Work Out Your Salvation

	"Whoever gives thought to the Word will discover good, and blessed is he who trusts in the Lord, " Proverbs 16:20.
	What does it mean to 'give thought to the Word', or as in Jude 17, 'Consider the Word of God'? It means that we need to be daily reading, meditating, and memorizing the Scripture! Jude 20 says that we need to be building ourselves up in holiness- Working out our salvation. This is what a believer does. Do we really believe this, or do we see these people as seminary students or missionaries or pastors or ministers? According to the Word, this is not a characteristic of some super/sub Christian (as Bruce Walker put it), it is the responsibility of everyone who has been saved by grace through Jesus Christ. We need to be renewing our minds with the Word of God. We need to know the books of the Bible, know the ideas of each book, know about salvation and how it works, and know about being a new creation (Col. 3). We need to be working out our salvation with the continuing grace of repentance. Unconfessed sin grieves God and clouds our discernment. It hinders our growth. We need to be in prayer. We need to be praying that God's will be done. To know God's will, however, means we need to know the Word. That is the way we know God's will. The revelation of His will was completed with Scripture. We must know it to know His will!! Be devoted to prayer- speak to our Creator. These were the truths taught out of Jude at the retreat. They are truths we should all be reminded of so that we don't become slothful Christians caught off guard by a catastrophic event or unable to answer an inquisitive non-believer or unable to discern unbiblical teaching that seeps into our church or home. We must be on guard and ready. This is not the job of a super, extraordinary Christian, but the job of all believers.

She's 2!

Happy
April 1st birthday, Rose! You're 2 now!

Locks of Love

Tessa has been asking me for about 3 months if she could give her hair to Locks of Love. This is an organization that makes wigs for children under 18 who loose their hair because of diseases. I gave her a little time to make sure it was a real desire, but after that long of asking, I told her she could- after Easter pictures. She is very excited about her decision and wrote to Locks of Love and told them that she hoped her hair would go to someone special.