"It is necessary, then, that each man should
first of all find in the Scriptures that he, through being entangled in
the love of this world—i.e., of temporal things—has been drawn far away
from such a love for God and such a love for his neighbour as Scripture
enjoins. Then that fear which leads him to think of the judgment of God,
and that piety which gives him no option but to believe in and submit
to the authority of Scripture, compel him to bewail his condition. For
the knowledge of a good hope makes a man not boastful, but sorrowful.
And in this frame of mind he implores with unremitting prayers the
comfort of the Divine help that he may not be overwhelmed in despair,
and so he gradually comes to the fourth step,—that is, strength and
resolution,—in which he hungers and thirsts after righteousness. For in
this frame of mind he extricates himself from every form of fatal joy in
transitory things, and turning away from these, fixes his affection on
things eternal, to wit, the unchangeable Trinity in unity. "Augustine
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Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Romans and the Flesh Monster.
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on: December 24, 2008, 11:22:47 PM
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Ive come to realize this is not necessarily a
fellowship in His righteousness. But i come with my baggage of filth and
anger so that He can take that as already imputed on Christ, and He
reminds me that He loves me based upon Christ work on my behalf. I have
applied the concept as He is speaking to me of that assurance that I
cannot define by any goodness in my part of believing. There is a
temptation to think that our relationship to Him is based upon how we
communicate to one another , that is the horizontal communication. But
God changes the whole entire way of speaking to us because we come as
unworthy discerning of the thoughts and the intents of our hearts. I
really believe that we are blind beggars in His presence. In a sense we
come just like the beggar who wants some change for doing nothing, and
yet we are offended to give it because of the beggars brashness. I think
that is what it is like for the Eternal Holy God to listen to our
asking. This picture has been so ingrained from the scriptures that the
simplicity of presenting how we are before Him in such a lowly state
does not give us an identity that is debased in the wrong way, or like
being embarrassed before Him in our evil. We can dare to be more honest
about ourselves in His presence than we could even dare to with one
another. First because we cannot read and reveal each others hearts. But
He knows every evil thing that lurks in the darkness, He reveals these
things to us, but its because we grow to understand that we can bare our
sores and our deepest angry response to the troubles of our lives more
and more as we grow to understand that He exposes these things in us in
order to heal us and not to bring us under the law as if it was a way He
would use to get us to fall in line with His program.
God is
able to listen to our temper tantrums, our complaining about the pain,
and our problems with other people without batting an eye. We can come
before Him with everything, lay it before Him and receive healing and
wisdom. Its as if He were pleased with us for commanding Him. If we
thought that when we come before Him it is all about His glory and not
about us, then we have not been open before Him. He not only cares about
our pain but He wants to listen to our reasoning it out before Him. We
come as people who plead our case before this Holy God, and yet with so
much sin, with so much He could condemn us for just by the hypocrisy of
our personal stake in the pleading, yet He listens to us as if we had a
rite to come before Him as lawyers. Its unbelievable that He would
encourage us to plead these promises and answer us according to our
personal stake in the promises. I just think about that and it just
blows my mind. Any other judge would tell me to go sit in the corner
because there was no value in my pleading for His Son to speak on my
behalf. But He not only listens, but He encourages us to plead to Him
what we could not obtain in our working it out on our own. Ok , as we
grow , then we become more savvy and enabled to be as bold as a king.
This is what we have as a personal rite in appearing before the Judge of
the universe.
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5751
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Forums / Main Forum / Re: Sad and lonely Christmas :(
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on: December 24, 2008, 10:22:02 AM
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Theres no simple answers. We could find our
hope in being in community, making some steps in volunteerism as a way
of relieving the anxiety of being under some kind of power of desire to
find our happiness in the short lived moment, or we can find all of our
happiness in Him. Then we can live in the reality that there is a refuge
, a place where we can go that is like a transfixed place of
experiencing a peace that passes all understanding. Because if we try to
reason these things about our pain with just getting out of our states
and frames of having our hopes dash ed by a longing that will only be
fulfilled by some other person, then we will find ourselves back to
finding our hope in meeting some short term need in the moment. The
world is a very secularized dungeon. But still eternity can break
through our present learned frame, and we can still acknowledge that God
is absolute sovereign over all the physical and spiritual forces in the
universe. For there is no force that does not come from will of prior
existence. And if the will of God be the cause then we can be sure that
the end for which we find ourselves at this present time is according to
His purposes. For we will never find our reason for existence in self
determination. Because we cannot acknowledge that God is all in all,
then we will fill ourselves with the delusion that God has left us to
our own power to work in this time frame. For every moral desire there
is a desire to please our own frames and ends in our own goodness. There
is always a way of man to create more laws that God has designed. As
well as being a law breaker man is also a very bad judge of God doing
His purpose in His time and accepting the will of God as what is
reality. So man on that purpose devises his own laws to cover himself
for being accepted before God. Just look at the history of religion,
nations, and you will find that man always tries to redefine the
personal cause of all things existing, by creating a system of rules for
his own purposes of acceptance. So that we need to find all of our hope in God at this time of yr. For if we have not found God then we are restless.
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Forums / Main Forum / Re: Christless Church
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on: December 24, 2008, 03:26:32 AM
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Excellent post, Willis.
Christ's
claim on our lives do indeed preclude everything else we have an
attachment to including friends, family and country. My objection to
Jawood's comments lay soley on the basis in that the way he has them
phrased, makes them into a false dichotomy. (Whether he intended that
way or not). I am quite capable of having a healthy form of patriotism
and appreciation for the freedoms I enjoy (and for which much blood had
to be spilled) without turning them into an "idol" thank you very much. I
do not put ultimate faith in this (or any) political system to acheive
"heaven on earth" nor have I ever stated anything to that effect in any
of my posts.
