And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh.
O how I love the times that I truly spend with God. When I can hear His voice and feel His hand.
God gives us a new heart. One that is not stone and callused from the pain and hate of this life. But, one that is new and tender. One that cries with those in pain and reaches out to help. One that leaps for joy when salvation comes to those that hate us.
What do you mean by repeating this proverb concerning the land of Israel, ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge’?
One thing I try to instil within my children is to accept consequences. When you do wrong you make it right and you take the punishment. You don't put it off and you don't pass on the blame.
Today we as a nation are doing a terrible evil.
We are passing on the consequences of our evil and selfish actions upon our children and our grandchildren. As fathers we must take the responsibility of what we have done wrong. It is better to financially suffer ourselves than to bail out our foolish actions of spending what we do not have and taking from those coming behind.
A nation that lives in debt is raping the future of its children.
So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.
I was thinking about this passage of James and the tie between faith and works ...
Our lives are like a great ocean. We sit upon it in our sail boats waiting to go somewhere. The sail that each of us has is our faith. The wind that drives our boat is the Grace of God. With no faith we keep our sails tied up and don't catch the wind of God's Grace. We may rock the boat a bit as we stomp around, but this is a sail boat not a row boat, so we go nowhere.
We can cry out to other people in their boats: "Look at my great sailing ship and how far I can go!" But, if your sails are still tied up you aren't going anywhere.
Untie your sail and watch the Grace of God fill it and suddenly you begin to move. Soon your little ship is making great waves that the dolphins jump and play in. And the wake behind you trails out forever; spreading and touching many other ships. Sometimes giving them a little push in the right direction. And sometimes rocking them and letting them know something is wrong with having tied up sails.
The wake of your boat is your actions for God.
If you are moving with God you must be creating a wake.
If you see no wake ... it is because your ship isn't moving.
So it is with faith. We are saved by the Grace of God and faith alone. But, your faith will make wakes as your move through life. Someone can profess the LORD. But if their ship is just rocking in place ... their sails are still tied up.
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