Assurance through inability.

Assurance is practiced when we have described Gods kingdom so that we believe that God is in control. We gain assurance by pronouncing His covenants then petitioning Him according to His faithfulness , kindness, long suffering and salvation. We also approach Him with our human frailties and the sorrow we carry because of our propensity to experience the effects of the curse. It is easy for us to imagine that our assurance is described by how much we focus on Christ. Its very deceptive to approach God on what we are experiencing in the present and never address what is bothering us. Its easy for us to teach that focusing on Christ must be done with a lot of care. But to focus on Christ and get our focus off ourselves we must really believe that we are saved into a kingdom in which Gods law has established our boundaries and our safety. Focusing on Christ is going beyond the word to the Person. We must learn that God has established His righteousness so that He might show forth His glory and in this we need no other motivation for growing in the christian experience.

But we also go down side roads because we focus on ourselves being unable to do good. The truth is that even if we become proficient in describing His kingdom that dwells in our hearts and appealing to Him because we really believe that we live in this kingdom that its easy for us to make inability  our act to gain acceptance.  We are easily led astray by thinking and feeling that we are worse then He thinks we are. We really believe that if we could talk ourselves down that He would show pity to us and be more available to us. But at some point inability must be expressed in the lack of care we have for the things of this world. The only way that we will really accept total inability is when we experience the powerlessness of human achievements by tasting and seeing the works of God as if God came to us in a battle and pulled us out at the most dangerous time. Focusing on Christ is living in a kind of mysterious disposition in which the weight of the care of this world does not influence our experience in His kingdom. When the kingdom that is within us comes in unity with the kingdom that God has established through His covenants, laws, decrees, and promises then we have Christ in us the hope of glory.

We glory in our weakness , we do not shy away from it.  Our weakness is the gift of God to dull the pain. We can settle back into our secret meditations in any circumstance and seek to rest in Christ as if we have left the room. The truth is that rest is like a soldier who is entering a city at night and must go past the guard without awakening him. If the soldier makes one loud move then he puts his life in danger. And this is what true biblical rest is. We can be the agents of someones fear and sorrow by speaking with the wrong motives. If we are not at rest then we will wake the guards up in others. Inability is being able to touch the other persons experience. 

Assurance is gifted to us

Everyone of Gods children should have a settled assurance. When we are saved God reverses the way that we view morality. God must settle us in our assurance before we can grow in the christian experience. Before we were saved we believed that it was necessary to do good in order to be rewarded. We believed that our relationships with others was built on doing good to our neighbor. We lived by the laws of karma that what we do always comes back to us. But when we are saved all of our motivation comes from experiencing the love of God.

God has created everything for the purpose of being pleased with His creation. In the first temptation of man Satan wanted us to believe that God did not create everything for our good. Rather Satan presented the idea that God left something out with the intention to deceive us. When Satan convinced man to accept that if he disobeyed God, man would know this other gift that man could get upon eating the fruit, man became his own god and received the curse of death. But this did not thwart Gods original purpose to love mankind.

But when sin entered into the world everything that God created became corrupted. The problem is that if God loved all men as His children without showing that He gave man freedom then He would be seen as someone who created robots. God does not rule by forcing people to act. That would not be love but dictatorial control. Rather God shows His love by setting His children free from experiencing the curse of the second death. God does not just save a person from hell but He gives His children a gift that is different from all other gifts.

When we receive a gift from other men it is given so that we can enjoy it by using it for our personal benefit. We use it in some way to further our success by enjoying it. So in this way we add to the value of the gift by the amount of work we put into its use. So the value of the gift is according to our character that we share in enjoying it. But Gods gift is not like this. God has provided His gifts with a total experience of the highest performance and pleasure of the gift so that we can enjoy it in total freedom of our limitations but never getting to the experience that God has performed . The pleasure of the gift then is valued according to the Person who gifted it to us. The unfathomable knowledge of the gift is in God alone. When God gives us His gifts He gives us Himself because He wants to love us as He is free to make the gift and its enjoyment according to His eternal pleasure. So Im saying that our assurance of the gift of salvation is based upon Gods understanding of what He has gifted us. This is why the apostle compared receiving this assurance as a cry to a Father from a child.

 

Gods perfect recreation of us.

Ps 25

1 To you, O LORD, I lift up my soul;

2 in you I trust, O my God. Do not let me be put to shame, nor let my enemies triumph over me.

3 No one whose hope is in you will ever be put to shame, but they will be put to shame who are treacherous without excuse.

4 Show me your ways, O LORD, teach me your paths;

5 guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, and my hope is in you all day long.

