7256 Living christians.... power of faith.... presence of God....

January 15, 1959: Book 77

Only when you are faced with great adversity will it become clear whether you are living christians or only call yourselves formal christians who will fail when they have to prove themselves. And this time will come upon you when only a living faith can help you, when you have to prove yourselves, when the strength of faith has to be tested, which only a living faith can muster. The majority of people only have a formal faith; they do not reject what they have been taught but they have not yet seriously thought about the teachings. And as soon as they are prompted to call upon their God and creator, they will look for Him in the distance because they do not yet have communion with Him, a communion which manifests itself as a feeling of God's presence. And as long as this feeling is not yet in the human being, God has not yet come alive in him, and faith in God is only an empty expression, because he does not possess Him. Only the feeling of God's presence characterises a living christian, and then he will also possess the strength of faith which lets him take the path to the father in great hardship and ask for help from Him. Much suffering and misery will befall people, precisely in order to put their faith to the test. And it does not depend on the denominations, for every denomination can include living and dead followers, people who have entered into intimate bonds with God and those for whom God is and will remain the distant God, Whom they certainly know by name but have no bond with Him themselves as yet in order to call upon Him for help and assistance in cases of sudden adversity. But the need comes.... It must come for the sake of people who walk along indifferently and have not yet decided for themselves how they will relate to their God and creator from eternity.... It must come for people who believe to be christians and are only christians in name.... A confession of Jesus Christ is required of all, and only those who have a living faith can make such a confession.... but not those who only know about Him but have not yet established the right relationship with Him, which He requires in order to be able to be their redeemer from sin and death. Every person can decide once for the right relationship with Him, and he should do it of his own free will, because earthly life repeatedly gives him the opportunity to make this decision. But anyone who is foolish, who only ever remains a formal christian, that is, who is well aware of the divine redeemer but has never made use of His love and grace in order to be redeemed from his bondage.... who has not yet spoken to his father like a child, will first have to go through suffering and hardship in order to find the path to Him; he will first have to be so severely affected that only one way out remains for him, to take refuge in God in Jesus Christ and thereby confess that he believes in Him alive.... whereas the formal christian often still loses his shallow faith when the going gets tough and thereby proves that he has not yet had any bond with Him, the divine redeemer Jesus Christ, with God Himself.... The closer it is to the end, the more necessary this testing of faith will be, for more and more people separate themselves, even if they belong to an ecclesiastical community, but it is only an illusory bond for the sake of fellow human beings, there is nothing true and living left which can be counted as a 'community of believers'. The churches are only worldly organizations, but no longer the union of deeply believing people who see in Jesus Christ the founder of their church, which was only founded on firm faith. And people will therefore be forced by life to make a confession, for the coming time will be very difficult for many people but nevertheless also a blessing for the living christian, because he will establish the bond with God ever more firmly and he will also be led out of all adversity and distress by his faith, because there is nothing for the living christian which cannot be overcome with the 'strength of faith'....

Amen

This proclamation is used in the following themebooks:

Themebook	Title	Download
139	Jesus' Promises - "I Am With You Always!"	ePub   PDF   Kindle
171	God'S Presence In You	ePub   PDF   Kindle

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