James 5:16 “Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.” (KJV)
If you want to know how to confess your sins, it is as easy as confessing your faults. I will give you examples of how this works.
But first, I would like to present a different way of looking at what we consider sin is. We all have faults. However, we don’t really look at faults as sin. We look at them as things we need to improve on. This is true, but it doesn’t make us realize that our faults are sin and so we won’t recognize the need to confess them.
The bible talks about sins of “omission” and sins of “commission.” Omission being sin we commit without trying to or even without knowing it. I am not talking about addictions. These are not sins of omission. Sins of commission we know it is wrong to do, but consciously make choice that this is what we plan to do. Sins of commission have to do with what you know.
The bible tells us if we truly know God, we won’t live a life of sin. Sure, we will still have faults. But this is why we pray daily to be forgiven. And we have to practice forgiving others if we want to be forgiven.
In addition to confessing our sins to God, the bible also instructs us to confess our faults to each other so that we can be healed. What do you recognize in your life as a fault today? Then, you can go to God and confess that to him.
Did you also know that you can be in an ordinary conversation talking to someone about what you would like to improve about you? This is confession your fault. But it is good to share your faults only with someone who can provide you with proper guidance or encouragement for getting better.
I wanted to start eating right everyday to improve my health. I also wanted to start a routine exercise. I told my daughter about it. Now she makes sure I am staying on track by challenging me and regularly asking questions about what I have eaten for the day.
Confessing your faults to others, gets things out in the open and opens up the opportunity for others to help you. You then have a support system.
If you have financial problems because of your spending habits, you can talk to someone who is good at managing money and let them know that you would like to be better. They can help you by putting a plan in place for you to follow and you have to cooperate.
If you have emotional issues or personality conflicts with people, you can confess that issue to someone close to you and the can help you get over those things.
The key to confessing your faults is confessing to the right person or people. You want to talk to someone who genuinely cares about your well being and has the right knowledge to help you get better. Sometimes people who love us don’t have the answers and so the answers we get are inaccurate and don’t benefit us. This is why I stress this.
Lastly, even if you don’t know who to talk to and your desire is to get better, you can Pray to God and ask Him to lead you to the right person or information that will help you.
If you are willing to know the things that are wrong and that are hindering you in your life, God will show you if you allow him.
How Faith Works
in Articles & Resources/by Visual WordHebrews 11:6 Without faith it is impossible to please God.
Faith is the basis of our relationship with God. Faith is doing. Faith is creating. Faith is vision. God had a vision prior to creating the earth and then He spoke it into existence. It is the same with us. We get an idea, a vision and then we speak our plans out loud or we “say” that we will do “this” or “that.” Then we begin taking action to produce the end result. Faith without actions does not produce results. This is how faith works – in a nutshell. Nothing complicated.
So what causes us to not have faith? What causes our faith not to work? Sometimes we think we are acting in faith, and we may be doing all we know, but there are things that can actually hinder your faith. Sin is one of them. Strife is another. Strife is ill feelings in your heart, bitterness or anger toward another person. Heart issues stop faith from producing.
When you ask God for something, Jesus says believe when you pray and don’t doubt and you will have it. Jesus also said: “If you abide in me and my word abides in you, you shall ask whatever you will and it will be done for you.” If Jesus really lives in you, there is no room for doubt. And if He lives in you, His word is in you. That means you operate by His word and His power.
Hebrews 10:36 “Ye have need of patience that after you have done the will of God, ye shall receive the promise.”
Whatever it is you want from God after you have prayed for it. Find out what He requires you to do regarding the thing you asked for. Listen for His answer. Do what He said. Then have patience. Sometimes what He requires you to do takes you through a certain process and after you complete it, you will have what you asked for.
If you want God to bless you with a profitable business, He may require you to educate yourself first, then do certain steps and finally implement your marketing plan. You won’t see profit until after you have done all that is required.
Finally, our faith doesn’t work if our conscious condemns us. If our conscious condemns us or lets just say if we have a guilty conscious, we don’t think we deserve the best. What causes your conscious condemn you? Things you did in the past can cause you to feel unworthy. Sin can cause you to feel unworthy. People intimidating you can cause you to feel unworthy.
