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Meditations on Christian Revival
Meditations on Christian Revival PDFCopyright 2016 All Rights Reserved R.S. Pearson
Permission is give to reprint sections for review and inclusion in other works granted the source is quoted.
Some scriptures may be from the New King James Version or NIV versions.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scriptures taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The "NIV" and "New International Version" are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™
ISBN-13: 978-1517542962
ISBN-10: 1517542960
First Edition
Table of Contents
Introduction
Numbered Sections
Introduction
Revival has been meant to be seen as a time of spiritual fervor that takes place under a certain preacher in a certain church, or a Christian revival in the population in an area. This work can be seen a personal guide to revival in a few different ways, one is thriving in one's faith in a so-called post-Christian culture by taking the attitude of a soul winner. It takes the view of internally reversing the pressure from living in a post-Christian culture by praying for the "unprayable," planting seeds, and living through the offense of soul-winning as being the best defense in such a society.
"And they that are wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever."
Daniel 12: 3
In the West, especially Europe, there is much of a need for a Christian revival consciousness. Many of the mainline churches such as Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian and others have lost much of their congregation. The Christianity that is in its place is often good, but sometimes falls prey to a simplistic "prosperity gospel." It is true that prosperity is promised in the Book of Proverbs, but Jesus as often promises tribulation for those that follow Him. This book examines how the two paths can often co-exist.
I believe it is largely true that much of so-called post Christian culture has become "dumbed down" to the Christian heights that the world once knew. As well as the normal historic Christian interpretation, Jesus was promoting a state of being that is closest today to what we consider the genius. We can see that geniuses like Van Gogh or Tesla had something that is ahead of their times, or that they did not get the fair recognition due them. The righteous are in the same situation, especially in cultures that are sometimes trying to diminish the concept of righteousness as the world once understood it. I'm not saying that all geniuses are righteous or that Jesus meant to do anything other than set up the historical church. I mean the position of the true soul-winning Christian in the world is similar to the position of the genius that is not heralded in their day. True believers are those that preserve the world, like salt does. The day they herald is the day that God rules, which can be said to be after the death of the Christian, but can also be seen in the here and now.
It is true, there are sometimes Christians who do not have much love. They are trapped into modes of living in which their unconscious security needs overcome their drive to love as Christians should. Their choices do not enable them to love fully because they are not sure of the love of God. The fear of God is so great that they stay away from other people because of a fear of contamination. But the Word constantly also warns us about fear. It says God does not give us a spirit of fear but of power, love and a sound mind (2 Timothy 1:7). It also says those who still fear are not made perfect in love (1 John 4:18).
This is written to address the fact that many educated people became trapped away from their Christian backgrounds and have had problems getting back to it.
One aim of this work is to explain why and how to transform lust and the love of money into the love of God and love of people, and how this spiritual transformation is also the salvation of one's lot in life. It is said in the Word if we delight ourselves in the Lord, He will give us the desire of our hearts (Psalm 37:4).
One should look at many of these statements as prayers, not as grandiose plans, but a way to focus one's prayer life into praying for the power of God to help us do the things described. There was a great problem that I recognized as not being able to merely formulate the prayer, "Lord, help us bring revival to this city." The city in question was considered internationally very modern and trendy, full of modern paganism and destructive false spirituality. Christian revival in such an area seemed worthless to even contemplate. But I recognized that God can be praised as having done exactly this kind of miracle when people can simply formulate the prayer, meditate on the solution, and create a lifestyle in which the revival can be reproduced in others by soul-winning.
If we lose the hope that others can develop spiritual fervor, that is a sign that we ourselves have lost the fervor. This hope is the main key to winning souls.
I seek to motivate some who are already Christians to interface with the world more, as Jesus taught us to in Mathew 5:13 to 5:16:
13 "You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. 14 You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven." (NIV).
Some can do this, like St. Paul, by using their education, and rethink how they live their faith in areas that are presently indifferent or hostile to it.
Clearly, the fall in church attendance in the last fifty years or so is the result of there being a lack of wisdom regarding soul-winning in the Body of Christ, as it has manifested in much of the "post-Christian" areas. In this work, I will also hope to address the objections of those who have not made the commitment to Christ in the historical sense.
Everyone needs to start out with the personal revival that Jesus mentioned. He taught us to focus on making our own lives a Kingdom of Heaven within, by not judging others but by focusing on certain things in our own lives. He said this by saying take out the plank that is in your own eye, before you take out the speck that is in your neighbors. When one really studies the Word, year after year, certain things become related. By eye, the whole Word of God can make allusions to the idea that by the light of the eyes, by the amount of light we see, is a type of witness of the Spirit of God. There is a Proverb about the light of the eyes: "The light of the eyes rejoices the heart and a good report makes the bones healthy" (Proverbs 15 30). There is also the reference that if "thy eye be single, thy body be full of light" (Matthew 6:22). These things are not occult nor pointing to things in Eastern philosophy, but they show a beautiful way that studying the Word of God increases the beauty of human experience.
Then He talked about making us "fishers of men" (Matthew 4:19, Mark 1:17), which is interpreted as "I will make you builders of my church," but can be also seen to say, "I will make you able to be loved (which could also have a certain shade of the meaning of "popular") among those in your life." He did this because by following Jesus' commands, we become more loving, forgiving and generous people. People feel gratitude for those who "go the extra mile" (Matthew 5:41) for others in their life. It seems Christian society understood these nuances of the gospel of Christ in greater degree than the post-Christian society today understands it.
At first this was an essay on how a certain post-Christian city that I lived in could be the home of a new Christian revival based on fusing the more intellectual aspects of the Word of God with the power of the manifestations of the Holy Spirit. A revival based not on religious scrupulosity and divisiveness, but on helping each other survive: spiritually, emotionally, intellectually, socially, physically, economically, and aesthetically. Anyone's post-Christian area can be the home of a new Christian revival based on taking no intellectual short-cuts, not by creating an armchair theology based on an elitist terminology that no one understands but academics and clergy, but by tapping into the intellectualism and art already accepted by the mother culture. I believe this is what some Christians always feel it is their responsibility to do, and some, like C.S. Lewis, many modern classical composers, and many others, have done. In fact, if I was to name many of the major players of culture in the years from 1970 to 1990, one would be surprised that many of them had a significant relationship with Christianity. I could name twenty of the major figures in the intellectual history of the West in the later 20th Century who considered themselves Christians. It is more or less the media, both large and small, and academics, that often have an anti-Christian sway in these recent times, in order to appear sophisticated and embracing of what is to them "exotic" world cultures. But, of course, it is interesting to see how many people of those foreign lands have now turned to Christ, running from what they knew.
True soul-winners are not so much interested in proving specific doctrines theologically, and thereby creating a new list of do's and don'ts, because as we can see, the modern average person does do or believe something simply because they are told to do so by followers of Christ. We must be interested in what produces the good fruit of being capable of doing acts of love. Christian faith and fellowship enables people to reach out and work with others with more than the idea of "what is in it for me in this life?" but not excluding that, either. The Bible never preached a doctrine to only care about the future life, but it mentioned its blessings also in the here and now.
Becoming more loving seems like a cliche, and it is easy upon exploration to find out who are the enemies of love. Didn't communists kill others in the name of love, and is not having a greater love usually said to be on each side that goes to war? There is a problem, however, historically, when the image changes of what to be loving is. In Christendom, perfect love was to involve some degree of self-sacrifice. Historically, Jesus personified a universe that had a God that loved the world so much that He would come to earth and suffer in our place in order to bring His original intention into the world. Is one's worldview in line with this?
Since I have written three books which cover difficulties upon the spiritual path, I thought it was only fair that I should write one that covered what genuine Christian "fervor" or intense spiritual devotion could look like.
A theme for revival is the verse, "where there is no vision the people perish" (Proverbs 29:18). Sadly, the "vision" of some nations or groups may be a destructive vision so they perish nonetheless. And then there may be people within such groups that may be capable of hope or a vision, but the structure of the group may not permit it. A good example of this would be nihilistic, obscene or self-destructive focused art. Art should always be about edification first, not leaving the viewer with a state of the negativity that is so obvious in the world. Personal hopelessness is a by-product of such art. When there is personal hopelessness, there is generally a lack of ability or aim to help those less fortunate.
Short Overview of Some Important Themes
1) A Key to Understanding Revival
1) God always desires revival.
2) The problem of not having a revival can only be solved at a higher level than it was created at.
3) Revival does not happen because we do not have the wisdom to cause it (He who wins souls is wise).
4) Revival will happen when we can find new bottles to put the new wine in -- you cannot expect the present leadership to cause revival, they can only encourage those who are in revival, and understand what the Lord needs to do in those who are in the population that are not actively involved in church service and attendance.
5) It is a ministry to go to church, and this is a predominant theme of the new revival. A revival should not focus on replacing existing pastors, but instead supporting them. The present leadership can only encourage a new revival, and they should for their churches to remain prosperous, or even active in the Western world due to low attendance in some areas and in particular in some churches.
2) Some key themes of this work:
1) They who win souls are wise. What does it mean to win souls? Does this mean that we will become wiser than the majority if we pray to have the abilities to win souls? Is this why many Christians who are very upfront about their faith are prosperous and in long-term relationships?
2) How the Bible and its salvation is about life more the way a sensible person wants it in whatever circumstance.
3) The Bible has more truth than any one person can contain. This is a reason why unity is important, denominations are all different colors of a rainbow, each can educate the other about certain things if we accept and do not judge.
4) The creativity of the Christian artist and intellectual are needed for this kind of revival. Some modern Christians are sometimes afraid of the arts but when Christendom was in full swing, it used all the arts to glorify God.
5) All truth is God's truth.
6) Why do we praise God? "God dwells in the praises of Israel," or "God dwells in the praises of His people" (Psalms 22:3). When we have the spirit of God in us through praise, we become more because of being united with Him. Praise can be seen as showing love and trust in someone, not something cowering.
3) Three Directions for Our Own Spiritual Blessing
1) Know God wants to bless us.
2) Repent, and ask for forgiveness, which involves being "in Jesus' name."
3) Accept as much of God's love and power for one's life as one can.
4) He Who Wins Souls is Wise
1) Believe in the righteousness of what we win souls to.
2) God is not to blame for man's unrighteousness.
3) Christ said to not sleep, make this a vital concept not a meaningless or boring one.
4) Using Christianity to make our life better, not make our life more obsessive and useless.
5) The gifts of the Holy Spirit - God is a rewarder only of those that diligently seek Him (Hebrews 11:6).
6) Bravery helps us do the least to build the best.
An expansion of certain ones:
2) God is not to blame for man's unrighteousness. Describing Psalm 82, Jameson's commentary reads: "Before the great judge, the judges of the Earth are rebuked, exhorted, and threatened." God is not to blame for man's unrighteousness, even if He appoints rulers, as the New Testament tells us.
3) Christ said to not sleep, make this a vital concept not a boring one. What is it like to be awake in higher brain states and be vitally active in our faith? There are many Christian neuroscientists today that can prove the power of the Word of God and it is powerful positive effect on the brain. The Orthodox saints writings describe states of wisdom and sanctification that come from following God. We should study edification as a gift of the Holy Spirit for those who ask for it.
4) Using Christianity to make our life better, not make our life more obsessive and useless. We are using Christianity to make our life better, yet can use modern ideas which are found in secular therapies, like chiropractic or nutritional therapy, and we can use psychotherapy. To not allow these things is being used by dysfunctional religion that focus on man's traditions and cultures, but disguising it by creating new rules by accusing the other as doing so. At the same time we must always realize that Christianity is about being righteous, by allowing the Holy Spirit to guide us, and this righteousness can manifest in a perfect divine health for some people. Some of this may be based on their genetics, so people should not feel challenged by this.
5) Using the gifts of the Holy Spirit and not associating them with the "the uneducated culture" as the devil likes to try to represent them. It is true, God will use humble people, but there is not a human culture that goes along with the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
6) Willing to do the least to build the absolute best by being brave in Christ.
5) What is spiritual power?
