Back to http://corbanmt.blogspot.com
THE WAY OF FAITH
Chapter 11 of the Letter to Jews http://laparola.net/ outlines the theme of a people of faith in what he hopes is still unable to see and know-confidence following his God, of course I hope will not disappointed. The essential features of the chapter are:
"Only the sacrifice of Abel offered in faith, Enoch was pleasing to God he had so much faith in God who knew no death, but was caught up in the sky, and this certainly remind us that faith-ce driver closer to God, Noah believed the word of God of the impending flood, so the axis-curing his salvation and his family, and this despite the neighbors unbelievers mocked them see the intent to build the ark. By faith Abraham left his homeland and began walking towards the land God had promised to his descendants. Abraham's faith was tested when he was ordered to sacrifice his only son, Isaac. Isaac was a man of faith, as were his son Jacob and Jacob's son, Joseph. All these ancestors died fully trusting in what God had promised, but not had the joy of seeing the promise made. Moses would have been able to enjoy life at the court of Pharaoh, but by faith, and chose the path of suffering-ties of solidarity with his people. It was through their faith in God that the Israelites did break down the walls of Jericho and captured the promised land. The same could be said to Gideon, Samson, Samuel, David and the prophets. It was always and only faith in God that allowed them to subject the enemy to establish the kingdom and even to perform miracles. "
Hebrews trace the path of faith that leads to life and person of Jesus and concludes the previous millennium revelation addressed to the Word incarnate in Christ.
"We, therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, we set aside every weight and sin that so easily embraces us and let us run with perseverance the race that is made, he looked at Jesus, the one that creates faith and make it perfect. For the joy that was set before him he endured the cross, despising the shame, and sat at the right hand of the throne of God. "
faith is experienced in their evolutionary life. Those who have walked the path that leads to God, can begin to understand, to realize how the Lord has led from the start to the point where it is now.
For simplification outlined four stages in the journey of faith.
1. FAITH ALONE
At this stage of the faith experience of God is unique, the greatest virtue is the loyalty-loyalty to religious leaders, without worrying much of the other . The greatest effort is to preserve the pure and stay away from groups who profess other religious views, considered false and dangerous. We cling to symbols that allow you to feel the elect and avoids becoming contaminated by different ideas and practices. A faith of this kind is typical of children, who often consider true only what they are told by the father or mother, but not in a position to compete with the views of others and therefore exclude them from their conscience.
mentality "we-they" leads us to believe that since it was elected, the others are not, so you are allowed to hate, or even destroy, what is thought not loved by God Scripture shows us clearly archaic morality, connected with this stage of faith, has often led the Israelites to feel justified in their actions to exterminate those who did not belong to their ethnicity. Today many Christians are ready to defend their religious views with nuclear warheads.
It 'clear that at this stage it has to do with a child of faith and a kind of archaic thinking. It 's just a beginning. The divine call invites us to a deeper level of faith and a higher stage of morality.
2. FAITH ALLIANCE
mentality "we-they" leads us to believe that since it was elected, the others are not, so you are allowed to hate, or even destroy, what is thought not loved by God Scripture shows us clearly archaic morality, connected with this stage of faith, has often led the Israelites to feel justified in their actions to exterminate those who did not belong to their ethnicity. Today many Christians are ready to defend their religious views with nuclear warheads.
It 'clear that at this stage it has to do with a child of faith and a kind of archaic thinking. It 's just a beginning. The divine call invites us to a deeper level of faith and a higher stage of morality.
2. FAITH ALLIANCE
Following Moses in the desert and putting their trust in God who had freed them from slavery in Egypt, the Israelites felt to be loved and to be a chosen people, to walk in the faith of their forefather Abraham and believe in their election by Yahweh. At Sinai, the desert, they responded to his call, and entered into a covenant with him.
God's love for Israel has always been infinite, they have experienced only in the form of a preferential Agreement, a transaction, a deal. The love of God in their regard has always been unconditional, but then they were only able to hear the announcement of a conditional love, presented in the form of a deal, or at least such as the inte-Sero: if they had observed the their part of the alliance, in obedience to the commandments given by Yahweh Moses, God would protect them and ushered safely into the promised land.
In this kind of faith in God, you think you should stipu-lar kind of agreement, for which God will do its part if the man will do his. God save the man if he will obey his commandments, and if not he will be punished. This is a typical mentality of do ut des . It is believed that it will be good if we love God and you will be bad God does not love you. It is believed that there is a way to win the love of God, to get the prize in heaven, where the morality is to get enough merits and demerits rather avoid in order to be saved at the time of death. The merits are to do good by the rules, while the demerits consists in breaking the rules and commit sins.
We are facing a kind of dualist faith and selfish individual.
