[2.] In a time of some judgement, calamity, or
pressing affliction; the heart is then taken up with thoughts and
contrivances of flying from the present troubles, fears, and dangers.
This, as a convinced person concludes, is to be done only by
relinquishment of sin, which gains peace with God. It is the anger of
God in every affliction that galls a convinced person. To be quit of
this, men resolve at such times against their sins. Sin shall never more
have any place in them; they will never again give up themselves to the
service of it. Accordingly, sin is quiet, stirs not, seems to be
mortified; not, indeed, that it hath received any one wound, but merely
because the soul has possessed its faculties, whereby it should exert
itself, with thoughts inconsistent with the motions thereof; which, when
they are laid aside, sin returns again to its former life and vigour.
So they, Ps. 78:32-37, are a full instance and description of this frame
of spirit whereof I speak: "For all this they sinned still, and
believed not for his wondrous works. Therefore their days did he consume
in vanity, and their years in trouble. When he slew them, then they
sought him: and they returned and inquired early after God. And they
remembered that God was their rock, and the high God their redeemer.
Nevertheless they did flatter him with their mouth, and they lied unto
him with their tongues. For their heart was not right with him, neither
were they steadfast in his covenant." I no way doubt but that when they
sought, and returned, and inquired early after God, they did it with
full purpose of heart as to the relinquishment of their sins; it is
expressed in the word "returned." To turn or return to the Lord is by a
relinquishment of sin. This they did "early," -- with earnestness and
diligence; but yet their sin was unmortified for all this, verses 36,37.
And this is the state of many humiliations in the days of affliction,
and a great deceit in the hearts of believers themselves lies oftentimes
herein. These and many other ways there are whereby poor souls
deceive themselves, and suppose they have mortified their lusts, when
they live and are mighty, and on every occasion break forth, to their
disturbance and disquietness.
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Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Fighting the skeptic within
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on: October 12, 2007, 09:51:40 PM
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A certain amount of skepticism is good. As we
grow in the Lord we will be confronted with more skepticism because the
natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God. If there
was not this kind of adversity in our lives by some of the people who
are in the church or in the world then we would be tempted to self
confidence and decline in our faith. If we believe the God is
sovereign then we know that He has placed us in this present post modern
time for a purpose. First these are the days of small things. We move
forward one step and we take three steps backwards. In days past when
the church was enjoying the out pouring of the Spirit and experiencing
revivals in this country, it was much easier for the average church
going believer to have a consistently high devotion and a more profound
eternal perspective world view. But now we experience the dry times
involving a sud o religious fervor mixed with the sorrow of facing the
depression that springs from Darwinian determinism. How can we
cope? Well ,from my own experience Ive gone through times where i ve had
people who God has brought into my life for the purpose of really
encouraging me to the depth of my soul. Even tho i do not deserve to be
revived to call upon God, yet because He is unfailing in His love, and
gracious in His nature, He has brought on this encouragement so that i
might encourage others who are not experiencing those special
relationships. I really believe that God has decreed from eternity
whatsoever comes to past. He has determined when we are going to be
refreshed because He just and rite in all that He has determined. The
dark days are here so that we would not get complacent as we live out
our lives of faith. Whenever we feel the pressure of skeptics becoming
greater than our zeal for Him we must begin to seek Him in a special
way. His word is His spoken message for us in these dark days. Every
thing that transpires in creation is because He has spoken it into
existence and He upholds it by the power of His word. He sends His word
like heat and the snow melts. The seasons are determined by Him
sustaining them by the word of His mouth. So if we are filled with the
word, mediating on it night and day, we will experience a portion of the
Spirit in these dark times that will illuminate our path and strengthen
our faith by His illuminating experience of being renewed every day.
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Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Conscience As Proof?
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on: October 12, 2007, 05:50:02 PM
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The conscience acts as a filter. From the very
beginnings of our new birth the conscience is awakened to grace. Even
tho the conscience and the law worked together to bring us to an
understanding of our need for Christ , the conscience could never bring
us to new life in Christ. If the conscience could be the cause of good
behavior then there would be no need for a cause prior to the action of
the conscience on the understanding . Then the will could act by itself.
In
the soul the cause of a new moral principle is what is prior to the
choice. What is before choice is the strongest desire for the object.
And what is most pleasing to the understanding comes through what the
mind is most pleased with. The conscience works with the law to
determine whether what is most pleasing in a believer is what glorifies
God. But the question remains whether the cause of good moral choices
comes as a result of the laws work on the conscience. For the answer we
must explore what causes a change in the state of the soul.
God
made everything so that He is the cause of everything that transpires.
If God created all things then it would be wrong to share the creating
with God. First because if God created all things then He has the only
rite to have a purpose in creating and sustaining all things. We have no
claim even to the purpose of whatever transpires in this world. God is
the only cause and if there is any other cause then there would be an
effect that is other then Gods effect. If there was an effect other than
Gods first cause effect then it would need to be equal or better
because in order for there to be an effect there must be the cause of
its power being manifested in its working. And if there was a cause
outside of Gods causing then there would need to be equal power of
choice in order for there to be another effect.
God created man
for a purpose because God made man. God is the cause of mans existence.
If God is the cause then He has a purpose from the beginning of a mans
life to the end of mans life. If man could cause his own destiny then
God could not be the first cause of mans existence. If man had the power
to cause any purpose outside or along side of Gods power of purpose
then man would be the first cause of the exercise of his own purpose. If
man could will apart from Gods purpose then man could be equal with
God. If man could have a purpose along side of Gods purpose then man
would need to cause his own existence.
The power of choice is
what caused our being created. Gods sole rite to choose the identity of
each one of us was a determinative choice. If our first choice
determined our own destiny, then Gods purpose in our identity would be
without that sole rite as God. Our identity as created moral agents is
determined by the power to exercise that purpose throughout eternity. If
Gods purpose is not determinative then man is working out in his own
power to determine his existence. If there is no working purpose of
existence then there is no existence. Without Gods power to exercise His
will in our lives from beginning to end there would be no way for us to
keep existing , because God could not be God because we would replace
God.
