INSIDE this Issue...
Character Lesson
Health Information
Photography, Design, & Printing
Recipes & NEWS
About Us
Subscription Information
|
No faith, no choice!
Faith in God is the most vital part of being a Christian, but it is not the only part. We have to have just a little faith in ourselves. Now, before you through out this whole article please let me explain. If you feel hopeless, so helpless that you think you no longer have the power of choice, you are in real trouble. And there are people out there very close to the point of no return. “He (Satan) endeavors to affright their souls with the thought that their case is hopeless, that the stain of their defilement can never be washed away. He hopes so to destroy their faith that they will yield fully to his temptations, and turn from their allegiance to God.”{COL 168.1}
You have to believe you can choose. The rest, the power to believe, the power to do, the power to put forth the effort, comes from God. But your choice is the most important part. Sometimes this choice can take extreme effort. (Remember we talked about effort in our last newsletter - November 2009.) God cannot save you without it, so those who feel completely hopeless, feel completely lost. Because they don’t have “faith” they can choose, they can’t choose. It is not because they don’t have faith in God, but that they don’t have faith in themselves to be able to choose.
Some of you can’t understand this complete hopelessness, but it is still real. And maybe that is why you can’t understand some of the people you meet in life. You can’t understand why they don’t just choose God, choose the right path. Some of those people are not willing to put forth the effort, some of those people don’t want to change, some of those people have chosen the wrong path and like it there, BUT some of those people don’t believe they can choose right! And guess what??? You don’t know who is who. We need to give hope to the hopeless, so they can have an opportunity to choose. “We are not merely to say, ‘Come.’ There are those who hear the call, but their ears are too dull to take in its meaning. Their eyes are too blind to see anything good in store for them. Many realize their great degradation. They say, I am not fit to be helped; leave me alone. But the workers must not desist. In tender, pitying love, lay hold of the discouraged and helpless ones. Give them your courage, your hope, your strength. By kindness compel them to come. ‘Of some have compassion, making a difference; and others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire.’ Jude 22, 23.” {COL 235.3}
Give the power of choice to someone today!
Angela Poch, Director
www.settepublishing.com
“Then come to Christ just as you are, weak, helpless, and ready to die. Cast yourself wholly on his mercy. There is no difficulty within or without that cannot be surmounted in his strength. All who choose can come to him and find the help they need. Some have stormy tempers. But he who calmed the stormy sea of Galilee will say to the troubled heart, ‘Peace, be still.’ There is no nature so rebellious that Christ cannot subdue it, no temper so stormy that he cannot quell it, if the heart is surrendered to his keeping. Those who are overcome have only themselves to blame.” {SW, April 28, 1908 par. 5}
“No one need say that his case is hopeless, that he cannot live the life of a Christian. Ample provision is made by the death of Christ for every soul. Jesus is our ever-present help in time of need. Only call upon Him in faith, and He has promised to hear and answer your petitions. Oh, for living, active, faith! We need it; we must have it, or we shall faint and fail in the day of trial. The darkness that will then rest upon our path must not discourage us, or drive us to despair. It is the veil with which God covers His glory when He comes to impart rich blessings. We should know this by our past experience. In that day when God has a controversy with His people, this experience will be a source of comfort and hope.” {CET 190.2}
|