Long Weekend Quotes: Part C

Heaven: The Presence of God

If it has entered the heart of man, our thinking processes and concepts, then it is probably not an accurate representation of "heaven," of God's presence! God is so much bigger than our finite abilities to conceptualize that any images that we can conceive are but inadequate images which become idols.

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Would you want to participate in a "heaven" that was only what your mind and heart could conceive? I would not! I have very little imagination! The "heaven" that I could conjure up in my mind would be extremely boring! I am convinced that heaven is not boring. Is love boring? Is joy boring? Our meagre human perceptions of "heaven" would only lead to discontent. They are so static, so selfish, so mercenary, so materialistic, so space/time oriented, so inadequate!

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Man is made so as to only be content with God! That is why our human aspirations of heart and mind are no basis for revealing "heaven," as some authors have indicated.

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The character of God is the only basis for revealing "heaven." Heaven is the presence of God, acting as He always does, according to His character.

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God is an active God. His presence is always actively expressing His character in the out-going means of grace. Faith is our receptivity of His activity. God is love. Love is always active, extending out toward the other. There is no such thing as passive love; that is apathy! God is joy. Joy is always energetic and enlivening. Heaven's demeaner is that of humor and laughter and play and activity. Thus I repeat, "Religion knows nothing about heaven," as evidenced by its being so sour and dour and serious about itself, and so passive and inactive in loving others.

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Heaven is the presence of God, and subjectively considered, heaven is spiritual ecstasy. The word "ecstatic" is etymologically derived from two Greek words, ek meaning "out of," and stasis which comes from histemi meaning "to stand." It is not difficult to see that that which stands and is unmoving is "static". "Ecstatic" has to do with that which is "out of" the realm of the "static." There is no ecstasy in that which is static, for such is rigid, cold, hard, immovable, dead. Ecstacy is experienced only in that which is dynamic, i.e. alive, active, warm, moving and incomprehensible. Heaven is spiritual ecstasy in that it has to do with the dynamic presence of God in action.

Christianity de facto

Christian theology becomes a knowledge-based epistemological emphasis on the propositional truths of an ideological belief-system formed into orthodox doctrines and creedal dogmas, rather than the ontological expression of the very Being and character of God in Christ by the Spirit.

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When Christianity de jure is thus portrayed only as objectified justification, imputation, and reconciliation, then Christian living is inevitably cast in legalistic and moralistic ethical inculcations to attempt to behave in consistency with what you have been declared to be, and thus to justify God in demonstrating that He was indeed justified in justifying you. This in contradistinction to the de facto reality of the indwelling presence of the Righteous One, Jesus Christ (Acts 3:14; 7:52; 22:14), manifesting His life (II Cor. 4:10,11) in our behavior by divine grace.

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The Christian is also righteous by the fact of the reality of the Righteous One, Jesus Christ, actually living in him, and being allowed to live out His righteous character in his behavior.

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In terms of the practical outworking and outliving of the life of Jesus Christ in Christian behavior, it is the de facto reality of the indwelling Spirit of Christ that must be emphasized. Soon after the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century, some of the post-reformation Catholic theologians, noting the almost exclusively objective de jure arguments of the Protestant theologians, surmised that if a Protestant Christian were ever to exhibit righteous behavior in practice such must of necessity have been activated by the self-effort of human performance by "works" (so abhorred by the Protestants), since the Protestants made no allowance for the internal dynamic of God's grace in a de facto expression of Christianity. It was a accurate indictment on Protestant theology, which has not been resolved by a balanced emphasis on the objective and subjective elements of Christ's work, even to this day.

A Personal Relationship With Jesus Christ

Is a "personal relationship with Jesus Christ" just a relation of our mental assent to an historical Jesus? Is a "personal relationship with Jesus Christ" just an ideological relationship of belief based on the circumstantial evidence of reports that we can read in the Gospels of the New Testament? Is it possible to have an interpersonal relationship with an historical personage that lived hundreds of years ago? Is it possible to have a interpersonal relationship with a logical construct of theological tenets about God and His Son, Jesus Christ?

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It is important to understand that a personal relationship with Jesus Christ is not just an objective relationship to the benefits that Christ allegedly made available by His historical actions of death, burial and resurrection. Protestant Christian religion, in particular, has tended to objectify the relationship of the Christian to God and Christ in a forensic, juridical and legal framework that posits the relationship as but the "justification" of a right relationship with God the Judge in the heavenly realm. As a corollary, the relationship of the Christian with God has been viewed as a static "reconciliation" that is no more personal that "reconciling" one's financial books.

Long Weekend Quotes, Part B

Chapter 8: A Life in the Flesh and a Life in the Spirit Contrasted

Now the works of the flesh are obvious ...

By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit ...

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It will be observed that the contrast between the works of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit is their initiator:

The Flesh
I (initiate) = Works

The Spirit
God (initiates) = Fruit

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Self-control is the by-product of a self-forgetfulness that looks away from itself to God for meaning and purpose to life.

Chapter 10: Conclusion

The New Covenant revelation is not that God has given us His gifts, His power or anything else that He possesses. Rather, He has given us Himself. The clarity with which this internal reality becomes externally visible depends upon, if you will, the quality of the resolution in the revelation and not in personal resolve.

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Proximity is determined by "knowing". There are degrees of knowing and knowing in its most intensive form is " epiginosko " where knowledge perfectly unites the subject with the object.

The Tithing Controversy - No Laughing Matter

However, my experience is that most Christians give for one of two reasons and neither is very honourable:

1. Insurance : God will get me if I don't
2. Investment : God will bless me if I do

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Perhaps now I am parodying the point but it seems to me at least that what we are doing in the main is on the one hand, we are paying God protection money to leave us alone and on the other hand, we are investing into the Kingdom with a view to maximizing our returns. We are seeking to protect and/or increase our asset base. What we are not doing is GIVING without any expectation of reward other than the reward of giving.

Heaven Help Us, Chapter 2: Is the Spirit the Word?

Life is uncreated and eternal. In a sense God is life, for just as there was never a time when God was not, so there was never a time when life was not.

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To the Jew the Cross was a scandal; to the Greek it was simply absurd. It was foolishness. Thus, those who were saved by trusting in the cross manifested a faith that was not grounded in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.

Heaven Help Us, Chapter 3: What Does the Spirit Do?

Surrender of the life to Jesus means more than one's merely trying to do better according to a new code of rules and regulations. It is not the turning over of a new leaf, but one's turning up with a new life.

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What is set before man is not a variety of lifestyles from which to make a selection. God is not operating on a glorified cafeteria basis.

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The word "know" so often used in the Scripture does not refer to an accumulation of facts about another but personal identification with him.

What if: What you can bear

What if God DOES give you more than you can bear?

What if God is committed to giving you more than you can bear?

What if the unbearable is to teach us dependence on Him?

What if the unbearable gets us to choose to trust Him over trusting our selves?

Long Weekend Readings; Part A

God's not Deaf!

Perhaps you are praying for a "breakthrough" in some area of your life. If so you have a wonderful opportunity to meet God especially if you were taught God never gives us more than we can bear - And HE HAS. Relax, God is committed to giving us more than we can bear; otherwise we will never learn to depend on him and give up trusting in SELF and abandon all confidence in the flesh. [Phil 3:9]

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The point of prayer is not to get God to change His mind but to get us to change ours.