For sin, the bible says God is faithful and just to forgive us. Once we are forgiven, we have to be bold about what we want and believe we deserve it. Every other negative feeling that would cause us to feel unworthy are lies. You have to know that you deserve the best. That is important. Otherwise feelings of doubt will creep in and you won’t believe it will happen for you. If you remain in God’s word, you can have so much confidence and know that if He grants anyone what they want, it will be you.
Many times we have been misled to think we are only human and that it is not possible to live fully and perfectly for God. But we can abide – live totally by – live totally for – live totally in God, and obey His will. Then we can be confident in our requests of God. This then, is how faith works: it works by our confidence in God. Our confidence in God comes when we are obedient to His word.
How To Confess Your Sins
in Articles & Resources/by Visual WordIf you want to know how to confess your sins, it is as easy as confessing your faults. I will give you examples of how this works.
But first, I would like to present a different way of looking at what we consider sin is. We all have faults. However, we don’t really look at faults as sin. We look at them as things we need to improve on. This is true, but it doesn’t make us realize that our faults are sin and so we won’t recognize the need to confess them.
The bible talks about sins of “omission” and sins of “commission.” Omission being sin we commit without trying to or even without knowing it. I am not talking about addictions. These are not sins of omission. Sins of commission we know it is wrong to do, but consciously make choice that this is what we plan to do. Sins of commission have to do with what you know.
The bible tells us if we truly know God, we won’t live a life of sin. Sure, we will still have faults. But this is why we pray daily to be forgiven. And we have to practice forgiving others if we want to be forgiven.
In addition to confessing our sins to God, the bible also instructs us to confess our faults to each other so that we can be healed. What do you recognize in your life as a fault today? Then, you can go to God and confess that to him.
Did you also know that you can be in an ordinary conversation talking to someone about what you would like to improve about you? This is confession your fault. But it is good to share your faults only with someone who can provide you with proper guidance or encouragement for getting better.
I wanted to start eating right everyday to improve my health. I also wanted to start a routine exercise. I told my daughter about it. Now she makes sure I am staying on track by challenging me and regularly asking questions about what I have eaten for the day.
Confessing your faults to others, gets things out in the open and opens up the opportunity for others to help you. You then have a support system.
If you have financial problems because of your spending habits, you can talk to someone who is good at managing money and let them know that you would like to be better. They can help you by putting a plan in place for you to follow and you have to cooperate.
If you have emotional issues or personality conflicts with people, you can confess that issue to someone close to you and the can help you get over those things.
The key to confessing your faults is confessing to the right person or people. You want to talk to someone who genuinely cares about your well being and has the right knowledge to help you get better. Sometimes people who love us don’t have the answers and so the answers we get are inaccurate and don’t benefit us. This is why I stress this.
Lastly, even if you don’t know who to talk to and your desire is to get better, you can Pray to God and ask Him to lead you to the right person or information that will help you.
If you are willing to know the things that are wrong and that are hindering you in your life, God will show you if you allow him.
Who Is The Holy Spirit
in Holy Spirit/by Visual WordIs The Holy Spirit A Person?
The Holy Spirit is also a “power” or “force” that lives in us. It is our “helper.” It causes us to do what we could not ordinarily do. There has been mis-conceptions about this force that would cause people to think the Holy Spirit to be spooky and mysterious.
The Holy Spirit helps us to be able to do things like “forgive” or “be nice” to people who have been mean to us or “to obey God’s Word.” Think about something the bible tells us to do that is considered hard. The Holy Spirit enables us to do this thing, if we allow.
The Holy Spirit Influences
There are two influences in this world period. Good or (God) and Evil the (devil). Every action we take is influenced by one spirit or the other.
How do we get the Holy Spirit to help us or to influence our lives? It is easy. We just have to “allow.” Read the bible, obey the bible and John 14:15 tells us that Jesus would pray to the Father and he would send us a helper which is the “Holy Spirit.”
Galatians 5:16-22 tells us the difference between good and evil and paints a picture of both when they are operating in our lives. It also tells us that if we practice doing what God wants, we will develop or produce (certain fruit) in our lives or the things that God’s Holy Spirit produces.