Which comes back to the matter of the conscience. If we
could act apart from Gods purpose in our acting then we could become the
first cause of our own acting. But if we are not the cause of our own
existence then we are not the cause of the exercise of the will for us
to exist. When God created us ,He created us body and spirit. We were
created in His image, being given a desire to worship Him, or having a
God consciousness. We were created with a mind will and emotions. But in
the fall our mind was darkened by sin and our will was only evil
continually. In order for us to have an acceptable choice we must have
our minds enlightened because our choice is what is our minds view of
the object as most pleasing. And a mind that is darkened does not view
spiritual things as pleasing. In regeneration our minds are given new
spiritual light. Now we can desire what is spiritually good. But if we
could be the first cause of our being pleased with spiritual things then
we could have the power to cause our will to exist. The Holy Spirit is
what causes our desires to be acceptable.
We are not the first
cause of our being renewed. Our renewed desires are brought on by the
Spirit and the word. There is a new principle at work in our mind will
and emotions. Our consciences as filters are not the cause of us
choosing morally correct. Prior to us being regenerated we had a
relationship to the law that was legal. When we heard the word preached
our filter condemned us. We were under a condemning conscience. We were
under the power of the letter of the law. We had no will to choose what
was spiritually acceptable. We lived in a guilty disposition, running
from the deep well of guilt. But when we were regenerated we were free
from the condemning power of the law. Because we had no cause in our
being regenerated, or the will to be saved we were given a new will by
grace so that we could choose what is pleasing to God because we now
have the God by the Spirit living in us. We no longer live by the
letter of the law , but we live by the Spirit. The cause of our being
able to choose good is brought on by the Spirit. Our consciences are
renewed by the Spirit in grace.
If we could be morally good by
our own consciences then we could filter out our inability to do good.
If our will was the cause of our consciences being clear then we could
train our consciences to be self righteous. The defiled conscience is
not just from filtering the outward sins. But our choosing comes from
the view of the mind being pleased with the object of choice. We are
unable to choose good without the Holy Spirit causing us to desire what
is good. If we are unable to choose what is good then we are unable to
filter what is good as a first cause. If we were able to be the first
cause of filtering good then we could be self sufficient. We could
really excel in keeping the letter of the law. But God has made it so
that we are dependent on the Holy SPirit to be able to filter. Because
we are unable in ourselves this keeps us filtering by grace.
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7135
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Forums / Theology Forum / Galatians, Anger At Church
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on: October 07, 2007, 03:33:56 PM
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The apostle was concerned with the pure grace
of God in the gospel remaining unfettered by mans being able in Himself
to obtain salvation. It was strictly a work of the Spirit. By embracing
circumcision after they had received the Spirit in the acts account,
through the preaching of the word they were going back to what was
required under the ot law as an act of obedience for being part of the
national covenant. Circumcision gave them a distinct identity as a
member in the covenant community of all Israelites. But circumcision
never was the means by which they obtained salvation. There was a
remnant within the circumcised nation of Israel that were saved by grace
alone, through faith alone , in Christ alone. The religious
leaders of the Jews were the Scribes and Pharisees. They were the
teachers of the law. They were teaching that one had to be circumcised
in order to be saved. So these Galatian christians who had been a part
of the acts account of the preaching by the apostles were having second
thoughts about their assurance that they had been saved. These teachers
of the law were following the apostles around from city to city trying
to undermine the gospel that the apostles were taught by the Lord
Himself. These were the same teachers that were responsible for having
Christ put to death. They not only tried to change the message by
requiring circumcision but they were also requiring them to return to
all of the ceremonial laws as well. They in essence were putting a
burden of the law on people that only Christ could have met the
requirements as satisfaction. The grace of God is what was being
undermined here. The grace of God hath appeared to bring salvation. In
Christ this grace of God enable men to be declared rite by the
requirements of the law. When a man is called to salvation ,he is called
by the grace of God. When the grace appears the man is changed in the
saving act brought on by the Spirit through the word so that everyone
sees a change. Not only is it visible but a man receives assurance by
his experiencing the effects upon his heart. Man goes from being dead in
sins and trespasses, with no spiritual desires, to having the knowledge
of salvation by the transforming of the mind. The man receives divine
light. The mind now has an understanding of the spiritual things , so
that a man can taste , touch, feel, and see spiritually. Salvation is a
transformation of the whole soul. In experiencing the effects of
the law upon the heart, we are brought low. We feel the weight of sin
because in our thinking we naturally are morally responsible. We stand
alone in the water having left the other 11 and on the twelfth step we
come to the end of trying to be justified by the law so that we begin to
have second thoughts about walking across the ocean of troubles all
alone. No one can go with us to meet Christ. And so we are brought to
cast ourselves on Him alone being unable to turn around to join the
others. We must cast our gaze on Christ and Him alone.
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Forums / Steve Brown Etc. / Anger At Church
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on: October 05, 2007, 02:58:40 AM
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There were some instances then of such
apostates, as were esteemed eminently full of the grace of God’s Spirit.
An instance of this nature probably was Nicolas, one of the seven
deacons, who was looked upon by the Christians in Jerusalem, in the time
of that extraordinary pouring out of the Spirit, as a man full of the
Holy Ghost, and was chosen out of the multitude of Christians to that
office, for that reason; as you may see in Acts vi. 3, 5. Yet he
afterwards fell away and became the head of a sect of vile heretics, of
gross practices, called from his name the sect of the Nicolaitans,
Edwards
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Forums / Theology Forum / God's Blessings
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on: October 03, 2007, 02:01:07 PM
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Think of a five year old who wants the attention and co-operation of
their father, if the child is screaming and kicking and acting out of
control, the father may just let that child continue until they're
finished, if that child looks to the father with longing eyes, and lifts
up their to him calling out \"daddy\" will he not stop everything to
attend to them?
