This is a growth question, because these sins
that so easily beset are life long struggles. Because sin is much deeper
than the ones that people can see, such as drunkenness, homosexuality,
sex problems, and the like are all tied to other deeper sins of the
heart. These outward sins just show the inability of man to deal with
having a divided elegance to sin. When we come to Christ we come
as we are, with all of our addictions to sinning, our condition of
rebellion, and our unsavory addiction to the law having the old
relationship as our school master. We are granted full acceptance as
saints ,being given a righteousness that is not earned, and being
completely made whole by Christ work on our behalf. We die to our old
way of viewing ourselves as slaves to sin, and we live in the gospel
paradigm doing the will of God from the heart. We begin in evangelical
obedience. Our working comes out of grace by being granted forgiveness
for sin , and looking to Christ alone for our acceptance. We live in
praise and adoration to Christ. We live as a friend of God, having a
salvation that comes to us in unfailing love, for His name, so that we
will be confident on the day of trial that God will cause us to
persevere to the end. We are obligated to live as tho we were
not our own, but we were bought with a price. The nature of our
obligation is to find pleasure in God alone, by being in the use of the
means of grace. When we understand that salvation is of God, we will
begin to have a joy knowing that we stand as sinners bringing nothing to
the relationship but our doubts, fears, sins, fickleness, and hardness
of heart. We come obligated to bring God all of these struggles, pouring
our hearts out to Him from an unfeigned love in our relationship with
the purpose to constantly viewing Him as our sovereign Lord, always with
our eyes fixed on Him, and then receiving from Him, trust, confidence,
joy, peace, and love of the Holy Spirit. I do believe that He will give
us the Holy Spirit in a special way at seasons in our lives if we stay
on Him in persevering prayer being taken up with His bigness. When
we see that our sin is so deep, a constant irritation to our enjoying
God, then we will begin to desire after Him. The pleasure in being swept
ed up to being raise to God will be experienced in the height of His
love, kindness, faithfulness, and His absolute sovereign rule in the
universe where His design is the beauty of His being please with all
things and surrounding us with that pleasure in His being pleased to use
us as His trophies of love. This is being lifted up in His pleasure in
His created order. When we begin to have this joy unspeakable then we
will begin to see that there is nothing in this world that has that kind
of draw. Struggling with sin, will be a drag rather than a love of
ours. Get out of that accountable relationship to the law, it will only
lead you to self deception. We are to glorify God by enjoying Him
forever. We live with Him being our all in all, at all times, with all
kinds of praise!
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Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Is It Possible To Compromise For The Greater Good?
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on: November 20, 2007, 01:05:20 PM
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Whatever path God has led you down, it is for
His glory and for the good of those who belong to Him. Life s path is a
long marathon. For the sake of deepening faith, He must make the way
desperate at times. An so we have these moments of time down that path,
where we hit the bottom of the trial, and we begin to turn to Him in
prayer, and then in our crys He comes in that pit of pain and despair,
for God is the God of the valleys. But the valleys are only a moment in
time in comparison to eternity. We have a paradigm of pain that is very
very short, because eternity goes on and on and on.
Yes, on
this earth we may endure the most sever circumstances, for His glory.
But we have His protection and we have that sense of His love as the
assurance that we can endure any thing in this life. Because when God is
present there is nothing else. There is no pain or pleasure that we can
possibly experience in this life than to find God. In the moments of
Gods appearance we are lifted up above the trials. We then experience an
assurance that all will be well, that there is no trial that can
ultimately bring us under. For God will be close to the afflicted and
the poor. He will up hold us by His right hand. That is the rock we
stand on, the working out in our lives to subdue our enemies, and to
speak salvation to our hearts. Do we long to hear that voice ?, Say to
my soul "I am your salvation". Then we must give Him all of the problem.
We give Him the problem and He speaks to our souls. When he takes us
from the moment of a valley to the heights of joy and we enter His
temple rejoicing , being really taken to another paradigm, then we will
know of Him in the glory of that power, we will have the Spirit speak to
us "I am your salvation alone!"
