Mary, I can absolutely understand the ongoing frustration and anger you
feel when politicians at any level make promises they never intend to
keep in order to gain votes. This is even more frustrating when one is
able to see the fraud and insensitivity taking place in a world where
the ones with the least influence bear the greatest cost.
I
understand that what I'm about to say will offend ... perhaps even you,
but I need to say it in order to be honest and true to what I believe.
We
live in a world that has trained everyone, even those committed to Him
to value physical life and everything physical in general. However, at
every conception ... even in the animal kingdom, death's clock begins
ticking the instant it occurs. This planet is teeming with physical life
and even a modicum of thought brings one to the conclusion that this
animal life fades in consequence to Him in comparison to the life He
intended His creation to have when He spoke creation into existence.
What
I'm saying is that physical, animal life really isn't all that
important, but connectedness is. When Adam and Eve lost connectedness
with Him, they lost eternity. That's what Jesus came to demonstrate ...
how man can become Man in his creator's eyes.
How man is able to attain connectedness again.
Political
systems ... every one of them, regardless of type is essentially a
worldly system and is, by definition, corrupt in His eyes. I do not
believe that any person is able to attain worldly status without severe
compromise and corruption of godly values to the point where
connectedness disappears.
I refuse comment on any politician,
though some cannot even be looked at without a nauseous feeling in the
pit of my soul. The ones appearing good in light of the things we hold
to be important such as care, respect, and value will become more and
more corrupt as they rise through the ranks because the only way to rise
in a worldly system is to become part of the problem, not part of the
solution.
... the nature of the beast.
Jesus taught that
the only way to gain true life is to turn away from the worldly,
physical one we have. The one we all start with is the physical, worldly
one. Only as that animal life becomes less important can True Life
grow.
The single most outstanding attribute displayed by Jesus is
His lack of complaint ... regardless how the world treated Him. He
steadfastly trusted His Father to meet each and every need. Those things
His Father did not supply were not considered needs.
I desire
health and wealth as much as the next person, but have come to see that
what is most often demanded in order to have those things is compromise
and acceptance of corruption.
Not a good trade.
The bottom line is that it is an impossibility to be friends with the world in any way and continue conectedness with Him
gene
I
agree with you Gene , but we are people who live in the world, and
really what is true of us as believers is that there is this pull inside
of us to become enamired with the world system. Those people do not
have the problems we do. We not only do not belong to this world but in
self denial in our identification in Christ and Him drawing us to
Himself by trials we can develope an attitude of being envious of the
world. And we often do. So when we become envious we are becoming double
minded.
Our lives are lived in the realm of relationship, not in
things. When we begin to be envious we begin to become bitter. The
weight of our envy drags us down and we begin to blame God. We start
believing that what we see in the world is better than the life we live
as a christian in self denial.
But God has made a remedy for this
level of christian experience. He has given us the preaching of His word
and the fellowship of the saints. We pick up these tendencies to envy
as we are involved in our every day chores in the world. Our spiritual
thoughts begin to degrade by being mixed with envious thoughts because
of our being in the world ,working, playing and buying and selling. When
we go to church God shows up in the preaching of His word and all of
the spiritual views we have are renewed again, and we see the reality of
the those who belong to the world and their ending up in hell and the
value of our life in Christ and having eternal life. Once we see that we
have let the world mold our minds in that week, some more than others ,
then we start to understand that we are weak sheep, wandering around
like beast. Comming to that realization we see that we cannot hold
ourselves from falling into envy, but that God holds us from falling
away into envy. We may slip, our thoughts and our eyes may drift away,
but God is keeping us.
Its always true that when we get a view of
Gods soveriegnty and the absolute control He has in our lives we have
experience a renewal in our desires that are of an eternal existence. We
see that there is only one person we want and all other things are of
little significance. When we begin to glory in God our desires are
inflamed and our perspective of the world becomes Gods perspective.
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Forums / Theology Forum / Repentance, What Is It?
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on: October 21, 2006, 05:57:32 AM
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Patrick, perfect.
MBG, sorry, but you are still trying to include your own efforts in the saving process. At least your post here reads that way..
Our
efforts are only to try and get the dead hunk of flesh to do something.
May wiggle and smile, but is still dead, always and forever dead...
doug
\"We
have an obligation but it is not to the sinful nature to live according
to it, for if we live according to the sinful nature we will die but if
by the Spirit we put to the misdeeds of the body we will live.\" You
must make an effort, you must repent, confess sin. We are involved in a
life of repentance, knowing that even our believing is a gift. We see
ourselves as sinners, and falling short of the standard, we make an
effort to avoid our pet sins and we avoid them by mortification. In
Mortification we meditate on the word of God so that we can be changed
from the inside, inflaming our new desires for the glory of God, and
changing the way we think about sin. Unless we are going to the word and
allowing Spirit to renew our minds we are not going to mortify the
inward corruption. We are only going to focus on the outward sins. The
word of God is quick and powerful and sharper than a two edged sword.
When we are peircing ourselves with the word God the peircing of the
sword of discipline will not be as deep because He loves us.We must be
active in putting sin to death by the Spirit.
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8310
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Forums / Theology Forum / Repentance, What Is It?