Remember this though, first that child should be his, (even though he will attend to others at times)
To attend to someone doesn't mean to give them what they want,
His response to our cries may not be how we expect, but just remember: father knows best
How do you know when you run out of invisible ink?
We
are Gods sons, and if we are sons then we are heirs, and co-heirs with
Christ Jesus. We are given everything we need in Him. He no longer
treats us as people who are in need of standing in judgment. When we
were under the law we were under its legal threatenings, the law as our
school master. But we are no longer under the law, but we live by the
Spirit, because where the Spirit is there is freedom. We are now free in
Christ to obey the law even tho we never keep it according to Gods
eternal counsel. So we can disobey the law knowing that we have been set
free from being threaten in order to become obedient once again. We
have graduated from child hood, so that when the scripture says that we
are children of God, it is speaking of our being sons and having the
full rites as sons. So we treat each other like sons together under one
household because we are the local temple collectively. We become like
we are in order that we put the unity and purposes of God over our own
wants in our former ways. Its His work, we become what we already are. When
we are regenerated our wills are destroyed, and we are given a new
will, so that He causes us to walk in His ways. By His Spirit we are
free to want to obey the law perfectly , yet we are able to come to Him
as not being without sin. So we are always wanting to do good, but we
are also wanting to do bad. But Christ has taken care of our problem
with sin. So even in the incompleteness of experiencing our full rites
as sons, we have the same willing that God wills. It is not His will
working in us as a child, that is, we are not under the kind of
instruction as blind little children. But the new will has become our
own so that we desire what He wants. That is why we have the full rites
as Sons. So that what the desire of our hearts is , is what He desires.
He gives us the desires of our hearts even though these desires for His
glory are faint and small at times. Most of the time our desires are as
faint as a tiny mustard seed, yet they are rite desires because they
meet the righteous standards of the law since they do not come from a
righteousness that is our own. Christ righteousness was imputed to us
when we were legally declared rite in the court of heaven. As
sons of God, we are no longer slaves to sin, since we no longer have a
relation to the law as a school master ruling the little children.
Christ has done all of the work at the cross and pronounced it as
finished. Now He rules in the Church and in the nations by the gospel of
the cross. Now as free sons with all the rites and privileges of a son
we are victors because of His work in our behalf.
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7143
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Forums / Theology Forum / God's Blessings
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on: October 02, 2007, 04:02:45 PM
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It sounds like she is trying to gain
acceptance with God by changing something on her own. First , what is a
successful christian? One who is working on being better? If the
christian life were that easy, then we could eliminate all self doubt by
doing good. And if we could come to a place where we arrived at a new
level, then are we not bringing God along only to find ourselves
dissatisfied with the present level only to start a new journey to bring
Him alone again. We are making God be the responder of our inititutive.
This deli ma is the natural way of self righting. What God does
in our lives is not to respond to our weaknesses and sins negatively so
that we do something to change. God does not treat us as our sins
deserve. He does not demand what He does not give freely. He does not
demand change in order to obtain strength to over come a temptation. If
God were to tell us to do something great or to change a certain
behavior, then He would give us the grace in order to accomplish any
change. Gods ways are normally extreme slow and personally moving. When
we are down, He under girds us. When we are afraid, He becomes our rock
being the advocate to come to our rescue. When we are lazy, He gives us
strong desires for doing His glory. When men accuse us , He punishes
them. When we are upset, His voice stills our hearts. When we are under
great trials He loves us the most. When we see that our sins are too
great for us, He speaks to us of His loving kindness and His
faithfulness. Unless we come to a place where we are able to let go of
the life of spurts of good and spurts of guilt by our scheming to be
better, then we will never see Him as He is or see Him as always
faithful, always loving, always compassionate and always strong.
We
are hero worshipers. We see men who have gone before us or are living
among us and our natural way is to compare ourselves with them. When we
compare ourselves with other men, we learn that way of thinking, so
that we develop a self righteousness, a self satisfication because there
are people in our lives that we are doing better than, and there others
that are better and farther along in their spiritual walk than we. We
learn to turn our eyes off of the things that recreate us anew, that
make us who we are at that time in our lives as being acceptable ,
worts and all, and we scheme by comparing ourselves with other men, so
that we can feel better about who we are than we actually are at that
time in our lives. We are not as good as we think we are , and we are
worse than we think we are. It is a way to avoid the pain of mourning
over our sin. But mourning over our sin is being able to look at
ourselves in the mirror of scripture where we are confronted with who
Christ is. But we are confronted with our Hero. Because hero s are
bigger than life.
Christ is our Hero, our Saviour, our friend
our advocate and our rock against offense. We are under His wings, in
the shadow of His strength.
When we begin to see Him as advanced
beyond our advancing we become still in our disposition. This is looking
through the glass dimly to view His beauty. His glory and His
righteousness are not just what came out of those 33 yrs. Yes He live a
perfect life, a morally perfect succession of choices. But He also was
acting in the unseen world according to His righteousness because He is
God. When we think of righteousness we only think in terms of moral
choices. But , really every movement in the universe was designed from
eternity to move according to His righteousness. So the law is really
spiritual. It enlightens the eyes, it revives the soul, it endures
through all eternity. It is what He speaks that determines what
transpires in nature, in the work of condemnation, in the repetition of
each moment in the universe of repetitive movement. But the greatest
comfort that we have is that He works all these things out according to
His goodness , kindness, and love for our good because He alone is
righteous. It is by His being right that He alone has the power to
exercise His designed plan from eternity to work just as we see it
unfolding before our eyes. When we sit back and look through the veiled
glass of His righteous power, we will understand more and more the
beauty of His work, in creating and recreating.
