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Yes. I moved again.

2007-09-10T15:02:00.000-07:00

Click here for my current on-line journal.
Thanks!

Don't worry. It's just a silly Quiz (What are you doing here, anyway?!)

2007-08-14T19:44:00.000-07:00

You are The Hierophant

Divine Wisdom. Manifestation. Explanation. Teaching.

All things relating to education, patience, help from superiors.The Hierophant is often considered to be a Guardian Angel.

The Hierophant's purpose is to bring the spiritual down to Earth. Where the High Priestess between her two pillars deals with realms beyond this Earth, the Hierophant (or High Priest) deals with worldly problems. He is well suited to do this because he strives to create harmony and peace in the midst of a crisis. The Hierophant's only problem is that he can be stubborn and hidebound. At his best, he is wise and soothing, at his worst, he is an unbending traditionalist.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

GONE

2007-07-27T06:03:00.000-07:00

GOING........

2007-07-26T19:09:00.001-07:00

Going......

2007-07-26T14:22:00.000-07:00

Sound of Water...

2007-07-25T09:33:00.000-07:00

...Spiraling down a drain.....

This is my last post here.
Feel free to visit my other blog.

Bye!

meme

2007-07-13T15:53:00.000-07:00

Brother Scott Mitchell hit me with some tough, but interesting questions today.
I think this is something called "meme".

The deal is that after answering the questions, I get to make up five questions and send them to five other bloggers.

Scott's Questions/ My Answers

1. What teacher has had the most influence in your life? Why?

Impossible question!

Norman P. Grubb.
Great teacher. Very clear and pure. Resonates deeply.

2. If you could write the "Great American Novel" what would the first line be?

"Stop! Do not read this book. If you do, you will never read another book,...ever."

3. Which job would you prefer: the guy holding the 'slow down' sign in a work zone, a ring announcer at a world championship boxing match, or the person serving sample snacks at a Sam's or grocery store?

Sample Server (grocery store).

4. If you have just awakened from a coma, who would you like to see first and why?

My wife, Missy.
I fall in love with her more and more all the time. If my memory were damaged, I would have the joy of falling in love with her again, for the first time!

5. If you could get a do-over in high school, what would you change?

Nothing.

Now for MY questions (below), I choose Neil, Jasmin, Michael, Margaret Ann, and Jeremy.
(The funny part is that I truly think that Jeremy is my only reader, and right now, he is probably SICK of answering my questions!!).

1. If you could make up a national (or worldwide) holiday, what would it be called?

2. Which of the characters from Winnie the Pooh do you relate to the most?

3. How about Gilligan's Island?

4. If a sitcom were made about your life, what would it be called?

5.If you could keep only three books from your bookshelf, which three would they be?

Now you guys (and gals) get to do the same (if you want, of course) and please link back to me!!

Almost 50/50

2007-07-12T20:00:00.001-07:00

You Are 45% Left Brained, 55% Right Brained

The left side of your brain controls verbal ability, attention to detail, and reasoning.
Left brained people are good at communication and persuading others.
If you're left brained, you are likely good at math and logic.
Your left brain prefers dogs, reading, and quiet.

The right side of your brain is all about creativity and flexibility.
Daring and intuitive, right brained people see the world in their unique way.
If you're right brained, you likely have a talent for creative writing and art.
Your right brain prefers day dreaming, philosophy, and sports.

Are You Right or Left Brained?

Simple Questions

2007-07-05T21:20:00.001-07:00

1) What is the difference between living and walking?

2) Do we learn to live or is that something we do without effort?

3) Does walking require effort?

4) Could you put forth effort if you were not alive?

5) How does one become alive?

6) What causes a child to desire the skill of walking?

7) When one walks (literally), outside of possible physical pain, is there much consideration as to how difficult it is, or do you not really think about it?

8) Is it the same for toddlers and teenagers, or fully grown adults?

I would love to hear your comments.
Anyone?

I Just Had to Post this Link...

2007-06-25T15:33:00.000-07:00

Many a Truth are Said in Jest.

(I mean no harm, it's just......funny!!!)

BREAK

2007-06-22T18:58:00.001-07:00

It's time for a retreat.
My vacation from work is almost over and I'm getting ready for things to get back to normal.

It's been a good break.

I've gotten some clarity from the Lord on a handful of things, and He has cracked the doors open to a couple of new rooms.

The light keeps getting brighter and the darkness keeps fading away.
Such is the way of the Lord.

I'm breaking from BlogWorld for a while, there are some things I need to get back to.
In the meantime, I pray the Lord reveal Himself to us all more and more.

G'night.

Don't Ask....Just Read.

2007-06-20T15:06:00.000-07:00

Trust me.

Man! This Guy Just Continues to Nail It!

2007-06-17T19:43:00.000-07:00

www.ChristAsUs.com

Tired of Being for Others?

Norman Grubb

Now the danger arises of us thinking that we must rush about being not for ourselves but for others. By no means. Just go on being yourself and don't give a thought about being for others. Just run your own life, accept yourself, be yourself, love yourself! Appreciate that you are a special person, specially gifted by God. For what? That's not your business. Don't try and run His business! Get on with your daily occupations and putting all your heart into them.

But of course, there's a catch in that. You are not really yourself, but Christ in you, Christ the real you. And He is for others and He knows exactly how He will reach others by you in your special life's situation and with your special equipment, of which you may not even be conscious, and probably good that you are not! If you try to fuss around being something for others, for your neighbors, for good works in your church, your town or out to the world, you may be so occupied in the wrong direction that He will have to do some more work on you to get you where He really wants you!

He is love in us, other-love, so you just can't help yourself. Without any kind of human effort, you just find yourself drawn into maybe love-contacts with naturally unpleasant neighbors; you find that folks somehow get in touch with you, because you are free from fussing about your affairs or theirs, just free to love, not to condemn or judge or try to change them, and one or another will be coming to you and pouring out their burdens. But when folks do find that you are available, you have to beware against being back under the law. The Spirit is original in each of us and He will get His original plan into action by you in some way which frees you from man-pleasing.

So, we are back on the usual paradox: do nothing which stems from self-effort. But in being a do-nothing, you will actually be a do-everything, because the Real Doer whose aim is to get the world back to Himself will surely be busy by you in His own way and time. Yet watch even there when we say ''He will be busy by you,'' because times will come when you will appear to be useless on the shelf, as if God has forgotten you (how crazy can we be!), and the only word left which can suit you is, ''Be still and know that I am God.'' Very well, then, be still; and if God wants to be lazy in you, let Him be!

taken from Who Am I? by Norman Grubb

Another Silly Quiz

2007-06-06T09:52:00.000-07:00

Well...
They're kind of right.

They really should incorporate a more diverse variety of questions and theologians.

At least this one doesn't think I'm a stoner!
(How dare they!!!???)

You scored as Martin Luther, The daddy of the Reformation. You are opposed to any Catholic ideas of works-salvation and see the scriptures as being primarily authoritative.

Martin Luther

87%

Anselm

80%

John Calvin

73%

Jürgen Moltmann

67%

Augustine

60%

Friedrich Schleiermacher

53%

Karl Barth

53%

Paul Tillich

47%

Charles Finney

47%

Jonathan Edwards

33%

created with QuizFarm.com

Our Fodder which is in heaven Hollowed be thy name...

2007-06-02T13:55:00.000-07:00

Haven't started the next psalm yet.

Here's a little fodder in the meantime:

You Belong in 1967

You are a free spirit with a huge heart. Love, peace, and happiness rule - oh, and drugs too.

What Year Do You Belong In?

Psalm 3

2007-05-22T15:28:00.000-07:00

{A Psalm of David, when he fled from Absalom his son. }

Lord, my distresses have increased. They arise in multiples!

Yet in my mind do I have the promise of Gods Deliverance.

~Rest~

The Existing One is my defense and my glory.

He is the lifter of my head.

With my voice, I cry out to the Existing One,

And He responds from the Sacred Mountain.

~Rest~

I laid down and slept and when I awoke, The Existing One had refreshed me!

Still afraid of the myriad of people set all around me, I called to the One,

“Arise Lord, deliver me!”

“God, you have struck the jaw of the enemy and broken the teeth of the wicked.”

Victory is in The Existing One and is a Gift for His People!

~Rest~

Thanks.

2007-05-13T17:09:00.000-07:00

Thanks to anyone and everyone for their prayers. Even if you didn't pray for her thank you anyway, because I know that the Spirit within us all prays without ceasing.
Becky is much better now. Just a few more days of antibiotics.

Since I haven't finished psalm 3 yet, I'd like to post something from Kevin A. Beck...

Parousia

May 14, 2007

By Kevin A. Beck

Play Time

We live in busy times. People are working more hours than ever and making longer commutes. Technology has made it nearly impossible to leave your job at the office. The communications revolution relegated the forty-hour work week to relic of history.

Our sense of busyness is compounded by volunteer commitments, community service, and religious activities. Once you start adding up everything you “have to do,” you may quickly realize that you don’t have any time for living. Jon Kabat-Zinn asks, “Do you know anyone who has more free time than he did ten years ago?”

It’s not that work, volunteering, and spiritual practices deter you from living a full life. In fact, they constitute meaningful facets of our being. We find creative expression in our vocation, contribute to the well-being of others as we serve, and strengthen our conscious connection with God as we deepen our internal space. Yet—if we’re not careful—we can turn work, service, and religion into obsessive compulsions driving every moment of our existence.

A driven life is a robbed life—a life robbed of peace, joy, and wonder. A life robbed of an unrushed pace and an unhurried tempo. A life robbed of the ability to soak in profound experiences. A life robbed of time needed to reflect on the grandeur of each moment. A life robbed of presence.

An ingredient necessary to develop a richly integrated life is play. This is not what passes as the ‘play’ of fanatical parents trying to regain their youth through their children’s organized recreation. Real play is the uninhibited fun most of us experience in the unstructured environment childhood.

Play allows us to momentarily set aside all of our to-do lists, perceived crises, and urgent impulses. It refreshes the spirit and rejuvenates the mind. Play is not a diversion; it is an utmost sacred act.

I know. You don’t have time for play. You get more done before 9am than most people do all day. You’re too busy with everything that you must accomplish, or the world will end. If this is how you see yourself, you might want to consider Jesus. “Let the little children come unto me,” he declared. What do you think he did when they came to him? Did he give extended discourses, organize them into evangelistic teams, and test them on their Bible knowledge? I doubt it. Instead I imagine he played their childhood games with them, living spontaneously in the moment.

I have a friend who works two jobs and is training for a triathlon. In other words, she has a full schedule. However, she told me that she took time out last week to walk her dog in the park. At one point, she stopped to rest. She lay back in the grass and watched the shapes of the passing clouds. After a while she rolled onto her front, and pulled her shirt up exposing her stomach. She beamed as she told me, “I rolled in the grass and felt like a little kid. It just felt so good.”

This week, create a break in your all-too-hectic schedule so you can play. If you feel obliged to write it in your calendar, scribble the words “Important Meeting.” Then take your kids or grandkids to the playground and get on the swings. Fly a kite. Go hiking. Play catch. Shoot some hoops. Jump on a trampoline. Ride your bike. Ride a horse. Paint, draw, or sculpt. If you haven’t played for a while, don’t worry. Once you start, it will all come back to you. And when it does, enjoy it. Breathe deeply for the spirit of life is reviving your inner self. “Begin the music, strike the tambourine, play the melodious harp and lyre” (Psalm 81:2).

Psalm 2

2007-05-11T02:39:00.000-07:00

Why are the nations in such turbulence and commotion?

Do the people not know that the cause of their disturbance is their own vain devices?

Together, the kings of the earth present themselves as enlightened and wise.

Weighty are the words spoken within their counsels.

The Existing One and His Anointed rend their bonds

and cast away Their cords from them.

The Master chuckles at their derision from His heavenly abode although the countenance of His face declares His burning disappointment.

“Yet, I anoint My King of Holiness upon the Mountain of the sunny place”.

Declare the resolve of The Existing One!

He has spoken to me, “This Day, My Son is generated”.

“Just ask of Me, and I shall give you the nations for your heritage. Ultimately, even the uttermost parts of the Earth will be your dominion. You will break them with a scepter of strength, shattering the fashion of their vestments”.

So be wise, you kings and be teachable, you Judges of the Earth.

Be useful to The Existing One.

In all reverence, rejoice with trembling!

Kiss the Son, lest you offend Him. Otherwise, if His anger is kindled even a little, He might vanish from your journey

You will be happy if you trust in Him!

Prayer Request

2007-05-10T06:59:00.000-07:00

I'm at work right now, so I don't have much time to "blog".

My youngest girl, Becky, has an ear infection. Been running a fever between 102 and 104 for the last three days.

She's going to the clinic this morning.

Please pray for her.
And me too.

Thank you.

Psalm 1

2007-05-07T18:14:00.000-07:00

Okay. Since I'm not blogging here anymore, and you still insist on coming here anyway, the least I can do is offer you some good reading.
How about my translation/interpretation of the Psalms?

(Sorry, I refuse to add the "verse" numbers. Makes for much smoother reading.)

I hope you enjoy......

**************************************************************************************

Happiness is the experience of whoever refuses to live according to the

purpose of the wicked.

They depart from the way of the condemned,

And dwell no longer in the company of the arrogant.

Their pleasure is in the direction of The Existing One.

In His direction do they muse day and night.

They are like a tree planted near a channel of refreshing water,

producing fruit in due time.

Their leaf shall not wither and

whatever they do shall prosper.

The wicked, however, are like chaff

blown away by the wind.

The wicked cannot stand justice

And neither can the condemned be gathered together

with the righteous.

The Existing One knows the way of the righteous,

But the way of the wicked shall vanish.

the end

2007-04-10T17:49:00.000-07:00

Today I offer you something a bit different from what I usually put out here.

Today I'm not going to worry (too much) about the repercussions of saying what is really on my mind.

Not that what I usually write or post is dictated by what people might think, but rather, today, my inhibitions just a bit lower than normal.

There comes a time when you just can't let the expectations of your self or others be a factor when it comes to sharing your heart..., a time when you must follow God and not men.

So what is it that I want to say?

I'm tired.

I'm tired of upholding an image.

I'm tired of self importance. Even if I shroud that self importance in impressive jargon about "having a voice" and my "right and calling" to express it.

Not only am I tired but, I'm dead tired.

I'm not interested in blogging anymore.
If you want to know what I think or feel, be my friend.

Otherwise, enjoy your life.

If you are here out of curiosity, turn it elsewhere.
If you are here looking for something in particular, look somewhere else. Preferably inside your self where God is.

I'm sorry, but if you are interested in the "First John" study, look at the letter for yourself and look within.

"You have no need for anyone to teach you".

I'll summarize briefly:

Little children need their sins forgiven, although it is really only for His names sake.

Young men have overcome the evil one. The key is, that they have done so by the blood of the lamb and the word of their testimony. Sometimes they come across cocky because they realize the victory and power they have in Christ, but haven't come to terms, fully, that they play NO PART in that victory (other than being a vessel of Victory Himself).

Fathers have known Him from the beginning and they have the potential to raise up more Sons.
They have very little to (possibly) nothing left of themselves and have, in a very deep way, realized their full and perfect union with God in Christ.

I think that there are more of these folks around than we tend to think, but chances are you won't find them in the places you might expect to.

My mother said to me the other day, "I feel like I've known Him all of my life, like I've NEVER been without Him".

I don't need to draw these things out.

Let go of you religion.
Or keep it.

It's your call.

Either way, God does not condemn you.
Just don't condemn yourself.

Walk in freedom or walk in bondage.
It's up to you.

There's so much that I want to say, but I'm moving in a different direction now.

I'm almost afraid to say it, so I will not.

I'll just say it's time to stop talking and time to start living.

Peace to you all.

God Love Us All
~Johnny

The "Choice"

2007-04-08T14:09:00.000-07:00

"We are always faced with a ''choice'' of what we will see .... (The ''choice'' is simply in our receptivity) .... that choice is this -- either we see UNITY, only GOD, ALL in all, manifesting Himself everywhere in EVERYTHING, ALL ordered, upheld and moved by HIM -- or we see chaos, disunity, separation, dissonance, disharmony ....

Either we see a great ETERNAL FIRE OF LOVE EMBLAZONING EVERYTHING IN ITS LIGHT AND POWER or we see a million houses on fire and we can't get to them fast enough to deal with them before another million houses go up ....

There is no fear in love .... LOVE casts out ALL fear ....