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Prayer carries us beyond our circumstances bringing us to the place of contentment. As we walk with Him we learn that if he wants to us to have something nothing can prevent it, & we see that if God doesn't want us to have it we don't want it either Ps 37:4.


Get a Life
After all The Great Commission does not say " Do witnessing" it says, " Be witnesses."

Deceived: Let no one deceive you

However, whilst it is correct to say that we cannot in reality be anyone other than who we are, if we do not know who we are we will try to become someone else. In the absence of a fixed understanding of our identity, we are want to fashion in our own vain imagination images and mental pictures of whom we ought to be based on how things appear to be.

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As long as we do not recognise our union with God we will live our lives by own resources for our own ends. We will be self-focussed rather than other-focussed as independent self-getting-selves.

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We are the visible expression of the invisible God, containers, vessels, branches, etc, not the essence but the image of the essence.

False-Self Syndrome
that by faith we are made righteous not simply right with God but the righteousness of God [2 Cor 5:21]. The Christian life is not something that you cultivate it is something that you contain for the Christ life is the life of Christ expressing itself through human agencies -His living His life in us for each other

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The purpose of the Law is to help the self-reliant man recognize his need of Christ.

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It is sufficient for the moment to say that God did not give us the law because He thought we could keep it. He neither needed us to nor expected us to.

To the Saints At...Am I Talking to You?
We would want to say that the believer is a saint and has therefore been separated by God from separation.

Casting out fear

Perfect love casts out all fear. Who's perfect love? Ours? Do we cast out all fear? Or does He? Or is there something else going on here?


And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.

Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world.


There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.

What if: Sin vs. Trusting

What if our sins are a matter of lacking trust in Him to provide for our needs?

What if we do not need to figure out WHY we seem to fall into what we do, but simply trust He will provide for our EVERY need?

What if the long struggle for deliverance is less about the performance of deliverance, but more about the recognition of His grace and provision?

What if: Seduction

What if one of our great personal challenges is being seduced by our giftedness for the kingdom?

What if our own giftedness brings reliance on self rather than dependence on God?

What if our giftedness is more a test than an outright blessing?

What if our giftedness is a test to show to our own selves who and what we truly trust?

What if: Externals

What if the externals are there to confirm the internal reality?

What if relying on the externals does the opposite?

Deontic to Ontic?

Is the Old Covenant predominantly deontic and the new predominantly ontic?

Does the deontic set one up for the ontic?

Does deontic failure bring one to the ontic reality?

The Fall: A crime

Was Satan's work at the fall an act of murder or was it manslaughter?

Is Satan not responsible for the spiritual death of the entire race of mankind?

If so, then He truly was a murderer from the beginning.

What if: Implicit Trust

What if the faith of a child is implicit?

What if we implicitly trust in our innermost man, our spirits?

What if our walk is the outworking of our spirit's implicit trust into our soul life?

Waiting

Three great reasons we are "forced" to wait.

1) To show us what is in our hearts


2) Show who is of faith and who is of presumption


3) Reduction of all our strength in any of our ability to fulfill

From Practice to Being Ushered

We may be able to practice His presence but can we go deeper? Can we be ushered into the reality that we are in the Father's heart and have been since our new birth?

Contextual Trip Up

It is so easy when reading the Bible to forget that the one inspired to write the letter does not have the "full" revelation that we do. How does this effect the context we impart to passages?

Person trumps the Letter, part III

From the first article:
To observe today's churches, you would have to conclude that Jesus told the disciples in John 14:26, "But the Bible which the Father will send in My name, it will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you." Believe us, this is NOT what Jesus promised the church to keep it from error, but rather the Holy Spirit. The Godhead is not the Father, the Son and the Holy Bible.

We have taken that which is seen and manifest and touchable as the true object, rather than realize that it points to the real object. How often do we miss the Holy Spirit's work (which is to point to Christ as well, FYI) and instead focus on our interpretation and understanding of the Bible? The former is not bad, it is very important. But do we live in the reality of Him by the Spirit, or do we read and study and pontificate on the letter?

Person trumps the Letter, part II

For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. Hebrews 4:12

I was always taught that this is referring to the Bible. But is it? Context is important. Let's just look at this verse by reading the very next verse.

And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do. Hebrews 4:13

Hmmm, doesn't sound like the Bible. It sounds like a Person, not a thing. Let's look at John 1:1, perhaps this may help, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Oh, then it's not the book. It's not the letter. It's the Person.

How often do we do this anyway?!

The Inscrutable Christ

When Christ Jesus walked upon the earth He gave everyone fits. They just couldn't figure Him out. He didn't fit in any box, and category, any classification. Whenever you thought you had Him pinned He'd slip right through physically as well as in reasoning. And then to top all this off, His great work, His great victory, was a humiliating and degrading death. And THEN He didn't stay dead! And THEN He left! Talk about inscrutable. And you think it ends there, but NO, HE COMES BACK AT PENTECOST!

We have his spirit now! In us. And we are in Him. So this Person of divine inscrutability has returned and enlivens all who believe upon Him. Here's the key question. Why would we expect His life in us to fit some understandable pattern? Why do we think the inscrutable in word and deed somehow becomes fathomable in word and deed because there is this book called the Bible and these Church traditions?

You know what's inscrutable? The wind, "The wind blows (breathes) where it wills; and though you hear its sound, yet you neither know where it comes from nor where it is going. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit. " (John 3:8, Amplified)

What if: Seek ye first

What if the Kingdom of God IS Christ?

What if His righteousness IS Christ?

What if the kingdom of God being at hand meant Christ had come?

Person should trump Letter

Peter's vision. Kill and eat 3 times God tells Him. What's Peter's "righteous" excuse? "God's word says the opposite..." What we see here is the seeming confrontation between God's word and God the Person. We know that there is no confrontation at all IN REALITY, because the law was temporal, it was never meant to be placed on man when the promise (Christ) had come.

But this is an interesting illustration. Do we take what was past to be the template, model, the full constraint of what is to be done in the future, or better yet, what God is doing right now?

Hmmm when [our interpretation of] the letter trumps the Person, we find ourselves in abject and total disobedience. No excuse, just the reality.

Perspective Clash

It is interesting how Christ's perspective and our religious/carnal/fallen perspective clash so diametrically. It gives one a great deal of pause when we come to His words as recorded in the Gospels.

Take the interchange between Him and the woman at the well about water. She talks of physical water, Christ talks of spiritual water. They are not even talking on the same plane of reality.

Water is a parable of the true reality in Christ. How often do we take the true reality and physicalize it. There is often talk of spiritualizing, but what of its opposite? Physicalizing is coming to the reality of Christ from man's perspective: vain reasonings, worldly, earthy...

There is understanding that something is a metaphor and then there is truly understanding. There are many analogies, parables, metaphors, etc... that Christ uses, but what if we still take them illusory rather than in reality?

What if: Speaks

What if God by the Spirit still speaks?

What if: teaching

What if teaching was mostly the confirming of the reality in which the Spirit has already wrought and revealed?

What if: Willy nilly Spirit

What if the working of the Spirit appears willy nilly?

What if the working of the Spirit is unpredictable by human standards and man's understanding?

