gruvystarchild

>" Ren, if you get this far reading, do you remember that verse about
works we
> were talking about last week? It seemed pretty clearly to say
works were
> required.
>
> I know the Baptists love to quote by grace are ye saved, not by
works. The
> church Ren grew up in had a different favorite verse. "

That was Sandra....NOW I'm up to speed. I missed this because of
problems with Yahoo bouncing my emails, PLUS trying to get unpacked
after the long drive home from the conference.
So now I understand the question Mike was asking.
But, I had a very lengthy private discussion with Sandra about
religion, which included a LOT about the church I grew up in, and so
remembering a specific verse would be very taxing on this girls
memory.
Just to clarify, the church I grew up in believed in the "saved by
grace" part, but it seemed that the members were always talking about
those that "lost out" (if you quit going to meetings, started wearing
makeup and cutting your hair, blah, blah, blah) so the insinuation
was that if you didn't do certain things, you were definitely going
to screw up your salvation.
There was this perpetual fear of messing things up.

Verses in the Bible about works?
There are so many.
And so many that clearly state that you can not have faith without
works.
There are many, many more verses that talk about the fact that a
person is not saved by works, but by grace, forgiveness....

The church I was raised in claimed to believe this, but the feeling
was not one of being saved no matter what mess ups you had in life.
There was perpetual fear over Satan getting ahold of you, or those
horrid wordly influences creeping in.
I often wondered why the world/Satan seemed so pervasive, so strong
against the light of God.
I now know in my heart that a fear based religion is just plain wrong.

Ren

Mike Ebbers

--- In Unschooling-dotcom@y..., "gruvystarchild" <starsuncloud@c...>
wrote:
> Verses in the Bible about works? There are so many. And so many
>that clearly state that you can not have faith without works.
> There are many, many more verses that talk about the fact that a
> person is not saved by works, but by grace, forgiveness....

Excellent. I think you and I are on the same wavelength. These
verses say that a person is not "saved" by works, but the works do
give evidence of the faith of person. So while Ephesians 2:10
says, "For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do
good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do", the verse
just before it says, "(You are saved by faith)...not by works, so
that no one can boast."

If a person tells us s/he has faith in God, but we see little or no
evidence of it (and no good works), we have a strong case to wonder
about her/his faith. On the other hand, if a person does good works,
but shows no faith in God, we might wonder about her/his faith also.

> The church I was raised in claimed to believe this, but the feeling
> was not one of being saved no matter what mess ups you had in life.

Also agreed. No church (members or minister) is perfect, and some
churches are farther away from teaching the Bible than others.

> There was perpetual fear over Satan getting ahold of you, or those
> horrid wordly influences creeping in. I often wondered why the
>world/Satan seemed so pervasive, so strong against the light of God.
> I now know in my heart that a fear based religion is just plain
wrong.

True. The Bible indicates that God created us to enjoy him. And it
is certainly clear that God loves each of us (John 3:16 and other
verses).

Thanks for providing that explanation. I wouldn't have asked you on
this list, but Sandra "asked you" about the verse on works in two
separate posts, so I thought it was worth a try.

Mike