Re: [TruthTalk] Christians' authority over nature

[Judy Taylor]

In a message dated 8/24/2004 2:16:55 PM Pacific Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Remember it is Jesus who said ...be it unto you according to Your faith, not His power etc. When Jesus came down from the mount of transfiguration and the father pleaded with Him to heal his son in this manner '...but if thou canst do anything, have compassion on us and, help us. Jesus said unto him, if thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth...' Mk. 9:22-23.   jt: The rest of the story is that the man humbled himself before the Lord following which Jesus cast a deaf and dumb spirit out of his son.  The son was having seizures and this spirit would throw him into the fire.  Is nobody afflicted with these kinds of spirits today? John writes: Faith, our faith, is not the only consideration, is it?   I mean, you have the parable of the woman who gets what she wants because of her constant and unrelenting requests.    jt: Persistence is evidence of some kind of faith - in my understanding at least ie: If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try, again.    We have the man, the father, in the above text admitting to a lack of faith ("I believe, help me in my unbelief" v 24).   jt: He believed enough to come in the first place, he was just covering all the bases.   We have the fact that Christians are no more healthy, live no longer, are  delivered from the mouths of lions and the wicked no more frequently than others.      jt: Why?  This ought not to be.  What about our Covenant Promises?  We are supposed to have a better Covenant with better Promises than Israel - which should include healing and deliverance because their Covenant included both so long as they walked in it. Covenant breakers don't get much from God.  Actually God told Israel that if they went whoring after other Gods and broke the Covenant they had with Him that they would look worse than the other nations, and people would walk by and hiss at them saying "Where is their God?" because of their pitiful state (Jer 18:16, Jer 19:4-8, Deut 28:20-25, Isa 65:11)   Understand, that I do believe very much in the power of God and the miraculous.     jt: But not for us today?    But I have watched as my brethren  (Foursquare Intern'l) try to fine tune some formulaic fantasy ("you didn't have enough faith,"  "your life must not have the degree of holiness pleasing to God,"  "have you received the spirit with evidences of speaking in tongues,"  " God only answers for xxxxxx result (physical healing, spiritual whatever, never mechanical considerations such as your car or refrigerator or ?") that would open the door to God's  supply of physical blessing.   jt: I don't know about the Foursquare but I do know that Christians in general are passive and unwilling to be like the   importune woman, pressing in.  We give up too easily (and this includes me more than I'd like to admit) making us sitting ducks for the one whose sole purpose is to kill, steal, and destroy.    I am interested in a discussion of this rather than receiving an attack claiming I am not a believer of sorts. John Smithson   jt: No attack John, but how about a challenge to the status quo?