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Russ on the Sovereignty of God

In my last several posts, we began the process of looking at each of the components of TULIPS in order to see how well this model of salvation aligns with Scripture. In looking at Total Depravity, we agreed with much of the traditional position though we found no Scriptural evidence for: regeneration prior to faith; an understanding that death means spiritual inability to act; and that the non-believer is unable to exercise faith. Thus, we stated that a person will never seek God in their sinfulness. However, through the conviction of the Holy Spirit, God seeks each individual making them aware of their standing before Him. It is at this point that a person does or does not exercise their faith in Jesus. Once they believe, they are given life which is the presence of God through the Holy Spirit living in them. All the benefits of salvation are immediately bestowed upon them (though final fulfillment awaits our resurrection).

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Russ on Perseverance

Believe it or not, this post is near the 1,000 word maximum (woo hoo!!!). Since most of us will agree on this one (I haven’t seen too many Arminians involved in our discussions, so this should draw them out if they are out there), I’ll forego the beginning joke…just the fact that I’m staying in my word limit should make you smile :) .

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Russ on Irresistible Grace

Rather than starting every article with a joke, I decided to use a real life story which, often times, can be funnier than any joke.

I have a three year old son whose chief delight is playing in either dirt or mud. So much so, that we have needed to place limitations on his mud-playing. For instance, since we generally don’t allow him to play outside when it is wet and rainy, he found that he needed a source of water for his mud-making. So, he would often find a bucket, turn on the faucet that is outside our house, fill the bucket and go off to his mud-making. Of course, once his use for the faucet was over, it was forgotten, and rather than shutting it off, within a short amount of time we would have gallons of water flowing down our driveway. To remedy this, we placed rather strict parameters on the use of the outside faucet (i.e. NO usage except with Dad or Mom’s permission)…

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Russ on Unconditional Election

WARNING: I?m sure some people felt that after my last post that I deceived them into reading far more than the typical 1,000 word entry into a blog. I did this by inserting them into the middle of a dialogue which removed both introduction and prefatory material. It was not my intent to deceive?and I ask for forgiveness. It is my promise this time that by reading the material after the statement that says IT DOESN’T MATTER AS LONG AS WE LOVE EACH OTHER that you will be reading far more than 1,000 words. Don?t actually read that statement because it is the punch line to a joke and you may actually be drawn in to the material below that really has absolutely nothing to do with the actual topic, is really nothing more than the crazy connection in my bowl-of-spaghetti-like mind of ?election? and ?electricity?, and thus exponentially increases the words you will read. So, just to be clear, read all the material after IT DOESN’T MATTER AS LONG AS WE LOVE EACH OTHER and you will be able to stick far closer to the 1,000 word maximum (though, it?s not really even close).

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Russ on Total Depravity

WARNING: I’m told that most bloggers will not read more than 1,000 words without beginning to skim the article. If you are one of these people, you need to skip to the section below that states ONLY A THOUSAND MORE WORDS TO GO. If, on the other hand, you are someone who doesn’t like long introductions, and just need to skip to the “meat” of the article, you?ll want to scroll to the section that starts THE POINT WHERE THE ARTICLE ACTUALLY BEGINS.

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