The best time
to tell somebody about God's grace? Wait 'til they @$!*-up big-time.
When the wheels start coming off their life. Or when the demands of
being truly righteous become overwhelming.
And of course, one of the best ways to tell somebody about the grace of God is to live in it gratefully and show grace to others.
Actually
this is the extreme view here. This is 5 point arminism and some
Calvinist hold to this kind of thinking. I always take this as a threat.
First because God isnt a child abuser. Not only is He not a child
abuser but He meets the needs to unthankful people. If a healthy child
is secure enough to take his fathers love for granted, then the child is
being loved enough to love others from that secure position. Its the
children that are neglected that appreciate half hearted love. So if a
father gives his children gifts how much more our heavenly Father. He
supplies us with an abundance of gifts in our lowest point of sinning.
We form a view of God as requiring more than we can give because we are
weak and straying all the time. And we do not think that God gives out
of His abundance and not as a requirement. It really is the opposite. I
mean we could all be in the house of God as living like orphans so that
we could be brought to a place where we would love His grace, or we
could all be loved so much that we are secure in Him, and even tho we
presuppose on Him, yet He still gives and gives and gives. Thats what
the greater love of the Fathers purpose of us is that is more than our
earthly relationships with our kids . I always look for that need filled
spot in my children to be met by me before i even communicate with
them. And i recognize that they are going to get fat in this love. Well
at least we try as fathers. You could say that grace is meeting all of our needs when we are the worse sinners. There
is a principle that we some times overlook, and that is , there is
nothing wrong with having confidence in some spiritual endeavor that we
have accomplished that others have not, because they did not do the home
work. So if others want to look down on these accomplishments then
either there accusations of pride will stick or they will be shown to be
unloving. I would say that it is not wise to view these accomplishments
as different that our Father loves us to be.
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6467
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Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Anger?
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on: April 18, 2008, 02:45:46 PM
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This is the next step . http://www.oneplace.com/ministries/living_grace/ Then
this is the next step after that.Phil 3: 13. Brethren, I do not
regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do:
forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, 14.
I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God
in Christ Jesus. Once you have done these you will have obeyed God. |
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6468
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Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Grace Avoidance
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on: April 18, 2008, 01:48:04 PM
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Society is already without foundations. As the
building blocks of grace have tumbled from the top down , we have lost
the care and concern for others. So that the rule of legal authority is
the suppression of the poor. When the leaders use their authority to
suppress the people then there is not much understanding of the advocacy
of grace. This is the destruction of the foundations. When people are
trained in legalism, they do not understand what it was to live in a
free society. The root cause is the effects of the corruptions of the
foundations and not the intermediate willing acts that produce no real
lasting renewal. And in this sense we are the products of our
environment. The causes from not having any foundations, result in the
effect of sorrows. Its not in the compromise in human relationships, but
its seeing that there will be more personal effects as a result of the
pressure of these corrupted foundational causes. Without common grace
there is much distress of soul. The foundations of grace are the freedom
that causes happiness and caring. But when the foundations are
destroyed then the distress as a cause magnifies the prohibitive
effects, which causes more oppression. First because when people become
desperate , they look for short term solutions. And because we have an
ingrained love for rules, we become comfortable with a set of rules as a
way of feeling comfortable in the society of no foundations. We avoid
the desperation by clinging to what works. This is a vicious cycle of
societal destruction.
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Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Romans and the Flesh Monster.
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on: April 17, 2008, 11:56:27 AM
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The Holy Spirit is working because Christ has
done the work on our behalf and we have that work as our rite way to
live. So that sanctification is an on going process in which the Holy
Spirit applies Christ obedience as He reveals Christ image to us. We are
looking on Christ in His word, and being changed from one glory to
another. If we live by the Spirit we will not fulfill the lust of the
flesh. Because the Spirit controls the believer, bringing grace to bear
on our sin, as He reveals Gods unfailing love in working these
redemptive patterns of dispositional qualities in us. We are graced with
love so divine that we no longer view ourselves as slaves to sin. We
live in grace, so that we will know His will. When we know His will, we
know Him as everything we need and there is no one else or any where
else we can turn to , where we can find rest. So that we are totally
passive in receiving this rest, and filled with power in being enabled
to do good. We know that if God did not create life, then He would not
have ordered the intricate sustaining forms of matter to sustain life.
