Saturday, April 23, 2011

I Feel Great

Just peachy-keen-lemonade-goodness. I feel thankful! I feel loved :)
I feel a bit tired, but mostly I feel like I am waiting for something. What am I waiting for?
Maybe I should just go to bed.
I'll let you know more, haha my bad :P

I just got back to my house after going to a church sermon (of sorts) that lasted about 6 hours, with 10 minute breaks every now and then. It was amazing! Secret Church 2011. Good stuff! Check out Twitter, I heard there were a lot of 'tweets' on there. Or just google search it.
Anyway! The speaker basically went through the whole gospel. Outlined our sinfulness, God's goodness and holiness. Talked about how God is just, loving, merciful, and He has nothing but absolute wrath for evil. In fact, God abhors those who do evil. (It is in the Psalms, I can find it if you want.) I don't know about you, but I do evil :/

And that reaction, in itself(!) is enough to make me wonder how much I really care... As it was said tonight, true repentance involves a feeling of regret and a decision to turn the other way. A decision to run towards God. And in order to turn and run towards one thing, you must turn and run away from another thing.

Then we talked a lot about faith, and justification, and works, and sanctification, and it was really interesting! I learned some things about 'official' Catholic doctrine that was quite concerning, and I was reminded that just because it is the 'official' doctrine does not mean that every individual who claims to be Catholic believes those things. People are different. Opinions are different. Experiences are different.
But God is always good :)

Propitiation was mentioned, which is similar to atonement. We talked about the different parts of what happens when a person repents and believes. We talked about why Jesus died, and about what happens now that Jesus has gone up to heaven. In plain speech, we talked about some of the activities of the Holy Spirit and what it means to be adopted as a child of God :)

Then we talked about more stuff that I am currently not remembering apparently, and then we talked about the idea of election and God's will and love. That is, God's will is that all people be saved, and His love extends to all of creation, which includes all humans. Yet, God's character, which includes justice, would not simply allow anything that was not good into heaven, and would also punish anything that was not good. That would be just. And so we have the problem of predestination and free will. But, it was late, so we didn't go into it too much. I really liked the analogy that was used at the end though :)

There should be more to come, as I keep reading Romans and consider posting my thoughts here.

What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. -Philippians 3:8-9

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