My answer, quite frankly, is no I wouldn't. I "believe" it is only by His power ANY of us believes this, to the fallen mind this is foolishness. Right? Through man it's impossible, but through God...
My only personal picture of this is that my belief in the truth didn't go, Bible, obey, salvation, it went salvation Bible, obey (100% willingly by His power). Now the further I walk with Him, the deeper my understanding grows, and my love for Him and my desire to please Him grows right with it. In my experience so far.
My only personal picture of this is that my belief in the truth didn't go, Bible, obey, salvation, it went salvation Bible, obey (100% willingly by His power). Now the further I walk with Him, the deeper my understanding grows, and my love for Him and my desire to please Him grows right with it. In my experience so far.
Ultimately, I agree. God seeks all men, Rom. 1:18-32. Men respond to His truth. Apart from His seeking us first, as He explains in Rom. 1:18-32, no man would ever have the opportunity to be saved. As it says in that Romans passage, the non-religious lost suppress, reject, exchange the truth of God for a lie, choosing not to even retain any of the knowledge of Him that He writes into the hearts of every man.
The religious lost go to scriptures to justify what they want to believe as truth. Rom 10:1-3
The many who believe themselves to be Christians, the same many that are on the broad path that leads to destruction, the tares who have and do pretty much what the true Christians are doing, but who respond like dogs and pigs, and get angry when others question their infallible core beliefs/their version of Christianity, or simply ignore you because they know they already have unquestionably true core beliefs, who have stopped seeking, knocking, proving all things over and over again, altering their beliefs to fit the fullness of the truth rightly divided, are found in Mat. 7.
Ultimately though. everyone gets what they want from God Himself. People are given over to what they want to believe as truth if they do not receive a love of the truth that will drive them to avoid what all others do to hold fast to their beliefs "as" truth. But each man chooses their response to God's seeking of them.
2Th 2:10 and with all the deception of wickedness for those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved. 11 For this reason God will send upon them a deluding influence so that they will believe what is false, 12 in order that they all may be judged who did not believe the truth, but took pleasure in wickedness.
ALl of the other passages on how men choose to hold fast to what they want to believe "as" truth are included in this one. Atheist, religious non-Christian, believing yourself to be Christian, but failing the test, all is summarized here. Love truth and keep on doing what it takes to get to it eventually, or love your beliefs and hold fast to them. People stop seeking, knocking, proving all things over and over again, as a habit and way of life ... when they believe they have found. Yet God says that only those who keep on seeking, knocking, proving all things over and over again will find. If your beliefs are unquestionably true to the point where you would respond like those in Mat. 7:6 rather than 7:7-12, those who will receive the Holy Spirit in the parallel passage in Luke, then you will here the words of Jesus in Mat. 7:23.
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