Living by Faith in God

I thought I'd postpone some of the JBW blog wars for a few days, but I have to say, for an Easter holiday, this guy packs some wicked demonic heat. Thankfully, Serr8d's on the case and has been peppering JBW with covering fire. And as you can see, the Brain Rage posts have become more whiny and impotent with each iteration, so the higher power's getting to this human defect, fallen temporarily though he may be.

JBW's responded as well to Stogie's photoshop, but my comments on that will go live tomorrow or Tuesday or whenever. Here I just want to elaborate the differences between myself and JBW, and perhaps he'll think through the scathing fires of the perturbations tormenting him.

The differences are of faith, and that which sustains me, and the absence of The Good, which inflicts JBW for want of meaning and fulfillment. Here's a passage from The Strategy of Satan: How to Detect and Defeat Him, which is a pocket handbook for the Christian (blog) warrior, "Living by Faith in God":

Everybody in this world lives by faith. The difference between Christians and the unconverted person is not the FACT of faith, but the OBJECT of faith. The unsaved person trusts himself and other humans; the Christian trusts God. It is your faith in God that is the secret of victory and ministry. If you have any doubts that God honors faith in himself, read Hebrews 11. In fact, one of the greatest problems God has with his children is the developing of their faith.

Satan knows this, and therefore attacks the believer's faith. Paul's words to the young Christians in Thessalonica illustrate the point:

Therefore when we could endure it no longer, we thought it best to be left behind at Athens alone, and we sent Timothy, our brother and God's fellow worker in the gospel of Christ, to strengthen and encourage you as to your faith....For this reason, when I could endure it no longer, I also sent to find out about your faith, for fear that the tempter might have tempted you, and your labor would be in vain. But now that Timothy has come to us from you, and has brought us good news of your faith and love, and that you always think kindly of us, longing to see us just as we also long to see you, for this reason, brethren, in all our distress and affliction we were comforted about you through your faith...as we night and day keep praying most earnestly that we may see your face, and we may complete what is lacking in your faith.

1 Thessalonians 3:12, 5-7, 10

According to Romans 1:17, the Christian is supposed to go "from faith to faith." When you read the life of Abraham in Genesis 12-25, you see that all that God did, he did in order to perfect Abraham's faith. It is a spiritual principle.

"It shall be done to you according to your faith."

Matthew 9:29

Whenever God works in and through your life, it is always in response to faith. The thing that hinders the working of God is not his lack of his power, but his people's lack of faith ...

At seeing JBW's Easter sacrilege today my heart skipped at Satan's breath, and I fear that JBW knows not of his wayward travels to the underworld of death. He thinks he's cool -- that I'm an old man, a tubby has been -- and that he's got nothing to learn of the ways of grief and hardship and perseverance to the life of goodness in The One. Serr8d, in his rough manner, repudiates JBW's demonology, and that's when JBW recoils and pleads his divine tormentors off. We might say in regular terminology: "If you can't stand the heat get out of the kitchen." So, in fact it's JBW who should call it a day when beaten silly.

But however it's assessed, the boy has lost his faith, and thus he's lost his way in this world. (I know this from JBW's confessions of his parents love and values, and his rejection of them.) Perhaps a further comeuppance is due before change can be effected, but mysterious are the ways of the Lord.

More tomorrow, dear readers ...