What if the wild goose chase of following the Spirit is an integral purpose of God in order that we would walk by faith and not by sight?

What if: Revival and Reformation

What if "revival" and "reformation" have absolutely nothing to do with getting the New Testament pattern correct?

What if "revival" is easy, the Spirit leading?

The Bible: Witness to Itself?

The way we tend to go about things Christian -- at least from the Prostestant denominations -- is from the perspective or foundation that the Bible is the witness to itself. That the Bible points to itself. Where do we get blessing and healing? The Bible. Where do we find knowledge, wisdom, and truth? The Bible. How do we know God? The Bible.

Perhaps this perspective is askew, perhaps we are missing something. Perhaps what we fail to discern is that the Bible is pointing to Someone. We acknowledge this in a perfunctory manner, "Yeah yeah yeah, we know, Jesus Christ." But where do we go for life? Not Him (though we profess such), but to that which points to Him, the Bible. It's like going to a map to experience the city. There is a saying in self-help circles -- the map is not the territory. How unintentionally true it is for us Christians. We have a tendency to look to and stay in the map rather that engage, inhabit, and take in the territory. Christ is the territory, Christ is the promised land. We are in Christ, in Him we live and move and have our being. We live in Him. But are we living in the Bible? Is the map where we live and move and have our being?

What precedes form and function?

Great quote from today's the first article in today's readings:
"In all God's creation, life precedes form and function. Latent within the acorn is the mighty oak. The kingdom of God is no exception to this rule."

LIFE precedes form and function. Without the life, without the life embodying seed, there is no expression of form or application of function.

This has manifest application to our understanding of the early church. The seed was and is and always will be Christ. It is out of Him that all the expressions of true Christianity grow out. Fellowship, true love, patience, gentleness, you know all the fruit of the Spirit.

It is from the fellowship with Him by the body individually and His leading them to corporate life that the true reality is expressed.

What if: Spontaneous Expression

What if what we see in the New Testament churches of the first century is not a pattern but the RECOUNTING of the spontaneous expression of the Spirit of Christ at work in the community of believers?

Quotes from Today's Readings

Into All Truth by George Davis and Michael Clark
There is one major problem with this. Most of these teachings and writings are based on the supposition that if we find the right pattern or the right regimen we will experience the life and power the early believers knew. This "Field of Dreams" mentality, "Build it and they will come," is a clear case of the cart pushing the horse.

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In all God's creation, life precedes form and function. Latent within the acorn is the mighty oak. The kingdom of God is no exception to this rule. What at first seems no more substantial than a mustard seed, difficult to see and handle, with time and the right conditions grows into the largest of herbs. So is it with the things of God. Life precedes form and function.

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All form and function of the early church was the spontaneous expression of the overflowing life within.

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No, the focus of these primitive believers was purely upon the Christ living, by His Spirit, in the midst of them, individually and corporately.

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We believe that Christendom has elevated the head-knowledge of the word (the letter) to a place usurping the experiential knowledge of the living Word (Jesus). Jesus' words to the Pharisees ring as true today as ever, "You search the Scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and these are they which testify about me. Yet you will not come to me, that you may have life" (John 5:39-40 WEB).

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Whatever our doctrine, if it does not lead us to an intimate knowledge of Christ, it misses God's mark completely.

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The scriptures point to Jesus, yet how sad that many refuse to come to Him. We can find no evidence that Jesus taught his followers to live strictly by a rulebook.

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Likewise, the Gospels and the Epistles are not a rule book by which we independently and systematically attempt to approach God in our own merit. They are witnesses of Him, by whose blood we are accepted in the beloved. Christ is the substance that the scriptures give witness of. The scripture is a mirror that reflects His image. They were given to verify the existence and reality of a Person and lead the readers to Him.

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Should we study the scriptures? Absolutely! The problem is not the study of the scriptures, but the misguided belief that they are the Source, the Well-spring of life. The scriptures are a witness, and like any good witness, they do not testify of themselves but point to Him who is the fountain of Life.

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True church reform, revival, or what ever you choose to call it, has nothing to do with getting the pattern right. Failing to understand this has led reformers to fall far short of the purposes and heart of God in the past. True reformation is not the regaining a previous pattern but is the restoration of the Spirit's rightful place as leader of Christ's ekklesia.

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We have concluded that a true spirit-led teacher rarely teaches those led of the Spirit anything new, but rather just confirms them in their faith and trust in the Spirit, assuring them that they can hear His voice.

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Allow us to borrow the words of T. Austin Sparks.
The thing about a real windstorm is that it takes the government out of all other hands and proceeds to do as it chooses without reference or deference to conventions, traditions, common acceptances, inclinations, or fixed ideas. While it lasts, it is sovereign."

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Christ lives IN and through us by the Spirit's indwelling. The triune knowledge of Jesus being IN the Father and Christ living IN us and us being IN Him can only be realized by virtue of that indwelling.

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Much that calls itself "Christian" today prefers to be led by its own light or understanding of what has been spoken or written in the past rather than by He who now speaks.

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She spoke of worldly water, the traditions of the Jews, and the teachings of the Jewish and Samaritan fathers. But Jesus answers her from HIS Father's heavenly perspective on each point.

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Religious man has codified many of the words of Christ and the apostles into rigid doctrines, rules and regulations that have become dead letters. The Jews took the words of Moses and the prophets that pointed the way to the living waters of the Spirit and the Messiah and got hung-up on interpretations of the letter. They missed their Messiah altogether.

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What makes men think that The Living Word of God, His own Son, has ever ceased to speak? By the way men lead the church today, you would think they believe that "God is dead" and it is now all up to them. The Bible speaks of Jesus as the Word of God, but men have chosen to ignore this fact and call the Bible itself "The Word of God." This is symptomatic of what is killing the church.

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Complete things make partial things obsolete.

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Paul spoke of the problem of looking back to established traditions and creeds as a safeguard against error. On the surface this seems like wisdom, but is it? In the natural, looking back causes you to assume an unnatural position. If held for any length of time, it will make our necks ache and our vision to blur. God created us to look and walk forward. This is why He pointed our feet and eyes forward. Our feet will go best where our focus is. If our eye is on the mark, we will forget those things that are behind and press forward, allowing the Spirit of Truth to lead us on into all truth.

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For the Holy Spirit to come was just the same ALL, and FULFILLING of the whole gospel, as a Christ to come was the all, and the fulfilling of the Law. The Jew therefore with his Old Testament, not owning Christ in all his process to be the truth and life, and fulfiller of their Law, is just in that same apostasy, as the Christian with his New Testament, not owning the Holy Spirit in all his operations, to be his only light, guide, and governor. For as all types and figures in the Law were but empty shadows without Christ's being the life and power of them, so all that is written in the gospel is but dead letter, unless the Holy Spirit in man be the living reader, the living rememberer, and the living doer of them. (William Law)

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For many years, the church has tried to establish a letter-based unity and it has only resulted in greater division.

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When we build doctrines or establish mindsets out of reaction to anything instead of following the Spirit of Truth, error is close at hand and mind-numbing legalism is hot on its heels. To observe today's churches, you would have to conclude that Jesus told the disciples in John 14:26, "But the Bible which the Father will send in My name, it will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you." Believe us, this is NOT what Jesus promised the church to keep it from error, but rather the Holy Spirit. The Godhead is not the Father, the Son and the Holy Bible.

