US Christian Right torments Palestinian Christians

[Guest yod]

the wall of apartheid encircling Bethlehem

this was said twice and it's another lie.

"encircling" would imply that this FENCE (not a wall) goes around Bethlehem. It does not. It goes between Jerusalem and Bethlehem because so many of the homicide bomber terrorists were walking around the checkpoints into Jerusalem.

Whose fault is that?

When I pray for the peace of Jerusalem it includes arabs...and it includes muslims, jews, christians, and any other religious affiliation.

That is the responsibility of all christians everywhere including those in Bethlehem. That is a very dangerous place to be a christian...but not because of Israel or the jews.

Their enemy is Islam and other arabs because to be a christian they must learn to love the jews....and the King of the Jews.

If they do not...then they are not truly christians. They are only religious.

Still...I pray for Palestinian christians to overcome the obstacles of peace. I pray for them to be a witness in the darkness they find themselves living in. I pray for them to show the way to peace....to lead by example of selflessness, grace, and love for the jewish people...for the arab people.

They just might be the only ones who can effectually cause peace by changing their society with prayer. Let's remember them.....even as we forget whoever this person is posting junk.

[His son]

This is a classic case of on leaning to their own understanding, and looking to men for their information. The only source of Truth for anyone is God's Word, The Bible written by Him for all people everywhere in this world. True circumcised in the heart Christians are going to suffer for their belief or they are not true circumcised in the heart believers. For one faction of people to blame anyone other that satans followers for their grief is in effect calling Jesus a liar. One of the many Scriptures that make this obvious.

Mark 10:39

39 And they said unto him, We can. And Jesus said unto them, Ye shall indeed drink of the cup that I drink of; and with the baptism that I am baptized withal shall ye be baptized:

(KJV)

Instead of wasting time accusing members of God's family for your trouble, you should take your example from Paul, and Silas, and thank God that you are counted worthy to share in the sufferings of Christ. Your present attitude only makes you worry, and worry is the biggest tension component, and tension is the greates enemy of your physical body. Go with God, and accept the peace that Christ left with you just before He ascended up to The Father.

Holy Spirit I pray that you will send God's Gospel to convict us all of every sin, of our need to confess, ask for, and receive God's forgiveness, convict us of our need to truly repent (change of heart, and life style), and come Holy Spirit, and empower us to walk out that repentance, and change us ever more into the likeness of Christ. Amen

[Guest abeata]

Response from the Catholics (900 million worldwide):

ARCHDIOCESE - Stories of unrest in the Middle East and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict abound in the daily new reports, keeping us well informed on Jewish and Muslim tensions. Yet, largely unknown to many Americans is the plight of Palestinian Christians, who have lived under military occupation for more than 50 years, and now face daily injustice, violence and desperate living conditions.

The Holy Land is home to 123,000 Christians in Palestine and Israel and 160,000 in Jordan and, many of whom are descendents of the early Christians, explained Rateb Rabie, president of the Holy Land Christian Ecumenical Foundation (HCEF), who spoke with the Catholic Telegraph, last month. Rabie, along with Jesuit Father Drew Christiansen, a senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center and Counselor for International Affairs for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, addressed the subject of Christians in the Holy Land when they spoke to students and faculty at Xavier University on Feb. 26. Both have recently returned from a fact-finding mission to the Holy Land. Their situation is critical, Rabie said, and Palestinian Christians have come to think of themselves as the "forgotten faithful," because of the isolation they feel from the rest of Christendom. They have been denied access to their places of worship, particularly in Jerusalem, their homes have confiscated and demolished, and there are limited employment opportunities for Palestinians. In addition, roads are frequently closed in and out of villages and designated for Israeli use only, and the identity cards of Palestinians are confiscated, keeping them from moving freely in their own territories.

With conditions as they are, Christians are leaving the Holy Land in large numbers, Rabie said. In 1948, the Christian population of the Holy Land was over 18%, but by 1999, it was less than two percent. The Christian population of Jerusalem was 51% in 1922, as compared to less than two percent today.

A non-profit organization founded in 1999, HCEF is working to educate Americans about the plight of Palestinian Christians, as providing moral and financial support that will assist them in remaining in the Holy Land, explained Rabie.

"We're not interested in political power, but in keeping the heritage of Christians alive," he said. "This is not just a concern for the Middle East, but for all Christians, because our heritage is in the Holy Land."

