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Author
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Topic: What is Purity?
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helpforhomeschoolers
Advanced Member
Member # 15
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posted
I love your too Born Again, and your point is well taken. I also loved your border crossing story, that was exactly what I was speaking of.
Posts: 4684 | From: Southern Black Hills of South Dakota | Registered: Jun 2002
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BORN AGAIN
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but to get back to the "purety" Topic, sister helpforhomeschoolers writes quote:
Have you ever dealt with someone like that? You bring them flowers and they think you are being disingenuous?
I once crossed from the Mexican border north to the United States border with my friend K. who wanted to bring some alcohol in with him, more than was allowed.
I was trying to be a goody-two-shoes then {and well I should have been}, so I said, "well, that's fine, but I'll get out and I'll walk across the border or I'll get a ride with someone to the border."
So I got out, but we were still quite a ways from the border. A hispanic-looking driver came by at that moment, saw me get out of K.'s car and saw me stick my "can I get a lift" finger out and he kindly stopped and I crossed the border with him, while K. crossed the border by himself with his extra few liters of booze.
On the U.S. side of the border, I sincerely thanked by amigo for helping me get across the border without carrying anything illegal, and I waited for K's car to pull up.
But it so happened that when K. pulled up, my amigo saw me get into the same K's car that my amigo had seen me GET OUT OF on the Mexican side of the border and my amigo now became my enemigo when my amigo errouneously thought that I HAD USED HIM AS A MULE TO CARRY SOMETHING ILLEGAL ACROSS THE BORDER, and that is why I had gotten OUT OF K's car south of the border and had gotten back IN K's car on the north side of the border.
It got dangerous for a while. Now there was a good deed gone astray huh?
May the LORD God of Israel bless and protect us all. I am BORN AGAIN in the USA.
"no matter what I face today, You're all I need"
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BORN AGAIN
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hi sister helpforhomeschoolers, you know I love you and I hope that you don't mind me showing this to you. I'm going to critique your writing style, if I may impudently do that. You write: quote:
This verse is interesting to me because there is a lot in it. If we look at it contexturally of course we see that Paul is dealing with some that are trying to bind the gentile Christians with the Law...{snip}
I'll forever be thankful to Terral for {snip}. Okay, sister helpforhomeschoolers, do you see above how you "changed from me to we", as if you suddenly had a prairie mouse in your pocket?
Now here is how I would rephrase your sentence: quote:
This verse is interesting to me because there is a lot in it. If I look at it contexturally of course I see that Paul is dealing with some that are trying to bind the gentile Christians with the Law...
Do you see the difference, sister helpforhomeschoolers?
In the your version, you suddenly switched, wihtout permission, I might add, to the "we" form as if you had a prairie mouse in your pocket, thinking that now you could be speaking for "we".
In my version of your text, I am only speaking for myself, and that is a less aggressive way of speaking because I am only speaking "what my experience is", and people don't mind hearing that.
People start to mind however when "try to tell them how it should be done, almost Taliban-like."
The thing I love about speaking in the "I" form is that "I'm not telling anyone what to do, I am just sharing what MY experience has been thus far; after all, I really cannot speak for anyone else anyway."
So, anyway, sister helpforhomeschoolers, my point is that it is better to keep to "I" and "me" and not switch from "me" to "we" as if you suddenly got authority from someone to speak for them also. ![[happyhappy]](graemlins/happyhappy.gif)
![[Kiss]](graemlins/Kiss.gif) BORN AGAIN
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BORN AGAIN
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hello, sister WhiteEagle, good Topic.
Titus 1:15 "To the pure all things are pure; but to them who are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure, but {and} even their mind and conscience is defiled."
To them who are defiled and unbelieving "nothing is pure", wow, what a way to live. I thank my God Elohim of Israel that I have found Him and His Son Jeshua and the Holy Spirit of Israel, because I can now experience "pure things", thanks be to God Elohim.
And:
Titus 1:15 "To the pure all things are pure; but to them who are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure, but even their mind and conscience is defiled."
Who is pure? Is anyone pure like Jeshua-Jesus?
In a way, yes, we Christians are "counted as pure", because we do not depend on "our own righteousness", but we "believe and trust that the LORD God of Israel is the True Creator of heaven and earth, the Only Living God".
We who believe the above are allowed to exchange our filthy righteousness for Jesus' righteousness "for free", and whoever on earth chooses to do that, the same is "considered pure."
God bless, BORN AGAIN ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
"a wheel within a wheel, way up in the middle of the air" I
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helpforhomeschoolers
Advanced Member
Member # 15
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This is a great post WhiteEagle. I love a post that really challenges me to think. BA writes those kinds of posts often and the other day Mac did with his genesis post and now you with this one! I enjoyed this and I would like to comment on some things:
quote:
I've been contemplating this verse lately:
Titus 1:15 "Unto the pure all things are pure; but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure, but even their mind and conscience is defiled."
