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Posted by Michael Harrison (Member # 6801) on :
 
Draw night to God and God will draw nigh to you. Do you not want Him near?

As He is - then by Him - so are we in this world. If you are not so by Him, then you are not so, because you cannot be as He is by trying. Let Him do it for you.

He says that those who are for Him will not quickly turn against Him. What is it but that they will? Learn the difference between for and by.

What does God do? He completes us.

It isn’t what you do. It is what you have. What you have is because of who He is, and who He is to you. The life is in the blood. Your glorified body (Revelation) will be of flesh and bone. Who do you think will be the life blood? Never thought of that?

You cannot be sufficient in yourself to know what God wants - and do it!

God makes faith a verb. You do not.

Even the ‘work’ of reading the word accomplishes nothing towards His saving power. It helps to reveal Him, which is the point of the written word. It helps reveal what you have in Him.

It is widely understood that one scripture verse can be taken out of context. Talking about swallowing a camel, or straining at a gnat…. There is plenty of it. However, one single scripture can reveal to you who He is, where He begins and where you end. One single scripture verse, not taken out of context can break you so that the aroma of Him can escape.

Walk in the light as He is in the light. Do it! Don’t rationalize it so that it will fit you. If you try to do it you will find out that you cannot do it. That is not to say that it cannot be done! This is the mystery hidden from the foundation of the world. (This applies to many one-liners.)
The Bible reads like a doing manual, but it doesn’t expect you to do by doing, but by having and walking in.

Strong meat belongeth to those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern between good and evil. When feeding the sheep on the verge of maturing, feed a tiny morsel at a time.

Blessed are you if you are not self-sufficient, is the sum of the Beatitudes. If you are self sufficient, you’ll not need His peace. You will be able to do all sorts of things for God – which don’t count. Listen! Don’t be self-sufficient. It is a sin. Cain was self-sufficient. That is why his sacrifice didn’t please God.

Which one of you by taking thought can add a cubit to his stature? If you cannot by taking thought for the least, why take ye thought for the rest? Then what makes you think that you can accomplish anything for Him by doing? Do you not understand that this very thing is what this very scripture addresses? And if you can’t accomplish the least, what then will you - do? Will you prove to Him that you can do it? Blessed are the meek, poor in spirit. They need His strength, not to do it, but to let Him do it for them. This is walking in the light. Love!

Look for something that you don’t know to look for. Ask! Just because nobody else in your congregation knows of it, or even if in all of the denominations in the country, it is not understood, it doesn’t mean that you should not look. For:

No man putting his hand to the plow is fit for the Kingdom. Why? Because he looked back? No! It is because he isn’t looking ahead for something that he probably doesn’t know to look for.

What saves you? I mean, people will say that Jesus died on the Cross, and since He did, if you pray the sinners prayer, you will be saved. But listen! The faith in the fact that Jesus died on the Cross, and thinking that it applies to you because you believe, is not what saves you. It was the means to an end. It is the fact that Jesus died on the Cross that enables Him to be able to save. Jesus in dying doesn’t save. Jesus living, saves! The cross is for you, that He might live. He did that so that you wouldn't have to.

I am [the very name of God] the resurrection. He is resurrection! You have to read it slowly. Say it! He is resurrection. Then resurrection is not something that happens to you. It is what He is. He is resurrection to you if you believe unto Him. If you believe unto Him, He is resurrection unto you. You are the sail. He is the wind!

Until you give Jesus full control, you don’t know how to obey, and you don’t know where you transgress. Of course, if you cannot believe that if He is in control, you exclude yourself and He is in spite of you. If He is not, all you can do is pay tribute and hope. Nothing is yours. Everything, and everyone, is His, including all of your decisions. And if He is in control, then you are not. Quit trying.

Until you do let Jesus do it for you, you do transgress Him.

It does not make you a robot. Here’s the thing. If you are not willing to be a robot for Christ, you are not willing to serve. If what He desires is for you to be a robot, will you resist His will, and say that you are trying to please Him?

Doing is alive to self. Having is alive to Christ.

Nothing is yours. Every thing is His, including all of your decisions.

God saves you, and recreates you, but He leaves you dirty? Then it takes a lifetime to get clean? Think, when you read scripture!

We press into the Kingdom. At the same time, we are pressing out of the flesh. It is a grape thing, squeezing out the pulp to reach the point of firmentation, for new wine.

Muddy water. If your eye is not single, then you are full of muddy water. You might be full of the Holy Ghost, but you can still be avioding the cross, and live, and therefore muddy up the works.

If Jesus isn’t the center of your heart and being, then He isn’t on the throne in your heart. You may have let Him in, but you are not honoring Him. You might think that you are honoring Him. By your words, it might sound to others like you are honoring Him.

Your purpose is to manifest Jesus in His very creation here on earth, by your faith.

Will worship, as mentioned in Corinthians, is doing.

You don’t do the will of God by performing it. You do the will of God by yielding to His performing it.

He sees you from the inside out, not from the outside in.

Among responsible, mature individuals, there is only one person who thinks that they have a right to make a decision for someone else, and that is satan.

If you are pleased with yourself and your contribution, what does that make you? (Luke 17:10)

Imitate Christ? You cannot. You are not supposed to. You are taking His place if you do, pushing Him aside, falsifying. It would be a cheap imitation at best.

It is not what you do that saves you. It is what Jesus does. It is not what you do that manifests righteousness and works. It is what He does.

That there is no growth: Scripture says that we are complete in Him! So, if you are growing, then you are not complete. You are becoming. Becoming makes Him a liar if so be that He says that you are complete. This is why He says to repent!

You can use scripture to justify what you believe, but you use it wrongly if what you believe is short of His glory! Therefore examine yourselves, if ye be in the faith? Everyone has a doctrine, but is it the life of Jesus?

He is reconciling the world to Himself, but is the world benefiting? Who benefits? They who believe unto His righteousness, and receive Him unto themselves.

‘Doing’ takes credit, promoting one’s self. ‘Having’ glorifies your Father who is in Heaven.

Righteous according to your own way of thinking, does not mean that your righteousness is of the Lord. Many people will perish because of this course of belief.

It is His life that justifies you. If you do not have His life, you certainly have nothing to contribute. Then why boast! You can contribute nothing to Him except the obedience to believe and receive that He may make you. Any other righteousness is as filthy rags.

If I have shaken your belief, it means that your belief can be shaken. Then your house is not built on the Rock. If you lash out at my words, likely it is because your belief is challenged. If your belief is challenged and it cannot peaceably stand, it is built on sinking sand. Then you know what to 'do'.
 
Posted by Carol Swenson (Member # 6929) on :
 
From Tyndale iLumina Bible: Bible Charts


THREE DISTORTIONS OF CHRISTIANITY / Galatians 4

Almost from the beginning there were forces at work within Christianity that would have destroyed or sidetracked the movement. Of these, three created many problems then and have continued to reappear in other forms even today. The three aberrations are contrasted to true Christianity.


Judaized
Christianity

Their Definition of a Christian
Christians are Jews who have recognized Jesus as the promised Savior. Therefore, any Gentile desiring to become a Christian must first become a Jew.

Their genuine concern
Having a high regard for the Scriptures and God’s choice of Jews as his people, they did not want to see God’s commands overlooked or broken.

The danger
Tends to add human traditions and standards to God’s law. Also subtracts from the Scriptures God’s clear concern for all nations.

Application question
Do you appreciate God’s choice of a unique people through whom he offered forgiveness and eternal life to all peoples?


Legalized
Christianity

Their Definition of a Christian
Christians are those who live by a long list of “don’ts.” God’s favor is earned by good behavior.

Their genuine concern
Recognized that real change brought about by God should lead to changes in behavior.

The danger
Tends to make God’s love something to earn rather than to accept freely.
Would reduce Christianity to a set of impossible rules and transform the Good News into bad news.

Application question
As important as change in action is, can you see that God may be desiring different changes in you than in others?


Lawless
Christianity

Their Definition of a Christian
Christians live above the law. They need no guidelines. God’s Word is not as important as our personal sense of God’s guidance.

Their genuine concern
Recognized that forgiveness from God cannot be based on our ability to live up to his perfect standards. It must be received by faith as a gift made possible by Christ’s death on the cross.

The danger
Forgets that Christians are still human and fail consistently when trying to live only by what they “feel” God wants.

Application question
Do you recognize the ongoing need for God’s expressed commands as you live out your gratitude for his great salvation?


True
Christianity

Their Definition of a Christian
Christians are those who believe inwardly and outwardly that Jesus’ death has allowed God to offer them forgiveness and eternal life as a gift. They have accepted that gift through faith and are seeking to live a life of obedient gratitude for what God has done for them.

Their genuine concern
Christianity is both private and public, with heart-belief and mouth-confession.
Our relationship to God and the power he provides result in obedience. Having received the gift of forgiveness and eternal life, we are now daily challenged to live that life with his help.