Dare we believe this??? (There is always somebody somewhere that wants to point out that there's plenty to fear out there -- but dare we step out anyway and believe there's NOTHING to fear???) ...."

~Fred Pruitt
www.ChristAsUs.com

I John Part VI: Little Children

2007-04-03T13:16:00.000-07:00

Lets take a look and see how John views the brothers and sisters to whom he is writing.

In this post, we'll start with the first group.

"I write to you, little children,

Because your sins are forgiven you for His name's sake".

Little children.

How sweet and precious are the little ones.

My youngest child is soon to be four years old. For those of you who know me well, you would probably agree with me when I say that, in her, I see no wrong.

Even when she is wrong.

I could lay down all the rules for her to follow, all the things that I expect her to do and be, and even get on to her when she is up to something that she shouldn't be, but the over arching principle is that she's my baby girl.

Just one teary eyed "I'm sawee, daddy." and that's it. I'm nearly on my knees in tears, embracing her in my arms, lifting her up in love, building her back up to where, in my mind, she always is and will always be:

Perfect.

So here's Johns word to the little children.

"Your sins are forgiven..."

Now for the kicker.

It's not for your sake.

Little children tend to think that it is for their sake.
And that's okay.

I know that when I have gone out of the way on something, when I have begun walking somewhere other than the place my Spirit allows, I need forgiveness.

I need to know and experience God's unchanging love in Christ, and this seems to be ,very much, for my sake.

But John has a different perspective.

It's "...for His names sake".

Wow!

Can you get hold of that?

What I get from this is that Gods nature, character, and expression must measure up to His name.

Why?

So that His name will maintain it's "Quality".

What quality is this?

Well...,I'm not sure what you call it, but I know that it can be "broken down" into various aspects:

Yahweh Jireh (Yireh): “The Lord will provide.”
Yahweh Nissi: “The Lord is my Banner.”
Yahweh Shalom: “The Lord is Peace.”
Yahweh Sabbaoth: “The Lord of Hosts.”
Yahweh Maccaddeshcem: “The Lord your Sanctifier.”
Yahweh Ro’i: “The Lord my Shepherd.”
Yahweh Tsidkenu: “The Lord our Righteousness.”
Yahweh Shammah: “The Lord is there.”
Yahweh Elohim Israel: “The Lord, the God of Israel.”

Our Heavenly Father wants to be known as a "Good Daddy".

Jesus Exposed

2007-04-01T14:05:00.000-07:00

“Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there.”

--Job 1:21

“They divided my garments among them and cast lots for my clothing.”

--John 19:24

Noted “food artist” Cossimo Cavalloro has stirred up quite a controversy—which is precisely what many artists intend to do with their art. He sculpted an anatomically correct image of a crucified Jesus out of chocolate entitled “My Sweet Lord.”

Predictably, some religious activists found this offensive. They took to the airwaves and to the internet wielding political pressure and threatening economic repercussions against the hotel that was set to display what has become known as “Sweet Jesus.”

In traditional pious artwork, Jesus on the cross is usually covered with a loincloth. However, this isn’t always the case. Renaissance master Michelangelo created a crucifix with an exposed Jesus. Also, his scandalous “Risen Christ” originally pictured a revealed Jesus, only to have a later craftsman add a loincloth. Not coincidentally, Michelangelo sculpted David nude in what is perhaps the most famous statue in western civilization.

Leo Steinberg’s book The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and In Modern Oblivion shows that from the fourteenth century through the mid-16^th century many hundreds of pious works of art display Jesus naked. Apparently, art is in the eye of the beholder—or the patron commissioning the work.

Regardless, something incontrovertibly true strikes me. Jesus came from his mother’s womb naked and naked he returned. Maybe it isn’t pleasant to consider this reality of life. Perhaps we’d prefer to imagine an asexual Jesus who was unlike us in every way. However, as Jesus died upon the cross he hung suspended and exposed before God and the world. The soldiers had gambled for his clothing, and he had nothing to hide his shame, and this was the exact point of Roman crucifixion.

However, instead of feeling shame, Jesus despised it. “For the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:2). Steinberg acutely observes that rather than taking umbrage at an exposed Jesus and considering a naked Jesus as insult to faith, an uncovered Christ actually affirms Jesus’ kinship with humanity.

In becoming exposed, Jesus took on the identity of the Last Adam. As such, “one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all” (Romans 5:18). Maybe the reaction against an uncovered Jesus exposes our own reluctance to come to terms with the fact that God spared nothing to create us in the divine image—not even God’s own self-image.

The naked Christ signifies the scandal of a naked God. Jesus exposed reveals God. As the express image of God’s very person, Jesus demonstrates the counterintuitive glory of God. God doesn’t appear to humanity in the form of an invincible warrior girded with impenetrable armor. The Constintinian fascination with Emperor Jesus blinds us to the gospel message that God shows up in full vulnerability. God in Christ identifies with the lowly, the weak, and the defenseless. Why? Because vulnerability resides at the heart of love, and God is love.

In a paradoxical move, God’s weakness in Christ created the perfect means to bring about the transformation of the ages. In a show of strength, the powers of the old age took matters into their own hands. Ironically, their power grab brought about God’s desired result. “None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory” (1Corinthians 2:8).

That is why when Christ was struck, he did not lash out. When mocked, he did not mock in return. His submissiveness was not simply an act of biding his time until he could show everyone “who is boss” and torture his enemies for all eternity. No. His meekness ultimately embraces even those who have been seduced by the mirage of power—because love, like a “weak force” and gravity breaks down barriers and draws all things to itself.

Paul observed, Christ “was crucified in weakness, yet he lives by God's power. Likewise, we are weak in him, yet by God's power we will live with him to serve you” (2Cor 13:4). Loving service seems weak, but God in Christ forever exposes the power of weakness and the weakness of power.

If you find yourself offended by artwork you consider outrageous, look past the offense of the art and embody the offense of the cross. Begin looking for ways to identify with the weakness of Christ exposed, the weakness of God. When you do, you will discover God’s promise: “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” In place of feeling slighted that someone might sculpt an icon of Jesus exposed, be thankful. Allow the exposed Christ to disclose the glory of God’s love in becoming weak on behalf of us all.

By Kevin A. Beck

www.presence.tv/cms/index.php

Faith vs. Belief

2007-03-29T18:24:00.000-07:00

Belief provides answers to people's questions, so as to find assurance and provide a solution; so as to fashion for themselves a system of beliefs.

Faith is not to supply us with explanation, but to get us to listen to God's questions.

Belief talks and talks, it wallows in words, it takes the initiative to explain.

Faith listens patiently.

Belief brings people together, joined in the same institutional current, oriented toward the same object of belief, sharing the same ideas, following the same rituals, enrolled in the same organization, speaking the same language. It has the social benefit of consensus and identification.

Faith individualizes. It has to do with a personal relationship with God in which God confers each with unique identity. Faith separates people and makes them unique, set apart for what God wants to do.

Belief is antithetical to doubt. It is the basis of fundamentalism; people unbending in their convictions, intolerant of any deviation. In their articulation of belief they press rigor and absolutism to their limits. Belief is rapidly transformed into passwords, rites, orthodoxy.

Faith recognizes doubt. Faith puts to the test every element of my life and society. It leads me to question all my certitudes, all my moralities, beliefs, and policies. It forbids me to attach ultimate significance to any expression of human activity.''

(Taken from Jacques Ellul - Living Faith)

www.ChristAsUs.com

By the way...
If you're wondering about the I John study, fret not, it's coming soon.

{I must move as I am moved!}
~Johnny

COMING SOON: The End

2007-03-24T19:38:00.000-07:00

Well it will soon be that time again for me to announce that I will no longer be posting stuff here at Blogger.

I tend to do this a couple times per year (at least), and my reasons, although they vary slightly in detail, are basically very simple.

It's more or less just the fact that I don't really know why I keep a blog in the first place.

This time it's for real though.

There's just a few more things that I want to put out here, things that I think are important for everyone to know, basically because I know how important they are to me.

These things can, more or less, all be extracted from I john, so about the time I get through to the end of this particular letter, all will be said.

I have no idea as to how many people or who it is that reads this blog (although I do gratefully acknowledge a handful), but I trust that if there are more things to be said in the "virtual church", (and certainly there are..., just not from me) that they can easily be found elsewhere.

I'm not sure why, exactly, I am putting this out here now as opposed to just saying goodbye at the end of the study.

It could very well be that I want someone to convince me to stay.

How terribly sad.

But I know that my life is moving in a different direction now, and I must be true to what that is and where it's going.

I hope you stick around till the end.

G'night.

First John Part V: Hate or Love? ~OR~ The Old and The New

2007-03-23T12:44:00.000-07:00

"Again, a new commandment I write to you, which thing is true in Him and in you, because the darkness is passing away, and the true light is already shining".

This passage really fascinates me.

John is on the verge, here, of writing something which was true in Christ and true in the church as well.

We'll get to what this "thing" is shortly, but first John wants the church to see why it's true:

"..because the darkness IS PASSING away and the true light IS ALREADY shining".

John wanted to point out the fact that a divine transition was underway.

A move of God.

A move of the Spirit which involved a process of doing away with darkness as it was being replaced with the true light, a light which was already, presently, shining forth!

(Hmmmm..What is "dark"?.Hmmmm. Shadows are dark...Hmmmmm)

Rather than slipping into too much eschatological rhetoric, I'm going to try to keep this in the realm of things personal/spiritual.

That being said, I must remain true to what I believe to be the Lords revelation concerning this portion of scripture.

First, let's look at the next portion of text.

"He who says he is in the light, and hates his brother, is in darkness until now. He who loves his brother abides in the light, and there is no cause for stumbling in him. But he who hates his brother is in darkness and walks in darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes".

The first thing that I notice here is that we are given an illustration of two (kinds of) brothers.

The first one claims to be in the light, although at the same time, he hates his brother.
The second brother loves his brother, and therefore abides in the light and there is no cause for stumbling in him.

The first brother lives and moves in darkness, and he has no sense of where he is going.
He simply cannot see.

Now, allow me to borrow an illustration from Paul's letter to the church in Galatia:

"For it is written that Abraham had two sons:

the one by a bondwoman,

the other by a free woman.

But he who was of the bondwoman was born according to the flesh,

and he of the free woman through promise,

which things are symbolic.

For these are the two covenants:

the one from Mount Sinai which gives birth to bondage, which is Hagar--
for this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and corresponds to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children--

but the Jerusalem above is free, which is the mother of us all.

For it is written:

"Rejoice, O barren,

You who do not bear!

Break forth and shout,

You who are not in labor!

For the desolate has many more children

Than she who has a husband."

Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are children of promise.

But, as he who was born according to the flesh then persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, even so it is now.

Nevertheless what does the Scripture say?

"Cast out the bondwoman and her son, for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the free woman."

So then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman but of the free".

Now I'm going to use Johns writings to complement what we just read from Paul.

(Please don't stumble over my "holy scripture re-mix". I've seen alot worse things done with the text of the bible!!!)

"For it is written that Abraham had two sons: the one by a bondwoman, born according to the flesh, He ... says he is in the light, (but he) hates his brother. (He) is in darkness and (he) walks in darkness.

The other of the free woman through promise. He... loves his brother (and) abides in the light, and there is no cause for stumbling in him.

which things are symbolic.

For these are the two covenants:

the one from Mount Sinai which gives birth to bondage, which is Hagar--
for this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and corresponds to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children--

but the Jerusalem above is free, which is the mother of us all.

Cast out the bondwoman and her son, because the darkness is passing away and the true light IS ALREADY shining; the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the free woman

But, as he who was born according to the flesh then persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, even so it is now, because the darkness IS PASSING away and the true light IS ALREADY shining;"

Now I'd like to also borrow a portion of text from the letter to the Hebrews that offers a very similar statement to those made by John and Paul:

"...He says, "A new covenant," He has made the first obsolete. Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away".

As I said earlier, I don't think it's necessary to get into the technical side of my current eschatolological viewpoint, but on the other hand, there is something here that needs to be extracted from all of this.... something, to me, which is vital.

The darkness has passed away.
It has no place in you.

The old testament law/covenant system is obsolete and has vanished away, to try and hold to it or to live by it will ALWAYS only result in death.

As a matter of fact, to try to live by any form of "legal/spiritual" system is a vain attempt at replacing what the Lord Himself has already established for His people:

The Lord has given us LIFE to be LIVED, not RELIGIONS to be MAINTAINED.

Receive and hold to the Love of God as manifest in Jesus Christ...

This is the thing which was "true in him..." and was also true in those to whom John was writing.

The Love of God.

Embrace His favor towards you.

Fall in love with His mercy.

Bask in His kindness.

ENJOY YOUR LORD, FOR, THROUGH AND IN CHRIST, HE NOW ENJOYS YOU!!!!!!

Want to be a lover?

Spend time with Love Himself.

Get to know Him.

Believe His unbelievable passion for you and be free to return it back to Him again, over and over, receiving and returning His great Love.

This is not hard to do as He is readily found in you and your brothers and sisters.

Share your love, which is His love, with the All in All.

This thing is true in Him and in you. You have no need for me to teach you that whoever loves his brother knows the Lord, and whoever hates his brother is in darkness and the love of God is not in him.

{my summary}

A Brief Look at Gods Character

2007-03-19T11:32:00.000-07:00

Now, borrowing some words from Paul, I'm going to present to you an illustration which might give an insight to the character of our Lord.

John wrote to the church that, "God is love..."

So I am taking the liberty of changing Paul's word "Love" and instead inserting the word "God".

(I'm going to emphasise my favorites.)

	God is patient, God is kind {and} is not jealous; God does not brag {and} is not arrogant,
	God does not act unbecomingly; God does not seek His own, God is not provoked, God does not take into account a wrong {suffered,}
	God does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth;
	God bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
	God never fails. Is this the God that you know? If so, how well do you know Him? Just a little something to consider as we peer into the character of God Maybe use these phrases during meditation or as a tool during prayer.

First John Part IV

2007-03-18T08:44:00.000-07:00

"Brethren, I write no new commandment to you, but an old commandment which you have had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word which you heard from the beginning".

From the beginning of what?

I think that It would be safe to say that John is at least referring to the beginning of our life in Christ.

Perhaps we could go deeper than that, but this will suffice for now.
John says,

"This is nothing new, but it is what our Lord said to us before", 'Love one another as I have loved you..."

So the way of Gods love being circulated within humanity begins with us first receiving the Love of God and then second; sharing this Love with one another.

Elementary right?

Right away the mind begins to drift off into "doctrine land" where we have all of the fundamental scriptural truths worked out in our heads, including the "love one another" doctrine.

We hear it preached from the pulpit and nod our heads in agreement, or we preach it from a blog spot on the Internet and expect to change the world with our insightful revelation of just how simple it is to love one another as Christ loves us.

But this knowledge..., this understanding that we should love one another..., this is not the way.

The way isn't knowing that we are supposed to love one another and then trying to exercise that love.

The way is knowing, in the most intimate sense of the word, by faith and experience, that He first loved us.

How could we possibly expect to ever be those who express the love of God to one another if we have never gotten hold of that love for ourselves?

It just cannot be so.

May the Lord God give us all a deeper revelation of His unconditional Love....

May the eyes of our hearts be opened.

Beautiful Words From a Precious Sister

2007-03-16T16:20:00.000-07:00

This was originally part of a personal email from my wife to a friend of hers at work.

She granted me permission to post it on my blog.

Although I did edit out alot of peronal stuff, the core of the email is here.

Jesus.

Some people cringe at the name, but it is a glorious name...

(...I don't what kind of relationship you have, if any with Him, or if you even believe in Jesus Christ at all, so I'm taking a chance telling you all this.)

...I grew up in the baptist church (building) and came to know the Lord at the age of 9. (I will skip around, not really trying to tell you my whole life story.)

I've struggled with my relationship with the Lord for a long time, never feeling good enough for Him to love me, I guess because I didn't really love myself, or thought myself worthy of his love.

And a lot of that is because of what you are taught in the "building".

... we found out about this group of people that meet in their homes, no preacher, no building, just people with one thing in common, wanting to know the Lord in a more intimate way.

... we lived in, Florida. We came and visited these people in Lithia Springs, Ga., and WOW! They showed me a side of the Lord I didn't know existed. Like, how much He truly loves me!

We really cannot fathom the depths of his love, I still have a hard time with that one, but I KNOW it is true, We, his people, including you, were with Him before the foundations of the earth. He knew us before we even existed.

He sees us as pure and holy, without blemish....

We moved here (Lithia Springs) to be with the church, which I learned the church is the people and not the building. We make up the church. We meet as a group on saturday nights and the ladies would meet one night during the week and the men would meet another night.