6 Remember, O LORD, your great mercy and love, for they are from of old.

7 Remember not the sins of my youth and my rebellious ways; according to your love remember me, for you are good, O LORD.

8 Good and upright is the LORD; therefore he instructs sinners in his ways.

9 He guides the humble in what is right and teaches them his way.

10 All the ways of the LORD are loving and faithful for those who keep the demands of his covenant.

11 For the sake of your name, O LORD, forgive my iniquity, though it is great.

12 Who, then, is the man that fears the LORD? He will instruct him in the way chosen for him.

13 He will spend his days in prosperity, and his descendants will inherit the land.

14 The LORD confides in those who fear him; he makes his covenant known to them.

15 My eyes are ever on the LORD, for only he will release my feet from the snare.

16 Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted.

17 The troubles of my heart have multiplied; free me from my anguish.

18 Look upon my affliction and my distress and take away all my sins.

19 See how my enemies have increased and how fiercely they hate me!

20 Guard my life and rescue me; let me not be put to shame, for I take refuge in you.

21 May integrity and uprightness protect me, because my hope is in you.

22 Redeem Israel, O God, from all their troubles! 

If we study and meditate on this Psalm we will find that it is a holistic petition for God to form the Psalmist into a new man. Our tendency is divide our weaknesses and sins so that we can pinpoint the problem and then find the scripture that applies to it so that we reckon the sin dead through Christ death. In other words our purpose in dealing with sin is to try to stop sinning. 

I think this comes because we take a teaching in the NT that is describing the doctrine and the work that Christ has done in order to put the doctrine in its proper context and we assume that we can take that description and apply it to our particular problem. Most of our problems in the christian life do not come from understanding the teaching but miss applying the teaching. We find here that the Psalmist comes to God touching all of the points of what the bible describes as true faith in the form of a petition as if he is balancing himself so that he can walk straight. But the question is why does the Psalmist end the Psalm with such a desperate cry? 

The reason is because God is more than just a Person who helps us in our faith. No the Psalmist has a much more profound understanding of what is necessary for there to be real change. The Psalmist purpose is not to sin less. He is appealing to God who creates and recreates his total being. 

God sees every thing that is in creation as the most beautiful objects that are working in perfect unity for the purpose of bringing Himself glory. Our problem is that we only see our weaknesses and sins from our perspective and how they affect us. Our imperfect view keeps us from experiencing the unity that God has established in gifting us with His perfect acts that are described in His law. Because of our distance from enjoying Gods back bone as His expression of strength and comfort we experience loneliness...an inability to view the value of all things that God views. This is the desperation that the Psalmist finds himself with as cries out to God.  The Psalmist is praying to a God who can provide the successful foundation in which the Psalmist can experience a security that is outside of his small view as if God is allowing the Psalmist to be taken from the dungeon of his own finite experience to the eternal garden of the beauty and order of Gods perfect kingdom.  

 The sweetness of the presence of God.

Psalm 34

1 I will extol the LORD at all times; his praise will always be on my lips.

2 My soul will boast in the LORD; let the afflicted hear and rejoice.

3 Glorify the LORD with me; let us exalt his name together.

4 I sought the LORD, and he answered me; he delivered me from all my fears.

5 Those who look to him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame.

6 This poor man called, and the LORD heard him; he saved him out of all his troubles.

7 The angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear him, and he delivers them.

8 Taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in him.

9 Fear the LORD, you his saints, for those who fear him lack nothing.

10 The lions may grow weak and hungry, but those who seek the LORD lack no good thing.

11 Come, my children, listen to me; I will teach you the fear of the LORD.

12 Whoever of you loves life and desires to see many good days,

13 keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking lies.

14 Turn from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.

15 The eyes of the LORD are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their cry;

16 the face of the LORD is against those who do evil, to cut off the memory of them from the earth.

17 The righteous cry out, and the LORD hears them; he delivers them from all their troubles.

18 The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.

19 A righteous man may have many troubles, but the LORD delivers him from them all;

20 he protects all his bones, not one of them will be broken.

21 Evil will slay the wicked; the foes of the righteous will be condemned.

22 The LORD redeems his servants; no one will be condemned who takes refuge in him. 

This is one of the sweetest Psalms to memorize and meditate upon.  The Psalmist is really describing the experience that transpires as he meditates upon the book of Psalms.  It is written to explain what happens when we seek God through the Psalms. Anytime the Psalmist talks about extolling God or praising God he is trying to describe the joy that he has in his heart as a result of speaking to God in the most pleasant way by having the Psalms on his lips. So we sort of walk around our house speaking the Psalms to God. 