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7144
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Forums / Theology Forum / Conscience As Proof?
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on: October 01, 2007, 02:51:38 PM
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The object of our faith determines the
sustenance , continuance , and the growing in the grace of believing.
Faith itself has no purpose of existence. Because faith is agency in our
closing with Christ. There is one faith, one hope , one love. For to
Him and by Him and through Him are all things. So it is with the
conscience. The conscience is the agency by which we see our selves in
the light of the law of God. The law is not the problem in the pricking
of the conscience, because the law is spiritual. But we are guilty. But
those who live by the law will die by the law. Because the law only has a
purpose of condemning the offender and the conscience is the laws
prosecutor. We are arrested by the preaching of the law and brought
before the prosecution of the conscience and declared guilty in the
legal conviction. So in the paradigm of the relationship between the law
and the conscience we are criminalize in our disposition. So we avoid
the prosecution in order to think that God is not like He says He is in
His word. But the answer to a guilty conscience is the object of our
faith. If we rest in Christ work as our advocate then we will have a
defense that will free us. We may be guilty, our conscience may be
prosecuting, but the object of our faith determines the spirit by which
we are to live in. Because we have Christ living inside of us, by His
Spirit, we are given new life. It is at the point of the criminalization
of our lives that we are freed because of His work on the cross, and
His complete forgiveness. Our response is to not take part in depending
in our faith to bring us through, or focusing on our believing but
focusing on the object of our faith and seeing our need in that
criminalize mournful state and see that our sin is too big for us to be
the advocating spiritual stream of cool water of new life. We are to
immediately shout for joy for our redemption in Him. When we obey His
speaking peace to us in that objective reality, then we will learn to
seek forgiveness in our only hope of advocacy. It is this process that
makes us realize that He made us, because we were made to enjoy Him , by
knowing His voice .
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7145
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Forums / Theology Forum / Rob Bell, Nooma, And The Emerging Church
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on: September 23, 2007, 06:45:27 AM
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Words are the only thing we have to make
reality. The biblical language is what is. Every word of it is from
God.We have no rite to change its meaning by dumbing down a word, the
meaning of a word by recreating a new epistemology of the word of God.
The Bible has all we need to live a life of godliness. Because
the bible is an accurate document of the very life and will of God its
contents need no redefining or explaining in any other terms than those
used by God. Not only are we to study each word, but we are to spend our
lives looking into the ways of God as God defines them by the near and
far context of a particular concept in the word. We are limited in our
study of the word of God by the explanation we get in the whole of the
word. We have no rite to bring in our own views into any verse or
passage. God has designed this process by not only defining the words by
context but by setting the word apart so that man must submit himself
fully to every word because it proceeds out of the mouth of God. The
word of God is powerful, the dumbing down or the redefining of its
contents does not divide the soul and spirit, to show the intents of the
heart, but the very words that God spoke are what the ear and the mind
are transformed by that brings man the mirror so that he sees himself. When we intend to make things easier we intend to cloud the mirror of our intents.If
we say that man must perform in order for God to perform, or if we say
that meditation on the word of God is equal with counseling, or if we
focus on certain steps we can take in order to get to the truth of
ourselves in order to be able to join a community of believers and that
this equals the epistemological intent of the word , then this equal
intent nullifies in us the forming of our doctrine in the importance of
each word, this exclusive place of authority the word must have in our
lives. We decry these teachings in order to protect this exclusive
supernaturalism. In the way of Spurgeon we are reforming avoiders  in order to reject what is wrong. The
function of the word is to be used to examine all communities of faith,
all the ways of man so that its strictness initially attacks the
teacher in order to create the environment for God alone to be
glorified. The view of the word in the teaching of the word demands that
a person have an absolute submissive spirit in studying it, teaching it
or doing it. We as churchman are reformist, always going backwards
historically to get to the pure gospel. We will never understand true
freedom until we begin to experience the nature of the word in all its
effectiveness in an indirect way from the ways of man , so that we see
God as lifted up, as we look into the mirror of Christ glory. Then those
effects will illuminate in us the personage of God breathing life into
our very souls, and by His Spirit ,creating a life of dependence on Him
alone.
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Forums / Theology Forum / Conscience As Proof?
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on: September 22, 2007, 06:26:29 AM
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If God decrees whatsoever comes to pass, then
there really is nothing that we can do except look to Him. And since He
is outside of time the events of time are already set before Him , even
the future. Yet His being outside of time does not answer our immediate
difficulties in this world. Our being created presupposes a necessity to
exist because if there is no cause there is no necessity and without a
cause there is no effect. But we can reverse this logic. Without
necessity there is no cause. Without the effect of things being created,
and the circumstances of life transpiring and unfolding as they do,
there would be no reason to believe there was a cause of their
existence. Our understanding of trust is determined by how we understand
the cause and effect relationship. It is necessary for whatever
transpires in our lives to transpire if there is a Sovereign God.
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Forums / Theology Forum / Conscience As Proof?
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on: September 15, 2007, 11:18:55 AM
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The conscience and the law work together to
condemn us. The law is good and our conscience acts as a warning system.
But we still are not able to judge correctly by the working of the law
and the possessing of a conscience. Because as the will is only one part
of a persons make up, so the conscience. And who can judge correctly in
any state of mind of a person who struggles with being wrong in how he
judges himself as compared to others, and how he views the accumulation
of knowledge at specific decisions in ones life. At best even when we
try to appease our conscience we are under a certain deception. There is
no man with a clear conscience that he has achieved in his doing good.
There is no man who can balance the scales of his conscience of guilt
and peace by his moral ability. All men when led down the road to face
the law and hear the conscience cry out are put in a state of silence.