The danger
Avoids the above dangers.

Application question
How would those closest to you describe your Christianity? Do they think you live so that God will accept you, or do they know that you live because God has accepted you in Christ?


THE CHOICES OF MATURITY / Hebrews 5:14

One way to evaluate spiritual maturity is by looking at the choices we make. The writer
of Hebrews notes many of the ways these choices change with personal growth.


Mature Choices Versus Immature Choices


Teaching others rather than just being taught

Developing depth of understanding rather than struggling with the basics

Self-evaluation rather than self-criticism

Seeking unity rather than promoting disunity

Desiring spiritual challenges rather than desiring entertainment

Careful study and observation rather than opinions and halfhearted efforts

Active faith rather than cautious apathy and doubt

Confidence rather than fear

Feelings and experiences evaluated in the light of God’s Word
rather than experiences evaluated according to feelings
 
Posted by Michael Harrison (Member # 6801) on :
 
I don't know what is happening. I used to could spel real good. I think i had someone else on my mind at this site when i speled crucic, oh, never mind. I have corrected it.

quote:
the power he provides result in obedience. Having received the gift of forgiveness and eternal life, we are now daily challenged to live that life with his help.

If you live by Christ, it transcends merely having His help. The notion of help fits the theory that God helps those who help themselves. This means that you have to contribute something to get something. That would be works to the consternation of some. Obedience is having the gift of life , and seeing it (Him) manifested in their life, walked out through faith, the faith of 'having', because He died to give it (Himself) just that way. He paid a considerable price to know us, and be known of us. It breaks His heart if we do not discover that. (They will REALLY know me then! Heb8:11)

Circumstances are no gage of a believer’s relationship. In such case, Paul would be a dismal failure to be compared with, which some believers in his day thought he was, and looked down on the Lord's chosen source. Look at the books of Corinthians.

quote:
Lawless
Christianity

Their Definition of a Christian
Christians live above the law. They need no guidelines. God’s Word is not as important as our personal sense of God’s guidance.

Their genuine concern
Recognized that forgiveness from God cannot be based on our ability to live up to his perfect standards. It must be received by faith as a gift made possible by Christ’s death on the cross.

The danger
Forgets that Christians are still human and fail consistently when trying to live only by what they “feel” God wants.

God's Word is entirely important, however, the work of reading it, though necessary, and certainly to be encouraged, is not in itself the source of the life that is ours when we have believed. It is the assist, the revelation, conformation, which is more simply, the revealing. I've said it before, the word is viewed by some as an instruction manual, which it is. However, it is more than that in that it is a Revelation of who He is, what He has done, and what He is doing in the life of the believer. It is paramount, the revealing of who He is to us, without which we would only be speculating on His desires, and His will, and we would service Him by introspection, combined with personal interpretation of how to please Him, perhaps with consideration of what others simply think. He has made it easier than that.

If Jesus lives in you, your sense of guidance is living, not speculative. It is His life. It is real! For He is real. He is and has a living will. If you fall short of this revelation, the devil will tell you that it is how it is supposed to be, and use the scriptures to prove it. That is how he keeps believers in the dark, and separated from the full-blown revelation of Christ their Life.

Take heed that the light [religious concept] that is in thee be not darkness! Luke 11:35

Lots, i mean lots of folk fall into this category. They mock! The Lord would spare them. He is very patient. His Spirit is wooing them.

2Ti 3:5 "Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away."

This is hard to do on a forum like this. People who don't have a clue will raze you. They will use scriptures that make sense to their way of thinking, however they completely miss the point, and the scriptures do not convince them because the Spirit doesn't open their eyes.

If one slows down and reads the word 'the way it is written', it is unescapable that they will encounter that which the natural man (that old man of unbelief which dwells within) can not cope with. They will be broken. They will realize Jesus in His glory the way that Paul, Peter and John are trying to tell by their epistles. Just ask Jesus if you don't believe me.
 
Posted by WildB (Member # 2917) on :
 
More "Fuzzy Logic"
 
Posted by Michael Harrison (Member # 6801) on :
 
Of course williby! Without faith, that is all that it can be.


----------------
all that is
 
Posted by WildB (Member # 2917) on :
 
and a fool's voice is known by multitude of words.
 
Posted by Michael Harrison (Member # 6801) on :
 
Well, Paul gave the message. He is willing to let God sort em out. Me too!
 
Posted by WildB (Member # 2917) on :
 
Not so~

Rom.9

[3] For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh:
 
Posted by becauseHElives (Member # 87) on :
 
If you will check out C. G. Trumbull, you find out where Michael Harrison gets this weird doctrine that separates justification and sanctification.

http://www.frontlinemin.org/higherlife.asp
 
Posted by Michael Harrison (Member # 6801) on :
 
incorrect becauselylives! Sorry. I was there already when i encountered these publications, which reinforced and confirmed to me that which is true concerning the word of life. It is called seek, and ye shall find; Knock and it will be opened; Selling all for the Pearl of great Price. Moreover, there are others who understand. As you say, narrow is the way and few there be.

WildB. They willl be sorted.

Rom 2:16 "In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my gospel."


I don't know what is happening. I used to could spel real good. I think i had someone else on my mind at this site when i speled crucic, oh, never mind. I have corrected it if you want to reread that post, cuz i have added to it. Here is a one paragraph recap though.

If you live by Christ, it transcends merely having His help. The notion of help fits the theory that God helps those who help themselves. This means that you have to contribute something to get something. That would be works, much to the consternation of some. Obedience is having the gift of life , and seeing it (Him) manifested in their life, walked out through faith, the faith of 'having', because He died to give it (Himself) just that way. He paid a considerable price to know us, and be known of us. It breaks His heart if we do not discover that. (They will REALLY know me then! Heb8:11)
 
Posted by Carol Swenson (Member # 6929) on :
 
God's laws are not burdensome. They can be reduced to two simple principles: love God and love others. These commands are from the Old Testament (Deuteronomy 6:5; Leviticus 19:18). When you love God completely and care for others as you care for yourself, then you have fulfilled the intent of the Ten Commandments and the other Old Testament laws. According to Jesus, these two commandments summarize all God's laws. Let them rule your thoughts, decisions, and actions. When you are uncertain about what to do, ask yourself which course of action best demonstrates love for God and love for others.

How much we love God can be measured by how well we treat others. Jesus' example of giving a cup of cold water to a thirsty child is a good model of unselfish service. A child usually can't or won't return a favor. God notices every good deed we do or don't do as if he were the one receiving it. Is there something unselfish you can do for someone else today? Although no one else may see you, God will notice.

Jesus said that his followers show their love for him by obeying him. Love is more than lovely words; it is commitment and conduct.(John14:21)

—Life Application Bible Notes
_______________________________________________________________
 
Posted by David (Member # 1) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by WildB:
More "Fuzzy Logic"

WildB,

Would you like to point out this fuzzy logic you are refering to. I have been trying to make since of this thread and what you all are debating. May be someone can spell it out for me. I am not seeing what the fuzzy logic is?

Thank you,
David
 
Posted by WildB (Member # 2917) on :
 
fuzzy logic
n.

A form of algebra employing a range of values from “true” to “false” that is used in decision-making with imprecise data, as in artificial intelligence systems.
 
Posted by becauseHElives (Member # 87) on :
 
Romans 8:10-11

For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people: And they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest.

The work of Justification and the work of Sanctification are both works that Yeshua does in and through the child of Yahweh…

Justification … Simply put, to justify is to declare righteous; to make one right with God. Justification is God declaring those who receive Christ to be righteous, based on Christ’s righteousness being imputed to the accounts of those who receive Christ. Though justification as a principle is found throughout Scripture, the main passage describing justification in relation to believers is Romans 3:21-26:

"But now God has shown us a different way of being right in his sight - not by obeying the law but by the way promised in the Scriptures long ago. We are made right in God's sight when we trust in Jesus Christ to take away our sins. And we all can be saved in this same way, no matter who we are or what we have done. For all have sinned; all fall short of God's glorious standard. Yet now God in his gracious kindness declares us not guilty. He has done this through Christ Jesus, who has freed us by taking away our sins. For God sent Jesus to take the punishment for our sins and to satisfy God's anger against us. We are made right with God when we believe that Jesus shed his blood, sacrificing his life for us. God was being entirely fair and just when he did not punish those who sinned in former times. And he is entirely fair and just in this present time when he declares sinners to be right in his sight because they believe in Jesus."

We are justified, declared righteous, at the moment of our salvation. Justification does not make us righteous, but rather pronounces our righteousness. Our righteousness comes from placing our faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ. His sacrifice covers our sin, allowing God to see us as perfect and unblemished. Because as believers we are in Christ, God sees Christ's own righteousness when He looks at us. This meets God's demands for perfection; thus, He declares us righteous--He justifies us.

