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Topic: The Gift of God
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Found in Him
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Member # 7596
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posted
hehehe I love the clarinet. My Daughter use to play in High School.
I think I would be an oboe ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
Strangely different, but a part of the woodwinds none the less! Lol
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~To Him That is able to keep you from falling and to present you before His glorious presence without fault and with great joy...to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen.~ Jude 24
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Found in Him
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posted
I think you said something important there.
Our walk with The Lord is progressive. We went from the milk of the word (babes in Christ) to chewing on a little meat.
Each person even represented on this board is at a different place on The road with The Lord and in their growth.
Each person here is individual, unique, and wonderfully made. Just as none of us have identical finger prints... none of us are exactly alike.
But each of us have the gift of God (The Holy Spirit) and name The Lord Jesus as The Lord of his or her life.
Each of us have differing gifts and abilities as The Spirit has gifted each of us as He saw fit.
Each person is very special to The Lord and we need to value one another in the same way.
One thing I find in scripture that it is hard to find in the Earth these days is this:
When The Holy Spirit first came, especially the early church was what the bible says as in "one mind, one accord, one heart"
Where did this go?
Jesus prayed that "they all might be One"
Act 4:32, Phl 1:27, Act 1:14, Act 2:1, Act 2:46, Act 5:12, Act 8:6
Strong's Def.
with one mind, with one accord, with one passion
A unique Greek word, used 10 of its 12 New Testament occurrences in the Book of Acts, helps us understand the uniqueness of the Christian community. Homothumadon is a compound of two words meaning to "rush along" and "in unison". The image is almost musical; a number of notes are sounded which, while different, harmonize in pitch and tone. As the instruments of a great concert under the direction of a concert master, so the Holy Spirit blends together the lives of members of Christ's church.
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~To Him That is able to keep you from falling and to present you before His glorious presence without fault and with great joy...to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen.~ Jude 24
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Carol Swenson
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posted
quote:
That's great! So the born again person has been given The Holy Spirit whereby they are spiritually discerned and understand the difference between good and evil...Amen. They have been illuminated with the truth of the word of God and they have "The Spirit of Truth" navigating their life from the inside.
I think we continue to learn and grow throughout our lives. Sanctification is progressive.
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Carol Swenson
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Luke 6:22 - 23 (KJV)
22 Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man’s sake. 23 Rejoice ye in that day, and leap for joy: for, behold, your reward is great in heaven: for in the like manner did their fathers unto the prophets.
1 Timothy 4:10 - 11 (KJV)
10 For therefore we both labour and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God, who is the Saviour of all men, specially of those that believe. 11 These things command and teach.
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Found in Him
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That's great! So the born again person has been given The Holy Spirit whereby they are spiritually discerned and understand the difference between good and evil...Amen. They have been illuminated with the truth of the word of God and they have "The Spirit of Truth" navigating their life from the inside.
This makes Christ The Lord of their life then doesn't it? This places Christ on the throne of their heart whereby He is the One that governs them and they are His alone.
If Christ is indeed the Lord of one's life, can others judge how their life is conducted then?
Does one Christian have the right to individuality, say as in what they regard as a Holy day or what they wear?
How should a Christian respond if they are being condemned or looked down upon for something that they hold dear unto The Lord?
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~To Him That is able to keep you from falling and to present you before His glorious presence without fault and with great joy...to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen.~ Jude 24
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Carol Swenson
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ILLUMINATION
THE HOLY SPIRIT GIVES SPIRITUAL UNDERSTANDING
The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. (1 CORINTHIANS 2:14)
The knowledge of divine things to which Christians are called is more than a formal acquaintance with biblical words and Christian ideas. It is a realizing of the reality and relevance of those activities of the triune God to which Scripture testifies. Such awareness is natural to none, familiar with Christian ideas though they may be (like “the man without the Spirit” in 1 Cor. 2:14 who cannot receive what Christians tell him, or the blind leaders of the blind of whom Jesus speaks so caustically in Matt. 15:14, or like Paul himself before Christ met him on the Damascus road). Only the Holy Spirit, searcher of the deep things of God (1 Cor. 2:10), can bring about this realization in our sin-darkened minds and hearts. That is why it is called “spiritual understanding” (spiritual means “Spirit-given,” Col. 1:9; cf. Luke 24:25; 1 John 5:20). Those who, along with sound verbal instruction, “have an anointing from the Holy One... know the truth” (1 John 2:20).
The work of the Spirit in imparting this knowledge is called “illumination,” or enlightening. It is not a giving of new revelation, but a work within us that enables us to grasp and to love the revelation that is there before us in the biblical text as heard and read, and as explained by teachers and writers. Sin in our mental and moral system clouds our minds and wills so that we miss and resist the force of Scripture. God seems to us remote to the point of unreality, and in the face of God’s truth we are dull and apathetic. The Spirit, however, opens and unveils our minds and attunes our hearts so that we understand (Eph. 1:17-18; 3:18-19; 2 Cor. 3:14-16; 4:6). As by inspiration he provided Scripture truth for us, so now by illumination he interprets it to us. Illumination is thus the applying of God’s revealed truth to our hearts, so that we grasp as reality for ourselves what the sacred text sets forth.