It will happen for the
saint, to subdue his enemies by pure grace. Trust me. We must long for
Him to Speak salvation to our hearts. He is saving us daily. But He will
put us on that hill again! He promises!
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6971
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Forums / Theology Forum / Re: The last stance of the Patriarchal society.
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on: November 19, 2007, 05:38:52 PM
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I have tried to tell you that this life and
the answers to problems are more simple than the religious community is
telling you. I have been aware of this process for along time. But i
guess you got to learn for yourselves. Go ahead and get that how to
paper back, i am telling you its not going to do any good over the long
haul. Its not that difficult.
I know your a calvinist and its
so tempting to think that there is more to this stuff than we believe
about God being sovereign and everything. But i will tell you, it will
lead you backwards. It will lead you to frustration, blaming others,
concentrating on everyone else behavior, and a life of worry and regret.
But i am telling you that you dont need to worry about everyone else's
behavior around you. You may twist their arms and get them to do some
stuff, but it is an impossible task to get someone to change their
hearts. Its too hard ,and it takes too much time. And in the end you
will have your little group, and all you little rules , but you will be
so far away from God that you could not see your way through the forest.
Thats were you want to go then fine. It doesnt bother me one bit. I
already know it is going to fail, and i will be waiting for you to
return.
Its so simple that its difficult. If you are in trouble
the answer is prayer. I know its not asking you to do anything. So ,
then God will do it . But then we are just avoiding the responsibility
He has given us. Go ahead and think that way. Go ahead and get that
paper back. I ve done this thing for a long time and i am telling you
flat out, it doesnt work. Theres only one lesson to learn in life that
matters. Yes , all you guys and gals that are graduating from HS and you
got all these goals. So is it that difficult? You are all concerned
about meeting that guy and gal, and then you have your standards. I
know. I was there . It was all just baloney. I miss the gold through the
forest. I was wrapped up in my little world. I was in complete control.
THe best lesson that i had to learn is that i was powerless, and i just
needed a very simple relationship. THat was Jesus,today tommorrow and
now being middle age its Jesus all the time. Its going to Jesus in the
morning , and going to Jesus at lunch time and going to Jesus at dinnner
the rest of the night with Jesus. Its falling in love with Jesus. Thats
it, no real difficult search for anything. Once you grow to love Jesus
you will be in the place where you will meet others who love Jesus, and
are not trying very hard. No blame, no worry, and no shame. But you want
to make it difficult, i know.
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6972
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Forums / Key Life Forum / Re: The Other Guys Who Don't Like Steve's Teachings
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on: November 18, 2007, 07:01:06 PM
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I listen to John Mac every day. Even tho i
dont consider him like Sproul and especially his views on double
predestination , i still like Macs preaching . Its also one hr .  Sproul
is such a great teacher. Never seen another theologian put so much deep
stuff into a small paperback like he did , Sproul is one of the best.
Go John!!! I think Steve B is the most flexible . I am also more attracted to his views on the work of the Spirit in the paradigm of grace. |
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6973
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Forums / Theology Forum / The last stance of the Patriarchal society.
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on: November 18, 2007, 12:51:34 PM
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My mind is moving a thousand miles an hour .
But its something that has been weighing heavily on my heart for quite
some time. Because of the amount of adversity in this society to hold to
some of the old morays, not saying that there are others who are doing
the same nor in the future whether this will change but it is within the
battle of the mind that there is the reality of a society.
So i
have this life style that i have been led into over the battle for
holding fast to what i consider being in line with those morays. And if i
thought that all truth was like a scale , where i had been confronted
with the word of God and then sorta had a new word at another text to
balance out what that prior text was saying then i do not believe i
would be truthful as to the nature of divine revealing. I do believe
that any divine idea or prop. comes as it is with the nature of the
existence of the paradigm in which it defines reality. Because divine
truth is from the absoluteness of the character of God. So what goes on
in the mind of a believer in that understanding is testing the
revelation of truth by that Spirit in which it comes and not by the
philosophy of life that it describes.And in this sense , scripture not
only describes the paradigm but it is the paradigm.
