Cerebrus

delte please

No, I am nondenominational. I do not depend on my works for nothing pertaining to salvation, but at the same time, I don't use salvation as a means to do whatever I choose to do with my life neither. No, never in fear about sins I know nothing about. God will show me my sins and I will ask for forgiveness. Fear is not of the Lord. What question would that be, the one in the OP? If so, I have answered it. If not, ask again. Now, fair play be as it is, answer this. If you have accepted salvation through Christ, but through hard times decide to turn you back on Him and return to the world, at which time, while drinking and drugging you are shot by a jealous husband while in an adulterous affair, will you still go to heaven? Keep in mind that you did accept Christ as your savior at one time in your life, and meant it with all your heart. Well I would say you can never lose your faith. "Perseverance of the Saints". Your arguments are really subjective. What is different from that situation you described from Peter renouncing Christ (arguably one of the "baddest" sins you can commit though God doesn't categorize them like that). You really think if Peter had say gotten speared accidentally by an unattentive Roman guard right after renouncing Christ he would have gone to Hell? I don't think that's how it works. The implications of that is that you better be SURE that you don't commit any sins right before you die! What if you're arguing with your son/sibling/friend in the car and say something hurtful to him and then get hit by and car and instantly killed 2 seconds later? Do you go to Hell? You refuse to answer my question, but instead, made up different scenarios to turn it around. As I stated, I do not believe in Once Saved Always Saved, but that is my opinion, not the ministries. Tell me, what do you make of these scriptures:? Ezekiel 18:19-32 (New King James Version) Turn and Live Yet you say,

Well... within the next couple months would be nice. Unfortunately there isn't just a Q&A box you can drop a question in for God... and even a 0.000001% chance of being damned to eternity because I can't put up with 60 years of misery scares me. Too bad drinking (or rather, getting drunk) and smoking pot is a sin, because none of the "legal" drugs have worked. I'm still a bit conflicted about whether smoking weed is actually a sin, because technically it just alters your mood just like any legal antidepressant. Or if in that case using antidepressants are a sin.

No, I am nondenominational. I do not depend on my works for nothing pertaining to salvation, but at the same time, I don't use salvation as a means to do whatever I choose to do with my life neither. No, never in fear about sins I know nothing about. God will show me my sins and I will ask for forgiveness. Fear is not of the Lord. What question would that be, the one in the OP? If so, I have answered it. If not, ask again. Now, fair play be as it is, answer this. If you have accepted salvation through Christ, but through hard times decide to turn you back on Him and return to the world, at which time, while drinking and drugging you are shot by a jealous husband while in an adulterous affair, will you still go to heaven? Keep in mind that you did accept Christ as your savior at one time in your life, and meant it with all your heart. Well I would say you can never lose your faith. "Perseverance of the Saints". Your arguments are really subjective. What is different from that situation you described from Peter renouncing Christ (arguably one of the "baddest" sins you can commit though God doesn't categorize them like that). You really think if Peter had say gotten speared accidentally by an unattentive Roman guard right after renouncing Christ he would have gone to Hell? I don't think that's how it works. The implications of that is that you better be SURE that you don't commit any sins right before you die! What if you're arguing with your son/sibling/friend in the car and say something hurtful to him and then get hit by and car and instantly killed 2 seconds later? Do you go to Hell?

I've looked at your other threads. Are you truly looking for answers or are you attempting to provoke certain responses? Well yeah I'm trying to provoke a response since I need an answer. You're right though, you've found me out, this isn't the only tough question I've dealt with in my life. You might want to look at the posting dates too. Still look like a trolling spree? I really would've expected a bit more compassion and love from supposed members of the body of Christ but I guess I'll just have to turn to my same-age Christian friends for wisdom. Forget I asked. But thanks to all who did help.

So Smacald and OneLight are you guys Catholic? I find it pretty scary that anyone feels the need to rely on their own works as a means to salvation, cause that's what you're in effect doing. And OneLight, you ignored my question. You must be pretty terrified to constantly be in fear of forgetting to confess a sin, because by your line of reasoning, forget to confess ONE and you're damned for all eternity! Sounds like the kind of struggle Luther was going through as a monk.

