Saving Faith Part 3

I have seen probably 10 of these sessions where Ray Comfort is witnessing to people on the street. In this episode, the man actually prays to receive Christ. In Matthew 13, Jesus says:

"Behold, the sower went out to sow; 4 and as he sowed, some seeds fell beside the road, and the birds came and ate them up. 5 "And others fell upon the rocky places, where they did not have much soil; and immediately they sprang up, because they had no depth of soil. 6 "But when the sun had risen, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away. 7 "And others fell among the thorns, and the thorns came up and choked them out. 8 "And others fell on the good soil, and * yielded a crop, some a hundredfold, some sixty, and some thirty. 9 "He who has ears, let him hear."

Matt 13:3-9 (NASB77)

Fruit is the only proof of genuine conversion. Out of all the soils that made a profession, only 1 of these actually produced fruit. Just think about how many people he had to go through to get one person who was willing to actually pray. Think about how many religious people are sitting in church that may not be genuinely saved.

Saving Faith Part 2

Going back to what I was saying earlier about faith being more than credence, I wanted to state a concise definition of the gospel and what you must do to be saved.

The gospel in one sentence is that you are a sinner and that you must place your faith in Christ alone to be saved. What does that mean? Here is what I have heard from preachers and believe that the Bible says and testifies about as to what true saving faith is.

1. When the Bible says that you are a sinner it means that you are committed to yourself as lord of your life and you are driven by your needs and goals and feel that it is your right to attain them (Isaiah 53:6a; Romans 3:9-20; Romans 10:3; 2 Timothy 3:1-5). You are in rebellion as God to your master and are a slave to your other master who is Satan and he is lord of sin and rebellion. So all who are rebels are slaves of sin and ultimately Satan (Romans 6:20-22).
2. For this, you are promised eternal separation from God in hell after you die and the absence of his covenant grace in this life (Hebrews 9:27, Galatians 5:19-21, Ephesians 2:3, Philippians 1:28).
3. To be saved you must surrender the control of your life to Christ to follow and serve him for as long as you live and vow to live your life in obedience to whatever he tells you to do from now on (Romans 10:9-10, Luke 6:46-49, Luke 9:23-25, John 12:25-26).

Saving Faith

Saving faith has to do with much more than believing in Jesus than in the sense that we use the word believing. The essence of the word, believe or faith in Greek has a wider meaning than in the way we use it.

• We can believe in Jesus or the boogey-man or the abominable snowman or we can choose not to. This means that we believe that he exists.
  
• We can Christianly believe in Jesus by praying a prayer to him. "Jesus I believe that you died for me on the cross and shed your blood to pay for my sins and want you to save me."
  
• You can believe someone's opinion whether they are right or wrong. For example, someone tells you they can run the hundred yard dash and if they do it you can say, "I believe you can do that." But, in this case you don't really have to do anything.
  
• You can believe what someone tells you that they are going to do. Like when the politicians are trying to get elected they lie and say they are going to lower taxes and you can choose to believe them or not. You can believe that Obama is going to lower taxes but you may not necessarily go out and vote for him or exercise your faith.

The Greek word, pisteuo, is defined in the Vine's Dictionary as:
"to believe," also "to be persuaded of," and hence, "to place confidence in, to trust," signifies, in this sense of the word, reliance upon, not mere credence.
Be persuaded of, placing confidence in, reliance upon-not mere credence.

What does credence mean? Well, I just gave you some examples above in how we use the word today. I can give something credence but faith in the Greek sense of the word is something more robust. Why do so many people have a shallow faith? Because they have merely given credence to the fact that Jesus died for their sins on the cross. They haven't let him be the soul thing they are persuaded of and put their reliance on his righteousness and not their own.

But you may say, "I trust only in Christ's righteousness to save me." If that is true, then you will be like the man in the story below:

A tight-rope walker stretched a cable across a deep and wide precipice. He said to the crowd standing around that he was going to walk across the cable without a net or a balancing beam. And he did. Next he said he was going to walk across the precipice with nothing but a wheel-barrow. And he did. Next he said that he was going to walk across the precipice while pushing the wheel-barrow with a 100lb bag of sand. And he did. Next he asked the crowd if they believed that he could carry a person across the precipice. The crowd shouted to the affirmative because they had already seen three seemingly impossible feats formed by the man. To which the man responded, "who wants to volunteer?" No one stepped forward.