1) Spiritual power is relative
2) Spiritual power is not a simplistic concept
3) Spiritual power fills the needs which appear
1) Spiritual power is relative. For example, a criminal who may not have much education will use fundamentalism alone and not a more explanatory Christian doctrine to change their life. They only understand fundamentalism, it works; they still are being taught about the gentleness in Jesus' teaching. Because fundamentalism can cause a reduction in others of their value, it cannot meet the needs of an advanced society. There is a type of real need for fundamentalism in some people yet there are different types of spiritual power available. "Fundamentalism" should not be the term always used, because it is fine to use the Bible as the main source of one's life. "Reductionism" is what we should call it when people reduce God and others to something smaller than what they are. Christianity at once has to have more literate forms but not deny the gifts of the Holy Spirit such as speaking in tongues, laying on of hands for physical healing, gifts of prophecy, and so on. Otherwise, the more liberal churches in fact do become something that the more conservative churches cannot appreciate, and vice versa. We have to strive for the unity that Jesus prayed for and this comes by being spiritually appealing to the other.
2) Spiritual power is not a simplistic concept, even the less educated can have a complex thought which is fed by their emotional experiences. Spiritual power needs the ability to tolerate abstract thinking. A city-born cosmopolitan can still have knee jerk opinions about many things.
3) Spiritual power fills the needs which appear. It is existential based on who the person is, what they understand, and the positive and negative experiences of their life. This could be expanded upon but I will not here, just note that it could be.
I am not planning by this to write out a systematic work, which would have an exact plan to be followed. Nor will this be written with all the stylistic graces of what is considered good prose, which is always subjective in any given generation. Instead, several ideas are presented in numbered form, in no particular order or style.
The Word of God is multilayered, and forms a type of exact language for a higher wisdom. Everything that the Word said needs to be taken in context, because in different contexts, it sometimes seems to contradict itself. But these doubts must be reasoned out, not run from. Jesus said "My burden is easy and my yoke is light, (Matthew 11:30)" and he also said we would suffer if we followed him and be persecuted. Obviously, the early Church fathers understood these things were not contradictory when they described "dispassion" that is, not being concerned with the things of this world in a way that weigh us down. Some spiritual teachers talk about non-identification, and it is really just a psychological concept first, that can be useful in spirituality. Such is a light burden, we will be persecuted if we are righteous, but it will not seem like a heavy burden to us, even like a "cup" that we drink and that is all there is to it, like when Jesus said, "let this cup pass from me." He called it a "cup" for a reason, and this is why a proper translation of the Bible is important. If we minimize a negative event as just an event, just a cup that we drink which passes through our system, it really is much smaller and we are free to focus on the goodness of God again.
These might seem like odd things to say to modern Christians, but this is only because they often do not have much of an education in historic Christianity, and mostly read writers that have been in vogue in the last thirty years or so. But Jesus said "Men do not gather grapes of thorns," which means, people do not like to become followers of Christian teachers that do not have a full and friendly emotional life. There are many pastors who do gather many "grapes," because they are not filled with thorns or thistles. They see the Sermon on the Mount as how the blessings of life come to the individual, not something miserable to be avoided in practice. This is moving towards the ability to follow the Book of Proverbs which gives one further "riches" in self-discipline.
Some of the statements are just short fragments. Just like Jesus, the bread of life, messages of inspiration can be seen as having a part of Him in it. I think of all the fragments of the bread that was left over when He blessed the loaves and fishes. Many authors have used the sense of the fragment, and they are often known as "fragments" as a literary form. They can be seen as affirmations, meditations, and so on.
I see this work as creating the kindling to create the understanding that leads to the ability to win souls. It is not set up as a strict formula but to create the space of mind in which your own ideas start to germinate and then bear fruit.
MAIN NUMBERED SECTIONS
1
Playing the Card of Righteousness
We all must play the card that God is righteous and wants us to be righteous. This is not the talk type of righteousness but the action type of righteousness. This type of righteousness is known to all true Christians, and it often separates them from others. Some of these righteous things are: no bitter judgements or unforgiveness of others, a focus on health by avoiding vices and overeating, charity, no premarital sex so that we may create and value a true team or family of at least two people (eventually for some, that team creating children), and prayer for others verses a criticism of them as "sinners." This righteousness of God is just as we want it to be, and always felt it should be, and we must realize that "His commandments are not grievous" (1 John 5:3).
Even though we focus on righteousness, we should never be content with our own righteousness, or even the righteousness of others besides Jesus. We are responsible for claiming three things:
1) Our humility
2) Our imparted righteousness in Christ, because of the forgiveness of our sins and our repentance in Christ
3) Our miraculous level of faith
1) Our humility - We prosper, in the big picture, only if we can be humble when necessary, which is most of the time. That is, an intelligent, "big picture humility."
We are only responsible for being humble, not a type of show of strength in a worldly way. We are not supposed to be proud of our spiritual condition. This is the opposite of worldly religions, such as the "New Age" variety.
2) Our imparted righteousness is in Christ - we claim the righteousness of Christ through the death of Jesus for us. We ask God to bless us because we are in Christ, and we strive to follow His commandments. This righteousness includes the armor of God, the benefits of which sound just like the self-esteem that the world is after, but seldom achieves. When we claim the righteousness of Christ through the death of Jesus for us, we also understand the concept of "praying in His name," as He taught us to pray.
3) Our miraculous powers through faith, which itself is from God. We have to believe in all the miraculous testimony of others, that there is still an ability to do miracles in Jesus' name. We have nothing to offer God on these higher levels. We get His help by the blood of Jesus, the power of the Cross, and the indwelling activities of the Holy Spirit. This is vastly different than all the New Age promises of attainment by having fancy teachers and going to expensive classes.
God can do miracles through us because we have all the righteousness we need before our Heavenly Father. God teaches us through His Word that we can only please Him by having a strong faith, and what else is a strong faith but faith in something that is beyond us, that is, a miracle for us? We do not have to contend with others because God requires our humility, not our winning a court case against the rest of humanity. God helps us to focus on our righteousness by faith in Christ, and on His Word.
We claim by asking for help to give us a boost in our loving focus on the three responsibilities.
2
All revival should be additive to the church structure that is in place. It should not tear these structures down. Doing so is divisive, it is trying to pluck out the speck that is in one's neighbor's eye, instead of focusing on the beam that is in one's own.
In a Christian rededication, we have to remember what we were. We have to remember this clearly, that there has been growth, how rare this growth can be on earth, and give the credit where it is due. We do not need to regret the good from the past - bless God for this, but we are not blinded by pride or denial. Therefore, we will not try to change the pastor in the church we are going to. We have to remember the life of a pastor can be very difficult, a type of target for many divisive people. We do not need to ruin our growth in God by letting the enemy use us to attack Christian ministry.
3
They Who Win Souls are Wise
Some of this writing is about winning souls, and how Jesus seemed to know that there was a social pressure against the loving and creative. So, He started out his ministry by telling His disciples that He would make them fishers of men. This is very interesting.
Obviously, Jesus didn't repeat the same simple statements over and over again during His three years of ministry. He didn't speak by creating one statement over long periods of times, making cryptic statements that sometimes the Gospels present His style as being. He talked with his disciples frequently, but obviously, only a few dozen pages of his statements are preserved for us today. Some would add that the entire Bible are the words of Jesus, since the Bible itself states that He is the Word incarnate. During his lifetime of ministry, He must have explained more about what He meant by making them "fishers of men." We can only see this as meaning, that He would teach us how to make people love us, creating a sense of community that was colored like the love and bonding of a family. This is a good description of the early church, and successful
churches since then.
4
We should get to that point when we think about difficult people, or difficult relationship dynamics with people, that we can be "instant in prayer." A start for this is to pray, repeatedly, "Lord God bless every one that comes across my mind today, when I think about I will pray for them."
Freedom is about losing what unhelpful belief system we hold. Being in the parental mode, not the mode of people taking care of us.
Paul said in Romans 12: 21, "Do not overcome evil with evil but overcome evil with good." Forgiveness is one area to repeatedly focus on.
Why didn't we just go to God in prayer about people who did things to disturb us? When people seem to be so gone, or so far out to some that they do not believe they can "matter any more," that they are not even worth prayer because some imagine that they will not become Christians, we must teach them do this:
1) Pray for them that they live according to love and the Word of God.
2) Pray for ourselves that we may have no resentment over them, or judge them harshly. This is wisdom - to live with all others in wisdom and love must be a prayer focus.
3) Pray for the conditions surrounding the world that enabled us to be in the situation we both are in.
5
Not communicating is one of the major sins of the earth. Having the heart to communicate is to root out that sin. Jesus described this when He said "If you have anything against your brother, make sure the sun does not go down before you tell him about it."
Even if we look at something as dubious as fame, famous people every day are focused on being "other centered" more than many. They are trying to provide a service for many people by being someone of perceived value to others. They focus on communication.
True success is, among some other important things, a succession of positive relationships. Being in parental states of consciousness to the community and to others is the way to achieve this. See how Jesus taught us to give and go the extra mile as creating "family" around us. This sense of sacrificing for others causes us to honor us. He said to use "unrighteous mammon to win eternal dwellings" (Luke 16:9). One might see this as not just meaning a heavenly reward, because that would be salvation by works, and even though faith without works is dead, we can look at it as instead of our money buying us something temporary, or having many of one think as a way of further security, these things can go toward others' benefits, and then others being benefited by us will make them a more long lasting ("eternal") friend.
Here is a good rule of thumb when dealing with certain people: we need to shrink the whole communication that is needed, in a good way. This can be a rule for good communication with anyone. Where there is aimless talk often there can be miscommunication and arguments, or at least hurt feelings. Who can control the tongue?
Being other centered in a good way is a way of godly maturity. Think of all the things Christ talked about and apply it to what He said making us "fishers" of people.
6
You cannot take away from modern man the idea that all nations and peoples have their inherent goodness that comes from God. The church should not try to take this away, but only show how the world falls short of the glory of God, and show people how Christians have gained blessings from God that are very uncommon on Earth. There are some strange cases where there were odd tribes that had very bad customs, but often the modern person has left the church because of his or her love for world culture, which is not necessarily hand in hand with "worldliness" or false doctrine in a Biblical sense. Missionaries could be respectful of cultures, while still presenting the gospel.
Perhaps many modern people do not understand how to have a revival that would simply be having great gratitude for having repented and not being in danger of hell. Earlier people saw in revivals that these events were about saving oneself from hell, which they logically believed was sure to come if they followed a life without Christ within themselves. They probably understood the Bible much more than modern, so-called, post-Christian cultures do.
A revival can be about what we are writing in our own bodies and souls, we are developing into something greater. We can keep our focus on our divine physical, emotional, and spiritual healing. For physical healing, the change takes place in the state of our bones, tissues, cells, coordination, and so on. It is about what is happening in our body, which we can easily monitor, when we focus on muscle relaxation and deep breathing. God works from the ground up in our lives so often, in a scientific way, and we can keep praying for divine physical health for ourselves.
The first thing we have to do is be able to visualize a post-Christian area under a Christian revival. It will be our pleasant mental image. What would it look like? Imagine seeing a crowd in one's city under the lens of the verse, "You are all Children of God through faith in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:26). This can bring about a spiritual, even mystical, experience. If we can formulate a prayer for what others consider impossible, we call things that are not as if they were.
7
There are many types of Christians in a so-called post-Christian area who probably do not want to be socially connected to Evangelicals. These are people still proud of their faith - and who wince when they see it mocked, or just otherwise spoken untruthfully against. They want it presented as the cure for a life falling apart. Every Christian who feels that way in a post-Christian area should be willing to talk about this in a public forum, and all those who want to support Christians in these more depressed post-Christian areas should get together in some way and defend their faith. Of course, this should include being a member of a local church. There are some who have made Christianity a dirty word for many, even though in their culture, people like Dali, Messiaen, Stravinsky, Simone Weil and others, were openly Christians in one form or another, and these are people who their culture intellectually looks up to.
Loving God involves loving His creation. God may hold us accountable in such things as our health and our income if we do not love the use of our mind to make our lives better.
God may hold us accountable in many things pertaining to the quality of our life,
if we do not love His creation. This is just common sense, that a secular person can see: if one does not like a lot of people, it hinders what one can do in life. That is, if we do not see that the small things of life are to be loved, we may not see that God gives us the opportunity to prosper by activating our love in all we do, and all we can be. This is a key concept of the new revival, or any Christian revival. To continue adding love to all our attitudes and behaviors. This obviously involves things like physical exercise but also enjoying things like great paintings, music, ornamental gardens and so on.