Romans 5:18-19 sums it up well: "Yes, Adam's one sin brought condemnation upon everyone, but Christ's one act of righteousness makes all people right in God's sight and gives them life. Because one person disobeyed God, many people became sinners. But because one other person obeyed God, many people will be made right in God's sight." Why is this pronouncement of righteousness so important? "Therefore, since we have been made right in God's sight by faith, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us" (Romans 5:1). It is because of justification that the peace of God can rule in our lives. It is because of the FACT of justification that believers can have assurance of salvation. It is the FACT of justification that enables God to begin the process of sanctification – the process of God making us in reality, what we already are positionally.

Sanctification also refers to the practical experience of this separation unto God, being the effect of obedience to the Word of God in one’s life, and is to be pursued by the believer earnestly (1 Peter 1:15; Hebrews 12:14). Just as the Lord prayed in John 17, it has in view the setting apart of believers for the purpose for which they are sent into the world: “As Thou didst send Me into the world, even so send I them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth” (v. 18, 19). That He set Himself apart for the purpose for which He was sent is both the basis and the condition of our being set apart for that for which we are sent (John 10:36). His sanctification is the pattern of, and the power for, ours. The sending and the sanctifying are inseparable. On this account they are called saints, hagioi in the Greek; “sanctified ones.” Whereas previously their behavior bore witness to their standing in the world in separation from God, now their behavior should bear witness to their standing before God in separation from the world.

There is one more sense that the word sanctification is referred to in Scripture. Paul prayed in 1 Thessalonians 5:23, “The God of peace Himself sanctify you wholly; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved entire, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Paul also wrote in Colossians of “the hope which is laid up for you in the heavens, whereof ye heard before in the word of the truth of the Gospel” (Colossians 1:5). He later speaks of Christ Himself as “the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27) and then mentions the fact of that hope when he says, “When Christ, who is our Life, shall be manifested, then shall ye also with Him be manifested in glory” (Colossians 3:4). This glorified state will be our ultimate separation from sin, total sanctification in every aspect. “Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is” (1 John 3:2).

To summarize, sanctification is the same Greek word as holiness, “hagios,” meaning a separation.

First, a once-for-all positional separation unto Christ at our salvation.

Second, a practical progressive holiness in a believer’s life while awaiting the return of Christ.

Third, we will be changed into His perfect likeness—holy, sanctified, and completely separated from the presence of evil.

Neither Justification nor Sanctification condemns the Law, for the Law is Holy, Just and Good just as Paul states in Romans 7:12….
Romans 7

DO YOU not know, brethren--for I am speaking to men who are acquainted with the Law--that legal claims have power over a person only for as long as he is alive?

For instance a married woman is bound by law to her husband as long as he lives; but if her husband dies, she is loosed and discharged from the law concerning her husband.

Accordingly, she will be held an adulteress if she unites herself to another man while her husband lives. But if her husband dies, the marriage law no longer is binding on her she is free from that law; and if she unites herself to another man, she is not an adulteress.

Likewise, my brethren, you have undergone death as to the Law through the [crucified] body of Christ, so that now you may belong to Another, to Him Who was raised from the dead in order that we may bear fruit for God.

When we were living in the flesh mere physical lives, the sinful passions that were awakened and aroused up by what the Law makes sin were constantly operating in our natural powers in our bodily organs, in the sensitive appetites and wills of the flesh, so that we bore fruit for death.

But now we are discharged from the Law and have terminated all intercourse with it, having died to what once restrained and held us captive. So now we serve not under obedience to the old code of written regulations, but under obedience to the promptings of the Spirit in newness of life.
What then do we conclude? Is the Law identical with sin? Certainly not! Nevertheless, if it had not been for the Law, I should not have recognized sin or have known its meaning. For instance I would not have known about covetousness would have had no consciousness of sin or sense of guilt] if the Law had not repeatedly said, You shall not covet and have an evil desire for one thing and another.

But sin, finding opportunity in the commandment to express itself, got a hold on me and aroused and stimulated all kinds of forbidden desires lust, covetousness. For without the Law sin is dead the sense of it is inactive and a lifeless thing.

Once I was alive, but quite apart from and unconscious of the Law. But when the commandment came, sin lived again and I died was sentenced by the Law to death.

And the very legal ordinance which was designed and intended to bring life actually proved to mean to me death.

For sin, seizing the opportunity and getting a hold on me by taking its incentive from the commandment, beguiled and entrapped and cheated me, and using it as a weapon, killed me.

The Law therefore is holy and each commandment is holy and just and good.

Did that which is good then prove fatal bringing death to me? Certainly not! It was sin, working death in me by using this good thing as a weapon, in order that through the commandment sin might be shown up clearly to be sin, which the extreme malignity and immeasurable sinfulness of sin might plainly appear.

We know that the Law is spiritual; but I am a creature of the flesh carnal, unspiritual, having been sold into slavery under the control of sin.

For I do not understand my own actions I am baffled, bewildered. I do not practice or accomplish what I wish, but I do the very thing that I loathe which my moral instinct condemns.

Now if I do habitually what is contrary to my desire that means that I acknowledge and agree that the Law is good morally excellent and that I take sides with it.

However, it is no longer I who do the deed, but the sin principle which is at home in me and has possession of me.

For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot perform it. I have the intention and urge to do what is right, but no power to carry it out.

For I fail to practice the good deeds I desire to do, but the evil deeds that I do not desire to do are what I am ever doing.

Now if I do what I do not desire to do, it is no longer I doing it, it is not myself that acts, but the sin principle which dwells within me fixed and operating in my soul.

So I find it to be a law (rule of action of my being) that when I want to do what is right and good, evil is ever present with me and I am subject to its insistent demands.

For I endorse and delight in the Law of God in my inmost self with my new nature.

But I discern in my bodily members in the sensitive appetites and wills of the flesh a different law rule of action at war against the law of my mind my reason and making me a prisoner to the law of sin that dwells in my bodily organs in the sensitive appetites and wills of the flesh.

O unhappy and pitiable and wretched man that I am! Who will release and deliver me from [the shackles of] this body of death?

O thank God! He will! Through Jesus Christ the Anointed One our Lord! So then indeed I, of myself with the mind and heart, serve the Law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.

Romans 8

THEREFORE, there is now no condemnation no adjudging guilty of wrong for those who are in Christ Jesus, who live and walk not after the dictates of the flesh, but after the dictates of the Spirit.

Romans 8:1 my, my what a enlightening verse by Paul….illuminating the whole of what He preaches in every book that bears his signature, and all the other writers of scripture: for here we see….

the heart of Yahweh “For God did not send the Son into the world in order to judge to reject, to condemn, to pass sentence on the world,”

the work of Yeshua, THEREFORE, there is now no condemnation no adjudging guilty of wrong for those who are in Christ Jesus, who live and walk not after the dictates of the flesh,

and the work of the Holy Spirit… but after the dictates of the Spirit.

for each believer…… For I endorse and delight in the Law of God in my inmost self with my new nature.

John 3:16 in context

And yet no one has ever gone up to heaven, but there is One Who has come down from heaven--the Son of Man Himself, Who is dwells, has His home in heaven.

And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert on a pole, so must so it is necessary that the Son of Man be lifted up on the cross,
In order that everyone who believes in Him who cleaves to Him, trusts Him, and relies on Him may not perish, but have eternal life and actually live forever!

For God so greatly loved and dearly prized the world that He even gave up His only begotten unique Son, so that whoever believes in trusts in, clings to, relies on Him shall not perish come to destruction, be lost but have eternal everlasting life.

For God did not send the Son into the world in order to judge to reject, to condemn, to pass sentence on the world, but that the world might find salvation and be made safe and sound through Him.

He who believes in Him who clings to, trusts in, relies on Him is not judged he who trusts in Him never comes up for judgment; for him there is no rejection, no condemnation--he incurs no damnation]; but he who does not believe cleave to, rely on, trust in Him is judged already he has already been convicted and has already received his sentence because he has not believed in and trusted in the name of the only begotten Son of God. He is condemned for refusing to let his trust rest in Christ's name.

The basis of the judgment indictment, the test by which men are judged, the ground for the sentence lies in this: the Light has come into the world, and people have loved the darkness rather than and more than the Light, for their works deeds were evil.
 
Posted by David (Member # 1) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by WildB:
fuzzy logic
n.

A form of algebra employing a range of values from “true” to “false” that is used in decision-making with imprecise data, as in artificial intelligence systems.

Not very funny.
 
Posted by WildB (Member # 2917) on :
 
I am sorry for my sillyness....
 
Posted by Michael Harrison (Member # 6801) on :
 
The Key to Everything by Norman Grubb
PART I The Believer as a Container
for God’s Presence

When I was in the British army in World War I, God very plainly called me, though I'd planned another career, to join a little independent missionary group just starting in Africa. I wasn't there very long before I deeply felt my inadequacy.

It wasn't that I was lukewarm for Jesus Christ; it wasn't that I had turned away from Him to some other interest. I was a servant of His, and my whole interest was set on introducing my brother Africans to Him.