HCEF is engaged in a number of projects geared toward "building solidarity and relationships," between Americans Christians and their brothers and sisters in the Holy Land, Rabie noted.

"The idea is not just to raise money and send it there," he said. "We want to offer more than money. We need to pray together, communicate with one another, people to people, church to church."

Some of HCEF's efforts in this regard include a child sponsorship program, through which American donors can support the education of indigenous Christian children in the Holy Land, parish partnerships between American and Palestinian parishes, and a student correspondence exchange, geared toward promoting cultural understanding between American and Palestinian children. HCEF is also working to provide a U.S. market for religious craft items, particularly olivewood, made in the Holy Land, to offer some economic stability to Christian families there, and is overseeing a number of projects focussed on improving employment, education and housing.

Key to developing understanding and relationships between American and Palestinian Christians is direct contact, so HCEF is also organizing pilgrimages to the Holy Land, including a trip scheduled for April 4-16. Christians run eighty-percent of the tourist industry there, Rabie said, and "we're trying to encourage people to go to the Holy Land and help Christians there by using their businesses. It will give Christian business owners the hope and strength to carry on."

"By staying with local families, people will also have a better understanding that we share the same faith, and that we all pray the same way," he added.

For those concerned about the safety of traveling in the Holy Land, Rabie offered reassurance noting that HCEF pilgrimages are coordinated with the Latin Patriarch and other local church leaders and involve traveling with a protected group, which is more secure than a commercial tour.

Recognizing the urgent needs of Palestinian Christians, Catholic and other religious leaders have assumed an active role in working toward improving conditions for them. "The U.S. Bishops have "explicitly asked that Catholics become more aware of the plight of Christians in the Middle East," said Jesuit Father Benjamin Ursmston, founding director of the peace and justice programs at XU.

In January, Catholic bishops from the United States and Europe met in Jerusalem, hosted by His Beatitude Michel Sabbah, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem and the Assembly of Catholic Ordinaries of the Holy Land. The gathering served as a follow up to a Dec. 14 meeting in Rome, at which the Pope expressed his deep concern for the suffering of Christians in the Holy Land and the worsening spiritual and socio-economic conditions under which they live. During the conference, which was organized by Father Christiansen, the bishops examined ways to strengthen solidarity between their own churches and local Christian community.

In their concluding document, "Message to the Christians of the Holy Land," the bishops addressed the violence impacting everyone in the Holy Land writing, "The present cycle of violence is a tragedy for everyone. It is profoundly wrong to keep a people under occupation; it is abhorrent to hold millions of men, women and children confined in one enormous jail. It is likewise morally reprehensible to take vengeance or undertake resistance with random attacks on innocent people."

For more information about the work of HCEF and to learn how to help visit the organization's website at www.hcef.org.

[Guest abeata]

Jews who feel with suffering Palestinians:

An open letter to Bashir al-Khayri, a lawyer by profession,who was deported to Lebanon the day before.

(From THE JERUSALEM POST

Dear Bashir,

We got to know each other 20 years ago under unusual and unexpected circumstances. Every since, we have become part of each other's lives. Now I hear that you are about to be deported. Since you are in detention at present, and this may be my last chance to communicate with you, I have chosen to write this open letter. First I want to retell our story.

After the Six-Day War, you came with two other people to see the house in Ramle where you were born. This was my first encounter with Palestinians. My family and I had been living in that house since 1948, just after your family was forced to leave--you were a child of six then, and I was a year old. We had come to the new state of Israel together with 50,000 other Bulgarian Jews, and your house was considered "abandoned property."

Following your first visit in 1967, I accepted your invitation to visit you in Ramallah, where I found myself surrounded by hospitality. We talked for hours and established a warm personal connection. However, it became clear that our political views were very far apart. Each of us saw through the lens created by the suffering of his own people.

But some change in perspective was beginning to take place in me. One unforgettable day, your father came to our house in Ramle, accompanied by your brother. Your father was then old and blind. He touched the rugged stones of the house. He then asked if the lemon tree was still in the backyard. He was led to the abundant tree, which he had planted many years before. He caressed it and stood silent. Tears were rolling down his face.