8
Jesus prayed for the unity of believers.
We all are in need of each other in this so-called post-Christian culture or era. We each have different fruit to bring each other. I can see the three major divisions, Orthodox, Protestant and Catholic as having all something to give each other. The Orthodox have their canon of saints' writings, the Philokalia, which seems to be the most advanced spiritual psychology and which I believe is the only legitimate defense for the more educated to override the influence of the New Age, Eastern Philosophies and other ideas that have influenced people away from Christianity.
We should realize that we are not the first people to realize the truths about the need for oneness in the Body of Christ, and that the more educated feed the less educated and the fervor and courage of the less educated feed the more educated. It is not always this simple, but if less educated people are truly humble, they will not be cynical about more educated people. Of course, the Word tells us that we must not give favor to more educated, or more wealthy people. If the more educated or wealthy people think they are superior to the less educated or less well-off financially, then they are the same as the greedy where it is mentioned that we should "not even eat with such a person."
We must overlook the negative and critical, and focus on the prayer of Jesus, on where He prays, and remember He asks us for unity. Also, focus on where the other New Testament books have an all-inclusive reading when they talk about giving thanks "for all men"?
Jesus prayed for unity, let's honor Him by following what the Word says and if anyone confesses Christ, we should not focus on judging them as non-Christian because of differences in doctrine.
This is the prayer of Jesus, from John 17: 11-23:
11 And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are.
12 While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name: those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled.
13 And now come I to thee; and these things I speak in the world, that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves.
14 I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.
15 I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil.
16 They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.
17 Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.
18 As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world.
19 And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth.
20 Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word;
21 That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.
22 And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one:
23 I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.
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Sometimes people will reject edified believers but it may be God who is setting them apart from the edified. They may have very bad habits that are possibly "contagious." Bad company corrupts good more easily than good influences the bad, the bad who are not humble before the good. The Bible does talk about demons and "strongholds of Satan" as sometimes even so powerful that angels have a difficult time getting through it. If you are well edified in Christ, you may eventually see that some people who are not, are unable to be grateful and treat you as an equal with them, nor mutually lift you up. They cannot understand edification and it becomes a bad experience for them. That is, they fear what they do not understand, and they perceive the world through the suffering others have inflicted on them.
Some of the people who have stayed in the churches may be dysfunctional and may unconsciously act out against new members who come in. You might see them as your mission field instead of some kind of governing body of the church, since Christ is the head of any church. One can remember the verse, "Men do not gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles," and gain some relief in this verse.
There is an anonymous saying that, "Heaven is a place for forgiven people who are forgivers." We go with the Word in our life and metaphorically sell all that we have so it is foremost. We will be anointed with God's power to do God's work. To be in that high watering nest of God's love to others, to be in that non-critical place above all human judgements, of God's pure help to others. To desire to be in it only for the sake of being in it, not just for salvation from the sins of a life, health or one's prosperity.
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"By the words of the righteous a city is exalted, but is overthrown by the mouth of the wicked (Proverbs 11:11).
The topic of what are "Strongholds" is very important for a revival. For instance, if we realize an aspect of a certain internationally influential city may make one more depressed we could send prayer requests to others in different parts of the world to make the city have a revival, or to strengthen the church there. In any city, one can criticize what areas are considered the worst. But it is wrong when people are attracted to these elements in their thinking. It is a negative trait to be interested in something wrong in order to be repelled by it. It is easier to focus on "winning souls" by praying for these elements. This is an example of how a true Christian operates. Instead of being repelled by sin, they see it as opportunity to shine Christ's light on it.
C.S. Lewis did much for culture at large because he was both educated and a Christian. Today the world needs both, but only when combined with a sacrificial heart. The Christian revivals in the last fifty years built-up believers but did not help culture as they could have if they also included prayer for more educated people to be saved, and to not have them lose their knowledge but understand more about what the most gifted Christians in distant ages did.
Christianity, for some people, when it works for them, is a method to be in better brain states and build a better blood chemistry through positive emotions and the resulting deeper breathing. The deeper breathing they do, they not do on purpose, but it seems to be related - shallow breathing is pretty much impossible when practicing stillness before the Lord. Being still before the Lord is actually the opposite of ruminating thoughts about one's past.
Most people of faith in so-called post-Christian lands would welcome an intellectually-based Christian revival. This is because it would have a different set of parameters than what the previous outlook on a Christian revival would have, but it would be as Biblical, and as accurate to historic Christian theology. The fact of the matter is, in recent times, much of Christianity has lost touch with its intellectual heritage. The Holy Spirit does not need to be "dumbed-down" - one can see by reading Paul's writings that his sentences often have complex sentence structures, and because of the depth of the Old Testament, the Jewish people are often the most educated in the world, wherever they are. Academics even in recent times, frequently focus on the stories in the Bible to elucidate
their ideas.
An example is a certain city that seems morbid, anti-child at times, because of all the crimes against children in the USA, fascination with it by a low intelligence, sleeping and corrupt media, and the high incidence of rain and cloudy skies, causing gloominess. A person does not have to be only focused on the criticism of this but instead praise the good of this city. More good will come to them by their experience of acceptance of the people and positive events of the area. The Bible addresses this when it says in Proverbs 11:11, "By the blessing of the upright the city is exalted: but it is overthrown by the mouth of the wicked."
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An atomistic theology can be seen as a theology which is able to deconstruct satanic strongholds at the root levels of manifestation so that there is no hindrance to the Word of God. Atomistic theology is that in which we serve God by focusing on the building blocks of our society, making sure they are sound and able to build foundations of a more Christian-friendly culture.
A church may become huge in a large modern city, and create several satellite churches, but those churches may still need to learn much about the atomistic approach to theology, in which we serve God by focusing on the building blocks of our society, making sure they are sound and able to build foundations of a more Christian-friendly culture.
An aftermath theology can be a name and outlook useful for when dealing with the negative effects of economic recession, and similar problems a society faces. A post-Christian culture will have several types of aftermaths, several areas that need Christians to do intelligent work.
An atomistic theology is applicative to the aftermath of destructive cultural tendencies.
Some strongholds can be lies that we somehow tell ourselves but have never thought through. They are dispersed when the light exposes them for what they are. We "own" them in the sense that they come to mind from time to time.
Examples of these are personal, and we must find all of our own.
An example of a satanic stronghold of unbelief might be seen in examining John 5: 46, "For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me, for he wrote about Me."
What do we get in our field of thoughts when we read that? Do we consciously and actively believe that Moses spoke of Jesus in the form of the Law? Moses obviously was not thinking of a physical image of Christ as we know of them from artist's representations, but Moses may have been thinking of a perfect sinless human being.
An example of "atomistic" change is getting at the strongholds that Satan has over the community against the gospel going out further. For instance, find a list or create one for helping all the city missions in the USA, consider publishing a book on this, or getting a grant. Or, create the idea of a cultural rescue mission for Christians trying to influence culture. I believe it is good to make it have no political affiliation, which can alienate Christians of the other party.
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He told them this parable: "No one tears a piece out of a new garment to patch an old one. Otherwise, they will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old. 37 And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. 38 No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins. 39 And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for they say, 'The old is better.'" Luke 5:36-39
I saw that the key to revival is "putting new wine in new wineskins." This verse means to me that "the first love" excitement of new converts -- people who have been delivered from death and who know it -- does not always remain in those who have been in the church for a long time. The same people in the post-Christian lands that kept many people at post-Christian status are often not fully awake to what their area needs to be responsive to the call of Christ. They have too easily fit into the Church as it is, and hence they do not understand the difficulties others have fitting into to a vital relationship with the body of Christ, that also has the discipline and other blessings that church attendance gives one. There is much good writing on this verse, and it is important. Like other verses in the Bible, it can have an impact on many different problems we face.
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Much of the world is lost in "semantics." Many troubles come from this. What an argument based on semantics means is that the two sides do not really wish to understand each other from the other's true perspective, but instead judge them based on words which carry their own personalized meanings. But if one focuses on service, and increasing the "standard of living" that is necessary for more focus on the Word and on the arts and education, one can avoid useless semantic and divisive arguments. By "standard of living" I do not necessarily mean money. The modern problem today is that for many people, the "middle class" standard of living has been eroded: they have little time for study, the arts, exercise, other health focuses, gardening, beautifying the home, and so on.
Perhaps the biggest problem is that you just cannot ever discount how this Earth is in dire need of help in every direction, and those with power are often not spiritually and effectively prayed for.
A higher mind does not see contradictions where a lower mind does. Thus, we do not have to change directions from the Word of God as it is, we have to synthesize. That is, all the insights we have had, such as those of psychology, health studies, artistic backgrounds and so on, are added on top of a Biblical framework, as are health-based ones, it becomes additive and not contradictory. Look at the additive nature of logical reason, the ignorant do not use this on top of the Biblical framework, we add whatever else we need.
One thing that could be done to cause elements of a Christian revival, in any place in the world, not just in the West, would be to have different denominations agree that all truth is God's truth. The thing that took the more educated people away from the Gospel was understanding the psychological and physical aspects of other religions, yet they did not find a theological improvement on the Gospel. That is, body awareness and modalities of health improvement are not theologically against the Word of God, except when they clearly bring ideas which state things against the Word of God. Stretching the body if done with the Word of God in mind will not open a person up to Satan. What we can see is that the theological replacement these educated people found was not as good as what the Christian church would give them, if the Bible was the sole focus. But the fruits of rejecting the Bible can easily be seen today in the West.
The whole Earth, has one major lack, a lack of communication. Even on a secular level, the biggest lack the whole Earth has, is a lack of accurate and in depth communication. A huge amount of evil comes from that. On a spiritual level, the lack the whole Earth has is a lack of communication with the Holy Spirit and the lack of communication between all creatures. Jesus said do not let the sun set when you are angry. People have to develop the love to stay long with their neighbors, or acquaintances, or countrymen, or other countries, so they can express their needs to them, and they can be understood.
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Seven Areas Where Some Modern Christians are Not Very Biblical
This list is not trying to set anyone apart from anyone else, but it is only a cause for reflection, a point of contact between people, and for asking oneself, are you really as much of a Biblical Christian as you think?
1) Ability to reach out and do missionary work in one's home country without the fear of "contamination" from one's neighbor. Jesus said "what good are you if you only greet your brother? Do not also the Pharisees do this?" (Matthew 5:47, 48). He said this right before He said, "Be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect." Often people instead of being able to witness to their neighbor are afraid that their neighbors' ways will influence them away from following God closely. They believe that if they are influenced at all by their unsaved neighbors, they will lose the blessing of God. This is not always there but sometimes is.
2) Advocacy for the poor - Political Wisdom - Activism. The Old Testament is full of concern for the poor, not for some poor in other land, but the poor who are around them. Those who focus on "the prosperity Gospel" believe that a member is virtuous if he or she is rich. This often attracts people to church who already have money and so they feel they are already righteous, even if they do not provide for the poor.
3) Health Focus - Herbal medicine is mentioned in the Bible and only the most educated and often financially wealthy people today follow herbal medicine. Gluttony is frequently mentioned as a sin - wisdom is needed in this area. There is a verse about the blessing of God making one fat, but that is because in older times often food was scarce, and being "fat" is relative, and one can see by the problems that accompany obesity that ill health never is seen as a blessing of God. Daniel seemed to promote vegetarianism, and there are many other areas that seem to depict that God allows us to eat meat, but that it is not really Biblical to eat it without a sense of gratitude. This goes along with a larger need to accept scientific thought when it is accurate and not done via a bias. Many vegetarians cite Bible passages to promote a more vegetable and fruit diet, and many herbs are considered super foods and medicines.
4) Environmentalism -Jesus said that God cares about the sparrows. The Book of Revelations (Revelations 9:4) mentions certain creatures are told to not harm "any green thing." What does that mean? Is it just a something that will not make any sense until the End Times, or does it mean that God Himself is angry at those who recklessly destroy the Earth for greed, not keeping it as good stewards for the generations to come, as Adam was instructed to do? Do we believe that God created nature to give us an optimal life, and the more man-made things that get us away from the principles of nature, the worse off we usually are?