The inadequacy I felt in myself first of all was the need of love. I deeply felt, when I got among them, that I just didn't have that love which bridges the gap. With that went the need of faith — and with that the need of power. All of these were linked together.

Response to the Christian message in Central Africa, like the United States, appears to be quite large. But I soon found there was much more profession than possession. I began saying to myself, Are we bringing the Africans anything really worthwhile? Are we just bringing a code of
ethics? Or a liturgy, or historic faith? Have we got something genuinely transforming to transmit to others?

Then I made the question personal, "Have I?"
As I asked these questions, I discovered that when your ministry is disturbed, it tends also to disturb your personal life. I found myself, as my wife well knew, irritable at home in a way I hadn't been irritable — and critical of others to cover my own failures.

As I doubted, asked questions, and searched the Bible for some kind of an answer to my inadequacies, I found some amazing answers. Some of them have shaken me considerably. They have changed my whole viewpoint — and my experience.
I can't call them revelations, because they are based on the revelation, witnessed to by the Spirit.

To begin with, my attitude was that God should improve me. Well, I'm a servant of Jesus Christ, I thought. I've been redeemed by His grace, I belong to Him. I must ask God to make me a better servant of Jesus Christ.

I thought He should channel in some love into my heart, some faith, some power, some holiness — and improve me. I had to learn sharply that self-improvement is both a sin and an impossibility. It came as a considerable shock. But though my idea of how God should answer my problem was completely wrong, my sense of inadequacy was good. It sent me to the Bible. And my first discovery came as I read one famous verse in the first letter of John: "God is love."

Suddenly the is stuck out. What dawned on me went something like this: It doesn't say God has love, but God is love. If some body has a thing, it isn't he himself. It's something just attached to him, as if you've got a coat on or something in your pocket. You just have it, and you can share it. But the Bible doesn't say God has love, but God is love.

I Could Never Love!

Love, therefore, must not be a thing I can have. Love is exclusively a Person. God is love. Therefore, there is no other pure, self-giving love in the universe beyond Him Himself. Love is exclusively a characteristic of one Person only —and that's not Norman Grubb.

That was a deflation for me. I had thought I could have love imparted to me, channeled into me, and I'd be more loving. But I suddenly found God saying, "You'll never have one iota of love. I am love, and that's the end of it."

Love is a Person; one Person only loving — and that's not I, and that's not you. God is love and, therefore, love is God loving.

That set a new trend of thought going. I began to relate this to my other need of power. And I suddenly found a verse in the first chapter of I Corinthians where it says that Christ is the power of God. Not Christ has the power, but He is the power.

Once again, I had thought power was something which was given to me, and I'd be a powerful servant of Jesus Christ. I suddenly found that power, also, is a Person. And that person is not I but is exclusively Christ, Who is God; it doesn't matter whether you call Him Father, Son or Holy Spirit.

Then I came to the one thing every Christian claims to have. Every believing Christian accepts the fact that he has eternal life. He takes it that he has a life which will go on forever in Heaven. ("The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.")

But I suddenly found that eternal life is not something I can ever have — for Jesus did not say, "I have the life to give you" — but, "I am the life." Once again I had found that something I had thought I had — eternal life — is one person only, and that's not I. Jesus Christ is that "eternal life." But where did I fit into all this?

Finally I came to a statement which gathered all together and finished off my investigations by its absoluteness. The verse was Colossians 3:11, where it says of believers in Christ that "Christ is all and in all." Christ is all, not Christ has all. And if Christ is all, what's left for me? Not much by my mathematicsl

I had thought I was somebody, and something or could get something. I found God had taken the lot. Christ is all. Then I got the link. Christ is all and in all. Then I saw for the first time that the only reason for the existence of the entire creation is to contain the Creator! Not to be something, but to contain Someone.

So there dawned a very important truth. We humans naturally regard the human self as
important. But we've got the wrong ideas of the reason of the existence of the self. An immense distortion has come into the very warp and woof of humanity. It's the distortion of the ego — of the self. Though we feel self to be important, all of this showed me that self is extremely unimportant.

There is only one Self in the universe who is really important. I would almost say there is only one Self. Why? Because there's only one Person in the universe who ever said, "I Am."

God said that was His name thousands of years ago when Moses asked what he should say when people would ask, "What is the name of your God?" (Exodus 3:13, 14).

We are told that at the end of the history of the universe it is God Who will be all in all. God all in all! Then what's left? It's terrific.

Why We Exist

There is only one Person, and the human creation is brought into a living relation ship with this One, so that He can manifest Himself in His perfection of life and love through us.

The whole creation exists because Spirit must have a body in which to manifest Himself. As the Scriptures say, "The whole earth is full of His glory." They say that Christ ascended "that He might fill all things."

If He fills all things, all things are containers of Him. Here is both the height and the dangerous depth in humanity. The height is simply this: the rest of creation can contain manifestations of God; we can contain God as a Person. A person cannot manifest himself as a person through anything else than a person. You can't fellowship with a dog or a stone. You can enjoy the marvels of the atom or of a precious stone, but you can't fellowship with it. But I can fellowship with you because we are of the same makeup.

God can manifest His marvels and His beauty through the flowers and trees. We can view them through the microscope and telescope, and marvel—but we do not say, "That's God."

The greatest marvel, the greatest height of personality, is when we can look at a human being and say, "God is there." The depth, the dangers of humanity are that personality means freedom. Intelligent choice is the essence of personality. Therefore, God appeared to be on the horns of a dilemma when He created people. (Of course, He wasn't, for He knows His own business in the end.) But it appeared so because the people He created could turn around and say, "Thank you very much, I don't want You to live in me." That's exactly what happened.

We make self our god, not God. We just naturally run our own lives. And that's our whole trouble.
There isn't a single problem in humanity except our self-reactions: not one.

The Devil is no trouble. He was dealt with 2,000 years ago. Your neighbor is not your trouble. Circumstances are not your trouble. The only trouble is your reaction. Distorted self, self out of gear, is our problem. Once we know how to handle the human self and put it back where it belongs, we've found the key to life. That's what we're going to examine.

PART 2 You Simply Receive

Essentially from eternity there has been only one Person. This is difficult to realize. Yet throughout the Word of God it is underlined.
God was before all: He is the beginning and the end, the alpha and the omega. He is love. He is inconceivable beauty. He is the all.

If that is so, then the link between Him and us, whom He has created, is the link between the One and the means of manifesting or making known the One. In other words, our relation to Him is that of containing Him in such a way that He may be recognized. That is why the primary function of all creation, animate and inanimate, is receptivity. Your basic function, and mine, is the same—simply to receive.

This is demonstrated, silently, around us all the time. It's never better seen than in the springtime. If there were no receptivity in the trees and flowers and shrubs, we should have a desert around us. These things spring to life because of their quiet reception of the sunlight and moisture poured on them. What they receive they utilize. But utilization is secondary to reception. In Biblical language, we call this faith.

Better Seen Than Said

But no finite language can completely portray the infinite. So different illustrations are necessary in order to complete the picture of our relation to Him.

Look at the number of times the Bible calls us vessels. "We have this treasure in earthen vessels that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us." We are "vessels, sanctified, meet for the Master's use, prepared unto every good work."

Now you see at once the beauty of the illustration: a vessel is a hollow object made to
contain something. And God has made us vessels.
Of course, if God makes us vessels, He fills us. God doesn't fool with His creation; if He made anything to be filled, He must see to it that it gets filled. This is our receptivity. The whole function of the vessel is to receive something.

Now get this clear: the vessel never be comes the liquid, nor the liquid the vessel. I add this because we humans are so proud that there creeps into us the idea that we can be deified. That is blasphemy. There is no such thing as self-deification, except that of Satan, the pseudo-God, and what we share with him. The divine can dwell in the human, but forever
the human is the human and the divine the divine. God has said, "I will not give my glory to another."

That is the vital importance of the vessel illustration: we are forever the container; He is that which we contain. That relationship never changes. But there are other illustrations which both Jesus and Paul used which give us an enlarged picture of our position as receivers.

The famous one is that used by Jesus when He likened Himself and ourselves to the vine and the branches. Now we get a vital, active relationship. We begin to see that the illustration of the vessel is only part of the truth. A vessel is a dead thing and separate from that which is poured into it. From the vessel you might be led to picture us as simply passive containers. But we're not.

So Jesus gave us the vine and branches illustration. Through this our eyes are opened to the secret of the universe union — the mystery of the universe: how two can be one and yet remain two.

In this dimension, infinite truth is always in the form of paradox. We never get beyond facts that are seemingly contradictory to common sense. In this dimension we can never fully comprehend truth through our senses. Our reason cannot teach it to us. We have to live with opposites which don't meet, with facts that are, to our understanding, not completely logical. It is good for us to recognize this, and to learn to accept both sides—both ways of knowing—in their proper proportions.