But since He made everything for a reason, then the purpose of these
different parts of life are His working them out for good. So it is in
our willing to do anything. God determines to work in our working by
causing us to act in a way that He teaches us to, bringing circumstances
into our lives for the direction He wants us to go, and having His
working in our strengths and weaknesses. Because just like He wills to
make creation work, so He wills in His recreation.
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6476
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Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Smoking is REAL bad
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on: April 14, 2008, 07:38:05 PM
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MBG-
I applaud your grace here. You are most likely thinking I have none.
I do. I don't even smoke anymore and have many friends and relative whom I wish would stop.
It's
just using God as a mallet and pretty much adding to His Word through
assumption is wrong. Way more out of line than smoking.
Mary
She
was taught to think this way, it really does not work to curb sin in
the long run. This is legalism. O but she can learn to think for
herself. It will take time on listening to people on this forum. I think
she will take your encouragement. If she thinks about it.
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6477
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Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Romans and the Flesh Monster.
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on: April 14, 2008, 07:29:27 PM
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The question may not always be the reason for
the illumination. It is that we are internal reasoning people, as
receiving the knowledge of God. And yet there are levels of
understanding from our reasoning that grow into these impressionable
quiet communications. We start as babes in Christ , who love the word
more than we love to hear Him speak through the word. And then we learn
to see Him in the unseen. First by having an illumination of a
particular reveal proposition, and then gradually discerning the
implications of these quiet communications to present situations. These
communications are not necessarily prophetic, but they are from the
unseen real world in the Holy Spirits application to the understanding
of cutting us from the cords of our imagination to understand reality.
Which is a strong sense of freedom. We naturally are conditioned
in being tied down to circumstances and the expectations of others to
think on a vertical level. But when we are freed to be translated into
the eternal illuminations of supernatural communications of the Spirit
we are beginning to see things in layers. We go from tunnel vision, to
eternal perspective. As we grow in understanding of His communications
to us, we more and more leave behind those useless thoughts and earthly
passions. So this is waiting on Him to assure us of a direct
intervention from His past teaching to our understanding in these
communications, that we will see our graced hope realized. He may take
us to a very deep trial, or the way of grief, but we are never
unconnected from His reality to intervene.
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Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Romans and the Flesh Monster.
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on: April 12, 2008, 10:32:51 AM
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As we stand we are to put on the armor of God,
because Christ has already given us the victory in using these weapons.
And there are times when all men will be confounded at the purposes of
God for us, so that we must lean of Gods mighty interception into time
on our behalf. God still does miracles, by using the natural forces of
the universe , and the wills of people to accomplish His purposes. We
are warriors in the sense that we can pray for the victory over evil
spiritual forces, by the summons of God in the court of heaven. God
moves the winds to accomplish His purposes. He avenges the righteous by
the weather. He avenges the righteous by causing those wicked people who
have evil intentions, and scheme against His people to be thwarted in
their purposes. God is an avenger from Heaven, who when summoning His
power, actually works beyond the sight of all men, in preparation for
His moving in the judgment of men by the prayers of the saints. We can
be in a standing position using an offensive weapon. So that we are not
in control of His avenging power, but He is using our prayers, in having
a relationship with us, to show us that He does what ever pleases Him,
and it is more important to depend on Him for the victory than to take
these things into our own hands and work for profit, or worry and work,
or work for evil masters. God is good, so that we are able to be the
agents in which He destroys our enemies before us. We see it with our
eyes, so that we will be reminded that we are not to be defensive, but
we are really, in reality , serving a powerful God who avenges the
wicked. We are harmless, but God is scary. Gods ways are not our
ways, and His thoughts are not our thoughts , which really translates
that His workings are opposite of the way man works. God gets a harmless
shepherd with a sling shot to bring down a whole army of Philistines.
God reduces his children to powerlessness and nothingness to accomplish
His mighty salvation. We are buffeted on every side. That is there are
armies assembling all around us. And we are all alone, because we
believe that God controls all things, so that our doctrine defines our
pathway of victory. Most religious men are led away by their own
thoughts. Their doctrine is their success. Their beliefs are the
opposite of Gods workings. So that when they become successful they fall
into the enemies hands. They are blind to Gods ways. But God does His
fighting with losers in this world. The lame, the helpless, the
struggling saint, the one who begging for God to come to the rescue. Men
have a natural love in pride to be successful by their position. They
cannot accept the struggle that they are in, so they go out and become
successful, leaving behind their allegiance to Gods workings. And they
become hard hearted and unbending in their philosophy. In this religion
there is no working power, just a bunch of people fighting with sticks.