When the conscience talks it silences the mouth. We could never
get better by this method of listening to our consciences and doing
good. Thats why we need clean consciences. I do not believe in a two
tier conscience. I mean that a clear conscience is when one is free of
any blame in society. First because a person is never without sin, nor
the reality that sin is very deep, many, and the obligation to believe
in Christ is to know, be knowing, and have known that sin is effecting
at all times and that we are divided in our loves in this paradigm at
all times. But having a clear conscience is looking at ourselves in the
light of who God is, and how much His work has accomplished on our
behalf. It is seeing that work as personal, always available, fully
effective, and even acknowledging the trouble one feels as a result of
sin, and not just doing something to remedy that sin. The conscience
must be lifted up beyond the condemning voice of the law , that legal
conviction that causes us to flee to another mountian, and we must be
lifted up to see God as who He is in light of all of those things that
He does, creating new life ,bringing into our lives situations , and
speaking for us on our behalf in spite of the condemning voice of the
populace and the conscience. We can wallow in the forgiveness of
those who scheme to get what they want, who work like a slave, and who
put their confidence in men. Or we can begin extolling Him night and day
for His work, seeing His love and grace fully taking care of sin and
leaving our sins before Him, knowing that He freely gives us a clean
conscience. As long as we live our worthiness is our boasting in Him. It
will silence a condemned conscience.
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Forums / Main Forum / Evangelism
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on: September 14, 2007, 06:16:45 PM
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Everyone one is different. There is not a
cookie cutter way to win the lost. So you should use your particular
gifts , when you are in a social situation. There is the John the
Baptist types. They are not too attractive but they will put the fear
of God in you. Just look at John Knox. His prayers were fearful. The
queen even remarked about Knox that she was afraid of his prayers more
than an actual army. Then there are the lovers. John the disciple of
Christ. Then there are the very tender types. They are very personal
like the apostle Paul, an would open themselves up for the world to see.
Just like John Calvin, the pauline theologian who played Cricket on
sundays, just to escape the physical pain that he had to endure through
his life. And all of these people are saints whose faith was like a rock
to those around them. If there were no lovers the world would not know
of Christ love, if there were no fighters the world would not know of
the fear of God and the imitate nature of Gods fearceness. Its the
judgement we place on the other kinds that is not necessarily the way
God sees things.
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Forums / Main Forum / Selfish Or Self Responsibility?
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on: September 12, 2007, 08:32:11 PM
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We all come to Christ broken and abused by
sin. All of our past has been spent in these effects of sin coming from
adults in our childhood. As children there may be more innocence in our
understanding of the nature of sin, the depth of sin, and the
selfishness that comes from sinning, but there is no more real example
on sinful thinking on an innocent child than an adult sinner. And for
adults sin becomes exceedingly sinful in a sud o moral universe of self
deception. It is because there are many avenues that one can take to
become a good moral example of a hardened sinner that there is no room
for cuddling self as a believer. The truth is that any thing we describe
as what is good in us, or morally enlightened, including our own good
self image is what competes with His life and His purposes. Because
adults become so proficient in taking the glory that belongs to God and
mixing it with being a good christian example, as the stamp of the
saved, is the corrupted thinking that darkens the glory of Christ being
the very poison that makes children practicing Pharisees. It is only as
we see through the word of God, the glory of Christ and the profound
power of God, that surpasses all of the self powers of choosing that we
have , that we can have a self hatred that is what good examples wean
themselves from self glory to glory in His person alone. Until we see
that in any willing we must desire Him above any thing in this world
including our own lives, families ,churches, jobs, wives, fathers,
pastors. Until we can crucify our own desires in the pleasure of Him
alone, will we only be the adult that makes it easier for a child to
begin to practice sin with no response to Him.
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Forums / Main Forum / Selfish Or Self Responsibility?
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on: September 10, 2007, 01:02:32 PM
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We must be raised up to high views of God in
order to be able to have a proper view of ourselves. This is what
distinguishes the difference between a worldly view of man and a God
view. Because we are graced with new life from Gods being eternally
present and then life being created from His design and will, a proper
view of our the design of our lives must come from this theo centric
paradigm. So that any kind of blindness of the human condition comes
from God withdrawing His favor or grace from the individual soul so that
the nexus of spiritual health is determined by Gods secret providence
in giving renewal in His appearing like a strong tower to our present
circumstances or withdrawing Himself for a season so that we are in
distress. Even tho the feelings follow believing yet the feelings
are interrelated to our assurance of His secret providence being worked
out in our knowing ourselves in the light of His will. If we experience
distress we can be sure that God has designed our inward struggle by
His hiding Himself in order to accomplish His purpose for us in our
lives. We are in a moment by moment relationship being in Christ with
our Father knowing that His presence is determinate in all of our
happiness in Him and all of our safety being determined by Him. Being
dependent on Him is reacting to distress in His present actings on us.
What ever upholding is done is strictly by Him, and what ever step we
take in being renewed is accomplished by His giving us new life. What
ever work we do , is done by Him teaching us how to perform, and
whatever rest we have is His watching over us even while we sleep. He
has pre design our distresses from eternity for His purpose. Even our
feelings are connected to our experience of being in Him as we are
receiving life like the leaves from a vine. Any time we experience a
lack in growth it is only because the Father has designed our testing
for our growth in the whole of our finite existence. When we look to HIm
, we look day and night, when we cry to Him , we cry day and night,
when we think on HIm, it is day and night, so that the determinate
nature of life in Him is His being our all in all.
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Forums / Main Forum / Can Grace Be Harmful?
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on: September 03, 2007, 08:23:28 PM
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When you have grace you get a predisposed
disposition to view the law properly. The law cannot save, it shows us
our sin. The work of the law only is a condemning work. When a person is
saved they are pre graced with the ability to believe. Grace is given
to them in everything they do. Paul says about doing \" yet not i but
the grace\", in other words all of Pauls goodness was birthed out of
Gods favor. We do not even have the strength to perform one good thing
before God without His grace because we are unable to do one act of
righteousness without His imputed righteousness as a declaration of our
being righteous. God gives us the strength to perform even tho we are
discipline in that performance. He causes us to be able to perform. That
is Gods goodness, favor, and His unfailing love. We receive all of
these spiritual riches by His grace. These riches are strength,
spiritual insight, forgiveness, consistency in our obedience, and every
good and perfect gift -every thing that comes into our lives being for
our good and His glory. Living in this paradigm is living in His grace.
