7598	Forums / Main Forum / How Does One Counsel His Own Pastor?	on: April 07, 2007, 11:41:05 AM
Quote Hey MBG< No I didn't think you were..it's cool I was just saying that sometimes I get around "Hyper-spiritual" Christians who think Church is SOOOOO serious business and that ALL it should provide is doctrines and worship and nothing else should fall out of it. BS I say.. But to get back to your last point.. I DO attend a church..I just wasn't sure where I stand with the whole movement of late.. BUT I am starting to dive deeper into their structure. They even asked me to be a group leader.. isn't that wild?? I prayed about it and felt a strange leading towards something that needed to be revealed to myself. It did. They said the reason they asked me was because they liked the amount of knowledge I had about the Bible. I was referred by another in the group to take over. The second reason was because they saw that I seemed to have questions and was suspicious of the motives of the direction of the modern day church movements . So my burning of the past was now being used for good. BUT I knew that there had to be a change of attitude and cynicism. Being form the northeast it comes natural anyway. When i first took over I had some doubts about the pastor and the church and their whole direction. Still they supported me even with my reservations and questions. We even openly debated some of them. In the end the major points we were on the same page. That's all they cared about. they never once made me feel out casted even when I did not agree on some points. They said that they would rather have that kind of checks and balances as long as it didnt get divisive. Kind of like these boards or the body as a whole. We seem to be on the same roads just by different means. we argue and debate those means by which perception we have at the time or has proven itself in our lives. If we can debate those things and still have love for one another and realize that one day we will all be singing around the same throne then that's all I really need to see in anyone and even while not agreeing with some of the conclusions you have come to in your journey. I would have the pastor over just like i would have anyone over for dinner or to see a ball game or anything. I think some of our best spiritual bonding comes form times of just being ourselves and not partaking in "Church" activity. I think the world needs to see that. The evangelical message has been drummed to such repetitive beats that we don't even appear like salt anymore. At least in America. Knowing how to handle relationships and being there for people is a MAJOR door I think for the gospel without ever preaching a word. Then when an open door presents it self..there ya go.. I think sometimes the body looks lofty with all it's spiritual jargon ( and let's be honest) that we really don't fully understand either. Humility is severely lacking and is I think the greatest witness of Christ. Even in the way we treat our pastors and Brothers and Sisters. Jesus BECAME the word. I'm still meditating on that one and always will. I send my pastor a card once in awhile and just say . "thanks". I always have. I once had chat with a pastor of a huge church I attended 10 years ago. He came up to me and thanked me for the card and words of encouragement. I said it was no big deal and said, "With a church this large you probably get hundreds." He just smirked and said, "Is that what you think?"Believe me the criticism far out weighs any encouragement." Just like the world. We preach so hard aginst worldliness and look what happens in our own camp. No wonder I frown when I hear the word "Christianity". If He knew to pull me out of a large crowd in a lobby of hundreds..what does that say? The biggest thing IMNSHO lacking in the body is lack of encouragement. It will humble you right in your tracks. But the natural mind thinks it will puff up.. BS. It's all backwards. I 've watched some of the proudest and believe me I'm in THAT group get almost brought to tears by a kind word. So encourage your pastor and each other. I really enjoy reading and debating and observing your personalities and all the insights God has given to each of you. Peace RR I hear ya. But the truth will set you free, not necessarily men. Men are finite, the word last forever. God will reveal Himself to us in fellowship so that we can share not just in relationship that mean nothing, but we can encourage down to the bottom of the heart of everyone we meet. And yet most of the time we really are not being too sanctified by the word. We begin to develope a society of science mentality. We encouarge each other through the flippent spirit to go home and carry on as usual. You know the culture i dont think i need to elaborate. We are not in community to disappear in a social paradigm, but we are individuals with gifts, and the hard part in community is to be an individual with the whole councel mentality and get along. That is impossible as you know. We are tempted to give into the mindset of the cultural bias of secularism. But we are to be so filled with scripture that when we bleed the scripture comes out. And we are to always think Gods thoughts after Him as individuals. There are gifts of the Spirit that are supernatural , and they are given as a result of God purposing in us before the world that we would be gifted as individuals. When we are filled with the Spirit we are being what God made us to be. It is in the exercising of the gifts that makes community a place for the healing of the soul by divine fiat. It is as individuals in our private mortification that we can bring something to the table. When we take these things seriously they have a life of their own. NOt saying the we do not have power over our spirit, but that there will be a depth in us that either will attract those Spirit filled believers or will repel the carnal believers. There are in every church the mix of saved and unsaved. Unfortunately because the spoon of the world has been shortened so that now the handle does not protrude from worship but the belly of the spoon actually is in the church , it can be very depressing. We must begin to use our spiritual discernment so that we will not be overcome with grief in carnal paradigm. We must become angry at what God is angry and and thankful for the absolute control of God in creation and in the the working out of all things in our lives for our good. But God will always move us if we are crying out for the pure worship of God. Its just a matter of time. Sorry if you do not understand, just read the cotton picken thing. Thanks. 