Many years later, after the death of your father, your mother told me that, whenever he felt troubled at night and could not sleep, he would pace up and down your rented apartment in Ramallah, holding a shrivelled lemon in his hand. It was the same lemon my father had given him on that visit.

Ever since I met you, the feeling has been growing in me that home was not just my home. The lemon tree which yielded so much fruit and gave us so much delight lived in other people's hearts, too. The spacious house with its high ceilings, big windows, and large grounds was no longer just an "Arab house," a desirable form of architecture. It had faces behind it now. The walls evoked other people's memories and tears.

It was very painful for me, as a young woman 20 years ago, to wake up to a few then-well-hidden facts. For example, we were all led to believe that the Arab population of Ramle and Lod had run away before the advancing Israeli army in 1948, leaving everything behind in a rushed and cowardly escape. This belief reassured us. It was meant to prevent guilt and remorse. But after 1967, I met not only you, but also an Israeli Jew who had personally participated in the expulsion from Ramle and Lod. He told me the story as he had experienced it, and as Yitzhak Rabin later confirmed in his memoirs.

My love for my country was losing its innocence. It was taking on new dimensions.

While I was learning to live with these painful facts, you were imprisoned. You were charge with planting a bomb that killed several civilians. My heart aches for those murdered even now. For your crime, you sat in prison for fifteen years. Passing the Ramle prison on my way to work, I often wondered if you were there. I never had the courage to ask. It was too painful.

After my marriage and the death of my parents, I inherited the house in Ramle. I shared our story with my husband, and he and I both felt that we wanted to dedicate that house--to some healing purpose. We wished to do this in conjunction with you, but we did not know whether this was at all possible. Following your release from prison, we sought you out and met you. I felt that you and I, your family and mine, were bound by a strange destiny, that the house with which our childhood memories were connected had forced us to face each other. However our conversations revealed that, despite the passage of time, your basic position had not changed--and this makes it impossible to find common ground. Perhaps some day, if we are both willing to make sacrifices, some kind of mutual forgiveness may yet emerge.

If you could dissociate yourself from your past terrorist actions, your commitment to your own people would gain true moral force in my eyes. I well understand that "terror" is a term relative to a subjective point of view. Some of Israel's political leaders were terrorists in the past and have never repented. I know that what we consider terror from your side, your people considers their heroic "armed struggle" with the means at their disposal. What we consider our right to self-defense, when we bomb Palestinian targets from the air and inevitably hit civilians, you consider mass terror from the air with advanced technology. Each side has an ingenuity for justifying its own position. How long shall we perpetuate this vicious circle?

The first step out of this deadlock is to free ourselves from self-justifying moral relativism. We are taught that the essence of our Jewish tradition can be encapsulated in the following teaching: "What is hateful to you, do not do unto others." Unless both Israelis and Palestinians can embrace this basic human principle, we will not have a solid foundation for co-existence. That foundation entails the right to self-determination for both peoples.

You, Bashir, are a Habash supporter, rejecting the self-determination of my people in this land. Most Israelis feel that the planting of bombs, as well as the throwing of stones, by Palestinians is not just an expression of resistance to the occupation, but is a much deeper refusal to accept a Jewish state in even part of Palestine. As long as we experience this total rejection, you and your people will not achieve your own independence. For you will alienate all those Israelis who, like myself, are prepared to support the Palestinian struggle for self-determination. People like yourself, Bashir, bear a great responsibility for triggering our anxieties, which are well justified, given the PFLP's determination to replace Israel with a "secular democratic state" and to use terror to achieve this aim.

Regardless of what you may have done recently to displease the military government, deportation is a violation of human rights and is, therefore, wrong. It also happens to be counter-productive for Israel. Not only do the expulsions create greater bitterness and extremism among the Palestinians, thereby escalating the violent confrontations, but the deportees will have greater freedom to plan actions against Israel from abroad. You, Bashir, have already experienced one expulsion from Ramle as a child. Now you are about to experience another from Ramallah forty years later. You will thus become a refugee twice. You may be separated from your wife and your two small children, Ahmed and Hanin, and from your elderly mother and the rest of your family. How can your children avoid hating those who will have deprived them of their father? Will the legacy of pain grow and harden with bitterness as it passes down the generations?