This habit is of speaking the Psalms is described by David as skipping about the altar and praising God. This Psalm has been repeated over and over again in the process by which I seek God through the Psalms. Over the years Ive been on the edge of euphoria that breaks into my experience as I go through the day.When I begin to seek God through speaking the Psalms I begin to experience being in a beautiful garden where the air is fresh and through sight I  feel as if Ive been looking on the beauty of the flowers. Along with this i begin to experience a heightened sensitivity to my sight and my hearing. Its as if it is really happening in a physical way but its actually the sensations of the physical presence of being in that beautiful garden. And after many times that Ive sought God in this way it has become a normal experience in which my mind functions as its been trained by the habit. 

Along with this I begin to sense as if there is someone actually listening intently to me. I have come to believe after this experience that most of the communication that we have on a horizontal level is not really listening to people. When we speak to God through the Psalms His presence is manifested by this experience of Him listening to us. Its not like we are having a vision of someone who is there but its Him drawing us in to listening to us through our desires. Hes saying "I sought the Lord and He answered me." The experience is that we long for someone to listen to us. Its not something we actually think about unless we have sought God in the words of the Psalmist that are given to us so that as we speak them we experience God as if we our focus grew by experiencing the effects of how He has made us. When we have experienced the effects of how we feel when we have talked to someone who has really listened to us ...this is what I am talking about. 

This presence that we experience is powerful and glorious. And this is why the Psalmist says that he has a radiant face. Its like a time in our lives where we excelled in something and we became so impassioned about it that we experienced doing it under the influence of our endorphins. Its like being empowered like getting waves of tingles that we cannot stop.  The radiance is that there is nothing that is coming at us.... all the power is going from our inside out. In this sense we are acting in the proper context of doing the act with our whole being. We are experiencing the oneness of the pleasure of God in our created task. This is the radiance the Psalmist is talking about And so as we exercise in our meditation we begin to build this radiant image in us. 

But its not that we are experiencing God listening to us . We begin to taste and see the presence of God. And we begin to sense that we are being surrounded by angels. There is just something about this experience that I cannot explain. Its as if in this experience the Person is using the Psalms in imprinting in our minds a response to our speaking them to Him. This sense of God speaking back has been refined to me over the years. Sometimes I will be sitting and all of a sudden i will be hearing my thoughts speaking to me about something and its the same experience Ive had in this taste and see part of speaking the Psalms. Ill stop here.

Gods single purpose for us. 

Ive been living this christian life for a very long time. Most of the time I am frustrated because I hardly ever in complete agreement with the teaching. I get frustrated when someone teaches that salvation is by grace but then they teach a totally different option with different purposes. Im old enough to see that society is going in the direction according to what is allowed and not really how the person aligns themselves with the law of God. I ask myself how can a person who really reverences God go out and be genuine in the world? I think either they prevent themselves from getting dirtied by choosing their friends and avoiding other people. What I have described is exactly the two lines that they teach. This is the same kind of prejudice that is exhibited as someone who doesnt like a certain race.

If we have a category for redemption to be settled in the future than inevitably we have a cause not to act now. In my opinion this overshadows the communication of orthodoxy. I am so obsessed with creating disunity that Ive developed a shield around myself in private in which I cannot rest until I have cursed it. I have learned that grace is like a companion and when that person gets attacked I become restless. The only hope of rest is to understand the total teaching of grace and then to find the hole that was pierced in the grace boat through meditation on the Psalms so that it can be closed up and we can rest in Christ. If grace does not unify truth then we are hopeless to unify our body with our soul and live in unity with our culture.

Grace teaches us that we live in a kingdom in which God has provided our safety by speaking everything into existence in us and in our circumstances that are either for ordained as a gift for our good or reordered for our good. The Psalmist depicts the terrible circumstances that he was in prior to his deliverance in the worse terms. He calls them a miry pit. In other words it wasnt just a pit that was over his head but it had quick sand that would swallow him up. But he says that God lifted him out of the miry pit and set his feet on a Rock. Now listen the Rock is God violent and destructive work to prevent His elect from being mortally wounded in war. In other words the Rock provides the boundaries of safety within the walls of Gods kingdom. 

As a result of being delivered from the miry pit and put on a rock God also gave Him new shoes, clothes, and put a song in his mouth.This shows that in Gods kingdom we are provided for and set free as if we skip around singing songs. Later on the Psalmist adds to this depiction. He says that God will do many wonders on his behalf, the things that God has planned are to great for us to understand. What is this new promise? Is the Psalmist saying that in the future God will bring us all to heaven and then we will get what Christ has earned? Not really. We believe it is already gifted to us but its in the future it will be fully experienced.

