Tag Archives: life change

Walking in faith

Col 1:21-23

This includes you who were once far away from God. You were his enemies, separated from him by your evil thoughts and actions. Yet now he has reconciled you to himself through the death of Christ in his physical body. As a result, he has brought you into his own presence, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before him without a single fault.
But you must continue to believe this truth and stand firmly in it. Don’t drift away from the assurance you received when you heard the Good News. The Good News has been preached all over the world, and I, Paul, have been appointed as God’s servant to proclaim it.

  1. We were separated from God by our evil thoughts and actions.
  2. He, God, has reconciled you to Himself through Christ’s death.
  3. You have been brought into His presence
  4. You are holy and blameless before God- totally faultless
  5. But. This is important.
  • Continue to believe this
  • Stand firm in this belief (faith)
  • Don’t drift from assurance

This is the key to walking out this faith in Christ. It is reliant on our believing we are God’s, standing firm in it even in those times we don’t feel like it.

Grace and peace

Life As A New Christian

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So what does it look like to live a “christian” life. One thing that you can expect is that everyone christian and non christian alike will be more than willing to point out how a christian should and shouldn’t live.

Likely Advice From Christians

You will likely directed to go to church and to read your bible. These are two really good pieces of advice. It is always positive to interact with other christians to learn from one another, to discuss what is being learned, and how God is working in our lives. Encouragement from other believers in hard times and good time cause growth and strength in our lives of faith. As far as reading the bible, God has very successfully protected the bible through the history of the world. It is both the most loved and hated book of all time. It is the most published book of all times. It is translated into more languages than any other book. He has protected it for you and I, that we can know him through studying it’s pages.

Pray, talk with God. He has given us direct access to Himself. Jesus teaches that we can speak with Him directly Just as Jesus can. Tell Him of your struggles. Thank Him for the blessing that He brings into your life. Ask Him to meet your needs.

There will be other advice that will come from well meaning christians but not really rooted in the truths passed on to us through the word of God. Dos and don’ts that are considered to be the way of the “good” Christian life, but can be a trap pulling us away from God. Beware of religious activity, the High Priests of Jesus’ day were highly moral men, following God’s law to the letter, but missing the spirit of God when He walked among them. The same danger exists for the God fearing person today, be spirit led! Jesus told the Samaritan woman at the well that the day will come that we worship God in Spirit… That day is now!

Likely Advice From Non-Christians

Believe it or not there will be many unbelievers who will be more than willing to lead you in the way that a christian should go. I found it very interesting as a new believer how many people that would not be caught dead in a church would very readily tell me that “hey christians can’t do that,” or, “a good christian person would always do…”

Unbelievers will be the most ready to offer opinions of where you can go, what you can do, and how you can act. Live in faith, in the Spirit. Listening to God as you read His word.

Important for the Christian

First the christian life is a living relationship with God himself. He said in the word of God that He will send the Holy Spirit to guide us and lead us in all truth. I believe that He will make Himself known to us and guide our lives in the way that He wants us to live. I find that in our intellectual age, we tend to fear the spiritual world but to be a christian is to live in the spiritual world. The bible teaches us that the spirit of God indwells (Jn 16:13) believers, which means that we can be lead by the Spirit at all times. That makes the christian life a spiritual life. We can live in faith knowing that God will lead us, guiding our lives to be pleasing to Him.

There is no set of rules to live by to be pleasing to God. Jesus when asked which of the commandments was the greatest replied, “The greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, and the second is like unto it, love your neighbor as yourself.” These two thoughts sum up the way that God would have us to live. (Romans 1:17) There are well meaning people who will give you a set of standards to live by as a christian. Please know that the bible teaches that just as we are saved completely by faith so we can live only completely by faith. There is no recipe to live by but faith in God. The trick is to do what you do by faith and let God teach you and lead you. There will be people that God may put into your life to lead you along the way, but make sure that what they are telling you matches your understanding of the word of God. Faith is the beginning of our spiritual lives, and faith will take us trough to the end of this life.

The First Sin

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The first sin and the fall of mankind into a need for salvation from death came very soon after the new couple were placed in the perfect garden that He had made for them. What happened? What was the cause? Who did the sin?

I wonder how long it took for the disobedience to set in? I really think it was within the very first moments of their touring the Garden of Eden that this folly occurred. The reason I think this is, a perfect man and a perfect woman naked together in a perfect place would quickly lead to conception. But they would not conceive until after they have been removed from the garden. I don’t think they wasted any time in going to see this tree from which they were not supposed to eat from. This perfection was doomed before it even got started! But why?

I am convinced that the first disobedience toward God hinges from DISCONTENTMENT! They had it all, well almost, but they were not content with almost all. We find ourselves in the very same condition today. Nothing has changed, discontentment drives our lives. It causes us great misery each day, it causes us to sin each day. Just take a look around. We are not satisfied with the home we live in. The brother-in-law has a much bigger, newer place. His furniture is really nice, they never drive a car more than two years old. I’d like to do the same. The debt we carry says it all.