This verse is interestng to me because there is a lot in it. If we look at it contexturally of course we see that Paul is dealing with some that are trying to bind the gentile Christians with the Law and thus pure here to the Christian for whom all things are legal and defiled to the unsaved Jews who were totally without righteousness. So it has very literal meaning, but also of course it speaks to the purity of our hearts in a spiritual sense.
I once had a girlfriend who was married to a man that was unsaved, not nice, very controlling and ugly... and if she went off shopping or to a movie or something with her girlfriends, even if she had her children with her there was h e double L to pay when she got home because his mind and heart was so ugly that he imagined all sorts of evil thoughts about what she might have been doing. She would never have dreamed of doing any of those things. She was saved, and she was a good girl. It was a dreadful situation. But this verse speaks to me of his mind and his heart... it thought ill of her because it thought ill period.
Have you ever delt with someone like that? You bring them flowers and they think you are being disengenuous- you share a thought and they get defensive just knowing that you are some how criticizing them, heaven forbid you have to let them know that they have soup dribbling down their shirt! As my mom would have said you at damned if you do and damned if you dont. But really what is happening is their own corrupt minds are contriving things about you that you yourself would never have thought or done.
Then there is the pure at heart part. I once had a dear friend, who later became my mother in law when she married my at that time father in law, who was widowed. She was a lovely lady, some 30 years older than I and to me a beautiful picture of grace.
To this day I have never met another woman so totally without guille. She used to work in the county courthouse back when I lived in Tampa this was 25 years ago now, but she worked in felony criminal and Tampa being no small town even 20 years ago, you can imagine the walk of life that she saw and dealt with on a daily basis.
But you know, there was never a time that she could not find something if even the smallest thing, but something redeeming about every one that crossed her path. Sometimes I would go there to take her to lunch and she was always smiling, cheerful, kind, gentle and encouraging, showing empathy for every one.
I asked her one day, how she did this. And she told me that she feared that she might be the only person that some of those people ever dealt with or would deal with from this point forward that cared about them and she saw every one of them as someone that God desired to redeem and she saw every situation as one that if not for the grace of God could be her.
I break to tears now to tell that story because if I lived to be 200 I dont think that I would ever have so much grace. When I see to the pure all things are pure I think of her. Not that sin is ever pure, But God sure can wash it clean! And for those who have not yet been washed clean we can see the HOPE for them that is there in Christ.
quote:
An example is the vision that Peter had of the sheet coming down from heaven with the clean and unclean animals (Acts 11:1-18 This vision of Peter confirmed to him that the Gentiles were able to received the Holy Spirit just as the Jews did. God had called them "clean."
I had a little trouble with this one fitting in here because I dont see that peter was defiled when he did not get this at first or that he did not get it at first because he was defiled, just that it was so foreign an idea to them that the gentiles could be washed clean. Maybe I did not understand your point with this particular verse?
quote:
In Romans 6:12-15 We are to yield our bodies to righteousness.
Romans 14:14 "I know and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus, that there is nothing unclean of itself, but to him that esteemeth any thing to BE UNCLEAN, to him it is unclean."Yet we are to be aware that something we consider to be clean, another person may find a problem with it, and we should submit to avoid causing a stumbling block to the other Christian.
How many of us are willing to do this though? Paul said in the verse before this that is a man was having a hard time with our liberty to eat meat that we should not eat in front of him.
Today I see that if a brother thinks that drinking beer is a sin, and I feel that God has given me liberty to drink beer and I am of course not talking about being a ramble rouser and getting rip roaring drunk, but just that I feel that I have the liberty to have a beer...
Then, do I not drink in front of my brother so as not to cause him to sin by his judging me wrongly or do I demand and argue and strive that he is a legalist and I have liberty to have a beer?
I fear in most cases it is the later and not the former that happens in that situation.
quote:
Lately, I've noticed, that God is speaking through things that the doctrines of men would consider "unclean".
I don't mean things that are against the ten commandments, or things that Christ commands we should not do.
I mean things like movies, songs, and other secular places that most under legalism would declare to be evil, as they do not name the name of Christ.
I always hate the word legalism because in reality the gentile church has never been under law. Legalism is the reliance on works to save, It was the error of the Pharisee that did not understand that the it was not the LAW that justified them or their circumcison that promised them the life to come. Legalism would be my expecting to be able to be good enough to get to heaven... my expecting that if I did not touch, did not taste, etc etc God would find me righteous and the Gentile never had the Law in the first place. So to return to what I did not ever have, I cannot do.
Having said that I do agree and believe that God can speak through secular media. If God can speak though a donkey, God can speak through secular media.