So what if the person in question has been born that way and it's only gotten increasingly worse despite years of various forms of treatment and prayer? I gotta admit I'm a little shocked by the judgmental attitudes on here. our actions don't get us into heaven and our actions don't keep us from heaven. *sarcasm* Well then, I may as well go out, get drunk, smoke some strong weed and have an affair, then rob a store at gunpoint so I can have the money to do it again since I can do nothing to loose my salvation! Why not allow my flesh to have as much fun as it would like, and if I get killed in the process, or die of an overdose, who cares? I'll see ya in heaven! */sarcasm* You have to be kidding me. I do not believe that we can not loose our salvation. Romans 6:1-2 What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? Romans 12:1-2 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God

That's very easy to say when you're not bi-polar, schizophrenic and have social anxiety disorder. Anyways, this thread isn't about the merits of suicide or lack thereof so please stay to the topic. Thanks

I know the Roman Catholic church believes you don't because you haven't repented of it (since you're dead), but want does the reformed church teach? Please let me know what denomination you are from when you answer. Thanks . (calvinist/Arminian, reforme/liberal etc.) EDIT: Obviously I'm talking about someone who is saved and has trusted in Jesus as their savior.

Again I don't understand this logic. You assume I'm not asking for God's help to change me. Couldn't be farther from the truth. I'm not "assuming I could do it better" as you put it. I find that frankly insulting. I pray, and then trust God to guide my actions. Like Augustine said: "Love God and do what you want". Do you pray for safety when you travel? But I bet you still put on your seatbelt right? There's a difference between predestination+trusting God and fatalism. Muslims are fatalists, and have a very "laissez-faire" approach to life. EX: That Saudi pilot story I shared a second ago. I pray for God to help me to gain physical strength and endurance, but I STILL PUSH MYSELF VERY HARD in the gym and control my eating habits. I totally disagree that bettering myself is "taking the place of God". What an absurd notion! Do you think people who get into the AA program are sinning? Oh and, believe me I pray constantly for God's assistance in all areas of my life, but I still take the action for it to happen. I don't think the only way we can trust in God is to do NOTHING and wait for divine intervention. God can work THROUGH our actions. Trusting in God is not carte blanche to sit around and do nothing. The best athletes of our time had to get there through years of hard work and dedication. Are you saying that they're "wrong" because they didn't just sit around and pray that God would make them fantastic athletes?!?! If anything, what you're suggesting could be a great excuse for laziness. Praying "Lord, please help me to get a good job", yet not bothering to walk out the door and go through dozens of painful/boring interviews.

No I haven't. Why?

Maybe you can clarify this more for me. Are you saying that you healed yourself by some form of lucid dreaming or mind control? Let me clarify. Basically what I did was focus my mind on the fact that the pain was not caused by physical means, and I journaled about my emotions and possible emotions that could have caused the pain (the theory was that the pain was created to distract from emotional turmoil). Has nothing to do with dreams, I'm just giving an example of using the "mind". I give the credit entirely to the Lord though because I found that book literally in a million-to-one chance. And no I don't consider myself a "new age" Christian I consider myself a Christian period. What is the name of the book that had helped you use your mind to heal your knee and to relieve you of your emotional turmoil? Sounds something like The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peel. The Divided Mind: The Epidemic of Mindbody Disorders by Dr. Sarno. I read a couple other books by him as well but they were essentially the same material. Highly recommended. Also, you say that God would have told us and instructed us in it if it were good... What about the thousands of things we do to better ourselves that God did NOT specifically tell us about? I find this idea that any time you're trying to "better yourself" through means not directly connected to God (though I pray for assistance through all of my endeavors) kind of... well, flat our wrong? Paul said to test the spirit, and you've yet to come up with any evidence that "learning to direct dreams" is evil.

What on earth makes you think he's the antichrist? I haven't heard of his working any miracles I'm almost positive it will be a world leader regardless. I think it's more likely to be a US president or president of the EU than Tolle that's for sure.

Maybe you can clarify this more for me. Are you saying that you healed yourself by some form of lucid dreaming or mind control? Let me clarify. Basically what I did was focus my mind on the fact that the pain was not caused by physical means, and I journaled about my emotions and possible emotions that could have caused the pain (the theory was that the pain was created to distract from emotional turmoil). Has nothing to do with dreams, I'm just giving an example of using the "mind". I give the credit entirely to the Lord though because I found that book literally in a million-to-one chance. And no I don't consider myself a "new age" Christian I consider myself a Christian period.

