I have downloaded the top 200 stats for likes and the top 200 stats for dislikes. But for now that functionality is turned off. If someone has a free plugin for WordPress, I’ll turn them on again! (BrianK)
]]>All from God himself.
]]>For example, in point #8, Francis makes these excellent points:
“8. Faith opens the way before us and accompanies our steps through time. Hence, if we want to understand what faith is, we need to follow the route it has taken, the path trodden by believers, as witnessed first in the Old Testament. Here a unique place belongs to Abraham, our father in faith. Something disturbing takes place in his life: God speaks to him; he reveals himself as a God who speaks and calls his name. Faith is linked to hearing. Abraham does not see God, but hears his voice. Faith thus takes on a personal aspect.”
Francis points to the goodness of a disturbing event in Abraham’s life. Learning to discern God’s voice is a critical part of faith, and Francis rightly ties the two together. But ubf KOPAHN theology teaches us that it is the ubf shepherd/director’s voice that matters, and that following the route of faith of historic Christianity is not so important. What is important, according to ubf KOPAHN, is preserving the ubf legacy, and walking in the path of the ubf ancestors of faith.
He continues…
“God is not the god of a particular place, or a deity linked to specific sacred time, but the God of a person, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, capable of interacting with man and establishing a covenant with him. Faith is our response to a word which engages us personally, to a “Thou” who calls us by name.”
KOPAHN theology teaches us that God is a god of a particular place, and that we must discover the “god of America” or the “god of France” and our working for god will change that place to have the correct god, the god of the bible.
]]>Though I believe that his intention to help me have faith in God was good, I mainly came to see and view faith as something I had to generate within myself. Often it seemed that my effort was insufficient to generate the faith that would please God (Heb 11:6).
Over the last few years I began to realize that faith is not only my responsibility to be lived out as a Christian, but also a gift from God (Eph 2:8-9; Phil 1:29). Faith is primarily a gift from God which should evoke thanksgiving and praise, rather becoming proud because of my “superior faith.”
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