The virtue of this stage is more important than obedience: obedience to the commandments, obedience to the rules. In 'Old Testa-ment, in late Judaism, there was a real proliferation of commandments, the scribes, adding all the various "must-must not be" of the Bible, had arrived at the tidy sum of 613 commandments . The Pharisees believed that perfection consisted in obeying your every detail of the law. Many Christians still have this mentality. It is a stage through which every child passes during his psycho-logical and religious, when he became aware of the rules, like the children's games based on the rules and feels very frustrated and even angry when other children the break , not knowing how to react to the king in such a situation.
E 'this is a kind of faith and self-protective autogratificante and often prevents further development.
growth in faith demands that go beyond the conservative position until you get rid of any false comparative trial in the status quo. (It 's one of the reasons why Jesus was so hard lawyers and rich).
Church history shows clearly what is the risk run by those who allow themselves caught up in this stage of religious development and identify the faith with obedience to the commandments and worship with the proper performance of rituals. Those who do not obey the rules or do not worship God in the way we do are shunned.
In its worst form, this type of religion becomes a sort of pagan practice. The people are Christian in name but in fact practically atheistic. Do not really know the Lord and not allow God to save her and gets caught in a form of religion centered on itself and for convenience, prisoners of their own fears and prejudices of their cul-tural. Such a religion gives people the impression that they are good together, but it is only semblance of goodness. He is so confident of being right that he no longer feels any need for God which calls us to go out of ourselves to love those who are different. The God of all those who are stuck at this stage of their development is a God of religious opinion and ordinary it, a great cop up there in heaven, that records everything that people do and say, God is even a sell- cannot and belligerent, which justifies the punishment of those who break the rules and approve the suffering of the wicked from the righteous. This is a larger disk image origin false and empty, an idol. The God who is Lord, the God who is truly God, can only be seen through the eyes of a deeper faith.
3. FAITH PROPHETIC
God's love for Israel has always been infinite, they have experienced only in the form of a preferential Agreement, a transaction, a deal. The love of God in their regard has always been unconditional, but then they were only able to hear the announcement of a conditional love, presented in the form of a deal, or at least such as the inte-Sero: if they had observed the their part of the alliance, in obedience to the commandments given by Yahweh Moses, God would protect them and ushered safely into the promised land.
In this kind of faith in God, you think you should stipu-lar kind of agreement, for which God will do its part if the man will do his. God save the man if he will obey his commandments, and if not he will be punished. This is a typical mentality of do ut des . It is believed that it will be good if we love God and you will be bad God does not love you. It is believed that there is a way to win the love of God, to get the prize in heaven, where the morality is to get enough merits and demerits rather avoid in order to be saved at the time of death. The merits are to do good by the rules, while the demerits consists in breaking the rules and commit sins.
We are facing a kind of dualist faith and selfish individual.
The virtue of this stage is more important than obedience: obedience to the commandments, obedience to the rules. In 'Old Testa-ment, in late Judaism, there was a real proliferation of commandments, the scribes, adding all the various "must-must not be" of the Bible, had arrived at the tidy sum of 613 commandments . The Pharisees believed that perfection consisted in obeying your every detail of the law. Many Christians still have this mentality. It is a stage through which every child passes during his psycho-logical and religious, when he became aware of the rules, like the children's games based on the rules and feels very frustrated and even angry when other children the break , not knowing how to react to the king in such a situation.
E 'this is a kind of faith and self-protective autogratificante and often prevents further development.
growth in faith demands that go beyond the conservative position until you get rid of any false comparative trial in the status quo. (It 's one of the reasons why Jesus was so hard lawyers and rich).
Church history shows clearly what is the risk run by those who allow themselves caught up in this stage of religious development and identify the faith with obedience to the commandments and worship with the proper performance of rituals. Those who do not obey the rules or do not worship God in the way we do are shunned.
In its worst form, this type of religion becomes a sort of pagan practice. The people are Christian in name but in fact practically atheistic. Do not really know the Lord and not allow God to save her and gets caught in a form of religion centered on itself and for convenience, prisoners of their own fears and prejudices of their cul-tural. Such a religion gives people the impression that they are good together, but it is only semblance of goodness. He is so confident of being right that he no longer feels any need for God which calls us to go out of ourselves to love those who are different. The God of all those who are stuck at this stage of their development is a God of religious opinion and ordinary it, a great cop up there in heaven, that records everything that people do and say, God is even a sell- cannot and belligerent, which justifies the punishment of those who break the rules and approve the suffering of the wicked from the righteous. This is a larger disk image origin false and empty, an idol. The God who is Lord, the God who is truly God, can only be seen through the eyes of a deeper faith.
3. FAITH PROPHETIC
The prophets were the first to realize that the Israelites had a false conception of God when the Jews knew God, they thought that Yahweh was only the God of their nation and that his love in their con-fronts depended on the observance of the commandments. Only after the end of the monarchy, they realized that the Temple cult was less important than the worship of the heart and the love of God in their concerns did not depend on their ability to live in accordance with the requirements of the law.