St. Frances preached to the animals. We are told that the Gospel has to go out to all creatures. When we love animals, helping them survive along our growing civilizations, it is like loving the foreigner, the immigrant, or an alien. Of course, we do not put animal life on the same level as human life. But in another sense, they are our co-owners of earth, partners here with us. Who is to say that praying for animals is not one part of what can become a spiritual revival? We have to try methods that have not been done before, as long as they are not against the Word of God.
This work is an attempt to not lessen the intellectual quality of logical theological writing but to keep it still in the power of the Holy Spirit by being applicable to modern concerns. For instance, the neediest theological question for many in the last fifty years was "is it ok to kill insects?" This is because Buddhism's influence on the intellects of the West was huge. But I doubt this topic comes up much in theological seminaries even though it has been so important to the well educated in the West. Those in Evangelical circles are stereotyped as probably just laughing off such a question.
5) Stillness - meditation. The brain science aspects of this are being described now in the Body of Christ, peace and positive emotion are written into the Word of God, but some are still afraid of talking about this as being too "New Age." Many early church fathers wrote at length about "stillness," in the collection of Orthodox saints' writings known as the Philokalia. It is a word mentioned in the Bible often, as is the concept of "peace." Being afraid of being peaceful probably will not make a very full Christian life. God ultimately allows us to be still, because He gives us the blessing not by works, but by grace. He grants blessings to us just by our nature of being created beings, when we still our self-justification.
6) Inability to see the profundity of Scripture - using the mind of education, instead of dumbing down everything in the Bible along with society's image of the religious as ignorant, or especially in the body of Christ. Do the modern Jews "dumb themselves" down in following the Old Testament? Did Paul really intend us to glory in a low standard of education and communication? We should see each "jot and tittle" of the Word of God being accurate and by seeing it as such, learn more of what God intends for us.
7) Need for Heroic Self-discipline - Redeeming the Time ("So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom." Psalms 90:12). Focusing on the Book of Proverbs as a complex method of self-control. Our pride makes the need for perseverance seem so profound; when in reality the world is set up according to natural physical principles. If you want to write a good book, you must have the education, upbringing, time, skill in editing, and be able to either self publish it or convince a publisher to publish it. There is an immense amount of work there. It is the same thing with keeping a house or business going.
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Mother Teresa said that the greatest poverty was loneliness. When one thinks of all that the Bible said about how the poor man does not have friends but the rich man does, and we can of course also see the opposite. In Dickens' "Christmas Carol," Scrooge did not have much around him in the form of a warm home life and the respect of friends, but his poor employee Bob Crachit did. The topic of God putting the solitary in families, studies of social capital, and how winning souls is related to this, and how a workman is worthy of his hire, even in the terms of accepting donations or even a pastor's wage. All this is related to overcoming loneliness, as is the very real work done by Mother Teresa in helping the poor, of which we now have an abundance of in the Western world.
Motivated by Mother Teresa's idea that the poverty of loneliness is the most pervasive in certain areas, how do we then eradicate that? Creating and enacting a systematic plan to help others overcome chronic loneliness without it causing a huge personal burden on those that cannot tolerate one, emotionally, physically, or psychologically. One could create something like a "Mother Teresa Overcoming Loneliness Project" as a church project, or even take it as a personal oath.
From the book, "In My Own Words," by Mother Teresa, at the introductory page of vii. the editor said, "Mother Teresa's main objective had been to do all the good she could for the least of Jesus' brothers and sisters." We need to do that today in many areas of the world when it comes to bonding with others - many of whom may be less fortunate.
Christ teaches us that mean, sinful people can always have friends. One should never think that just because someone has more friends than you, they are more spiritual or kind than you. They may not be, then again, they might be.
Be confident you are doing the Lord's work among the disempowered even when weeding out the chronically bitter and blame shifting. It is not that we are weeding them out, they weed themselves out by not coming back, hanging up the phone on someone, and accusations. They get bitter and attack us for some reason, accusing us of something, when we are not at fault, but that is the nature of Satan, the accuser. The devil is not called the righteous judge, just the accuser. There is such a thing as a "lying spirit," -- when being in a person, it has no validity in truth but instead is just there to create strife.
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In looking at Jesus and the early church, we can see a focus on the miraculous. Experiencing the miraculous is one sure sign that we are working with God and not just the purposes of worldly religion. The opportunity to experience the miraculous should be a prime aim in our life. It is drive towards the miraculous that is one thing that separated much of the Christian West from false teachings. Not only did false teachers not see the true and divine miraculous, but many even lost many more blessings that they took for granted by turning away from Christ.
The gifts of the Spirit such as tongues, personal prophecy, and laying on of hands for physical healing are mentioned in several books of the New Testament. Some believe to be a part of a church that does not express these actions in human behavior is to endure a rather glaring hypocrisy, which is neatly hidden by the fact that so many other Christians indulge in it. The Bible clearly discusses them in a few different books. These spiritual gifts are given purely by grace. However, we must know how to think about something before we can decide whether it is right for us.
While it is said we must be willing to confess Christ before others, we do not necessarily have to proclaim to other Christians if we speak in tongues. In fact, one can even speak in tongues in silence, in one's mind without moving one's lips.
It is only intellectually sound to believe in speaking in tongues and other gifts of the Holy Spirit, as the Bible clearly mentions them. Since so many passages in various books of the Bible talk about speaking in tongues, why in two thousand years of Christendom did much of the Church not see that is just as much a part of the texts of the New Testament as the things they chose to openly follow? Maybe it is seen as more difficult, something that may take more dedication to receive. At least, something that may falsely seem to take superhuman dedication. But it is a gift of grace for the asking, just like salvation is, and it is presented as such. It also does not have to cause social ostracism, because it is hypocrisy that sees a vital part of the New Testament as unimportant, as some see speaking in tongues, prophesy, and laying on of hands for healing. These activities are described as gifts of the Holy Spirit.
We must subtract the human cultural element from "Pentecostalism," to open it up to all people of all education levels. An intellectually-sound international Christian Pentecostal revival is possible. The reason why there has been such a big exodus into New Age religions is because people have been looking for the miraculous and have been so insulted by some in the Christian "culture" that they have said that these people could not possibly be spiritual. God's Holy Spirit is not against any person who is educated, but will not manifest in a person who is proud of their limited perspective, no matter how wise it seems. To God, all of us look the same, because God is so above our perspective. To us, all ants look like ants. It is the same way in that, even though we are created in the image of God, to God, all people have the limited parts of a person, and can only think with those parts, whereas the mind of God is outside of the parts of a body, and can only be understood by us to be righteous love.
Most likely before speaking in tongues can be given to a person, that person has to understand the nature of praise. One of the things that must be taught to the modern person who may have had an interest in spirituality, but who has never had the power that comes with a real born again experience, is the role of praise. Those who know the benefits of praise know that one of the most important things is what praise is the opposite of. First of all, we must first look at praising God in the same way as we praise someone we love or respect. We are saying that we trust them, and saying that we love them. Second, when we praise God, sooner or later, when God gets to "know us" better, because the Word says that God is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him, we will feel the "comforter" that Jesus spoke of. Praise therefore becomes a positive emotion, and being in a positive emotion is obviously the opposite of many, many, negative emotions, which rob of our health and energy, and that is scientifically provable.
All those who have the gifts of the Holy Spirit such as tongues, prophecy and laying on of hands enjoy praising the Lord. In fact it seems that the ability to praise the Lord may come first before the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
It seems from recent history of Christian miracles that there is a spirit of praise happening in the areas around the miraculous, with the main focus of the audience on the person getting healed, almost like a mass communal prayer for the person. The modern educated person does not understand anything about praise, and to them, it seems to mean servile worship in a primitive state of consciousness. Praising God creates a bridge in which the Spirit of God lives inside us. The demonic influences of Earth have created the opposite of praise of God in the educated, and you cannot believe in something you do not value. In fact, praise is just another way of showing love and trust. The modern educated person praises the great literary and artistic minds all the time, but demonic forces have tried to separate this from praising God. Praising God is just an exuberant spirit of love and admiration, and it must be done to continue having the "kingdom of heaven" within. All Judeo-Christian peoples do it, from the most contained yet powerful in their hymns, to the most wild services.
Is God willing to be merciful to us in a way that we perceive as merciful? If we cannot feel His mercy, it may be that we are in some way "spoiled" by something, which means that we hold an attitude that is in some way skewed regarding the human condition.
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Teaching the Modern Man to Praise God
There is a great need to teach the modern man and woman about what it means to praise God, and why it is an essential key. The Word says, "God dwells in the praises of His people (Psalms 22:3)." Most real Christians understand what this means and why there is nothing "barbaric" or "servile" or "masochistic" in it. Basically, praise means showing someone you can trust in them and that you love them. That is essentially the whole of it. Since, "the Accuser" and all its forces, try to state that one cannot believe in a God that is so cruel that It cannot exist, praise essentially is overwriting all that false data with truth.
Praise gets us toward the area where the blessings of God like physical healing, mental health, peace, joy, and love can exist. It is a part of praying in the way that Jesus taught us to pray. Praise goes hand in hand with accepting the Bible as the Word of God and not like any other book.
Worshipping God makes us more "tolerable" to a higher level. There is no other word for it but "tolerable" but it is not completely a good word because it does not cover the love of God. Worshipping God develops that spirit of loveableness in us. God is above even the highest creatures, and when these high creatures see that we love and worship God, they accept us as their own, even though we may be fallen. That is one reason why some know to praise God, they understand that all the universe does this, except the demonic. We must pray that as many men as possible will praise the Lord, as this directly challenges the demonic. We also note that all atheists inherently blaspheme God because they do not see the goodness of God enough to even believe that God exists.
Praise is an entrance into the realm of the positive, whereas the "world" of the negative usage of the word "world" in Scripture, which has all of human decadence, slavery and so on, is the realm of the complaint or the negative. Analysis of something by logic and thinking about something is not complaint - nor praise. But there is limited pragmatic benefit in staying only with analysis, compared to being in the realm of the praise of God. God responds to showing our trust in Him and our love for Him.
Another method by which miracles are experienced is praying for a long period of time, such as three or more hours each day. During such time one can be in prayer, praise and worship, focusing on Bible passages such as healing scriptures, and sometimes be in a posture of prostration. But we must remember to ask for the thing, as it is said we have not because we ask not. There is the idea that faith without works is dead, dead in the sense that it does not have the power to create anything miraculous. Such works are the words of Jesus, the things he told us to do, not the things men tell us to do. I am for local church attendance. Going to church in a loving, prayerful, non-divisive manner is a ministry in itself. It is not a ministry necessarily because we are in the role of teaching others there, but it is a ministry because we help it to stay open by being one of the people that attend there.
What gets us in the state of mind in which we pray the most? What gets us in the emotional condition in which we pray the most?
One possible reason we are taught in the Word to give praise and thanksgiving for what we pray for before we receive it is because people often do not give thanks and feel gratitude after they receive it. Doing this keeps us more in one continuous feeling of gratitude. A state of permanent gratitude is what we should be in, not a naive one, where we give thanks for our lack, but a creative one, where we have true hope.
"So, do not throw away your confidence, it will be richly rewarded" (Hebrews 10: 35). Not just confidence in God but confidence in good things in general, and in oneself where necessary.
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We need to focus on higher culture and art in a revival in post-Christian lands because such lands have become heavily developed because of Christianity's influence on culture. The best of such cultures is "coasting" on what Christianity has developed in them, but soon the influence of money and lust overcomes much of what can be considered civilized.
One vision is focused on starting a new type of mission in post-Christian cities that is based on education. Maybe even a new movement in the body of Christ. It would be through Jesus' teachings, looking at His exact words. It has been done many times before.
We stare right into the heart of the reasons why there is stagnation in the human race. Weeds denying the bloom of the spiritual religious spirit which gives way to health, healing virtues one can disperse to others, mentally and physically. We see these weeds and pray to God that He plucks them out.
