Week 6

The Letter A

Class was good we studied about the “A” in FAITH. A is for available. God’s forgiveness is available to us. It is available to all of us. John 3:16 says “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Even though it is available to everyone it is not automatic. Jesus says in Matthew 7:21 “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven”. There are a lot of people out there that believe that everyone will be saved or that all religions lead to heaven. They read into John 3:16 and say see He died for all of us, so we all are going to heaven. We need to also look at the “whosoever believeth in him.” This is why the “F” that we studied last week is so important. Every one has sinned and needs forgiveness. That forgiveness is in Jesus only. If we don’t understand our sins, how can we receive or even understand the cure. We compare ourselves too much to other people (horizontally) and not to God and His holy standards (vertically).

In class we also learned that people often ask “How can a loving God send someone to hell?” Again, the need to understand who we are (sinners) and who God is (Holy and Righteous). Like an earthly judge, if a convicted criminal went unpunished then the judge would be corrupt. The same with God, we wouldn’t think that God would let a murder or a rapist go unpunished would we? How about a lair, a thief, or a blasphemer? When Jesus was talking to Nicodemus in John 3:18, a few verses after John 3:16. He said “He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already”. Jesus didn’t come to lead people to hell they are already on their way. He came to save us from it.

Our Visit

We visited a family from the school. When we got there we found out that that attend church at Central Baptist Church. Our goal is not to pull members from bible believing churches; our goal is to spread the gospel. Our first inclination was to just move on, but we were invited in. We had a great visit. We found out that they were trained in FAITH evangelism but had never been out on a visit because of fear. We just encouraged them to share their faith and the importance of evangelism. We just learned in class that the forgiveness is available but not automatic. Josh gave his new and improved testimony and I went over the gospel presentation “for practice”. I say for practice because, even though the 3 people we were directly talking to were saved, there were two others in the house that could hear what we were saying. Sometimes God is working on someone other than the person you’re talking with. Since this family was from Central, I gave them an example of that exact thing happening a few semesters back. The team that I was on was door knocking and came across the pastor’s house for Central Baptist Church. He was already saved, of course, but we just talked back and forth about God and the things he has done. They were just starting the FAITH program and we encouraged each other in sharing the gospel. What we didn’t know was the daughter was standing behind the door, and our conversation got her thinking and convicted of her sins. We later found out that, she was saved that night. We weren’t talking to her and the gospel wasn’t even really mentioned. It was nothing our team or the pastor said. It was all God. When God draws people to Him he’ll use anybody and anything. Be ready for God to use you.

Prayer Request

Pray for my mother-in-law and my family. It is her and Don’s anniversary this Saturday. Pray for those that are sick in our Church family and have been out.

Week 5

Forgiveness

At the heart of the Gospel is forgiveness. We need forgiveness because we have all sinned and fall short of God’s standard (Romans 3:23). Sin is the transgression of God’s law (1 John 3:4). We a lot of times may dismiss sin as not being “that bad”. When we compare ourselves to other people we may not seem “that bad”. It is not until we compare ourselves to God and His holy standard that we realize our need for forgiveness. Everyone can find someone worse off than they are, but Gods standard is perfect. If we’ve kept the whole law and yet offend in just one area we are guilty of it all (James 2:10).

The Bible says in Romans 6:23 that the penalty for those sins is death. This is why we need a savior. We have a sin debt and that penalty is death. God didn’t want that to be, but if He is just and fair, He must punish sin. Thank about it this way if a earthly judge let someone off, who rapped and murdered someone, simply because they are now a good person and said they won’t do it again, the Judge would be corrupt and should be punished himself. How much more holy, fair, and just is our God. If we’ve sinned that sin must be punished.

God didn’t want it that way, so He provided a way. He sent his only Son (John 3:16) to earth in the form of a man. He lived a sinless life, died on the cross, and rose again the third day. Jesus who knew no sin became sin for us. A legal transaction was made. He took our penalty in exchange we received His righteousness. We can go free in God’s court room because that penalty has been satisfied in Jesus.