I love everyone and so does Jesus. He loves you deeply too!
Thanks for listening.
Missy

Maybe she'll start a blog one day...?

Waiting

2007-03-13T19:21:00.000-07:00

Interesting.

Everytime I go to write my next post on 1st John, I am told to wait.

So I'll wait.

It's really easy to rush through the scriptues as if we were trying to understand it all... as if bible knowledge were the key to Life.

But it's not.

The Life is in Him.

Him.

Him.

First John Part III

2007-03-02T13:25:00.000-08:00

"And He Himself is (the means of appeasing) for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world".

"the means of appeasing"...,that's what the word propitiation means.

Believe it or not, in the story of the Publican and the Pharisee, when the Publican cries out, "God have mercy on me...", that word "mercy" means "to appease yourself".

So then a re-translation could look something like this:

"God, appease Yourself on my behalf..."

Is this not a core element of the gospel?

Isn't it the fact that since we cannot appease Him, that He, in essence, appeases Himself?!

Without one ounce of reservation, I declare to all that only God can satisfy God, and that is, indeed, how He is satisfied.

Does mankind play a part in this?

Absolutely! Mankind is the chosen vessel through whom God expreses this reality, hence the manifestation of the Son of God, and in like manner, the sons of God!

As mankind becomes more aware of the I AM, the self existing God, and begins to see how, this God demonstrated His love as and through the person and "work" of Jesus Christ, we begin to understand that this God is none other than Love Himself.

"...for the whole world".

Wow!
What a statement!

At risk of sounding heretical, I would like to elaborate a bit as to what this statement means to me.
(I'm coming in about midway of the whole "redemption" story here, but anyway...)

God did something big.

He wanted mankind reconciled to Himself and He would accomplish this by breathing into it His eternal Life

This God-nature has the quality of a Love that is so true and so deep, that it is unconditional and universal in nature, a Love that is for the whole world.

Jesus Christ did not come to condemn the world, but rather to restore it through Love.
(It is MAN who does the condemning!)

This Love is self giving and others centered and considers death a worthy experience for the sake of giving Life.

Death could not hold Him, and neither can it hold those of His nature.

Believers in this Love, those who accept it, become vessels to be "filled" with it.
Doubters of this Love, those who refuse to accept it, as long as they doubt, never get to know it in "fullness".

John wanted the church to know it in fullness, as he knew, from experience, that this would result in their being full of Joy.

"I write these things so that your joy (love) would be full".

God has more than enough Love for you.

God has more than enough mercy for you.

God has more than enough grace for you.
Please, do not be proud!!!

Just receive it with thanksgiving!!!

It is impossible for us to know God for who He is if we do not know Him by His love!

"How is that"?

Because God is Love.

Now for the verse that scares the socks off of anyone who has ever been held captive by legalism:

"Now by this we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments".

I still shiver when I see these words.

Why?

Because my first thought always goes back to LAW KEEPING.
What I mean to say is that when I see the word "COMMANDMENT", I automatically begin to think in terms of a "righteousness by works" mentality.

Truth is, if we look back at the gospel of John we find Jesus using almost identical terminology as John.
John 13:33-35
"Little children, I shall be with you a little while longer. You will seek Me; and as I said to the Jews, 'Where I am going, you cannot come,' so now I say to you. A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another."

COMMANDMENTS

entole {en-tol-ay'}

1) an order, command, charge, precept, injunction

a) that which is prescribed to one by reason of his office

2) a commandment

a) a prescribed rule in accordance with which a thing is done

1) a precept relating to lineage, of the Mosaic precept concerning the priesthood

2) ethically used of the commandments in the Mosaic law or Jewish tradition

Now lets look again at Johns letter to the church:

He who says, "I know Him," and does not keep His (commandment), is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps His word, truly the love of God is perfected in him. By this we know that we are in Him. He who says he abides in Him ought himself also to walk just as He walked.

What this portion of scriptures says to me is basically this; "If we are not loving one another, it is simply because we don't know Him (very well)."
"Whenever we know the perfect Love of God, we will be found keeping His word, we will be found loving one another."
"This is how we know that we are in Him and this is how we are to recognize one another."

"If anyone lays claim to being in Him, they ought to also walk just as He walked".

I think this is why so many of us don't talk very much about our Lord.
It is a very difficult thing to publicly say the name "Jesus Christ" when we feel that we, ourselves, aren't living the life that we think we should be living.

Okay. I understand that conviction is a holy thing. I have no problem with that (well, you know what I mean).

But conviction simply affords us an opportunity to be honest with ourselves and with God which in turn results in a fresh start.

Certainly, "God is not mocked", as Paul says. A man (or woman) does, indeed, reap what he (or she) sows. And that's good. That is a wonderful teaching tool. Even those "bitter harvests" are integral parts of Gods sovereign "Godness".

This can, however, become the perfect tool for the enemy to use against the children of God.

This is exactly why John says, "Children, your sins are forgiven. This is just a part of Gods nature. God loves you and has removed all of the things that you think keep you away from Him. He is madly in love with you!"

"I know, and that's why I feel so horrible about the way I am and the things I've done (or haven't done)!"
"I am guilty because of these things. I am wrong because I am not living the christian life."

Let me make a general statement here.

In my opinion, if anyone claims that they are living the "christian life", then they, in my eyes, have disqualified themselves already.

In what have you to boast other than the mercy, grace and Love of God as given you through Jesus Christ?

Nothing.
And you never will.

When the truth of the statement above ceases to ruffle your feathers...

but instead brings a smile to your face...

you will have tasted the true Christian Life.

First John: PART II

2007-03-01T15:11:00.000-08:00

Moving on into chapter two, I'm taking the liberty of re-translating certain words with other alternative legitimate definitions as offered in the STRONGS concordance. These I will italicize and put inside parenthesis.

Now we left off with the understanding that the writers of this letter had something in mind for the recipient. They were writing so that the church would be full of joy.

Now, without branching off into a totally different direction, I would like to point out a couple of things.

They were writing so that the church could be full of joy.
They were not writing in order to save anyone from hell.
They were not writing in order that the believers would become rich or prosperous.
They were not writing to fill their pews.

They were writing so that the church would be full of joy, and this would come about through the eternal life which was from the beginning and it would be accessed by walking in the light of the truth that they were a people who recognized the fact that they were an imperfect people in need of cleansing.

Ironically the recognition of this fact was the very thing that would bring them into fellowship with God, cleansing them from all sin.

Lets get hold of that shall we?!

It is not our trying harder.
It is not our doing better.
It is only by the cleansing power of God as manifest in the Person and Work of His Son, Jesus Christ.

A brother I know put it to me like this," The only thing that I contribute to my salvation is the sin that makes it necessary."

I totally get it.

So now, at this point, lets find out how they regarded this people to whom they were writing.

My little children,
Right off the bat they address some in the church as being "little children".

This, I believe, is the first category of people that John and company wanted to reach. The little ones or even the infants.

When we look at the epistles in the New Testament as letters written to groups of people rather than as a book written to "me" then things begin to become more clear.

When viewed this way we can understand that in a large group of believers (or even in a small group) there is going to be an element of diversity when it comes to spiritual development.

(Personally, I don't think that this, necessarily, has anything to do with time. I think it has more to do with faith. That's just my two cents.)

Here was one letter addressing three general categories of believers, and the first category is of "little children".

...these things I write to you, so that you may not sin.

Again, I want to go bit by bit here.
In our last study we understood that they were writing so that our joy would be "made full".
This fact, when taken to heart, is seen as quite a wonderful thing. Now John elaborates a bit more as to why he is writing this letter. So that we would not (err).

John is saying, "Listen, I really care about you and I want you to have a life of joy, not just having joy, but having abundant joy....that it would be full!

"....So I'm going to tell you some things, some things that will keep you on track..., that will keep you in that abundant joy and I'm sharing these things with you so that you don't go astray".

Sounds like a Father to me.

(But) if anyone (wanders from the path), we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world.

So it is here that we can see that he is giving the "little children" just what they need.

Here is Peter referring to the same thing:

"..as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious".

This is the sincere milk of the word.

"(But) if anyone (wanders from the path), we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins"

It is here that we find our divine foundation.

Since, through the fall, we have become separate from God, He has made a way through His Son (actually HIMSELF) to reconcile us back to Himself.

In other words, since we are messed up, we have Jesus who appeases the Father on our behalf.

This is our starting point, and not only that, but this is such a foundational truth that it is not only where we start, but it is also something that is truly the very core of who we really are.

In other words, as believers, we are who we are because of this very truth.

In the same way that the nutrition from mothers milk, which is in reality a part of the mother, actually becomes a part of her newborn babe, so does the milk of the Word, (an actual part of the Word, which is Christ Himself) become a part of who we really are.

"... he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit".

So then, regardless of where we are in our spiritual walk, we can always appreciate this truth as not only being that which brought us into right standing with the Lord, but as also being that which KEEPS us in right standing with the Lord.

Consider this portion of scripture from the letter written to the Hebrews:

"...Jesus has become a surety of a better covenant. Also there were many priests, because they were prevented by death from continuing. But He, because He continues forever, has an unchangeable priesthood. Therefore He is also able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them.

For such a High Priest was fitting for us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and has become higher than the heavens; who does not need daily, as those high priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for His own sins and then for the people's, for this He did once for all when He offered up Himself."

And later on in the same letter:

"..we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

And every priest stands ministering daily and offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But this Man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God, from that time waiting till His enemies are made His footstool. For by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified".

Wow.

Thank you Lord.
Thank you.

(to be continued...)

First John: PART I

2007-02-27T16:04:00.000-08:00

There seems to be a reoccurring theme going on with me lately...more or less a common question that keeps manifesting itself in one way or another.

The question is basically this:

Do we need to ask for forgiveness in order to receive it?**********

At first glance, just the way the question is presented would indicate that the reception of forgiveness is needed. But do we need to ask for it?

And if so, why?

I'm going to use 1st john as my basis for cracking this thing open to see if we can get to the heart of the matter.

I'm taking out the verse numbers for the sake of smoother reading.

"That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life-- the life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare to you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us-- that which we have seen and heard declare to you, that you also may have fellowship with with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. And these things we write to you that your joy may be full".

First off, I'd like to point out an interesting aspect to the scriptures, at least in the new testament letters, that catches my eye more and more every time I read them.

The word "we" ( or "our" or "us"...you get the picture).

This is the first time that I've noticed it with John, but I have noticed it with Paul as well. Many times (maybe every time) they wrote a letter to a church they would say "WE".
It was a "WE" writing to a "Y'ALL".

It was never really a "ME" writing to a "YOU".

I had already, with the help of others (imagine that), come to realize that the letters were written to a plurality of people, or more accurately groups of people, but I am becoming more aware that even each individual letter was written by a plurality of people.

Let me be more clear. More than one persons heart was involved in what one writers hand put to papyrus.

I think that says it better.

(Yes I know...the Holy Spirit....Yes...I get that...clearly...)

John (and company) had a burden on his heart. There was something that they wanted for the church to whom they were writing.It had to do with their spiritual condition. He wanted them to be full of joy.

This was the work that he wanted accomplished with this letter.

"these things we write to you that your joy may be full".

Now those are some dear brothers and sisters!!!

"We want you to be full of Joy!"

Hmmmmm....

I'm sad to say that is something that I'm just not too familiar with.
The concept of having a person or a group of people who desire that my (OUR) JOY would be FULL!

I've heard many things over the years....

"You need to read your bible", "you need to go to church", "you need to witness", and on and on and on....

But rarely do I hear "We want you to be filled with joy!"

"Oh but that's the goal of doing all those other things...that's the motivation."

You know what? I think some people truly do believe that. But I do not.

I'll give you a clue as to why.

Jesus never said that.
Paul never said that.
Neither did anyone else in the new testament.

The closest thing you'll find to that in the new testament are the Pharisees and Sadducees, and our Lord had many unsettling things to say to them about that very thing.

Anyway.

Lets move on.

Joy.

JOY!!!***************************************

So whats the first thing that John (from here out, I'm going to say "they"...and yes, that includes the Holy Spirit...in a BIG way) wanted to mention is,

"That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life-- the life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare to you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us-- that which we have seen and heard declare to you, that you also may have fellowship with with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.

So there you you have it. These are the things that they wanted to tell the church about in order that their joy would be made full.

"That which was from the beginning...,that eternal life which was with the Father...was manifested to us...that you also may have fellowship with with us; and truly... with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ".

There you have it.
This is what they wanted to share.

This is what, when shared with the church, would cause them to be full of joy.
That was their intention.

That was Gods intention.

And quite frankly, that's my intention.

Eternal Life which was with the Father from the beginning.*********

Lets continue...

"This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all."

Somewhere along the line, the Lord made it clear to them that God is Light.

Let that sink in a minute.

God is Light and in Him there is no darkness at all.

Personally, I think that this is something that has just got to be established.

There is no darkness in God.

God is not a cruel taskmaster.
God is not a twisted sado- masochist.
God is not a spiritual terrorist.
God is not a boogieman.

God is light and in HIM there is no darkness at all.

I'm sorry....take your "Woe is me because God blah, blah, blah...." bologna to someone who doesn't know any better.

Are you free to doubt this?

Sure! Just as you are free to stab yourself in the hand with a butter knife...if that's what you really want to do.

Remember, this is all related to your experiencing Joy.
If you are ever to experience true joy in your life then this is one thing that must be laid hold of.

God is LIGHT.

Yes. Darkness exists, but not in God!!!

"If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth".
So here we are presented a dichotomy.

Fellowship with God vs. Walking in Darkness.*******************

What they are saying here is that you can't have both of these at the same time. To try and do so would simply make one a liar. One who does not practice the truth.

(Please forgive me. I am sure that at this point all of this may be sounding extraordinarily elementary. The reason I am going through all of this is because I want to keep a clear context for the "confession" verse (1:9).

Now, if I am reading this correct, and I believe that I am, you could also derive from this portion of scripture the fact that you can walk in the light with God. As a matter of fact, I would say that this could be called "the normal christian life".

Wonderful fellowship with the Father and the Son and all the saints OUTSIDE of darkness!!!

Wow!

That's good stuff, eh?
Ehmen!

But how is this done?

"But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin".

Walking in the Light*********************************************

Walking in the light, as referred to above, is obviously very closely linked to being cleansed from all sin.

Now again, for most of us, I believe, this is rudimentary stuff; things we learned long ago, soon after our initial "conversion experience".

But let me ask you something.

Which sins did you confess when you "got saved"?

Perhaps there was some specific issue, a very personal sin (aren't they all?), that you were going through when you first called out to the Lord, the "Sin that Broke the Camel Back" so to speak. But what about all the other issues before then?

Or, as someone reminded me the other night, how many sins had you committed prior to the crucifixion of Christ? And yet in his last breath, the Lord Jesus declared that it was "finished", thousands of years before you were even born.

But lets get back on subject here...

What does it mean to "walk in the light?"
Whatever it is, it is a place where He is, and in that place, we have fellowship with one another and in that place the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses US from ALL SIN.

And what are we doing there?
Two things.

We are WALKING and
We are having FELLOWSHIP with one another.

In that place, what condition are we in?

CLEAN!!!!

Now they elaborate a bit more on this "walking in the light".

"If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness".

Okay. There it is. 1:9
The "confession" verse.

Lets take it bit by bit.

"If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us".

I like that.

Notice that it doesn't say,

"If we say that we have no sin, we deceive God, ...".

Nope, Doesn't say that at all does it?

God is aware.
God is not in the DARK.

What God wants, is for us also, to not be in the DARK.

In the darkness, you cannot see.
In the Light, you see perfectly.

It is very difficult to walk very far in the dark before you trip over something that cannot be seen.

In the Light, not only can you clearly see the path on which you are walking, but you are also aware of any obstacles which may be in the way.

"If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us".

So, it's clear then, that if we profess to have no errors in our being or behavior that we are merely deceiving ourselves.
I would take it a step further and say that we are even, at least trying to, deceive one another.

This is where we become liars.
Yep.
Deal with it. (talking to myself here....)

Dishonesty=LIAR

Now then. Is there anything particularly profound about this?
In a sense, yes, because it is truth, and truth by its very nature is profound in itself. However, ironically enough, this is a simple truth.

This should not be a mind shattering revelation to anyone unless, of course, one is walking in darkness and are not willing to admit that they are "imperfect".