It is a natural reaction to hate those who have made us suffer. It is also a natural reaction to inflict pain because one has suffered pain, and to justify it ideologically. In this small land, both our peoples are stuck in a fateful embrace. I believe that our finding each other here is potentially for the greater unfolding of life. In order to fulfill this potential, we all need to become more fully human, which, to me, means activating our capacity to understand the suffering of others through our own, and to transform pain into healing.

It seems to me, Bashir, that you will now have a new opportunity to assume a leadership role. By its intention to deport you, Israel is actually empowering you. I appeal to you to demonstrate the kind of leadership that uses nonviolent means of struggle for your rights, a leadership based on education for the recognition of your enemy and his relative justice.

I appeal to both Palestinians and Israelis to understand that the use of force will not resolve this conflict on its fundamental level. This is the kind of war that no one can win, and either both peoples will achieve liberation or neither will.

Our childhood memories, yours and mine, are intertwined in a tragic way. If we can not find means to transform that tragedy into a shared blessing, our clinging to the past will destroy our future. We will then rob another generation of a joy-filled childhood and turn them into martyrs for an unholy cause. I pray that, with your cooperation and God's help, our children will delight in the beauty and the bounties of this holy land.

Allah ma'ak--May God be with you.

Dalia

DALIA LANDAU is a teacher and counselor living in Jerusalem. She is a graduate of Tel Aviv University and served as an office in the Israel Defense Forces. The Ramle property is now the site of

the OPEN HOUSE project.

[Guest yod]

If you could dissociate yourself from your past terrorist actions, your commitment to your own people would gain true moral force in my eyes.

That was my favorite quote from the article....

"If only you wouldn't murder innocent people on purpose we could be friends....."

yeah...right.

This is a discussion board abeata. If you would like to talk about this stuff then have a little courage. Only a coward posts propoganda and then runs....

[Guest abeata]

Why are Christians in the Holy Land denied the right of worship

[Guest bernardusepiphanius]

For those interested here is an article by a Palestinian Christian academic for your consideration.

The Situation of Palestinian Christians: Some Food for Thought

Jerusalem

January 2004

In the mid-nineties of the twentieth century, the total number of Palestinian Christians in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza Strip was estimated at around 49,702 distributed among the various denominations as follows:

Greek Orthodox---- 25,835------------ 52.0%

Latins----------------- 15,168------------ 30.5%

Greek Catholics ----- 2,848-------------- 5.7%

Protestants------------ 2,443------------- 4.9%

Syriacs------------------ 1,498--------------3.0%

Armenians------------- 1,500-------------- 3.0%

Copts---------------------- 250-------------- 0.5%

Ethiopians---------------- 60-------------- 0.1%

Maronites---------------- 100-------------- 0.2%

(Source: Christians in the Holy Land, Edited by Michael Prior and William Taylor, London, 1994 originally from a compilation by Dr. Bernard Sabella based on different sources and estimates of the various churches in Jerusalem.)

The demographic situation has changed since the mid-nineties. Today, we speak of the Palestinian Christians being less than 2% of the entire population. Some would even suggest that we are approaching the 1.5%. The decline is not simply due to emigration, estimated among Palestinian Christians in the last three years since the start of the Second Intifada at around 2600 Christians. There is also the fact of the continuing higher birth rate among the general population and the fact that the average age of Palestinian Christians is higher than that of the entire population. Besides the marriage habits of Palestinian Christians tend to take place later in life which means the number of children per Christian family is lower than that among the average family in the general Palestinian population.

[Guest bernardusepiphanius]

For those interested here is an article by a Palestinian Christian academic for your consideration.

The Situation of Palestinian Christians: Some Food for Thought

Jerusalem

January 2004

In the mid-nineties of the twentieth century, the total number of Palestinian Christians in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza Strip was estimated at around 49,702 distributed among the various denominations as follows:

Greek Orthodox---- 25,835------------ 52.0%

Latins----------------- 15,168------------ 30.5%

Greek Catholics ----- 2,848-------------- 5.7%

Protestants------------ 2,443------------- 4.9%

Syriacs------------------ 1,498--------------3.0%

Armenians------------- 1,500-------------- 3.0%

Copts---------------------- 250-------------- 0.5%

Ethiopians---------------- 60-------------- 0.1%

Maronites---------------- 100-------------- 0.2%

(Source: Christians in the Holy Land, Edited by Michael Prior and William Taylor, London, 1994 originally from a compilation by Dr. Bernard Sabella based on different sources and estimates of the various churches in Jerusalem.)