How do we make God, and our spiritual condition, as well as spiritual painting, poetry, music, and other arts, seem as beautiful as a woman to a man, or a man to a woman? The destructive forces say, "They are not." But they are. They are even another kind of beauty, deeper and more constant: the beauty of lasting family, when that entire family seeks the Lord, the beauty of the spouse that is stable, loyal, and helpful. This beauty should be documented, because the fallen beauties have been. But in Christian culture, especially up to the silent film era, one can see many godly beauties portrayed in many films.
We have to get the spiritual art back into life. When Christianity stopped being a dominant force, the arts suffered tremendously. Not only is there a lack of spiritual work in painting and in music, but there is a complete glut of demonic work in all fields. This is not only coming from Western countries, but countries like Japan have their own brand of it. One can only imagine if other countries loosen their hold on traditional morals and follow "post-Christian" lands, with its tolerance that came from the Mind of Christ, what will happen to their arts as well.
Look at the history of art when Christianity was strong. It was real art, not gimmicky as much art seems to be today. Everything depends on the righteousness of the people. Where there is no Christ, there is little or often no righteousness in the land.
Imagine a video with a soundtrack of some work like Couperin's "Les Barricades Mysterieuses" with the images a Christian revival message. Link it with everything good in Christendom past, with Dickens's moral stories, classical composers, divine healings, all the great Christian testimonies. See the Word as promoting herbs, the wisdom of eating more of the foods God created, like fruits and vegetables. Putting new wine in new wineskins by helping those caste away by society. Linking it with a pro-Jewishness with shows the acceptance of all minorities, and those of Third World nations as equals. Because there is something greater in the heart than that which can be made by the hands of humankind, that is so wonderful in spite of what all such minorities and members of such nations have gone through, and it is that something which can help us understand the heart of Christ more.
The beauty of the liturgical calendar and living in remembrance of it, is a way of keeping in the Word that many newer churches do not have. Building up any local church is a great goal for a sense of community. Being needed and wanted in a small setting is a ministry that all can contribute to. Going to church also contribute to one's education, which is what anti-Christian snobbishness avoided.
Looking at historic Christian art can bless us in many ways, but we have to pray that the Holy Spirit opens up this work to our understanding. Each Madonna and Child painting we see can be looked at as a type of intelligence combined with emotion and/or beauty. The Madonna of Van Eeyk's painting, "The Virgin in the Church" seems to display the intelligence of architecture. Each Madonna is also a symbol of being new each day in Christ. As well as celebrating the Messiah, the Christ child represents the new state of mind, or "renewing one's mind."
It is possible to learning the Scripture by the great artists' painting of its events. There are at least two-hundred events or verses of Scriptures portrayed in art, by the greatest of artists.
I speak with conviction of a new art that returns back to Scripture. Is it any wonder art has become what it has been now that it is being done by a culture that has openly rebelled against the Church?
We could get artists to finish Rembrandt's Biblical sketches and turn them into oils. They can be modernized but should keep his compositional layouts and expressions.
We can also learn and teach Scripture and keep Biblical figures in the forefront of culture by focusing on all the great operas that have had Biblical Themes. There have been many written by the greatest composers of the 20th Century and they are still being written today.
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Personally committed acts of ignorance have to come back to those who commit them, because the fruit of such when personally experienced teaches us to not be ignorant. Often, our acts of stupidity did ourselves or someone else some harm, no matter if it was a conscious intent or not. We must repay for our stupid actions because we must be taught not to harm others or ourselves. This gives us a sense of humility and prayer, that God would inform us when we are wrong and how we can correct it. It is inherent in the universe that this education always goes on because it is a fair universe. If likewise, if we suffer others' abuses, we must see that we will be benefited by these acts against us, if we do not retaliate but instead be calm and absorb the blessing that can be received when we focus on forgiving them.
We have to take the sting of this sick surprise out of what happens when people do not follow the Word of God. I do not think God needs it -- do people who are following the right way? An example, is someone who was following lust too long and has avoided developing the character necessary for long term and comfortable bonding with the right person. It is the exact same principle in explaining why God is a jealous God. The process of changing any human being takes a long time of exposure to God's nature. That is, we have to face God in order for God to work on us. God just does not work on people without their interest in this work taking place. The amount of true interest they have is the amount of true interest that God will have in changing them. When we start replacing the things that only God can give us with lesser things we lose out on all these things. People no longer -- or did they ever more than now? -- follow directions simply because they are told to follow directions. Unless this is a quality of loving someone that is not as much understood today, many will follow someone's directions because you sense they love you. But many others need rationality and proof that the way you are pointing to follow will in fact give them good results.
A believer's goal can be, "In the greatest peace and health, to do the greatest good, for the greatest number, for an adequate income." This seems to be the holistic message of Scripture, freed from the shackles of hypocrisy, which forces some to see the Bible as against realistic thinking. It is against worldliness, not against the reality of the world, nor of the necessity to earn money. And if more people desire to win souls, which they should, it is almost the same thing, whether you focus on helping more disadvantaged or more advantaged, the level of need on earth can be equal between the two.
Many people are asleep, and need to awake to their true needs. By helping someone who has more money, possessions, or social power, they may then be able to use these things for others less fortunate. The early church did this, and it was done other times by the body of Christ, such as around the time of the Victorians. But what is as hopeful is that they may have more influence to eventually pour out more education and edification into the world of the media. The entertainment level of this planet can be changed. To God, all are equal, no matter what their money, possessions or power. We should have that attitude as well.
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Love heals.
Through grace, God is active love without negativity.
We can be active love without judgement.
Much of our thought can be judgmental which negates active love.
Because of the earth plane, that is, the land of the symbolic wheat and the tares, we can aim to vibrate an active love in our mind, that overrides our thoughts - just as in an experience with God we experience a higher density of that love feeling than we usually do in life.
If we are sick or imbalanced we can concentrate on that feeling of active love and a type of healing "nutritious" energy that people call under various names, and which in its most real form is the healing Holy Spirit which so many Christians have experienced causing miracles of healing in their life.
We can believe this healing energy of the Holy Spirit will heal not only our bodies, but our minds.
We heal by being up in a higher sensation of this healing energy of active love, maintaining our place there, while we seek to bring people to higher participation in it. We break apart all boundaries in us that stated we could not bond with a certain type of person, and help them become more loving.
Active love is called active because it radiates outwards and preoccupies the mind and body with itself. It is like the experience we have with God.
It is clear that God's healing power is real, but we must emphasize that we must do all we can do for ourselves to be healthy. If we have "religious" people using us for their own attempts at security by telling us certain healthy practices are Satanic, and offering no alternatives, and if they themselves are often overweight, lack energy, and the power to do more of God's will on Earth, then clearly it is they who maybe are deluded. However, I believe God, or life if you will, shows a person to not be conceited about the body, and to trust in the more powerful which is a manifestation of His Spirit, which sometimes uses a doctor. One can be average height and weight and still have health problems. One can get conceited just because one does a few healthy things, and allows many other unhealthy things.
God keeps giving healing out in amounts but of course God can heal completely. We should never think that if we do not receive a healing after prayer that we should not pray again.
I knew a man in a church who was 83 when I was told his story. He was active in the church, being both a greeter and the usher. He said that he was healed of bladder cancer at the age of 80. He said after he got the diagnosis he prayed for three hours a day, and was never negative or fearful, having already led a good, long life. He prayed in the spirit, praised the Lord, sometimes prostrated, and repeated this verse over and over again:
"When the evening was come, they brought unto him many that were possessed with devils: and he cast out the spirits with his word, and healed all that were sick" (Matthew 8:16).
He was always sure to get the prayer list at the prayer meeting to take home so he could continue to pray for people prayed for at the meeting.
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Thoughts on Possible Ways to be Healed
1) God keeps giving healing out in amounts but of course God can heal completely.
2) We should never think that if we do not receive a healing after prayer that we should not pray again!
Without any denial of the possibility of needing to stay under a doctor's supervision, state: there is nothing wrong with ______ (meaning, a body part that one believes is pure and healthy). This seems to break the hypnosis off the body mind which affects the brain cells that store the "wrong signal." But if you read many accounts of spiritual healing the people went to the doctor, also, sometimes at first to get a check up, but also to make sure that they in fact got a good report from the doctor. Perhaps this is because God wants the praise for the healing. One needs to know fully that one has the problem in order to be healed. In fact, when Christians often pray for the sick, they ask the Lord "for a good report from a doctor."
Since we are always supposed to be in God's presence with the Holy Spirit, then the other preventive medicine modalities we use need to be concurrent with the proof of the Holy Spirit in our heart. Speaking in tongues for some can be such a proof that God is intimately with us. This solves much, because many people wander far off safe and useful doctrine, and have no method of gauging where they are. Such preventive medicine modalities are the things we personally choose, and may be things like chiropractic, meditation, martial arts, and other bodymind awareness based practices, even though all in the body of Christ may not think such things are personally for them.
Another place altogether we can be in our consciousness -- another state -- is the peace that passes understanding (Philippians 4:7), which is both a grace of God, and a good work. Faith without works is dead (James 2:26). We are seated in the heavenlies (Ephesians 2:6) - so when bad events happen we have a country of stillness we are familiar with. Because the mind is made more still, the new man can arise more easily. The blueprint for this new man is the Bible only, because of the multitude of false doctrine there are in the world. If one can really see it, the Bible has the clearest way to the new man, with the shield of faith, the breastplate of righteousness - a person who knows life and death is in the power of the tongue.
In modern life, you have to maintain a deep attention span to experience the good, and also have attention to experience the pleasures of spirituality, such as during the Holiday seasons. You cannot have pleasure and stress the same time for it to be real pleasure. Sin always brings stress, and God's power in daily living can help us remove much of our stress.
What are the benefits of stillness with a Biblical focus on our benefits in Christ? They can create the moods that say, "I can do this and this and this with my life. I can do all things that strengthen me in Christ (Philippians 4:13)," it is much different than being simply in our own thoughts. When we are full of our own thoughts, when those thoughts are the average of the way "the world" thinks, we often are full of our own impossibilities.
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Those who have a problem with lust, trade it for God's protection. Pleasing lust not only grieves the Holy Spirit but it grieves people who are usually the most adjusted, prosperous, philanthropic, committed to the family values of raising children properly and so on. There is a saying, "the man takes the drink and then the drink takes the man."
It is the same thing with lust. Lust which is beyond the normal sexual desire given to us for our soul mate, once taken, will take the person. Pornography is a good example of this. The majority of pornography could be said to focus on situations that are full of inappropriate direction for romantic bonding of a lasting nature. Pornography is essentially the filming of the act of prostitution, and it often depicts a fantasy of crime.
Lust is so abhorrent when out of place, such as in public, for instance. It is a violation of the person one is lusting after. They may be half one's age and it is not appropriate for one to have sexual feelings towards them, even if one is not particularly into spirituality. Secondly, lust is a type of emotional feeling that is reserved for privacy with someone you deeply trust and have grown close to. Again, even if one is not particularly into spirituality, whereas if one is, one believes that there is a commitment one makes that comes after the agreement of marriage.
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I see this as a way to get grounded in the Holy Spirit:
Repeating the saying or singing of "hallelujah" aloud or in one's mind and heart, and looking at praise of God as showing God you trust Him and love Him.
The "Jesus Prayer " which has been written about for about 1500 years in the Orthodox tradition. It is simply: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." Sometimes "a sinner" is traditionally left off on the end. I find it is an easy formula to start a prayer for someone else, especially if that someone else is bothersome in some way, or needs prayer for any reason. It is taken from Jesus' parable about the publican and the Pharisee (Luke 18:9-14).
Tongues can be done aloud, or silently in one's mind, or in a singing fashion, again silently or aloud. The great heresy of the modern church age is that tongues should not be focused on because it was only to be done when there is an interpretation. I have personally heard this at least five times from Christians who considered themselves strong in the faith. However, tongues is spoken of in at least three separate ways. First, it was mentioned as a sign of the objectivity of God's power in the Gospel of Jesus, such as in the Second Chapter of Acts when those heard the Apostles speak in their own language. Secondly, it was spoken of as a private prayer language (1 Corinthians 14:2-4) that edifies those who use it. Thirdly, it is spoken of as a way of prophesying, being given a special opening space in communal worship where an interpretation was given afterwards (1 Corinthians 14:27). One could see that this would be very distracting if it was given a place in a service and there was no one to understand what was being said. In practice, tongues have also been a public display of love and trust for God, as in worship parts of services where there is singing and worshipping God aloud. Often, this is extremely beautiful when there is singing in tongues. This is a very common and non-disruptive practice.