Now let me take a minute to address a particular mind-set, one that comes about after having suffered abuse from legalistic power mongers, one that, after being beaten down so badly by the agents of the enemy,has by neccesity, become so fixed on eternal facts, that they fail to see a practical outworking of their inward life.

Although apprehension of eternal truth is the beginning of the path of progress, fixation on those facts alone, when divorced from real earthly life, can sometimes cause one to live in an escapist mentality where, rather than applying those truths to real life, they become the building blocks of a fantasy world in which, as long as one occupies that realm, the true calling of abundant living is left wanting.

But the writer here says that if we say we have no faults...then the truth is not in us.

Now, I can see how an argument could be made to say that John is reffering to those who are starting out in the faith, how in the "infant stages" a recognition of imperfection is neccesary and that as we mature, we become associated only with the eternal truth of our true identity.

Honestly, I think it's something like that...but there is still always a corresponding process which connects the blessed eternal truth of the Glory of our Lord to our earthly, human existence

Think about it.
Here is John (and co.),... many years in the faith, a personal disciple of Jesus Christ in the fleash, a brother worthy of working with local churches, and he says "If we say that we have no sin..."...and Paul speaks about "boasting in...weakness".

Mysterious, I know.
But not really.

Now for something truly mysterious...***************************

"If we say that we have no sin, we decieve ourselves, and the truth is not in us".

Another way to say this?

"If we acknowledge our faults, then the truth is in us, and we are not decieved"

The admittance of sin is equal to the possesion of indwelling Truth.

There's just something about that statement that draws me to a deeper place of the Lord.

This statement is remincent of the things that our Lord declared during his "sermon on the mount":

"Blessed are the poor in spirit,

For theirs is the kingdom of heaven...

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,

For they shall be filled...

And probably the most clear illustation of this truth is given by Jesus and recorded by Luke:

Also He spoke this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others:

"Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, 'God, I thank You that I am not like other men--extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I possess.'

And the tax collector, standing afar off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, 'God, be merciful to me a sinner!'

I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted."

I cannot clarify this message any more than it already is.

There is really no need to elaborate on what is being said here.

And now the biggie:

"If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness".

CONFESSION**************************************************

The word that I am most interested in here is "confess". What does this word mean?

Here it is in the greek:

homologeo

1) to say the same thing as another, i.e. to agree with, assent

2) to concede

a) not to refuse, to promise

b) not to deny

1) to confess

2) declare

3) to confess, i.e. to admit or declare one's self guilty of what one is accused of

3) to profess

a) to declare openly, speak out freely

If we look at the illustration given by Jesus, the publican is heard saying "God, be merciful to me, a sinner!"

Notice what we do not see here.
We do not see, "God, forgive me because today I coveted my neighbors lawnmower!"

Or "God, let me read you my list of offenses that I have commited today..."

Don't get me wrong. Just because these ways aren't referred to in the above passages of scripture doesn't mean that they are "wrong". All that I am saying is that this is not the way our Lord put forth in the parable given.

And that word "sins"in 1st John 1:9, according to my strongs concordance, could just as easily be translated "sin" as a state or principle as it is translated "sins" as indivual acts of transgression.

(Actually I think I "get" the first definition given there; "to be without share in". "Singleness" or even better "Seperateness". More on that some other time....)

Heres the Greek translation:
sins~
hamartia

1)a) to be without a share in

b) to miss the mark

c) to err, be mistaken

d) to miss or wander from the path of uprightness and honour, to do or go wrong

e) to wander from the law of God, violate God's law, sin

2) that which is done wrong, sin, an offence, a violation of the divine law in thought or in act

3) collectively, the complex or aggregate of sins committed
either by a single person or by many

So we see that it could (and does) mean:
A particular act (lying, killing, stealing etc, etc...) or..
A way (to miss or wander from the path of uprightness and honour, to do or go wrong)

For Paul it was basically "I'm a wretched man!"
For the publican it was, "...me a sinner!"

Certainly there are specific things that need specific attention, but I don't think that Jesus or John had a "legal" approach when it came to confession.

Personally, my confession is usually along the lines of "arrrghhhuuuhhhghhh....."

or maybe "what a mess I am!"
Some times even "I'm a piece of $#*&!"

Either way it should be accompanied with a genuine sense of humilty. I think thats the point.

"...for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted."

They go on to reiterate...

"If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us".

Let me try to sum all of this up in paraphrase and then I'll (finally) let you go until next time...

"This is the message of His Word:

All have sin. This includes you. This is the truth.
If you agree with Me, then you are in the Light and the Truth is in you.
If you agree with me on this, then Eternal life is yours. We can walk, together, in the Light and you are clean.

Now your Joy may be full!!!!

If you disagree with Me, then you are already in darkness and we cannot have fellowship.
You will not let me cleanse you because you think you are not dirty and that is your problem. Agree with me on this. Please."

Personally, I think this pretty much sums up this portion of scripture. Of course there are deeper truths to be discovered here, but I think this is the general message of the text given above.

Well,this has been beneficial for me as, like I said earlier, this topic has come up several times in several different ways lately, and now I am reminded of the joy that the Lord can give when we humble ourselves before our God and become living vessels of His glory.

I hope that you also enjoyed reading this, and maybe you will also experience (or continue to experience) what it means to have your "joy be made full".

Here's a Good Read.....

2007-02-26T14:56:00.000-08:00

(If the link below is non-clickable, just copy and paste it into your address bar)

http://articles.christiansunite.com/article5710.shtml

More Than Words

2007-02-23T16:03:00.000-08:00

It's too bad that words, when used too often, can really lose their "punch".

Here is a very basic statement that has been around for a very long time.
It's a simple one.

"God loves you".

Is it just me or is it just not as moving as it once was.

My mind reels as I ponder all the reasons why this could be so.

Maybe it's because so many people who have declared those word are the very same people who would just as well burden you with guilt and shame.

Or maybe it's because although we've heard those words a thousand times, somehow we just fail to see that love demonstrated in a practical manner.

Perhaps it's because we have commited some error or practiced some way of living that creates, in our mind, a barrier between God and us

Hmmmm.

I suppose there could be many reasons why we grow insensitive to this type of thing.

Married?
How does "I love you" affect you these days?

How about "Thank you", or "You're welcome".

How do you feel when you come home to your family, your spouse or your children.
Are you glad to see them or has everything and everyone become little more than different parts of a monotonus routine?

Take a minute.

Let go.

You are here and now.

Listen to what is being said.

Say what you mean and mean what you say.

This very moment is the only one you have ever had.

This moment never ends.

Take no thought for your life.

Now

In this moment

KNOW

God Loves You.

It is really true.

Yes, it is really true.

GOD

LOVES

YOU

Practice this way, and you will find LIFE.

EDITED Can You Believe that I Almost Actually Posted this...

2007-02-20T16:22:00.000-08:00

CHRISTIANS MAKE ME SICK!!!

***********************************************************************
Wow. I'm glad that I didn't really post that! That statement would have probably been really misunderstood.

What I am talking about are the self-righteous, self-centered,judgemental,manipulative,religious,groups and individuals who, by their character and behavior, give our Lord a bad name.

Of course I am not that way because I am on a much deeper level than they are.
If they would only spend two hours a day sitting with the Lord in meditation, like myself, and if they only had a better grasp on the scriptures, like me, then maybe I could tolerate them.

Oh well.

It's a good thing that I didn't post that.

*******************************************************
Okay. I decided that I should probably go ahead and point out the "tongue-in-cheek" meaning behind this post.

While it is absolutely true that, yes, people who demonstrate the above stated attitudes and behaviors make me want to at least grab them by their...well lets just say that they really irritate me,I still must recognize that my attitude in feeling this way about others, this vengeful, intolerate feeling that comes over me puts me in the same category as them.

Not to mention, for me to assume that I am in any positon to judge those of this mentality, or in other words, for me to assume that I am already in some other category, reveals much about my own disposition and heart attitude.

If I do anything other than love them, I have already judged myself.

Thank You Lord, for your Love.

TRADITION

2007-02-17T14:53:00.000-08:00

From the latter days of the Apostles till now, the history of Christianity is a history of prisons. This history is not of literal or material prisons, though there have been not a few of these. It is a history of prisons, which are the result of man's long established habit of bringing the Spirit into bondage.

How many times has the Spirit broken loose and moved in a new and free way only to have that way brought under man's control and crystallized into another form, creed, organization, denomination, sect, order, community, or the like! The invariable result has been that the Spirit's free movement and life has been cramped or even killed by the prison of the framework into which He has been drawn or forced.

Every time we seek to express something divine in word or form, we at once limit it. When that expression or form becomes the established and recognized formula, we have, in effect, put fetters on the Spirit. God gives a vision, and every God-given vision has unlimited potential and possibilities. But all too soon the vision is laid hold of by men who never received it by the Spirit. Then the grapes of Eschol turn to raisins in their hands. So very many of the living fruits of the heavenly country have suffered in this way and become dried, shrunken, and unctionless shadows of their early glory.

Successors, sponsors, or adherents build an earthly organization on a living movement of the Spirit, born with fire in the heart of some prophet. They imprison the vision in a tradition. A message becomes a creed; a heavenly vision becomes an earthly institution; a movement of the Spirit becomes a work, which must be kept going by the steam of human energy and maintained by man's resourcefulness.

Any real (or seeming) departure or diversion from the recognized and traditional order of creed or practice will sooner or later become heresy, to be violently suspected, repressed, and cast out. What was, at its beginning, a spiritual energy-producing living organism, expressing something that God really wanted and to which He gave birth has too often become something which the next generation has to sustain and struggle hard at to keep going. The thing has developed a self-interest, and it will go hard with anyone or anything interfering or seeming to interfere with it. The Spirit has become the prisoner of the institution or system, and as a result the people become limited spiritually.

All along the way the Spirit must be referred to and deferred to. In anything in which the Spirit may have His liberties limited, the Spirit will be a rebel. And if He is in us, He will make us to rebel against unspiritual restrictions.

~T.AUSTIN SPARKS

Here or There?

2007-02-14T13:43:00.000-08:00

There's a place that I am growing more and more familiar with that, when I think or speak about things from that place, I can say certain things that are absolutely true about that place.

There is another place, though, that if you are there and you are listening to someone from the other place, you just cannot see what they are talking about.

The ideas are too wonderful and the words are just too good to be true.

I really don't have any secrets as to how you get from one place to the other. I could say that a certain "knowledge" would get you there, but only if you are ready for that knowledge.

Don't get me wrong here. I'm not the all wise "answer man".
Like yourself, I only know what I know.

Maybe the best thing to do, would be to truly desire to move on to a new place, a place where things must be better, fuller, more...Godder.

I'm really speaking about the personal level here, truly desiring to experience wholeness, honestly desiring freedom and desperately seeking reality.

The Lord is faithful to give you these desires if you really want them. In fact He already has.

I remember my kung fu teacher telling me one time, "You are sitting on a gold mine. All you have to do is dig."

It's really something like that.

I'm not talking about a works equals rightousness kind of faith.

I am talking about an honest desire for experienced union with God.

The beauty of all of this is that the desire you have and the thing you desire are both One.

One Spirit.

free form pushing hands

2007-02-13T17:07:00.001-08:00

Push Hands

2007-02-13T16:49:00.000-08:00

Visited a Tai Chi push hands group on sunday. It's been about a year or so since I've trained with anyone and a couple of years prior to that.

(No the guys above aren't who I was training with, just wanted to give you an idea of what I was talking about)

Humbling.

But good.

It's a bitter- sweet thing to rub elbows with those who present tough challenges.

Push hands was a drill that I never spent much time with. Not until several years after training in the hard stuff. Even then, after only a couple of lessons with a really great teacher, I more or less conceptualized my own method of push hands, and was therefore limited in any deep understanding or experience with it.

Neat drill though.

For those of you unfamiliar with martial arts lingo, "push hands" is more or less a sensitivity drill where you learn the finer subtlties of movement and body mechanics, while at the same time it acts as a bridge between the techniques you learn in your forms or "katas" and your ability to apply them in sparring or actual self defence situations.

There are people who will say that those kinds of drills are a waste of time, and there are those who will say that it is vital to realistic martial training.

I guess I fall somewhere in-between.

Do I want to go back again this weekend?

I dunno. I'm pretty sore.

I hope everyone is well.

SOMETHING YOU MUST UNDERSTAND!

2007-02-08T13:56:00.000-08:00

blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,
blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,
blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,
blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,
blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,
blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,
blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,
blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,
blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,
blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,
blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,
blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,
blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,
blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,blah,

Have a nice day!

The Weak and The Strong

2007-02-06T14:45:00.000-08:00

First off I want to say that I'm not picking on vegetarians here. And neither was Paul. In this portion of scripture, Paul was trying to make a very important point.

I believe that it's important to keep in mind that this letter to the church in Rome was written to a group of people. I would even say that there is a fair chance that when it was received, it was probably read to the whole, or at least to a good portion of, the church there.

In that group there were obviously a variety of different opinions or convictions, if you will, about many different kinds of things.

Apparently diet was one of those issues.

"Receive one who is weak in the faith, but not to disputes over doubtful things. For one believes he may eat all things, but he who is weak eats only vegetables".

Well, Paul didn't have a problem discerning this issue as a matter of faith, and as a matter of fact, neither do I.

Here to the whole church, to the weak and the strong, to the vegetarians and the carnivores, Paul exhorts the strong to receive the weak.

How many of us can relate to this?

How many of us have some issue where we just know that we know that we are free to do the thing we do and we all but condemn another because they are just too "religious" or just too rigid?
Paul's exhortation is this, "Receive them".

Why?

So that we don't get caught up in disputes over the things that are in question.

It is all too clear. Some believe and some don't.

Oh my, how hard a lesson this is for anyone!

Remember, this was read before all.

"Let not him who eats despise him who does not eat, and let not him who does not eat judge him who eats; for God has received him. Who are you to judge another's servant? To his own master he stands or falls. Indeed, he will be made to stand, for God is able to make him stand".

Okay Mr. FancyFaith...

That's right. YOU ARE FREE, but don't think you've got it all together.

Don't you dare despise that brother or sister for their weakness.

Paul makes it abundantly clear that if God receives someone, we sure as heck ought to do the same, REGARDLESS of their strength (or weakness)!

Besides, that great faith that you are sporting around, that didn't come from you, it came from the Lord.

And you, oh Ye of Little faith...

Misery loves company, no?. Just because you don't walk in the same freedom your brother or sister does, that doesn't mean that you have the right to take theirs away!

It's best not to worry too much about how we think others should conduct their lives, rather it's best to know that it is only by the Lord Himself that any of us can stand before Him.

"One person esteems one day above another; another esteems every day alike. Let each be fully convinced in his own mind. He who observes the day, observes it to the Lord; and he who does not observe the day, to the Lord he does not observe it".

Here we have another issue. Although, I'm not completely sure of what the exact context of this passage is, I think we could draw a fair comparison to "holidays"...or "holy-days", if you will.
Hey, how about even religious days?

Years ago, for me, this would have been Sunday morning and Wednesday night. For some people it's Saturday. For others it's Christmas or birthdays, or whatever. Whatever they are, they are days that are "set apart" from others. To me, it's easy to express that all of these different days really don't mean anything and the beauty of it is, is that I am free to believe that!

Not only that, but I am free to be FULLY persuaded in my own mind about that!
And so are you, concerning what you believe about it. FULLY PERSUADED!

Notice that Paul does not tell us to FULLY PERSUADE our brothers and sisters of our own personal convictions!!!

How does this all work? Because those who observe the days, do it as to the Lord, and those who do not observe the days DO NOT OBSERVE them to the Lord.

"He who eats, eats to the Lord, for he gives God thanks; and he who does not eat, to the Lord he does not eat, and gives God thanks. For none of us lives to himself, and no one dies to himself. For if we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. Therefore, whether we live or die, we are the Lord's".

Wow! So much is being said here, but if I were given the chance to sum it all up here (which, thanks to Blogger, I am given that chance ;) I would say it like this. "Don't worry about it. WE ARE THE LORDS! No matter what, WE ARE THE LORDS!!!!

When this becomes our preoccupation, the fact that we are His and He is ours and that this is true regardless of what we eat, drink, think, observe, do, do not do, etc, etc... , when this becomes a living reality and the very core of our lives, then we have much better things to do than to sit around condemning and despising one another because of our not seeing eye to eye on these issues!!!

"For to this end Christ died and rose and lived again, that He might be Lord of both the dead and the living".
"Why do you judge your brother? Or why do you show contempt for your brother? For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ. For it is written:

"As I live, says the Lord,

Every knee shall bow to Me,

And every tongue shall (give praise to) God."