This already part is where it becomes a matter of contention for me. Because Ive been saying that Gods promises to us have been legally binding. God has sworn to uphold His covenant to His own hurt. There is not wiggle room for an island of non action by God. A lot of Calvinist say that if we lower God then we are making it hard for ourselves in this life. But if there is a possibility that we must have hope because of something that is promised in the future then its the same thing as lowering God because we tie His hands to act on our behalf now. When we allow God to have His hands tied we exalt man. And so this is where cursing comes in.
 

 True self denial

Let me talk about the use of the curses in the Psalms. Ive been accused of a lot of things because I am teaching that the curses are important in understanding Gods purposes in saving men. Ive been accused of being unloving and selfish...even threatening me by saying that those curses will fall on me. lol And yet these same people at some point and time are shown to attach labels on people they disagree with or that are socially unacceptable to them.

And yet these same people teach that our lives should be lived in self denial. But the self denial they are speaking of is defined by their own causes. So I am amazed at how easy it is for us to ignore portions of scripture as we even refuse to sit down and put ourselves under the ideas the scripture presents and try to think about them in a deep way. I mean even if we cannot reconcile every idea the scripture presents we should be able to expand our understanding the complications that we have reasoned out so that we can better understand some of these areas that other people have experience in and accept that we could be wrong in judging them.

Our problem with self denial is not really trying to avoid certain situations or things that we are tempted by. Our problem with self denial is that we do not believe that honor is displayed in substitution. The reason is that we live on the level of seeing sin as an action rather than an evidence that we are unable. This is just common sense. If we use sin to divide the good from the bad then inevitably we will never get past the level of communicating some kind of label in order to define the christian experience. We will always wonder why our self denial is always anti social.

But the truth is that we cannot save ourselves by trying to control how much we avoid sin. If self denial means death to self then why is it that some people are always thinking it means avoiding certain people and sins? Is there any purpose if someone is substituting their lives for other people for us to be obsessed with avoiding that piece of pie? And if dieing to ourselves means that we are self destructive then self denial is really inter relating with something that is alive in us in which we feel the pain that we can define. We can label the pain. Your attempting to be on that level of self denial that is not Gods design. But the reason that self denial is death is because we are pleased to substitute ourselves because the connection to honor is more important then any label that we can see.

You cant live on this level unless you see that everything that we are opposed by must be cursed to death. You cant honestly say that you deny yourself if your still alive to label what you are opposing. If you cant trust that you have killed it by cursing it then your gonna label it. This is what the apostle saying that he sees no man according to the flesh.

 We rule the earth
 Psalms 8
1 O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens.

2 From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise because of your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger.

3 When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,

4 what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?

5 You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.

6 You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet:

7 all flocks and herds, and the beasts of the field,

8 the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas.

9 O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

The Psalms describe Gods order in creation. God is the supreme Judge and Governor over the earth. Before the fall of man into sin God gave man the responsibility to rule over His creation.  As God created all things from nothing by the word of His mouth so man with the glory of a creating authority in using Gods word to bring unity and symmetry to Gods order. When the Psalmist is talking about from the" lips of children and infants" he is using the word "praise" as a metaphor for mans ability to speak Gods commands, decrees, statutes, and covenants as the source of mans artistic ability to rule over the earth and act as an individual as distinct from all other men. 

But as we see the gospel always has this legal side to it. This phrase "foe and avenger" is speaking of the nations who war against Gods order that He establishes in His counsel from all eternity and through His elect. So God does not only design the world but He governs all peoples and nations..He governs all of His creation. But we must also understand that God has placed this governing ability within each man. 

This is what is so hard for us to change . We have been taught that the world is run through social order.' All for one and one for all". In this day we take pleasure in being constrained by the force of other men. We really do not experience biblical freedom. But the Psalms teach that each man is his own ruler. This is why after God had made man, we could picture God as standing before His throne and raising the sword up to each shoulder as He ceremoniously honored man as a refection of His majesty by gifting him with these creative abilities. In the Psalms God is fully able to meet the desires of each man as distinct from all other men. And in honoring mans sovereignty which is in conflict with other men, God is fully able to reconcile these differences and establish the highest pleasure in uniting all these individual desires. We do not believe that by two lines we come to one purpose but we believe that God in His original work in saving man has gifted him with Gods desires that are united with Gods purposes so that the more personal the desires are the closer we grow to experience our full salvation. In other words there is no further work to be done in us in order for us to align our desires with Gods desires. I assure you that I am putting this in accurate context.