So this is
where deception comes in. If we believe that a word of faith is
determinate by the person speaking that word , then we are really in the
spirit of the age, or following the course of the world. Because truth
is not taught as much as it is caught. And the reason why is because we
live in a world that describes the truth in a different spirit but with
almost the same terms we christians use to describe truth. So instead of
being under the authority of the divine we are being redefined in our
working of the understanding by a wrestling of the terms in the course
of the world fashion.
I am just led to talk about these things
from my view and if it is offensive i do apologize. And i am probably
much worse than some of you so take it from the source of a really bad
sinner. But for yrs i have determined to weight everything i hear in the
meditation of the Psalms, and then since the Psalms are the descriptive
reality of the soul and it is the definition of the divine logic to the
individual circumstances that are determined by God for a person to go
through, the book is really the only spiritual , intuitionisal , and
futuristicly revealing in a no sight paradigm. The book is the place to
test spirits. Because the nature of truth is different than the nature
of disease. Truth penetrates into the mind to the understanding in the
revealing, but disease starts from the inside and goes to the exterior
in a bodily since.
Truth is always applicable as it comes into
the soul in the nature of its description and not in the describing. So
that is where we are being deceived . There is a difference between
describing the reality, and being in the reality and explaining it as
you are among the eternal varieties. We only live in the reality of what
we understand that reality to be and not what we have been told it is .
That is why we are saved one by one, because truth always comes
individually and not corporately. And it is in understanding the inner
workings of the soul that we begin to experience the paradigms of the
Spirits realness. Truth does not just define the terms, but it reveals
the nature of the person to the understanding of the soul and transforms
the soul by its paradigm's shift.
We are so easily led astray
by the society in which we live. Because we struggle so much with the
what is common to man syndrome it is revealed to us in this common way.
We are always looking on the outside to determine the truthfulness of
the nature of the way things work out. But truth sorta turns our eyes
toward ourselves and then demands a full revealing to all the areas of
our soul so that we not only are thinking in terms of the common but we
are thinking in terms of a good understanding of our inner life. It
divides our soul so that we are under the domination of the nature of
truth. When we are secure in our understanding of truth, we have
experience the full effects of the divine revealing to our souls, we are
receiving a lite of who we are in reality. This is the biblical way to
learn by experience so that we will not be learning by eye sight. The
primary function of truth is the unveiling of the knowledge of God so
that we know of ourselves in all situations, so that we can discern
between the human intention and the divine freedom.
In this age
where truth comes so easily in a package, there is a general distaste
for the time to taste the eternal verities of truth. In a sense the
deception is not in the truth, but in the understanding of the truth. So
our concern is not just in the speaking a word, but in the areas of the
soul where we know it is true by the experience of understanding the
way we think and the why we think. It is going from general to specific.
When we focus on the inner workings of the soul, we learn to define
truth in light of the how it functions in a deepening paradigm so that
we will understand more and more the reality of that divine paradigm and
not just treat it in a philosophical sense.
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6974
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Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Emerging Church
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on: November 17, 2007, 12:55:44 PM
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The latest is there is some problems with the
size of the movement. And then the process theology can be very
legalistic.If there is always a focus on the process then it becomes man
centered. They can be down right mean , accusing and one size fits all.
I mean not everyone is called to go to Angola and feed the poor and
witness. The church is the bride of Christ but he is not the guy who is
going to be a missionary school and will only marry a missionary. Watch
out for this narrow minded process focus that only looks at the outward.
It can be man centered. But they are doing some positive things. Reformation is as it is said of Abraham Genesis 26 15.
Now all the wells which his father's servants had dug in the days of
Abraham his father, the Philistines stopped up by filling them with
earth. 18. Then Isaac dug again the wells of water which had been
dug in the days of his father Abraham, for the Philistines had stopped
them up after the death of Abraham; and he gave them the same names
which his father had given them. There is a spiritual principle
here. The reformation is a movement that goes backwards. The old wells
are the water that is for the present church family. M L Jones dug up
the old wells by getting the old books in circulation again. That was
after a period starting at the end of Spurgeon where the periodical's
were as it were thrown in the well to cover the exegetical focus of the
word of God. Now we are replacing the old exegesis with paperbacks and
sound bites. If these reformed works are covered over again then the
next generation will have their bibles neatly sitting on a shelf. Thats
the process we are going through even among the Calvinist. It comes like
, instead of doing a theological book in a small group, it is just
opened up for discussion. It is a declension. A missionary is one who
has a deep theology. That is the process by which the old wells are dug
out. By having a confessional focus.