(I took the liberty of re translating the word "confess" to "give praise to" as that is an acceptable, and I believe much more accurate translation, found in the STRONGS concordance, than "confess". I also removed the word "to" between the words "confess" and "God" as it is not in the original Greek text)

Paul drives his last comment home with this simple statement concerning the universal nature of the supreme Lord of ALL.

He is the Lord of...
the strong , the tempted and the weak.

The faithful, the carnal and the fallen.

The lost, the found, the good the bad and the ugly.

You name it. He is Lord.

So why do you show contempt? Why do you judge?

"So then each of us shall give account of himself to God. Therefore let us not judge one another anymore, but rather resolve this, not to put a stumbling block or a cause to fall in our brother's way".

I think the last thing that I want to do is to stand before God, knowing that He knows that I had taken it upon myself to take over His position as judge. I don't want to do that anymore, instead, rather than becoming a judge, I'd rather keep my freedom to myself.

I don't want anyone tripping on my freedom.

"I know and am convinced by the Lord Jesus that there is nothing unclean of itself; but to him who considers anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean".

I could never describe how true this statement rings in my heart.

"Yet if your brother is grieved because of your food, you are no longer walking in love. Do not destroy with your food the one for whom Christ died".

Apparently grieving ones brother is a pretty big deal. I know that it is.
Paul likens it to DESTRUCTION. And he does it in a way that puts everything back into perspective.

How could one's freedom bring him to a place of walking outside of love?
When it destroys (the conscience of) his brother.
It's because even our freedom becomes self centered when we become inconsiderate of others.

"Therefore do not let your good be spoken of as evil; for the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. For he who serves Christ in these things is acceptable to God and approved by men.
Therefore let us pursue the things which make for peace and the things by which one may edify another. Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food".

Basically, don't consider your personal freedom to be higher than the value of your relationships with others.
With freedom comes great responsibility.

"All things indeed are pure, but it is evil for the man who eats with offense. It is good neither to eat meat nor drink wine nor do anything by which your brother stumbles or is offended or is made weak".

Oh the irony of it all!
"Everything is pure and acceptable so long as it doesn't bother you or anyone else".
I would dare argue with Paul about this if it weren't for my own "weakness'"!!!

And yet here is Pauls rebuttal to my two-cents....

"Do you have faith? Have it to yourself before God. Happy is he who does not condemn himself in what he approves. But he who doubts is condemned if he eats, because he does not eat from faith; for whatever is not from faith is sin".

Holy Smokes (no offense)!!!

The Holy Spirit hits every point imaginable concerning this situation (by the way, in case you haven't figured it out yet, that's what these "epistles" were dealing with...situations. Real people, real places, real things going on amongst them).

After spending most of his time and energy humbling the "strong" ones in the faith, he turns around with a bit of a subtle challenge to the weak.

You may have to read between the lines a bit to see it, but that's where it is!
"Where?", you ask?

Think about it...
There were certainly a good number of people sitting around the place wherever this letter was read.
A myriad of various convictions.
Some folks were mad with other folks because they had been judged negatively in regards to their freedom in certain things they were doing.

Other folks were troubled because they had just been called a bunch of religious prudes by some hedonistic scallywags who seemed to be way out of line from the status quo.

Paul levels the field by reminding us all, that we all belong to the Lord and that we should neither despise one another for our convictions, nor should we judge one another for our freedoms.

It would seem, judging by the content of these passages, that he is "harder" on the "strong" and "easier" on the weak, very much akin to the way a father might treat his own children (another topic for another time perhaps...), but the truth is that he gives no more than what can be handled and what he gives is, in reality, just right.

So where is the challenge to the weak?

Well, after poking at the strong for flaunting their liberty and considering their own enjoyment of things to be more important than the welfare of their siblings consciences he turns and says to them all,

"Do you have faith? Have it to yourself before God. Happy is he who does not condemn himself in what he approves".

"What? You mean it's possible to enjoy (those things) in righteousness? You mean faith equals happiness? You mean that it is possible to (do those things) without feeling condemned?"

But he who doubts is condemned if he eats, because he does not eat from faith; for whatever is not from faith is sin".

"You mean that doubt equals condemnation?"

I say ,"Yep. Hasn't that been the message all along?".

Think about it.

WHAT IF?

2007-02-01T13:54:00.000-08:00

Well I've temporarily put off the reading of Furious Pursuit: Why God Will Never Let You Go, by Tim King and Frank Martin

www.timkingbooks.com/home.html
www.presence.tv/cms/index.php

as I'm in search of a few brothers and sisters to go through it with me. Reason being is that there is a workbook which goes along with it which is designed for group discussion and interaction.

I Like what I've read so far though.

What if God didn't want to scare us into relationship with Him?

What if He didn't want to buy our love with His many blessings?

What if God wanted a relationship where we were willing to pursue Him, even honestly desiring to get to know Him better?

I like the way that sounds, and the more I get to know the Lord, the more it rings true in my own heart.
****************************************************************************************
Speaking of "what ifs", I have a few more for you.

It's not really a stretch at all for most christians to agree that the bible, the holy scriptures, were given and recorded to bring mankind to Christ.

Even those with the most legalistic mindsets, if they are to call themselves a "believer" (at least in the way I understand things....ugh...wait. That's a whole other conversation there....), that they do so on the merit of Jesus Christ and not themselves. Is this not the gospel?

So then if we can agree that the scriptures are to do what Jesus Himself says they are supposed to do...:

Jn, 5:39,40
You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me. But you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life.

...then we can say, at least in the way Jesus saw things, the scriptures were ultimately to point towards eternal life through Him.

What a far cry from so much of what is taught in the "churches" today!

So what is my point here?
Where are the "what ifs" that I was getting at?

First, can we say that what Jesus was talking about has been fulfilled? Can we say that the scriptures (He was at least referring to the old testament) testified of Jesus Christ.
Is it fair to say that all the incredible prophecies, and the types and the shadows were merely pictures of a much greater reality to come and that the true reality has come, indeed, in the person of Jesus Christ?

Has not the old testament done it's "job" of proclaiming and testifying of the Lord Jesus Christ?

Have not these types and shadows been replaced by One who is New and better regardless if I have failed to see it, or if you have failed to see it?

Has not the old gone out and the New come in?

My believing this only makes it true to me , which therefore ,should also make it true to those around me. Now if I believe this, how could I possibly credit that belief to myself? I did not initiate these things!

My disbelief in this would not negate the truth of it, but only the entering into that truth for myself and the hindrance it creates to, what could be, my enjoyment of taking part in it.

But as I have already stated, I am not the instigator of this divine reality, but it is Him!! He will still pursue!

So again, what if...

What if the bible is a book of fulfilled prophecy?
Haven't we, in some way, already covered this ground here?
Haven't we already established the fact that "believers" know that Christ is the point?

What if the bible was never meant to be used as a tool for any other means than to testify of Jesus Christ.

What if once that is finished, then the bible is finished?

I know..,"You're treading on thin ice here, brother..."

But am I really?

I'll add to the fires of my own destruction here with another question.

What if Jesus Christ came and finished His work, with everything that entails, and has set everything in order for the realization of the Kingdom of God and therefore no longer needs men to speak prophecies nor perform miracles, for these things were done only for a time which WAS to come and NOW IS?

" I will put My laws in their mind and write them on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.

None of them shall teach his neighbor, and none his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord,'

for all shall know Me..."

Believe it or not, I'm not talking about the Lord being irrelevant or out of the picture.
I'm talking about Him BEING the ALL in ALL.

Hmmmmm...
What if?

Continual Abiding

2007-01-29T07:11:00.000-08:00

I should have an internet connection at home soon. This means that I won't have to rush my blogging time during free moments at work and quick trips to the library.

I recently started reading a book entitled "Furious Pursuit" by Tim King and Frank Martin, and plan to blog about my perspectives and experiences of their presentation of the gospel.

In the meantime, make yourself at home and have a little Grubb....

Continual Abiding

~Norman P. Grubb

"There is a simplicity of the life. But it does mean sin-sensitiveness; that’s a tremendous verse isn’t it? “If my eye is single it is full of light; if it’s anything else but a single sight of Jesus, it is evil.” Let me call it what it is. A verse that lines up in my mind with that and is much the same is in Romans 14:23, the last phrase of the last verse.

It says it in another connection but we can pick it out I think quite fairly and make it a general statement: “For whatsoever is not of faith is sin.” Well faith is seeing Jesus, of course. We have the faith of Jesus for we see Jesus. Of course we do. Faith is believing Jesus, seeing Him in our hearts, and knowing Him. That’s believing Jesus. So faith is seeing Jesus. “Whatsoever is not of faith is sin” is the same idea. The moment I am not seeing Jesus in a situation, the moment I am not seeing Christ in my neighbour (as Brother Thompson told us in an earlier meeting), the moment I am not seeing Christ in a crisis, or Christ in a difficulty, I am sinning because it’s not of faith. I’m not seeing Jesus; I’m seeing something else. That’s evil. Not to see Jesus is evil. That’s big!

I’ve got to see Jesus in every one of my neighbours. I’ve got to see Jesus potentially even in the lost, those for whom, though there was only one on earth, He would have died. I’ve got to see Jesus in every circumstance, not a single circumstance but that it’s Jesus coming to me. That, I take it, is what Paul meant when he made that terrific statement around which I circle in my mind again and again and wonder at: “To me, to live is Christ.” That doesn’t leave much else, does it? “To me, to live is Christ.” That’s a single eye. Every circumstance, every person is just Christ to him. That’s this life. Anything less than that is sin, because it veils Him."

Karuizawa Japan Conference of 1954Topic: “Daily Walk in the Spirit”
www.NormanGrub.com

2007-01-26T05:43:00.000-08:00

Hope for tomorrow, only delivers from today

living in the moment, keeps the gremlins all away

looking forward in the sky
for that ever coming pie

never ever dare say "try"

or they'll punch you in the eye!

So I hope for tomorrow

maybe then... we'll live right now

got my eye on the sky
don't touch that golden cow

Is walking just a fantasy?
will we ever tire of milk?
His burdens all still weigh the same
not iron, brother, silk

Oh, the irony, what I believe!
so hard, some things to say!
yet a wonderful and pricless thing
to walk on in the way...

TURNING

2007-01-10T14:29:00.000-08:00

II Corinthians 3:14- 17

"But their minds were hardened; for to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away.

Yes, to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their minds;

"but when a man turns to the Lord the veil is removed.
Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom".

Wow! there is so much being said in this portion of scripture, is there not?

I guess what I want to say right now is that there is only one thing that removes the veil between us and the glory, the very presence of God....

"...when (one) turns to the Lord, the veil is REMOVED".

REALIZE

2007-01-04T10:08:00.000-08:00

Today was the first day in a week that I got out of bed before 10:00.

Been on holiday break...kind of a vacation really from work.

It's been great!

Just in time too. I was beginning to get,... no let's face it. I was already in a pretty deep funk there for a while.

Interestingly enough though, even my "funks" seem to be less intense than they used to.

I think it's because, little by little, I'm waking up to more and more reality.
As time goes by I learn to try a little less at becoming who I already am.

When I find myself trying, I become increasingly aware of the awkwarness of it. It's kind of like a built in check system. It's a good thing.

"Funks", for me, often involve a period of "unrest". I think, more often than not, they are based on the pursuit of things not true. Illusion.

Once the illusion is carefully articulated in the mind, built up by the ideas and imaginations of myself and others, and set upon the altar, it can become quite a beautiful thing.

So beautiful in fact, it tempts me to worship, to love and adore it. Often, it recieves the attention it desires.

It's a shame.

But it's also a learning experience.

Over and over my Lord whispers the same things to me...,

"that's not it"

"what are you doing that for?"

"I Am enough"

"Please stop that"

"If you insist, but I'm not hanging around while you do it"
I'm learning to not kick agianst the "spurs" and it's freeing me up tremendously.
The beautiful thing about it is that it is totally "Spirit". I don't know how else to say it.

I cringe at the idea of needing to follow a religious pattern in order to be able to fellowship with my Lord. No matter how simple it is.

However when I "realize"....then this is LIFE!!!

I can wake up and realize that I am not a seperated individual from God or my fellowman, but instead that I am One with the One who is the All in All.

To exist in this truth, regardless of how mysterious it is, is to find true Life. It is the ONLY true Life.

I need not practice any formula or ritual to "walk in the light", rather I acknowledge that I am in the Light because that is where I am.

God died for us and God lives for us and we find ourselves existing within this One.

Likewise we live for God and we die for God...or...

We live in God and we die in God, either way, we are GODs.

In another respect...
We die for one another and we live for one another and we are One body.

To draw lines of seperation between those who are Gods is to again raise the wall of petition between the jews and the greeks, the male and the female. This is to try and undo the work of The Son Himself.

We may find things of common interest with only a few, and that is fine. To me, that's just a bonus.
The true gift is seeing beyond the flesh, beyond the things that we just don't agree on, to the source of our true core commonality.

We share the same "Father"!!! We share the same Life!!! We share the same LOVE!!!

That may not settle well with you. God knows it rarely does with me, but the eyes of my HEART are opening more and more all the time.

Even to try and distinguish between the wheat and the tares is a task that we were not only never given, but commanded to avoid!!!

Ahhh...
I've said too much...

But I'm not going to take the time to erase it. Let it be said.

Have a nice day!

2006-12-28T06:53:00.001-08:00

"Christianity started out in Palestine as a fellowship; it moved to Greece and became a philosophy; it moved to Italy and became an institution; it moved to Europe and became a culture; it came to America and became an enterprise. "

~Sam Pascoe, American scholar

Here I AM

2006-12-22T08:54:00.000-08:00

On my way to work I began thinking about the human body...how the cells make up the different parts, or truly how they make up the body in general.

I began to wonder if it was my cells that "think" and live and work in order to create me or if it is me, myself, who, by eating, drinking, breathing, moving, and resting that gives "birth" to my cells (and molecule, atoms, etc...).

It's my belief that "I" have existed before the formation of my physical body, that "I" have always been a part of, and inside of the very creator and the essence of Life itself.

At God's appointed time, "I" was introduced to the physical world at conception in my mothers womb. This took place, physically, at the microcsopic level, even the sub-atomic level, where the physical, the chemical, the atomic, etc...was introduced to the essential, the spiritual, even the divine.

"My" body was made for "Me". I AM first...but I AM meant for my Body.

My body, and the many different aspects of my body do not have a life of their own, they simply contain Me and in that sense I am the Life of My body.

My body is My residence and My vehicle.

In it I do all that I do...but most importantly it is how and where I express that I AM.

My nature is Light.
My nature is Love.

I have no need to strive to be Me, for I AM.

My ears do not try to be ears, nor do they question the validity of my eyes. They just Are.

Failure?

Fall?

My Nature will not allow that.

My Nature exists in a realm beyond those things.

Do you believe Me?

I Looked death in the face, plunged through him and came out on the other side, carrying you with Me.

Do you believe Me?

Do not be afraid

Do not be afraid

Do not be afraid

Do not be afraid

Do you believe Me?

Do not be afraid

Do not be afraid

Do not be afriad

Do not be afraid

What If Jack Handy Were a Christian Mystic?

2006-12-13T05:56:00.000-08:00

Maybe you'd get something like this:

So which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Which one is Christ and which one is the church?

Maybe Christ is the Chicken which contains the egg which contains the chicken which contains the egg....... on and on for infinity.

Bonhoeffers Letter to Eberhard Bethge (1944)

2006-12-12T09:52:00.000-08:00

Below are some excerpts from a letter written by D. Bonhoeffer:

... You would be surprised, and perhaps even worried, by my theological thoughts and the conclusions that they lead to; and this is where I miss you most of all, because I don't know anyone else with whom I could so well discuss them to have my thinking clarified. What is bothering me incessantly is the question what Christianity really is, or indeed who Christ really is, for us today.

The time when people could be told everything by means of words, whether theological or pious, is over, and so is the time of inwardness and conscience ― and that means the time of religion in general. We are moving towards a completely religionless time; people as they are now simply cannot be religious any more. Even those who honestly describe themselves as "religious" do not in the least act up to it, and so they presumably mean something quite different by "religious."

Our whole nineteen-hundred-year-old Christian preaching and theology rest on the "religious a priori" of mankind. "Christianity" has always been a form ― perhaps the true form ― of "religion." But if one day it becomes clear that this a priori does not exist at all, but was historically conditioned and transient form of human self-expression, and if therefore man becomes radically religionless ― and I think that that is already more or less the case ... what does that mean for "Christianity?"