I really don't understand this logic at all. How is this different than learning the art of playing guitar, or drawing, or sky diving? What's wrong with being able to control your thoughts, and of all things, something as harmless as your dreams? What about "self control", keeping yourself from getting angry etc. I've had several of these lucid dreams entirely "by accident" and I really have trouble believing that learning how to induce them on purpose is "evil". I recovered from crippling knee and wrist pain entirely from using my thoughts and relieving repressed memories. This was after going to countless doctors giving me medicines and recommending even surgery (!). This was something I had to learn, an art if you will. (a book I came upon thanks I believe to my prayers to recover from the condition) Is this wrong too? Why is it that anything connected with controlling your mind you guys are considering evil? I'm curious what you all would think of some of the Christian mystics throughout history. The common theme seems to be "anything that doesn't directly involve God in improving yourself or attaining a goal is evil". What about working out to be better at sports? I mean, is it evil to have SOME measure of self-reliance while of course relying on God over all?? When you get in the car, you pray for safety, but you still put on the seat belt right? I can imagine in the past people being upset by medical research because it's "tampering with God's authority". Surely you don't agree with that logic! This reminds me for some reason of a story of a jet fighter pilot friend of mine told me about a training course he was doing with a Saudi pilot. He threw the jet into a tail spin on purpose (to see if the Saudi trainee could get out of it) and the Saudi simply said "Allah Akbar", and left the controls alone so as not to "tamper with God's authority". Obviously, my friend had to pull out the jet of the dive himself. I hope this argument makes sense, I realize I'm sort of going off on a tangent here...

Hmm... a lot of good feedback What I don't understand is WHY it's considered demonic/satanic. I mean, it's not like you're "calling on a foreign power" to experience this. Again, I can't recall ANYWHERE in the bible that speaks on this topic, but I could be wrong. Isn't it just taking advantage of a capability you already have but haven't "excercised"? (like say, parcour for example, the art of being able to perform all kinds of Matrix-like unbeliavble jumps, leaps, vaults etc... I'll talk to my parents and see what they have to say, since they were teens during the 60/70s they probably know something about it. As for lucid dreaming, well I'd had that happen "naturally" several times and enjoyed it so much I started training myself to do it whenever I wanted. Can't see what's wrong with that.

First off, I'm a believer, and I've been experimenting with lucid dreaming (where you're conscious during your dreams and can make yourself fly and all kinds of cool stuff). Anyways I find this kind of thing utterly fascinating--the subconscious mind and how it works especially-- (and quite frankly an awesome way to spend my nights sleeping--like having your own personal holodeck!) and I was looking into astral projection out of curiosity, as it's loosely connected to those who practice lucid dreaming. I've heard some very negative things about it from the Christian community so I didn't want to try it out without a bit more research... why does it have such negative feedback from Christians? First of all, not that I've tried it yet (I haven't) but I'm not at all convinced that you're actually "leaving your body" as much as having the impression that you're leaving the body. I actually get a little bit of this "out of body" feeling when I work out really hard in the gym for example, those of you who also work out may know what I'm talking about. Basically you "think" a lot less and just FEEL instead, and have a more global perspective... it's really hard to explain. So if astral projection is merely the impression that you're leaving your body (and is in fact just a subconscious trip) is it wrong? Even if your spirit IS actually leaving your body is this wrong? I can't really recall anything in the bible ever saying "don't leave your body" but maybe I'm overlooking something. From my limited research it seems that this "out of body" feeling comes from the left brain being given precedence over the (logical) right brain, doctors have caused patients to experience this feeling due to various medical procedures. So my thought is, it's just a hallucination. Thoughts?

yeah sorry for not making that clear. yes I trust jesus as my lord and savior. When I became a christian I felt tremendous relief knowing that regardless of what happened in my life I was "safe" so to speak. Nothing could hurt me because I was one of God's own. I still feel that way of course. What bothers me is that a lot of really bad behavior that I didn't see change despite my praying for it all the time. In the end, it was secular "resources" that helped me. Now I guess I could still see this as God's action because I did PRAY for it... but I don't know... it just kind of bothered me.