One might start out with circular breathing, which is just keeping the breath deep for a longer period of time.
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God seems to need to emphasize in the Word that He has made healing plants for humanity to be benefited by. Even Revelations 22:2 states, "On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations." The reason is that even in ancient times, false teachers were creating their own concoctions and potions out of animal parts and everything else, including probably plants that didn't serve the medicinal purpose they were intending for. Ridiculous things, perhaps fermented and dangerous, and things such as spells and voodoo, and who knows what else, was used for "healing" purposes.
We synthesize many of our modern medications from medicinal herbs and their properties, and we will most likely continue to do so in the distant future in ways which we haven't explored today.
Like many academic studies, the Bible does not teach that man has just one part, or is just made of one "substance." or has only one type of mind. The heart and the mind are described as different centers of sensation, function or experience. The body, heart, mind, spirit and soul are described as different parts of us. The body could also be called the flesh but it might as often have a more innocent usage in the Bible. Christian theologians discuss the difference between the "spirit" in a person, and the soul. The unconscious of psychology is sometimes often alluded to in the Bible, and often the modern idea called the "bodymind," which is well known to movement therapists also has a scriptural relevancy.
The "Spirit man" has the programming for physical healing - it then goes through the "soul man" into the body - they must line up - the charts on healing help that. When we are reborn with the Spirit of Christ, that is what our Spirit man has for programming.
Can our "Spirit man" forgive us for being angry at God, or is it better said, can our soul allow the bridge to the Spirit man if the soul has been lustful and angry at God?
Remember, God is love, The "I am" that creates us in His image. It was not a physical image that He created us in likeness of. He said when you pray believe that you already have what you ask for. "As a man thinketh, so is he" (Proverbs 23:7). In studies, athletes who visualize victory, have a better chance of winning. God wants us to be free, and to be able say, I am all things in Christ. The world, the flesh, and the devil want us only to be what they say we have to be, such as I am stressed, I am a loser, and so on. Many of the religious understand the need for humility and putting others' needs above one's own, and, at times, the value for this can even be explained secularly.
What can arise in someone who strives for competence is not anger and hate but to the simple it can look like those things. The unprepared mind cannot name these new powers because life is not about teaching empowerment easily.
Empowerment is something empowered parents usually spend many years teaching their children. Everything about it can usually be explained psychologically, and by brain science. Empowerment is not unethical if no one is being slandered, gossiped about, or hurt in any other way. Protests against immoral empowerment can happen by prayer, such as prayer for God to guide our actions when there is immoral power around us.
A certain type of person, who was not prepared by their upbringing, cannot understand the emotions of fortitude. Fortitude is the conquering of oneself by conquering the fearful and delusional part which tries to steal the best in social life away from us.
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Dispassion is a major part of historic Christianity, but it has not been much focused on recently, except in the liturgical churches, and the more liberal churches that attract more well-off and educated Christians. But I believe without understanding it, one cannot really get the full power of much of the Word, in Spirit and in Truth. In the story of Job, we can imagine he said to himself, "this is what God does with Satan, testing us, all I can do is not identify with it being what people say it must be, and control my emotions by focusing on good thoughts, especially those about God. I am a master of my thoughts and emotions. I cannot always make any ethical sense of what God and Satan are doing, but I will not let it destroy me like it does so many other people."
Maybe God wants the person to be attached and identified with some things. What gives God pleasure in creating the Earth? Our transformative loving ability to bond with others and "give ourselves" for our friends and family.
What the New Agers or other types of Non-Christians call "higher consciousness" is about making the here-and-now better. To a large extent, focusing on what God wants in a Christian context seems to make the present better, but also has more of a long term positive impact. This comparison should not be taken too far, but often in the West, many Christians are firmly grounded in good work situations and good-self discipline, whereas many New Agers or people involved in the occult are often not. The idea of enduring suffering now seems to take the effeminate "preciousness" out of our emotions. It puts our attention on bettering the external world of relationships with others, and providing for oneself responsibly. The New Age and Occult often focus on one's temporary emotional state of experiencing pleasure. This can lead to enduring difficulty that comes from hedonism or not following the Golden Rule such ethics can become relative.
The trials of our life are part of what life is for. Many people seem to instinctively know that to rock the boat will create more trials. But God has ordained this as a world that includes trials. The majority stay humanized at all costs, the heroes let themselves face the trials from their own conquests, and it is the job of the hero to stay humane. The devils through evil men seek to dehumanize those who threaten their way of life, which is the way of unkind and overly competitive worldliness.
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What is being strong in grace? (2 Timothy 2:1).
What does "My burden is easy and my yoke is light" (Matthew 11:30) mean? Isn't that just an attitude that Christ took? We cannot say that being hounded by the religious leaders was easy, and knowing He was to be crucified was just a light day in His life. Is light translated as not being heavy, or as in luminous? It is interesting but not correct to see "light" translated as luminous, but this gets into idea that there are various interesting "games" played in language and the idea that language was created by the angels.
Maybe Jesus meant that sometimes we are not "attached" or "identified" by the statement about "His yoke is easy and His burden is light"? Of course, heretics have no problem in suggesting all types of perennial philosophy thought in Jesus until they totally deny the Gospel, but more rigorous theologians have also discussed non-attachment as an integral part of the Christian's arsenal. Solomon prescribes a type of this in Ecclesiastes when he discuses that there are certain times for certain things and not be concerned about other things during that time. If we are all anxious about questions that make no difference in what we are supposed to be focused on today, the day's evil, in Jesus words. And that is also an interesting suggestion, to see each day as having a certain "evil" in it, which also supposes that the bulk of our day is focusing on the good, as the Letter to the Philippians tells us.
Ultimately, I believe "My burden is easy and my yoke is light" has the most to do with the comforter that Jesus promised us, a supernatural holding by the Holy Spirit, more than an act of will done by man.
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The theme of bravery helping us do the least to build the best is covered here.
"So, do not throw away your confidence, it will be richly rewarded." Hebrews 10: 35. Not just confidence in God but confidence in good things in general, and in oneself where necessary. Let your yes be yes and anymore of this is of the evil one is bred in places where earning our own way is called "self-seeking," and spiritual seekers have to be faced so much with the past. "This one thing I do, forgetting the things that are behind."
To not have fortitude is probably the reason for much lack of witnessing ability, psychosomatic illness, and other problems.
The Eastern Orthodox saints take much time to describe what Christian courage is. They called it, "Incensive Power." They use the words of Jesus to state that this is an appropriate topic, when He said, "Be ye angry and sin not."
Using the Incensive Power Appropriately
1) Feeling incensive power means nothing ethically in language. It can be righteous anger, as in fighting real crime, catching a dangerous criminal, or in keeping to an exercise program. Anger however can often be damaging physically, whether it is righteous or not. God did not seem to intend to allow us to indulge much in it, much like sweets, tobacco, and alcohol.
2) While anger is almost always bad, in the denial of all forms of active energy that seem like anger, we could lose out on some types of activity and health. This means that by fighting our anger, sometimes we also lose some of our active energy, ability to cope with difficult things, which can in turn develop into depression, a tendency towards obesity, and so on.
3) It is very spiritual to be able to use the incensive power appropriately. It is not spiritual to be in denial which can be toxic even though appears as spiritual. Happiness is closer in range of body and breathing to assertive behavior than it is to timidity or apathy. Just like crying and laughing can be similar in sound and body movement, great joy and incensive power occupy similar but very different ranges. In the brain, there are very obviously different places where the two emotions exist.
4) To use the incensive power, consider making a list of things that need changing. See if incensive power can change these things into something positive and concrete.
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Energy Into Ambition
1) Understanding more about human energy means accepting that "anger," "aggression," and "assertion" are somehow related and must be channeled by the Holy Spirit into godly ambition. "Ambition without malice" is a phrase from one early church father. Otherwise, we can be like the bad steward who has nothing, because we are expecting from God the creation of our own actions and the actions of others. This can only happen in rare occurrences. Otherwise, God would be responsible for all the evil on Earth. Incorrect theology actually has that fault built into it. Who can really know how often God makes people do things, or how much pain and effort devoted Christians put into their acts, which they also rightly give God credit for. It is one of the paradoxes of the faith.
2) Ambition can be formed when energy, or "power," is somehow stored and used. God does not give us a spirit of fear but of power, love and a sound mind. The armor of God, which is really a spiritual form of self-esteem, must be worn. This is to simply say that a spiritual person must also have a spiritual version of self-esteem, based on living a godly life. Otherwise, they would not value their voice enough in the myriad of voices in the world enough to raise it.
3) Ambition without a previous action related to it is not ambition but a dream,
a wish of someone who may be in reality apathetic.
4) If you have ambition in a holistic way, you have energy because you have motivation.
Spiritually-focused people will often say "God does it through them" and it is not their own will. For some, having a strong will would be dangerous - they would disrupt too much if they had more power. But the tested and spiritual must pray, "if it be thy will," and then focus on will because human will is the only way the Lord Jesus taught us that things can happen on Earth. In His Parables, all were held accountable for their actions. This implies that if their heart was pure, they would focus on, pray about, act out, God's explicit will, which is helping one's neighbor, especially the outcaste. We can see the exercise of will in Paul's letters. It is described in detail. We are to "run the race" and "fight the good fight." A "sleeping life" is filled with fear, but those asleep may not realize they are afraid and asleep.
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Some Ideas on Spiritual Warfare
In order to win souls we must have victory over the enemy. In many ways, spiritual maturity is knowing more about the enemy and having essentially a literal Biblical view on these topics.
1) Because we are body, soul, and spirit, we have to think on all three levels to arrive at truth. Because a person is not fully in the physical world, but also exists in the spirit world, where demons cannot be seen, much of a person's thought could be influenced by a demon without a person noticing it. A person exists simultaneously in the same dimension where angels and demons are, but according to Scripture the reality is just as strong as this world that we can see. One needs the spiritual gift of discernment of spirits to know when there is a demon present, otherwise this activity goes on without human knowledge. In a person that is heavily subject to demonic influence, demons begin and end the thought but it seems like it originates within the person. If it goes against one's better judgment, such a person should seek out some kind of deliverance.
2) Of a certain type of demon, Jesus said, "this kind does not come out without prayer and fasting (Mat 17:15-21)." If a church does not at times emphasize fasting, one can be sure there is a greater opportunity for demonic harassment, even if it is undetected. Self-control in other things like caffeine, tobacco, and alcohol may be also seen as a type of fasting.
3) Waiting on the Lord, expecting God's blessing on various areas of our life, is of the Holy Spirit, and shows faith. The demons strive for us to reject this patience. Gratitude keeps it inside us. Demons try to get a person to waste their lives with religious thinking that can have no benefit, in the wholeness of the life of the person, nor of his society. This is against what Christ taught us to do. Equally bad is waiting on God for something that one does not naturally deserve, even under a spirit of grace.
4) Godliness with contentment is great gain, but too much conceit about gratitude can hinder us from waiting on God for more difficult things. Such a conceit can lead to denials to the problems at hand, perhaps even lead to vanity. In this case it is not a heartfelt gratitude as much as it is a wrong application of something that looks like gratitude. It may be a compulsive fear-based action, not something that springs from insight and love. The demonic can make a person feel more and more gratitude for a lower quality of life, even while they are destroying much about the quality of a person's life. Only humility and hard work can free such a person. One must be willing to reach up to God, not always believe God is in every action and attitude we have.
5) Demons try to get some people to waste their lives with things that can have no benefit towards the wholeness of the life of the person, nor of his society. This is against what Christ taught us to do, and His words and directions guard us against this kind of life. This can sometimes be religious or moral thinking. What I mean especially is when people are in destructive cults. Sometimes the cure of fanatical religious thinking seems bad, when cults are not involved, but often it is better than what it is solving. That problem is a person who comes from a very dysfunctional background, and the unsaved world can seldom see nor appreciate that this healing is virtually impossible without the power of God.
