Perfectionism in this life is the worse sin.
The problem with us is that we are blind to our own depth of sin. And we
do not like to have sin revealed to us because we are blind by our own
love for being righteous. So we spend a lot of wasted time comparing
ourselves to other people. If we get enough people participating in this
religious practice, then we have a society of legalism. I mean how many
of us enjoy not only seeing the depravity of our own ways, and thinking
of it by what we do against the law of God? But feeling the hardness
that comes to us as a result of not being obedient in leaving the sin
with Him. Men can do no good, and if they could achieve a
certain amount of goodness, then they would think better of themselves
than they are. Which is the worse sin of pride. Sin starts in the
thought life. And it is not just the lustful , covetous, and murderous
thoughts that are ugly. But its the normal way of men under the curse of
sin and without the means in themselves to think of themselves of being
rite before God and standing in a position of being acceptable before
Him by their own obedience. The ugliness of sin is shown by thinking
that we have arrived by practicing a certain level of orthodoxy and
feeling that we have graduated into being on the level of being Gods
spokesman. We develop a religious acceptance so that we can feel like we
are able in ourselves to do Gods work. The moment we rest on our own
level of obedience, is the time we are most sinful. Because as
long as we are on this earth, sin will be present in us, and we will
need to see ourselves as God sees us. And the more we see ourselves as
God sees us the more sinful we are convinced we are. And i dont mean
that as just passing on reformed dogma. I mean if we are mortifying our
sin, through going to the God of the word, then we are going to feel
like we are suppose to feel as sinners. And if you think that the
negative attitude we experience about seeing ourselves as we really are
is the reason that we get depressed and discouraged then you are
probably not very wise in being in the presence of God. Seeing ourselves
as who we are is done when we look at who God is. And if we thought
that we were in this struggle alone then we would probably talk about
the passages about turning from sin, as totally in a interpretative way.
But those who are turning from sin, are the ones who feel that their
sin is beyond their own ability to overcome.
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Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Pet sins
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on: December 07, 2007, 09:10:55 PM
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I know I should be ashamed of myself, but it a force of my nature!  I try. And when I try, my cheeks go red, lol. And my head rolls about with my tounge hanging out. See look -->   I couldn't get one with the same pic. So those 2 have to do.
please
Mamabee never accept ownership of the Habit. accept that you have
sinned in this regard in the past. even if it was 2 seconds ago. but
always keep in mind that the sin is NOT you or a part of the "nature"
that G-D gave you. therefore IT'S NOT YOU. you are able by the Power of the Spirit to overcome unrighteous anger. and "cussing". (around a fire with an aged tribal chieftain) one
day many moons ago it was told me of a man with two dogs. one was evil
dog so evil he blacker than night. then there was the other dog who
always he could protect his master from the other evil dog.he such good
dog that he whiter than snow. the evil dog try every day kill the man
but the good dog always protect the man. one day another man
stay with this man and see this....he ask: how is it that evil dog do
not ever defeat good dog? the man say :the one who wins every day is the
one i feed every day. the other i don't feed.
As i recall
the story takes a different turn, especially since the old dog has no
new tricks. You see the evil dog never takes a rest because he knows
that one day hes going to die. But the evil dog gets to rule since he
taken the territory first. The dog is not only evil but brutally
vicious. Now even tho there are good dogs in the territory, yet the evil
dog keeps them under his power because the evil dog rules by brute
force. And he has enough power to keep all of the good dogs down. But
when the master dog shows up, he be more powerful than the evil dog and
the self righteous dog. See the master dog had a fight with the evil dog
a long long time ago. The evil dog stepped on His foot, but the master
dog gave the evil dog a blow to the head. So now those who are protected
by the master dog dont need to feed the good dogs. They just keep close
to the master dog.