In fact, as the day grows closer and closer to Jesus' return and the devil gets more and more active, I think that it is very possible that God will be speaking more through secualar media because GOD is destroying the works of the enemy and if the enemy wants to write songs to pervert the minds of youth for example, I think that God is able to take what the enemy meant for harm and cause what God wants said to come right out of some pagan heathen nasty gangster rapper's mouth if he so desires so as to catch just the right heart at just the right time with just the message God wants heard.
But (ha you knew there was a but coming didnt you?)
But, should HE have to speak to HIS children that way? I should hope not.
For HIS children, the scripture says God is working ALL things for their good and his glory, but should we continually invite the devil and his wiles in the door that God have to turn them around? I should think not.
Why would I willingly chose to fill my head and by heart and my ears with the things of this world when I dont need to and it is not prudent to... just because it is legal? Do I need to test God? Grieve the Spirit? Give the cloud of witnesses something to talk about and wonder?
I say this not because I think you ment that. I know that you did not. I say this because I fear the enemy's misusing your points.
As I was reading your post I thought about songs... like puff the magic dragon. Who in the world would have thought that Puff the Magic Dragon was about drugs????? Not I. It never occured to me. I would really doubt that it ever occured to Peter Yarrow either!
It occured to someone who puffed things that would allow one to talk to dragons!
Could God speak to me today about love or loss of youth or innocence through a song about a little boy named little Jackie Paper, who loved a fairy tale animal named Puff? Sure he could. He did when I was a kid.
But I probably would not today play the song and sing along with a car load of my children's friends who think that song is about smoking pot and have them think that I am a pothead. (all things legal - all things are not prudent, wise or edifying)
quote:
I just wonder if that when we draw closer to God, the more we can "see" Him in many other places we didn't expect to "see" Him before.
I most defintely think that this is true.
quote:
And that He makes clean the formerly unclean as we "see" Him.
This one scares me; though I do understand what your saying. I cant go here.
God is not yet in all things. That will not happen until there is a new heaven and a new earth and all that are living are living and glorified in Christ.
I cant see God in sin because HE isnt there. God does not make sin clean, God destroys sin and washes it away. He takes the stain of sin and makes it white.
Some would take this statement and use it to justify the goodness of a movie like Brokeback Mountain, and with it a homosexual relationship because the people in that relationship were momogomous and beleived they loved each other. This is how the church has come to accept homosexuality.
I cant see God in a swatstika because he isnt there; but a white supremicist sees him there and uses it to make evil clean and kills jews and blacks in the name of God.
People are made clean by the blood of Jesus. The corruptible things of this world that will be left in this world are not made clean because God is in this world...
When Paul said nothing in and of itself is unclean, he was saying that man makes it to be unclean with what he does with it. It was man who made things carved with the hands to be gods, carved wood is just carved wood. It becomes evil in the minds and hands of evil men.
But do you think that Paul would have made a lamp out of an image of Diana and put it in his house and said... nothing is unclean in and of itself, I dont worship Diana, I worship God that is just molten metal and I see the majesty of God in the creation of that metal and I think it is pretty?
I dont think so. And why not? because it represents something evil to men and to angels and that would not be something that Paul would want to be associated with in the eyes of men or angels.
One thing I do think though... the closer we walk with God the more we see the world and the things it it and also men as God sees them.
Posts: 4684 | From: Southern Black Hills of South Dakota | Registered: Jun 2002
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Pleasemaranatha
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Member # 5150
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posted
WOW !!!!!!! That is really good.
God Bless
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My soul waiteth for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning. Psalms 130 verse 6
Joyce
Posts: 308 | From: Missouri | Registered: Oct 2005
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WhiteEagle
Advanced Member
Member # 3728
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posted
I've been contemplating this verse lately:
Titus 1:15 "Unto the pure all things are pure; but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure, but even their mind and conscience is defiled."
An example is the vision that Peter had of the sheet coming down from heaven with the clean and unclean animals (Acts 11:1-18 This vision of Peter confirmed to him that the Gentiles were able to received the Holy Spirit just as the Jews did. God had called them "clean."
In Romans 6:12-15 We are to yield our bodies to righteousness.
Romans 14:14 "I know and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus, that there is nothing unclean of itself, but to him that esteemeth any thing to BE UNCLEAN, to him it is unclean."
Yet we are to be aware that something we consider to be clean, another person may find a problem with it, and we should submit to avoid causing a stumbling block to the other Christian.
Lately, I've noticed, that God is speaking through things that the doctrines of men would consider "unclean".
I don't mean things that are against the ten commandments, or things that Christ commands we should not do.
I mean things like movies, songs, and other secular places that most under legalism would declare to be evil, as they do not name the name of Christ.
I just wonder if that when we draw closer to God, the more we can "see" Him in many other places we didn't expect to "see" Him before.
And that He makes clean the formerly unclean as we "see" Him.
Posts: 1392 | From: Maine | Registered: Aug 2004
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