Walking in faith without seeing is the greater faith!

Next time someone tells you they have died and gone to heaven willing to tell you what they saw, repeat this verse to them.

 
1 Corinthians 2:9 "9Rather, as it is written: “ No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no heart has imagined, what God has prepared for those who love Him.”

 
It makes no sense that a believer would be shown heaven when he supposedly has already believed. We walk by faith not by sight and we have no reason to have "an experience" because we have the Word of God.

 
If someone will not believe you about the Word of God why would they believe you that you had an experience?

 
We have everything we need in the Bible to walk by faith, those who must see to "feel spiritual" have little faith.

No One Saves Themselves

There are far too many people who believe a born-again believer transformed by Christ can lose their salvation. If we had any part in our salvation, then Christ's death on the cross would be meaningless. Christ did it all, and none of it depended on ourselves.

2 Corinthians 5:17 "17 Therefore if anyone is in Christ, this person is a new [a]creation; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come."

Ephesians 2:10 "10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them."

When we trust in Chris,t He transforms us into a new creation. We will never go back because it was His work, nothing of ourselves.

Ephesians 1:12-14 "…12in order that we, who were the first to hope in Christ, would be for the praise of His glory. 13And in Him, having heard and believed the word of truth— the gospel of your salvation— you were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, 14who is the pledge of our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession, to the praise of His glory.…"

Those who walk away were never changed by Christ; they only pretended to work their own way to salvation without a desire to be changed by Christ. We know this because God said that many are like this.

Matthew 7:21-23 "I Never Knew You
21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ 23 And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’"

When we have been transformed by Christ, we hate sin. If we fall because we are still battling this fleshly bod,y then we hate it and confess it to be cleansed.

1 John 1:9 "9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."

Hebrews 12:5-7 "…5 And you have forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons: “My son, do not take lightly the discipline of the Lord, and do not lose heart when He rebukes you. 6 For the Lord disciplines the one He loves, and He chastises every son He receives.” 7 Endure suffering as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father?…"

God never throws away those who have been sealed by God. He disciplines them.

If someone walks away, they were never born again; they are pretenders. God said the church would be full of people like this in the last days, the reason He says the following.

Matthew 13:24-30 "24 Another parable He put forth to them, saying: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field; 25 but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way.
26 But when the grain had sprouted and produced a crop, then the tares also appeared.
27 So the servants of the owner came and said to him, ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?’
28 He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The servants said to him, ‘Do you want us then to go and gather them up?’
29 But he said, ‘No, lest while you gather up the tares you also uproot the wheat with them. 30 Let both grow together until the harvest, and at the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, “First gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn.”

No one who is born again loses their salvation. If someone walks away, they were never saved; they knew who Jesus Christ was, like the five virgins who ran out of oil, they knew but did not trust in Him. It was merely religion and not a relationship with Christ.

Remember: Ephesians 2:9-10 "…9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance as our way of life.

Bible Believing is not Necessarily Christ Following

There is a difference between a Bible believer and a Bible follower. Bible believers only say without obeying. Followers obey.

Visualization to Feel Safe is Ungodly

I once heard a Christian proclaim that when we become fearful about something happening to us, we should pretend Jesus is a 300-foot-tall giant standing next to us to alleviate our fears.

First of all, there is a lack of faith when we have to visualize anything about God. When we walk by faith, we have no need to see anything; we simply trust. We trusted Him without seeing Him when we became born again, and we can continue to trust Him after He transforms us, even though we may not see Him with our eyes.

There is no trust when we have to see or pretend; there is just wild imagination comforting us momentarily. This is not faith; we know that because Jesus Christ is not a 300-foot-tall person, He was only about 5' 2" when He was on earth. God never said He was a 300-foot-tall person who protects us. There is no scripture that describes fantasizing to make ourselves feel safe.

I am not a fan of visualization to comfort ourselves; fantasy is not a means of trusting in Christ. In fact it works against faith.

Matthew 21:32 "32 For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him. And even when you saw it, you did not afterward change your minds and believe him."

Using fantasy to feel safe is an expression of not believing in God unless you can see Him.

Our world is so full of fantasy and pretense that it even infects the faith of many without them realizing it. The principles of God are placed on the back burner while desired beliefs based on idle imaginings are extolled as legitimate faith expressions.

2 Corinthians 10:5 "5 We are destroying arguments and all arrogance raised against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ,"

When we take captive our minds to align with Christ and His Word, we will not need to imagine things God never said or did.

Colossians 1:15 "the image of the invisible God". While no one has seen God's essence"

We are never told to imagine anything about God, we are told to trust in Him and His written word.

2 Corinthians 10:5 "5 We are destroying arguments and all arrogance raised against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ,"

To visualize a man 300 feet tall to make ourselves feel safer is bringing down our God to a human level.

When we reduce our Christianity to cliches that sound good without analyzing them through Scripture, it always casts God in a much lesser position than Who He is, who is the creator of the universe above all things and all mankind. So precious that no one can imagine the real Him.

Labeled Wrongly Because of Your Faith in Christ

Have you ever been labeled rebellious because you think very differently from those who are rebellious?

It is common now in these end times for those who follow the Word of God to be called rebellious, divisive, or judgmental by those who are these things themselves.

A favorite tactic of the devil is to accuse the believer of sins the devil is committing, but the believer is not.

I see this on steroids in the news recently, when the police have to shoot a criminal, and the media claims the police were the bad guys in it.

It is the rebellious people who are accusing the police of wrongdoing who are only doing what they need to do to get criminals off the streets.

The same is true in families in which the family members who claim to be "Bible believers" accuse the Bible followers of the very things the disobedient "Christians" are doing, but the Bible followers are not doing.

Sadly this sort of disordered and unruly thinking is common now. They get away with it almost entirely without challenge because the entire culture supports those who are lying when they say they are "Bible believing."

Our culture has degraded so much so that the insane are runing the asylum, and the churches are included in this mess. The world has taken over the churches and has accused those who no longer attend of being disobedient for not attending their mess.

They follow a system God never commanded, while unable to wrap their minds around the truth of God's word, preferring their traditions of men over the Word of God.

Mark 7:13 "13Thus you nullify the word of God by the tradition you have handed down. And you do so in many such matters.”

Traditions of men are more powerful than truth in the hearts of those who love to have their ears tickled. They will only listen to those who say what they want to hear, while those who correct with Scripture are negated and punished for disrupting the status quo with truth.

Colossians 2:8 "See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, which are based on human tradition and the spiritual forces of the world rather than on Christ."

1 Timothy 4:1-3 "Now the Spirit expressly states that in later times some will abandon the faith to follow deceitful spirits and the teachings of demons, / influenced by the hypocrisy of liars, whose consciences are seared with a hot iron. / They will prohibit marriage and require abstinence from certain foods that God has created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth."

Romans 10:3 "Because they were ignorant of God’s righteousness and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness."

Acts 7:51-53 "You stiff-necked people with uncircumcised hearts and ears! You always resist the Holy Spirit, just as your fathers did. Which of the prophets did your fathers fail to persecute? They even killed those who foretold the coming of the Righteous One. And now you are His betrayers and murderers— you who received the law ordained by angels, yet have not kept it.”

These 5 Questions Jealous People Always Ask (Don’t Fall for Them)

The Hidden Signs of a Jealous Person (5 Behaviors to Watch)