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The book we commonly call "The Acts of the Apostles" would more correctly be titled "The Acts of the Holy Spirit." It is evident that the Holy Spirit was the only Counselor and Guide in the early Church. We can nowhere find, within the pages of the New Testament, where believers were led about by scripture. They referred to scripture, but that was not the primary guide.


Waiting on God or Holy Presumption by George Davis and Michael Clark
The word wait in the above passage is from the Hebrew word qavah, which means "to bind together by twisting." So waiting in this case is not speaking of inactivity, though inactivity might be required for a season. Rather it speaks of being joined to God in such a way that His desires become yours, being attentive to His vision and interests and acting only when He acts and moving only when He moves. It is being so melded together that His life is your life. It is being so intertwined with God, attuned to His pulse, that when He rests, we rest and when He works, we work. The object is not the work or the wait, but rather a complete unity in Him.

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Paul warned the church in Galatia that they could not perfect in their flesh what God planted in them by the Spirit. It also holds true that He will not perfect in the Spirit what we start in the flesh!

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Remember, the race does not go to the swift nor does the battle always go to the mighty (Ecclesiastes 9:11), nor is youthful zeal and strength enough. It goes to those who wait upon the Lord for that new strength that comes down from above in His time and for His purposes as they are intertwined with Him alone. It goes to those who have no sufficiency except the sufficiency of God. These are the ones He knows intimately and who know Him, His heart, His pulse and His timing (see Matthew 7:21-23).

Today's Readings

Into All Truth by George Davis and Michael Clark
Is Your Life as God Intended It to Be? by Ken Walker
Waiting on God or Holy Presumption by George Davis and Michael Clark
Titles of the Risen Lord by T. Austin Sparks

Great Post @ Lifestream

Wayne Jacobsen's blog has a great post here.

Summary: a list of questions about fellowshipping, how should it be done, best practices, etc...

The solution? Christ. When we focus on these other things we do not have real fellowship. Only by and through and in Him can we have real fellowship.

I suppose some previous posts deal with such:
here
here

What If: Fear, Guilt, Greed

What if fear, guilt, and greed are incentives of the old creation, the one done away with at the Cross?

Fear? Fear? There's no fear in fellowship!

The interesting thing about fear is the distance that it creates between the object feared and the subject fearing. Obviously this distance manifests itself differently in the differing relationships between the feared and the fearing. Fear of a physical object or place usually elicits an avoidance of that location or thing. Fear of a person elicits an appeasement and avoidance. Fear of a concept or thought elicits an avoidance of thinking upon it or engaging it...There seems to be a pattern. Avoidance.

Can there be true fellowship with avoidance? Is not avoidance the opposite of fellowship? We in the Bible see the first act of avoidance through fear just after Adam and Eve sinned. They hid. They avoided meeting with, fellowshipping with, communing with their Creator.

Is appeasement related to avoidance? Tangentially I would suppose. It is more the avoidance of the consequence of some direct or indirect engagement with the object of fear. For a gentile example there was the primitive practice of sacrificing something of value to the subject of fear (aspect of wealth, or even family member) to AVOID the god's wrath or displeasure that will result in the subtracting of some valued blessing such as rain or the addition of some curse such as plague. I also notice the sacrifice is not to bring a closer relationship -- fellowship -- but to keep the feared object away. If the object is appeased then the object will not disturb the fearing subjects plans, aspirations, and desires -- stay out of the way, avoid engagement.

It was often in this appeasement that the subject would hope the gods would stay in heaven or Olympus or whatever dimensionality they (or He) inhabited. So neither the god nor any of "its" agents would come to engage in disturbing the fearing subjects' lives.

There is another aspect of fear. The selfish component, already manifest above, but we'll develop it here. Fear is the apprehension, the thought, the feeling, etc... centered on the self's well-being, comfort, or certainty. This is why there can be fear without the application of any danger, discomfort, or change directly to the subject fearing. One can be fearful for another's well-being, but underneath is this selfish thrust because the self will suffer discomfort and loss from the other's suffering. But we digress...

So fear is distance, avoidance, and centered on self. What is its opposite? Love, obviously. As John so eloquently put it, "perfect love casts out all fear." Love is selfless (centered on the well-being of another, i.e. NOT YOU), engaging, and close. Sounds a lot like fellowship come to think of it.

So am I saying fear is bad? I don't think so. It's an emotion, it's a tool. Is fire bad? Well it depends on how it's used, and frankly, WHY it's used. Fear can be a great beginning to understanding. It gets attention, it focuses one. Most often we focus on the wrong things, true, but when we focus on the right things, or the right person then fear has done its job. As awareness leads to acquaintance which leads to trust and then finally love; fear naturally subsides. Perfect love CASTS out fear, all fear. Fear being cast out is fear subsiding, going away. As fear goes and love increases so does closeness, trust, and engagement.

Upon the ground of love, fear goes and fellowship grows.

Rituals as a Tudor

Rituals are very much like the Law. So much so they were an integral part of it -- especially with the tithing and the feasts et al. In a way it is a subset, a subsegment of Law. For Law was to be a custodian that brings us to Christ. How about this?

Rituals were a custodian to bring us to the reality of

• our relationship with Christ
• principles of life in Christ
• principles of the invisible but true reality in Christ

Therefore one could say that there is nothing, now, in the applying of rituals to our lives with this purpose -- that the ritual will do anything other than illustrate the unseen reality in Christ. This is perhaps why we are free in Christ. There is not a prescribed iteration of Lord's Supper for example. We are free from the SHOULD aspect for some curse or blessing. We in our freedom are free to remember, to go deeper into that relationship and partaking routinely (if yearly, monthly, randomly, however) helps in such. Perhaps it is not supposed to be a staple, for the only staple is Christ Himself.

Perhaps we SHOULD (hehe, you'll see the joke) not focus so much on the aspects of shoulding -- the regularity, the type of cup, the type of bread, how the bread is broken, how it is shared, etc...
In coming together in Christ, in sharing in His life -- not some simple prayer in His name or just a label for our gatherings -- but coming from TRUE fellowship with our Lord I am confident that God's commanded illustrations will be a part of gatherings as the Spirit sees fit. Perhaps in one group it is regular, in another it is not, and in another it is not even done in this particular gathering. No one is missing His life in the performance and participation in an illustration or ritual -- but if He is not the center, the fulcrum, the crux, the all in all in our walk and gatherings, then the ritual will not help in advancing us in fellowship or our walk anyway.

What if: Baptism

From:Ritual or Reality

What if baptism (or any other commandment or ritual) is a visual training device?

What if rituals (like Lord's Supper perhaps) are magnificent parables FOR a principle FOR a reality that is invisible but nevertheless very very real?

Quotes from Friday's Reading

Ritual or Reality

Let me explain by giving one of the common uses of baptizo in classic Greek. Farmers, who were forced by circumstances into going to war, changed their hunting spears into warrior’s spears by dipping them in pig’s blood. Now, is the true meaning of baptizo "to dip or immerse", or is it "to identify with something different in order to indicate a real change".

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It is my firm conviction that the principle or the reality is always more important than the ritual.