This illustration of the vine and the branches is one of those paradoxes. The living God, the living Christ, and I actually become one person and function as one person. Separation is impossible. It has disappeared. We function entirely and forever and naturally as one person. And yet we remain two!

The Mystery We Live In

Two in one; one in two. We see the paradox in the vine and the branch illustration because, though the vine and the branch make one, Jesus says that the branch must "abide in the vine." Though the vine is the life and the branch the channel, yet the branch does things. It utilizes the sap and produces leaf and flower and fruit.

But its activity is secondary to its receptivity. This is where we fail. We make activity a substitute for receptivity. It is its outcome.

Paul gave us another illustration: that of head and body. Head and body make one organism, one life. You can't divide head and body. My name is Norman Grubb. But my head is not Norman and my body Grubb! You can't divide the two.

The Bible tells us the same thing. For instance, I Corinthians 12:12 speaks of the body of Christ as being Christ. It says, "As the body [the body is, of course, the believers joined to Christ] is one and hath many members, so also is Christ." The body is called Christ—not the head.

We are part of a vital organism which is an ascended, glorious, perfect Christ—the eternal
Christ. We are part of Him, yet we remain, ourselves.

Self-Confidence Is Not Security

In that relationship we are all dependent. Exactly as the body is dependent on the head and the head governs the body, so we forever remain the dependent member in the union. And the union is never safe until we know that.

So, until you have a few good knocks on the head and discover your conceited self, you're not safe to know the union. Maybe you've had plenty of knocks. They're the healthiest thing we can have. We've got to be made safe and understanding for this tremendous relationship.
He is the Lord. We are the co-operators. We are receivers.

Basically every one of us has regarded life as something we must live, although we are glad to have the help and grace of God to assist us. Even though we are redeemed people, without realizing our error, we rely mainly on our self-activity. Basically, every one of us has thought, "We're the people, let's get on with the work."

That is the reason for the long periods of training through which we read God took all His servants in Bible times. Look at Moses. Few can equal his consecration. He threw away a throne as "the son of Pharaoh's daughter," with all "the treasures of Egypt" and "pleasures of sin for a season." And he did all this for the mysterious Christ who had not even come — for he "esteemed the reproach of Christ greater riches," the record says. Yet there was one thing that Moses had not renounced. That was Moses.

"Learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians," highly trained, highly educated, "mighty in word and deed," it says he thought the enslaved Israelites would understand that he was their obvious deliverer, and he set out to deliver them. Angered by an Egyptian maltreating one of his people, he beat and killed him.

But Pharaoh sent the police after him— and what did Moses do? All he had left was a good pair of legs. So he ran. A healthy body is useful—but you need more than two good legs to carry you through life for God! Moses had thought he could do the job; now he found he couldn't. He couldn't find God because, until he had come to an end of himself, God was a distant Person to him.

Unless you have come to the bottom of self you don't know basically in a crisis just how to find God. You can't find God when He's found you. He's just there. The Spirit must teach you. You just say, "That's fine, Lord, carry on." You are thoroughly natural.

I believe in being thoroughly irreverent with God! That's putting it in extreme form, but what I mean is that a great deal of our pious talk and reverent attitudes and language is a cloak for insincerity. Men of God, God's familiars, God's friends, talk back and forth with Him in plain language.

But Moses, like every one of us, had to learn that you don't do God's work by self effort and self-wisdom.

Unquenchable Energy

Forty years later, Moses saw what he had not been ready to see before. He saw a queer object where he was tending sheep in the wilderness. It was a common bush on fire. But the curious thing, as he watched it, was that it didn't go out.

That is where God showed Moses what humanity is meant to be: a common bush aflame with God.
But a man must be common first. Moses, in his own opinion, had been a very uncommon royal bush, and God doesn't live in uncommon royal bushes. Then Moses saw this sight: God's presence, God's word out of a common bush — and as the divine fire consumes the bush, it refuels it. "The bush was not consumed."

That's exactly what God does. The divine life keeps flowing in, as you give it out. That is receptivity: the key to true humanity. Then you move out into activity.

No one is active like a Christian, because he is motivated by the divine resources, the divine power, the divine Person. We've got to learn by our hard knocks to clear out of the way and recognize. Another functioning; get His voice, His plans, His resources. Then we come back into the situation as servant, not boss.

Once you have come to understand that your basic function is a constant recognition of Another, the whole of life is transformed. It isn't a matter of continually allowing Him to come into your life, because you have received Him. But it is the recognition of Another. Another is the functioning one. Another is the Person who inspires the prayers and imparts the faith and thinks the thoughts through our minds and expresses His compassion through our hearts and puts our bodies into action.

Once you've seen that, you see that He is the illimitable One. Then you relax and say, "This is what life is basically: Another living His life in me." You've got your key to everything.
Every problem becomes an opportunity.
Every tough spot becomes a chance to enjoy the luxury of seeing Him deliver us out of it.
And you welcome such spots.

Part III
 
Posted by Michael Harrison (Member # 6801) on :
 
u r 2 funny! So! What is silly about Christ being your life? He died to be. Don't want it? He knows what is best for all of us.
 
Posted by Michael Harrison (Member # 6801) on :
 
PART III
Your Other Self
Normal humanity is God-indwelt.

Humanity which is not indwelt by Deity is subhuman. Can you offer proof of that, you say? Yes, I can. I can give you proof from the only perfect human who has ever lived on earth. Jesus Christ was a real human. (That's why I love to call Him Jesus, though He is the Lord Jesus Christ.) He was the Son of God, but if He called Himself the Son of God five times, He called Himself Son of man fifty-five times. Which means He was a representative man — one of us.

Notice what Jesus said each time He was challenged on the source of His power to work miracles, or His authority to say what He did. Every time He answered, "The Son can do nothing of Himself." In other words, His basic self-conscious-ness as a human was awareness of His nothingness in Himself!

His statements about the Father often puzzled the disciples. He would say, "I do what I see the Father do," "as I hear, I judge," "My doctrine is not Mine, but His that sent Me." They wondered whether He had some strange means of communication with His "Father in heaven."

He revealed their true meaning in what I think is the most important conversation ever recorded. It was the first time in actual human words that the union of man and God is revealed. It came in that last conversation at the supper table before He went out to Gethsemane.

He kept saying He was going to the Father, but the Spirit had not come; therefore, a normal human could only understand outward relationships — one person here, another there, each person separate from the other.

So when He talked about the Father, the disciples thought He must be some Being way up in the blue. Feeling desperate that Jesus was going to whom they knew not, Philip made a commonsense request: "Lord, show us the Father and that will suffice us."

In other words, "Open Heaven, and let us have one look at the One to whom You say You are going."

Remember Jesus' answer? He said, "Have I been so long with you, yet hast thou not known Me, Philip? He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father. How sayest thou then, 'Show us the Father'?"

Now you might stop with that statement and say, "Well, that's Deity. He meant that their names were interchangeable — Father, Son and Spirit, and they could call Him Father or Jesus."

But He didn't mean that, for the next verse says this: "Believest thou not that I am in the Father and the Father in Me? The words I speak unto you I speak not of Myself: but the Father that dwelleth in Me, He doeth the works."

When Jesus said He did what He saw the Father doing it was not that He had some telescopic view into Heaven, but that as the Father in Him took Him into various situations and faced Him with various needs He would know this was a call to action. As He saw the Father moving into action, He took action. The action of faith.

The same was true of the words He spoke. He was expressing the thoughts and words the Father thought and spoke in Him. So you see the human nothingness and the divine union? Yet that doesn't mean that we do nothing. No one was more active than Jesus Christ! But the activity was secondary to receptivity.

An outstanding characteristic of the life of Jesus was His relaxed attitude. He was always saying, "I have what the Father gives Me." Yet what words He spoke and deeds He did! You see, that relaxed attitude is a normal human attitude-because a vessel hasn't anything except the capacity to contain. So relax!

Two, But One

Someone may say, "Well, Jesus Christ was a unique person. Can we say we're just like Jesus Christ?" Yes, you can. The chapter ends as Jesus says, "Arise, let us go hence." It appears to me that as they moved from the supper table toward Gethsemane, He wanted to give one other illustration to connect them up with what He had said of Himself and the Father. They passed through a vineyard.

"See," He said, "I have been the branch of My Father. He has been My vine; His sap has been flowing through Me, and I have just been bearing the fruit.

"Now," He said, "I am your vine and you are My branches. We are to have the same union which I have had with the Father, and apart from Me ye can do nothing."

Some years later, as a passing remark in the midst of another subject, Paul made a marvelous statement in I Corinthians 6:17 that reveals the nature of that union: "He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit." That's the real self, and the basis for our union: one spirit, not two spirits. The very same thing that Jesus said of Himself and the Father ("I and my Father are one") Paul says of us.

