In fellowship, out of fellowship, in fellowship, out of fellowship...

... this was the popular calls this week, asking about being in fellowship with God. It seems that, as the minister was assuring a caller that our sin does not take out of fellowship with God, several other listeners were getting concerned at the possible error he was giving out. One of the concerned callers called and shared the story of how she accepted Christ at a young age, but as she grew older, she wandered off, doing things that she knew were not good things to do. Now, while she knew she had NOT lost her salvation, she felt that she had lost fellowship with God. She was doing bad things, and totally ignoring God. Couldn't that be out of fellowship? 

Trials and Tribulations

Wow. What a timely message this morning. I cringed when I first saw that the sermon was coming from the book of James. James has always been rather hard on my old ego. I wondered how it would look through the eyes of Grace this morning. There are several verses in there that the Pentecostal background I had would use to prove that one must 'gut it out for God", if they indeed wanted to spend an eternity in heaven. Would today be more of the same?

During our Bible study last week, an interesting verse was revealed.  In I Peter, we're told to be ready to give an answer when someone ASKS us about the difference seen in us.  This was different than what I  was used to growing up.  I remember as a young child, I was encouraged to tell everyone I saw about Jesus. Somehow, and I don't quite recall how, I gathered that I was supposed to MAKE people listen to me when i would tell them about Jesus. Another preacher would laughingly refer to this as running them up the flagpole to get away from us.   Looking back, I suppose we were nothing more than one of those annoying people that we would go a mile out of our way to avoid.