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What was John preaching? Was the emphasis of his message the importance of getting wet in the river? Of course not! It was repentance and personal preparation for entrance into God’s kingdom! The emphasis is obviously on the reality, not the ritual!

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If you simply emphasize the ritual, the principle gets lost.



The Dawn of Religion
In the beginning man had no religion. In the Garden of Eden he respected God, reverenced His being, and served without it... In this state the Creator freely conversed with the being made in His own image, and there was no fear in the heart of the creature, nor was there any sense of shame (Gen. 2:22).

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Inasmuch as sin is an offense against the dignity and majesty of God, the terms of reconciliation must be dictated by the offended and not by the offender.

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God proposes the conditions, man must accept or reject them. Since man cannot ascertain the thoughts of God, except as He reveals them, the acceptable system of religion must be a revelation. It represents, then, not the groping, climbing, or struggling toward heaven upon a ladder erected by the trial-and-error method of human experience, but a bold approach through "a new and living way" provided by a kind and beneficent Father.


What Is Life in the Spirit?

We must start out with faith and love, and we must never outgrow or abandon either. Everything that is said must be spoken in faith and love. Everything that is done must be performed in faith and love. We must begin by going down into the soil of love. We must continue by growing up in love.

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God's love is not our love for God; it is rather the love that God is (1 John 4:16).


Slavery or Freedom?
Think of the implications in the phrase "led by the Spirit of God." The original for "led" is ago. Two things can be said of its usage in the New Covenant Scriptures. First, it generally applies to persons, and has to do with their motivation to act. Second, it implies willingness and cooperation on the part of those who are led. The leading is not by force. It is not against the will. To be led by the Spirit is to surrender to the influence and guidance of the Spirit. This is a proof of divine sonship. Only sons of God will be led by the Spirit, and thus, when one is so led he has a personal relationship with God. This is quite different from the measuring rods employed by men.

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Slavery to sin demands all of our powers and resources, and places every faculty under tribute. Sin reigning in our mortal bodies exacts obedience to the body's desires. It forces us to put all of our parts at its disposal as instruments for wrongdoing (Romans 6:12, 13). Sin is the most cruel taskmaster in the universe.

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Slavery to sin reduces us to servitude and then pays off with death. Sin promises everything and provides nothing.

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The fact is that Jesus made sense out of death by making sense out of life. By showing me how to live He taught me how to die.

Jesus Christ, the "it"

Perhaps there is an easy way to tell whether Jesus to you is a person or an it.

Let's look at how we interact with its...

• We go to them the same way over and over to get results
• The better we mentally can grasp them the better we get results
• They are tools to fulfill some particular need
• They serve no purpose unless in use, their mere existence is nothing without their use
• The more honed your dealing with them, the better your results
• Their value is what they do for us
• They are disappointing when they fail to do as we expect

What if: Assembling together

What if loving one another will "naturally" produce meeting and assembling with one another?

What if the assembling is the fruit of His life?

What if He will draw all men to Himself?

Wordly false dichotomy?

Christianity, as per the "church" must either be order or you have chaos.

Order <----------------------------------> Chaos

But what if the church is an organism? Then it is chaotic order and/or ordered chaos. Or so it would appear to the eyes of the flesh.

Either way, it is outside the world-system of ordering and functioning.

What if: World vs. Body of Christ

The Anomaly of Christianity
What if it is impossible to transfer human concepts of organization, institution, government, and business to the Church of Christ?

Do we lose something...

Do we lose something the moment we try to define something? What if what we lose are the most important parts? What if in our blindness we miss the Person for all the stuff that we have defined?

What if: Christianity is ALIVE

What if Christianity is alive and not nailed down, systematized doctrine with behaviorial absolutes and institutional polity?
What if Christianity is a Person not a system?

What if: Christian Anomaly

(based on today's reading)
What if Christianity functions contrary

• to the natural order?
• to the status quo?
• to the normative pattern?
• to the accepted logic?
• to the general rule?
• to the common expectations of man?
  

Random thought: Faith

Faith is the certainty that God is certain, even though I may be very much confused.

Dissection of Christ: Aspectalism

Aspectalism -- I think I coined a new word.

Christ has many attributes which we can dissect and discuss. And that is fine. But when that is all that Christ is, then we are perhaps on the wrong ground.

An example let's say is His sovereignty. Do we focus ON it, rather than Who it is a part of?
His sovereignty is a "natural" part of Who He is.

Shaquille O'Neal is a 7-footer. His height is an aspect of who he is. But to focus on, derive a system of thought, relate to him based upon the foundation of an ASPECT of him, would be silly. And HEAVEN forbid you relate to him on the aspect of his skin pigmentation! But do we do the same thing with Christ?

Now meditating on an aspect of His being is highly important. We perhaps though, tend to dissect Him to such an extent that the Person disappears from our hearts and only the epistemological aspects remain in our heads.

Quotes from Today's Readings

Jesus Christ, the Way -- Avoiding the Ditches
When Aquila and Priscilla explained to Apollos "the way of God" (Acts 18:26), they did not explain the path, the road, the procedure, the plan of God. They explained to him Jesus

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Jesus is the way to be man as God intends man to be, the way to do what God wants to be and to do in us.

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There can be no act of God apart from His Being. He always acts "in character" and does what He does because He is who He is. His doing is the dynamic expression of His Being. Christianity is always and only the dynamic expression of the life of Jesus Christ in the Christian, individually and collectively.

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Notice that the epistemological and experiential religionists are both dealing with a static object, an "it" which they seek to figure out and work out, or feel and experience in order to merge with. Jesus Christ is not an "it," an object. He is the personal dynamic of God.

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The gospel is not essentially information or experience. The gospel is Jesus Christ! He is the "good news."


God Hates Religion
It is the propensity of man to formulate religion to take that which is of the invisible God and attempt to make it visible, tangible and controllable.

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Religion is essentially idolatry. Men worship their man-made formations and structures their ideological idols formed in the concrete of inflexible minds.

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Men can form idols out of wood or stone in an attempt to represent God, or they can formulate ideological idols (belief-systems, doctrinal definitions, theological theses).

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We reduce God to fit within our mental "box," then we nail it shut, construct our creed, and absolutely affirm that we have God figured out. We have reduced God to no bigger than our cranial cavity.

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People want a sense of meaning, a sense of purpose, a sense of belonging, a sense of identity, a reason to be. These are God-given desires. Religion offers a false-fulfillment of these desires.

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Religion fosters a fixation, a compulsion, an obsession, an addiction to religious activities, explaining the absolute necessity to be thus engaged in the activities in order to please God, and for the good of the whole


The Anomaly of Christianity
Christian functionality is one hundred and eighty degrees contrary to the natural order, the status quo, the normative pattern, the accepted logic, the general rule, the common expectation of man. Christianity "does not fit" with the world-system.

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But what does natural man do? He tries to impose God's order upon the natural order in religion. He attempts to impose so-called Christian or spiritual "principles" upon the world by legalistic imperatives and activist legislation. The divine dynamic of Christianity cannot be forced upon or forced into the world-system. It will not fit! It is not just paradoxical to the world; it is a totally different reality.

