Believing the Words of Jesus cannot be done apart from believing the Word who is Jesus. This is why we read the Scriptures because to believe the Word of God is to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.
A Reason Why You Must Go To Church
Prov. 19:27 – “Cease to hear instruction, my son, and you will stray from the words of knowledge”
Notice the verb – “hear”
Remember faith comes by hearing & hearing through the word of Christ – Rom. 10:17
What Does Conversion Involve?
2 things:
a) the dying of the old man
b) the coming to life of the new man
This is by God’s Sovereign work alone through the saving instrumentality of the gift of grace & faith.
To die to self – is to be genuinely sorry for my sin, to hate it more and more & to run away from it.
To come to life – is to receive wholeheartedly with joy Christ Jesus, and to have a desire to do every kind of good work as God desires of me
The Power of the Sea
The catastrophe in Japan should remind us that God rules the raging of the sea & when its waves rise he stills them – Ps. 89:9. Though Satan would throw the nations into despair – God will do his work simply because he is God. May the Gospel do great things in Japan.
The Downgrade of the Supernatural
The moment you exchange the supernatural for the natural – all faiths become the same and therefore are the product of a particular culture or people or person. This in turn forces you to accept all since they are the same and not supernatural. This has always been in existence and idolatry is the clearest example of this. Idolatry therefore is not distinguishing God alone as he has revealed himself supernaturally in the Scriptures. If you can bring all faiths to the same level then there is no one true faith. Yet Jesus made it abundantly clear that he alone is the Way, the Truth and the Life and therefore all other faiths are not faiths at all – they are perversions of Satan and the sinful human heart and mind. They are not therefore true. They are rivals to God – they are idolatrous. To exalt God above all is only his due since he alone is God. All others are gods, and therefore not gods at all, since an idol in any form whatsoever is not true or real. So always magnify God as he is and never seek to reduce him to any contemporary model or thought. That would be to downgrade the supernatural and you would have created a new idol for yourself.