The discovery that God loves unconditionally both the good and the bad, and sends rain on the just and the unjust, which has led the transition to a new dimension of faith. The Later Prophets and the Wisdom writers, alert to what God said to them at-large through the disasters which led to the end of the monarchy, were the first to realize this-and I'm discovering that God was with them and at times painful in those happy and that his love still in spite of their sins and the inability to perform the rites of worship in the Temple prescribed.
Yahweh loves Israel, even if high-Isra, just as the wife of Hosea, a prostitute in front of other gods. God patiently waits until the return and will not lacking in faith, even if Israel does not pay attention to his promises. He suffers when Israel goes into exile, and left to find the hour of need, pledging to join hands and bring back home, his people, once exiled.
The most beautiful picture of God's Old Testament is that of the suffering servant. The four songs of the Servant of Yahweh in the Book of Isaiah http://laparola.net emit a sound that becomes a melody and then will turn into a major theme of the New Testament. The God who has gone revealing over the centuries is a God of love and service. We are cer-tion created to know, love and serve God, but it seems that God yearns to know, love and serve us.
Despite all their insights into the depth of the love of God, the vision of the prophets was incomplete. They still imagine God "there FUO-ri," beyond the realm of men, as it exists at a distance. In their conception of salvation was the vision of a messiah who came from afar to win the wickedness of the world and restore order in things.
Beyond awareness of the prophets, that God is good and loves us unconditionally, we need a deeper faith, to which the Scriptures never speak clearly before the full New Testament revelation.
4. Incarnate faith
The discovery that God loves unconditionally both the good and the bad, and sends rain on the just and the unjust, which has led the transition to a new dimension of faith. The Later Prophets and the Wisdom writers, alert to what God said to them at-large through the disasters which led to the end of the monarchy, were the first to realize this-and I'm discovering that God was with them and at times painful in those happy and that his love still in spite of their sins and the inability to perform the rites of worship in the Temple prescribed.
Yahweh loves Israel, even if high-Isra, just as the wife of Hosea, a prostitute in front of other gods. God patiently waits until the return and will not lacking in faith, even if Israel does not pay attention to his promises. He suffers when Israel goes into exile, and left to find the hour of need, pledging to join hands and bring back home, his people, once exiled.
The most beautiful picture of God's Old Testament is that of the suffering servant. The four songs of the Servant of Yahweh in the Book of Isaiah http://laparola.net emit a sound that becomes a melody and then will turn into a major theme of the New Testament. The God who has gone revealing over the centuries is a God of love and service. We are cer-tion created to know, love and serve God, but it seems that God yearns to know, love and serve us.
Despite all their insights into the depth of the love of God, the vision of the prophets was incomplete. They still imagine God "there FUO-ri," beyond the realm of men, as it exists at a distance. In their conception of salvation was the vision of a messiah who came from afar to win the wickedness of the world and restore order in things.
Beyond awareness of the prophets, that God is good and loves us unconditionally, we need a deeper faith, to which the Scriptures never speak clearly before the full New Testament revelation.
4. Incarnate faith
The New Testament bears witness to a whole new dimension of faith, already announced in some of the prophecies of Jeremiah and Ezekiel and clearly expressed by the prophet Joel:
"After this, I will pour out my Spirit on everyone: your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions. " (2, 28).
"After this, I will pour out my Spirit on everyone: your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions. " (2, 28).
The Holy Spirit descends on Jesus after his baptism in the Jordan and the same Spirit filled the apostles of force on the day of Pentecost, but the first creature that embodied this new belief was that young woman who said, " Behold the servant of Gd , "was Mary, whom the angel announced the birth of the Messiah said his unconditional" yes " be done to me according to your word " (Lk 1:38) .
The last stage of faith to which God calls us is a total and unconditional yes to his request to be present in the world and the world through us. He wants to love others conditionally in- in us and through us, wants each of us in attaining the fullness of redemption, so you can make through us the world's salvation.
Those who live their faith at this level can be truly called of God means God wants His light shine through us, so our first response to its pre-call is simply to pay attention and remain open to his grace. Mo-we have to make them transparent to God so that he can shine through us. We must leave open the channel so that light can reach the world through us.
When the Word became incarnate God formed a body able to rise and enter into eternal life. Jesus was closely united to the Father, the source of his being, and called him Abba, the expression of very familiar as 'dad' or 'daddy', and was so open to be guided by the Father who followed him also in the inevitable conflict, suffering and in death, with full confidence that God would not have abandoned.