A great many of our confusions in life begin because we haven't discerned between soul and spirit. The Bible analyzes the human personality into three parts (for everything is a trinity). It speaks of "your whole spirit and soul and body" in I Thessalonians 5:23.

Look at the order: not body, soul and spirit—that's our order. God's order is spirit first: "I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless."

To put it briefly, spirit is the seat of ego; soul is the seat of the emotions and of reason.
Spirit is the ego, the self. God is spirit and He is the first ego, the first self. We are spirits, of whom He is the Father (Hebrews 12:9). He is the Creator of body and soul, but the Father of spirits.

Down in that center—the spirit—is where you know and love. Knowledge and love-mind and heart-are the real self, the real person. That's where you irrevocably live.

Paul, in I Corinthians 2:11, said, "What man knoweth the things of a man save the spirit of man which is in him?" The knower inside us is our spirit. For instance, we Christians know Jesus Christ. How do you know Jesus Christ? I can't tell you. Somehow you've come past the realm of just knowing about this Person called Jesus Christ and He is real to you. In the same way, a person knows music, knows art, knows science.

I understand that, you say. I'm at home with that. The knower just knows! That isn't giving a reason, is it? It's something intuitive inside you, and that's your spirit. That's different from reason. But your soul is more external. It is how you express your spirit.

Your mind (your knowledge) expresses itself in reasons. But reasons can vary. They can be influenced by all sorts of things.

Your heart expresses itself through the affections, the emotions. That's where you feel. But feelings can vary—quite apart from the set purposes of the heart. We say, "I don't feel like this," or "I feel spiritually cold, or dead or dry," and they are all illusions of the soul.

Neither reason nor emotion is our real life, which is deep inside us.

Now, we live where we love. That's what the Bible calls the heart. That's not the emotions; it's the set of life, the choices, the purposes where one of the two spirits is joined to us—the false spirit of self-love, called the spirit of error, who is in us from birth—or the true spirit of self-giving, the Spirit of God, called "the Spirit of truth," who replaces the false spirit in us by redemption and rebirth.

We have to learn how to discern between soul and spirit (Hebrews 4:12). We have to refuse in our spirit, our real selves, to be dominated by the reactions of the emotions or the reasons—our souls.

When we have learned to discern and to discipline the reactions of the soul, then through our reasons and our emotions we channel Christ, and are not moved by the reflex action of the world coming back at us.

But how can I do this? you say. You can do this because "He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit."

The Bible reveals that God, who is spirit, is an invisible Person. He always expresses Himself
He expresses the kind of Person He is through His Son; that's the soul of God. The soul of God is Jesus Christ.

Visible - and Invisible Life

So with us, our spirits are our invisible selves, and we have to have a form of expression. The form of expression is the soul life. And it's in our soul life that we differ.

In the spirit we're undifferentiated. You and I are exactly the same, eternally one person in the Spirit. You and I are one unit. I'm sorry for you, but you've got to have me. Because we're all one!

But in our souls we differ: you're very quick and I'm slow. One person is cautious, another person is dashing. Variety is in our soul life-that is, in the emotions and the reason. These are the varied expression of the inner spirit.

Now you may say in your soul life—in your emotions or your reason — "l don't like that person." We have an affinity with some people and not with others. We're just made like that.

But you have to move back from your soul-affections (your emotions) to the inner spirit-love.

This business of emotions is most important, because dozens of Christians live with their feet dragging with a sense of condemnation and failure because they feel away from God, or the feel cold, or they feel guilty, or they feel weak, and so on. They haven't discerned between the variable emotions of the soul and the unvarying reality of spirit—where God's Spirit of love is eternally our other self in our spirit.

How can I be cold when I've got that permanent fire within me-Jesus Christ? Move back from your soul-affections and say, "No, He's here." How can I feel dry when I have a permanent well of water inside me-Jesus Christ?

Not Emotion, But Reality

You move back from your affections, your emotions, to the real love-center—because "He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit."

The other verse that goes with that one, which I always think is so marvelous, is perhaps my favorite in the Bible. It is Galatians 2:20, where Paul says, "I am crucified with Christ."
That's the old Paul out. Then he says, "..... nevertheless, I live."

That's the new Paul in Christ: a living, thinking, willing, feeling, battling human. A real person. But listen: then he corrects himself and adds, "Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me."

He could very easily have said, "Nevertheless I live and Christ lives in me"—as if Christ lived near him or close by him. But you see, he replaced self by Christ. That's the point.

He said, "Nevertheless, I live—excuse me, the real I isn't I at all, it is Christ."

In other words, your other self is Christ. It is not you, it's Christ. There are two selves joined in one; and the other self is Christ.

That's why it's indivisible. That's why it's ridiculous to look around or above and try to find Christ. You don't try to find yourself, do you? Wherever you go, you are there, aren't you?

However you feel about it, you can't escape your self. And your other self is Christ; you can't escape Him either! I'm sorry if Christ has to go where you go! But that's His business! In the grace of God, Jesus Christ tied Himself to us.

Isn't that amazing? You can't escape Him.
Where you go, He goes. He's your other self; He's not you. You're you; He's He. You contain Him; He motivates you. And you learn the habits of this abiding life.

He is the one who lives it. You are His means of expressing Himself.

Motivation by Jesus Christ; that's the eternal life which we who know Him have already begun!

Next we will need to examine, understand and establish how this change of relationship has taken place. How can it be when we are eternally separated from God by sin? How can we have such a boldness, so that we can be free, happy, familiar, natural—not superduper reverent—but ordinary, normal people : what God intends us to be?

PART IV Your New Spirit

I believe in a secular Christ. I do not believe in a religious Christ. I believe one of the whole difficulties of Christianity is we've put Christ in a special building for a special occasion, with special forms of worship, special music, special everything.

Cut the special out; put your hands in your pocket and go in your old blue jeans. Christ is a secular person.

If Christ is your other self, Christ washes dishes. If Christ is your other self, He spanks the youngsters. If Christ is your other self, He handles the accounting machine and runs the business. Christ, therefore, is a very common per-son.

You're a very common person—I assure you that. That's why I believe in a common Christ—because He lives in common people!

Obviously, humanity has become separated from God. Before I can live in the kind of familiarity with God that He intends for me, I need to know the basis for that kind of a relationship. I need to know my title. Once I am sure of my foundations I can forget them and go ahead. Once I am sure of the road under my feet I can proceed to walk confidently.

Road to Familiarity

These are the simple facts of revelation (and we can follow their logic, as well as their tragedy and wonder):

What the Bible calls sin is, in one phrase, independent self. The created self was made to contain and express the Creator Self who is selfless love. Instead, in the person of Lucifer, probably the created being nearest to God Himself, a new and horrible form of life came into existence: a created self who refused to contain the selfless Self of God but chose to live for and by himself. Lucifer was the sin-spirit, the spirit of self-love, self-seeking, and all the sins known to man that proceed from that.

The history of the creation of man in the Garden of Eden tells us what happened to our forefather. He was created to contain God in a living union, which was symbolized for him in the offer of "the tree of life in the midst of the garden."

But as a human being with free choice, he could take another way—the way of self-love: symbolized for him in the other tree in the midst of the garden—the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Deceived by the lying spirit of Satan, he received into himself the spirit of error rather than the Spirit of truth, and became a child of the Devil. Since then the whole human race is born with the spirit of self-centeredness in it. The Bible calls it "the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience."

That we are all born and live under that domination is obvious, for we are all by nature egoists and self-lovers. Every breath we breathe, therefore, is sin—because anything less than God's perfection is sin, and God's perfection is perfect love. But such total love to God and our brother is totally impossible without God who is love living in us.

Two Problems Solved

What, then, has He who is Love, and therefore must save, done to restore His lost humanity to Himself? He has taken flesh Himself to start a new race. In the Person of His Son, Jesus, He came into history as a man called "the last Adam," the Creator of the first. Having lived a perfect life which the first Adam failed to live, He then identified Himself totally with the fallen human race by dying for us. In that death He was so identified with us all in God's sight that the Bible says, "He made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin. Thus, He died. In doing so, the Bible reveals that He effected the two supreme deliverances that were the two absolute necessities.

First, He solved God's problem (or rather, God solved His own problem) by taking upon Himself the curse of the broken law, and being made a curse for us. By the shedding of His blood, His outpoured life, He became God's "mercy seat."

By this, God could both be just and justify the ungodly, and pronounce all believers in Jesus justified from all unrighteousness-for-given, cleansed, in His sight as if we had committed no sin; "made the righteousness of God in Him." Broken law has consequences. That is the nature of law. God, farseeing that we should all be lawbreakers, foreordained His Son to be "the propitiation through faith in His blood."

What God revealed to be the necessary atonement for sin, He Himself suffered. What He suffered He accepted. And His acceptance is our justification (as the Scripture says, "raised again for our justification"). What is good enough for God is good enough for us. "How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot unto God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?"