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6948
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Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Pet sins
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on: December 06, 2007, 09:29:26 PM
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Since most of our sins are revealed to us in
battling with them in our our thoughts, we are cast into an imaginative
world in trying to cope with the pain. The intensity of the struggle can
be magnified by the feeling of the intense pain. What starts as mental
pain then begins to spread over our whole disposition and we are left
with a depressed countenance. When we struggle with sin, we are under
the d illusion of fear, doubt ,and anxiety. The problem is that we have a
hard time grasping the nature of the problem of how the sin is
connected to our d illusions. Its as if the fear becomes a monster, and
the sin is hidden. Since we are struggling with visible sin, we
naturally try to avoid that sin. But we cannot avoid the corruption of
our own hearts. So the problem in all d illusions is that we fail to
understand the condition of our hearts in our struggle with sin. But if
we have so much mental pain from the fear, doubt and anxiety , that pain
speaks of its absolute control over us, so that we are convinced that
the pain is really a problem and that it is very prevalant and powerful.
But if we cannot connect the pain to our corruption then we find it
hard to determine to go on. In all of life we are on the edge
of falling into a very intense mental struggle. Because the corruption
of our hearts is always very able to bring us down under a trial that
will cause us to turn inward so that we feel the detestable part of
being trapped and imprisoned, which is the paradigm of being under the
weight of the pain of an inward struggle. When we experience a wholeness
and peace, we know that its not because we have an absence of pain, but
its because we don t feel the corruption of our own hearts. In a sense
we program ourselves to believe that we are not as bad as we are since
we do not feel as bad as we are. And if we felt that bad, then we would
be more convinced in our believing that we were capable of being
detestable. The problem is that we are what we think. But we
sometimes rationally know what to think and do but we don t always feel ,
think, and do , what we know is good and rite. And so we live in a
certain amount of deception about who we are, since we cannot possible
feel the total weight of that corruption. So that we are only capable of
going under the weight of the pain and d illusion that we are able to
handle since we are not instantly destroyed by the power of the pain and
delusion. The pain takes away a certain amount of our feeling
correctly, thinking rationally , and discerning our circumstances. This
is the imprisoned paradigm. So there is a certain amount of ability in
us to be deceived as to our understanding of our ability to to use these
faculties in a normal way. This is part of our thinking of who we are.
In this deception, we are always under the power of an uncontrolled self
deception. If we think that we control our faculties, then a lack of
control would cause us to be under the power of some other power. So in a
sense this helplessness is what causes the pain.
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Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Rob Bell, Nooma, And The Emerging Church
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on: December 05, 2007, 06:32:26 PM
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Every thing in life is centered around who
Christ is. So that we cannot possibly define the human paradigm of
relational conflict in anything short of knowing Him and understanding
what He has done. He is the only real man, and His fellowship with the
Father is defining the convergence of the difference between the true
and false in all of life. So that what relationship we have with Him
defines all other horizontal relationships. And since He leads us to the
Father in our adoption, that relationship precludes any other conflict
due to addiction. What we think of Him determines everything in life and
changes every relational problem.
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Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Pet sins
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on: November 25, 2007, 06:29:49 AM
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We are not defined by our sinful habits. We
have eternal life and sin no longer reigns in our disposition. We can
live that quality of life in Christ. We have these eternal desires now
that make us live above the circumstances of this world. We have access
to more inner power than the world, we believe that we are fully able to
come out of any trial in a better way than how it was before the trial.
We believe that our King is ruler over every person ,and circumstance,
and earthly power that we are face with daily. So that we live in a
different world of thinking than the kind of thinking we are faced with
living in this world. So our thinking effects how we feel about
ourselves and others. Because everything in the universe is under the
Sovereign Hand of our loving Father, then we live in harmony with that
design when we desire what He desires. God has created everything for
His pleasure, because He is only pleased in His own goodness. We being
His children receive these workings from Him. So that we are pleased by
His being pleased. So that we experience pleasure in lite of our
relationship to Him. And as we grow in Christ our pleasure increases.
