8333	Forums / Main Forum / Tell Me Why.	on: October 17, 2006, 06:24:50 PM
Steve, I believe because a long time ago in the wild blue yonder God decided to include me in His family. I had no desire to have a relationship with Him. I loved myself too much to humble myself before Him. I still struggle with that and i really believe that He loves me now. But inspite of my arrogance He still loves me. I believe because every day He makes me believe in Him. I go up and down in my relationship with Him. I am always wandering away from Him, and so i have a very bad problem that only He can help me with. No one around me knows what is going on in my mind. No one around me knows what will happen to me in the future. No one around me cares about me like Him because they do not understand me like He does. He knows just what i need when i need it. He has designed the circumstances in my life for my good and for His glory. He sees me in the big picture in His plan in a group of people, i can only see the small picture. He is the only one that really listens to me. Because He can understand my pain better than any other person on the face of the earth since He has gone through so much more pain than i would ever experience. He loves me no matter what. Even when i am so weak that i have no strength to live good He still loves me. He loves me when i sin, and sin, and sin. He loves me when i am cold and heartless. He loves me when i have nothing to give. He loves me when i am afraid, and lonely, and suffering, and depressed, and quietly suffering, and faithless, and uncaring, and angry, and fretting, and when i am so addicted to sin so that i see no way to get from under its weight, in these dispositions is when He shows me how much He loves me. It is when these circumstances are the greatest is when His love is the greatest. He supports me by giving me things for free. He gives and gives and gives, and I take and take and take. And when i get fixed on something He gives He still loves me. When i love these gifts more than Him HE STILL LOVES ME. It is when i realize that He loves me inspite of the awful predicaments i get myself in is when i love to come and pour out my hurt to Him and thank Him for loving me.

8363	Forums / Break Room / Do You Have A Verse For Your Life?	on: October 10, 2006, 10:53:08 PM
I have a verse for every mood i find myself in. Worry, fear, anger, lust, coveting, and depression. Anyway, i try to get myself to feel differently when these things come up rather than avoid the circumstances that cause them. Actually there is a balance in being challenged to be tempted in these areas by stepping out in faith and going into temptation. So i start from the positive, and that is to get my heart happy in the verses, and then i can overcome these things in the most trying circumstances. There are many verses to deal with these dispositions. Meditation on scripture in prayer seems to jedison one into the heavenlies so that the rules of man are not the coolade. Somehow it is scarry to drink the coolade of depending on a frienship to avoid sin or even a counselor. There is freedom in just allowing the promises of scripture change your mood rather than group therapy. 8368  Forums / Main Forum / The Bible On Trial on: October 08, 2006, 11:58:55 AM The law of God comes with a threat. The threat makes the law consequential to the action of the law breaker. Unless the law had a threat then the law would not have any power. So the threat is equal to a law having power. The threat equals the level of the law broken. Sin demands death, death was treatened in the garden if man sinned. The caracter of the one threatening would also demand that punishment that that eternal God would require for breaking the law. Because God is eternally righteous, then one small sin would equal an eternal judgement since God is eternal and the breaking of His will is the absolutely most heinious act being done before a holy eternal God. So the punishment level of little one sin would have the threat of an eternal judgement. Thats how serious God takes sin. The reality of Hell teaches us that sin should be judged and we understand the heiniousness of sin by the reality of Hell and that threat. So really we are just living in a dream world if we think that sin is a small matter or it does not exist. Since there is so much fear in the world that amount of fear would prove that there is a real threat to cause that fear. Mans fear of death is what makes sin so very real. It argues against mens rationalizations. Man experiences fear because God is angry and man has alineted himself from God. Fear is the consequence of that alinetion. Fear causes restlessness and unless man finds his rest in God he will end up experiencing that fearful fulfillment at his death. 