Ive got to say something about God being a
friend of sinners. First God is not waiting for us to accomplish His
purposes. He is fully able to do more than we could ever ask, and it
also says what ever we think. So our problem is that we do not think
that God is all things to our relationship to things. Whatever we need
the Father reduplicates the answer in His Son so that no matter what we
face He is going to work it out as if He was doing it for His Son. Our
problem is not that we do not have enough ability to access this
completed confidence in God as a friend, but we do not believe that He
is able to do what He has promised. If we would envision a God who is
not surprised by the most realistic struggle that we have with our own
weakness and sin, then we do not have enough confidence to present our
case to Him in order for us to be convinced that He is our friend. We
are more afraid of Him than we are of dwelling on what we think He is
like. I mean we have an incomplete understanding of what He thinks about
the application of what He says about Himself, so that we spend wasted
time thinking that He is thinking something that He has never thought
about us about our sin. Now where did we learn this? We learned it from
our earthly relationships. What ever we understand about God has very
little to do with how we react to one another. God is other, He is more
loving than we can imagine, He is more faithful than we could enjoy in
others, and He is more determined than our best convictions. We who are
His, could not even exhaust His patience.But we talk to Him as if we
would cause Him to be impatient with us. Just think of it like this, if
you had a friend who was all ears, and you could listen to His questions
as you pour out your heart to him, wouldnt you come away from that
communication a much more peaceful and encouraged person? Well God is
unfathomably more of a friend than that. As you know if we
consider God a very wrathful and holy God then that is perfectly
legitimate. All of His attributes are expressed in one on His
attributes. He is not a force. But to conclude that His wrath is a
personal assault upon His own people is not biblical. In fact our
relationship as His children do not come out of His anger. That means
that He has ceased to be imagined as a God who is at odds with us as His
children. The worse situations that we face in this life do not reflect
upon Gods retribution toward us. We actually are experiencing His
working the good out of the evil. If God was going to use threats in
order to help us to not want to do evil then all of us who are in the
family can express our anger toward each other by controlling the bad
behavior in a threatening way. This is exactly the opposite of grace.
Grace is loving the unlovable, not trying to convince a sinner to get in
line. If Gods grace is greater than our sin, then He has enough cause
and effect power in grace to keep us who are sinners.
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Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Romans and the Flesh Monster.
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on: January 30, 2009, 11:32:19 AM
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The worship of God is a spiritual worship.
The reason is because in order for us to worship properly we must have a
High Priest that has interceded for us and is presently interceding.
The reason that we experience this present intercession is because we
desire to find God, we long for the living God. This is as natural as
eating. The source of this experience is from the Spirit. I mean we
could look at this as our being defined by a social order, or a peer
review, or one thing being added to make us something that we were not,
that is in the succession of changing from an idea of what the truth of
that thing is, and how we saw it in the past. I think this is the
difference between drawing from a philosophy of what it is defined as it
to what it is supposed to be, or having a relationship in our
understanding of what He is making us to be. This is the realm of seeing
things that do not appear.
Maybe His word is a succession of
ideas. I mean in our experience as we define living from one minute to
another in this physical paradigm. But i do not think we can describe
how we go from the letter to the spirit unless we understand that the
words themselves are eternal. I had one of those reality checks today as
i was working. I was thinking in terms of time and then eternity broke
through so that even tho i was moving in the physical sense my inner
world was under the eternal views as to the order of things as they do
not appear in time. I mean i could describe it as Jesus being there in
the room by His Spirit, but then if Jesus view of things is not a
succession of events or ideas maybe i was in His spiritual illumination
so that i was worshiping Him outside of time. Ok, maybe our inner world
actually is more real than the actual causes and effects that we see
happening in time so that they are eternally one event. O man this is
way too big.
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5638
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Forums / Main Forum / Re: Unbelieveable...
