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Romans 4:25 says that Jesus was raised from the dead because we were justified by grace.

I always thought that the OPPOSITE was true... that is, we were justified by grace because of his resurrection from the dead--i.e., sins were paid.

How come Romans 4:25 puts the cart before the horse...?

Please explain in simple English... (smile):-)

Grace.
Joe

I'm glad you like our pages. Some of your note, the links you are recommending, are being deleted by the program that does the posting. We do this because people post spam. Send me your whole note at don@dontveter.com and I will sneak in the rest of your note by bypassing the program that is deleting the text.

Don Tveter, don@dontveter.com

1)are we a good friend to people we have relationships with while they are alive? Once people are gone it is too late to listen, apololize, forgive or tell people how we feel about them. Put a lot of care into the relationships you continue to have.

2)What do we learn in the experience? When we deal with the death of a loved one, a lot of things happen: we question God, we start to wonder about the point of our own life and like you, we may even wonder if it is somehow our fault; is God punishing us for something we did wrong etc.. What we choose to believe in these moments shapes and defines who we are. So I would suggest you use these times to evaluate your relationship with God. He wants a relationship with you; the real questions is, "Do you want one with Him?" You also need to guard against blaming yourself. There are far bigger issues involved and we can't possibly know or control them. You are not a death "carrier". But it is in your power to spread life, through your relationships, through kindness and generosity and, if you are a Christian, through spreading and living your faith in a way that leads others to have a right relationship with God through faith in Jesus. These are the things within our power that we should focus on.

I hope this is helpful. Please feel free to contact me again.

Pastor Steve

This is my 1st time writing something on this page. Things lately have been diffcult but, I go to church and group as well and that helps out. But, what has been on my mind is a lot but this sticks out the most. I am in High School and this is the place were i had to deal with death the most.And to me i have thought that i am the (Angel of Death)what i mean by this is everyone from young to old that i get close to die's i know that is a part of life and that is the cyle of life but. In my life it seem common and i worry who will be next or should i talk and get to know that person. i know that this feeling is wrong proably and it might be the (devil) speaking but, i am not sure about this. i hope i didn't upset anyone.

Don Tveter, don@dontveter.com

The way Ask the Pastor works is that whenever anyone posts something
an email is sent to Pastor Steve and to me. Pastor Steve knows his
Bible but he doesn't know the Internet so he's been responding to email
instead of going to the web page to post an answer. Anyway his answers showed up in an email account that I rarely check because no one knows it exists except the spammers who simply guess it exists. So here are
two missing messages from February:

For Ryan:

First of all, you're doing the right thing by reaching out to
someone for help and guidance and let me say that I'm impressed by a
13 year old doing that. The Bible says that a wise man seeks the
counsel of many.

Second, I'm sorry that you're down and sad about yourself, but the
flip side to that is that God is always working in us and around us,
so when you're feeling the way you do right now, you have two
choices: 1) draw near to Him or 2) move away from Him (because of
the shame & guilt). Of course, God wants you to draw near to Him.
But one of the awful things about sin, is that it robs us from this
joy of being able to draw near to Him because we feel so bad. So,
here are a couple of things you have to know, train yourself to
THINK
and therefore, with time & maturity, you will FEEL & BELIEVE in your
soul/heart.

1. You have to BE forgiven to FEEL forgiven: If you are a child of
God, your sins are forgiven! Jesus paid the price for your sins by
dying on the Cross at Calvary and if you've accepted that as payment
for your sin, God says He remembers them NO MORE! Have you done
this? Have you been forgiven? Read Eph. 2:8&9.

2. If you have done the above, there are some practical things you
can do on a daily basis with your sin, but remember God doesn't
punish us for our sin because He punished Jesus at the Cross:
Confess your sin to God, make right whatever needs to be made right
(i.e., if you stole something - bring it back, if you lied to
someone - confess, if you hurt someone - sincerely apologize; and
take whatever consequences comes from these actions).

3. Third, keep doing the next right thing. If you don't know what
the next right thing to do is, ask someone like you're doing now. I
encourage you to keep going to church, sunday school, youth group,
etc..., keep praying, start reading your Bible daily or as much as
you can.

4. You said you didn't have any friends at school because you can't
find any that love the Lord, right? Do you have any at church? You
need to be in a community of believers, you're right about that.
You need a good, godly friend or two that you can share with where
you can encourage one another.