It means that the foundation is taken away from the whole of what has up to now been our "Christianity," and that there remain only a few "last survivors of the age of chivalry," or a few intellectually dishonest people, on whom we can descend as "religious." Are they to be the chosen few? Is it on this dubious group of people that we are to pounce in fervor, pique, or indignation, in order to sell them our goods? Are we to fall upon a few unfortunate people in their hour of need and exercise a sort of religious compulsion on them? If we don't want to do all that, if our final judgment must be that the western form of Christianity, too, was only a preliminary stage to a complete absence of religion, what kind of situation emerges for us, for the church?

How can Christ become the Lord of the religionless as well? Are there religionless Christians? If religion is only a garment of Christianity ― and even this garment has looked very different at different times ― then what is a religionless Christianity? ....For the religionless working man (or any other man) nothing decisive is gained here. The questions to be answered would surely be:

What do a church, a community, a sermon, a liturgy, a Christian life mean in a religionless world?

How do we speak of God ― without religion, i.e. without the temporally conditioned presuppositions of metaphysics, inwardness, and so on?

How do we speak (or perhaps we cannot now even "speak" as we used to) in a "secular" way about "God?"

In what way are we "religionless-secular" Christians, in what way are we the εκ-κλησια, those who are called forth, not regarding ourselves from a religious point of view as specially favored, but rather as belonging wholly to the world?

In that case Christ is no longer an object of religion, but something quite different, really the Lord of the world. But what does that mean?

What is the place of worship and prayer in a religionless situation?

Does the secret discipline, or alternatively the difference .....between the penultimate and ultimate, take on a new importance here?....
The Pauline question whether περιτομη [circumcision] is a condition of justification seems to me in present-day terms to be whether religion is a condition of salvation. Freedom from περιτομη is also freedom from religion.

I often ask myself why a "Christian instinct" often draws me more to the religionless people than to the religious, by which I don't in the least mean with any evangelizing intention, but, I might almost say, "in brotherhood."

While I'm often reluctant to mention God by name to religious people ― because that name somehow seems to me here not to ring true, and I feel myself to be slightly dishonest (it's particularly bad when others start to talk in religious jargon; I then dry up almost completely and feel awkward and uncomfortable) ― to people with no religion I can on occasion mention him by name quite calmly and as a matter of course.

Religious people speak of God when human knowledge (perhaps simply because they are too lazy to think) has come to an end, or when human resources fail ― in fact it is always the deus ex machina that they bring on to the scene, either for the apparent solution of insoluble problems, or as strength in human failure ― always, that is to say, exploiting human weakness or human boundaries. Of necessity, that can go on only till people can by their own strength push these boundaries somewhat further out, so that God becomes superfluous as a deus ex machina.

I've come to be doubtful of talking about any human boundaries (is even death, which people now hardly fear, and is sin, which they now hardly understand, still a genuine boundary today?). It always seems to me that we are trying anxiously in this way to reserve some space for God; I should like to speak of God not on the boundaries but at the center, not in weaknesses but in strength; and therefore not in death and guilt but in man's life and goodness....

All the very best. Your Dietrich

The Need for Joy

2006-12-11T10:07:00.000-08:00

Since ancient times, acidia - sorrowfulness of the heart, "resignation" - has been one of the deadly sins. "Serve the Lord with gladness" (Ps. 100:2) summons us to the Scriptures. This is what our life has been given to us for, what it has been preserved for up till now.

Joy belongs, not only to those who have been called home, but also to the living, and no one shall take it from us. We are one with them in this joy, but never in sorrow....Joy dwells with God; it descends from God and seizes spirit, soul, and body, and where this joy has grasped us it grows greater, carries us away, opens closed doors.

There is a joy which knows nothing of sorrow, need, and anxiety of the heart; it has no duration, and it can only drug one for the moment. The joy of God has been through the poverty of the crib and the distress of the cross; therefore it is insuperable, irrefutable. It does not deny the distress where it is, but finds God in the midst of it, indeed precisely there; it does not contest the most grievous sin, but finds forgiveness in just this way; it looks death in the face, yet finds life in death itself.

We are concerned with this joy which has overcome. It alone is worth believing; it alone helps and heals.

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer - Letters and Papers from Prison 197-198

from A Year with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Carla Barnhill, Ed., HarperSan Francisco, 2005

Now A Word From Brother Neil....

2006-12-06T06:14:00.000-08:00

This is just something that I came across today (for the first time).

Good stuff, Neil!
http://www.christinyall.com/articles/lessons.html

Farewell

2006-11-21T09:38:00.000-08:00

Well....

Although I can't be sure that I will never post here (or anywhere) again, I can't help but to acknowledge the fact that I'm not sure why I keep posting my thoughts.

I have resigned "permanently" from the blogosphere before only to come back after a short break...more of a vacation, I suppose.

But this time things are a bit different.

As I've said before, there are some things that are more relevent to me now (and hopefully for the rest of my life), things like just being who I am.

So now I say I will let my good-bye be just that, a good bye.

May we all continuously find ourselves within the unfolding Mystery of life in our Lord.

Farewell.

Are these Hard Words?

2006-11-16T06:42:00.000-08:00

"Do not be deceived,..."

So here we have Paul warning Gods dear children, the elect, that deception is at least a possibility.

"This is not Life, brother"
"Wrong Tree, brother"

Really?

Perhaps it is deception itself that is of the "wrong tree".

Could it be possible that, while in an earnest attempt to apprehend the things which are eternal, that we sometimes miss those eternal things which are involved in the now.

Besides, doesn't eternity exist here in "the now"?

Paul seemed to think so....

"God is not mocked;for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. For he who sows to his flesh will of the flesh reap corruption, but he who sows to the Spirit will of the Spirit reap everlasting life."

Sowing and reaping.

Sowing to and reaping of.

It would seem as if Paul acknowledges the potentials of our existence in the present time. He clearly makes a distinction between a "sowing" to the flesh, and a "sowing" to the Spirit.
Even more interesting is that the latter involves a "reaping' of eternal or "everlasting" value!

Life itself!!!

"And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not".

Again another exhortaion. This time, Paul is saying, "I know that this can seem hard for you, but don't grow tired. When the time is right, you will benefit from this..., you will gain Spiritual food from this."

As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all [men], especially unto them who are of the household of faith.

Wow! Yet another encouragement. "Plant your seeds as often as you can...DO GOOD to ALL..ESPECIALLY to those in your own Family."

Hmmmm...

Whats at stake again here?

"...he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting."

Okay, Paul.

I'm in.

I believe you brother.

Practical Perspective

2006-11-14T04:59:00.000-08:00

"Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. For he who sows to his flesh will of the flesh reap corruption, but he who sows to the Spirit will of the Spirit reap everlasting life."

"And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all, especially to those who are of the household of faith."

Here are a couple of excerpts from one of Pauls church letters.

I beleive that it's important to note that Paul didn't write these very practical exhortations until he went through some very fundamental and spiritual truth.

Earlier in hs letter, he goes to great length to declare the facts about the difference between legalisitc rule keeping and life in the Spirit.

He explains how a life which is lived on the basis of doing what is "according" to the law results only in a life that is cursed, but how that a life lived in the liberty of the holy Spirit is one of absolute freedom and is marked by the characterisitcs of that Spirit.

And then he does something interesting....

He doesn't assume that the believers in Galatia will spontaneously live this new life in it's fullness. If he did, why would he bother to urge them, "As we have opportunity, let us do good..."

Paul understood that even Spirit filled believer still needed to hear simple, practical exhortation.

Did they have Christ in them? Certainly! However, Paul felt that there was still reason to give them some very basic, universal advise.

What do you think?

Yet Another Profound Statement From T. Austin Sparks

2006-11-10T08:44:00.000-08:00

The True Church Now With Christ In Heaven

"Why am I saying that? Because it is of very great practical application and value. For the Church is a heavenly body, seated with Him (Eph. 2:6). We therefore need have no moment’s worry about the true Church.

Come down to the earth and see how men worry about their ‘church’, and their churches, and their ‘things’. They have got to look after the ‘thing’: they have got to take care of it, they have got to keep it. They are the custodians of this thing, and they watch jealously and fiercely over it. What a lot of worry they have, and what a lot of trouble—just because it is something on the earth that has got to be looked after.

What a grand thing it is, then, to be in the realm of the heavenly Church, where there is no need to worry about trying to preserve something and keep it going and see that it does not pass out!

There is nothing of that at all about a work that is a heavenly work, that is united with Christ in Heaven. There is all the difference when you are on heavenly ground. You need not worry or fret to try and keep the thing going, lest it should break down, and you would be left without your ‘pet’, without the thing for which you spent all your time and your resources.

A heavenly thing is in the custodianship of One Who—thank God—is above all these things, and at rest."

2006-11-07T11:14:00.000-08:00

"Husbands, Love your wives..."

2006-10-30T07:30:00.000-08:00

Such a nice weekend.

We were fortunate enough to have a few saints keep our kids for us as we went to visit some brothers and sisters in Raliegh, N.C.

Jasmin's mom had offered us some "stand by" passes a while back when we were considering taking a flight to California.

Since that never panned out, I asked Jasmin if the offer for passes was still available, and they were.

Thank You Jasmin and Mom!!!!

THANK YOU!!!

****************************

What a wonderful weekend.

It was great hanging out with Mike, Jasmin, and all the saints that we got to see, and meet.

I especially enjoyed my time with all the brothers..., Mike, Phillip, Micha, Drew, John, Kurt, Daniel, Malcom, Jared, Golden, and ...well.. knowing me I have unwittingly forgotten someone...
If so, I assure you that your presence was honored as well.
****************************

We had a birthday party for Michael that was...well it was a funeral.

Yep.

One of the sisters there happens to work at a funeral home, so she came up with this brilliant, although certainly twisted idea of throwing a funeral themed birthday party.

It was hilarious!

I may comment more in detail about that later....but my time is short for now.
****************************

Praise the Lord for brothers and sisters!
Thank you Lord!
Thank You!!!!!!!

Comments Please

2006-10-26T08:39:00.000-07:00

"...when people saw God they began to see Jesus Christ, He became the Cohesive Power drawing together, and if they were really on that ground, what did they meet? They met Jesus Christ.They met Jesus Christ—that is the Church, and there is no other Church in the New Testament".

He became the Cohesive Power drawing together

Could our generation be just too busy for this, or is this a "test" which proves who we really are or are not?

Could we be that enslaved to the demands of our "selves" and our culture, or have we been given all power and authority over the powers of the world?

I would appreciate any comments or responses.

Synchronicity

2006-10-25T05:58:00.000-07:00

The coincidental occurrence of events and especially psychic events (as similar thoughts in widely separated persons or a mental image of an unexpected event before it happens) that seem related but are not explained by conventional mechanisms of causality —used especially in the psychology of C. G. Jung

I know that this may sound totally off base to some of you but....

This is happening with me again. Last time was between winter of '98 and winter of '99...

Has to do with solar systems outside of ours, logic maps, and mans free will being somewhere centered in Gods soverignty....

I have no idea what any of this means..., so I cannot explain any of it.

Maybe that I'm nuts....

Lord only knows for sure.

WOW

2006-10-17T14:25:00.000-07:00

The Church Is A Person Expressed In Mankind

"I must reiterate that the Church is not a thing; it is not an institution; it is not a denomination, nor is it all denominations put together. It is not anything like that. The Church is a Person expressed in mankind, expressed in human life.

The apostles never went anywhere with the preconceived idea: “We will have a church here; we will set up a church here; we will form a church here.” No, they went and preached Jesus Christ; and when people saw God they began to see Jesus Christ, He became the Cohesive Power drawing together, and if they were really on that ground, what did they meet? They met Jesus Christ.

They met Jesus Christ—that is the Church, and there is no other Church in the New Testament".

(From the writings of T. Austin Sparks)

2006-10-17T09:42:00.000-07:00

Acts

Ways

Condition

Life

GOD

Life

Condition

Ways

Acts

Yep.
That's my post.

2006-10-13T08:43:00.000-07:00

WWWWAAAAAAAHHHHHHOOOOOOOOO....!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am free

2006-10-04T11:55:00.000-07:00

I've abandoned "My Story", at least for the time being for something of a more relevant nature.

Being who I am.

Right now, all I have to say is that the Lord is moving inside of me...renovating...remodeling.

I don't say this because of anything that I've done...It's got more to do with my "condition".

For years, my head was wrapped up in "acts", instances, deeds.

Then it was preoccupied with "ways", principals, and concepts.

Now I am in a different place...one that involves my "condition".

It's funny because...I know that, with words, I cannot accurately express whats going on.
My head...,my mind if you will, is at rest, although not dormant.

I believe that there must come a time in any "believers" life when there mind ceases trying to dominate the heart and, instead, the heart begins to utilize the mind.

I've realised that, spiritually speaking, I don't have to figure anything out.
I just believe. I just know.

No, I'm not laying a claim to "attainment". Rather non-attainment.

I have no desire to "seek Gods will", (Thank God!), because I am a part of His will.

I am slowly shedding the desire to be "somebody", because I am realizing that I am who I am.

It is even sort of silly that I'm posting this right now...I'm not trying to convince you, because I have nothing to convince you of.

The Truth will always speak for Himself.

I have no bible verses to post, no "wisdom" to impart, and nothing else to say.

I am FREE.

Thank you Lord.

2006-09-28T09:49:00.000-07:00

Well, I've decided to just post this link http://www.ccel.org/ccel/nee/normal.toc.html

Rather than go on with my comments on what the normal christian life should be. It's been awhile since I've read the book, but I know that brother Nee gets probably as close as you can get in "explaining" what true "christianity" is.

I will say this though. The normal christian life is Christ.

You can slice it and dice it. Add to it. Take it away. Believe it or doubt it. Complicate it or whatever, but the normal christian life...or rather the only christian life is Christ.

***************************************************************************************

Things have been really good lately. The weather has been beautiful, much cooler lately.
I've realized just how close knit my emotions are to the seasons. I suppose it only makes sense seeing as how our bodies were formed from the dust of the earth, the mother of all things "natural".

I must say, that I have been in a really "good" place lately. Very secure. I feel very open and "true" somehow.

Must be Him.

Been writing alot of music and recording some stuff. I like some of it, some I'm not really sure of.
I can understand why so many bands shelve finished material for years, waiting for a loyal following before releasing it.

Otherwise, they would flop.

Lucky for me, I do it primarily for fun...and to give away to my family and friends, so I'm not too concerned about flopping (although I would like for people to enjoy whatever I give them).

Up until this week I've been extra busy, working alot, taking care of the kids while Missy is at work, and like I said writing and recording.

I do have a MySpace account now, so maybe I'll get Jeremy to help me put some of my tunes online (?)

You Don't Know?

2006-09-13T12:10:00.000-07:00

"...do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death,..."

So what happened to us? What is Paul talking about?

Is he speaking of some mystical experience that happens when a minister dunks us in the water, or sprinkles us during a religious ceremony?

I don't believe so.

So what is this baptism into the death of Christ Jesus?

It is an eternal reality to those who have believed the good news of Christ Jesus.

The more that I think back on my conversion experiences (yes experiences), I have to say that each one was bit different. It was as if my conversion has been occuring for quite some time, dating back,...well.., I believe from before I was in my mothers womb.

This salvation which we have in Christ sometimes seems to be more of a presently occuring event than one that took place on a certain day and at a certain time.

We have been saved, are being saved and will be saved.

Not that there aren't very clear and specific "milestones" that occur along the way.

More and more I am seeing that this is all as much about the journey as it is the destination. Perhaps they are even one and the same.

For example, I remember an experience I had of realising the complete an utter emptiness of the life of the world. I had come to realise the vanity of life without meaning and without hope...an awareness of being somehow seperated from God.

My girlfriend at the time told me that I needed Jesus. So, she guided me to a neighborhood church.
I couldn't tell you what was said in that church,...what the preacher was talking about,...but I remember my girlfriend coaxing me down the aisle near the end of the service. I recited some kind of "prayer", got up off of my knees, and went home.
I'm not sure if anything happened or not. I really don't know. However, I was reacting to something inside of me. He was moving me...pursuing me, but I didn't know how to respond. At that point, I was unfamiliar with the good news. I'm not sure if I had even ever heard it yet. If I had,I just didn't get it.

Like being "baptised" into Christ.

Paul was saying,"Don't you get it"? Or in his own words, "Do you not know"...?"

Do you not know that as many of us as were (submerged) into Christ Jesus, were (submerged) into His death"?
"Submerged"

"Inside Of"

One definition of this word is "to overwhelm".

