What is the difference between believing in your heart when praying the sinner’s prayer and just telling Jesus that you believe? Or is there a difference?

If God cannot look at sin or be in the presence of sin, how was Satan able to appear before him and ask about Job?

I see that your position is that someone can believe there are other sinless persons that have existed throughout human history, and still be born again through faith alone in Jesus. I am wondering if you think a person can pray to Mary and to the various saints and also be a born-again Christian? Does praying to others besides Jesus, indicate a lack of faith in and understanding of who Jesus He is and what He has uniquely done through His death and resurrection on our behalf? Does praying to others also a indicate a denial of Him as the only possible mediator between the sinner and God the Father because of His unique sinlessness and deity?

I am having a hard time imagining an indwelt believer, not grasping the basic understanding of the unique sinlessness of Jesus and why only He is able to mediate between sinners and God. That’s almost like saying the Holy Spirit isn’t doing His job.

Thank you for your recent articles on the subject of prayer. I had been troubled about why the prayer section in my local Christian bookstore is so large.

When the Lord Jesus had his earthly ministry, did He ever say “No” to anyone who came to Him, asking (praying to) Him for help, healing, sight, hearing, speech, wine for a wedding, food, etc?

He certainly is saying “No” a lot since then, and that has me troubled, as He is “the same yesterday, today, and forever.” “What is too hard” for Him? So maybe it is the institution of prayer that has changed? Does the Bible tell us everything about God, or only what He thinks we need to know?

He told us that we were to have the faith the size of a mustard seed, not that of pseudo-theologians who appeal to “original languages” to hedge on the prayer promises. If faith “is a gift of God, not of man, lest no one should boast.”(clearly this verse refers to faith as the gift, since grace is by very definition a gift from God, that to mention it would be silly) then how and why do I need to have more faith for my prayers to be answered if the very faith that He requires, is a gift from Him???

Perhaps the best answer is “I don’t know”. “That’s God’s business.” He gave us so many prayer promises, with “whosoevers” and “whatsoevers”, but evidently, that has changed. I find it troubling.

I was hoping you could shed some light on two scriptures for me if you could:

The first being Ecclesiastes 12:6, what specifically are these objects that are being destroyed i.e. the silver cord?

The second is Amos 5:2, why does God say that Israel is fallen never to rise again?

Thank you so much for your help as always.

I was having a talk with my pastor about the belief that Mary was sinless, a view as you know held by Catholics as declared by the ineffable God decree of 1854 and the idea of the Immaculate Conception of Mary.

I was wondering if you thought that a person who believes Mary was sinless can also be a Christian. Does the view of Mary being sinless take away from Christ’s glory? Ineffable God does stress that Mary remained sinless by the power of God and not by her own deeds, however does this even change anything?

I just read your response to a question about gifts and had some of my own. Do gifts change? From my experience I think they do based on what God desires to happen in both my life and how I interact with those around me. I see some of the change being based on my growth as a Christian and maybe some based on gaps in the Church I attend. My wife and I recently took a class in Church on the spiritual gifts. In that class we covered about 13 or 14 of them in the time frame of the class and then took a “gifts” test at the end. One of the things which struck me was I had one or two which stood out (was strong in) but others that I had some affinity for (not quite as strongly inclined). I also saw that what I had today (at the time of the evaluation) was not even close to what I saw in my life when I was younger in age and Christian walk as well as single. Is this biblical?

I know that Jesus is my Savior, and I know that the only way to get saved is to believe in Him and His death on the cross for my sins. I have been wrestling with Satan, who is trying to convince me that I am not saved because I don’t have enough faith in what Christ did, and therefore I have to do more to keep my salvation. I know none of this is true, but how can I convince my heart of this and get Satan out of my head?

I don’t understand the apparent contradiction in 1 John 1:8-10 versus 1 John 3:6-9. Am I misunderstanding something, if we claim we have not sinned we make God out to be a liar, but if we continue to sin this is evidence that we are not born of God? I know that I am a saint who sins … but please enlightenment me on these verses.

I have been troubled over a book I started reading (and decided not to finish) a couple of weeks ago. I believe the author is grossly misinterpreting the Kingdom Parables, the Bema Judgment and the Church’s place/role in the Millennial/Heavenly Kingdoms. Furthermore, our sanctification “process” is equated with our Kingdom rewards, and actually states that the “outer darkness” and “weeping and gnashing of teeth” is about “believers” who are cast out of the presence of God after the Bema judgment because they failed to achieve a certain level of sanctification.

The focus is on Matthew’s parables from chapters 8:11-12, 22:13, 24:50-51, 25:12, and 25:30, and before listing these parables the author states, “Always remember the ones who were not able to inherit:”. Then the author says, after the list, “These passages are all talking about Christians! And yet none of them inherited the Kingdom. Yes, they were all in it. But they were in some other region, some other place -the darkness outside – and thus separated from the light of the Lord’s presence.”

The book goes out of its way to state that the person is still saved, and still goes to Heaven, but because they did not follow Christ faithfully they will dwell in a part of Heaven away from Him and forfeit any rewards of reigning with Him in His Kingdom.