THE FOUR PILLARS OF FAITH
What is Salvation?
Salvation is becoming one with God or entering into the family of God. Jesus said (in John 14:6 NKJV) “I am the way the truth and life: no one comes unto the Father except thru me.”
God has invited all of mankind to eternity with him, both male and female, regardless of race or ethnic background. In Revelations chapter 3 verse 20 Jesus Says “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to them and dine with them, and they with Me.”
Jesus summed it up in John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”
Let’s try to understand that we are spirit beings, living in a physical body and have a soul (the soul is made up of our mind our will and our emotions). God isn’t interested in the body, since it is perishable and only temporary. He doesn’t care if you are tall or short, blue eyed or brown, dark haired or light neither does he care one iota about the color of your skin. What He does care about is you, the spirit being!
Our bodies are going to eventually give out, unless we are living at the time of the rapture (more about that at another time). This is often referred to as the 1st death.
The 1st death is when the spirit is separated from the body. So, is there a 2nd death?
Yes, the 2nd death is spiritual death. What is spiritual death?
Spiritual death is the separation from God, and spiritual life is being one with God!
Because of Adam’s disobedience, we are born into a separation from God, an unable to be one with Him.
Salvation is being “born again” into being one with God by accepting Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior!
When a person is ready and wants to make the decision to be one with God, they simply accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior
There are many different prayers that people use or recommend. It doesn’t matter if it is a flowery speech, or a canned formula prayer or just a simple plea like “Save me Jesus” if it comes from the heart and is an honest plea Jesus & God will honor that plea and send the Holy Spirit to fill you with God’s love!
If you are ready to accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior simply say “Dear Jesus I accept you as my Lord & Savior, Father God please come into my heart and fill me with your Holy Spirit!” “Thank You Father thank You Jesus!!
If you said that prayer, from your heart, you have been saved.
By the way “welcome to the Family of God!"
What is Wisdom?
The dictionary defines wisdom as: The ability to think and act using Experience, Knowledge, Insight, Understanding, and Compassion in an Unbiased and Ethical manor.
In Proverbs 9:1 it states “Wisdom has built her house, she has hewn out her seven pillars;”. Many Bible scholars have come up with a lot of different explanations of what the “seven pillars of wisdom” are.
To me the “seven pillars of wisdom” are experience, knowledge, insight, understanding, compassion, a lack of bias, and ethics.
So how do we build or shape these seven pillars of wisdom? Let’s look at them one at a time:
Experiences – these are the day-to-day interactions with our environment and other people
Knowledge – the things we learn from studying our experiences or the experiences of others thru observation reading or listening. It also includes the information we learn about our environment and its inhabitants (plants, animals, birds, and fish as well as humans)
Insight – Seeing and understanding the motives behind others actions or words
Understanding – Taking the time to put yourself in the other persons position, to see the situation thru their eyes, comprehending how things interact and work together or don’t work
Compassion – Having concern for and treating others sympathy, tempering your reactions with concern for others who may be indirectly as well as directly involved
A lack of Bias – Setting your feelings for the individuals or groups aside and looking at the situation with out hate, personal preference or connections
Ethics – setting your personal interest or the personal interest of your friends and loved ones aside and remember God’s law first and man’s law second. Being honest (especially with yourself) and fair at all times
Wisdom is not something you receive or are born with; it is something you search for and develop over time. All of the “pillars” listed above, except Insight and experience, come from a conscious effort on your part.
Experience comes as we live, play, work and explore the world we live in.
Insight comes from God thru prayer and a close relationship with God.
It takes a lot of living, study, prayer and effort to gain wisdom, but the journey is well worth it especially when you realize how much closer to the Father and Jesus you become!
Health
God wants you well!!!
God is not the source of sickness and disease, but he is the source of healing!
God does not make people sick so he can get the glory by healing them! That is a mental disorder called Munchausen by Proxy or Munchausen Syndrome.
God is not mentally ill!
So why do we get sick?
How can we stay health?
How do we get healed?
Those are great questions and also some of the toughest to answer! The world is full of misinformation on health and even the treatment of some diseases. This has been made extremely and painfully clear over the past year concerning the COVID-19 pandemic!
Some folks say prayer is the answer, but prayer with out faith is not very effective and faith requires corresponding actions to be effective! So what is the corresponding action required to put your faith to work in a given situation?
Over the next several weeks and months we will take a journey, together, thru the bible to try and find those answers!
To get started here are some scriptures to read:
Proverbs 4:20-22, 14-:30 and 17:22
3 John 1:2
1 Corinthians 6:19-20
Exodus 15:26 and 23:25
1 Timothy 4:4
Jerimiah 30:17 and 33:6
Isaiah 41:10, 53:5 and 58:11
Philippians 4:6-7
1 Peter 2:24
Psalms 30:2 and 103:2-3
It is always good to read the 23rd Psalms!!!
Wealth
God wants the best for us, but we often get in his way!
This is most evident in our finances!
We allow our desires and needs to get confused and often try to take short cuts or expedient methods to obtain our goals. Some times they work but more often they just get us in worse position than when we started.
Wealth with out wisdom is a formula for disaster snd failure!
There are several good teachers on how to handle your finances, such as John Avanzini, Gary Keesee, and, perhaps the best-known, Dave Ramesy.
The bible has plenty to say about this subject and some of it is misused by preachers and pastors to get you to finance their projects.
We will be studying many of those scriptures in the months to come, and the first is Malachi 3:8-12.