7600  Forums / Theology Forum / The Donkey Messenger on: April 07, 2007, 10:51:43 AM Quote This is another example that took place once I got out from under what OTHER people said the God of the Bible was trying to say. The Bible is very clear as far as I can see in NOT trying to say the church has replaced the Jews. What it DOES say in essence is that the church is being used to make the Jews jealous. I do wonder though how one would know the droves of Jews are doing anything. Just who is a Jew? Yes well i do hope that youall are seeing the imprint of Christ existence in your own back yard because it is shouting above the height of your roof tops.  And really justification by faith in the coming messiah was as ot as it was nt. It was never in the animal, but it was in the covenant of grace.The animal sacrifices were a temporary appeasement of the wrath of God until the final atonement who was the lamb of God , purposed in eternity in the Trinity, one in essence three in Persons . And if you are trusting in your own righteousness , then your faith is on shaky ground. And your sacrifices are ever before the Lord, but His answer to you I do not rebuke you for your sacrifices or your burnt offerings which are ever before me, I have no need bull from your stalls or the goats from your pens for every animal of the forest is mine and the cattle on a thousand hills, I know every bird in the mountains and the beast of the field is mine sacrifice your thank offerings to God , fulfill your vows to the most High, call upon me in the day of trouble and i will deliver you. Yes if there is any thing from the creation of the world that could alter the purposes in God in saving then it would be of our own possession. Wow, Look God is actually sovereign even over those un caged animals. And since the temple curtain was rent from top to bottom , because the articles in the Holy of hollies had long since lost their power  seein that Christ was the fulfillment of the ot ceremonial sacrificial system and only because Israel was in the past looking forward to the Messiah and now we who are in Christ are looking back at the fulfillment of the law. Now we know that it is not through our faith that we can approach the throne of heaven, but it is through divine favor offered to His elect, who are ever thanking Him through their own inability , and only in His purposed salvation do we stand. Yes we are made alive and if we mix our own works or our own faith in the absolute sovereign plan of God we will only give what we lack. And so that island of righteousness of the self effort of the animal or the theology of the garden leaves dress will keep us from glorying in the free grace of God. Praise Him that He did it all. 7604  Forums / Main Forum / Forgivness Anonomous on: April 06, 2007, 03:26:14 AM Forgiving of others depends upon us understanding forgiveness. Most of us seldom have a really deep understanding of forgiveness so we use our performance to forgive others. Forgiveness is something that Christ alone has accomplished at the cross. Because He has completed the work , our going to Him for forgiveness is absolutely free. We must come before Him and as we are seeing our sin we must place it before Him. We must sense His divine cleansing at the cross. Forgiveness does not depend upon a feeling but it is a reality. When we meditate upon His bigness we can begin to see ourselves as unable to forgive without His grace. Forgiveness is not found in some little trick we try. Its found in the free flowing grace of Christ alone. We are sinners because we are in Adam. We are seen in Adam , that is we would have done the same thing he did if we were in the garden. His sin was imputed to our account as a result of the fall. We are sinners from our birth. Sin is much deeper than just the feeling of guilt. It goes down into the areas that we are blinded to. We are so corrupted with sin that some time we experience a load of guilt, by sin that outnumbers the hairs of our heads. When we begin to mortify sin we begin to morn over our sin. We must hate sin more than we hate our feeling of remorse. Our feelings of guilt remind us that sin has consequences and we are always going to face them on the inside as long as we are in this corrupted state. If God were to judge us by our sin, we would be consumed in a second. But because of Christ we are not treated as our sin deserves. The problem is that we do not understand the depth of our sin rather than dealing with the feelings of guilt we need to go deeper than this. We need to be raise by our view of Gods beauty and holiness so that we see our utter inability to do anything about sin. We cannot bring one act of righteousness before a Holy God in order to receive forgiveness. We cannot wash our sins away. Religion will lead us to think more highly of ourselves than we ought and it will cause us to look to someone or something