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Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Who Or What Defines Sin ?
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on: November 17, 2007, 12:44:35 PM
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We enter the world as sinners. And we sin
because we are sinners. Our nature is one of sin. Sin is not doing what
is required by the law, not only in letter but in the spirit of the
law. Christ extended their interpretation of the law because man always
lives in deception of the extent of the law, and wants to define sin so
that if man meets a certian standard then the man has done what the law
requires. Thats why man always adds all kinds of principles to the 10
commandments so that he can be righteous in himself. So the problem with
man is not only that he is blind to the law of God, but that he is
determined to rebel against the law of God by building a system in which
he can achieve his own righteousness. So from the 10 it goes to 1000
different principles.
But Christ came to show the extent of the
law by bringing it to bare on the extent of mans sin and show the depth
of the sin in man by showing man that the requirements of the law went
much farther than the letter. He was bringing the eternal standards of
God, so that men would see that there was no way they could do good
without an eternal satisfaction to meet the eternal punishment for
breaking the law. The law goes to the attitude of the heart not just
the communication of the requirements in intercepting bad habits. The
law brings us to see that our attitude determines our actions, and not
that our actions determine our ability. Instead of Christ meeting us at
our behavior, the eternal law of God has Christ meeting us at the core
of our hearts, our attitude,the knowledge of divine love that gives us
an understanding of Christ which will determine our choice.
When
we see ourselves in light of the law of God, we feel very small, being
unable to meet the requirements of the law in ourselves. We must be
convinced that every time we go before God, we understand that there is a
"woe is me." But we do not stay in this disposition. Because we know
that since Christ has become a man, that He has shown us God by bringing
His humanity into the Trinity for all eternity. He has been the only
real man, and our identity as man is in Him, who leads us to a oneness
because of His oneness in the Trinity. Because He became man and died
and rose again and ascended into heaven,our identification with Him in
His work as our mediator is the life we share in union with the Father
so that we can never fail or be without the life of God in our souls.
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6978
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Forums / Main Forum / Re: What A Single Lady Should Do To Catch A Single Man
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on: November 17, 2007, 05:52:29 AM
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An athlete who is a member of a church, Calvinist. A person who you are attracted to physically and feel comfortable being around. Don t act too complicated, but be smart and discerning. Read Spurgeons notes ,heres a good home page. http://www.4familyreformation.org/public/chspurgeon/Good_start02.htm
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Forums / Main Forum / Re: A Raw State of Repentance
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on: November 15, 2007, 10:32:01 AM
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It may surprise you that i believe that we are
capable of doing the most vile of sins at any time. Even tho it may be
from a steady declining in our fervency, sins power is capable of
getting us all at one time, and the fall can be great. In fact , very
little is depends on our avoiding it. In fact the first cause in all of
sin is really not what we do to avoid it. All of these potentials, these
powers of temptation, these deadly delima s of the vileness of our
lives is dependent on grace. We live in sin or die in sin in relation to
grace. Where ever grace is sin is overcome.
If we thought that
we were righteous in ourselves then the tension between our ability and
overcoming that sin would be from a legal paradigm. The power of sin
does is not just from a spring of being overcome by an addiction, having
a ruling effect, but it is also from the law. When the law revives- sin
revives and we die. The law strengthens the desire to sin. Our problem
is that we do not understand the other problem with ourselves other than
the addiction or the sin. We are naturally blind to what was so
apparent to us when we first came to Christ. We had a very real
understanding of the power of God, because we had such a clear back
ground of what we experience having a rebellious heart and living under
the power of sin without any other remedy. We were so thankful for
forgiveness that we experience grace as if we were clean having a direct
renewal of the Holy Spirit by going from the height of sin to the
glories of renewal.