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Natural, self-oriented man does not know what to do if he cannot figure it out, define it, organize it, control it (as "god" over it). So he sets out to define the undefinable, to explain the inexplicable; and thus to "incorporate" such into another denomination complete with orthodox creedal formulation. Man's carefully delineated orthodoxy is always challenged by God's heterodox ways, which will not conform to man's plans. "The ways of God are past finding out" (Romans 10:33).

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We try to systematize thought and thus create doctrine and systematic theology. We try to systematize behavior and thus create ethics and morality. We try to systematize interpersonal relationships and thus create organizational models and institutions. Christianity cannot be systematized! Christianity is the living dynamic of the Life of Jesus Christ and such infinite spiritual reality cannot be systematized by the finite mind of man.

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What we observe everywhere within the misnomer of "Christian religion" is the abundance of "how-to..." formulas informing us "how to" make Christianity "fit" within the world-system. As the square peg is forced into the round hole the corners are peeled off to make it fit. But you no longer have Christianity; merely human attempts at proceduralized religion trying to force Christianity to fit into a sinful, human world-system.

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Three particular areas of such religious proceduralization are (1) Doctrinal definition (2) Behavioral standards (3) Institutional polity and policy. Christianity is not a belief-system. Christianity is not an ethical system. Christianity is not an institutional system. But the world-system will always try to systematize Christianity into such man-made systems. Fundamentalists create precision of doctrine. Moralists and legalists create ethical behavior guidelines. Management specialists create functional institutions which they call "churches."

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Whenever man tries to take Christianity and "screw it down tight" in human understanding in order to "get a handle on it," you can be sure he is no longer dealing with Christianity. Christianity is alive with the Spirit of Christ living and functioning in receptive individuals, and cannot be contained in man-made parameters, thus to be manipulated by man.

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To try to encapsulate Christianity within doctrinal, behavioral or institutional definition, thinking that such will preserve and ensure its survival is ludicrous.

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Precise doctrinal definition may fine-tune fundamentalism, but it does not facilitate Christianity. Precise behavioral guidelines make for moralistic legalism, but such is not Christianity. Precise institutional models define organizational authority structures, but they do not facilitate the function of the Church of Jesus Christ.

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The recognition of the anomaly of Christianity should keep Christians focused upon the person and Life of Jesus Christ, the sufficiency of the function of His Life presently even when "the going gets tough" (cf. I Peter), and the continuum of the function of His Life in the perfect context of the heavenly realm.

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Despite the perfection of the One who lives in us, and the complete sufficiency of His life in all situations, He is still an anomaly in the contextualization of this sinful world-system. He was an anomaly during his incarnated redemptive mission here on earth, and the unacceptability of that anomaly caused the authorities to demand His crucifixion. The continued anomaly of Christianity is no more acceptable today. Despite man's attempts to avoid, explain away or gloss over the anomaly of Christianity, it remains just that.


The Dangers of Meetings
A Christianity anchored in meetings as its foundation for or expression of life will become performance based and focused. Performance based in our expectations of what those meetings should achieve, and therefore performance focused in our expectations of the people attending those meetings.

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Ultimately, meetings will become our definition of the Christian life which results in agenda taking priority over relationships - worse, even defining relationships.

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Last but not least, we become meeting focused instead of Christ focused. Our goal becomes "church" - which again is unbiblical - and we become perpetrators of a third kingdom upon the earth, The Kingdom of Church which is a hindrance to The Kingdom of God and powerless against The Kingdom of This World.

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If you mean business with God, you can’t find your identity in anything but Jesus. That will progressively cost you your life. By that I mean it will cause you to have to lay down your search for identity in ANYTHING other than Him. That includes, meetings, ministry, peer groups, leaders, messages or causes, traditions……anything. ESPECIALLY RELIGIOUS!

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Compare how many times the bible tells us to meet with one another with the number of times it tells us to love one another. And perhaps even more critically, check out the number of times Jesus told us to have meetings with the number of times He told us to love one another. Which one do you think we should be majoring on?

What if: Gospel OF vs. Gospel of

What if it is the gospel of CHRIST as opposed to the gospel OF Christ?

Gospel OF Christ
Like the work OF Michaelangelo. They are things connected to or get their meaning from the object (Michaelangelo). The object is the nexus, for the constellation of things that surround it. Therefore works of David and Mona Lisa fall into it. In reference to the phrase in question it would constitute the historicity, the teachings, the character traits, all the things ABOUT Christ.

Gospel of CHRIST
Like the work of Mona Lisa. In this case the antecedent (or whatever the term for "work" would be -- trying to be academic here) would be equivalent, synonomous, equal to, exactly the object. The work IS Mona Lisa. They are the same thing.

So the gospel OF Jesus Christ are the things ABOUT Him.
And the gospel of Jesus Christ is Jesus Christ Himself.

Now this example does not mean that they are mutually exclusive. For if the latter is the case, then obviously the former flows from it. From the person flows the accountrement, those things about the person. The question really is then, what is the emphasis? The constellation about or the object that centers?

Today's Readings

Jesus Christ, the Way -- Avoiding the Ditches by Jim Fowler
God Hates Religion by Jim Fowler
The Anomaly of Christianity by Jim Fowler
The Dangers of Meetings by Alan Richardson

What If: Fruit Confusion

What if we confuse a relationship with Christ with relating to (acquiring) the fruit of His presence?

What if we confuse a relationship with Christ with acquiring...

• feeling loved?
• His sovereignty?
• our freedom?
• Heaven?
• His provision?
• Holiness?
• Righteousness?
  

Law Metaphors; Law is a tutor that leads us to Christ (Gal. 3:24)

Like a roadsign...
Once you are at your destination, you no longer look to or use the road signs.

Like a map...
When you arrive at your destination you put the map away. You put off your map reading personhood.

Like a mirror...
You see what you look like. Then you put the mirror away.


You don't live looking at your face in a mirror, but you live looking into the face of others.

Law focus (religion) is moral/spiritual narcissism. It is a self-focus. It is navel-gazing. It is the spiritual parable of one who is constantly checking themself out to see what they look like. Someone who is more interested in how they look than looking into the faces of those around them.

What if: Obedience

What if obedience is not always onerous?

What if obedience is usually natural?

What if obedience is sometimes unwitting?

What if obedience is directly correlated with authentic trust in Him?

What if: Legalism

What if legalism is like tax-law, the endless seeking, parsing, and striving for loopholes to get what you want while still "abiding" by the letter of the law?

What If: Expectations

What if God does not have the expectations we have in any of our moments of failure and loss?

Vicarious Walk

How often do we walk vicariously with Christ? Whether through our leaders, mature believers about us, on fire new believers, or great thinkers of the past -- we tend to do our walk in a vicarious manner.

Are we doing what others who we regard as mature do, RATHER than realize that true doing is out of an inner reality? AND are we forgetting that this aspired doing is the result of a long wrought out process managed, energized, and constrained by the Spirit?

In Christ...Our past

...we are free to look back on mistakes, on hardships, on embarrasments and see them afresh. We are hidden in Him. Ahhh the losses in love, the poor decisions. It's a tapestry of life not a life diverting, life wrecking, life ending failure.