Now maybe you're thinking, "if it were Jesus with the wheel-barrow, I certainly would have stepped forward. Or maybe you're thinking, "Jesus doesn't ask us to do any works to be saved. Only faith. Jesus never asks any of his believers to do anything." Maybe you are right. I certainly agree that in this situation, you were not standing there and no it was not Jesus who was asking people to get into the wheelbarrow. But what if there was a fire behind you closing in on you? Would you be more apt to get on? Maybe you would just say, "forget you Jesus, I'm making it across on my own." Many people try that.

Well how about that second question. No, salvation is not by what we do or don't do. It is all of faith and it is also all of God. Eph 2:8-9. But certainly you can see that faith is much more than mere credence can't you?

Let's consider the following scenario:
Jesus is holding the wheel-barrow. There is no other way to get across the precipice except for in the wheel-barrow. Those who try to throw their own ropes end up falling into the gorge and those who try to cross through either balancing or climbing across on the rope are shot down by arrows from flying demons who hover on either side of the rope. Only one person can go across at a time. Jesus says, "all who will, let them come unto me." There is an inescapable fire closing in on your group as you stand before the precipice. What are you going to do? Well, in that case there is nothing left to do but get on and trust in Jesus. That would be faith.

But incredibly, you see most of the people in light of what I just described, knowing the danger knowing their death is approaching, just lounging around and getting drunk. Others are gossipping about you for considering such a crazy choice as getting in the wheel barrow. While others, knowing the risk are getting picked off left and right as they, one by one, try to exalt themselves by going across the precipice on their own. Some take armor with them to try to deflect the blows, but nothing ever works. Sound crazy?

How about this? Before you can get into the wheel-barrow, Jesus tells you, you see these people standing around getting drunk and whispering? You will have to leave them all behind and you will have to leave behind this life that you have there and trust me to take you across the precipice. But, mind you, if you go across with me, you must keep in mind that you are trusting your life to me. Not only that, heaven is not immediately on the other side. You must pass through many tribulations to enter into the kingdom of God. But I will be with you every step of the way. I will never leave you nor forsake you. But as for these who are standing here; their part will be in the lake of fire, prepared for the Devil and his angels.

The reality is that in evangelicalism today, the picture is not painted as black as that. In evangelicalism. The picture painted is that, there isn't a fire coming. Jesus is just an entertainer who likes to take bags of sand across precipices and we turn a deaf ear to him. When he says that he can take a person across in the wheel-barrow we are happy and cheer, "hip Hip Hooray!" And the preachers that are standing around there with us are telling us, "You see, Isn't Jesus great? We get all this entertainment and now we are saved because we have placed our faith in Jesus! Isn't that great? Jesus asks us to do nothing but believe! Hallelujah! Pass the port!

Are you believing in Jesus in this way? I urge you to read the Bible and see that your situation is much more dangerous than you could have ever imagined there is much to loose but the reward is certain and the salvation, once entered into is sure.

Eating Less Meat

Recommendations for eating less meat are as follows:

• Falafel balls fried in oil and isralie couscous boiled w/ onions, oil, spices, tomato, cilantro and jalapeno (good for you and filling).
• Tortillas lightly toasted w/ black beans and pickled jalapenos
• Rice and Black Beans w/ jalapeno, seasoned w/ salt, garlic and onion powder
• Soup of Lentils, black beans, salt and pepper and Jalapenos
• Flat-bread w/ hummus and avacado
• Greek wrap (hummus, flat-bread, roasted red pepper, tomato, avacado, feta and mozarella cheese)
• Starkist Tuna w/ boiled Quinhoa, tomatoes, olive oil, salt, onions, jalapenos

I believe that these are also Kosher (but I could be wrong).

