7350	Forums / Main Forum / Souls In The Hands Of Angry God	on: June 09, 2007, 07:31:06 AM
Does God hold the threat of hell over our heads? May it never be. There is only one accuser of the brethren. If God is for us , then who can be against us? For we know that nothing can separate us from the love of God, that is in Christ Jesus. Because of His grace we know that we are safe in His family. He chose us in Him before the creation of the world. We received eternal life by grace, because we did not deserve it. So we cant keep it on our own strength. It really is His salvation. We have been given everything for life and Godliness. And we are new creations in Christ Jesus. Even tho we experience sorrow over sin and over the circumstances of this life, our sorrow does not equal the pain of the dread of the wicked. Nor do we retreat into fear, and dread. But we are more than conquerors through Christ Jesus. Our state of mind is that even tho we are helpless in ourselves, we have been given powers beyond ourselves to fight a good fight of faith. Our state of mind is that when we look to Christ we can fight faithfully against the world the flesh and the devil. We can know by faith that our struggle will ultimately be complete victory. And yet our state of mind is to be in  a battle that gets really intense at times. We are not overcome by the sorrow but we are tempted to draw back, to do something in the flesh, or to trust in our own horses. But this battle takes all of our strength because we must focus on the prize, like a long distance runner. The more we see Christ as the end, the more confidence we will have that we are conquerors. Christ said that we would suffer hardship. We suffer because He suffered. When we stand with Christ we will experience persecution. When we take refuge in Him alone we will be misunderstood by the Pharisee, or we will be tempted by the wicked. The battle is to go the path of resistance against the self righteous and the wicked. Both of these groups will use threats to intimidate us , on the one hand , to lead us to curb the appetites by not tasting, not touching, in order to go through a set of steps to attain self righteousness, and then the others will encourage us to sin by turning against those who are resting in Christ in order for us to make our lives easier. We must fight these temptations in prayer. We must cast down these imaginations, because we know that the grass is not greener on the other side. But that these worldly views will ultimately lead us to trust in ourselves, so that we are not hoping in His word, we are not taking refuge in Him alone, or we are trapped by our own lust. It is a joy to partake in these kinds of battles knowing that with each little victory there is a prize.