So we start viewing ourselves as not only
having this new power, but also thinking that we deserve it. What we
struggle with is not necessarily the sin, by being exposed to the law,
but this delusion that we are somehow deserving of this new power. Then
in this paradigm of secularism , the doctrine of Justification by faith,
and the understanding of definitive Sanctification are not part of the
paradigm that are given to us so that we can relive the freshness of our
conversion experience. For some reason we get this attraction to the
law by being under the allusion of trying to obtain righteousness
through being good, instead of having the view of the law in the cross ,
so that Christ work on our behalf gives us a view that is perfectly
complete, so that we now can be involve in all the praise and glory in
Christ , so that we can live in the first love paradigm.
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6983
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Forums / Theology Forum / Re: why study Hebrew or any original language for that matter?
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on: November 15, 2007, 10:06:33 AM
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I
read neither Greek nor Hebrew. But I really wish that I had the time
to learn it. I think that being able to read in the original language is
a good thing. There are nuances in the original that I'm sure just
don't show up in translations. I have talked to our ASL interpreters at
church and they talk about how tough it can be to really give the
essense of what is being said, and I'm sure the same is true for Hebrew
or Greek to English.
If you read some of the books that i post, you will get this textual teaching in a very detailed and understandable way.
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6984
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Forums / Theology Forum / Re: why study Hebrew or any original language for that matter?
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on: November 15, 2007, 09:36:12 AM
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Its important to have an understanding of the
language. Especially, if you are teaching in a particular text. But just
like any kind of teaching , the word studies are not fool proof.
Not only is the word study necessary, but the context , historical back
ground and the overall usage of the word in light of the whole counsel
of God (or the entire biblical account.) Historically as a result of the
Reformation the theologians did the exegetical work in detail and over
the yrs refined the process, because that was a 40 hr a week job for
them as well as a devotion. They took these propositions and
produced a balanced view into standards, or putting fences around what
was revealed and what was a mystery. Then they put these standards in a
confessional type of document. Instead of preaching through the bible or
the nt, they would preach through the standards of the confession from
the text of the scripture. In this way the word study would not become
an avenue by which they would create their own doctrine by going outside
the scriptural usage of a proposition in the balance of the near
context and far context. They wanted the average church member to have
the whole counsel in a teachable form, with taking into account the
exegetical genuineness into that confession. So we have these different
confessions that promote what is an acceptable doctrine and what is
heresy. The logic is that if you find a problem in the text or you
promote a false teaching from the scripture then it will be evident from
the confession because it is the next line of protection revealing the
false teaching. It is absolutely essential that one understands the
confession. Understanding the confession keeps you from deception. They
would also get the practicality of the doctrine as it applies to the
Christian from the Psalms. In fact most churches used the Psalter as
their Hymnal. So even tho there are a lot of disagreements about how to
conduct this regulated worship, these Reformers had a much more profound
knowledge of the doctrines by the wisdom books. These confessional
documents, the Westminster standards or the 1689 Baptist standards are a
result of not only the professional exegeses, but a high view of
worship in the practical application of Calvinism in the Psalter.
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Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Is my new life philosophy biblical?
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on: November 09, 2007, 03:36:05 PM
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What is Gods will for our lives? To glorify
Him and enjoy Him forever. Or to glorify Him in enjoying Him. So it is a
matter of perspective. And since we have obtained such a great
salvation the will of God is that we see His purpose for our lives
starting from before we were born. We were called from our mothers. And
even when we were in sins and trespasses He redeemed us. His purposing
our salvation was when we were in sin to prepare us for salvation. So
we are called before we were able to understand. And some of us were
taught lessons about sin very early in our lives. Some of us were
protected from sin and we were brought along slowly and religiously. But
all of us can rejoice that our salvation originated in the eternal
counsel of God. And the purpose of us being saved was from eternity. When
we struggle with sin in our salvation, we can look back and have
confidence that before we were saved we can remember when we were in
bondage to sin so that we learn to rejoice in Gods eternal love for us,
and His faithfulness when we were unfaithful, His kindness , when we
were at enmity with Him, and His patience when we were living in sin. We
are given life by His choice, and we were forgiven at an early age so
that He does not remember the sins of our youth. We do not need to
return to the blackness of the guilt of sin that goes back wards, but we
can have confidence in His loving us over our past experience. His love
breaks through time and experience. We can have confidence that He was a
Father to us, and that before we were saved He kept us from dieing
before we were given salvation. Our lives are under His eternal purpose. It
is to our advantage to listen to our Fathers voice in the word of God,
and see how much He has determined to advance His purposes in the call
of His divine revelation. Because it is terribly important for God to be
the rock of our salvation. When we are standing on that rock we are
lifted up above our circumstances and the people who have no regard for
Gods purposes. When we experience this effect our Fathers voice from our
finite view we experience His love that surpasses our finite relational
past by His eternal love sustaining us by being filled with the eternal
Spirit of God who gives us a vision of the eternal past. We are
protected from the danger of being trapped in the damage of this
terrible problem with past pain.This is experiencing Christ as the rock.