Wow.
Have you been overwhelmed by Christ?

There is so much in this little passage, but I want to get to the point that I want to make for now. Please allow me to jump over to another passage...

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved".

We are in the beloved!!!

Since none of this is original to my thinking, let me just share what brother Watchman Nee has to say about this from "The Normal Christian Life"...

"How did you receive forgiveness?

You realized that the Lord Jesus died as your Substitute and bore your sins upon Himself, and that His Blood was shed to cleanse away your defilement.
When you saw your sins all taken away on the Cross what did you do? Did you say, 'Lord Jesus, please come and die for my sins'? No, you did not pray at all; you only thanked the Lord You did not beseech Him to come and die for you, for you realized that He had already done it.But what is true of your forgiveness is also true of your deliverance.

The work is done.

There is no need to pray but only to praise. God has put us all in Christ, so that when Christ was crucified we were crucified also.
Thus there is no need to pray: 'I am a very wicked person; Lord, please crucify me'. That is all wrong. You did not pray about your sins; why pray now about yourself? Your sins were dealt with by His Blood, and you were dealt with by His Cross.

It is an accomplished fact.

All that is left for you to do is to praise the Lord that when Christ died you died also; you died in Him. Praise Him for it and live in the light of it. "Then believed they his words: they sang his praise"

(more to come...)

INTERMISSION*

2006-09-01T13:18:00.000-07:00

Got some new work boots today.

Man, they are great!

Thank you Lord!

I'm a little sad today, as a dear brother and sister of mine have moved away.
They went to live among these folks: http://raleighdurhamsaints.com/

Mike and/or Jasmin, if you're reading this, I (we) love and miss you already.
***************************************************************************

Brothers and Sisters.....I'm not sure how to say what I want to say......

I don't want to use the wrong words.....

Ask for Him.
Seek Him out.
Knock down His door.

So much is "hanging in the balance"!

***************************************************************************

Love to you all!
~John

Touching on Death

2006-09-01T09:45:00.000-07:00

The Lord has no problem revealing Himself to His people.

More and more I see picture after picture, type after type of the Lord in everyday life. Especially in retrospect.

Just as with my kung fu teacher, I saw that part of Him which presents the law. The divine standard was put forth not only as the schoolmaster till my encounter with Christ, but also as the "instrument" which reveals faults and weakness, convicting all who are under it to death.

At the time, I could not clearly see the full picture, as even now I do not see it fully. I did not really know that the Lord was revealing something (or should I say SomeOne) to me.
I could only see the intimidating master with his unreachable standards.

I can see His hands all over it.

I actually remember a time of falling to my knees, crying, after an encounter with his severity.

But it broke me.

Well, at least it put a big dent in me. Those who know me well will testify that I'm quite a way off from being a truly broken person. Regrdless, I have no doubt that the Lord put this man in my life to do a work in me which He saw fit .

"So what's up with this morbid death thing anyway?"

Because it is an all important element to the normal christian life.

Not the "deeper christian life", or the "certain kind" of christian life but something so basic and fundamental it caused Paul to ask the believers in Rome,

"Do you not know..."

".... that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?
We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death..."

There are some things that Gods people are supposed to know....

Meet My Tutor....

2006-08-26T12:08:00.000-07:00

{ Please forgive me if I do not keep strictly to a linear timeline. I don't do any kind of outline or anything before I post and I usually post without looking over what I've written. I will try to make it known, however, if I realise that I am jumping around from one place to another.}

My master was a very intense man. Even when he was relaxed, he radiated some kind of energy.

What I remember most about him was his philosophy on suffering. He would word it differently from time to time...sometimes stressing the importance of practicing outside of your "comfort zone".

Other times, he would emphasise learning new habits, even if your old ones weren't bad. To him, to always operate and react in the same manner is a very limited way to, not only defend oneself, but to live ones life.

He did teach rudiments though. Elementary principles and practices which were key for further and more advanced development.

I can remember them vivdly.

Horse stance, stretching, variety of push ups, various kicks, forms, sparring, combat techniques,
literally thousands of technique combinations.

What is the benefit of horse stance training? What is the point in standing with your feet straight, slightly wider than shoulder width, knees bent to where your thighs are parallel to the ground, back straight (no leaning forward!) and fists chambered at the hips?

Some would answer saying that it's to build strength in your legs.
This is true.

I believe, However, that the highest truth to this practice, is that it forces you to suffer.

You learn how to suffer.
Quietly.

And you do it while your master is blasting you for not doing it right.

He puts forth the Law of the Horse Stance, and then constantly reminds you ( in a sometimes abrasive way) that you're not doing it right.

Even if you ever become satisfied with your "horse training" the master will certainly discover and point out other weakness that you have. While you are with the master, your faults are always before you.

I can remember one thing that he would always say to his students (especially his more advanced ones...), "You should be killed."

He was right

As strange as this all sounds, my kung fu master played a very important role in my life, one that I am still learning from today.

I should be killed. I am not worth keeping alive.

Kung Fu

2006-08-16T09:08:00.000-07:00

On occasion Ray would come by the house to visit...and I think to preach a bit as well. I remember a few times my mom sighing when she would see him pull up into the driveway.

It wasn't the gospel that she resented. I think it was more all of the other stuff that customarily gets dumped on top of the gospel that she dreaded.

The "You Gotta..."'s.

At any rate, this was one man whom the Lord placed into my life who would point me in a direction closer to the Lord Jesus Christ.

************************************************************************************

The years passed on and my thirst for truth continued.

My brother had become a student of a local kung fu school along with some of his friends and I would often see them practicing in the back yard and hear about the crazy things the teacher had them doing in class.

A couple of years later I went in to visit the academy and was highly impressed with what I saw going on (www.toaskungfu.com).

There were young men and women moving with such speed, flexability, and ferocity (is that a word?)
that I had never seen before....not even in the movies.

The senior students there radiaited a sense of discipline and integrity which was tempered with humility, a balance which is hard to come by in most places.

Searching for something deeper in my life, I joined the class not knowing that it would be one of the most meaningful decisions I would ever make.

Uncle Ray

2006-08-12T04:39:00.000-07:00

*Wow, after re-reading my last few posts, I'm not so sure I want to continue with my story.
It's just not that interesting.

Then again, I'm not writing this primarily for entertainments sake.

By the way, my life really hasn't been as bland as my story may allude to. I am leaving many things out for the sake of others (the Blogosphere is a pretty small cosmos, ya know).*

So now I'm growing up quickly, and am becoming more and more aware of this other One in my life. That's what He was to me..."Other", seperate, distinct....

Although He was those things to me, He was there with me.

My uncle, Ray, was (is) a southern baptist bible teacher/preacher. My mom would, from time to time, take me to his house on the bay. Uncle Ray would take me out in his boat and we would ride all along the banks and just talk.

Ray knows Jesus well. He really does.

He also knows "Southern Baptism". But for some reason, he didn't allow that to become an obstacle when we were out on the bay.

When we were out there, there was peace. I sensed it out in the bay, and I sensed it in Ray's heart.
He wouldn't preach to me out there..., he just shared peace with me.

That peace was Christ.
And He was beautiful.

The Sin Offering

2006-08-02T15:09:00.000-07:00

What was this horrible deed?

Would you believe that I can't recall?!

It's really beside the point anyway. I was a young child, so it couldn't have been all that bad, whatever it was.

What's important here is that I had become aware of personal sin and the looming guilt associated with it.

I was in debted and I knew it.

Guess what I did.

I took all of the pages of collected strips, including the one that I am sure the Lord had delayed for me, into the back yard and destroyed them. Burned them, I think.

I offered God a sacrifice for my sin.

And guess what. I felt better.

For a time.

Until I realized that I would eventually run out of things to offer.

Isn't this the way we think? We think that when we do something "bad" that all we have to do is pay for it somehow by doing something "good" to make up for it. Even if that good work means to punish ourself for our transgression.

{ Now what kind of sense does that make. Somehow we believe that it is a good thing to beat ourselves up for doing something that we knew was wrong to do in the first place... can't really express my thought about this right now...it just seems kinda twisted to me...}

If we are able to keep a tally on all of this up to the end of our life, then we can only hope that our good works will out-weigh our sinful deeds.

The years passed and my struggle with myself continued on. Day after day and year after year...

Intermission

2006-07-29T09:31:00.000-07:00

For those of you who may be unfamiliar with Bloom County, here is a link to some of Berke Breathed's favorite strips: http://www.berkeleybreathed.com/pages/favorite_strips.asp

My Sin

2006-07-29T08:52:00.000-07:00

It is so clear to me now that God wanted me to know that He is real and that He is involved in every detail of our lives..., even the silly details.

My comic strip "crisis" may seem miniscule and even self centered to me now, but at the time it meant everything to me, and He knew that.

So what does any of this have to do with debt and redemption (as alluded to in my last post)?

Well, like I said, this collection of comic strips meant everything to me. I had placed an incredible value upon them. Especially now that the completion of this booklet had been enabled by God Himself!

(Maybe it wasn't all about me though. Maybe this was some type of "shadow of things to come", a divine hint as to something the Lord would have accomplished.
It would seem as if He didn't want any missing pieces in this collection....this story...and, certainly, He wanted all of the pieces to be in (chronological) order!

Hmmmm.

Who knows?)

So here we have this great sense of value. It wasn't a matter of the monetary value of this collection. 35 cents or so per strip, maybe $2.00 per page, so...maybe $50.00 or so worth of comic strips, plus an irrelevant amount for the cost of blank paper and glue.

The value of this collection was in that it was a labor of love. I just loved Bloom County (here's to you Berke Breathed!), and to have it preserved in a sequentially smooth reading fashion was priceless to me.

There came a time, though, when I had done something wrong. I had...well.., I sinned. Sure I had heard the word before. You don't have to grow up in church to know what the word "sin" means. I had done something wrong. An offense to someone, and an offense to God.

For the first time in my life, in a very sure and knowable way, I was aware that I was indebted to God...

Divine Intervention

2006-07-27T16:51:00.000-07:00

The next day I had a slightly empty feeling although I had come to terms with my great misfortune.
I had already asked around to my neighbors to see if they still had the paper from the day before, and much to my disappointment they did not.

Oh well. Life goes on.

I hop on my bike and peddal up to the service station to pick up the days paper just knowing in the back of my mind that I would always be incomplete without that one missing strip.

When I returned home, I went right inside and unfolded the newspaper straight to the "funny pages" . You'll never guess what I saw.

Two Bloom County comic strips. One from that day and the one from the day before.

How could this be?

There was a comment printed near the strip explaining how the strips writer had been sick and then apologized for the strip not being there the day before.

Coincidence?

If that's what you really want to believe.

Why would God bother proving Himself via such a ridiculous situation?

In retrospect, all that I can say is that it was very important for Him to be sure that I understood that I was His (or to be His if you like).

Bloom County

2006-07-26T08:25:00.000-07:00

As a young boy, probably around the age of 9 or 10, I can remember somehow having this understanding of debt and redemption. I'm not quite sure how I aquired this other than the fact that it truly is a universal principal.

(I feel as though I am not giving enough credit here to my parents for their "Godly" influence on my life, but the fact is that they were not religious people. They were "normal" people...and I mean that with the utmost respect and appreciation.

For the time being all that I can say of my mother and father is that I truly have no regrets in the way they raised me. I'll try to touch on our relationship more later.)

I was always a big fan of the "funny papers". There was one comic strip that I just loved. "Bloom County".
What a sense of humor!

Anyway, I remember riding my bike to the gas station everyday to pick up a copy of the newspaper just so that I could read that strip.
I would do more than just read it though, I would cut the strips out and glue them, in sequence, to paper so that they read like the pages of a book.
I had been doing this everyday for several months when one day I just could not scrounge up the change (35 cents?) to purchase the paper.

I was devestated. All of this work for the love of this comic strip and now my booklet in progress would be incomplete!

In all sincerity I cried out to God (as we all do in the midst of such earth shaking crisis) and pleaded with Him to help me out of this horrible situation. After many tears, I finally let the situation go and fell asleep, exhausted, in my bed....

On Being an Alien

2006-07-25T18:11:00.000-07:00

...I'm not sure what it was. Why was I so uncomfortable around these other children?
Who can say for sure? All that I can say for sure is that It wasn't just the children that bothered me, it was more about the "system" that I found myself forced into. Even in my earliest years of childhood, I had a streak, or a natural bend which kept me from feeling "okay" anytime I found myself in any structured institution of mass education or manipulation.

Sure I could use gentler words than "manipulation" but that is indeed the reality.

It was almost as if there was this instinct within me that constantly reminded me that I was not at home in the world. I'm not referring to the Earth here...but more about this other "world" that we find ourselves in. A world of mass manipulation which starts nearly from birth. A world where we are not initially instructed about true Life and Reality, but rather one where you are taught, oh so subtley, that your whole existence and meaning is to be spent pursuing illusion after illusion. A world where you grow up watching everyone you know struggle with this same situation, wondering why life seems to seem so vain in the midst of the pursuit of the American dream.

I knew that I did'nt belong, as I am sure so many others felt the same way, but faked it through anyway just for the sake of doing whats "right" (as did I, to the best of my ability).

And this hipocracy is not over yet.

I remember when my oldest sister and her family moved in with us. They were having a hard time making ends meet and my parents were insistent that they come and stay.
There was a total of ten people living together in a three bedroom house. The age ranged from 2 years old to fifty. Unfathomable for most americans, but those were some of the most interesting days of my life.

There's nothing in this world like a family that struggles to stay together in the midst of lifes many trials and tribulations.

Well I can think of One thing maybe...

My Story

2006-07-22T10:34:00.000-07:00

I grew up on the west side of a sleepy little military town called Pensacola, Florida.
Throughout my life, I had always had a sense of God, a knowing that even when I was alone, I was never really alone.

My father was retired Navy and a former police officer and my mom had been a bartender and house cleaner. Pensacola was my moms home town and the place where she met my dad.

We were basically poor. Although most of the time we had food to eat and clothes on our backs (...okay, maybe we weren't that poor...), but I can remember times when our electricity or water would be shut off for a day or two because we weren't able to pay the bills. Dad's retirement check wasn't very big and my mom attempted to earn a living selling fishing bait
(wigglers, as a matter of fact) to the local bait and tackle shops just didn't quite put us "over the hump" (not at 2cents/ worm!).

I was a peculiar little boy who had a very difficult time relating to others. Being the youngest of five was not as beneficial as my siblings would try to persuade you into believing.

They would often suggest that my folks treated me differently...were easier on me. Well maybe so, but that wasn't my fault was it? Sure. They probably mellowed quite a bit between the birth of my oldest sister, Wendy, and myself, but I began to get the impression that I was somehow to blame.

And certainly, I had much to be blamed for. A model child, I was not! But I plead in all sincerity, that I was only a product of the society of which I was a part.

It seemed as if, in school, I often found myself uncomfortable around the other kids (with a couple of exceptions), I just felt that I didn't fit in with the other children and was much more comfortable on my own. This discomfort gradually increased until I began to get physically Ill in the mornings just before school....

(to be continued)

Here I AM!

2006-07-20T14:47:00.000-07:00

...so I went to hear "pastor" and speaker Rob Bell in downtown Atlanta the other night.
He had a very interesting presentation which was based primarily on the first two chapters of the book of Genesis.

Although I thought he was a little over the top with some of his "scriptural numerology" (lots of sevens!), he had a very good central point.

I AM.

Rob pointed out the fact that in ancient jewish poetry, the format for at least part of the book of Genesis, involves the fact that the central theme of a given poem is placed in the "center" of the poem.

Rob suggests that the "seasons" are the central theme of Genesis 1....

"And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:"

To get right to the point, he believes that this is for the sake of keeping and maintaining a regular sabbath day.

1) Sabbath
a) sabbath
b) day of atonement
c) sabbath year
d) week
e) produce (in sabbath year)

AT- ONE- MENT

What he failed to mention, however, is how Christ has been made our sabbath, our rest, our AT-ONE-MENT with God the Father. I don't believe that this was intentional, I think that he was just stressing a different point.

Practically speaking, we need rest. The Lord knows that just as much now as He did in the beginning. Where I see things a bit different from Rob on this point, however, is that this rest, rather than being enjoyed on a specific day, can be enjoyed at anytime and in any place.

This Rest dwells within us. He is our AT-ONE-MENT.

Sure, taking a regularly scheduled day to enter into this truth would be wonderful, but let us never box this thing in with our religious minds and limit ourselves to only one day per week.