True freedom. To look back and see events as just chapters leading up to the now and part of the exciting story that leads into eternity. It's no longer events where I blew it, screwed things up, failed, or missed out, but steps in a great story. Plot devices that had to be to make this story so rich and make the future so bright and clear. They do not hurt any less, but they no longer bring us in any bondage. For in Christ, we are truly freed.

Quotes from Today's Readings

JPL
Only through the testings can we enter into deep and full life in God. We can only know our God and His abundant grace as He brings us through circumstances that are a "good deal beyond the possible point," as someone once said. Each "impossible" point simply casts us upon the God in Whom we hide. "Deep" - "Dwell deep," said Ezekiel, the prophet. How can we unless we have no resource but God, no refuge but in Him?

WJ
However, our knowledge about what is truly best for us is so limited, that decisions we make seeking our own best interest only draw us further from him.

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But let us not forget, that God knew from the beginning what their choice would be and had already set about to use their failure in the process of redemption. Immediately after their fall, he prescribed conditions in which their bent for choosing in their own best interest would be used to help hold their sin in check until the Savior would come. The curses and eventually the law God used rewards and punishments to make God's ways appeal to our self-interest.

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The only way to life was for self to be swallowed up in the immensity of Father's love.

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Because we would trust his love and care for our lives, we would no longer have to look out for ourselves, but follow him freely all of our days.

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when we are confident that God will have his way, we no longer have to push for our own agendas. In the cross Wayne's best interest has ceased to exist and no longer needs to be served. That's not just true of sinful acts but even visions of ministry. He is at work in me for his pleasure. I don't have to scheme or manipulate people anymore.


SM
First of all the inheritance is Christ. Not heaven. Not power. Not freedom. These are all a fruit of the inheritance but not it.

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The Father did not give us many things, He gave us His Son in whom are all things. We are amiss to seek after righteousness, healing, power, and wisdom for Christ is all of these things and more, 1 Cor. 1:30.

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Many are asking what is the Lord anointing today in the earth? I tell you that He is anointing what He has always been anointing and that is the knowing of His Son. Not the knowing about His Son but the experiential faith filled knowing of His Son by revelation. This meets the Father’s and our deepest desire. This is the perpetual passion and activity of the Holy Spirit, that is the revealing and making known the Son. What is the inheritance represented by? In one word, FREEDOM.

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Jesus was constantly offending, especially the religious folks of His day, with His glorious freedom in the Father. He did not fit in their law, traditions, and religion. He was free in the Father so His life could not be contained in certain buildings, events, and religious activities. And it cannot be today! We have a habit of trying to contain the life of God into certain times and places but it cannot be done.

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Our need to control leads us back to law every time.


IW
If we try to control our own tongue by our own will, then we will find ourselves in Cain's position of trying to master sin but being mastered by it. Genesis 4:6. You cannot cast out satan by satan.

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We are harsh and critical of others because that is how we see ourselves, and in turn how we see God, no matter how we might try to pretty it all up with our religious catch phrases.

Tangled Conversation

I'm tired of Kingdom talk.

Whoa! I'm sure I don't know what you mean. What do you mean?

I mean the word, not the reality.

Oh, how postmodern of you.

Is postmodern thought really that different? Does it not just bring out the...for lack of a better word...hypocrisy in our religious language? I mean really, any systemization of human thought is just that, human based perceptual definition and conceptualization.

Hmmm, so in effect any outward understanding of human thought is still within the trap of human based thinking. So can we then say that there is no moral difference between modernism and postmodernism thinking?

Well they both have their plusses and minuses I would think. How about this...what if their strengths ARE their weaknesses?

How do you mean?

What if the deficiencies of each are the opportunities, the portals through which God brings Himself to us, showcases His Son. What if in these missing, these low places, these glaring holes that we are "forced" to come to the ultimate reality.

Well that turns contemporary thought, and man's striving for truth and the description of reality on its head.

How so?

It means that foundationally we cannot derive from ourselves set propostions that will arrive at the true reality. Somehow in our efforts the fallen is mixed in -- perhaps the efforts themselves are the seeds of not only ultimate self-contradiction, but the failure of practically living out that which we have in fact postulated.

So man cannot work His way to revelation. Revelation is by definition of God. And therefore to understand, perceive, know the things of God, they must be revealed.

Right. Therefore any construct we humans come up with will by definition be false. It will be an illusion. Will be distortions of reality. Some modes of thought or worldviews will be distorted in different ways than others, but the fact is they all see reality warped, they all perceive an illusion, they all based on and ultimately are, a lie.

Ouch. That's harsh man. But it just might be fairly accurate, But the question is then, what value is this conversation? We use the rules of language and logic to have this conversation. They are all products of human rules and conventions.

True. But not really. They are tools, not the system itself. What I was saying is that the seeing mind is the problem, not the telescope that the mind sees out of -- or better yet, not the lens that the mind discovered. I chose the second one because language and logic are discoveries, not inventions per se. God speaks, and God thinks. He has REVEALED such. We are endowed with those two, plus many more characteristics. But I think we've gone off topic a bit. I think what I'm trying to say is that no human derived system of thought can be trusted, nor should it. We may live in a postmodern thinking world, and therefore we must engage postmodern thinkers so there are certain aspects of thought that must be adhered to, communicated, agreed upon (in common use, not necessarily belief). But the mind in which we inhabit does not necessarily have to be human derived.

So you are saying that the renewing of the mind is not necessarily the renewing of a modern or a postmodern mind.

Ding ding ding. That's what I think I was getting at. It's back to simple faith. We were not given the mind of the world. But we are "let this mind be in you" the mind of Christ. It transcends. It is not within the confines of the presuppositional or classificational systems of human thought. God does not fit in a box. The Christian mind is not the reaction of one system of thought to another -- although Christian culture can surely operate that way. It is entirely other, it is not a system even, it is a Person.

Ways of God = Christ

There is a description of God's way and juxtaposing it to the world-system's way. Like God chose the weak and despised things to humble the proud. Here it is easy to see Christ as THE example of such.

Christ then IS the manifestation of God's ways. Are God's ways completely within the Person of Christ?

God's Wisdom = Christ
Christ is the Wisdom of God
Therefore this is a strong inclination that God's ways are Christ.

Perhaps Christ is even more the be all end all All in All than we even imagined.

Running Musings: Manipulation and Appeasement

Can all our religious activity be broken down to these two concepts? They're essentially two sides of the same coin.

Manipulation: self-focused attempt to get another (God) to do what you want
Appeasement: self-focused attempt to get another (God) to NOT DO what you think the other (God) was going to or has the power to do.

What If: His Provision

What if seeking Him you'll see how He provides for you?

What if in seeking Him you'd see that which you'd probably miss focused on the problem and yourself, but it was there anyway?

What if in seeking you are now able to truly receive?

What if in focused upon Him you are truly able to ask rightly?