The fleeing to Christ as our refuge is not just standing on the rock
but it is His work in our lives to effect the transparency of our past
and the weakness that we experience as a result of the pain of our past,
and to shield us from the present pain that comes out of that past
pain. When we know of our Fathers love in an experiential way , we know
of His being present in our experiencing His eternal purpose for us to
surpass this earthly struggle. In the times that God hides
Himself, we begin to be less confident in our struggles. Because God
protects us by being our shield, we are so dependent upon the Holy
Spirit to be a comfort in all of lifes trials. But God does things to
effect the advancement of our faith. If we never experience Gods
withdrawal then we would never grow in our faith. In the souls
declining into the depths of despair, these self righteous voices begin
to sound louder, so that the self begins to be agitated by remembering
the former ways of being under the power of , the course of the world,
the power of the flesh, and the temptations of the Devil. God wants us
to look for deliverance so that our looking on Christ will be more
important than the experience of love flooding our souls and inflaming
our desires. We are led down the road of tribulation and temptation. We
are so easily led astray. Because the world loves self
righteousness, we are cast into the mold of self strength. We grow
tired, because we are not able to make God appear in the same way , but
He seems to hide Himself. We want the same experiences of the eternal
call of God, the sense of His love that fills our every longing, and the
power of His right hand putting us on the rite path, so that we are
raised up above our enemies, and the self righteous crowd. But we begin
to falter. Oh, how low that sense of desertion feels. Oh how desperately
we are led into this tension. We are as it were shaken in our faith as
the world mocks at us, and the self righteous say, "I told you to listen
to me." It is a dark age, that we are led into, as if there was no
Martin Luther, only the idolatry of saint worship, and indulgences. The
pull of the world begins to over take our devotion, and we are most
misunderstood. Yes this is the state of a trial. It is very hard indeed
to believe in an eternal present Father, who is fully able to come to
our rescue without our help. It is so easy to fall into semi -plagenism.
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Forums / Main Forum / Re: A Raw State of Repentance
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on: November 08, 2007, 08:22:59 PM
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We live a life of repentance. You are rite ,
it is an attitude of the heart. Usually when God teaches us about
repentance He is always dealing with some lust, greed, coveting, and
pride. These sins of the heart make us anxious and are the enemies of
our faith. Gods design for us is to find in Him our all, so that when we
have found Him , then we are at peace. He is going to come as the God
who speaks and then the earth shakes.
Because He upholds all
things by the word of His power, His will is being worked out in our
lives by that upholding word. Its not necessarily the outward action
that we focus on, but the struggle is in the mind, the thoughts, and
then the will. The struggle is how we dwell on these thoughts and how we
understand the nature or power of sin and our natural hardness of
heart. When we repent we begin to understand more of Gods power that is
in the inner man from the new birth. When we learn to understand the
nature of that power, we become very desirous of the object of that
power.
If repentance were a matter of changing behavior then we
could have a manual of bad behaviors and good behaviors. We would 'nt
need prayer, the doctrinal instruction, and promises. We would simply
follow the rite behavior.
The truth is that Jesus alone
provides the purity we need. He earned it by His death and resurrection.
