The Gospel Changes People

"Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." - 2 Corinthians 5:17

Anybody who has trusted Jesus Christ as their Saviour knows that He truly makes a change in your life. Last week, I saw an example of that like I've never seen before. My pastor was out of town on Sunday, so he asked me to preach the Sunday morning service. A lady in our church had led her boss to Christ on Wednesday and had invited her to church on Sunday. The sad part was that this newly saved lady was planning on moving to Phoenix the following weekend. This would be her only opportunity to attend our church!

Well, she came to the service and absolutely loved it! She told her co-worker (our church member) that she had changed her mind about moving to Phoenix and that she wanted to stay here in Sherwood, OR and become a member of our church! Keep in mind, she had only been saved for four days!

It was an awesome thing to see God work in the life of such a new believer and witness her desire for God's Word and fellowship with God's people. The Gospel will change people's lives!

Is It Worth Dying For?

If you know that you could be executed because you do something in particular, it will probably cause you to think twice about doing it. That sounds like common sense, right? Well, apparently a group of professors from the University of Colorado had to do a study to come to this conclusion. I found an article on Foxnews.com with this headline: Death Penalty Discourages Crime.

Well, imagine that!

There are actually some very interesting statistics in the article about how even 1 execution can save more than a dozen lives. Of course, the executed murderer won't strike again. But that execution also discourages other would be murders from committing that horrible crime. I'm not sure, but I think that is the whole purpose of any penal system...to discourage crime! The simple fact is that the harsher the punishment for a crime, the less likely people will commit that crime. I don't think these brilliant professors had to do a study to come up with that. All they needed was common sense.

I am a proponent of the death penalty. I believe that punishment absolutely fits certain crimes. If a person brutally murders one person, that murderer has simply forfieted their own right to life. They are no longer fit for society. There has been a lot of hoopla about the cruel and unusual punishment involved with the "faulty" lethal injection system used by many states today. My opinion is, if the murderer dies because of the injection, there's nothing faulty about it at all. I wish these people crying for the "humane treatment" of these criminals were around when the killer slaughtered their victim. I think a little discomfort before dying is pretty fair in comparison to what the murdered person suffered through.