Faith is a big issue to me. It is the core of belief. Everything else doesn’t matter if your faith is not at the center of who you are. Faith drives you; it is an internal motivation from which your daily life springs from. Christians will say, “Even the Devil knows scripture.” This is true. Reading the bible is not going to give you faith, your faith is going to drive you to read it. Your faith is going to drive you to prayer. Your faith is going to drive you to hurting, feeling the weight of your sin so that you will repent from them. Faith will drive you to obedience to the Lord. My first pastor drew an analogy of God as an earthly father. When we are hurt, we can crawl up onto our father’s lap for comfort. His use of this was from a different concept, but I developed my belief from it as follows. God as an Earthly father. As a child, I may fear him and thus obey him. As a teen I become rebellious and disobedient. As an adult, I realize how right my father and his rules were and how much I love him. Thus, I return to him and do so in obedience to him and respect for him. Most Christianswill take issue with at least two items, first paragraph, hurt, or guilt and the word obedience. Most love to be guilt free. Their past present and future sins washed away. No concerns whatsoever. Yet somehow, even the most devoted Christian still sins. As I have discussed before, sin is disobeying God. How does a Christian who commits adultery repent if they are not feeling guilty about it? Truth is, they don’t. You must feel the weight of your sin, otherwise you are secure in your sin, meaning you don’t care about what you just did. The second word, obedience, smacks of legalism. GOD FORBID. This is due to the fact most Christians have no clue about legalism. Let’s address legalism. 1) Adenomination sets rules that congregants must follow, if they don’t, they are judged, harassed, or thrown out of the denomination. 2) A pastor who sets rulesfor congregants to follow and if you don’t you are judged even thrown out of the church. 3) Congregants who either have spoken or unspoken rules by which theyjudge their fellow congregants by, making them feel judged or unwanted. This iswhat the Pharisee and teachers of the law did. They created volumes of rules not found in the bible and heaped them onto the backs of the believers. These are not biblical rules, merely manufactured, gleaned from man’s interpretation of the bible. Ask a Jew why the follow the law. They will tell you because they love the Lord. Can you disagree with that statement? Do you love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength? If so, then will you not be obedient to Him? Below is a list of a few OT Laws. Which ones do you say you do not follow? To know that God exists, Do not believe in other gods, Do not blaspheme, To know God is one, To honor the bible, To pray To recite grace, To love others, and To feed, and care for the poor. I mean, I can go on with many morelaws from the bible that you preach or live by. So, Paul says that law was written in our hearts. Which ones do you not want to follow? If you love the Lord, then let your heart guide you and you will follow them.

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