else to relieve the guilt feelings. Christ is the only remedy for sin. It is only when we turn to Christ away from ourselves and trust totally in His substitutionary atonement that we can truly be forgiven and that is for all time.Because forgiveness depends upon His work, and what He does is final. Some times God withdraws His graciousness in our lives so that our struggle with sin will increase. He does this so that we will be drawn together in the body of Christ by being humbled. Our unity depends upon our seeing how sinful we not being able within our selves to make christian unity possible. We need the streams of mercy to be united to one another. We cannot unite in a program or a little physiological trick. We can only be united with we are brought down from ourselves and glory in Christ alone. We are all at different experiences in our lives. If we are experiencing a time of refreshing and God is showing us the wonders of His grace then we need to carry the burdens of our brothers and sisters. We need to take them to God in prayer and pray that God will bring revival. We need to show them free grace. We cannot show people free grace if we have a system in place to get forgiveness on our own. We will only lead them down the path of self forgiveness and pharisee-ism.  7619  Forums / Theology Forum / Judas-could He Have Repented? on: April 04, 2007, 03:01:36 PM Judas was a type of fool that is portrayed in the old testament in most of the narratives. He represents the traitor to a king. It was Absalom who betrayed David because he was taking from David what was rite-fully his and giving it to the people as a bribe for power. The political judas of the ot. And judas is brought out as the heat is turned up. As Christ agony increased from His birth to the majority deserting Him to the betrayal of Judas and the weakness of Peter and the other apostles to His taking on sin and suffering the Fathers displeasure these devilish dimensions expose the traitor. The traitor is the self righteous secret agent. He is a traitor to grace and imputed righteousness. As the persecution comes the traitor is totally self absorbed and willing to sell out in his self righteousness. The traitor is one who never prays, never worships, and never agonizes in his interior experience. He is standing on a house of cards that he cannot see will be his down fall. But the righteous even tho they face disaster are calling on the name of the Lord. Even in their agony they are leaning harder and harder on Christ through the pain. Their only hope is in Christ not the bribe.  7620  Forums / Theology Forum / The Art Of War on: April 04, 2007, 02:43:20 PM I dont agree with the book the art of war because the book has been the one doctrine that has changed the united ideal of American marriage paradigm, ie family relational principles toward every american, to the adulterious practices of selling out those ideals in a strictly business mindset of secularism. The company and profits have replaced our brotherly heritage.  7631  Forums / Theology Forum / The Donkey Messenger on: April 03, 2007, 02:23:57 PM Quote Quote God obvously does not save every man. So either God is thwarted in His purposes or the word world and all do not mean everone in the history of man kind. There are enough verses that in Eph. Rom 9 , and through out the ot that state that Gods purposes in saving man cannot be thwarted. You know, the more you preach hyper-Calvinism, the better universalism sounds to me. You make some pretty good arguments for universalism in that paragraph in a backwards sort of way. If it's either/or I'll take the God who chooses to save everyone eventually over the God who chooses people to be lost and without hope just because He has the power and feels like it. No Willis and Joker, As we have been discussing the nature of the gospel we must not be hood winked by the semi plagenist world view. If we are not schooled in Trinitarian theology the we will easily be led into example theology. A theology that you guy represent and it borders on heresy although in youalls case its probably not intentional. In example theology we present a Christ that is lesser than the soveriegn God of the bible. To digress here since i have the floor and these thoughts have been going around in my head today. But example theology presents a Christ that is less than God and more than the average Guy. What we have here is a problem in the views that work out in a practical way how grace works in our lives and how much freedom we actually posses, who we are free from and what we are bond to. The problem with example theology is that it creates a syndrome in which that teacher is the judge of scripture rather than allowing the scripture and its propositions to be the judge of the person. It is the view of the importance of doctrine and practice in a suttle way that gets heretical as it spreads to flatter a mans mind. It makes Jesus a good teacher and an example rather than of a divine essence. Jesus is totally God and He is equal with the Father and the Spirit. In substance they are one, with out division. In the divine essence raises Christ above an example to the place of Lord and being the second person of the Trinity in person the Principle cause of the Trinity is the sovereign person of the Father who even in essence is the magnified God above the Son and the Spirit in persons. So that Christ love points to our Fathers love and makes that love condescending rather than mere relational. So when i talk about the Fathers choice in salvation and His love i am pointing to something that  is seldom focused on by the example theologians and that is Christ equality in essence in the Trinity. What you do is you do not believe in the divine decree of the Trinitarian