God has no granchildren

As author and Christian activist Corrie ten Boom once said,  "God has no grandchildren."  We cannot inherit salvation from our parents.  In God's eyes, pedigree counts for nothing.  Who owns your faith?  Is it our country?  Your parents?  Your church?  Or is it your own?  If you come from a Christian family, praise God for the legacy of faith that taught you to discern truth early in life.  However, beware of the trap of complacency.  Remember that belonging to God is always rooted in a heart transformed by the Holy Spirit - never in one's ancestry.

[Extracted from  LIVING  Life  - September 2016]

Living faith

Faith without action is insincere, worthless and dead. Just like in James 2:15-17 recorded, "If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food. And one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit? Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.

Likewise, true and scriptural faith is always expressed in submission and obedience to God. Faith that continues stubborn and disobedience is dead faith that cannot save us from God's wrath and judgment.
Living faith is expressed outwardly in a continual walk of submission and obedience to God. Each act of obedience faith that we performed will developed and strengthened our faith and prepared us for our next test.

So as Christian, if we profess faith in Christ, we must be willing to identify ourselves actively with Christ's cause and Christ's messengers. We must also be willing to make a definite, open confession of our faith, which marks us out from all the unbelievers around us.

[This excerpt is taken from Foundational Truths For Christian Living by Derek Prince]

Faith or Hope

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. (Hebrew 11:1) KJV

There are two main ways in which faith differs from hope.

Firstly, hope is directed towards the future, but faith is established in the present. Hope is an attitude of expectancy concerning things that are yet to be, but faith is a substance - a confidence, something real and definite within us - that we possess here and now.

Secondly, hope is anchored in the realm of the mind; faith is anchored in the realm of the heart.
But let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation.

Notice that faith - together with love - is found in the region of the breast, that is, the region of the heart.  But hope is pictured as a helmet, in the region of the head, or mind.  Thus, hope is a mental attitude of expectancy concerning the future, faith is a condition of the heart, producing within us here and now something so real that it can be described by the word substance.

[This excerpt is taken from Foundational Truths For Christian Living by Derek Prince]