{"id":6889,"date":"2016-02-04T02:09:13","date_gmt":"2016-02-04T02:09:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pjhmail.wordpress.com\/?p=6889"},"modified":"2016-02-04T02:09:13","modified_gmt":"2016-02-04T02:09:13","slug":"strength-in-the-truth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/6889\/strength-in-the-truth\/","title":{"rendered":"Strength in the Truth"},"content":{"rendered":"

Good morning John,<\/span><\/p>\n

I am loving reading through the New Testament together like we are.\u00a0 The things that Paul taught are so simple, and so rich, and so full of the love of God for people.\u00a0 I think it is such a wonderful thing that we don’t have to depend on our own strength, intelligence, status, or money to please God (in fact, those things just get in the way), and that “God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise”.<\/span><\/p>\n

I hadn’t realized it until you talked about it last night, but I have never once wondered if one of my natural family members was right about something they had rejected from me about Jesus and what he did for me.\u00a0 I never even had the thought, “Well, maybe they’re right about such-and-such.”\u00a0 I knew what Jesus was teaching me was right, because I could feel it, and I didn’t learn it on my own.\u00a0 \u00a0I had already tried, for years, to figure things out – figure life out – on my own, with my own wisdom and intelligence.\u00a0 And it got me nowhere but deeper in sin and despair.\u00a0 But after Jesus touched me, and opened my eyes to the truth, and baptized me with the Spirit, I could feel the Spirit in me saying “amen” whenever I learned a new truth about God.\u00a0 It was like coming out of a dark tunnel into the bright sunlight.<\/span><\/p>\n

At first (last night), this was such a wonderful, exciting thing to me to realize, and when the power of God touched me, it felt so good.\u00a0 And so cleansing!\u00a0 But then, a very humbling feeling of thankfulness came over me that brought tears to my eyes.\u00a0 Jesus reached down from heaven in 2007 and touched me, and gave me a desire to know him.\u00a0 And I didn’t want him, nor was I looking for him!\u00a0 And ever since, he has taught me, helped me, encouraged me and strengthened me – both personally and through the pastor and family that he put me with.\u00a0 HE is the one who has done it.\u00a0 And I am so very thankful that he did, and gave me a love for it at the same time.<\/span><\/p>\n

Thank you John.\u00a0 I am very much looking forward to laying my eyes on you in person next week, along with Barbara, Rob, Donna, Token and the kids, and Earl and Betty.\u00a0 When I first moved into my apartment nearly six years ago, I used to daydream about you chartering a bus and bringing everyone out here.\u00a0 I had even picked out the perfect little community center nearby that we could rent out for a meeting.\u00a0 Ha!\u00a0 Your visit next week is pretty close to that – I’m glad Jesus did that for me. \ud83d\ude42<\/span><\/p>\n

Vince<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Good morning John, I am loving reading through the New Testament together like we are.\u00a0 The things that Paul taught are so simple, and so rich, and so full of the love of God for people.\u00a0 I think it is such a wonderful thing that we don’t have to depend on our own strength, intelligence, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-netmail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6889"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6889\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}