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7163
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Forums / Main Forum / Whats More Harmful?
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on: August 29, 2007, 04:31:17 AM
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We cannot compromise the gospel. And we must
have an active definition of who Christ is, in other words we must
believe in Him as He defines Himself. But I agree that the person does
not always look like what the bible describes as one who believes in
Christ. It could be that a person has certain patterns of actions that
are biblical yet not really be trusting in Christ. Some of the
legalistic forms that look like active Christianity put us to shame but
they may be trusting in their rules. Some people struggle with outward
sins so that we would question their salvation, but they have a very
deep faith. Some people are psychologically damaged and even tho they
struggle in that paradigm, in that small world without much social
interaction yet they are believers. Its not necessarily the amount of
external works that are performed because many people will have those
and Christ will say, \"depart from me\", so that we only see on this
earth part of the picture, where as God sees the heart , that internal
work that we cannot see.
There is this moment by moment trusting
in a the Person of Christ. So that the direction He takes us is not
always the direction we want to go. We should go though periods in our
lives where we are called away from acting to learning, being all alone
and seeking. And so we are not just all herded into this religious
hierarchy but we are hearing His voice. \"My sheep hear my voice and
follow me.\" Every person has a specific mission to accomplish on this
earth ,determined and designed in and for Gods eternal glory. What
blinds us some times is not only sin but it is religion. Or an over
zealousness of the religious thought of the day.
What we may be
seeing is the spiritual adultery of Americian religion, where the less
educated and theologically self taught are better able to see the
problems with the \"religious system\".Where they would be better able
to place on the back burner those religious activities that are not
necessarily bad , but encourage a sinful culture. What we might see in
the future is a leader like a Spurgeon, or a Jones. Rite now the shift
from the past paradigms of one time professions to the present
therapeutic moralism introduction into the faith is a determinate man
centered culture that leads to anti supernaturalism. The revival
theology is looked on as hocus pocus and an irresponsible form of
christianity. The theraputic introduction does not lead to christian
individualism, but socially responsible coveting individualism.
When
we think about the nature of Gods attributes, that is His eternal
presence we must look to His Spirit as the revealer to us. The Spirit
lives in us, so that the space we inhabit does not exceed the space that
the Spirit inhabits in our inhabiting. The Spirit of God is greater in
His presence in the inhabitable space than we could imagine. Thats why
we are so overcome with His eternalness. Where can we go from His
Spirit. There is no space that we can exist that the Spirit does not
exist in the nature of consciousness. We live in a certain blindness of
His moving and His designs in being present in our space and time in the
extent of these eternal conscious levels. If we could understand that
communicable activity, then we would be smitten with the glory of Gods
eternal presence.
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7165
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Forums / Main Forum / Most Haunted
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on: August 23, 2007, 12:29:08 PM
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. . . . . .+++
Dear Half-Brother mbG,
.
.If the day ever comes that you decide you want to be 'born of God'
instead of 'adopted', you may come to a different understanding about a
lot of things. Meanwhile, I suggest you try not to pontificate about
matters wherein you have no experience. Your conclusions are about 3%
correct but homogenized with 97% pious manure. In some areas this is not
a major problem, but in spiritual warfare your counsel is downright
dangerous.
. .I would tentatively conclude that there are others on
this Forum who have had as much and more experience in this arena than
I, which means that I will listen intently to what they may share.
.
. .Q:"We can think of ourselves strong enough to use the powers as
Anias, making a deal with God so that we come out as" the man "on the
stage of life, who has a special gift that we are sharing with the Holy
Spirit."
. .In general you are correct about Ananias, who tried
to make a deal (with the apostles) to become "a special man on center
stage." Then you proceed to confess OUR sins. They may be YOUR sins, but
don't presume they are OURS. Secondly, it is not WE who are sharing a
special gift "with the Holy Spirit. It is He Who shares His gifts with
us. Thirdly, if we come wimping into the arena of battle with the
attitudes you describe, we will end up like the seven sons of Sceva. Our
boldness is in the name of Christ and our words and actions are to be
by the power of THS, and we are to be like Joshua "strong and
courageous."
. . .Q:"When we begin to think in these terms we
begin to use the scripture as a magical incantation rather than in a
meditative way. When we use the scripture as a methodical way so that a
man comes out as super spiritual and able to do things that are
supernatural like casting out demons, then the man has too much power."
.
.Again, QUIT CONFESSING what you consider to be OUR sins. If you are
the guilty party, say "When I begin to think in these terms I begin to
use the scripture as a magical incantation ..." Actually, it is obvious
that you are a Cessationist and are, not so obliquely, scolding US for
engaging in deliverance, and trying to heap condemnation on US for
having "too much power." I have noted above that "the power" is not of
us but from THS and we are simply doing what Jesus told us to do. Kindly
take up your arguments about that with Him.
. . .Q: "He uses
sinners who are not able to overcome the devil in their own power
because men are naturally weak and self reliant."
. .In the first
place, YOU may still be a "sinner" because YOU haven't been born of
God, but the NT fact is that although WE still may sin, WE are no longer
"sinners". If you read Ro.5:8 after removing your RTh goggles (=
Songlasses) whereby you are veiled from the Truth, you will note that
St. Paul says "while we were YET sinners, Christ died for us." This also
explains why St. Paul never addressed his letters to "sinners in the
Church at ..." It is obvious that if you still regard yourself as a
sinner, you have not accepted the fact that Christ died for you.