Its not just in the way we view ourselves and the good circumstances in
this world that we experience pleasure by. But it is Him communicating
His pleasure in the life we have in Christ. We can become so
eternally minded that we experience the pleasure of God as time goes by,
just by sensing the eternal presence of God as near. As we grow, we
learn that God is so big , that He dwarfs our present circumstances so
that we are no longer a slave to this world. When we experience desires
that are pleasurable, they are the reason we know that the quality of
life is eternal. In experiencing that pleasure we feel the secret
providence of God in His smiling on us in the worse of circumstances.
The pleasure is His being present in a way that makes us sense that
oneness beyond the normal human oneness. He dwarfs human experiences of
closeness in relations so that we are lifted out of this world in an
eternal paradigm, feeling that this life is a stepping stone to what we
will have after death. When we enter the eternal paradigm, the pleasure
we will experience will be unimaginable, but we imagine what it will be
like by our experiencing that pleasure as death comes upon us. Gods
pleasure is our desire to be heavenly minded.
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Forums / Theology Forum / Re: What is a REAL Christian?
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on: November 25, 2007, 05:36:48 AM
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I agree, we can get bogged down in these
different philosophies, that are legal in nature. The tendency in myself
and all of us is to think that we are somehow so fallen that we cannot
really trust what we desire is what God desires for us. But when we are
made new by the grace of God, all things become new. We being bought
with a price have been created anew, we are new creatures in Christ
Jesus.
Even tho what we desire is corrupted , yet our desires
are new. The problem is we have mixed desires like sin-grace,
joy-sorrow, confidence-fear, love-hate, and peace-anxiety. We naturally
lean toward the accumulation of these wrong desires because we are still
sinners, by what we were like in the past, and what our present
circumstances are like. We are also a product of the dominating
philosophies of this world. But when we are made new in Christ , we no
longer are under the domination of these wrong desires. It becomes a
matter of becoming like we really are. We do this by thinking properly,
or thinking thoughts after Gods thoughts.
The fact that we
struggle with sin, does not mean that we are defined by that particular
sin. As sheep we are so easily led astray by bad teaching that enters
our thought life and makes us under confident about what we are in
Christ. As Calvinist , we can get so introspective, that it becomes a
morbid exercise of futility. When i speak about not trusting myself, i
mean that there are some of my desires that well up in me that are not
to be trusted like the negative desires i have listed. But just because i
experience these mixed wrong desires with good desires does not mean
that what i desire is wrong. To often we let others talk us out of not
being true to our own desires. But the truth is that as belivers we
belong to a new king so that what we desire is what He desires for us.
This is called Christian liberty or liberty of the will.
When
we go to His word, we learn our new identity in Him by being created a
new by that transforming of our minds so that we desire as He has
re-made us. We learn that the desires of our hearts are new. We become
familiar with the new desires by that transformation in the meditation
of His word. Its not that our actions are change by a moral conviction
that comes from His law, but we actually are given new senses so that we
enjoy Him by those new desires doing what He wants us to do. Its more
than just knowing what to do, because we know rationally what not to do,
but we still do it.
We need to learn to trust our new desires.
Do not let the legal disciple talk you out of who you are. They focus on
your behavior and create in you false guilt. They come accusing you of
sin, and wanting you to do something in order to make them look good in
the flesh. There is a lot of extra pressure that comes from their
doctrine. They try to talk you down and make you feel that unless you do
their 5 steps then you cannot trust what you desire.
The first
warning signs of legalism is the amount of pressure applied in the
teaching. Legalism creates the allusion that you are not complete in
Christ unless you do a certain thing first. Legalism steals your freedom
to think ,desire and act as God created you. If i am mixed in my
desires, it doesnt mean that what i desire is wrong. Its just as wrong
for you to make me do something that i do not desire to do, as it is for
me to dwell on the wrong desires. When we are made new in Christ we
were given a freedom by having His Spirit dwell in us. Just because we
struggle with sin , does not mean we are defined by sin. We can talk
ourselves into being what we are not, by a lack of understanding of who
we are in Christ, so that we do not trust our desires. But God always
works from the inside to the outside. What we desire is what we are in
Christ. And we must do what we desire in order to be really free.
Because what we desire is what He desires.
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