Wherever there is exchange of love, sharing life, healing and support offered to the weak-ness, a growing capacity to love God and act through us. Where the love of God is multiplied in a community of people who sacrifice, God is able to operate effectively through his Church. And 'the Spirit of God to pray through us and lead us to intimacy with the Father. When we act as a body, is the power of God acting through us. It 's another way of saying that God gives us life in the gifts of faith, hope and charity. So everything is a gift, all is grace. Recharged by opening-Doci these gifts, we become channels of God's grace
In prayer we tune-mo with the voice of God calling us to do His will and to join with him. With our choices and our actions that we identify the direction he has chosen for us and no matter what we do, we know going in the right direction if we feel that he will con-duce to a greater love, greater donation, and greater freedom.
In this stage of faith, the life-mind becomes incredibly simple, almost naive. We discover that God does not demand great things, he just wants to be great in us. If we let them, even God can do great things through us, without which we should strive for minimum-tion occur. We just Arren-DERC to him and put our trust in him at every step. We just hope he at any time. We just have to take seriously its promise and wait until it is fulfilled in our lives, making choices conform to it.
In faith, we know that God is within us and works through us. This makes us incredibly large. Not that we do something great, but-tiamo allow God to do great things in our lives.
If we respect the Lord and live in an attitude-to large 'with respect-wonder' in front of him that lives in us (this is the true meaning of 'fear of God'), in-put to its power to work through us. Doing so, we drop the arrogance and humility in us grow, we are satisfied and enriched by His love and that in contrast with what happens in the world around us so that men protect their power and bow to wealth. How many are already full of themselves can not receive what God has to give, and only those that are empty can be filled.
Only at this point in human faith can be recognized in the history of God's action for what it is realmen-yourself: the Spirit of God that transforms and redeems the world through the actions of those who surrender to re- Kingdom of God in their lives. The faithfulness of God enters fully into the story through the loyalty of their co-which place their trust in him and forgive. The mercy of God can shine upon all those who need it, through the mercy of those who agree to become servants of God 'is where begins the story of Jesus, the story of the men in He search, discover, open and walk with God
The last stage of faith to which God calls us is a total and unconditional yes to his request to be present in the world and the world through us. He wants to love others conditionally in- in us and through us, wants each of us in attaining the fullness of redemption, so you can make through us the world's salvation.
Those who live their faith at this level can be truly called of God means God wants His light shine through us, so our first response to its pre-call is simply to pay attention and remain open to his grace. Mo-we have to make them transparent to God so that he can shine through us. We must leave open the channel so that light can reach the world through us.
When the Word became incarnate God formed a body able to rise and enter into eternal life. Jesus was closely united to the Father, the source of his being, and called him Abba, the expression of very familiar as 'dad' or 'daddy', and was so open to be guided by the Father who followed him also in the inevitable conflict, suffering and in death, with full confidence that God would not have abandoned.
Wherever there is exchange of love, sharing life, healing and support offered to the weak-ness, a growing capacity to love God and act through us. Where the love of God is multiplied in a community of people who sacrifice, God is able to operate effectively through his Church. And 'the Spirit of God to pray through us and lead us to intimacy with the Father. When we act as a body, is the power of God acting through us. It 's another way of saying that God gives us life in the gifts of faith, hope and charity. So everything is a gift, all is grace. Recharged by opening-Doci these gifts, we become channels of God's grace
In prayer we tune-mo with the voice of God calling us to do His will and to join with him. With our choices and our actions that we identify the direction he has chosen for us and no matter what we do, we know going in the right direction if we feel that he will con-duce to a greater love, greater donation, and greater freedom.
In this stage of faith, the life-mind becomes incredibly simple, almost naive. We discover that God does not demand great things, he just wants to be great in us. If we let them, even God can do great things through us, without which we should strive for minimum-tion occur. We just Arren-DERC to him and put our trust in him at every step. We just hope he at any time. We just have to take seriously its promise and wait until it is fulfilled in our lives, making choices conform to it.
In faith, we know that God is within us and works through us. This makes us incredibly large. Not that we do something great, but-tiamo allow God to do great things in our lives.
If we respect the Lord and live in an attitude-to large 'with respect-wonder' in front of him that lives in us (this is the true meaning of 'fear of God'), in-put to its power to work through us. Doing so, we drop the arrogance and humility in us grow, we are satisfied and enriched by His love and that in contrast with what happens in the world around us so that men protect their power and bow to wealth. How many are already full of themselves can not receive what God has to give, and only those that are empty can be filled.
Only at this point in human faith can be recognized in the history of God's action for what it is realmen-yourself: the Spirit of God that transforms and redeems the world through the actions of those who surrender to re- Kingdom of God in their lives. The faithfulness of God enters fully into the story through the loyalty of their co-which place their trust in him and forgive. The mercy of God can shine upon all those who need it, through the mercy of those who agree to become servants of God 'is where begins the story of Jesus, the story of the men in He search, discover, open and walk with God
Back to: http://corbanmt.blogspot.com/