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on: October 20, 2006, 05:37:22 PM
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I
must go on, Do you feel weak ? do you feel down trodden? Do you sense a
struggle that just wont go away? This is Gods work! He has a most humble
state to work in us His wonder! He is a supernatural God, and we in our
natural state are too self confident. We are so blessed to be able to
feel tire, over burdened, lacking confidence.If we just turn to Him and
see Him humbling Himself in coming as a man and dieing on the cross, He
knows just how tired we are. He has already accomplished over coming the
evil that makes us feel burdened. He has already forgiven all of our
sins. He is all we need. We can have confidence in Him. We can go before
Him and ask for blessing beyond anything we could ask and thing in our
weakness. We can have a joy beyond any thing we could ask or think in
Him. Dont dwell on your sin! Dont always think it is your sin! You have a
Father who is caring for you more than you can believe. You can test
His love, you can rest in His arms, you can have more confidence and
faith as a result of being in HIs house. He is more desiring of speaking
peace and confidence to you than wanting to point out your weaknesses.
There is no greater love, who can bring any charge against those whom
God has chosen, who can seperate us from the love of God? Not a thing
not a person, not a sin, not a devil, nothing can seperate us from the
love of God!
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Forums / Theology Forum / Repentance, What Is It?
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on: October 20, 2006, 05:18:27 PM
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Repentance
is confessing individual sins and turning from them to Christ. Fleeing
to Christ from ourselves and our wanting to gain some kind of relief
from balancing the scales of grace by appeasing our consciences by
working even harder. Repentance involves trusting completely the work of
Christ on the cross as the only means to be forgiven and believing that
He alone will meet all of our expectations of having peace of
conscience.
Repentance is a way of life. In repentance we feel that
we never are able to do a righteous act in ourselves. We always fall
very short of what is required of us. We morn over our state of sin
because we confess that we are corrupted in every area of our being, our
faculties our lack of want etc. If we do not focus on Christ in
repentance then we will be most miserable. We depend apoun Gods grace in
repentance , we know that God has enough grace to cover over our sins.
Repentancing in prayer is the safest place to be when we sin the same
sin continually. We need to fight the earge to become disheartened due
to committing the same sin over and over again. Gods grace covers all
sin, the small ones, the big ones , at all times in all places. It is
best to want to repent even though you know you are going to give into
temptation. It is best to repent even tho you do not want to repent
while you are giving into temptation. It is best to know that you will
be forgiven knowing that God is faithful when we are not and it is
because of His name that our sin does not consume us. He will forgive us
because we represent His name and He being in that covenant He is bound
to forgive saints. We only go before Him and lay out our case and ask
for grace to over come our besetting sin. He will develope in us a
desire to go to Him for grace because when we see ourselves as having
violated His law we will believe that we have no rite to be His other
than Him holding us up because we fall. We will see Him as undergurding
all of our good deeds as well as keeping us from sinning further than we
could have in ourselves. The only way we will understand this is when
we feel the guilt of our sin and sense the peace of His hand of grace
keeping us from departing completely. In strugging with sin and
repenting we are learning how to grease the wheels of grace so that we
glory in His work on our behalf and in that state of joy we will want to
sin less. If we are repenting from guilt as a result of breaking His
commandments we are going to want to sin more.When we break His commands
we go to Christ and glory in the cross and we are sensing a peace in
the midst of our vileness. Our Father does not deal with us under the
law, we have died to the law, we live by the Spirit. We can experience
the joy of the Spirit as we have a broken spirit. We have a Father who
knows our weaknesses, knows all of our sins from the begining of sinning
to the last sin we will commit. He has decreed how we will sin and when
we will sin. He will teach us lessons against pride, and how great of a
love He loves us with by forgiving our sins. He uses our sin to keep us
in His grace ,and keeps us desiring a moment by moment relationship
with Him, to have an unencumbered fellowship with Him by keeping us in
His word as a result of our weakness to sin.
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Forums / Main Forum / Tell Me Why.
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on: October 17, 2006, 08:27:10 PM
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I was 7 yrs old when i first heard the gospel
by my mother. I cried about my sin and ask Jesus into my heart and was
baptized within a few weeks in miami. I was always encouraged to read my
bible and study. I used to study some in my teen yrs. But my life was
up and down. Then when i moved out of my child hood home and through my
pride i began to visit some of the local taverns, but through my brother
, before i started to drink heavly i was introduced to a pastor who
helped me. I started to attend church on a regular basis for the first
time in my life. I had also gone to a Gothard seminar and so i went
through that discipline for awhile.
That is when i began to memorize
scripture and it was a stuggle for me at first to keep it as a
discipline but after awhile i began to find real comfort in that
discipline. I was led out of that church and started to attend a
calvinistic church-reformed baptist. It was there that i grew so much
doctrinally. I was there for 7 yrs and that experience in worship and
being with those leaders that had a lasting impact on my life. Though
these years i was still ploddiing along in memorization and meditation,
mostly in the car, and as i was going to bed. After awhile there was
developed a very devotional life style. Every where i went in miami i
was in quiet meditation,at work, at a football game, at church, at
parties, at church gatherings. I was so hooked on the experience of
meditation that it was all consuming. The Holy Spirit would enliven me
as if it were a timeless heavenly experience. As i began to memorize the
book of Psalms after memorizing the book of Acts i was in the
heavenlies , full of life, it was as if the Holy Spirit would speak to
me often after a short meditation and fill me with joy beyond anything i
could imagine.
When i met my wife, i was so free. I loved christian
bios. I was so happy all the time. Being young and having strength with
all the pleasure in God it was a baptism that is with me today. I
remember those experiences, i remember those sweet times in church. Oh
how sweet is it to meditate on the psalms. The joy comes up in our
desires that is full of the Holy Spirit.
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