8374  Forums / Main Forum / The Bible On Trial on: October 07, 2006, 06:04:18 AM Love is a commitment. But love comes from God. Every act of love has its source in God. God is so big that the more we know Him the more we will love. When we are saved love becomes more than a commitment thing tho. God actually communicates to us through love. He shows us as a Father that He loves us. We are in His covenant of love. In His covenant He has promised to keep us and bring us through all of our trials , so that we become more like His Son. He has shown us who He is by His law, and He has required us to obey Him. He has signed that covenant with us in the blood of the sacrifice of His Son and sprinkled that blood of obedience on us. So we are loved eternally. When we hear His voice through His word we are changed from thinking that we earn His love by our performance to knowing He loves us because we could never act rite. When we understand the covenant of grace we know that we are representatives of His name so that being in a relationship with Him , He will uphold us, sustain us, keep us safe, forgive us, grant us grace, show us that He is all powerful etc... Knowing that we are completely sorrounded by Gods all incompensing grace and mercy we are able to love others. When we take Gods name in our salvation we begin to know our Father through that covenant relationship. All of our lives are focused on our Fathers love through covenant. When we meet someone who our Father has made for us to be our mate we begin to share that love with them. We covenant with them to love them as our Father has love us. He decides when to bring that person to us in marriage. The natural out flow of a covenant relationship is to long to be united  in the marriage covenant. Because we have so many experiences where God has love us in covenant we understand what unconditional love is. Because God is our high tower we can have a sense that we are over our circumstances, that we are loved beyond any other being we encounter. Now we can relax and understand who we are, and in being able to comprehend that we can become one in marriage. Now we share in a covenant of marriage. That covenant is so important to us because we have experienced our Fathers covenant love, by Him communicating to us absolute power, soveriegnty, glory, and truth. He communicates this to us through His faithfulness to love us. When two people grasp Gods covenant love, they are able to rise above the circumstances of life, and love one another beyond those circumstances. Gods covenant love is all comsuming. They know that God would never leave them, or cheat them. Covenant love becames a seriously holy union. Any breaking of the covenant in marriage would create serious consequences. Both husband and wife in covenant are a picture of our Fathers love that shadows our lives in absolute security. Being in covenant is the most spiritually secure place in the universe. We may go through many trials, but through the Holy Spirit we experience Gods love in a very strong way. Because God shows us our humaness through our trials and He show us His special love in bring us through the trials. He wants us to have full confidence in Him even in the most severe trial. He wants us to rest in Christ. He creates in us a disposition that causes us to be over come with His love, by communicating it to us in our pain through the Holy SPirit and the word. When we go through the pain of marriage, and we are confronted with the word flesh and the devil, we get through this world by getting a sense of Gods love, a beauty of His love. We know by that sense that we are loved, so that it can become a weighty sense. That glory of God is what opens up to us eternity life. We are raised above this world in our thoughts, motives, loves. We begin to long for Christ, who sits at the right hand of the Father. We long for His beauty. We begin to rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory. His Spirit witnesses with our Spirit and we are assured of His love. That spiritual sense carries us through our trials. So much of marriage is feeding off of the spriritual riches of this table. When two people eat at this table , they become living sacrifices. Marriage becomes ministry, and their children become covenant children who grow up to feel the weight of that glory. 8381  Forums / Theology Forum / Challenging The Holy Word, "church" on: October 05, 2006, 07:30:35 PM The place of the Psalms- The psalms are a compulation of all human emotion and all spiritual actings on the heart that bring these two paradigms into unision so that the focus of worship becomes all consuming! Man naturally is always in a state of confusion ,that is his heart does not always line up with these spiritual experiences, which is why we are easily led astray because the lie comes from the heart and the deception about what the spiritual experience brings is not tune correctly so his understanding is  disoriented and his devoted loves are divided, especially when the word is preached. What is amazing is that so many people think a long sermon is an exercise of futility because this music of the heart is so corrupted. The psalms bring about an understanding of not only the Spirits work on the heart but the reality of the experience of the Holy Spirits work on the heart in worship so that the music of the heart plays in a unision in worship. Once that experience happens then the word of the Psalms of Christ  is more valuable than any other object in the exercise of being under preaching because the psalms realign the hearts music so that the worship experience is hightened and the spiritual senses are ignited, the mind will and emotion will be realigned in that experience and that will cause you to rest supernaturally. It is in the exercise of meditation on the Psalms that sharpen these spiritual actings on the heart so the the soul knows when the music begins to sound like music.