"Harold and Susan Vordos" wrote in message
...

If there's a God, we are on our own. We make our own good fortune, we
make our own successes in life. Poorly educated individuals with
considerable drive and faith in their own abilities are often far more
successful than their counterparts, who are well educated (fools), with no
drive, or notion of what constitutes success in their lives. Even when
they pray, I might add.

If you must praise your God, do so privately, and don't expect miracles.
It's like people that see the success of others and declare how "lucky"
they are.

My experiences in life dictate that the guy that is so "lucky" has
dedicated a great deal of time and effort to his success-----proving that
the harder you work, the luckier you become. YMMV.

Harold

I'd say you got it right Harold, for those who don't have faith in God,
there is no evidence of him. They are on their own.

Hebrews 11:6 But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who
comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who
diligently seek Him.

Harold, it sounds like you believe in hard work and have good moral values,
that is very honorable and about all that can be asked by human standards.

Living here in Illinois, I can live my whole life without any evidence of
their being a Statue of Liberty. Others, however, may drive by the Statue
of Liberty every day. I can believe there is no such thing as a Statue of
Liberty since I've lived my whole life without seeing it. There are others
that have evidence of it and my lack of evidence doesn't have any affect on
the truth that the Statue of Liberty exists. Likewise your lack of seeing
Jesus Christ after the ressurection doesn't negate the 500+ eye witnesses
that did see him. Most of Jesus' disciples were killed for their faith,
Paul spent a lot of time in prison for talking about Jesus, for them it
wasn't all about the money. Actually most preachers I know of have other
jobs, the TV preachers might make tons of $$$ but few others do.

Let's pretend for example that perhaps someone you knew real well got real
bad sick with something like cancer. And the doctors tried to do surgery
but upon cutting them open, they found the cancer was too bad and they
couldn't remove it. So we're pretending that someone has an incurable case
of cancer and they don't have long to live. Now suppose someone tells you
that Jesus can heal cancer and you think they are full of ****. Then they
pray for this person that you are very close to and the person gets up and
the cancer falls off of their body. Now, even if you didn't believe it you
saw it happen with your own eyes and know it wasn't fake because you were
there when this person went to the doctors, you know their condition first
hand, you know for fact it wasn't staged. Ok, pretending that's the case,
you see someone on the newsgroup saying that healings don't happen, that
there are no miracles, etc. What would you do? If you tell them what you
say they will call you a simpleton flat earther and stuff like that, but
should you deny what you know happened just because others don't believe it?
What if you like these other people but they treat you like dirt just
because of something you have witnessed yourself, even though you yourself,
like them, didn't believe in it at one time. If you ever do see proof of
God you better keep it quite unless you want others to jump all over you and
tell you what a fool you are.

God is not my genie in a bottle, he doesn't obey me, I'm supposed to obey
him (though I don't do that very good either). If I quit my job why would
he provide for me? Now if he told me to quit my job that would be a
different story. If I quit my job I can believe I would not do without food
and clothes, but I may lose everything else I have. If I do obey God and
meet him on his terms I get results, otherwise I seldom get results.

2 Chronicles 7:14 If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble
themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways;
then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal
their land.

Notice who needs the humble themselves, pray, seek Gods face, and turn from
their wicked ways... God's people that are called by his name.

Here's something I find interesting.
John 14 11Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in
me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves. 12I tell
you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He
will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.
13And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory
to the Father. 14You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.

This is one of many verses where Jesus gives those with faith in him the
authority to do the very miracles that he did, and even greater ones. You
have to keep in mind that when he says you can ask him for anything, he was
talking to those whose lives were dedicated to him. I was kind of hoping
he'd give me with winning lottery numbers but it didn't happen :-) Anyway,
if Jesus was a phoney it would be kind of a strange thing for him to pass
his abilities down to others.

RogerN