The demographic situation has changed since the mid-nineties. Today, we speak of the Palestinian Christians being less than 2% of the entire population. Some would even suggest that we are approaching the 1.5%. The decline is not simply due to emigration, estimated among Palestinian Christians in the last three years since the start of the Second Intifada at around 2600 Christians. There is also the fact of the continuing higher birth rate among the general population and the fact that the average age of Palestinian Christians is higher than that of the entire population. Besides the marriage habits of Palestinian Christians tend to take place later in life which means the number of children per Christian family is lower than that among the average family in the general Palestinian population.

[Guest abeata]

We serve, obey and fear our Lord Jesus Christ ONLY. We were taught not to respond to those who deny our spirituality or fellowship.

Those who repond to human suffering and outcries with a fleeting comment, or make charater accusations are NOT true Christians and hence do not deserve a direct response, says the Lord.

MAY THE LORD JESUS HAVE MERCY ON YOUR SOUL AND OURS.

All of the previous articles including the one below appeared in Christian/American magazines - a uniform testimony to suffering of many Palestinian Christians in the name of Jesus. Moderate Jews and Palestinian Christians are working behind closed doors day and night to bring reconciliation and harmony. What is your contribution !!!!"Seek and you may do good in this life and the one after." Amen

Palestinian Christians after Nazareth

By Graham Usher

Last week, as Israel's Islamist movement was transforming the cornerstone-laying ceremony for the Mosque of Shihab Al-Din in Nazareth into a virtual victory parade, one image lingered in the minds of Palestinian Christians, whether in Israel or the Occupied Territories. This was the sight of a solitary nun standing on the parapets of Nazareth's Basilica of the Annunciation while, beneath her, thousands of Palestinian Muslims chanted slogans of "fire and blood" and pitched green-canister flares into the night. It was an icon of absolute vulnerability.

"The Christian population here [in the holy-land] feels it is being abandoned," admitted the Latin Patriarch in Jerusalem, Michel Sabbah, one day after the Nazareth ceremony. On 22 November, Sabbah -- himself a Palestinian from Nazareth -- had given his blessing to a two-day closure of the main Christian Churches in Israel and the Palestinian Authority areas in protest at the construction of the mosque in Nazareth. He also charged the Israeli government with "neglecting Christian interests" and of "capitulating" in the face of "pressure" from Israel's Islamist movement.

It is a sentiment shared by many Palestinian Christians in the West Bank and Gaza, even if some viewed the church closure as unwise. Bernard Sabella is a professor in Sociology at Bethlehem University and a member of the Middle East Council of Churches. At the most basic level, he says, Palestinian Christians feel "hurt" by the events in Nazareth. "They have seen that certain elements of the Islamic Movement in Israel are prepared to trade centuries of tolerance in return for local displays of political power."

They also feel increasingly small. According to Sabella, Palestinian Christians now comprise 120,000 (around 12 per cent) of the overall Palestinian population in Israel and 45,000 or two per cent "at the most generous estimate" of the Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza. In other words, "we are a quite insignificant minority," says Sabella. "And this is obviously threatening, because the smaller you are the more afraid you will disappear. In sociological terms -- if in no other -- the writing is on the wall for Palestinian Christians," he says.

The question is what is going to be their future with their Muslim compatriots, beyond another round of church closures and warnings over the pope's millennium visit, threats that in Sabella's opinion are less a solution than "part of the problem."

Israeli Arabs celebrate after unveiling a cornerstone for the controversial mosque in Nazareth last week

(photo:AP)

Sabella is clear about the options Palestinian Christians do not have. One is to mount a Christian confessional response to the agenda of political Islam posed by the Islamists. Aside from the smallness of their numbers, a purely religious agenda "does not appeal to Palestinian Christians, whether it is Islamic or Christian," he says. "Our primary identification has always been and must remain that we are Palestinians and an integral part of Palestinian society in Israel and the Occupied Territories."

But Sabella is under no illusion that movements of pan-Arabism or communism that once provided a natural habitat for Arab Christians in Palestine and beyond can be a domicile for the future. "The old nationalist consensus no longer exists", he says. It is "politicised religious movements" that are on the ascendant now and Palestinian Christians "must be prepared to address them."