How do we get that forgiveness? By repenting of our sins and putting our trust in Jesus as Lord and Savior. Robert said in class, “good people don’t go to heaven, Saved people do”. I’m glad that is true, because if I had to rely on my goodness I’d be in real trouble.

Our Visit

We were scheduled to visit a family from the school. When we got there the child was sick so we told them we’d come back at a better time. We were in the area of another member of our Sunday school class, so we dropped by. It was a great visit. You know how God closes doors so that others can be opened. I feel that this visit was one of them. We had a good discussion and prayer while we were there.

Josh gave out our bible to a lady at a car wash in Jacksonville and earlier in the week he had a chance to share what he has learned in FAITH with a friend on the computer.

Prayer Request

Pray for our age group. Satan is hitting us with sickness and just all sorts of things to keep us a way from serving the Lord. Pray for our visitors and potential visitors we’ve meet the last few weeks for our class. Pray that they feel a connection and the love of God through His people. Pray for our outreach both on our scheduled Tuesday night visit and our everyday lives. Pray for my family and the White’s. We will be traveling Wednesday and be gone through Thursday. Pray that we’ll be safe.

Week 3

Opening up Spiritual Dialogue

In tonight’s class we talked about opening up spiritual dialogue both on a FAITH visit and in our day to day actives. Because sharing the gospel should be everyday right? There is only two times we should preach the Word Paul says in 2 Tim 4:2, in season and out of season.

One of the things that I got out of the lesson is to listen intently to the one you are visiting. Being of the male race, I don’t listen very well. Just ask my wife. It is important to do more then hear someone, but to listen and understand what they are saying. One of the groups that went out tonight had a good example of this. Not where they didn’t listen, but where a previous church didn’t.

Another great point that I got from the lesson is to be real. We should really care for people, especially the lost. If we ponder hell, how can we not have a true passion for the lost? We should every day think what hell is like and who is going there. Matthew 13:47-50 says there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. In Mark 9:47,48, where my class studies will be soon, it describes hell as a place where the worm will never die and the fire is not quenched. Who do we know that is not saved? Should we not warn people and tell them that they too can have eternal life?

Our Visit

My team visited a church member. We wanted to introduce ourselves and invite her to our class. It was a great visit. Because we care for the lost (see above), we asked what she understood it took for a person to go to heaven. From her answer we know she was saved. No need to share the gospel, but we did invite her to Sunday school and look forward to her joining our group.

After this visit we went a few houses down and visited her parents. We stopped by just to introduce ourselves, because I am terrible with names and faces and couldn’t place them. It was a great visit there too. We told them about another class that would be a great fit for them.

Prayer Request

Pray for Adam’s family. This is the young man that was killed in the automobile accident this Sunday. Pray for our country and our economy. Pray for our age group, it seems we have been hit very hard this year sickness, surgeries, work related issues. You name it and it seems it has happed to us this year.

Week 2

Testimony Time

It’s week 2 of FAITH. You may be wondering where week one went. Even though this is the second week it is the first time for us to go out visiting. The first week was an introduction and some testimony work. We are doing it a little different this go around. Only the learners, first timers, are required to go to class. All the rest come in just for visitations. Even though it is not my first go time, I can’t pass up the food. They are the only ones to get a meal….oh the teaching good too and you can always pick up something more each time through.

The last couple weeks we have been working on our Sunday school and evangelistic testimonies. If you are saved and go to a Sunday school class you will already have one, but it always good to put it on paper. This gets you thinking about it and helps you in how to share with others.

