From The Editor
Winter 2004/2005

From the Editor

Features
Salvation Begins w/the Word of God

True Repentance

God’s Patience & You

Baptism, Are You Ready?

Real Salvation

Heaven & Hell

Will Non-Christians be Saved?

Infused at the Feast of Tabernacles

Highlights
Is the Bible Real?

What’s Your Seed

My Memories From the Feast of Tabernacles

What Does Baptism Mean?

What’s Wrong With Counting?

Q&A

By You: Poetry

Finding Financial Peace and Freedom
I was seven when my parents began attending the Church of God. I grew up keeping the Sabbath, Holy Days, dietary laws, etc. It was my sophomore year in college while studying the book of James, however, that God opened my mind and helped me grasp and be convicted of a truth I never understood before. In particular, it was when my instructor began to teach James 2:14-26. These verses are about the relationship between faith and action.

I hadn’t been living a life of wild parties, drugs, alcohol and debauchery. From a human point of view, my life was about as perfect as it could get. While my lifestyle was moral and clean, God’s miraculous hand reached down and showed me my heart and mind were not. I was a sinner who needed to turn her inward heart away from sin and trust in God and Jesus Christ. My works were all about keeping the written law. I thought I was a great person because with ease I was able to do this. After all, I had done so since I was seven. My attitude and actions demonstrated incomplete faith. I had the knowledge, but my thoughts and conduct of giving loving service remained unchanged.

The greatest challenges for me as a young adult was to stop trusting in my own good works of obedience for salvation and put my faith and trust totally in Jesus Christ. When the study of James was complete, I learned two valuable lessons. My good works didn’t give me salvation, but rather allowed me to avoid discipline from God and since no one but God knows my heart, my works show the glory of God and the message of salvation to the world through my acts of service. I was baptized that sophomore year in college and my life has never been the same. I am profoundly appreciative and thank God daily for His gift of salvation. It is God’s love that has filled my life and His greatness that allows me to reach out to others.

I hope that through the articles in this issue of Infuse, you will learn that receiving salvation is a miracle of God which takes effort but isn’t complicated.

Noni

Noni McVey
Editor in Chief
JAMES 2:14-26
What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, “Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.”

Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do. You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that–and shudder.

You foolish man, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless? Was not our ancestor Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did. And the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,” and he was called God’s friend. You see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone.

In the same way, was not even Rahab the prostitute considered righteous for what she did when she gave lodging to the spies and sent them off in a different direction? As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.