6) If we are not at times working on a specific singular goal, demons will force us to think of several things at once and become less effective. "The Lord scatters the proud in the imagination of their hearts" (Luke 1:51). That is not saying a person cannot be "a Renaissance man" or what is now called polyartist or polyglot. Western civilization at least was built by such people, artists who were also scientists and statesmen. This used to be called having a universal education. The power of attention is not free or cheap. It is a powerful tool. Jesus healed us from an ambiguity that dilutes by saying, "Let your yes be yes, and your no be no, any more than this is from the evil one (Matthew 5:37, James 5:12)." Many of the other things He said and which others in the Bible said seem to be related to universal laws of process, which describe how to be soul winners, "fishers of men," and even prosperous as generosity seems to lead to prosperity.
7) The believer who draws close enough to God has the power to cast out the enemy, even imagine the act occurring in the big picture of the pantheon of heavenly beings who detest them. We are vitalized to do this by understanding their eternal doom, and the weight of their destruction in time verses the little time free they have. In Jesus name we can claim this authority, to repeat the statement that God says that we "have the victory." In meekness, we pray, and say to them, "The Lord Rebuke you" (Zechariah 3:2, Jude 1:9). Remember, that to be rebuked of the Lord is very powerful, and serious, to the being who is rebuked.
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A Chart for Building the Church by Winning Souls
I believe creating innovative charts are one way to overcome difficult problems that need to be focused on for a long period of time. The process of breaking down a problem into its parts which need to be focused on I believe can be an innovative way of problem solving. Often we do not know what the parts are of difficult problems. Creating a chart for them is therefore one way to overcome such problems.
Charts can be used by making check marks next to each line, and the check marks can stand for any amount of attention or time paid to the item. One can put a check mark on the line before or after one focuses on the subject's trait.
Here is an example of a chart:
He Who Wins Souls is Wise Chart
1) Believe in the righteousness of what we win souls to
2) God is not to blame for man's unrighteousness
3) Christ said to not sleep, make this a vital concept not a boring one
4) Using Christianity to make our life better not more obsessive and useless
5) The gifts of the Holy Spirit
6) Bravery helps us do the least to build the best
More Thoughts on He Who Wins Souls is Wise
1) We love the down and out, but they do not believe fully that we do love them enough, to get to the next level of functionality and self-sustainability.
2) We ourselves are helped out by people above us in various ways and we must likewise trust them.
3) Processes of edification can be impeded by those who do not fully put love in this situation. There is a psychodynamics of helping the devastated. Some friends and acquaintances of hurt people may help them as a way soul winning. The total rejecters of others just throw the devastated out of their social circles as a way of feeling secure. We are never to call ourselves victims, just successful adapters to our environments.
To not embrace the possibility of having enemies is to shrink from public responsibility. We must pray to God for courage to face these who see us as their enemies. This is the work of God - to face any chance of evil, to gain insight from the Lord about what it is and how to counteract it, wherever possible. We wrestle not with flesh and blood, St Paul says, but that is not describing the life of Jesus with the Pharisees, it is an internal description that the battle or the judgement of these people is not in our hands and we just not soil ourselves with the stress of it. Let the filthy be filthy still (Revelation 22:11). We must face our enemies, still, to not let them be the only voice in the land.
I heard a statistic that there were certain churches "slated to close the year" in the United States. Some might say these churches were run by pastors who did not have the wisdom to win souls.
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For those who are in love with everyone:
Many are in love with life, like we think of the average person who is in love with life. Certain types of artists, writers, or even religious types, dislike most of life. There is of course the verse in the Bible referring to two prophets in the book of Revelations, "and they loved not their lives unto death," but this is not what I am referring to. What I mean is, it is good to be in love with the feeling of loving people, as many people, I believe, in general trusts and appreciates people, and accepts institutions as necessary. Many have at times been thrown off the track of this state of being in love with life, but manage to recover it, as long as they realize that the hurt people we may reach out to are often not in love with life, and probably cannot love others very much either.
I will explain that verse, "they loved not their lives unto death," as meaning that these people are constantly fasting, denying themselves, and fighting the spiritual warfare that they are being persecuted against all the good that God has set up for us to enjoy, and they are not brought in and accepted by others. The verse may have been in the Word of God to give hope to those who struggle for God's ways on Earth, as Jesus clearly said those who followed Him would have trials. It can be looked at as a statement about these two prophets in the Book of Revelations, who lived in an age that was so decadent that their lives were full of suffering.
Usually, we are taught to not love "the world" but that means a system of behavior that is fallen away. It does not mean, "do not love unsaved people, and do not enjoy life." Basically, it is the concept of love the sinner but not the system that leads to sin. To some, people comprise the "world" and yet they do not see that the Bible never tells us not to love unsaved people. It does not have to be confusing, but some are not perfected in love.
It seems those who are better situated in the Biblically negative sense of the "world," want to accuse those of us who are in love with everyone - we that are not so much in the negative "world" -- that we are not in love with everyone. This a big test of our commitment to love. Do we really have such deep love for love that we do not wrestle with flesh and blood? Some would say "vengeance is of the Lord" but we might even ask, "Vengeance, what vengeance?" With Christ, our spirit is saying, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do," and "I'm not even going to focus on anything negative anyway because I'm having a good time in God's love, power, and forgiveness."
Unconditional love can be practiced. One simply just has to track one's thoughts and see how they measure up to clear examples of unconditional love. Hatred shared among people of lower moral development is like alcohol, it frees them of their personal inhibitions and anxiety, allowing them to bond. One thinks of the Nazis, the wars in the Middle East, and politics even within the same country. It says in Scripture that God hates a gossiper. One can see this lure that gossip has to hate others and bond against others. We have to look at what Jesus taught to also be about how to survive being virtuous, instead of using a little virtue to be a way to dig oneself into a pit. Remember to put new wine in new wineskins, and get new people to spread the petition, write out anonymously as far as the petition but put on a website.
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The church's lack of response to challenging cults' use of events to draw converts
should be examined. Often in university towns in the United States, there are no Christian events on the bulletin boards but there are many for various eastern philosophy groups. A secular person might not think would be a big deal, until they do a search on modern cults and see the hundreds of groups involved in scandals and abuses of all kinds. A large percentage of cults that once appeared innocent have been involved in murder, child abuse and other forms of corruption. It is well known in ministry that a large percentage of those encountered with the most extreme forms of problems have had occult or other false teachings in their background.
Two major facts need to continue to percolate through the person in a so-called
Post-Christian culture.
1) God does desire us to be fervent towards Him
2) God does honor the Bible as source of His truth towards humanity
Many major gurus from the East have been shown to be corrupt, almost everything that is called "spiritual" is being sold to the people with a large price tag, and these people have not made the psychological and economic world around them any better. The only things that have improved are the aspects of protecting the environment, natural health awareness such as food and releasing stress, but these would have gone on if the Western world stayed more Judeo-Christian focused.
One can now see that those who went for Eastern religions in order to levitate or experience other miracles in fact have not received what they were looking for.
The Bible in fact presents the most "exotic" and miracle-focused religion. It has the doctrine of direct transmission into the many by the gifts of the Holy Spirit, "speaking in tongues" being one important primary manifestation. One instantly overcomes one's "ego" by using this force of the Holy Spirit and this is why it played such a central role in New Testament scripture. The Word talks about three distinct types. The first was mentioned in the Book of Acts (Acts 2) in which there is an interpretation of a foreign tongue known to someone who witnesses it. The second is a private prayer language (1 Corinthians 14:2). The third is in the presence of others where there is an interpretation (1 Corinthians 14:27). It is very sad to see many modern Protestant teachers who once embraced the gifts of the Holy Spirit essentially deny them all in practice by stating that tongues were only meant to be used when there is an interpretation of them.
I can sum up the potential problem of all New Age and other mystical teachings that try to have some kind of mental discipline, which brings a person outside the understanding of the need of the grace of God and the resulting filling of the Holy Spirit. They become a way of misery management, because the fullness of God's spirit is not filling the person with His joy, wisdom, and peace. It becomes an attempt of the person to counterfeit this active life of God's Spirit that comes to us when we follow His Word.
On an intellectual perspective, we should see a sleeping attitude about there being greater wisdom in the word of God as something to never tolerate in ourselves. An example of this is when we do not think of each word as exact. We may take too many things as vague generalities which can be re-translated with many different synonyms. Many people, myself included, love the fact that there are many different translations, because sometimes they shade the Word of God in wonderful ways. The problem is when we tend to look at broader, more general synonymous meanings blurring intended distinctions between words, thinking that the Bible uses a very limited vocabulary.
A principle point is that many were previously cheated out of their inheritance in Christ by the world, the flesh and the devil, and that from a certain point on in their life they live for a progressive unfolding of the revealing of God's promise in them. This happens as we accept that God is a jealous God, and that He requires our attention, and service to His will to be accepted as the bride of Christ.
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Here are some points about getting over despair or inertia with God. Certain Christians obviously do not have joy and power, often do not have a spouse, and do not feel like it is possible to get anything or make any change through prayer.
1) Focus on what God possibly can help us with, since the despair or inertia often comes from what we perceive He didn't help us with.
2) Realize that this despair or inertia is what Satan wants so resist Satan and he will flee. Realize it could be Satan trying to be in us that brings anger at God.
3) Did we really do the thing ourselves that we blame on God doing to us? Did God not prevent our own free will, and does not He allow humanity to have free will?
4) Can we change our mood and start with something other than a focus on religious ideas? This is important for readers of heavily religious, or even "monastic" literature to think about. Maybe others cannot state they focus on other things than religious ideas, or maybe they cannot admit they do but they do.
5) In the morning, praise God for your new life and all the things answered that you prayed for. God is infinite in power, He can do all we ask of Him. Track prayer requests of the time, prove the Lord is good.
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It seems breaking down the most important things in the Gospel is important.
Doing so in a logical way is helpful, outside of a lot of other verbiage, which can
descend into personal elaboration that may become boring for many. For that reason, I've taken the logical studies that I employed as a computer programmer, and used them to create topical themes, or lists, and which can become a type of chart that people use to check off. I've put the most important ones for the Christian life in this work.
One could also make a chart for specific Bible verses like those for healing and empowerment over sin, and use it for a way of controlling our attention to godly things.
Here is a system of Christian Growth that shows various areas we can meditate and otherwise focus on.
1) Experiencing the Opening of the Word
2) Experiencing sins as being cleansed, the white as wool feeling - this does not happen in the world
3) Gratitude Lists
4) Praise
5) Answered Prayer Lists/Praise Reports
6) Prayer for Pleasing Personality
7) Being strong in the grace of God
8) Understanding "words of knowledge," (1 Corinthians 12:8) which mean personal prophecies or personal guidance from God, be glad for them, confident and try to live up to them
9) Be vigilant to get to new higher levels of virtue and obedience
10) Important masculine expressions for men/Important feminine expressions for females
11) Acceptance of risky things that make us strong and that have no sin in them
Here are some characteristics for being poor in spirit:
1) Try to get from heaven, instead of criticizing it or thinking one has all the answers
2) Do not be quick to criticize ministers or other believers
3) Do not say God cannot do something for you in your life
4) Do not underestimate what God can do in your life
5) Be willing to pray for all your needs and all other needs that you are guided towards
6) The blood of Jesus has redeemed us and made us kings and priests -- claim the
righteousness of Christ -- not one's own.
7) Focus on love being the answer
8) See going to church as your ministry, not somewhere to criticize other people
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"A merry heart does good like a medicine (Proverbs 17:22)." Modern science has proven the truth of this verse.
"The Joy of the Lord is my strength" (Nehemiah 8:10, Psalm 28:7).
What are the components of the joy of the Lord?
1) Putting enlivening wisdom in the heart of oneself and people via the Word.
2) The "Pink Cloud" period of growth, which is knowing that old seeds of sin no longer produce evil fruit, the past is over and done with. Because we are not doing the same things, we will not get the same results.
3) Music - melody --- God loves spiritual music - anointed sound patterns.
Singing in tongues.
4) Knowing what the Lord will help us with is the Joy of Love.
5) Knowing the good life of the faithful in Christ will be ours if we ourselves
are faithful, and being so is not grievous: my burden is easy and my yoke is light.