Today's Readings

The Hidden Life of a Grain of Wheat by Jesse Penn-Lewis
What's in it for Me? by Wayne Jacobsen
Our Inheritance is Freedom Not Slavery by Sam McVey
What, Me a Pharisee? by Iam Williams

Christ + X = X (only)

Christ + Law = Law (only)
Christ + Works = Works (only)
Christ + love = Love (human)

Christ + pattern = pattern (only)
Christ + model = model (only)
Christ + principles = principles (only)
Christ + methodology = methodology (only)

Christ + 0 =

From The Problem with Solutions
Chirst + 0 = redemption
Christ + 0 = freedom in Christ
Christ + 0 = peace (because Christ is all these things)
Christ + 0 = love [agape]

Christ + 0 = righteousness
Christ + 0 = goodness
Christ + 0 = gentleness
Christ + 0 = contentedness
Christ + 0 = wisdom
Christ + 0 = victory

Quotes from Today's Readings

From The Problem with Solutions by Milt Rodriguez

GOD HAS NO SOLUTIONS FOR YOU PROBLEMS!
In fact, He doesn't even move in the realm of solutions...God uses no methods! We figure that the best way to solve the problem is by focusing all of our attention on the problem. God says that the only hope is to look away from the problem to another place. That place is a person! THE PERSON OF HIS SON, THE LORD JESUS CHRIST!

• Learn to walk in His ways.
• I am the Way...
• Connection? Or was Jesus just talking about a specific aspect, while there are other ways out there?
• You want ways -- See Christ

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God has no solutions, only a Person.
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It's as if all of your problems are on a window of glass and the Lord is standing right outside of the window. You need to look through the glass, beyond the problems, to see your Lord!
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If we will develop the practice of continually focusing on Christ, then we will be able to see Him move and hear Him speak. It's a lot easier to hear someone speak if you are looking at them, isn't it? If there is something we need to do about our problem, then the Lord will let us know WHILE WE ARE LOOKING AT HIM!
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THE ONLY LASTING SOLUTIONS COME AS WE BEHOLD THE LORD!

• It's definitely not about you when in the midst of this.
  

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We don't focus on the Lord in order to get rid of all our problems. We focus on the Lord because we love Him!

• True and very important, otherwise it's just manipulation and appeasement.

Today's Readings

The Problem with Solutions by Milt Rodriguez

Spiritual Sight by George Davis

Law of Liberty by Lynnette Woods

What if: Teaching

Teaching not is the revelation of anything new. It is the revelation of that which already is. It is the revealing of reality. Teach someone golf is not the creation of a new thing. It is the revealing of a sport that already exists in forms, rules, and skills.

• What if the same is true for us in our teaching on all things Christian?
• What if teaching is merely the revealing of the reality that ALREADY exists in Christ?
• What if teaching is revealing what is ALREADY true for us in Christ?
• What if teaching is just the bringing of believers deeper into Christ?
• What if our reality in Christ is true of the believer whether they know (gnosis or epignosis) or not?

Tangled Conversation of the day

Just talking with myself....

Is freedom the liberty to do what I want?

Liberty to do what? Do? Or is it to be?

Be what? What I want to be, right?

And your experience with your wants are...

But I am in Christ, He's in me. So my wants are His?

Hmmm, that threw me for a loop. Was expecting something else. Interesting. Presumptuous too. Now there certainly appears that there is a union, but we are still selfish and such. Now I'm the one questioning.

Well couldn't I say, liberty to do what the "new me" wants, which is Him?

That's interesting. Go on with that thought.

Well I would think freedom is found in Him. Therefore freedom is in His wants, His thoughts, His mind. "Let this mind be in you."

That is interesting. Interesting how Paul said let this mind BE in you. So it's already given, it is just letting.

Just receiving. Of faith. Faith is trusting, it is believing... all of which is receiving. So receive the gift of Christ's mind.

And that is freeing?

Well the mind of the flesh is emnity with God. And the flesh lusteth against the Spirit and the Spirit the flesh.

True. Now the question then is are those about the experience of a believer? If so there is much we can go into. If it is talking about the the two men shall we say, in Adam and in Christ, then things are more prickly.

Well let's assume the former and see where we go. Now our spirits are reborn, our mind is renewed.

Ahhh, so the mind is being translated from the old to the new daily?

Well I don't know if translated is the right "term" but it's merely a word anyway. So okay, that works.

Therefore the spirit has been freed and lives in total freedom. The mind is being freed. And the body will finally be freed.

Ahh the three aspects of salvation. The past, present, and future.

Hmmmm so freedom in a sense flows from the Spirit, where we are in union with Him, bone of His bone, flesh of His flesh; where he that is born from above is one in spirit...whew...down to the mind.

I see where you are going. Very intriguing. Therefore by letting His mind be in us by faith we find our minds freed. I can hear Morpheus saying something like this.

I have to admit I'm not THAT comfortable with our methodizing, is that a word, God's freeing of us. But... we're free to continue this conversation. I don't think we're building a curriculum here. I guess we're just trying to map out a reality. Whether our map is true or not has no impact on the reality of Christ. Okay, I'm off my soapbox.

Oooookay, back to freedom? So the mind is the "control center" of the body, the person. But isn't this bondage? Should not it be the Spirit?

Hmmm, interesting question. Why is it not now?

Well it appears we can walk in the flesh.

Yeah, true. And...wait for it...the flesh have nothing to do with the Spirit, the Holy Spirit that is, nor does it have anything to do with our Spirit. Because we are made of an incorruptible seed.

So freedom flows from the Spirit down. Hmmmm must ponder...

Questions

The recapturing of a teaching brings up some interesting questions...

Will recapturing any teaching truly bring us anywhere, OR is the recapturing merely a response or result of something else?

Is the recapturing the visible manifestation of something unseen, something invisible?

Interesting Quotes from Readings

That is why St Paul, our earliest Christian writer, speaks of the Spirit as the guarantee or the down-payment of what is to come. The Greek word he uses is arrabon, which in modern Greek means an engagement-ring, a sign in the present of what is to come in the future.

Unity and holiness have been two great problems for the church in the last generation. Could it be that we need to recapture Paul's bracing teaching about our vocation to be Temples of the Holy Spirit?

Is recapturing some teaching going to do this? Can we "go deeper" and perhaps see the source of such.

That is what many theological traditions have explored as the very heart of God's own being, the love which passes continually between Father, Son and Spirit. Indeed, some have suggested that one way of understanding who the Spirit is is that the Spirit is the personal love which the Father has for the Son and the Son for the Father - and that we are invited, by being indwelt by the Spirit, to have a share, ourselves, in this inner and loving life of God.

The heartsearcher; there is a divine name to ponder.

Read Today

The Holy Spirit in the Church
by N. T. Wright

A Bit about the name

From the poem by Yeats.

He Tells of the Perfect Beauty
O cloud-pale eyelids, dream-dimmed eyes,
The poets labouring all their days
To build a perfect beauty in rhyme
Are overthrown by a woman's gaze
And by the unlabouring brood of the skies:
And therefore my heart will bow, when dew
Is dropping sleep, until GOD BURN TIME,
Before the unlabouring stars and you.

What a powerful phrase. It evokes the eternal just reflecting upon it.

God BURN time?
Ehhh, would be a bit presumptuous. I'd think it would sound more like a command rather than a reflection and meditation.

God BURNING time?
A bit long.

God's BURNING time?
Straying far from the poem -- not that the poem defines anything here. Why would even the last statement be needed? Why do we feel impelled to justify choices we've made?

Can time burn? Hmmm that brings up some interesting questions. If the eternal is the absence of time and that is our "future" then time will have to "burn". Is time burning now. Is time a physical aspect of the elements of the world -- or was Paul merely talking about our vain traditions and rituals?