{"id":7021,"date":"2014-05-25T01:00:49","date_gmt":"2014-05-25T05:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/allandouglas.dougbittinger.com\/blog\/?p=7021"},"modified":"2025-04-21T01:56:39","modified_gmt":"2025-04-21T05:56:39","slug":"death-defying-faith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/death-defying-faith\/","title":{"rendered":"DEATH DEFYING FAITH"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Calvin<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/strong>How does one die who never prays nor talks to God about anything?\u00a0 How does one approach death when there has been no effort to claim God’s death defying promises?\u00a0 Surely it must be a shock to one’s spiritual system to face the unknown with an unknown God.\u00a0 The trauma of death is too much for our human resources alone.\u00a0 The thoughts of dying requires us to have some serious thoughts about God.\u00a0 Our fragile understanding of our departure from this life is proof that we need more than the human intellect to guide us into eternity.\u00a0 <\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We are not equipped to face death with calloused indifference and that too is a part of God’s grace.\u00a0 He requires us to have sober thoughts about our eternal destiny and then offers us a place He has gone to prepare.\u00a0 He frightens us with the prospects of entering the darkness all alone and then He promises to be with us always.\u00a0 He lures us to the edge of life with resurrection hope and bids us come unto Him and find rest.\u00a0 <\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Our hope\u00a0is a matter of faith and acceptance.\u00a0 He does not force His house of “many mansions” upon us.\u00a0 He does not walk beside us as an uninvited presence.\u00a0 It is a simple gospel of receiving what Jesus has to offer and we complicate it greatly when we try to earn it.\u00a0 Heaven is a gift we do not deserve, therefore, dying as well as living is a matter of grace.\u00a0 <\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Only with Christ can we face death with the assurance that God who called us into life has something special for us in death.\u00a0 Who knows what we might grow to become in the hereafter.\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    How does one die who never prays nor talks to God about anything?  How does one approach death when there has been no effort to claim God’s death defying promises?  Surely it must be a shock to one’s spiritual system to face the unknown with an unknown God.  The trauma of death is too much … Continue reading “DEATH DEFYING FAITH”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[78,57],"class_list":["post-7021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-matters-of-faith","tag-christian","tag-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7021"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7021\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19160,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7021\/revisions\/19160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}