{"id":3510,"date":"2014-08-17T22:48:30","date_gmt":"2014-08-18T02:48:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/simplelife\/?p=3510"},"modified":"2014-08-17T22:48:30","modified_gmt":"2014-08-18T02:48:30","slug":"the-choice-that-changed-everything-a-sermon-for-the-mentally-challenged-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/simplelife\/2014\/08\/the-choice-that-changed-everything-a-sermon-for-the-mentally-challenged-community.html","title":{"rendered":"The Choice that Changed Everything&#8211;a sermon for the mentally challenged community"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center\"><strong>The choice that changed everything<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">Nehemiah 9:17<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">Central Theme: Man choices to sin and God chooses to be gracious.<\/p>\n<p>A ream of paper has 500 sheets&#8211;not more and not less. A foot is 12 inches&#8211;not more and not less. There are many absolutes in our lives. There is a couple of absolutes that totally changed mankind. First, since Adam\u2019s sin, We all choose to sin and God always chooses to be gracious and forgive. <strong>Have a member read<\/strong> <strong>Nehemiah 9:17.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Tell the story of the first sin and the fall of mankind from Genesis 3.<\/p>\n<p>A.Eve ate the fruit and Adam followed her.<\/p>\n<p>B.\u00a0 They were tricked by Satan.<\/p>\n<p>C.God made them leave the garden but he chose to love them and forgive them.<\/p>\n<p>II.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 God will always choose to be gracious and loving to you.<\/p>\n<p>A.We must desire God\u2018s love and his forgiveness.<\/p>\n<p>B.\u00a0 We don\u2019t always think we need God.<\/p>\n<p>III.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The ways we reject God.<\/p>\n<p>1.\u00a0 We decide that we can handle everything ourselves.<\/p>\n<p>2.\u00a0 We work toward being independent of God<\/p>\n<p>3.\u00a0 We want to please people rather than God<\/p>\n<p>3.\u00a0 We disobey God\u2018s laws.<\/p>\n<p>A.There are unintended consequences to all of the bad choices that we make.<\/p>\n<p>IV.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We should never forget that God will always show his love and graciousness to us.<\/p>\n<p>Conclusions: Each of us chooses to sin but God chooses to forgive us all the time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The choice that changed everything Nehemiah 9:17 Central Theme: Man choices to sin and God chooses to be gracious. A ream of paper has 500 sheets&#8211;not more and not less. A foot is 12 inches&#8211;not more and not less. There are many absolutes in our lives. There is a couple of absolutes that totally changed&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":387,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,20,3,40,186,49,16,8,4,41],"tags":[690,21,688,342,7,699,694,689,745,678,6,700,677],"class_list":["post-3510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christianity","category-church","category-developmental-disabilities","category-faith","category-hope","category-inspiration","category-intellectual-disability","category-mentally-challenged-community","category-simple-truths","category-spirituality","tag-autism-spectrum","tag-christian","tag-christianity","tag-creation","tag-developmental-disabilities-2","tag-faith","tag-intellectual-disability","tag-mentally-challenged-community","tag-sermons","tag-sermons-on-the-original-sin","tag-simple-scriptural-truths","tag-spirituality","tag-the-fall"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Choice that Changed Everything-a sermon for the mentally challenged community - A Simple Life, a Childlike Faith<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/simplelife\/2014\/08\/the-choice-that-changed-everything-a-sermon-for-the-mentally-challenged-community.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Choice that Changed Everything-a sermon for the mentally challenged community - A Simple Life, a Childlike Faith\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The choice that changed everything Nehemiah 9:17 Central Theme: Man choices to sin and God chooses to be gracious. A ream of paper has 500 sheets&#8211;not more and not less. A foot is 12 inches&#8211;not more and not less. There are many absolutes in our lives. There is a couple of absolutes that totally changed&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/simplelife\/2014\/08\/the-choice-that-changed-everything-a-sermon-for-the-mentally-challenged-community.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"A Simple Life, a Childlike Faith\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-08-18T02:48:30+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Linda G. Howard\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Choice that Changed Everything-a sermon for the mentally challenged community - A Simple Life, a Childlike Faith","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/simplelife\/2014\/08\/the-choice-that-changed-everything-a-sermon-for-the-mentally-challenged-community.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Choice that Changed Everything-a sermon for the mentally challenged community - A Simple Life, a Childlike Faith","og_description":"The choice that changed everything Nehemiah 9:17 Central Theme: Man choices to sin and God chooses to be gracious. A ream of paper has 500 sheets&#8211;not more and not less. A foot is 12 inches&#8211;not more and not less. There are many absolutes in our lives. There is a couple of absolutes that totally changed&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/simplelife\/2014\/08\/the-choice-that-changed-everything-a-sermon-for-the-mentally-challenged-community.html","og_site_name":"A Simple Life, a Childlike Faith","article_published_time":"2014-08-18T02:48:30+00:00","author":"Linda G. 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Howard","description":"Linda G. Howard is the best-selling and award-winning author of four books, including MOTHERS ARE PEOPLE, TOO and THE SECRET LIFE OF A HOUSEWIFE. Currently, she serves as area director of The Special Gathering, a ministry within the mentally challenged community. Additionally, she is the co-publisher and editor of CONNECTING POINT, the ministry newsletter. Her husband is a retired aerospace technologist who worked for NASA. They have three children and four grandchildren.","sameAs":["http:\/\/specialgathering.wordpress.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/simplelife\/author\/lhoward"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/simplelife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/simplelife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/simplelife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/simplelife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/387"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/simplelife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3510"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/simplelife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3510\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3511,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/simplelife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3510\/revisions\/3511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/simplelife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/simplelife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/simplelife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}