The surest way to do so, he says, is for Christians to embrace an inclusive agenda based less on ideology than on citizenship and universal rights that are "applicable to all." He is hopeful that this can happen because Palestine -- by virtue of "where it is geographically and what it means religiously" -- can never be a "closed" society. He also believes that the "positive" intervention made by the PA in the Nazareth dispute reflected this vision of Muslim-Christian unity rather than sectarian difference.

It is a vision held also by Issam Nasser, a professor in History at Al-Quds University and associate director of the Institute of Jerusalem Studies. He agrees with Sabella that the PA has a "vested diplomatic interest in preserving the image of Palestine as a holy-land open to all religions." But, "on the ground," he is disturbed by what he sees as growing Islamisation of Palestinian national culture. He cites the Palestinian national curriculum currently being prepared for PA schools in the West Bank and Gaza.

"The textbooks basically equate the history of Palestine with the history of the Islamic conquest of Palestine," he says. "The Christian history of Palestine -- as occurred, say, during the Byzantine period -- is not celebrated in the same way. The result is that many Palestinians taking the curriculum will grow up believing that Palestine is historically Muslim with the only 'Christian' references being the Crusades and Napoleon. "I really don't see how this equips Palestinian Muslims to view their Christian compatriots as equals."

Nasser argues rather for a national culture that acknowledges and "celebrates" that it is predominantly Muslim but insists on a content that is secular.

Sabella too has anxieties about the legislative bases of a future Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. "I don't have a problem that Islam will be the religion of the state," he says. "When 98 per cent of Palestinians are Muslim, how could it be otherwise? But I do have a problem with a religiously-based state."

He has an even greater problem with the revival in certain Islamist discourses that Christians should have the status of Ahl Ad-Dhimma ("the People of Responsibility"), the notion that Christians (and Jews) are special religious minorities whose "protection" is ensured by a Muslim majority. "Forget that," says Sabella. He is eloquent with his reasons.

"A majority-minority relationship means either you don't have equal rights before the law or that you are dependent on the good will of the majority for these rights. At the dawn of the 21st century, this idea is simply no longer acceptable to Palestinian Christians. I exist in Palestine not because Muslims or the PA or Israel 'protects' me. I exist here by virtue of my birth, my ancestors and, above all, because I am a Palestinian. I don't owe this existence to anybody. The age of Ahl Ad-Dhimma is over."

[Guest yod]

Aside from the smallness of their numbers, a purely religious agenda "does not appeal to Palestinian Christians, whether it is Islamic or Christian," he says. "Our primary identification has always been and must remain that we are Palestinians and an integral part of Palestinian society in Israel and the Occupied Territories."

That is the problem.

My primary identification is that of being a citizen of the Kingdom of God!

Do you not realize that your Master is not Palestinian, Arab, Catholic, Lutheran, Roman, Islamic, or anything else besides jewish? You have to start looking at EVERY person as someone that Yeshua gave His life and blood for. You must stop trying a political solution because this is exactly what the zionists you oppose are seeking. I define zionist in a spiritual way but I recognize that there are extremist positions within the zionist movement and you have painted us all with the same brush.

Basically we believe the jews have a right to live. When you take a position opposed to ALL violence against them you will have the freedom to live beside them. Otherwise you will be cursed. Your arab "brothers" have shown that they don't want you.

I seriously feel for you. It must be terrible to live in the fear of Islamic persecution of christians....with conditions worsened by Israel's attempts to control the Islamic persecution of jews....but as long as you identify with those of your flesh instead of the Messiah who gave His life for you then you will be powerless, ineffective, and defeated.

Here are a few verses you should consider. I promise to pray for you. I promise to speak about your plight when given an opportunity....but nothing will happen as long as you fight this in the flesh

Romans 8:5

Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires.

12 Therefore, brothers, we have an obligation--but it is not to the sinful nature, to live according to it. 13 For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live, 14 because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. 15 For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, "Abba, Father." 16The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. 17 Now if we are children, then we are heirs--heirs of God and co-heirs with YESHUA, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.

18 I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. 19The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. 20For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21that[9] the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.

22We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? 25But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

1 Thessalonians 1:6

You became imitators of us and of the Lord; in spite of severe suffering, you welcomed the message with the joy given by the Holy Spirit.

1 Peter 4:13

But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed.

Please consider these things. They are spirit and they are life.