Secondly, Christ's cross and resurrection solved our problem. For by this means He fully effected the destruction of the old union of humanity to Satan and replaced it by the new union to Himself.

Our problem is simply that in our unredeemed life our inner self, our spirit, was united to the self-loving spirit of Satan.

As a consequence, we followed the desire of soul and body. When our bodies stimulated appetites in us, we gratified them. When our souls stirred up pride or dislike of this or hate of that or love of that—we just followed them. We were governed by our souls and bodies.

Replacement for Soul Life

But when Christ died, it says that "He died unto sin once." That means that in His death, as our Representative, our last Adam, He became separated from the sin-spirit which had invaded the human spirit—just as anybody in death is separated from his spirit. And in His resurrection He was "made alive by the Spirit."

In other words, the Spirit of truth—God Himself—united Himself to that last Adam, and thus united Himself to all who will accept their place by faith as participators in His death and resurrection.

Here was the beginning of the new and final creation, when the usurping person was cut off from the possession he had deceitfully gained of the human spirit; when the true Owner, the living God, replaced him in all who receive Jesus.

This is no Biblical theory. This is the most tremendous and dynamic event in human history!

Here is our title to union—to permanent familiarity—with God! For example, use this little illustration.

On Sunday morning you say your duty is to go to church. But you get a blustery day, wind and snow, and you don't feel like going. But you go anyway.

Why? Because down inside you purpose to go. You say, "Oh, I don't feel like going, but I'm going." There you've got the point. Now you have moved from soul to spirit, you see.

Reason is exactly the same. Reason is the faculty by which we explain things and argue about them and talk about them. Through these words I've tried to use my reason, which is my soul life, to explain what I claim to know. I claim to know Jesus Christ; I try to explain myself to you—that's my reason.

You see, reasons can differ. That is why we can differ in our opinions and explanations—our soul life—but be one in Christ-in our spirit life.

I've always been one to dig into things. I took up philosophy just as a hobby and got my reason thoroughly shaken. I said to myself, "I'm really not so sure that there is a God at all. Yet," I said, "I know Him and love Him and have done so for years—yet He may not be a living Person at all!"

My reason conveyed doubts to me. My spirit said, "But I know Him!" So do you know what I came to? I said, "Well, if God is the big illusion, I'll be a little illusion alongside Him. I love the 'Illusion,' that's all."

You see, I would not be governed by my reason—my soul—because I had something deeper, more real.
Of course, in due time, I came out more strongly confirmed in soul, or reason, as well as spirit-knowledge. Doubts are the raw material of faith.

Have we got it clear? The consequence of broken law which we must inevitably suffer, stated in most direct and terrible fashion again and again in the words of Jesus and the writings of the apostles, was borne by God Himself in the Person of His Son. If we ask, how can the blood of any man atone for the sin of all, the answer is that this was the blood of Deity made flesh.

The enslaved condition of humanity, through the indwelling spirit of self-centered-ness, with which every man is born, was ended at the cross!

Christ, as our representative, died to that enslavement—that sin-spirit; and again as our representative, was raised from the dead by "the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead."

Thus, this change of union from the spirit of self-centeredness to the spirit of self-giving becomes an actual, down-to~earth fact in the personality and experience of every human being who, recognizing and admitting his need, receives Him as Lord and Savior.

Your old spirit is replaced by your new Spirit!
You were governed by soul and body. Now, as a redeemed person, the Spirit—His Spirit in your spirit—is master of soul and body.

You meet the demands of the bodily senses, the varying emotions of the soul stimulated by world, flesh or desire, with the affirmation of the indwelling Christ as Lord. Soul and body become the manifestation of Jesus Christ.

Here, indeed, is the key to being a normal person—free, happy, familiar, natural—released from the spirit of self-love into the boundless, creative outflowing energy of the new governing Spirit that indwells you: His Spirit.

Here, indeed, is the key to everything.
 
Posted by Carol Swenson (Member # 6929) on :
 
Michael...

Please correct me if I'm wrong.

If I understand this, you are about one step away from saying that you don't need to obey Christ because you are Christ.
 
Posted by Michael Harrison (Member # 6801) on :
 
I certainly will! [Wink]

You 'are' obedient because you are alive 'by' Christ, 'if' having fulfilled your obedience by faith.

Joh 4:24 "God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit..."
They who worship Him must do so by the Spirit, not the flesh. Most Christianity is carnal. They do what they do by the flesh, not the Spirit, alive to their own self, not to God, thinking themselves to be ‘doing’ something (that counts).

Rom 7:18 For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing:

The best way that i know here to say this is that there is only one set of footprints in the sand - if you truly are surrendered to His will. If!!! Otherwise, you don't abide 'in' Him. You are worshiping Him from without, the same as a theif and a robber. Think of it as being outside the city walls, unable to get in, and you are devoted to Him. Is it enough? Think of the Jewish people at the Whailing Wall. This is tantamount to being in the flesh.

You are not obedient in what you 'do for' Him. that is 'wood hay and stubble'. If you live by Him, you are obedient 'by His Spirit', if you are Crucified with Him, because He can live, because you do not frustrate His grace.

Zec 4:6 Then he answered and spake unto me, saying, This is the word of the LORD unto Zerubbabel, saying, Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the LORD of hosts.

You don't part the waters. He does. You don't add to the church. He does. Do you have a role to play? Absolutely. But most believers believe that they 'add' something to Him by their own effort!

There is something here that the Spirit beckons all men to see, yet they stubbornly resist. They resist by their own natural strength and refuse to be broken. DISOBEDIENCE! This is why i brought up the story of the wounding of Jacob's thigh, which is expounded upon by Watchman Nee in one of his books. He became 'dependant upon God' in this wounding. His own strength was compromised so that he would not muddy the waters of God's working, or take credit as having 'helped' God (therefore taking glory from God).

Gal 3:27 "For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ."
You put on Christ from the centermost part of your heart outward. Otherwise you have not put Him on, rather you are trying to put something on Him.

1Co 3:11 "For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ." Jesus is the foundation - your heart!

One step away? That last step you can never take. So what is the problem? Does no one read? All exalt bezbub? Nowhere do you read that you become Christ! You become 'obedient' by becoming 'one' with Him in moving, living, breathing.
Act 17:28 "For in him we live, and move, and have our being;"

Need more scripture? Put on Christ - not works!
 
Posted by becauseHElives (Member # 87) on :
 
Michael Harrison

quote:
Michael Harrison
The Devil is no trouble. He was dealt with 2,000 years ago. Your neighbor is not your trouble. Circumstances are not your trouble. The only trouble is your reaction. Distorted self, self out of gear, is our problem. Once we know how to handle the human self and put it back where it belongs, we've found the key to life. That's what we're going to examine.

Michael, you can’t see the forest for the trees…..

You are trying to preach that which you have not attained….

You still have not request for forgiveness for your insult to me on this board, yet you persist on trying to explain to all the rest of us how spiritual you are.

This is very disturbing!…..


quote:
Michael Harrison
But Pharaoh sent the police after him— and what did Moses do? All he had left was a good pair of legs. So he ran. A healthy body is useful—but you need more than two good legs to carry you through life for God! Moses had thought he could do the job; now he found he couldn't. He couldn't find God because, until he had come to an end of himself, God was a distant Person to him.

…..I feel this is true of you Michael …..

quote:
Unless you have come to the bottom of self you don't know basically in a crisis just how to find God. You can't find God when He's found you. He's just there. The Spirit must teach you. You just say, "That's fine, Lord, carry on." You are thoroughly natural.
…..The Apostle Paul understood this about himself, which is why he said and understood that as long as he was in this body of clay, he was still pressing toward the mark, he had not yet arrived and only when morality was swallowed by immortality would he be completely like His Lord.…..

quote:
I believe in being thoroughly irreverent with God! That's putting it in extreme form, but what I mean is that a great deal of our pious talk and reverent attitudes and language is a cloak for insincerity. Men of God, God's familiars, God's friends, talk back and forth with Him in plain language.
…..Oh that all men and women that claim to know Yahweh would be this honest with others and with Yahweh!…..

quote:
But Moses, like every one of us, had to learn that you don't do God's work by self effort and self-wisdom.
…..True statement, what a price Moses paid for one act of disobedience, better pay attention to what you are trying to preach Michael.…..


According to Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, the definition of obey is as follows: 1. To give ear to; to execute the commands of; to yield submission to; to comply with the orders of; 2. To submit to the authority of; to be ruled by; 3. To yield to the impulse, power, or operation of; as, a ship obeys her helm.

To obey is better than sacrifice (1 Samuel 15:22)
This passage records the circumstances that led to God's rejection of Saul, the first king of Israel. Saul had been instructed through the prophet Samuel to enact complete judgment upon a group of people called the Amalekites. This was because of what they did to the people of Israel years before, when they came up from Egypt.
Saul was given very clear instructions:

Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys (1 Samuel 15:3).