We also have a specific way we share them. On our Sunday school testimony, we list some true statements about our class. We then follow it up with a benefit we gained about that statement. For example here is mine; “I love my class and the people in it. We just formed a new class because we were growing so large, but we still feel like one big, close group with the connections in the other class. All of them are people around my age. We have the same life situations and just people that I can have fun with both inside and outside of class. They are there when you need them. Just recently we had a death in the family. Our class stepped in and was there for us emotionally and physically too. We had meals brought to us for over a week. That was just one thing we didn’t have to worry about.”

The evangelistic testimony is real similar. We break it down the three parts: pre-conversion experience, conversation statement, and benefits of conversion. The pre-conversion experience is a statement about before we were saved and about our life. Then we have the conversion statement which is just “Then I had a life-changing experience”. The last part, the benefits, describes how things are different since that change. The example of mine would be: “When I was just starting my family, it often worried me that if I died, what would happen to my family. Not only that that, but I feared death and what would happen to me. Then I had a life-changing experience. Since then when troubles arise I have peace. For example with the down turn in the economy and people losing their jobs, I still have confidence that God will take care of us and more importantly I no longer fear death.

We were also instructed to start memorizing the outline through “I”. To learn more about the outline see the post from last year:
“F” http://faithatvictory.blogspot.com/2008/03/week-4.html
“A” http://faithatvictory.blogspot.com/2008/03/week-5.html
“I” I don’t have a post for “I”, I must have been gone.

Our Visit

Our visit was with some members of our Sunday school class. It was a family that has been out due to medical issues. We just wanted to drop by and see how they were going and if we could help in any way. We had a good visit. I got to practice our gospel presentation, both to show the learners on the team and also to expose our class mates we were visiting to what we actually do in FAITH. We had a great visit and got to know them a little better. I may even have a new team member to fill the empty spot. One of the class members we were visiting said she has been thinking about joining FAITH and will pray about filling that spot that we have. We prayed with them before we left and got back to church about 30 minuets late, but it was worth it. Great visit!

Prayer Request

There has been a lot of sickness going around, pray that God will keep everyone well so we can enjoy the fellowship of all our class members. Inside and outside our class we have friends that are fighting long term illnesses. Pray that God will heal them. Pray for my new class that God will give me the wisdom and guidance to lead it in a way that will honor and glorify Him. Pray for baby Emma as she is recovering from RSV. Pray for our possible new FAITH member, that if this is the right time to join, God will give her the strength.

Week 11

New Age Movement

This is really “a believe what you want” religion. It contains a lot of Buddhism and Hinduism in it. It is really hard to say exactly what the New Age Movement is, because you can really believe what you want. The most common thread in there is the beliefs of no absolutes. My truth is not your truth. As long as I am not hurting you and it gets me closer to some sort of spiritual state then it is good. It reminded us a lot of Oprah and her religion.

There is a lot of belief in reincarnation in the New Age Movement. Most believe that your soul keeps progressing until you get it right. However most don’t believe you can go backward on the evolutionary scale or should I say the reincarnation scale. Hey, if you’r going to make something up, why make it hard on your self. We know the truth is salvation comes from putting your faith in Jesus as Lord and Savior (see Rom. 3:24,25; Eph 2:8,9).

A common phrase in the New Age Movement is “God is us and we are God” and that Jesus is just one of many teachers. Even scarier is that all roads lead to heaven. Jesus said that he is the only way (John 14:6). The bible also talks about God being separate from His creation (Isa. 45:6, Rom 1:25).

This is not anything new. In the Garden the Serpent asked if God really said she couldn’t eat from tree (see Gen 3:1-5). We can be like gods and can have our “eyes open”.

Our Visit

We attempted a visit that we tried a few weeks ago. A school family, the son is in my daughter’s class. Last time we had trouble finding it. That was because it was their store address. I called before hand and she was excited about us coming by. She owns a convenience store/gas station. One thing to note, her store is one of very few that doesn’t sell beer. She was told that she’d never make it if didn’t. She said her and God will prove them wrong. Great faith!