Our salvation is provided for us as an inheritance. Our cleansing can
only come from Jesus work on the cross. And that work is finished, so
that He sits at the right hand of God in heaven, declaring us not guilty
by that cleansing. He is our only High Priest. When we repent, that act
of repenting is His gracious gift to us. The transformation of the
heart is His reminder that we cant clean the latrine by self washing.
When Christ causes us to repent, we become very familiar with grace. The
repentance that God offers is absolutely free, without human effort,
and completely effective.
When we learn to repent, we learn to
morn over our sins. We need to dig to get to the old root attitudes of
the heart. If we focus on self effort we will only get the outward
attitude. But we are to fix our eyes on Christ in His word. If we love
Christ then we will love the nature of His work, the spiritual knowledge
of His divine light, and His absolute rite to rule in everything.
Loving Him is desiring Him in this way.
In repentance we learn
that Christ is to be desired more than any other object of our love. The
more we repent, that is acknowledging sin, the condition of a dull
heart, and our inability to obey, we will build these longings so that
we actually repent to see Christ and understand that His life is
experienced in us by understanding the nature of His work on our behalf
as completely of grace. We will learn to long in grace in His word.
Fixing our eyes on Christ will solve our wrong focus of man. The Holy
Spirit will bring new desires of our Fathers unfailing love,
faithfulness, and forgiveness. Gods attributes will become all consuming
in us, so that we see Christ as the radiance of Gods glory.
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7008
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Forums / Prayer Requests / Re: Fuel Prices
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on: November 07, 2007, 02:47:12 AM
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Its mind boggling what we put ourselves
through. Really, who cares about the average American citizen? First ,
he has no real representation in Washington. So now the libs are in
power, so we get a steady diatribe of global warming,
blah,blah,blah,blah,blahhhhhh. It might be smart to let the planet get a
little warmer this winter after the elderly freeze to death. While we
average Americans get the raw end of the deal because it really matters
who is in power. Create a crisis by dropping the ball in producing
alternatives and then throw up your hands as if it doesn t matter. We
are all laughing now, rite to the bank! Why are we not using nuclear
power? drilling in the artic and the Florida coast? Building more
refineries? At least the Republicans were heading in that direction.
With this bunch in power , who would be concerned about the coming of
these new alternatives? Its mind boggling what the American people will
put up with. The global warming gets a 4 out of 5 for its success - I
mean 4 dollars a gallon. I think we should make the fuel prices the
measuring system for the global warming media success. Is there any one
who wants to make it out of 10? It has everything to do with who is in
power, and for what direction we are taking. Its drives you crazy when
you think about it.
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7009
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Forums / Main Forum / Re: What is most important to you in a church? Poll:
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on: November 06, 2007, 10:48:55 AM
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there
has to be a give and take with church. I mean you do have to get
something out of it, or you'll burn to a crisp. But I think way too many
people are looking for "what's in it for me" and never think about what
they can give.
I well remember the Sunday when one of my Sunday
School class members said, "Well I don't think we should be trying to
meet the needs of the community until we've met every single need in
this church." On so many levels, this is just plain wrong, and
ridiculous. You can't meet everyone's needs. You just can't. There are
some people who are just a bundle of needs and if you focused just on
meeting what they bring to the table, you'd never get past them. And
just like Jesus said that you'd always have the poor, well you'll always
have people with needs. It's an endless stream. I do think the church
should look out for its own ... but while we're looking to those around
us.
I am always feeling like one of those needy ones, so I
guess I have just a thought or 2 on a church meeting needs. Sometimes
our needs well I am just selfish it is more I want, I want this fixed I
want my lights on even tho I seem to have made foolish choices and I am
talking about myself here not anyone else. I want my kids to have and my
"need" go on and on. what I need is to be content with what I have even
if only half the couch is sitable lol or my fav chair is actualy broken
and to see it would dispell any notions of wealth lol
Acts of the Apostles 6 1.
Now at this time while the disciples were increasing in number, a
complaint arose on the part of the Hellenistic Jews against the native
Hebrews, because their widows were being overlooked in the daily serving
of food. 2. So the twelve summoned the congregation of the
disciples and said, "It is not desirable for us to neglect the word of
God in order to serve tables. 3. "Therefore, brethren, select
from among you seven men of good reputation, full of the Spirit and of
wisdom, whom we may put in charge of this task. 4. "But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word." 5.
