Decisions Define - 9.13.10 0840

Decisions define.

Your decisions will define who you are and who you will become.

The person you are today was completely determined by the decisions you've made up until now. It explains why two people with the same background and opportunities might rise to completely different places in life. A person who is constantly taking handouts or always choosing to reason out/excuse a fault will grow to look completely different than one who fights to rise above handouts or takes ownership of their mistakes. Or one who, above all circumstances, chooses to show loyalty to friends, family, or a job will look different than one who doesn't.

Your decision making is one of the prime molds that will determine who you will be in 20 years. If you want to be seen as a loyal person, a "successful" person, or a faithful person, than those decisions in situations that would exhibit those characteristics must be made now. Every time you react a certain way to a certain circumstance, you have either moved one step forward or one step back to where you want to be. It's the people who aren't firm on who they want to be that wake up one morning wondering how they got to where they are in life. Why am I successful with no friends? Why can't I help but lie to keep myself safe or my reputation intact? If someone doesn't have a destination in mind but they wander through life anyway, then they will inevitably find themselves where they don't want to be. Because to attain any sort of honorable characteristic takes self-discipline, hard work, and dedication. Do you want to be honorable? then find the most honorable person you know and ask them about their life. Do you want to be godly? Then read about or talk to those who are seen as such to learn about how they react to things.

If your decisions are going to determine you, then the most important thing to look at is your decision making paradigm, your faith and where you put it.

Have you seen the lives of those who put their faith in money? Where do they end up?

Have you seen those who put their faith in themselves above all else? How do their lives look?

What about those who put their faith entirely in what others can do for them?

Do you know someone who puts their faith in God?

Where you put your faith will determine the decisions you make and the person you will become.

But it gets harder and habits get more entrenched as time goes on. The longer a person commits to one direction in life, the more difficult it is to turn course. So, the sooner you figure out your faith and goals, the easier life will be to you in hitting them.

Where are you putting your faith?

Faith - 4.30.09 0955 (Part 3)

What really amazes me about the word faith is how much it encompasses! It's not just trust or belief, which are two different things that become one in the word "faith." It also brings in "loyalty." And this is the shade that more often than not becomes dominant when it's used of God (i.e. his faithfulness). The Hebrews 11 definition isn't exhaustive because, if you apply that definition to God, it doesn't make sense (does he hope for something he can't see?) and it doesn't really tie in the loyalty factor as strongly as when the word is used in the bible to describe faithfulness to something. So "faith" not only seems to blend in concepts of trust and belief in something, but also a commitment to what you trust and believe in. Loyalty.

What still bothers me though is that when it's used of God, there has to be some kind of trust or belief tied into it, otherwise they would just say God's loyalty, right? What belief or trust is God loyal to? Himself? He's committed to trusting himself? To believing in himself? I'm still fleshing it out, but either all three concepts of "faith" are still tied together in "faithfulness," or it could be that faith and faithfulness just overlap in the area of commitment/loyalty; that when you speak of "faithfulness" you are just bringing in the concept of loyalty/commitment and pushing aside the trust/belief, making loyalty, commitment, and faithfulness complete synonyms, 100% interchangeable.

Faith - 4.30.09 0955 (Part 2)

Faith does not come from us. It doesn't originate from us. It's not initiated by us. The bible seems to make this clear. Does this mean we can't have faith without God flipping a switch in us? Kind of, but not really.

See, if God had no part in our faith then we could boast in ourselves and our faith in God. We could say, "I believed in God without any help at all!" This isn't biblical. But I also don't believe this means that God directly causes some to have faith and some not to have faith. What would be the point of Paul's argument in Romans that no one has an excuse not to have faith in God when, in fact, they do have an excuse. God never gave them the faith to have! Simply doesn't make sense, and I think this is because we've misunderstood something about faith.

Faith is always the second step from something else.

Faith is always the response to something or the reaction to something. Faith isn't initiated because "initiation" or "starting out" or "the first step" isn't what faith is. It's not even a part of faith! Saying you've initiated faith in God is as nonsensical as saying the color green tastes like wood. But if it's a response, a reaction to something, then things become clearer once you figure out what it's a response to, a reaction to.

God's revelation.

Revelation can be initiated, and in fact is when it comes to God revealing himself. Now no man can have an excuse, because God has revealed himself to all, either through nature, the Law, Christ, etc. Your response to that revelation is the all determining factor. That is why God can hold everyone accountable, because we're all responsible for the way we respond to God's revelation. This is why we can't brag about our faith in God, because without God's revelation, we wouldn't be able to have the appropriate, faithful response! God doesn't choose your response for you. He determined whether or not you had the option to respond. And everyone before, during, and after the Christ event had the option, has the option, will have the option.

People before the Christ event had proper/effective/real faithful responses. If you read Hebrews 11, the hall of fame for the faithful, you will see that every one of them is a response. And some of them are even said to have been justified or made righteous by their response! So this concept of justification by faith is not new to the Christ event.

What, then, did Jesus bring that wasn't there before? Forgiveness? Nope. people could be forgiven before Christ. Righteousness for the believers? Nope. That happened before. Justification, Holy Spirit, recognition of God's supremacy, mercy or love? Nope nope nope, all there before the Christ event. People were able to be justified, people got the Holy Spirit, and people fully recognized God's attributes. What new thing did Christ bring?

Salvation.

Eternal Life.

Being able to spend infinity with God.

Before Christ, righteousness or justification or forgiveness didn't mean salvation or fully restored relationship with God, allowing eternal life. These were brand new concepts that Christ brought!

Faith - 4.30.09 0955 (Part 1)

There really is so much tied into the word "faith" that I'm not sure where to begin. Something about it that I think is important to distinguish though is that, in the bible, faith is distinct and separate from works. It is not an action. It may be an "action word" in how we define things like verbs and what-have-you, but it is not in and of itself an action. What the bible does say about faith, however, is that it causes action. It prompts action. It drives action. And what you put your faith in (money, self, God) will motivate certain types of action. I think this is why in one epistle it can be said that salvation is not attained by works but by faith while in another epistle faith in God can be described as dead without works.

Salvation can be attained by faith in God, and certain works are evidence of the type of faith you have. Baptism (a work) doesn't bring you salvation in and of itself, but it is an action motivated by your faith in God, which does bring you salvation. For me, this answers the question, "what if you're on your way to being baptized and you die in a car accident?" You're still saved! You were taking an action motivated by your saving-faith in God. The faith saved you, not the baptism. But someone who says they have faith in God but keeps pushing baptism off might not be, to my understanding, saved. For whatever reason, they are resisting the full commitment to being a part of God's people, and the way a bible describes the "lukewarm" is not exactly positive.

Your faith in God is made evident by your fruits, your actions, your works. But that doesn't make faith and action the same, anymore than a red ball can be used as evidence that "red" and "ball" are the same. One describes the other. One tells the type of the other. "Ball" gives shape to the "red," just as your "works" will give shape to the type of "faith" that you have.

I think that, because of this, what someone puts their faith in (again: money, self, God, etc.) is the most important thing about a person, because it will determine your life and it's outcome. And of all the things you can put your faith in, there is only one that not only gives you eternal life, but also makes your life on earth worth living. God brings something that self, money or material things simply can't provide.