love, so that the will of the Father is not out of the essence with the Son but rather thwarted by the will of man, creating the illusion of the will worship of the example of Christ rather than the Fathers condescending love by His absolute rite to choose. Of which the scripture presents this doctrine that makes practice orthodox. And it really gets down to your view of human freedom as it is endowed with grace. Because if the Fathers love through Christ does not offer the only hope of the giving up of the control of self, then you have a problem with the definition of control and of grace. Man i hope its not to difficult. So yes my views of the doctrine of the divine essence are more important than the focus on human freedom by changing something about the self. What real freedom involves is my ability to a descent-er by my doctrine as it relates to example theology. In my apologetic i am raising up divine sovereignty by the essence theology and loosing the bands of the so called false freedom offered by those example prophets. To focus on the Fathers essence in His willing some to be saved and some not to be saved is to present God as God.  7637  Forums / Main Forum / How Does One Counsel His Own Pastor? on: April 02, 2007, 05:45:53 PM Quote Quote Quote Maybe if God called him, God can also speak to him about how to handle the church?  (asking gently...) If I were you, I'd befriend him, but I wouldn't offer advice until I was asked... lm LM... that is what I am trying to figure out: I don't want to be mucking in God's mud. Nor, if I am actually responsible as a brother to throw some input out there from a just me to him standpoint, I don't want it to come off wrong. I am already his friend, so that isn't an issue. God does speak to people directly all the time, but sometimes, wise counsel comes from friends too. Eric Out of all of the letters in the NT the book of Gal. has more scathing rebukes than any other of the letters of the apostle. Why do you think that is so. Because the doctrine of phariseeism is the most destructive doctrine of the entire history of the church. And it starts with will worship. After years of living under the domination of semi plaginism we have lost our individualism. We love to have structure. We would absolute need medication if the pastor told us that we could do any thing we wanted to do if we are believers. That we had an advocate in the church in which we that actually protected families rather than pester them to death for money. That we are all screw ups and in need of an advocate or a Savior that actually offered free grace and we would see to it that the sheep understood that. That we would be watching each others backs rather than trying to start some new program and get a new board going just wasting every ones time. We need to go back to real Calvinism and the art of dissenting. We are all high preist and have responsibility to keep the individuality of each member protected. God is big enough to have each one of us crying our for our individual needs and meeting them at the same time so why are we always attracted to structure outside of the doctrines of grace. We need to stop with our personal insults and our lack of freedom and really get to know the Christ of free grace for sin. 7639  Forums / Theology Forum / The Donkey Messenger on: April 02, 2007, 12:29:15 PM Dear Half-Brother mbG, I think you know which spiritual half you fail to grasp? But God will reveal to each one of us the Pauline doctrine of predestination and so we are full brothers in heaven. I am just enjoying the resting in the pre- grace of God  that will be revealed in its fulness at the coming of our Lord. I hope and pray that you will reconsider what kind of love we are talking about. Its not just the love of the goose bump type we get as a result of glorying in Him in His holy word through the Holy Spirit. But is is a sovereign love in choice in which Christ forgives us and stands in our stead so that we can receive all of the benefits of His work. In Christ death and resurrection we enjoy all we need through all eternity. And the Spirit makes it known to us by His comforting us because of Christ and not because of our obedience. We simple must believe in the absolute sovereign work of Christ on our behalf and cry out to Him for it to be made manifested in us and through us because it was accomplished in full at the cross and was a pre grace work in all of our responses. And so the love is not just a feeling but it is the power of God in the gospel of God, who poured out His wrath on Christ so that we could glory in His righteousness, sent from heaven. We being unworthy sinners deserve nothing. We cannot even look up to heaven for comfort without the sprinkling of His blood upon the alter of heaven on our behalf. We come to the Father with sin that is so heinous and odious that we are unacceptable and without hope of any righteousness in ourselves. The love of the Father is a powerful refuge only for a really bad sinner. Its not for the righteous. Its for the beggars and the prostitutes the thieves and the adultery. And might i say to those religious self righteous people there is also a spiritually sinful red lite district. Have you gone past the goose bumps to the true personal advocacy of Christ. Has He been magnified as God and you been reduced as a sinner? Unless we feel the weight of our odiousness we cannot understand the power of His advocacy. And we will never trust Him enough to get a gift that is beyond our ability to receive by our own efforts. Christ is dashing the world governments into pieces because His is king. Its time to give Him His sovereign rite to rule of He will take you out of the way also. His love is the only thing that matters in this life.