So the only thing we really have to do for the Holy Spirit to help us is to read and obey God’s word and we will receive additional assistance to do what we otherwise could not.
Bible Verse On Faith
in Bible Verses By Topic/by Visual WordHeb 11:1 Famous Bible Verse On Faith
This bible verse on faith has been quoted many times and its meaning not fully embraced with a complete understanding of what it means and how it works. Here is another way I’d like to show you how to look at faith that I hope will provide enlightenment to your understanding of faith and getting results.
Faith is what you have in place of the thing you hope for or want until it manifests. It is the substance or stuff that produces what you want. Faith is now . . . in the present.
Faith produces what you want by causing you to do what it takes to produce the outcome or the desire of your faith. The bible says believe in your heart and do not doubt when you pray and you shall have what you want which means you have it right now. So that also means if you have faith, you already have or are certain to possess materially and physically the thing that you desire. Faith is spiritual substance that produces a natural outcome of our heart’s hopes and desires. So faith is in your heart.
Matthew 6:33 says for us to seek first His Kingdom and all we desire will be added to us. Seeking what God wants us to do is the action our faith would cause us to take. This is the action which will produce what our faith hopes for.
The bible tells us that the reason for not having the things we ask for when we go to God is that our own conscious condemns us. We think we don’t deserve to have it.
So if you hope or desire for anything:
You can get the mp3 or mp4 file of audio or video scriptures on faith by clicking on bible scriptures by topic. These downloads will help you memorize bible scriptures on faith and strengthen your faith.
View a demo of the faith mp3 or video.
Deal With Peer Pressure
in Articles & Resources/by Visual WordDealing With Peer Pressure Effectively
The media says we should live our lives “this way” or “that way” or that we have to have “this” be “this” or wear “that.” At one point the media said we all have to be skinny, have long straight hair as a woman to be beautiful, then they said it’s okay to be big. If I write a book and a lot of people know about it, then I must be an expert. What is sad is that we believe and buy nearly everything the media says whether we admit it or not.
We are told what holidays to celebrate and how to celebrate them . . . even to the point of what type of education is best or acceptable. We determine what is good or bad, valuable or invaluable by our attitudes and esteem toward a given thing.
At one point, being African American, I would never have worn my hair any other way than “straight” and long. When short straight hair cuts came in style, I cut my hair and wore a nice, straight style and received many compliments. We even let society tell us what kind of man or woman to date. This is how we came up with socio-economic status. And it does have its place within proper perspectives, but I say most of us are mentally controlled by “status quos” and don’t think for ourselves. We don’t even read for ourselves.
We are told today that if we are not on Facebook or Twitter, our businesses will not be successful. So everyone has bought in. It used to be MySpace. There will be new technology coming out and we will all move to it as soon as they tell us to. You have to ask yourself, “How did businesses become successful before Facebook and Twitter?” We as a society determine what is valid as a whole using the media as our guide and we agree upon it to make it a norm. Allow your opinions to be those you formulate on your own and not because everyone else is doing it.
Tips for dealing with peer pressure:
Let’s just take some time and think for a moment . . . who created books before there ever were any? Men. How did they know to create the books? Who told them to? They were inspired with an idea. They shared it with those around them and it caught on. Just because an idea you have has never been done before doesn’t mean it won’t work. Computers and most major technology, especially the Internet had to have buy-in from the people.
Peer pressure is all about influence. Who is doing the influencing? Why are they able to influence people? We all have equal opportunity to influence. You can influence people by not being influenced. It is said that people with the most money have the most influence. You know why? It is because people give them and their money that power. That is not real influence. Once you run out of money, you run out of influence if that is the case. My family lived at one point in a really bad neighborhood influenced by heavy drugs and alcohol, yet we chose not to be involved as pre-teens and teenagers.
Peer pressure is all about how you think about what other people think, have thought or will think about you. You have to not care. Not in a bad way. It is truly freedom to be able to live by your own values and not be concerned about what people will say about you. When we get to this point, we are free. This takes a great deal of stress off of us.
Lastly, you have to value yourself so much that it doesn’t matter who it is, if it is wrong, it’s wrong and you don’t have to go along with it. Dealing with peer pressure involves the ability to think properly about situations and put them in the right perspective.