Trying to quit

If anyone is reading this, can you please pray for my husband and I? We've been trying to quit smoking ever since we started.

Please do not judge, but please pray.

For HIS glory.

Are you pondering what I'm pondering?

• What does it feel like to be saved? Does such a feeling exist? Or does feeling saved simply mean that you believe in God's promises?

To be a Christian is a call to suffer...

The difference between believers & unbelievers [speaking of suffering/death]:

"For them, the pain is fundamental and the joy is superficial because it won't last. For us, the pain is superficial and the joy is fundamental."

-Steve Saint

http://www.desiringgod.org/library/sermons/01/051301.html

...so that no one may boast

If I love you, I desire to please you. Not out of duty, but out of love. If I love you, I will seek your pleasure, your happiness and your joy. If I love you, I will sacrifice my time, my life, and my heart for you.

This is how the Christian heart lives. It does not seek God out of duty. It seeks God out of love. The Christian heart loves to please God, it loves sacrificing it's time, it’'s life, and it’'s whole being for God.

I believe we are saved by faith alone. "“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God..."-–Eph. 2:8 (my emphasis added)

I take this verse literally. Some don't, and I am not sure why.

When God chose to save His sheep, He did so in a way that would eliminate boasting. There is nothing by our own efforts that can possibly save us. It is purely a gift from God.

To those who say, "“If we are saved by faith alone, that would give us freedom to sin! After all, we don't have to obey His commandments if it is only by faith that we are saved!"”

This is a lie! A complete misunderstanding of the Good News Paul was preaching:

"Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?”" Paul asks in Romans 6:1,2 and answers, "“By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?" "Those who are born of God and love Jesus cannot walk up to Jesus as He hangs on the cross and say, “I know that you are suffering for my sins and that it is your dying wish that I sin no more. But there i’s this one need that I have that I can only satisfy by sinning and so I hope you understand as I thrust this other sword into your side. There now. I sure am glad that every time I do that your blood forgives me.” " Those who have been born of God cannot think like that.
(Quote taken from John Piper)

If I love God, and I do...it is my greatest desire to please Him, to love Him and to give my life to Him. I cannot justify my sin, so that “grace may abound.

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come!"” 2 Corinthians 5:17