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on: January 28, 2009, 01:12:39 PM
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I do not think it is wrong to have a
distinction between how we treat one another in the church and how we
treat these different relationships with the world. We should receive
the best from both worlds. On the one hand we have a very difficult time
in the world, but on the other hand we come together in the the church
as if we were being Shepherded by those who give encouragement and
support as our doctrine becomes our practice. Our minds are formed by
our understanding of this i -thou paradigm. Now in the world we
will have tribulation. The reason is because we think differently than
the world in every area. Our understanding of in our need is that we
depend entirely on our great Shepperd. He supplies all of our needs in
His time. We are not people who think that we are able to incorporate
these different moral qualities into our personalities and find
happiness with the accumulation of wealth that we have acquired in order
to have a standard of living. We do not have hope in this worlds goods.
We put our hope in things above where Christ is seated at the rite hand
of the Father, where all of our encouragement from what we receive
comes from the throne of grace. That is the divine light of the truth of
the knowledge of Christ that flows down from His throne, where the
cherubim are on either side. We receive His grace which is the source of
all of our resources being met and we find that grace to be all we need
to live in this life of trouble and discouragement. If we are to
struggle with anything as it relates to our view of ourselves in light
of how we look at this world and what we value as a result of what we
value, then we are only proud as we think in terms of what we deserve.
If we think that we have enough power on our own to produce something
worthy of His good judgment then we are no different than the way the
world thinks. Because the world thinks only on the horizontal level. But
our hope is in Christ alone. We come to Him for everything we need. We
go to His word for all of our wisdom, and we lean on Him in all of our
troubles. For if we are to be taught in how to glorify Him, then we must
not put anything before Him. And if we are to enjoy Him then we must
find all of our comfort in this life from Him. Then we will find that He
is worthy of all of the glory. Then we will find how much the world
hates Him. For the world cries out for us to find our trust in something
else. The world calls from near and afar, "Let him trust in the Lord if
the Lord will save him." In other words their hatred is expressed by
reminding us that our trust in Him is of no value. Or if we have a trust
in Him that is to our own hurt then we are fools. But we are
encouraged to give HIm the glory even when we are most miserable and
low. Then we receive from Him all that we need. We are always receiving a
public scolding , but we are always enjoying a private and secret
encouragement. This is why we are to find His giving to us of the worlds
riches as the most gracious gift from His hand seeing that we only are
promised our daily bread but He has given us wealth beyond our ability.
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Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Person, or Place?
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on: January 25, 2009, 01:16:04 PM
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Its interesting that after man had sinned he
begin to flee from the presence of God. First because man was afraid
that God who was offended would punish him. So the thinking was that
when they disobeyed God then the command was speaking against them. I
think they became self conscious because they had the experience of
guilt for the first time. Before the fall there was no reason for man to
think evil in a suspicious way ,as if there was a temptation that was
strong enough for man to be under the power of anything. When man gave
into the temptation then he placed himself under the power of evil. Mans
whole countenance changed because his enjoyment of not having to worry
about how the responses to his longings was perceived to be averse to
his ability to focus on the object of his affection in a complete
understanding of what was to be the ultimate union. The paradigm of
guilt forced him to focus on his own needs first. This was a great fall.
He went from having an understanding of the praise worthiness of all
that his union was with Eve and His fellowship with God from a
perspective of no confusion about himself to complete confusion and
frustration about himself.
I think the fig leaves not only was
an attempt to cover up the nakedness, but it was an attempt to forget
his cycle of condemnation to sin.The nakedness reminded him of the guilt
cause the power of temptation forced him to be afraid and made him
uncomfortable in his own skin. In other words there were new longings to
avoid or forget the law of God and the condemnation to sin. Mans new
conscious existence was in sin. Thats why the world avoids thinking
about their own sins. The reaction to cover up their sin is as natural
as the first attempt. This is the blindness of men who do not know God.
Every thought of man is a scheme because they convince themselves that
God is not looking and counting. I guess you could say that there is
this temporary relief of our own goodness followed by a continual
hardening of the heart.
Of course God comes looking for man.
This is always the case. Men run from God because of their sin and guilt
and God comes to man. The voice of God was the call to Adam that would
bring adam back to God. When God asked Adam where He was i think it was
about redemption. Adam was being brought back. The skins were provided
for his renewal. When a man is renewed then the problem of sin is taken
care of by God. Ok, we can attempt to put on the leaves but we are
forever changed to trust in the skins. Just like going to the leaves was
as natural as desiring for self gratification, now getting the skins is
as natural to us who enjoy grace.
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