They already attend a church and seemed to love it so we didn’t talk much about the church except where it fit in with the school. It was a good visit, very friendly family. Her sister came into the store just as we were about to pray, so we prayed blessing on her family and her business. I gave my bible to her sister before she left.

Prayer Request

Pray for my step-father-in-law. He is battling cancer and is having trouble with his back. Pray for our country, school and our solders and friends overseas.

The Greatest Show on Earth

We had a chance to hand out some bible tracts at a large event in North Little Rock. A couple friends and I meet up every other week to share the gospel on the streets. This time we chose the Circus at Alltel arena.

There were a lot of people there. We handed out a few hundred tracts in just a couple hours. Even though there were so many people, we still didn’t have a chance for any one-on-one conversations. With it being the just before show time, people were in a hurry, but people were very excited to get our Million Dollar Bible Tracts. We even had a new zillion dollar and the incredible shrinking dollar, which is great for the down turn in the economy.

It was so cold I have to get something to warm me up, so I walked to a conveiant store next to Alltel. I gave the cashier a million for the good service. He made such a big deal out of it I have to give everyone there one.

Week 10

Mormonism
Most people today believe that Mormons are just another “Christian” denomination. It is not only not part of Christianity, but it is anti-Christian. They have twisted the most fundamental doctrines of the Bible. Here are a few

Source of Authority-They don’t take the bible as the infallible word of God and they don’t believe scripture was closed with the bible. They have 3 additional books; the Book of Mormon (which has changed in 4000 places since it was written in 1830), the Doctrine of Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price. Their belief is that the Bible is correct as long as it is translated correctly. If the bible contradicts their teachings or their other books, then they fall back on “it is an incorrect translation”.

Trinity-Mormons believe in polytheism, many gods. The universe has many gods that produce spirit children. They believe in God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, but they believe that these are three different Gods.

God-Their view is that God was once a man like us. Through self-effort and the father-god of his plant was able to work his way to receiving his own planet and now has a physical resurrected body. They believe through their own good works and the atoning work of Jesus we to can be god and have our own planet.

Christ-They acknowledge the divinity of Christ, but not by the bible’s standard. They believe that Christ, Lucifer, the demons, and mankind are all bothers and are spirit babies from our father-god. They believe that Christ was conceived by sexual relations between god and Mary. They also believe Jesus had many wives; Mary and Martha (the sisters of Lazarus) and Mary Magdalene.

Heaven and Hell-Mormonism teaches that there are three degrees of glory: Celestial (for good Mormons able to cease sinning in this lifetime), Terrestrial (for good people who do not comply with all the teachings of Mormonism), and Telestial (for those who have lived unclean earthly lives). They don’t really believe anyone will go to hell but a few that can’t be redeemed, sons of perdition. They used to put blacks in this category up until 1978. Their belief is that the people that half-heartily fought when Lucifer got mad at God’s decision to select Jesus and fought against Him and Michael were the black race.

There are many differences these are just a few. The main thing to realize is that the lingo is the same. They use works like “salvation through Jesus”, Grace, and Trinity, but their definitions are totally different

Our Visit
Joanna and I picked up Josh this time out to make our three person team. We were scheduled to visit a family from the Church’s school. The husband was there with their 2 children. We had a good visit. When I asked what his understanding of how a person goes to heaven, he gave a “faith” answer, in Jesus only. I asked him if he as put his faith in Jesus and he told us that he has recently done that and was starting learn more and grow as a Christian. He already had a Church that he was attending and was about to start a new bible study. We didn’t want to pull him away from his church, but did tell him about Victory since the school and church were connected, this way if he ever needed anything he would know a little about us. We prayed with him and encouraged him in his new walk with the Lord.

Prayer Request
Pray for the family of a boy that was just saved. Pray for my step-father-in-law. He has is battling cancer and is taking chemotherapy. Pray for our family has we go through this with him. We only have a couple weeks left pray for our FAITH teams.