Secondly, it is quite true that our human nature is weak and by virtue
of Grandpa Adam our genetic inheritance of what the Church calls
"Original Sin" has left us with all the undesirable attributes of
selfishness, self-centeredness and the host of other undesirable
"self-s" which is precisely why Jesus instructs us, "If any man would
come after Me he must deny himSELF and take up his cross and follow Me."
This, of course, would be impossible, except that in Him we are a NEW
CREATION [II Cor. 5:17], and having been BORN OF GOD, we have the seed
(Gk. = sperma) of God in us [I Jn.3:9] whereby we have become partakers
of God's nature [II Pt.1:4] and which therefore explains why when He
appears we shall be like Him [I Jn.3:2]. In the blinding light of these
incredible facts, do you begin to see why I keep encouraging you drop
'adoption' and to be "born of God"?
. .Finally, I realize that
you have been brainwashed into believing that the "chief end of man is
to glorify God." I will never faint or grow weary of correcting this
totally unbiblical conception. The chief end of man (in contemporary
terms, "God's purpose for Man") is to do GOOD WORKS. "Let your light so
shine before men that they may see your GOOD WORKS and glorify your
Father Who is in Heaven." WHO SAID THIS mbG?" Is it your intention to
call Him a liar? I don't think it was the intentions of the Westminster
Divines to call Him a liar, but we can attribute their mistake to
ignorance. If you persist in this deceit, it will cease to be ignorance
and become spiritual stupidity and rebellion. However, since God's Grace
is NOT IRRESISTIBLE, that is your prerogative.
Love in Jesus. Just lovin' Jesus. And I still love you Half-Brother. Pompou Sass
Dear . dear little Ricky X- man with supernatural healing powers,
Theres not to much we agree on about the atonement (satisfaction)and
about the order of salvation (sovereign grace). So i guess we are left
with a mish -mash of human philosophy mixed with some mysticism. 
If you can explain to me what a demon looks like then we may be able to
go from speculating to actually knowing what you are talking about. I
mean the bible also says that the air is filled with supernatural spirit
beings as myriads of angels also. So what do you see in the air that
none of us humans see? What does being born again and adoption half to
do with casting out demons? The seven sons of Scevia were also
trying to prove their human capabilities. Their desire was not Christian
as Peters and the rest of the apostles was in Acts- dont think of us as
any better than any other men , do not worship us. But Joshua
was not perfect. His strength was corrupted.Thats why the scripture says
that God uses the weak things of the world to confound the wise. And
Those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength. If we look at the
courage of any man we will conclude that it was by divine fiat. Because
the help of man is worthless. What institution of higher learning has
out lasted the scripture? Real courage displayed by man. Mans thinking
is worthless. All have turned aside, including every institution and
government ever devised by man. God makes wars cease and the sharpness
of the power of human governments are blunted and they come to nothing
at the sound of His voice. Yea i recall the size of Joshuas army. Really
something to fear by human standards.
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7166
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Forums / Theology Forum / Orthodoxy - Chesterton
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on: August 22, 2007, 10:22:52 PM
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Galations 2:19-21
What
actually took place is this: I tried keeping rules and working my head
off to please God, and it didn't work. So I quit being a \"law man\" so
that I could be God's man. Christ's life showed me how, and enabled me
to do it. I identified myself completely with him. Indeed, I have been
crucified with Christ. My ego is no longer central. It is no longer
important that I appear righteous before you or have your good opinion,
and I am no longer driven to impress God. Christ lives in me. The life
you see me living is not \"mine,\" but it is lived by faith in the Son
of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I am not going to go back
on that.
Quote Chesterton - Courage is almost a
contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form
of a readiness to die. \"He that will lose his life, the same shall
save it?\" is not a mysticism for saints and heros. It is a piece of
everyday advice for sailors or mountaineers. It might be printed in an
Alpine guide on a drill book. This paradox is the whole principle of
courage...
A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his
way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange
carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he
will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for
death, for then he will be a suicide and will not escape. He must seek
his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life
like water and yet drink death like wine. No philosopher, I fancy, has
ever expressed this romantic riddle with adequate lucidity, and I
certainly have not done so. But Christianity has done more; it has
marked the limits of it in the awful graves of the suicide and the hero,
showing the distance between him who dies for the sake of living and
him who dies for the sake of dying.
God's Grace and Mercy
We
are very fragile in our understanding of ourselves in a natural way.
Because we are limited by our finiteness we may get an understanding in a
psychological way but there are much deeper things that we must
understand about ourselves because we must understand the spiritual
nature of ourselves. The abandonment of self is equal to resting in
Christ. When we abandon self we lay our selves at His feet , by an
illumination of the spiritual nature of the understanding of our being
as abandoned. The fact is we seldom spend enough time in these spiritual
paradigms to understand the spiritual nature of that kind of rest.
First because we are not sensitive enough to the these paradigms. We
have a limited ability even as believers even tho we are given spiritual
eyes, taste , touch and smell. The reason is because we do not exercise
ourselves to understand the spiritual nature of these things of
abandonment. So we listen or read about abandonment and we form our view
by someone else's experience. That taught experience in us is filled
with deception and imagination. So we do not give ourselves to the
spiritual understanding of the nature of self abandonment because
usually we get scared away. Gods nature is spirit. God is a
spirit. We worship Him in spirit and in truth. It is the truth that
leads us to Him. And when we look into the word we gain an understanding
of who He is, or we begin to understand the spiritual nature of His
attributes. Our understanding of these things are determined by our
exercising our spiritual senses in the divine revealing of the nature of
these things. Its not out of the proposition that we gain an insight
into the nature of these things. It is exercising our spiritual senses
as the Spirit is revealing the nature of these things to us. The
application of truth is what the Spirit does as we understand the nature
of spiritual things. Gods ways are not our ways, our ways are
not Gods ways. Gods way is to examine us, and in the examination of us
He is making a way for us to gain a greater understanding of who He is.