But that is not what Saul did. Instead we read,
But Saul and the army spared Agag and the best of the sheep and cattle, the fat calves and lambs - everything that was good. These they were unwilling to destroy completely, but everything that was despised and weak they totally destroyed (1 Samuel 15:9).

The Lord's word to Saul in reaction to what he did is as clear as his original instructions:
Does the LORD delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the voice of the LORD? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams. For rebellion is like the sin of divination, and arrogance like the evil of idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the LORD, he has rejected you as king (1 Samuel 15:22,23).

The interaction between Saul and Samuel provides us with some key insights into how we can tend to put our own agendas ahead of God.

First, though Saul had neglected the Lord's command, he tries to sound really spiritual.

When Samuel reached him, Saul said, "The LORD bless you! I have carried out the LORD's instructions." (1 Samuel 15:13).

Notice the spiritual talk spewing from his mouth. Was Saul trying to deceive Samuel or was he deceiving himself? He hadn't done what God told him, and yet he tries to portray himself so wonderfully.

We too can use God-talk to give the impression that we are more spiritual than we really are.
Then when Samuel confronts him, saying that Saul failed to carry out the Lord's instructions, he denies it. "But I did obey the Lord" (1 Samuel 15:20), he insists. He even attempts to turn his disobedience into religious service.

The soldiers took sheep and cattle from the plunder, the best of what was devoted to God, in order to sacrifice them to the LORD your God at Gilgal (1 Samuel 15:21).

But it is to this that Samuel replies, "To obey is better than sacrifice" (1 Samuel 15:22). To disobey God and call that spirituality is a great evil.

Now, most of us will never be in a situation like Saul's. But I wonder how often we give ourselves to things or noble causes in place of the most important things in life. How many of us sacrifice our families for our jobs or our congregations for example. We fill our lives doing "good things," but they are not God's things.

It is us that God wants, not our sacrifices.

I will read part 3 as soon as I have time….
becauseHElives
 
Posted by Michael Harrison (Member # 6801) on :
 
quote:
~ The Devil is no trouble. He was dealt with 2,000 years ago. ~

The devil is in any and all unbelief. That is who he is, and how he works. When Jesus rebuked Peter saying get thee behind me satan, and, that he careth for the things of the world, He was rebuking satan, who was behind Peter's unbelief. Better yet, satan was able to take wholesale advantage to try through Peter to deter the Lord.

When Jesus told them to go tell that fox:
Luk 13:32 'And he said unto them, Go ye, and tell that fox, Behold, I cast out devils, and I do cures to day and to morrow, and the third day I shall be perfected," He was talking to satan, not Herod. Satan filled Herod's unbelief.

Mat 12:30 "He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad."

What you believe in your heart makes or breaks you, establishes you in the Kingdom, or casts you outside of it.

Mat 15:8 This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me.

Luk 24:25 Then he said unto them, O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken:

Joh 12:40 He hath blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart; that they should not see with their eyes, nor understand with their heart, and be converted, and I should heal them.

You can have a lot of knowledge and not know anything at all (as you ought to know).

Luk 12:34 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
 
Posted by Michael Harrison (Member # 6801) on :
 
To believe what He wants you to believe, that is what is important. You should not be satisfied, but rather you should want to find out if you do. If you are satisfied with what you know, well look at the word. Does it poke any holes in what you know? Is there anything that you are a little unsure about? Does anything not completely add up? Do you have trouble understanding a lot of stuff?

I heard a man on the radio the other day say that there is more in the word that he doesn't understand, than there is which he does, which he admitted to his shame. He knew the word really well. I used to be like that. Are you? So then is there something beyond what you have understood thus far. You should not be satisfied until you know. That is what the race is about.


If you don't believe what He wants you to, you disobey Him. Why do you think you do, by doing? Then you console yourself by all of this other stuff that is about Him, but is short of Him and His Glory.
Heb 11:6 "But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him."

Himself in person is the reward. He rewards belief. Careful what you believe. If you are not living by Christ, by the very faith of Him, you are living by faith in dead works, wishful thinking, and will worship, which is not living at all. Indeed, you are not exalting Him, for you are not letting Him live. You are crucifying Him by unbelief. I know. That is hard. But truth is truth, and reality is reality, and discovery is about discovery. Believe what He wants you to believe that your obedience may be fulfilled.

There is no shortage of persons who will hinder you from 'entering' the Kingdom of God' which is ' within you', even if you have not fully discovered what that means.
 
Posted by Michael Harrison (Member # 6801) on :
 
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
~ The Devil is no trouble. He was dealt with 2,000 years ago. ~

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The devil is in all sin and defiance! If he was dealt with 2000 years ago, what is your excuse then? Does not the Apostle Paul through his letters deal with that very thing in a church that cannot, will not hear, as can be determined by the epistles. It is one thing to know that the devil has been dealt with. It is quite another to discover and understand the application of it in your own life, which is our requirement.
 
Posted by becauseHElives (Member # 87) on :
 
quote:
MH
It is quite another to discover and understand the application of it in your own life, which is our requirement.

Our requirement
Micah 6:6-8
With what shall I come before the Lord and bow down before the exalted God?
Shall I come before Him with burnt offering, with calves a year old?
Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or ten thousand rivers of oil?
Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

Romans 7:14
For we know that the law is spiritual:
Romans 8:7
Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.
Romans 8:6
For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.
Romans 15:27
It hath pleased them verily; and their debtors they are. For if the Gentiles have been made partakers of their spiritual things,

1 Corinthians 3:1
And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ.

The 1st Pentecost was the giving of the Law to Moses on tables of stone, and being carnal the people could not receive it. The law (on Table of Stone) brought death, 3000 died on that first Pentecost.

But just as Yeshua fulfilled the imagery of the Feast of Passover, the Feast of Unleavened Bread and the Feast of First Fruits by His death burial and resurrection…

So did He fulfill the Feast of Pentecost 50 days after His resurrection when He sent the promised Holy Spirit, when He came and filled those 120 first assembled in Jerusalem, bringing life to 3000 as Peter spoke to those gathered there.

When the Law is upon the heart, the believer is totally able to live as Christ commands.

Now the Law that is spiritual as Romans 7:14 declares has been written on the hearts of those that have been filled with the Spirit.

Now that which once brought death because of a carnal or hard heart brings life to all that will tarry and wait to be filled with the very Spirit of Yahweh, that same Spirit that lead Yeshua day by day, moment by moment.

Romans 8:1

THEREFORE, there is now no condemnation, no adjudging guilty of wrong for those who are in Christ Jesus, who live and walk not after the dictates of the flesh, but after the dictates of the Spirit( the Law of Yahweh).

Romans 8:3-4
For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh:

That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.
 
Posted by cbou4668 (Member # 6280) on :
 
The man that the number 666 stands for (1st Kings 10:14, 2nd Chronicles 9:13) died the day that King Solomon died. Wisdom is to understand that King Solomon died a scoundrel. Even though one professes that he knows Christ, they may NOT KNOW CHRIST because they believe more in religion rather than Nature's Creator. Matthew 7:21-23 spells out that not everyone that approachs and proclaims they worked wonders in His name will be acknowledged as truely knowing Christ. Salvation comes through Jesus Christ, not believing King Solomon is the devil. We can't expect God to listen to us if we don't acknowledge Him by understanding that His good far exceeds us humans. It is because I proclaim Faith in Christ Jesus that I say that I believe that King Solomon is the one that brought about need for Christ to die on the Cross (do not misunderstand, I believe that Christ died for my sins but I also believe that study of the forgiveness of Christ has allowed me to hone my Faith in Him). If King Solomon had only done that which God had commanded him to do, the world would have been a different place. I've heard the saying "God must have a sense of humor". If He does, it is for the benefit of gaining understanding of the good that He is. Actually, I got a chuckle out of the realatively harmless plagues (frogs, dead fish, etc.), being duplicated by the magicians to double the suffering of the Egyptians. The hardball death came with the Pharoa's own curses. Is it not true that we have a decision to make of "choose life and live or sin and perish"? Does this choice still exist today? YES IT DOES!!!! As long as a human lives there will be a choice. I have become turned off by religion, but not church. I believe in the Bible and I am glad that the many denominations could work together to create the NIV. But none of them can claim to be the truest of all and I believe that some may enfluence the interpretation of the scriptures to their understanding rather than the translated word. Although I believe that to be true to some degree I also know that God inspired the creation of the Bible. God knows us better than we know ourselves and He is fully Aware of the perversions of all the religions and denominations. Killing in the name of God is sometning man made up. God went into battle by Himself. He did not have the Israelites put anyone to the sword themselves until they, the Israelites, had already shown a lack of Faith. We pray that our soldiers are protected from harms way but there is still another religion that insists the everything is the fault of all the other religions and they kill people. The only solution is for God to reveal who He chooses or shows his choice for the authority in order for Faith to override the perversion of utilizing death as the ultimate solution for conversion of accepting God.
 




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