Illumination, which is a lifelong ministry of the Holy Spirit to Christians, starts before conversion with a growing grasp of the truth about Jesus and a growing sense of being measured and exposed by it. Jesus said that the Spirit would “convict the world” of the sin of not believing in him, of the fact that he was in the right with God the Father (as his welcome back to heaven proved), and of the reality of judgment both here and hereafter (John 16:8-11). This threefold conviction is still God’s means of making sin repulsive and Christ adorable in the eyes of persons who previously loved sin and cared nothing for the divine Savior.
The way to benefit fully from the Spirit’s ministry of illumination is by serious Bible study, serious prayer, and serious response in obedience to whatever truths one has been shown already.
(Concise Theology)
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Carol Swenson
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He was the one who prayed to the God of Israel, “Oh, that you would wonderfully bless me and help me in my work; please be with me in all that I do, and keep me from all evil and disaster!” And God granted him his request. (1 Chronicles 4:10, TLB)
Evil can be resisted through trusting prayer. Jabez is remembered for a prayer request rather than a heroic act. In his prayer, he asked God to (1) bless him, (2) help him in his work, (3) be with him in all he did, and (4) keep him from evil and harm. Jabez acknowledged God as the true center of his work. When we pray for God’s blessing, we should also pray that he will take his rightful position as Lord over our work, our family time, and our recreation. Obeying him in daily responsibilities is heroic living.
Evil can be resisted through specific prayer. Jabez prayed specifically to be protected from harm and pain. We live in a fallen world filled with sin, and it is important to ask God to keep us safe from the unavoidable evil that comes our way. But we must also avoid evil motives, desires, and actions that begin within us. Therefore, not only must we seek God’s protection from evil, but we must also ask God to guard our thoughts and actions. We can begin to utilize his protection by filling our minds with positive thoughts and attitudes.
I begged your disciples to cast the demon out, but they couldn’t. (Luke 9:40, TLB)
We cannot deal with evil in our own strength . As the disciples came down from the mountain with Jesus, they passed from a reassuring experience of God’s presence to a frightening experience of evil. The beauty they had just seen must have made the ugliness seem even uglier. As our spiritual vision improves and allows us to see and understand God better, we will also be able to see and understand evil better. We would be overcome by its horror if we did not have Jesus with us to take us through it safely.
For we are not fighting against people made of flesh and blood, but against persons without bodies—the evil rulers of the unseen world, those mighty satanic beings and great evil princes of darkness who rule this world; and against huge numbers of wicked spirits in the spirit world. (Ephesians 6:12, TLB)
Jesus gives us weapons to use against evil . These who are not “flesh and blood” are demons over whom Satan has control. They are not mere fantasies—they are very real. We face a powerful army whose goal is to defeat Christ’s church. When we believe in Christ, these beings become our enemies, and they try every device to turn us away from him and back to sin. Although we are assured of victory, we must engage in the struggle until Christ returns because Satan is constantly battling against all who are on the Lord’s side. We need supernatural power to defeat Satan, and God has provided this by giving us his Holy Spirit within us and his armor surrounding us. If you feel discouraged, remember Jesus’ words to Peter: “Upon this rock I will build my church; and all the powers of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18).
(The Handbook of Bible Application)
http://thechristianbbs.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=8;t=000728#000000
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Found in Him
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So it's a valid statement to say that The Spirit of God will be found where there is freedom then?
Wow. I guess God really does have the final say in what liberty is and where He is found!
Carol writes...and this means that the deepest desire of their heart now is to serve God by practicing righteousness.
God's people really do have a new heart like that don't they? Their heart went from "thou shalt not" to having no desire to sin and take pleasure in it.
That's quite a change!
I bet that's the work of The Holy Spirit, isn't? it?
How do God's people then distinguish between what's good and "evil" then?
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~To Him That is able to keep you from falling and to present you before His glorious presence without fault and with great joy...to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen.~ Jude 24
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Carol Swenson
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First , Christians have been set free from the law as a system of salvation. Being justified by faith in Christ, they are no longer under God’s law, but under his grace (Rom. 3:19; 6:14-15; Gal. 3:23-25). This means that their standing with God (the “peace” and “access” of Rom. 5:1-2) rests wholly on the fact that they have been accepted and adopted in Christ. It does not, nor ever will it, depend on what they do; it will never be imperiled by what they fail to do. They live, and as long as they are in this world will live, not by being perfect, but by being forgiven.
All natural religion, then, is negated, for the natural instinct of fallen man, as expressed in every form of religion that the world has ever devised, is to suppose that one gains and keeps a right relationship with ultimate reality (whether conceived as a personal God or in other terms) by disciplines of law observance, right ritual, and asceticism. This is how the world’s faiths prescribe the establishing of one’s own righteousness—the very thing Paul saw unbelieving Jews trying to do (Rom. 10:3). Paul’s experience had taught him that this is a hopeless enterprise. No human performance is ever good enough, for there are always wrong desires in the heart, along with a lack of right ones, regardless of how correct one’s outward motions are (Rom. 7:7-11; cf. Phil. 3:6), and it is at the heart that God looks first.