Spanish: How To Learn it in 2 years! (and not loose it all)

How to Learn to Speak Spanish Proven Method:

1. Buy and learn: Pimsleur Spanish (this will take 100 days or more).
   
2. Go to Mexico for 6 months and use what you have learned while not speaking any english.
3. While in Mexico, take a dictionary and read the Bible, and other books to increase your vocabulary. Also, write down words that you hear people say and don't know what they mean and look them up in your dictionary when you get home.
   
4. Cry (because that is what will get you through not being able to express your anger at how different their culture is from yours).
5. After 6 months, now you can make jokes and understand 90% of what is being said.
6. Return to the US via bus and stay for 2 days with the family of someone that you knew in Mexico. You have to do this because your visa only lasts 6 months and you have to renew your visa (also take 40 dollars to pay for the new visa, and about $400 for bus fare. MAKE SURE you don't act like a gringo!).
7. Go back to Mexico for another 6 months.
8. Return to the US and get a job speaking spanish.
9. Find some people who speak spanish and talk to them frequently.
   
10. Read lots of books in spanish and translate some books from english to spanish.

Disclaimer: Method not 100% guaranteed. Method is also FAR from the best one to actually use but will probably work if you can't find a better one. Although, this method is pretty well laid out. All you have to do is the work! Saftey not 100% guaranteed (especially with the drug war that is going on right now). Also, be careful in Mexico City! Make sure you have access to a good doctor and have someone to take you if you get cholera or the flu or a bad case of athletes feet. Don't eat cow stomach stew unless you like gross stuff. Tip your cab driver. Learn to speak spanish BEFORE riding a bus. Don't make this trip if you are a member of PETA.

Bible Study Tools

Bible Study Tools International Standard Bible Encyclopedia is a free online Bible Encylopedia. It has very detailed articles on most prominent words in the Bible. Helps you to study words like Ashtoreth or Pharisee that you may not know the meaning from simply reading the Bible. Blue Letter Bible Is a resource for looking up Strong's Dictionary and Vine's Dictionary terms. Useful for understanding Bible words in the original language. E-Sword is a website with a Bible study program available for a free download. It has several reliable Bible translations as well as a Strong's Dictionary and several very good commentaries that are all available for free. Other Bible Christianity.com is a great site with many resources such as videos, articles and a Bible study tool where you can study commentaries and various translations of the Bible. Grace to You is John MacArthur's website. The great thing about this is that he has opened up the archives of the past 40 years of his preaching and made all the audio free for download. Type the topic you want to search for in the Search box at the top of the page and choose from thousands of relevant topics for your life today. This is an indispensable resource for growing Christians! Desiring God is John Piper's website. In addition to great Bible teaching, you can also download for free in pdf format all of the books that he has written! There is a search function also. So if you want information on a topic or word, you type it in the Search box and you will see a listing of all the relevant material. Ligonier Ministries is the home of R.C. Sproul. For years he has been one of the most renowned theologians in Christendom and in the last 12 years he has pastored a church in Florida. He has free teaching videos and articles by himself and other Christian laypersons.

How Does One Translate Something?

I am finding out that translating things is very hard for me to do! I do notice however that the translation of terms into Ingles is much easier if I PRAY beforehand! There are many terms in English that are impossible to translate directly into Spanish. Because the English language is so subject to change and we have reduced our vocabulary so much, we have been able to make a slang term for almost everything. While slang terms exist in Spanish, they are different from English and vary from country to country.

Most people who have an education frown upon them and you most certainly can't use them in translating a published work. So, one must come up with a way to grab the meaning of the english expression and translate it to Spanish.

I wonder if the Bible translators had this problem. If so, I can see where some parts of the Bible could be hard to understand if you don't do your research. Also, word-for-word translation may not work perfectly if the slang term is not translated properly. Nevertheless, the Bible has been very well translated in almost every literal translation that I know of. I say this not because I can read Greek but because those who do proper hermenutical study of the Bible have been able to understand almost every passage of the Bible without a vast knowledge of the origional language.

I can say this much. I definetly have great respect for any Bible translator or any tranlator in general. This is no easy undertaking. Also, a caution to anyone who wants to be relevant to anyone who doesn't speak your same language is to not use more slang terms or made-up on the spot words like "Churchianity". Even the term, "putting off and putting on" is easily understood in English but difficult to translate the meaning into Spanish.