weekly spend on fuel and tolls is likely LOW...
Now assume further in doing this I needed $3,000.00 in vehicle repairs to keep my car SAFE to operate for myself and my riders. Now my net is $1,000.00

Do I tithe on the $5,000.00 GROSS, or the $1,000.00 NET?

For anyone paying attention, that is 288 hours to get $1,000.00 net income and a car with an added 10K miles on it. That works out to $3.47 per hour.

If you rideshare and don't tip. You may want to look at those numbers again. Would you work for $3.47 / hour and wear out a valuable asset like a car?

In the Eastern Orthodox Church tithing is not required, nor is it required by most traditional liturgical churches in the US such as the various Anglican churches, and its fairly obvious you are not in a position to give alms.

The system of tithes, church taxes and in the UK certain landowners having maintenance responsibilities for the local parish, imposed in Western Europe was and is used used by established churches like the Church of England, the Roman Catholic Church, the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, the various Lutheran churches of Germany, the Lutheran churches of Scandinavia, the Continental Reformed churches in Prussia, the Netherlands and so on, and these churches historically provided much of what is now provided by the welfare state in those countries, and in some cases still acts as an agent of it, for example with state-funded parochial schools paid for by a church tax in countries like Germany.

By the way, in the IT industry there is strong demand for skilled cloud, AI and security professionals; the main hit has been on software development and certain types of traditional systems administration and engineering. If you can develop your skillset towards these areas you might well be able to regain employment. Also freelancers in various IT related specialties ranging from web development to systems programming can leverage AI to greatly improve productivity.

I do understand this is not the main topic of your thread, but I would be very happy to provide some specific reccommendations for professional development in another thread or privately via a conversation.

I would also be very happy to pray for you.

God bless you!
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God's Ways are Higher Than Ours

“Seek the Lord while He may be found;
Call upon Him while He is near.
Let the wicked forsake his way
And the unrighteous man his thoughts;
And let him return to the Lord,
And He will have compassion on him,
And to our God,
For He will abundantly pardon.
For My thoughts are not your thoughts,
Nor are your ways My ways,” declares the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
So are My ways higher than your ways
And My thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:6-9 NASB1995)

This is from the Old Testament, but the New Testament writings teach the same truths. To come to God and to put our faith in Jesus Christ, who is the second person of our triune God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – it requires that, by God-gifted and God-persuaded faith in the Lord Jesus, we forsake our sinful practices and that we now follow our Lord in walks of obedience to his commands, in surrender to his will and to his purpose for our lives.

For God’s grace is not just forgiveness of sins and the promise of eternal life with God based on a profession of faith in Jesus Christ only. God’s grace, which is bringing us salvation, is training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives while we wait for our Lord’s return (see Titus 2:11-14). And his grace sent Jesus to the cross to put our sins to death with him so that, by faith in him, we will die to sin and now walk in obedience to our Lord in surrender to his will.

For Jesus Christ taught that to come to him we must deny self, take up our cross daily (die daily to sin), and follow (obey) him. For if we hold on to living in sin and for self, we will lose our lives for eternity. But if we deny self, die daily to sin, by the Spirit, and we walk in obedience to our Lord and to his commands, in his power, then we have eternal life with God. For not everyone who calls him “Lord” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one DOING (obeying) the will of God (see Luke 9:23-26; Matthew 7:21-23).

For by God-gifted faith in Jesus Christ, which is not of our own doing, we are crucified with Christ in death to sin and raised with Christ to walk in newness of life in him, no longer to live as slaves to sin but as slaves to righteousness in walks of obedience to God’s commands. We are no longer to permit sin to reign in our mortal bodies to make us obey its desires. For if sin is what we obey, it results in death. But if obedience to God is what we obey, it results in sanctification, and its end is eternal life with God (see Romans 6:1-23).

So, faith in Jesus Christ is not lip service only. It is not just a verbal confession of Jesus Christ as Lord and of his bodily resurrection. It is not just words we say in a prayer to “receive Christ,” either. And it is not a one-time event which takes place in our lives which secures us heaven for eternity, but regardless of how we live. For how we live determines whether or not our faith is of the flesh or if it is of God, and if it aligns with the biblical gospel, or if it does not. And that determines our eternal destiny.

For we learn in 1 John 1-3 that if we claim that we have fellowship with God, but yet we walk in darkness (sin), we are liars. If we claim that we know God, but we do not obey his commandments, in practice, we are liars. For it is not the one who claims he is “in Christ” who is “in Christ,” but it is the one who has denied self, died with Christ to sin, and who is now walking in obedience to our Lord and to his commands, in practice, and no longer in sin. We have the hope and the promise of eternal life with God in heaven.

For our thoughts are not the same as God’s thoughts, and our ways are not the same as his ways. But God’s ways are higher than our ways, and his thoughts are higher than our thoughts. So we do not get to define faith and salvation and forgiveness of sins and eternal life with God according to our own fleshly thinking, according to our own will and purpose. But we need to define all of that according to the teachings of the Scriptures, but taught in their correct biblical context, and not out of context.

For many charlatans and wolves in sheep’s clothing dwell among us who are distorting the truth of the Scriptures by teaching them out of their correct biblical context in order to make them say what they want them to say. So it is important that we are students of the Scriptures who read and interpret them according to their correct biblical context. Both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament we are taught that biblical faith involves us dying to sin and walking in obedience to our Lord’s commands. Know the truth!

[Matthew 7:13-14,21-23; Luke 9:23-26; John 10:27-30; Acts 26:18; Romans 1:18-32; Romans 2:5-10; Romans 3:23; Romans 6:1-23; Romans 8:1-14; 1 Corinthians 10:1-22; Galatians 5:16-24; Ephesians 2:8-10; Ephesians 4:17-32; Ephesians 5:3-6; Titus 2:11-14; Hebrews 3:1-19; Hebrews 4:1-13; Hebrews 10:19-39; Hebrews 12:1-2; 1 Peter 2:24; 1 John 1:1-10; 1 John 2:3-6; 1 John 3:4-10; Revelation 2:1-29; Revelation 3:1-22]

Seek the Lord

Based off Isaiah 55
An Original Work / July 20, 2012
Christ’s Free Servant, Sue J Love
Musical Instrumentation by Mark Bradley


“Come to Me all you who thirst; come to waters.
Listen to Me, and eat what’s good today,
And your soul will delight in richest of fare.
Give ear to Me, and you will live.
I have made an eternal covenant with you.
Wash in the blood of the Lamb.”

Seek the Lord while He may be found; call on Him.
Let the wicked forsake his way, in truth.
Let him turn to the Lord, and he will receive mercy.
Freely, God pardons him.
“For My thoughts are not your thoughts,
Nor are your ways My ways,”
declares the Lord, our God.

“My word that goes out of My mouth is truthful.
It will not return to Me unfulfilled.
My word will accomplish all that I desire,
And achieve the goal I intend.
You will go in joy and be led forth in peace.
The mountains will burst into song… before you,
And all of the trees clap their hands.”

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God’s Ways are Higher Than Ours
An Original Work / October 6, 2025
Christ’s Free Servant, Sue J Love

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