I’m currently having a really bad flare-up of Eosinophilic Esophagitis and I have lost my voice. I want to try posting a voice note on here of me whispering and see how that works.

This is a transcript of the voice note:

Alright, so I wanted to try posting a voice note on here and see if it works. I’m not sure if you’re going to be able to hear me, but I’m going to try.

 and use this speech-to-text app that’ll put a transcript up too of what I’m saying.

 I’ve been posting, like, written posts, but it’s easier to just talk. So I was going to try it this way.

 What I’m hoping that this website will be is a resource of devotional materials and also recordings of hymns.

 What really made a difference in my life was when I started doing daily quiet times.

 about 30 minutes a day, and a lot of times I would play through hymns too. So what I’m going to try and do on here

 as I still do daily quiet time, so I’m going to try and post about what I’m studying.

 that day. So whatever commentary I was reading from, whatever I was studying about, post it on there. And then also be trying to have

 hymn recordings posted so that people can

 spend time listening to devotional materials and then playing through hymns and if you do that 30 minutes a day

 every day, it can really change your life. So the, um,

 The website is called Learning to Live by Faith. So what I was going to talk about today is just talk some about what that means.

 And so, let’s start out by saying, what is faith? What does the word faith mean? When I was growing up,

 I think I thought of faith as belief. You’re believing in something. I had that book.

 about the little engine that could. I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.

 If you just put all your energy towards something and set your mind to it, you can make it happen. And I think that is a type of faith.

 That’s what I thought growing up in the church. I thought of faith as believing.

 I would pray to God, and everybody’s probably had this experience of you have something going in your life, you pray about it,

 You believe that God can help you keep praying and then things don’t change or what you were praying for doesn’t happen.

 I remember feeling like when I was little, I thought, well, but I believed.

 I thought I had done everything right. I believed. I prayed. But then things didn’t change. And so…

 It was about when I was in the sixth grade that I started doing

 quiet times on my own. I just started reading the Bible. I had a one-year Bible, and I started reading through that, trying to find these answers.

And so I’m trying to share now what I learned over the years. and Hoping that it’ll help.

 I’m hoping to find people who want to study the Bible together and talk about it.

 I had written a post on here about what is faith.

 And there’s a Charles Spurgeon sermon that’s really, really helpful if you have time to listen to it.

 And he defines faith, Spurgeon defines faith as believing God is who he says he is and that he’s going to do what he says he’s going to do.

 So faith is belief. There has to be an object for your belief. So for Christians, Jesus Christ is the object of our faith.

 We believe he is who he says he is. and That he’s going to do what he says he’s going to do. and

 in order to really be able to put your faith in him, I needed to know who he was. And the more you learn about him,

 And the more time you spend studying the Bible, the closer you grow to Him, your faith increases. So…

 There’s one book by John Gill. It’s called Doctrinal Divinity that I started reading in 2022

 and it was extremely helpful. He starts out by doing a lot of chapters about the attributes of God

 So that’s one thing I want to be talking about on here. If you learn about who God is about his

 His goodness, His love, His mercy, His grace, and also His almighty power. And you’re focusing on that.

 and spending time meditating on that. Again, you grow closer to Him.

 And it’s easier to put your faith in Him. And

 These will be things that I’ll take time to talk about over time. That’s the one thing I’m having trouble with now during this flare up, I’m having trouble concentrating

 but in that Spurgeon sermon about faith, he says that faith has three elements, knowledge, belief, and trust.

 So…

 There’s a Bible verse that talks about how can they believe if they haven’t heard. So it’s important to tell people about Jesus and to be

 teaching them from the Bible. And then, so you hear information about God, and then you believe it.

 And then you put your trust in Him and he talks about casting your all on Jesus.

 So again, I had to start over here for a minute.

 Well, I’ll be talking about like what faith is. Um…

 The things that I’ve been studying have, again, it’s learning more about who God is. One of the

 First things in that book, and also in Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, where they start off, that’s so important, is…

 Recognizing that God’s not a human being. He’s infinitely higher than us, so He’s divine. He’s God.

 So he doesn’t do anything like a person does it. He’s operating as God.

 and so that’s one thing to remember like if you’ve had something happen in your life or like we’re asking Him questions about what happened and remember who it is that we’re

 asking who we’re going before. We’re going before the Almighty God. We trust in His infinite wisdom.

 his righteousness, his goodness. I know that he has the answer to my questions. So that can be a starting point there of how to think about

 about God. One thing Calvin talks about is

 Think about yourself and your human condition. We’re in a sinful condition, in a fallen world. Alternate between thinking about that and looking up to God.

 and thinking about His righteousness and goodness. Those are things that you can start using in your daily meditation time.

 So I might stop here for today. I’m really wondering if people can hear me on here.

 I hope so, because maybe I can go ahead and start posting, like, talking about what I’ve been studying that day.

 I really hope you can hear what I’ve been saying. And these are things that I’ll be posting about on here over time. So I’ll stop here for today and post again if this seems to work.