{"id":5862,"date":"2015-11-11T00:00:38","date_gmt":"2015-11-11T06:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.twocities.org\/?p=5862"},"modified":"2015-11-10T18:49:34","modified_gmt":"2015-11-11T00:49:34","slug":"preparation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/?p=5862","title":{"rendered":"PREPARATION"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>As heirs of the Protestant Reformation, we revel in God&#8217;s grace.\u00a0 This is a good thing.\u00a0 However, any good thing can become a bad thing if we forget other important truths.\u00a0 We don&#8217;t have to work for our salvation, but we are to work it out (Phil 2:12,13).\u00a0 It was the grace of God which motivated Paul to work hard (II Tim. 2:1-7).<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Whenever I see someone going to great lengths to be the best they can be, I am humbled by Paul&#8217;s statement that many do it for a perishable wreath while we run for an imperishable one (I Cor. 9:24-27).\u00a0 When I see someone giving intense effort and focus to something other than building up God&#8217;s kingdom I am humbled by my apathy.\u00a0 Here is a good example of what intense focus looks like:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=sy8Noy0qt3k\">https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=sy8Noy0qt3k<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As heirs of the Protestant Reformation, we revel in God&#8217;s grace.\u00a0 This is a good thing.\u00a0 However, any good thing can become a bad thing if we forget other important truths.\u00a0 We don&#8217;t have to work for our salvation, but we are to work it out (Phil 2:12,13).\u00a0 It was the grace of God which [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,9,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christianity","category-spiritual-life","category-sports"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5862"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5862\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5864,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5862\/revisions\/5864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}