Donıt Get Tripped Up

(Psalms 119:105) Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path.

Today (Itıs Tuesday, September 9, 2003 as I write this.), Iıd just arrived home from the Circuit Pastorsı Meeting (Weıd seen a video and had a nice discussion on Mormonism.), stopped into the house to get something to drink and say hello to Teresa and Hannah, and I was about to go back to the office when the doorbell rang. I answered the door to find a man and woman with a copy of Awake Magazine in their hands, one of the magazines of the Jehovahıs Witnesses. Recognizing this as a golden opportunity to share the love of Christ (How often do people knock on your door to talk about Jesus?!), I listened to what they had to say. Having said their spiel, they were about to leave, when I stopped them: ³Wait, I have a question for you. What do you believe about how to be saved?²

What followed was a nice long talk about salvation, works, and grace through Christıs sacrifice on the cross. They talk about Jesusı ransom sacrifice, but they still believe that you need to earn your salvation, even though Jesus already earned it for us.

Now, I just talked about the cults a couple newsletters ago, so Iım not going to spend a lot of time on their beliefs, but what struck me after they left (Still sadly clinging to their works for the time being), was that the key to sharing your faith and standing up for what you believe in is memorization. I by no means have even a small percentage of the Bible memorized, In fact, I recited two key verses to them that I kept going back to repeatedly, and honestly, those two were all I really needed:

(Romans 3:28) For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law.
and
(Ephesians 2:8, 9) For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-- not by works, so that no one can boast.

I shared these with them, and they kept saying, ³But you still have to do something!²

³Šapart from works of the Law²

³But you have to have faith!²

³Right, and faith not from yourselves, it is the gift of God.²

The entire conversation kept going back to those two passages.

So whatıs the point? If I hadnıt had those two (or similar) passages memorized, I couldnıt have so firmly stood up for salvation by grace through faith apart from works of the law. Itıs very simple. Am I telling you this to toot my own horn? No, Iım a sinner saved by grace, but here you see the value of memorizing. Does memorizing earn you anything? No, salvation is a gift of God, but studying Godıs Word and committing it to heart will enable you to stand up for what you believe in and lead others to Christ. Today, God planted a seed of faith in those hearts by His Word, and His Word does not return empty.

One other thing about dealing with cults: Jehovahıs Witnesses have their own translation of the Bible. When they show you a passage, have your own Bible handy to look it up, and when you look it up, read the context of the passage theyıre citing: at least the paragraph before the verse, the verseıs paragraph, and the following paragraph, so you can determine what the writer is really talking about. Read more if you need to, and donıt let them rush you. (Look up the passages I quoted above, too!)