Category: What do you think?

Why some believe while others do not

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JEFF TURNER

At the end of a parable about a wedding feast, Jesus made a statement that can seem troubling at first. He said that many people are called, but only a few are chosen. This brief comment reveals something important about salvation.

When Jesus spoke these words, he was explaining that more people will hear the good news about him than will actually accept it. Christians are told to share the gospel message with everyone in the world. Believers proclaim this message and invite people to put their trust in Jesus Christ as their savior. This work of sharing the gospel happens because God has commanded it. (Another perspective here.)

However, only some people respond to this invitation. According to this teaching, those who do respond are the ones God has chosen and prepared for salvation. Before someone can truly believe, God’s Spirit must work in their heart to bring them to life spiritually. This inner work leads them to turn away from sin, place their faith in Christ, and call out to be saved.

This idea is sometimes called sovereign election. It means that salvation does not begin with human choice alone. Instead, it starts with God’s purpose and his decision to choose certain people. While this can be difficult to understand, it shows that salvation depends on God’s grace rather than human effort. The difference between those who believe and those who do not comes down to God’s choosing work in the heart.

Living in constant connection with God

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JEFF TURNER

When Paul tells believers to pray without ceasing, some people respond by feeling discouraged. They wonder how anyone could possibly pray all the time. The answer is simpler than it seems.

This command does not mean we need to walk around praying out loud every moment of the day. Some religious groups in ancient times tried to do exactly that, but they missed the point entirely. They spent so much time with their heads bowed in prayer that they kept bumping into things around them.

What Paul meant was something different. He was telling us to keep an attitude of prayer at all times. Think of prayer like breathing. You cannot live without breathing, and if you are alive, you breathe automatically. The air pressure around you fills your lungs without you thinking about it.

Prayer works the same way in our spiritual lives. It means living every moment aware that God is with you. When something happens during your day, you naturally turn it into a conversation with God. Good things become reasons to thank him. Difficult situations become requests for help. The needs of others become chances to pray on their behalf.

Praying without ceasing simply means staying closely connected to God throughout everything you experience.

God works through flawed people

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JEFF TURNER

The genealogy listed in Matthew’s Gospel includes some surprising names. Tamar had an incestuous relationship with her father-in-law, Judah. Rahab worked as a prostitute in Jericho. Bathsheba committed adultery with King David. All three women had serious moral failures in their past. Their presence in Jesus’s family line raises an important question about why God would include such troubled history.

The answer is straightforward. God can only work with sinful people because that is all who exist. Every person has moral failures, though they may look different from one person to another. These particular women appear in the genealogy to show how grace operates.

The family tree also mentions other sinners. Abraham displayed his lack of faith in God through his actions. David committed both adultery and murder, making him one of the worst offenders listed. Yet these women especially demonstrate something important. God’s plan to redeem humanity moves forward through people who have received mercy they did not earn.

If God’s purposes depended on people who deserved to participate, nothing would happen. Everyone who plays a role in God’s work has received what they have through unearned favor. The apostle Paul acknowledged that he murdered people and spoke against God, yet he received grace and was given ministry responsibilities.

God accomplishes his redemptive purposes through individuals who are what they are because of grace alone.

Understanding biblical teaching about visiting Heaven

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TEXAS GOSPEL VOLUNTEER

Some stores that sell Christian books carry stories from people who say they traveled to heaven and came back. These books describe experiences that the authors claim to have had beyond death. However, biblical teaching presents a different picture of what happens when people die.

Scripture tells us that humans die one time, followed by judgment. This means death is not something people experience multiple times. Claims about visiting heaven or hell and returning do not align with this biblical principle. When people make such claims, they are not speaking truthfully about their experiences.

The Bible does mention something called the third heaven. This term refers to where God lives. The first heaven means the air surrounding our planet that we breathe. The second heaven refers to outer space, where the moon and stars exist. The third heaven, then, is simply the place where God dwells.

Paul was the only person in the New Testament who experienced being taken to the third heaven. Even he could not explain how this happened. He stated that he did not know if he was physically present or if his body remained behind. This experience was similar to the visions that prophets received in the Old Testament, like the vision Isaiah had when he saw God’s throne.

Paul described being brought into God’s presence and witnessing things too wonderful for human understanding. He said these things could not be spoken about or described. I believe that if someone genuinely visited heaven, they would have the same experience Paul had. They would find themselves unable to talk about what they witnessed there.

The biblical pattern shows that genuine encounters with heaven leave people without words to describe them, not with books to sell.

In My Father’s house are many rooms; if that were not so, I would have told you, because I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I am coming again and will take you to Myself, so that where I am, there you also will be.

John 14:2-3

The Gospel’s power and humanity’s need: Romans 1

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TEXAS GOSPEL VOLUNTEER

The opening chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans could be considered one of the most significant passages in all of Scripture. Written to a church the apostle had never visited, this letter would become the most systematic presentation of the gospel message in the New Testament, and its first chapter lays the essential groundwork for everything that follows.

Paul clarifies the continuity between the Old and New Testaments. He tells us God’s Son, Jesus Christ, was descended from David according to the flesh and declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead. This dual nature of Christ, fully human and fully divine, forms the bedrock of Christian theology and the foundation upon which the entire epistle rests.

Within this gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.” This concept of God’s righteousness being revealed and received through faith rather than human effort represents a revolutionary truth that transformed the ancient world and continues to transform lives today. The righteousness that God requires, He also provides through Jesus Christ to all who believe.

Paul explains that what can be known about God has been clearly revealed to all people through creation itself. God’s invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived in the things that have been made.

The chapter concludes with a chilling observation about the depth of human depravity. Though people know God’s righteous decree that those who practise evil things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practise them. They don’t just commit sin but celebrate it and encouraging others to join in rebellion against God.

The first chapter of Romans is a foundation for understanding the gospel’s power. Until we grasp the severity of humanity’s condition, the depth of our rebellion, and the reality of divine wrath against sin, we cannot fully appreciate the magnitude of God’s grace in providing salvation through Jesus Christ.