All the law can do is arouse, expose, and condemn the sin that permeates our moral makeup, and so make us aware of its reality, depth, and guilt (Rom. 3:19; 1 Cor. 15:56; Gal. 3:10). So the futility of treating the law as a covenant of works, and seeking righteousness by it, becomes plain (Gal. 3:10-12; 4:21-31), as does the misery of not knowing what else to do. This is the bondage to the law from which Christ sets us free.
Second , Christians have been set free from sin ’s domination (John 8:34-36; Rom. 6:14-23). They have been supernaturally regenerated and made alive to God through union with Christ in his death and risen life (Rom. 6:3-11), and this means that the deepest desire of their heart now is to serve God by practicing righteousness (Rom. 6:18, 22). Sin’s domination involved not only constant acts of disobedience, but also a constant lack of zeal for law-keeping, rising sometimes to positive resentment and hatred toward the law. Now, however, being changed in heart, motivated by gratitude for acceptance through free grace, and energized by the Holy Spirit, they “serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code” (Rom. 7:6). This means that their attempts at obedience are now joyful and integrated in a way that was never true before. Sin rules them no longer. In this respect, too, they have been liberated from bondage.
Third , Christians have been set free from the superstition that treats matter and physical pleasure as intrinsically evil. Against this idea, Paul insists that Christians are free to enjoy as God’s good gifts all created things and the pleasures that they yield (1 Tim. 4:1-5), provided only that we do not transgress the moral law in our enjoyments or hinder our own spiritual well-being or that of others (1 Cor. 6:12-13; 8:7-13). The Reformers renewed this emphasis against various forms of medieval legalism.
(Concise Theology)
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Found in Him
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Thank you Carol for that link. Lots of good stuff in there! ![[thumbsup2]](graemlins/thumbsup2.gif)
Betty, I too believe in being ever filled with The Spirit as the word says to be. He intercedes on the behalf of the believer and sooo much more!
What do you two think of this verse...
Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.(2 Cor 3:17)
Liberty?
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~To Him That is able to keep you from falling and to present you before His glorious presence without fault and with great joy...to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen.~ Jude 24
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Betty Louise
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I am Baptist. My Baptist Preacher taught on the Holy Spirit Wednesday night. While we indeed receive the Holy Spirit at the moment of salvation, we should pray every day to be filled more and more with the Holy Spirit. He said that we can pray each day to get more and more of the Holy Spirit.
Although we are Baptist we believe that the gifts of tongues is a gift of the Holy Spirit.
Betty
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Luk 21:28 And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.
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Found in Him
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So this gift comes only through Peter?
How do modern day believers receive the gift now days?
The word has a lot to say about the last days and those who do not have the spirit... why profess if they don't have the Spirit?
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~To Him That is able to keep you from falling and to present you before His glorious presence without fault and with great joy...to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen.~ Jude 24
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Carol Swenson
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The Samaritans did not receive the gift of the Holy Spirit when they believed. It was necessary for two of the Apostles, Peter and John, to come from Jerusalem, put their hands on the converts, and impart to them the gift of the Spirit. Why? Because God wanted to unite the Samaritan believers with the original Jewish church in Jerusalem. He did not want two churches that would perpetuate the division and conflict that had existed for centuries. Jesus had given Peter the “keys of the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 16:13-20), which meant that Peter had the privilege of “opening the door of faith” to others. He opened the door to the Jews at Pentecost, and now he opened the door to the Samaritans. Later, he would open the door of faith to the Gentiles (Acts 10).
Remember too that the first ten chapters of Acts record a period of transition, from the Jew to the Samaritan to the Gentile. God’s pattern for today is given in Acts 10: the sinner hears the Gospel, believes, receives the gift of the Spirit, and then is baptized. It is dangerous to base any doctrine or practice only on what is recorded in Acts 1-10, for you might be building on that which was temporary and transitional. Those who claim we must be baptized to receive the gift of the Spirit (Acts 2:38) have a hard time explaining what happened to the Samaritans; and those who claim we must have “the laying on of hands” to receive the Spirit have a difficult time with Acts 10. Once you accept Acts 1-10 as a transitional period in God’s plan, with Acts 10 being the climax, the problems are solved.
(Wiersbe)
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Found in Him
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Acts 8
14 When the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to them. 15 When they arrived, they prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit, 16 because the Holy Spirit had not yet come upon any of them; they had simply been baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus. 17 Then Peter and John placed their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.
Hmmmm...
How do we get The Holy Spirit? Simon the sorcerer tried to buy the gift of God with money! (Acts 8)
What say you??
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~To Him That is able to keep you from falling and to present you before His glorious presence without fault and with great joy...to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen.~ Jude 24
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