God had given Adam and Eve everything they could ever need. All the food they could eat, a perfect climate that never changed, companionship, face to face communication with God Himself. Wow! But, they weren’t content. We can see this when Eve was questioned by the serpent. He asked the question that was on her mind. Her answer to him was very interesting. “God has said, ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.” Did God say that? No, He said don’t eat of the tree in the middle of the garden. She had already embellished what God had said. Isn’t that what we do as well. As we work things over in our minds that we see and encounter with our friends and family we make situations much bigger than they are. You see things have not changed with mankind. We are still not content with the life and possession that God has so graciously given us.

Because of our discontentment we still risk it all. We get our minds working in overtime to get the things we desire, even it they are out of our reach. Our discontentment is what still tears our lives away from God. We are so caught up in discontentment that we forget that He is there. You see, God was there when they ate that forbidden fruit. He is everywhere! He is not surprised by anything. He knows it all. Just as discontentment drove Adam, Eve, and all the rest of us into the problems of sin and death, discontentment drives us into problems of sin, and death.

Discontentment has forever changed the earth and all it’s inhabitants. What are we to do with it?

Star of the Show

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God devoted an entire chapter of the book of Genesis to describing how He created the universe, in what order, and in how much time He created it.

He spent the very next chapter of Genesis talking about His star creation. Man! The creation of man was mentioned in chapter one, but only in passing just as everything else was mentioned. Chapter two goes into more detail about the creation of man. Detail about the surroundings in which God put man. God does this because man is the star of the show as far as creation is concerned. God describes special things that He did for man, and how He created woman to be his companion.

God had gone to the trouble of making a special place for the new couple to live. They had in this place everything they needed for a great life. There was no hard work to be done. The only job that God had given to Adam at this point was to rule over all of creation and to care for the garden.

Why had God made mankind? Why did He give them everything they needed? His desire was and is to commune with man, to fellowship with him. He want’s to talk with us, walk with us, be the main part of our lives. He want’s to be worshiped by us, to be held in His proper place, at the centre of our lives. He wants to be our big picture.

We complain today that we have no time. That was not God’s intention. He created us to spend time with Him. To enjoy Him, to talk with Him, to need Him. We get caught up in the whirl wind of our lives today where it is easy to forget that God wants our attention. Are the things we are doing evil if they pull us away from God? No, not necessarily, they are often good things. We work to eat, buy a house, clothe out bodies, ensure a good life for our children. The bad part of all of this is that we forget God, our mind’s eye is on paying the bills and we lose sight of what we were created for… to worship our creator God.

Don’t forget we are the star of creation. Jesus taught us that if we seek after God with our whole heart, He will provide the things we need. Could it be that we see the bills so large in our lives because we have our focus on them instead of the God of our lives? He want’s our attention, He asks for our attention. Lets give Him our attention and see what He does.

Hello world!

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My name is Troy. I was born in the Bahamas and grew up between the islands of Eleuthera and New Providence. The time between the islands was split because when I was about 6 years old my parents split and ultimately divorced.

My parents divorce made me a bit of a bitter kid and also gave me excuses to do things that I should not have. I found that it was easy to manipulate people, no matter who they were by using this tragic event in my life.

After I graduating high school I went off to a tech school in FL to study electronics with the thought of coming back to Nassau to work in that field and eventually start my own business to become rich. This is where things began to change in my life in dramatic ways.

I met a family through a friend who would impact my life, forever changing it’s direction. They were christians. I had been around “christians” my whole life and I didn’t think much of them, but this family was different, they lived their everyday lives in accordance with their faith. They took me into their family and eventually I came to believe on Jesus as my Lord and Savior.

God began His work in my life and still now He is working in me to make me the Troy He’d like me to be. He has a challenge, but He knows that already. My Christian family got the idea that I needed to go to Bible School and within 6 months of becoming a believer I found myself in Word Of Life Bible Institute in Pottersville, NY. That was probably the greatest two years of my life. Those studies also set In motion conflicts within my life that I still battle with today and I suppose will be a constant conflict until the day I die. The greatest lesson learned at WOLBI is that God’s word, the Bible, stands as the ultimate authority for our lives. It alone holds the answers to life’s challenges and pleasures.

While at WOLBI we were introduced to many missions organizations, one of them being New Tribes Mission, now Ethos 360. I ended up going on to serve with New Tribes in Venezuela for a few years. In Venezuela I met my lovely bride. After being married and completing basic Spanish study we moved to the Jungle to work with an indigenous group called the Yanomamo. It is this time period that has most impacted my life as a believer. It has also impacted my cultural point of view of the bible, allowing me to realize that certain ideas I have are formed from cultural bias, and not necessarily true to God’s Word.

We left the New Tribes Mission in 2002 and moved back to the Bahamas. That has pretty much led us to this point.

My challenge to you is to always ask yourself, what does God’s word say? What does God expect of you as a follower/believer in Him? Search the Word of God to find His will for your lives, trying to lay aside those things that are not prescribed by God, and walking with Him in truth and simplicity.