Oh well. Let us each be fully persuaded in our own mind, right?

Rob also emphasised the importance of, during that special time, to do the things that bring joy to your soul.

HAVE A PARTY!

PLAY MUSIC!

CELEBRATE!

GO FISHING!

DANCE AROUND THE HOUSE (OR YARD)!

WHATEVER!

ENJOY YOU LORD!!!!!!

And be there, fully present!!!

Our Fathers Name is "I AM"!

What should that say about you and I?

No. This is not "New Age" philosophy. It is not that some of what is being said here sounds like the "new agers",it's that some of the things the "new agers" talk about sounds like us!

Aaarrggghhh...

Just ranting now....

Oh yeah.... now

Here and now, that's where I AM.....

Suffering and Joy

2006-07-03T09:27:00.000-07:00

There's no doubt that my last post was way too long. That's probably even worse than it not being original to me. Like I said though, he presents things much more clearly than I could ever hope to.
Sparks, although at times can seem very dry, touches on some very deep things.

There just seem to be some things that always resonate with some (or maybe all?) of us...no matter what the context or situation at hand.

There are some things that are just "natural" to our souls.

We feel like we deserve to suffer. We feel like we just aren't good enough and can't live up to God's or other peoples expectations.

Is this better than feeling like we do measure up?

Part of me wants to say that it is Christ alone who makes up the "difference". Whats better is that the scriptures seem to imply that He doesn't just make up the difference, but that He has come in and completely "replaced" us and that it is in this truth we find true life and power from God.

Hmmmm...

But there is this other matter of us filling up the sufferings of Christ.

How is it that He can call it a finished work and at the same time there be work left to do?

Some would divide this into "milk" and "meat".

To me what that means is that the lost suffering soul meet's His Lord for a time of rest and peace only to grow up into a different kind of suffering soul....a "found" suffering soul.

But wait...it's a different kind of suffering too isn't it?

Before our suffering was because of our sin, our self and the wicked powers of this age. Now we have a new set of ailments.

Christ has done away with the sin problem on the cross. As far as our "selves" are concerned they were in Christ and crucified with Him. Where there is no sin and no "self" that means that the forces of darkness have no more ground in our lives.

Unless you believe they do.

They have two effective weapons.

One is the lie.

They convince us that God's work is not enough. ..that the blood of Christ lacks power, and that the cross was not much more than an execution of one man.

The other is the truth.

That you have failed in this very specific way or that in general you are a sinful person. Their arrows are custom made for your weak points and their accuracy is better than the best marksmen on earth.

This is part of our new struggle.

Before we seemed to have no refuge, no weapon, no defence and no hope.

Now that we have found these things (and so much more) in Christ, we must learn how to fight.

In the New Testament there is much said about suffering. In the book of Acts it says that the apostles "... departed from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name."

At whose hand did they suffer?
The high priest and his company. The religious men.

The apostles were preaching Christ and the forgiveness of sins and suffered shame because of it.

We no longer need to suffer because of our own faults and failures. Christ has done this for us.
Now we suffer the faults and failures of others and of the world (and they ours!).

Even more true than this is the fact that for the believer in Christ we may find Joy in our tribulations and sufferings, something that the world regards as insanity, although an insanity they wish they had themselves.

For us tribulation is a tool, or a process, to reveal, more and more, the resurrected Christ who is within us.

This kind of tribulation Just happens. It would be foolish to seek after it as some sort of mystical experience. Those with eyes to see can even sense it on a daily basis...at least in retrospect.
God's way, unlike the ways of man, has a very unique spin on reality. What mankind sees as loss the Lord so often sees as gain. What we see as gain, the Lord often sees as loss.

We need not seek or try to manipulate the sufferings of our selves or others, but rather in the midst of our dark times, we should keep our eye's open to see the freedom, love, peace and joy which is found in the Son and His Bride.

Worship Unregimented

2006-06-30T11:06:00.000-07:00

I want to thank my brother Michael (www.zoecarnate.com) for sending me the following text by
T. Austin-Sparks.

He sum's up quite well, just about everything that has been on my mind lately....

The beginning of everything in relation to God is worship; that is, God having the central and supreme place of recognition, of acknowledgment, of government . . . God having supreme right in our complete obedience and surrender-in every part and phase of our being.

Worship begins there. It is a relationship, not only an exercise. It is not something that we do in specified ways and methods; it is an attitude of the life-a place which God has in the entire consciousness . . . that is worship.

Now if Satan is to counterfeit and take God's place, worship is his objective. With the first Adam, that was his objective-to draw man away from giving God the supreme place, in order that he might take God's place.

He supplanted God in the reverence and the acknowledgment and the obedience of man. He captured his worship and became "the god of this age." When the last Adam, the Second Man, came and entered officially, publicly, upon the great work that He had come to do, the one thing that the adversary sought to capture was His worship: "All these will I give thee if thou wilt worship me."

The enemy has betrayed himself-he has shown his hand; if he could do the same with the last Adam as he did with the first, he has defeated the object of a new race.
Now it is just here that we have got to have light.

The woman of Samaria (John iv.) is saying, "Our fathers worshipped in this mountain, but ye say that in Jerusalem men ought to worship." Jesus said unto her, "Woman, the hour cometh when neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem will men worship the Father; believe Me, the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth."

Oh, what is this? This represents a new regime-a new order. This is the crisis of the Cross in the realm of worship, the basic thing. But what has happened? Jerusalem was definitely Divinely ordained as the seat of honor and worship. The Samaritans imitated, with temple and mountain, the system which was at Jerusalem, while worshipping the same God. But it was God who had brought into the world that system of worship at Jerusalem; He had projected that.

It was a temple, a building, a piece of elaborate ecclesiastical architecture with priests, with robes and vestments, with burning incense, offering sacrifices, making prayers, reading Scriptures. . . and many other things. Yes, God had brought that in, but now the Lord Jesus was setting the whole thing aside; and in so doing, He was implying as clearly as anything could be implied that this is not true worship: "Neither in this mountain nor at Jerusalem . . . but . . , in spirit and in truth."

What has happened, then, if this is not the truth? What is the truth? Not something which was but a type, an illustration, a set of symbols. God never intended that to be the final thing-never intended man to make that a thing in itself-never intended that that thing should go on indefinitely.

That is the divide between soul and spirit. . . and that is where Christendom has gone astray. It was brought in to illustrate and represent something else, and its time of duration was until the Lord Jesus came. It all pointed toward Him-led up to Him-spoke of Him and His Cross, in which that which was merely of the soul would pass and that which was of the spirit would come in.

What is the spiritual life in the matter of worship? Oh, it is not ecclesiastical architecture, it is not vestments, it is not ordinances, it is not rites. They pass out with Calvary; the perpetuating of anything like that is a contradiction of Calvary. See where we are today. The maintenance of that sort of thing is because of a failure to perceive what the Lord Jesus has brought in.

What, then, is spiritual worship? It is getting back of all that and seeing the spiritual meaning. Worship is no longer the bringing of animal sacrifices, but the bringing up from the heart an appreciation of the perfection of Christ.

The vestments of old were only types and figures and illustrations; the priestly apparel was speaking all the time in type of a righteousness and beauty and glory which is the nature of the God-Man, the Lord Jesus, and which is given to the one who by faith apprehends Christ . . . that in the sight of God we who are in Christ are wearing garments of beauty and glory and holiness.

Again, the Temple and the Tabernacle were only types speaking of that spiritual fellowship of the saints as joined to an exalted Head-one Body-the Temple of God. The fitting together of the stones of the Temple, which were wrought in the quarry, brought together, and silently-without the sound of hammer or axe-fitted in, only speaks in foreshadowing of the living stones built together for a spiritual habitation . . . God now indwelling not temples made with hands, but a spiritual Body-the members of Christ joined to Him.

Why, then, perpetuate a thing which God has dismissed in the Cross and, by keeping to the lower, fail to reach the higher? Do you see where things are astray today? I know how sweeping this is, but all this has to do with worship.

Now note that when there is a failure to recognize the spiritual meaning of all this and to enter into it... and a maintaining of the old thing.., you are still on a soul level, and you are open to deception; the whole thing may be a ghastly deception.

And how does that deception work? In this way: that so many good Christian people are absolutely in bondage to a traditional system which is cutting clean across Divine revelation for them. It is their traditional system which is simply barring the way to spiritual revelation, whereas the Cross of the Lord Jesus represents the liberty in the spirit for God to lead into the fulness of His Life and Light.

That is the whole purpose of the Letter to the Hebrews. It was for that very purpose. Here was a people that had received light concerning the true nature of fellowship with God in Christ-that the Lord Jesus had taken the place of the Temple and the priesthood and the sacrifices and the ordinances . . . and even the Sabbath.

Now it is no longer a matter of form, ceremony, external rites, buildings, priests, sacrifices; it is all Christ.

They had seen that. The writer had called upon them to go outside the religious, formal, historic, traditional camp, and that brought persecution, ostracism, isolation, loneliness, and all manner of things.

The official religious people made it very hard for them because of that. The price to be paid for what is truly spiritual and heavenly was.., and is . . . great, and they were dangerously in peril of going back to the old thing.

The Letter to the Hebrews was written just to save them from that peril and to tell them more fully about the great change that had come about in the Cross-the work of the Lord Jesus... to tell them that one system, the earthly representation, had passed and the other, the heavenly reality, had come in (You know how that Letter speaks about "the pattern of things in the heavenlies" and "the heavenly things themselves").

Now, you see, historic Christianity as such-traditional Christianity as such-may still keep us on a soul level of worship, where we must have a certain kind of building with a certain kind of window, a certain kind of music, certain kinds of prayers, certain kinds of people, and certain kinds of dress . . . and all this to "aid" our worship-all this to make real our fellowship with God.

It is living back on pre-Calvary ground; it may be all soulish; and it may just be obstructing the path to a full, personal, inward spiritual life with God.

To know the Lord in Life, we must be free from the graveclothes of outward systems. Why, then, perpetuate a system?

The Lord Jesus put all that away in His Cross; it is all gone. That is what He means by worshipping in spirit and in truth.

Beloved, it is as true as anything I have said, that if you want to know the Lord livingly in greater fulness, you have to be free from ever external control of religion; you have to be free and open to the Lord: you have to be free in the spirit. Formalism has got to go, and reality and Life have got to come in.

There must be a personal life in God this is not dependent upon place or anything outside and around us-that is dependent entirely upon our spiritual fellowship in with Him. It can be as real, as blessed, in a dingy, rat-infested jail as it can be in the most gorgeous, ornate cathedral. Oh, miss yes; some of the most wonderful fellowship with God has all been in the most unlikely places.

You need no "helps" of that POW kind when you know God. Your life is with God.
Now remember, that letter to the Hebrews was written in anticipation of something. The Apostle knew that before very long the whole of that Jewish system would be in ruins. The Lord Jesus had prophesied it-that there should not be left one stone upon another. It would be scattered to the four winds. There would be no temple, no altar, no sacrifice, no festivals, no priests; in fulfillment of the Divine prediction, the whole thing would be smashed and cease.

What would happen to these people if their fellowship with God was God bound up with that? It would go. It would go with the system. And he wanted to save them from that thing which- the being bound to earth-would go, and to bring them into a new thing which belonged to salvation.

Fellowship with God must be of that kind, that whether we can go to meetings or not, we still have the Lord; whether we have nice soulish music or not, we still have the Lord. Ye are not in that realm: "Neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem . . ."

Bricks and mortar cannot communicate with spirit. Man's soul can communicate with God only through the vehicle of his spirit in union with God. That is what Calvary has done. You can understand now, of course, why the message of the Cross is unacceptable.., and that, because of this strong cleaving to a historic, traditional inheritance, you will be outside the camp if you are going to proclaim it and stand for it.

And, too, the awful thing is this-that Satan has taken hold of the Divine representation, or typical system, to appropriate it, when God has done away with it, and that what God brought in for a temporary purpose he has captured for himself in order to obscure the real nature of fellowship with God.

Now no one will think that I am saying that there are no spiritual people in that system of things. I sin not saying that; but I am saying that if that represents for them their spiritual life-if they must have that, if that is the realm in which they live . . . that they do not see beyond that and are not free from that as a thing in itself-then they have missed the meaning of Calvary, and they are bound to miss all the meaning of Christ crucified-the wisdom and the power of God.

Wrestling with principalities and powers wants something more than a system of external things. You see, we are up against a terrific business; we are up against a spiritual opposition which is colossal, and only a spiritual position is adequate to that-nothing less.

We do not want to be in any position less than the Lord's first and best for us. The toys, the picture books, the illustrations, the symbols, the types are for children who have little intelligence; they are taken away at a certain time when God is out to have, not children but sons; and there is all the difference between the two. And so Calvary dismisses the kindergarten of external things in relation to God and brings in the fulness of heavenly order so as to make of us full-grown sons of God.

May we be so!

T. Austin-Sparks - September, 1932

Awaken our Souls

2006-06-20T13:05:00.000-07:00

Why do they expect a happy reply when they ask "how are you?"
when we know that they really don't care at all?

"You're welcome" has become the auto-generated reply to the correct voice command of: "Thank You"

No I don't blame them at all, because I am often found "asleep at the wheel".

In a place off the beaten path, true life is conceived

not through "howdy do's" and painted on smiles, but rather through aWkwa rd moments and uncomfortable conversations

Awaken our souls, Lord!
Awaken our souls!!!

Pruning

2006-06-15T14:32:00.000-07:00

My boss, Lou, gave me a crash course in pruning trees the other day.

Follow me here.

Basically, the objective of pruning is to produce strong, healthy and attractive plants. By understanding how, when and why to prune, and observing a few simple principles, this objective can be achieved.

Without going into all of the details, I did learn a few interesting points.

One who does not understand the way nature works would be tempted to only trim up and shape a tree or hedge row by skimming the little sprouts and leaves that have grown on the outside.This approach doesn't require much skill or care and does, indeed, give the appearance of a nice, clean, formed specimen.

But only on the outside.

The truth is that this method promotes the growth of leaves all around the outside of the tree, but it also keeps any sunLight from getting into the actual body, or middle. You end up with a pretty shell of leaves on the outside, but on the inside it is very bare with no growth, no substance at all.

When a Skilled Tree Pruner comes across a row of hedges that have only been "skimmed" for any length of time, He will go deep into the hedge, cutting away the dead branches that only serve as obstructions to the Light which is vital for the health of the plant.

Not only that, but He will also go in deep and cut away many of the living branches in order to not only allow more light in, but also to stimulate new growth on the inside of the bush for a healthier, richer, more beautiful specimen.

There are other things that are important for healthy trees, but this is what I have learned about pruning.

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Yes. I moved again.

Don't worry. It's just a silly Quiz (What are you doing here, anyway?!)

You are The Hierophant

GONE

GOING........

Going......

Sound of Water...

meme

Almost 50/50

Simple Questions

I Just Had to Post this Link...

BREAK

Don't Ask....Just Read.

Man! This Guy Just Continues to Nail It!

Another Silly Quiz

Our Fodder which is in heaven Hollowed be thy name...

Psalm 3

Thanks.

Psalm 2

Prayer Request

Psalm 1

the end

The "Choice"

I John Part VI: Little Children

Jesus Exposed

Faith vs. Belief

COMING SOON: The End

First John Part V: Hate or Love? ~OR~ The Old and The New

A Brief Look at Gods Character

First John Part IV

Beautiful Words From a Precious Sister

Waiting

First John Part III

First John: PART II

First John: PART I

Here's a Good Read.....

More Than Words

*EDITED* Can You Believe that I Almost Actually Posted this...

TRADITION

Here or There?

free form pushing hands

Push Hands

SOMETHING YOU MUST UNDERSTAND!

The Weak and The Strong

WHAT IF?

Continual Abiding

TURNING

REALIZE

Here I AM

What If Jack Handy Were a Christian Mystic?

Bonhoeffers Letter to Eberhard Bethge (1944)

The Need for Joy

Now A Word From Brother Neil....

Farewell

Are these Hard Words?

Practical Perspective

Yet Another Profound Statement From T. Austin Sparks

Comments Please

Synchronicity

WOW

I am free

You Don't Know?

********INTERMISSION*********

Touching on Death

Meet My Tutor....

Kung Fu

Uncle Ray

The Sin Offering

Intermission

My Sin

Divine Intervention

Bloom County

On Being an Alien

My Story

Here I AM!

Suffering and Joy

Worship Unregimented

Awaken our Souls

Pruning

EDITED Can You Believe that I Almost Actually Posted this...

INTERMISSION*