But God reduces men to nothing in order to show that He alone deserves
the glory. It is more important in Gods ways that man learn not to lean
on himself than that he has the victory. So that men are always caught
in the struggle to trust God while there are armies on all sides. The
more God matures a man the more rejection, temptation, and big victories
that man will experience. But the more pain he will endure.
| 6486
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Forums / Main Forum / Re: Right Kind of Fear?
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on: April 11, 2008, 11:54:22 AM
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Yes, and wisdom is eternal. It is for an
eternal perspective. So that we see that before the foundations of the
world all of Gods purposes were laid out in a pleasurable fashion, since
His wisdom is what He determined by what He spoke. And we kind of have a
sense that when He determined that we would exist, and then become new
in Christ, that our salvation was always part of that divine life giving
vine of pleasure. Life is eternal, because God is eternal. We are
restless until we begin to enjoy the eternal perspective of this gift of
wisdom, who is Christ to us. When we look back at the reception of that
life in time, we can know that it was always personal with Him before
time. So that we can have a revelation of His being in union in the
Trinitarian fellowship in that counsel for our personal benefit. And we
can rejoice in Christ, who received all the praise for being the
revealed wisdom of God. In Christ we are totally secure.
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6488
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Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Anger?
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on: April 11, 2008, 09:01:02 AM
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God purposed from eternity to grace His love
on some men, and to pour out His wrath on those who He let go on in
their own sin. Now if He purposed to love men from eternity, then He
will love them to the end. Otherwise He would not be able to will to
love them by His purposing in the eternal counsel of God from eternity
past.
All men are sinners. All men are under the wrath of God.
God is angry with the wicked every day. There is no good thing in men.
The only Person good on this earth is God. Man hates God, and will not
submit to God. So the only thing that separates those whom God loves and
those whom God hates is Christ. Since Christ came and live a perfect
life both in His active obedience and His passive obedience, He is able
to save those whom are His to the end. He did not pray for the world,
but He prayed for His own. He prayed that the Father would keep us to
the end. When we are His we share in Him in the fellowship with the
Father by the Spirit. We do not have a fellowship as those who are not
His. Our identity is not from our ability to keep ourselves in the love
of God. But we are loved first so that we can love. We are in Christ ,
we are in the love of God. We cannot be out of Christ and so we cannot
not be loved at all times. This is what the purpose of God in Christ
will accomplish. He loves us to the end because of His goodness that
alone brings Himself glory. If His love for us was purposed in His
goodness to us, so that He alone deserves the glory, then anything less
would be a blight on His goodness in purposing.
The wicked
experience guilt, fear, shame, condemnation, anger, and separation from
God. They are restless every day. They are in an ongoing relationship
with God that is hostile. The only work that we have that protects us
from being in an angry relationship to Christ is His love for us. His
promises and His covenant to us is His unfailing love for us. He cannot be loving to us and be angry at us at the same time. But He can be loving to us and angry at the wicked at the same time. He does not have two wills.
Im
going to go into a deeper reflection here. There are inordinate
imaginations concerning these things of God, that are formed in us by
our past longings, and our blindness of our tendencies to dwell on
things that are not true, so that we can spend some time in an unreal
world of illusion.These times are not grace empowered. These are from
the depths of evil that resides in all of us. If we could rest in our
own imaginations then we would receive those paradigms of grief that
would be determinate on our disposition. But if we are reminded by
having a sense of Gods awesome holiness by a reflection of His love,
then we could release that evil cycle of thinking. Thinking wrong is
tied to our general disposition, a sense of what we think is real. How
we are used to feeling, how we look at our world, as to how these griefs
and joys effect us. So this is what determines our view of Gods
unfailing love.
We must have the nature of Gods will to us
through His divine revelation in order for us to have the illumination
of Gods power over our tendencies. We must end our toiling with these
imaginations. In order for us to change, we must get up to a level of
being in a gracious dispositional transition to transformation. There is
a battle of reasoning to that transformation. It is not a process but a
deliverance. It is a conversion through super naturalistic revealing powers from one
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