We like to listen with our physical ears, look with our physical eyes,
touch with our physical hands, but God is examining our spiritual eyes,
etc. He is changing us from the inside. His examination is the cause of
our growing in the faith. We impede by our imperfect view of ourselves.
When we are in pain, it is because we are bringing it upon ourselves.
Gods ways in His examination are far above our ability to understand.
But His ways never fail. He makes us more and more like Christ. We
really believe that it is through self discipline that we will help
Gods examination of us. Our thinking about the process is the reason we
are blind to His ways. Gods ways are always going to change us. We are
going to gain more and more understanding about the nature of the
spiritual. We are going to be drawn into trusting in our spiritual
understanding over our own discipline. At some point we are going to see
the value of dieing to self. We are in the process of gaining new
heights as we experience the illumination of the nature of the spiritual
things. As men made in the image of God , we are body and spirit. Each
one of us is unique, with different abilities, and different spiritual
natures in the application in regeneration. We each have the ability to
understand spiritual things. We have the ability to understand the
spiritual nature of how we are uniquely made. As God examines us He is
revealing to us things that are too wonderful for us to imagine. We
think in terms of the external, but Gods view is eternal and spiritual.
As we develop our spiritual senses by the meat of the word, we begin to
be formed into a new man. The disjointed parts of our nature are being
changed and we are becoming spiritually whole as we are sanctified. The
valuable things are the things that we can understand in this paradigm
of Gods examining us. As we grow in our understanding of the spiritual
things and we get an understanding of their nature, we gain an
understanding of ourselves. In seeing this change through spiritual eyes
we are brought to the beatific vision of God all knowing and all
powerful working things out. This is our holistic world view in which we
live.
| 7170
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Forums / Main Forum / Most Haunted
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on: August 21, 2007, 04:06:35 PM
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You are dealing with a totally different world
here. First these reactions are totally invisible. You can only see the
human reaction. A lot of what you are saying is imaginary. There is so
much we do not understand about God and the devil because of our very
limited knowledge.
The devil is trying to convince people
through teaching to be deceived. He is an expert in quoting scripture
but out of context. Any time we battle with the spiritual forces in the
heavenly realms it is mainly through the thoughts. The devil goes after
our minds because our minds are the only defense we have against his
schemes. We are not strong enough to over come him. So we are in a
defensive position, having a supernatural defense in the word of God. We
use the word of God as a defense against the accusations of the self
righteous, and the hardening effect of the reprobate. There is a
temptation to think of ourselves more highly than we ought in the way we
share these spiritual powers. We can think of ourselves strong enough
to use the powers as Anias, making a deal with God so that we come out
as\" the man \"on the stage of life, who has a special gift that we are
sharing with the Holy Spirit. When we begin to think in these terms we
begin to use the scripture as a magical incantation rather than in a
meditative way. When we use the scripture as a methodical way so that a
man comes out as super spiritual and able to do things that are
supernatural like casting out demons, then the man has too much power.
God will not share his glory with anyone. God alone fights the battles,
and His way is always through a weaker army or vessel so that He gets
the total glory. He uses sinners who are not able to overcome the devil
in their own power because men are naturally weak and self reliant. In
mysticism man becomes the equal with the divine , because the method of
this thinking is of mans own making, which propositions are not revealed
by God.
The way of holy war is through total dependence on Gods
power. We must become weaker, that He may become greater. When we are
weak , He is strong. So it is seeing ourselves in the light of His
holiness, and casting ourselves upon His ability to work. We go to Him
and give Him our burdens. When we are raise up in our worship to God,
then we are able to see ourselves as He sees us. When we are raise up
out of our little world, we are longing for HIm more than any thing in
this world. Its enough to be troubled with our sins. We will know that
He is not dealing with us according to our morals and sins but He is
dealing with us as a Father. He is not asking us to bring glory to
ourselves in our actions and in our works. He is showing us that He
alone works in us to will and to do. When we are worshiping Him, and
adoring His attributes, we are raise up to glory in Him alone. Our
desire for Him is the reason that we work so hard. We love Him more than
any thing in this world, so that we see His hand working out
everything, thats rite , e v e r y t h i n g for His glory in our lives.
He is a perfect Father, and He does not do anything wrong.
Its
when we begin to feel that we are good enough to accomplish the victory
on our own, making our own terms, is when we loose heart and fail. As
long as we stay connected to the vine we will be able. For without Him
we can do nothing. Its not our ability to accomplish victory over sin
that is how He works, but its us trusting in He power that works in us ,
and looking to His grace, fixing our eyes on our Sovereign Lord that we
are able to over come sin. Because we did not earn our righteousness to
begin with, it was imputed to us and we were declared righteous in the
court of heaven, then our doing is not equal with what He accomplished
while He was on the earth. We could never meet the laws requirements. So
we look at the amount of sin that we have and we conclude that we are
not able to do any good works. This predicament only reminds us that we
sin because we are sinners. And if we play with the idea that we can
some how make up for the predicaments we find ourselves in then we are
dis attaching ourselves from the vine. We must go to Him and tell Him
that we are troubled with our sins. We must lay them at His feet in
prayer, trusting that He will not remember them, thanking Him that He
has taken care of them, and pondering the nature of Gods condescending
love. He remembers that we are dust, He pity's our state in this life.
We know that we forgot ourselves and the sin that we were so easily
beset by. We only have His promises about forgetting our past sins to
worship Him about. When we see Him as completely sufficient to deal with
sin, because we see Christ is lifted up, then we will know in a very
deep way forgiveness. When we live in His light, and we begin to feel
the weight of that glory, is when we will only seek that kind of
forgiveness. Until then we will only be tossed to and fro by our guilt
and sin.
The kind of trust we have in God individually is how He overcomes the enemy. God says\" look at my servant so and so.\"
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