All of that being said, it has always seemed to me
that a situation like Solzhenitsyn's is something that is usually
arrived at, and not something that someone, after they have become a
Christian, just decides that he or she is going to do one bright day.
The "dying to self" is a process that comes to one either by a turn of
events leading one to futility or else by way of the Lord's gentle
promptings (and these two can be inextricably interwoven). Being "on the
lookout" for "idols" in my life which will hinder the process usually
just gets me building anxiety upon anxiety and ends with me chasing my
tail. If the Lord really wants me to experience the futility of an
"idol" in my life, He usually allows me to drink (to employ another
metaphor) heavily from that cup so that I may see for myself the
bitterness and futility of it. (Whatever "it" is).
Very
good posting TB , Willis is very good as well. The point is that there
are things that we cannot give up on our own. There are things that must
be done in His time. If we were to say that we had to give up
everything at one time ,then we wouldnt be in the position to be able to
give them up. It would be too much of a burden. So we are in a new
position in Christ. If we are made to hate the world and everything in
it, then it would be from our hearts desires. It would be foolish to
think that if we were not changed by having our desires enlightened,
influenced, transformed and renewed , that we would not go back to he
old loves, the old ways of security. God is doing those things in us
that need to be changed so that it will be genuine. This is why we are
just a guilty of trying to force this christian life into a mold and a
time table that is not rational. He is molding us not in relation to our
being chosen or being a new vessel, but He is working in us to will and
do. That is we are being changed to leave an old address and live at a
new one. But our struggles about how we give into temptation, how we
face trials, how we view the objects of this world, and then the
different levels we think on according to the knowledge we have of God
and ourselves will determine the growth we experience in this life. Some
of us are very slow as compared to others. All of us are bull headed
when compared to Christ. There is also a community of the
regenerated. There should be a unity based on those things that are not
seen in relation to the physical that are becoming deeper in the general
understanding of that body. This is that which we view in spiritual
understanding as opposed to believing things that would encourage others
to set up idols, i e liberal theology and other epistemological
concerns.The kinds of corporate prayers, the level of good preaching,
the kind of fellowship of the saints. All of these things have a direct
effect on the amount of growth we will experience in this life.
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5757
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Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Is the believer's heart still "desperately wicked?"
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on: December 21, 2008, 12:32:30 PM
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The relationship we have to the law after we
are regenerated is that it mainly shows us how valuable is grace. Now we
are not under the law as a school master. Because our new relationship
to Christ does not give the law that kind of condemning authority. But
the law still has a function to show us that we could never obtain
acceptance in obeying it. This is where we get confused. If we could
obey the law completely then we would no longer need grace. But if we
just said that the law was dead, that is there was no spiritual value in
the law then we would not have grace available as a gift before each
act of obedience to the law.Just like being tempted to fall back into
the old patterns of trying to obey the law and thinking that we have
obtained that obedience on our own. If we said that we did not have a
relationship to the law in any way as a legal instrument of conviction,
then Christ obedience to the law would have no value in our lives. I
think we would loose some respect for Christ living it out for us. In
this way since there would be no way for us to measure our lives to His
life then that would be treating grace as of no value as well.
I
do not think tho that the law is an instrument of bringing more
conviction that we can resist to turn to Christ. Its not that we have an
equal choice between good and evil. Then the law would work in the
same way as it did in the unregenerate state. There would be no hope in
this relationship to the law. But the law is only good at the negative
aspects of the process. And at the same time grace is under girding the
process of being confronted with the law so that the fundamental
salvation experience has grace as the initial power leading us to Christ
in the mirror of ourselves by the law.
I have meditated for
yrs in these penitent psalms. Now, if we apply the above teaching then
its kind of like the difference between trusting weight paradigms or in
nature paradigms. So that its really not about the level of confidence
as to off set the genuineness of the conviction. This is like the cop
that is so close to being the criminal cause the cop is always around
the criminal and handles the items the criminal handles. Now this is
terribly important cause we could be more confident after sinning than
we could as a self righteous person. Uh, what is the difference between a
pharisee and a sinner? Its not the level of repentance. I mean
repentance is not believing. Repentance is not a positive step toward
changing. Again, this whole mind set is part of the old forms and
shadows. We only know confidence when we understand grace cause if we
were always focusing on the act of repentance as it is in our normal
bent toward the level of conviction then we would never be confident.
And if we thought that confidence was bad for a sinner, then we would
not be distinguishing between a good confidence or that confidence
taught by grace , and self confidence , or trusting in ones own
righteousness. I do not think we can work our way into these different
views of the difference between the fundamental understanding of saving
grace . You are either a have or a have not.
So that we can have
more confidence after sinning than we do if we were not to understand
how bad is our self sufficiency. Thats the fundamental cause of all
forgiveness, that is we do not obtain grace by the amount of weight we
bring in our sorrow, but we already have grace as a buttress for our
sorrow and we are seeking more grace to have confidence that we are
forgiven. This is why there is a fundamental difference in the
application to understand that God is not waiting around for us to be
taught a lesson. That is God is not waiting around to dole out a pound
of punishment for a pound of disobedience. Rather God is going to bring
us to the most gracious loving relationship when we are sinners , since
He gave His most precious gift for our sin. Our confidence is in a
person not a level of conviction. And we will never learn to over come
sin if we do not learn that Gods love is greater than our sin, and that
He covers over our sins by blessing us in spite of our sins. It really
is only the Pharisee that has taught himself to be pleased with his
performance in comparison to the law.
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