The statement found approval with the whole congregation; and they
chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, and Philip,
Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas and Nicolas, a proselyte from
Antioch. 6. And these they brought before the apostles; and after praying, they laid their hands on them. Do you think the Hellenistic Jews were selfish? Is there a responsibility here for the church?
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7010
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Forums / Main Forum / Re: Reconciliation
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on: November 06, 2007, 10:38:00 AM
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He made no distinction between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith.
The
purity came from the divine light of the truth that is in Christ and
not from anything in man. It was believed upon by grace, that is even
the faith of believing was a gift. The pharisees were saying that man
had to do a work of man, circumscision, and keeping the other parts of
the law, in order to be pure. But soveriegn grace is real saving grace.
We bring nothing and we get everthing.
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7011
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Forums / Main Forum / Re: Reconciliation
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on: November 06, 2007, 09:25:02 AM
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Because salvation is not just a matter of the
intelligence and having faith, but having a view of the glory of Christ
as the most beautiful object of our love, while we are in this body of
death. Therefore, it is incumbent upon us to see things as they really
are ,in lite of the bigness of our view and the vast gulf it produces
between men and God ,as to effecting the power of change.
In
this exalted lite of the excellency of Christ we can now look at this
love- hate relationship to the world, the things of the world, and the
state of our own corruption as we live in this world. And as we have
been taught by our Lord Himself, that seeing and worshiping Him brings
us to a place where we are looking upon that work in HIs eternal
Sonship, as being a work, that as we compare all other works, in
themselves, is the difference between love and hate. In other words
unless we understand Christ in a saving way ,we would never understand
the relationship we have with love and hate.
That is why in His
exalted position as our mediator ,we see Him in such a way that all
other objects are as if we hate them. In our view of Christ in His
divine beauty, it is incumbent for us to come to a place where all other
objects are ugly as compared to His divine beauty.
His work on
the cross brought love and hate together, and now in Christ all of the
redemptive workings overshadow the condemnation ,because He has not come
to condemn the world but to save it. The beauty of Christ saving people
is on Him and not on the messenger. It is strictly because of His work,
that salvation is given to man. His working makes Him the most
beautiful object of our affection ,so that there is nothing that even
compares with that beauty, not even one. Compared to Him we are all
going astray and not having any good.
In our journey of looking
on Christ in His word, and being changed from glory to glory, we will
experience a profound change in our view of this world , the people ,
the things, and all the circumstances that come into our lives. This
experience cures a low disposition. It is in the constant experiences
of this kind, that will accumulate in us to see the reality of who we
are in this world, in lite of eternity. All of the changes in this life,
for the good, will not be experienced until we have an experience of
the nature of these things . This is different than fellowshipping in the milk of the word, as being exposed to the nature of
these things, as if we were standing at a distance. What changes us
from spiritual babies, to young men ,and then to mature adults ,is the
experience we have in the divines s of these truths, as they come to us
in the power of God ,so that we know the nature of these truths and not from a moral system of philosophy.
When
we are raised up from our natural deadness,we begin to love being
raised up, and we begin to hate being naturally dead. But in the being
raised up we go from our natural deadness to His divine aliveness in
that nature. When we look from being raised in our minds and in
our views ,we begin to hate ourselves with a good hatred. The self image
is becoming alive to reality. In the reality of our position in this
universe of Gods immensity, the nearness between the physical particles
under His present nature is compared to the unfathomable amount of the
blindness we have of His glorious beauty. If our spiritual eyes could be
open, we would only see Him and all other things and people would fade
away into a far distance. In other words in the beatific vision the
experience we have is reversed. Not only do we come to our senses in
being raise up to see Christ, as our all in all, but we begin to have a
proper hatred for everything in this world as compared to Him. It is
because we do not treat these things in this world as neutral, but as
being in Him, a hindrance ,we begin to live in the reality of who God
is. Our self image is formed by the experience of the nature of eternal things so that we can face reality.
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