Faith: Practical, powerful, rooted in sonship, and NOT in emotionalism « Project: Mathetes

For those who follow this blog (thanks to both of you :) ), you may have noticed I've changed the "tag line" or description of this blog. I've been inspired by other blogs to copy their style expand my horizons a bit in this blog. While I started out thinking this would be something more of a "Bible study" blog, I've come to realize that pulling together concepts from personal experience, supported by the Bible, might make my writing more relatable to others. I'm not saying that personal experience trumps the Bible … God forbid, as the King James says! On the other hand, describing how God whacks me on the head touches me through the Scripture is probably less dry and more easily understood by others.

Besides, I feel it's where God's leading me, so there. :)

Having said all that, I've started encountering tons of other Christ-centered blogs, as well as a few "flakes" out there. I don't like following the "flakes," so I'll probably leave them alone. There's one blog post, though, that expresses an idea perfectly! This article's title is a link to it, or you can use the one below:

Faith: Practical, powerful, rooted in sonship, and NOT in emotionalism « Project: Mathetes (Note: as of August, 2011, the blog has been shut down over concerns for the safety of the author & his family. See my post on Cyber-Persecution for details. I'll have to see if I saved a copy of the article and summarize it here or get permission to make it available.)

I first encountered the "Word of Faith" movement through someone I met online, on a pre-Internet system known as American People/Link. Okay, the Internet was sort-of kind-of in existence, but not to the home. These were the days of online services such as CompuServe and America Online. (For more about this period, see the Wikipedia Internet article's History section.) PLink (as it was commonly called) was one of the early "chat room" systems that added forums and other content later. One fellow from Georgia found me on there and on CompuServe. He read quite a bit by authors such as Kenneth Copeland, Kenneth Hagin, and Charles Capps. He "graciously" sent me a sampling of their books, including Capps' The Tongue: A Creative Force.

The bottom line of the whole "speaking = creating" heresy is that God "used His Faith" when He "spoke the universe into existence." Since we are "made in the image of God," we, too, can use the Force Faith to speak things, events, and situations into existence. Don't "speak negative," though, or that will come into existence as well!

This allows us puny humans to be like God, or like "little gods."

Sound familiar? I seem to recall an angel in Heaven who was cast down, along with a third of the angelic host, for wanting to supplant God. This ex-angel, now known as "the devil," Satan, the serpent in the garden, and a wide array of other names & terms, still wants to throw God off His throne and seat himself in it.

Is that what he wants to do with us? No way! He is a liar, and the father of lies (John 8:43-44). His purpose is to steal, kill, and destroy (John 10:7-13). He wants to obliterate everything that is special to God — especially you & me! You can't sell your soul to him, because he hates it. His purpose is like that of the man who searches for the finest example of art made by his enemy, only to burn it out of existence forever. He doesn't want you to prosper by the world's standards or by God's standard. He will, however, "fake it" until you're deceived to the point where it's too late to see the truth.

This is precisely what the heretics from "Copeland-Hagin" are doing to hundreds of thousands of people worldwide! They and so many other false teachers are deceiving people into the devil's hands, and away from God's truth. Some of them may very well be deceived themselves, perhaps by the "angel" that Copeland claims he hears. (Remember that third of the angels that fell with Satan? Yeah, we tend to call them "demons" now, but that doesn't make them any less angelic.)

True faith is vibrant and connects us with God. The false power of the "Word of Faith" disconnects us from the One Who loves us.