5. Just remember that the Christian Walk is a lifetime journey and
it takes a lot of time to mature, just like physically. We grow
from year to year, but we are not mature adults after a few years of
life. It's the same thing with being a Christian. We're not mature
adults in the Faith after a few years. Learn how to grace and
forgive yourself or you will not grow because your shame & guilt
will just choke out the grace you're trying to receive.

I hope this helps, I will be praying for you.

In Him and because of His grace,

Pastor

Dear Michele,

God clearly loses interest as soon as college football season ends.
Thanks for the question.

Pastor Steve

I was just wondering, is God a Colts fan or a Bears fan? Thanks for your thoughts on this.

Sincerely,

Michele

We're hoping and praying that you get better.

As for Ask the Pastor, I've reminded Steve several times
that there are questions there for him to answer, including
this Sunday. Steve said his internet connection was down
and before that his whole computer was down.

Don

And yes, we still need more pictures. Pictures that really reflect WCCC and not the city of Chicago. Just my humble little opinion. Thanks to everyone for your thoughts, prayers & financial assistance with my medical treatment I feel very loved and very special and I can't tell you how emotional it makes me to think about how many people cared enough about my family to get involved in an illness that was literally affecting my entire family. I love my WCCC family and thank God and pray without ceasing for the many many blessings that have appeared like a brilliant star in my life since this all started.

For instance there was the objection that when Israel comes out of Egypt God orders the Israelites to kill all the pagans in the Promised Land. Later on, as when Israel was captured by the Babylonians, God had the Babylonians do some rather nasty things to his own chosen people. The basic idea here was that if God would do that to his own chosen people He must be one heck of a jerk and not worthy of worship. God appears to be just a sadistic killer.

Often in the New Testament we see Jesus being meek and mild and urging people to love their neighbor and so on, all very nice things to do. People then get the idea that God is so nice or should be so nice that He couldn't possibly toss anyone into Hell. I had that idea once upon a time as well. So besides God in the Old Testament being seemingly nasty He is also going against what Jesus had to say in the New Testament, thus there seems to be a serious contradiction between the two portraits of God.

The basic reason God ordered the slaughter of the pagans at that point was to make the very important point to the world that God punishes sin. No one should think that He is such a wimp that He is going to let anyone, not then and not now get away with large amounts of very serious sins. Societies that bad deserve to be destroyed and they will be. Of course God could have just hit them like He did Sodom and Gomorrah and be done with them but by having the Israelites do it He was showing not just the world but also those Israelites who did the killing just what is liable to happen TO THEM if they go off and worship idols and behave rather badly. Later on we find that the Israelites frequently lost interest in God and God would do something to shake up their world as was the case when He had the Babylonians invade Israel and slaughter men, women and children. That's pretty graphic and as one of those posters said, not suitable for young children (I agree) but being pretty graphic is necessary to make His point.

Then there is the objection that God is an egomanic because He DEMANDS people worship Him (or else!).

The counter-argument is that people can only be happy when they have a relationship with God. So He is busy trying to steer people off into that happy situation. If giving people Hell on Earth will get them to follow Him and consequently make them happy then He will give them Hell on Earth. It's the right thing to do, not the wrong thing. Not doing anything and letting people go on being unhappy forever is what would actually make Him unworthy of worship.

Thus the basic objection that God in the Old Testament is rather nasty is without merit.

I'm having an email discussion with an atheist friend who thinks he
understands Christianity but does not. I told him that God made
people to have companionship with Him and he also made them free to
love Him and obey Him or not.

So the guy said he never saw anything like it in the Bible. (He
really has read it and has a head knowledge of it.)

So I realized that the companionship idea is kind of difuse in the
Bible. You know you can argue from what God says and does that He
is interested in having a relationship with people, like he refers
to us as sons and daughters. But are there specific scripture verses
that make this exceeding clear? You know, nice declarative sentences
that say exactly that?

Thanks,

Don Tveter

jenny
he should remember it
jlw2869@aol.com

thanks again

jenny
he should remember it
jlw2869@aol.com

thanks again

jenny
he should remember it
jlw2869@aol.com

thanks again

jenny
he should remember it
jlw2869@aol.com

thanks again

I forget where it says these things and I'm too lazy to look them up but in one case it says that if the elders get together with someone who is sick, pray for them and annoint them with oil they WILL be healed. In another place it says that if two of you agree on some request they will have it granted. Both cases seem to say the results are 100% yet we know that such prayers do not always work. In the case of healing it means most Christians would end up living forever, only accidents would end up killing Christians. So how about explaining what the text really means?

Don

The movie "Narnia, the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" is an allegory. If you would like to know who Edward, the Witch or Aslan represents, please write me.

Don

Don