Alright I would've posted this in another section but apparentally it won't let me so here goes. First off if you answer please tell me your basic beliefs!! Nothing against anyone but I want to know whether I'm getting answered by a unitarian or a reformed evangelical (the latter is what I'm hoping for...) Anyways. I'm a believer have been for about 9 years or so, I'm 19 years old. This is fairly long but I hope someone will bother reading it. I'd appreciate it! Throughout high school I was really introverted and shy and insecure. I always second guessed myself, worried a ton about what others thought of me and I was absolutely terrible with girls. Then I got rejected by a friend of mine my junior year. It was tough, but thankfully I got over it pretty quickly, I think I was more in love with the idea of being rejected than actually with the girl (sounds strange I'm sort of a poetry nut if that helps explain it--John Donne, Shakespeare, these things mess with your mind ) Anyways. I realized I'd had enough. I'd always felt so inhibited and though I know some people would say that I should be happy with "being myself" I honestly didn't feel like "myself". My parents told me that I'd actually been extremely outgoing and extroverted up until I got into the French school system in 1st grade (which if you don't know is extremely strict and comformist encouraging) at which time I quite literally "clammed up". So I was determined to change one way or another. I saw my other guy friends who were totally care free and had beautiful girls chasing them like crazy--and it wasn't that they were better looking than me either. I know some will argue that that's not the most important thing in life, and I know it isn't, but yes it's very important to me. It doesn't help that I've always been ridiculously picky, but I knew I had to get to where I deserved the sort of quality girl I wanted. So... I wanted to change... Anyways I prayed a lot about. A lot. A whole whole lot. And finally I stumbled by chance on something that really changed my perspective. It was an article comparing "nice guy" attributes with "real men" attributes. Talked a lot about how feminism had turned a lot of guys into sort of scared insecure drones who are so afraid to offend a girl that they don't make any sort of move and are so "in their head" so to speak that they're basically incapable of acting confidently in life. Needless to say this spoke to me immensely. It was like reading a biography of me. So... I determined to change, I started forcing myself out constantly, talking to strangers on the street, forcing myself to go up to the most stuck up, intimidating, beautiful women out there just to get "out of my head" so to speak. And the thing is, it started working... I'm still in the process right now, but I've already started changing a lot. Anyways during these past few months while this has been going on I've been reading a lot about various psychological aspects of personality, and change and such. One thing I stumbled across was something called the "Power of Now" by Eckhart Tolle. He's labeled a "spiritual teacher" but a lot of it is just pure psychology. There is some influence from the concept of "Zen" in Bhuddism though. Anyways, basically he makes the point that in many major religions telling people to "behave" in one way or another often doesn't work and I'd certainly found that to be true in my own life. I prayed all the time about it, trying not to be so critical of others, pessimistic etc... but I never got anywhere. Tolle suggested being "unreactive" as a way to behave better. Tolle's principles could be summarized as such: 1. You are not your thoughts. You are the awareness behind the thoughts. Thoughts are often negative and painful, yearning for or fearing something in the future, complaining about something in the present or fearing a matter from the past. However, the thoughts are not you, although your ego wants you to think that. Awareness of your thoughts without being caught up in them is the first step to freedom. 2. Only the present moment exists. That is where life is (indeed it is the only place life can truly be found). Becoming aware of the 'now' has the added benefit that it will draw your attention away from your (negative) thoughts. Use mindfulness techniques to fully appreciate your surroundings and everything you are experiencing. Look and listen intently. Give full attention to the smallest details. 3. Accept the present moment. It is resistance to the present moment that creates most of the difficulties in your life. However, acceptance does not mean that you cannot take action to rectify the situation you are in. What is important is to drop resistance so that you let the moment be, and that any action arises from deeper awareness rather than from resistance. The vast majority of pain in a person's life comes from resistance to what is. 4. Years of conditioned thought patterns, individually and collectively, have resulted in habitual emotional reactions with an apparent personality of their own. During 'pain attacks' we become completely identified with this 'pain identity' and respond from its agenda--which is to create more pain for ourselves and others. Observing the pain-body is awareness itself arising--as it allows humans to separate from this unconscious identification with pain. Anyways I tried applying these ideas and started changing even faster. I now get in far less fights with my family (used to happen all the time) and women are incredibly responsive to me because instead of getting embroiled in some argument or "test" I simply lay back, take it easy and laugh it off. I hardly ever get seriously angry anymore at the petty things that used to bother me all the time. It's really amazing. Now my problem is this: a lot of the psychology stuff I've been reading comes back again and again to the idea of "self esteem" and "entitlement". A lot of it is about "drawing strength from within". Basically, people who feel like they are generally "worthy" of X -be it a good business, a nice car, an amazing girl- get it, simply because they're confident about it. They still might face hardships, but they don't focus on them because they know they'll reach their goal come hell or high water. So... I'm a bit conflicted inside because I feel like I've been improving in many areas of my life but not by relying purely on God. True, I prayed for help from God in these areas, but what ended up helping me was not prayer or meditating on scripture or whatever. I feel a bit disturbed that after years of making almost no progress in my problems with anger, negative attitudes etc. despite praying and reading the bible and everything I've suddenly changed greatly for the better thanks to secular psychological principles. Also the idea of self-esteem seems counter to the idea of being humble and relying purely on Jesus' power. Should I be worried about this?? Any advice, comments greatly appreciated.