Some of these are not joys that are easy for anyone to have. They are a type of gift of the Holy Spirit. We can ask the Lord for more joy in these things.
Examine the spiritual potential from understanding the differences between:
1) Joy of the Lord - happiness by not needing laughter.
2) Godly humor - bonds people together.
3) Overly goofy, ungodly, or destructive humor - creates low IQ body states, and creates boundaries between people or enforces them.
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A major difference between those in false teaching and Christians is that Christians believe the Bible is both easy to understand and able to ever expand our wisdom.
That which took the place of Christianity to many in the West, call it what you will, will say that God's direction is not what is clearly written in the Bible. It was clearly believed to be a literal rendering, that is the Bible means what it says, and this has always been the way the majority understood it in history. We must have more faith in the historical academia that preserved the Bible than we do in the doubters of it. Occultists, New Agers, those of Eastern religions, always rewrite the Bible by reinterpreting it to suit their own ideas. It seems almost an obsession to them. But we can clearly see from the earliest Christian writings outside of the Bible, through the history of Christian art, that it was meant to be interpreted in one way, the way most of the church interprets today. And I mean on those important points which those in false religions reject: the death of Christ for our sins, God's standard of righteousness as written in both Old and New Testaments.
Prideful people cannot progress spiritually -- because they cannot be honest about real needs and their own real inability to meet those needs. Once they can commit to be strengthened in a mature outlook and role, then they can become more amendable to spiritual help, whether from spiritual teachers or God. "Those who wish to keep their lives will lose it" (Luke 9:24). This verse is proven by the many people who will not give up attitudes even to the point of suicide.
Some in the Church worry about members of the New Age coming in and perverting it by bringing in false teaching. I think there is something else to worry about, when people, who may or may not be sincere in their Christianity, act rough and hostile to more sensitive people and moves of the Spirit. We might beware when a church member, or members, act like Christianity is only a "tough" thing, and that the goal is to become insensitive and verbally hostile.
Does the Bible ever say the truth is simple? It says lean not unto your own understanding. The truth is at times so complex that it just keeps opening up more levels of proof in many ways - but it overall averages out to be that which is in Christianity, at least for those who are "elected" to be Christian.
If we are not operating under spiritual principles, we put out what we take in with our senses. The world tells us something must make us miserable, and when we see it, we become miserable. That is the common state of unregenerate humankind. If we are not controlled by the living Word, we are not more than what we take in with our senses. We need to draw into the Word of God, and use it to draw out of our hearts what we want to be, and what we want life to be around us. It is our God-given right to change such things. A person with a paternal state of consciousness towards life can change what they take in with the senses and "digest" it so that they have positive ideas which allow them to continue to be in the humility that is required to be under God's direction. They do not fall prey to societal and cultural restrictions of any one church. They can look outside their present time and see how the body of Christ operated in times past, not just the "popular studies" but to see where in history the Spirit directs one.
The so-called higher states of consciousness that much of the modern spiritual educated person seeks should not be about only building these energies in the soul, whether they be real or imaginary, but be about building higher levels of love in the soul. Work on oneself should be ultimately building a higher density of love in the attitude, not only "energy" or self-awareness. Love and usefulness and fulfilling responsibility.
The Lord's not condemning any of His faithful children that have lower IQ's to stay at their low IQ level. God will give wisdom, and a higher IQ can be experienced in degrees. But unless they humble themselves and ask to become wiser, they will stay at that lower level. When Christian culture becomes "dumbed down" by mis-representing verses about the need for us to be in God's power and not in words of man's wisdom, one is only looking at one side of the coin and not the other. I am never recommending man's wisdom by itself, but only the Holy Spirit utilizing it like He did with Paul and the Greeks and Jews. Paul's letters are very erudite and use complex sentence structures. He had God's power but he also had a brilliant mind and was able to use it to be a minister.
Unlike modern self-help ideas, Christianity does not aim only to affect our current state of mind, it affects larger more important events of our life, bringing deeper blessings. It changes larger, more important events of our life than what is covered in self-help books. But it does this by keeping one in the moment, for Jesus taught us to focus on the problems of this day. If practiced with humility, it can change deeper aspects of our character. Tie this together to how spiritual "titillation" can be damaging just for that reason: it only affects one in the moment and not long term events. The Bible gives us more than what is pleasing to the curiosity. It calls such attraction "having itching ears" and criticizes false teachings and those who follow them as centering on such.
One of the most popular ideas in spiritual circles, and which has been for at least the last one-hundred years, is called the law of attraction, and by many other similar names. The law of attraction simply stated means that we tend to get what we focus on in our minds. It can be seen to be true even if it is totally secularized, but of course there is no reason to do so in a work promoting Christianity. This is how Jesus taught us to pray, it is the basis of the faith of Abraham, the basis of the obedience of the Children of Israel in the desert, seeking the Promised Land. If we do look at it as totally secular, we can see that psychologically, it is the same as what we call hope. One can have hope for everything good in life by visualizing it coming to pass on a certain date. The Holy Spirit seems to help us in this law of attraction, prophesying over us, the good that will come, if we stay with our faith. There are various verses that support it directly, or indirectly support it by stating that we can receive whatever we ask for in prayer if it is God's will, which probably means a broader will than many "religious" people suppose (Mathew 21:22, John 15: 7, 1 John 5:14-15, Mathew 7:7, John 14:12-14, Mark 11:24, Psalm 37:4-5, Luke 17:6, 1 John 3:21-22, Mark 9:23).
What is interesting is how Jesus said "I will make you fishers of men" (Matthew 4:19, Mark 1:17), and the charisma and power that pastors have over people. If we are following His teaching without any aspect of deeper social and psychological wisdom, we are saying that Jesus said that He was just telling stories to the people in His parables and that was the outer meaning he discussed. But if there are different divine levels to what He was teaching, that is a different story.
It seems that some parables follow such simple archetypal patterns that a heretic can make them represent anything. We have to ask, were the people really so simple that they would be interested in the stories He told at their surface level? Aren't some of them too limited and simple if understood at that level? I do not think the common person at that time was that shallow. I think here we have to love God enough to allow some greater meanings in the words of Jesus, so that we read them afresh and allow the Holy Spirit to illuminate us in new ways. But these deeper meanings do not deny any tenants of Scripture, they only add to our deeper social and psychological wisdom.
One of the biggest changes, lessons, and new directions is the taking things to the Lord in prayer - instead of complaining.
God will teach us and give us the most important things, that we were not able to master on our own. We can receive much more from God by allowing ourselves to love more. This new abundance will come from people, obviously. When you love people more, you can allow more abundance in your life, because you are around them more.
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We all know what is meant by the different economic classes, but there is also the use of the word "class" that is meant as a term of honor, often used as a type of blessing on someone when they are said they have it. It would be good to have a spiritual definition of the word "class," which seems to have lost its meaning, impact, and importance.
When God affects the character of those with more money than average, that is called "class" --- but it can also happen to people with little money. We can just call that spirituality or virtue, because we aim to distinguish between those with money who "lord it over others" and those with money who have class. It might be true that there are less people with class at one time or another.
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Another way to look at what Jesus said when He said "you are of your father the Devil (John 8:44)" is "You are of your father, the Accuser." Paraphrased, meaning, "You are full of accusations against others. You have no faith because you accuse God of not wanting anything good for you." The esotericists accuse those in "common religions" - the Evangelical, Catholics, and other Christian denominations. They say that speaking in tongues is done by low IQ people and is essentially gibberish. So many people are divisive religiously and in this way they are of "The Accuser."
It is probably a fallacy to say, "as we judge others so shall we become what we judge them to be like." Sometimes this may be true, as in the case when one has a limited circle of people around one, and almost all of us are influenced by our environment. If we look at the Book of Proverbs and many other parts of the Bible, we can see the attitude we have towards God makes all the difference. We have to see our good qualities mysteriously come from the union we have with God; by our prayer, praise, gratitude, and fellowship with others who believe as we do.
There is a type of positive way of living one's life that goes beyond what one believes religiously. This is chiefly how a person is adhered to positive emotions, generosity, and clean living in their life. Their center of gravity is more or less joy and happiness, usefulness and friendliness. A Christian who has these traits is really the only good role model for another Christian. It is clearly written into Scriptures. It does not matter how simple-minded they may seem to more educated or worldly people. A so called "simple-minded" man in worldly standards can still grasp and enjoy the essence of a positive attitude, whereas we can see many worldly people are the opposite.
The Armor of God is of course famously mentioned in Ephesians 6 but it is also amazingly mentioned by Jesus in Luke 11:39, before Paul's writing.
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Developing parental consciousness I believe is the main thing that much of the church has been unable to teach to those who are unable to commit to long term marriages. Here is an example of parental consciousness at work in a single adult. A person who is married is culturally considered in so-called status above another person who is usually single. Yet, the single person has done much for the community, has helped various other people in many ways. The married person has done various problematic things yet still stays married. Because there is much value the single person can bring the married person, this single looks at the person in the married relationship as a type of being like his or her child, hence there is very little stress that they give the person. A child is more active and more energetic, and can seem physically stronger at times than the parent, but there is another higher energy and strength that the parent has over the child. This strength can come from God because God does draw close to those who draw close to Him.
The development of parental consciousness can be an incentive for a revival because it is a revolutionary change in viewpoints of life.
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On not bearing false witness (Exodus 20:16).
A prayer to enlarge our perception of and experience of another's soul. The act of putting more "soul" into others by our experience of them has to start by not perceiving them as soulless. Philosophies that say people do not have a soul, take the soul out of people who believe such philosophies. We are living in an intellectual climate that has tolerated mostly this kind of thinking for the last several years, so soul-winning and the eternal value of a soul is not always considered. People cannot be saved unless there is a possibility that they can be eternally lost.
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Glory is positive, an expansive state, full of light, and the security of salvation.
There is much about glory in the Word of God. We should examine what it is.
It is often used as a verb, as in "I glory in you" (2 Corinthians 7:4).
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We have to accept that the good life, the life of the soul winner, elicits
a struggle, which those who do not win souls do not experience.
"Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour."
1 Peter 5:8
Least we think that the word "devour" is meant as a metaphor, we should realize some translations render "devour" as "attack and eat," a few translate it as "eat," and one translates it as "swallow." Christianity is not the only place in the literature of the world where demons are said to "feed" on their victims in some way.
For this reason, when we resist demons, we maybe actively are taking part in
the destruction of their "livelihood," as they try to rob, kill and destroy humanity. This may be when they resist us so strongly. God alone destroys, it is ourselves that guides the Spirit of God actively against them. Let us fully feel that the power of God against them defeats them. We also must remember the verse regarding to say, "the Lord rebuke you."
We need not fear we are devoured by demons, for:
Jesus is the living water
His blood
His divine life
His body
His Resurrection Power
His virtues
are all ours, when we accept Him as our Savior, accept Him into our lives, as He becomes our Savior, as we see Him as the Bread of Heaven. If we do His commandments, we become His friends, His commandments are found in the Sermon on the Mount. They are not elusive.
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Healing
We must overcome the boundaries that keep the sick away from the love and wisdom that can heal them. Write out a list that is preventing one from bringing the sick this love and wisdom and pray it through. Pray for humility of those who are helping the sick, that they would be prayerful of Christ's light of healing and conversion, pray for the clarity of mind in the sick so the enemy cannot ruin the work done in them, and so on. Ask for discernment and wisdom to be revealed.
Topic for prayer: What made Jesus and the early disciples so different than most of us that they could perform miracles? Do not expect the answer right away. It is also recorded that many of the saints, Catholic, Orthodox (there are two different canons of saints) and especially latter-day Protestant saints have also been vessels for God performing miracles through them.
Did the person praying for healing, capture all love imaginable in every aspect of a person's heart and condense it into that moment when he prayed for healing for them? Is this an attitude that we should have when petitioning the Lord for healing?
Did the personal praying for healing stand outside of time when he saw the person as totally healed? Did he take the present time limitations off the person, and see them at healthy times in their lives?
Did the personal praying for healing focus on a type of understanding the absolute strength of God, that is, knowing God is above all the galaxies, or we could say "above the entire universe" when He healed us?
What if we go with the answer, "Yes." He took all limitations off God. He saw God in scope as He was. Not only the God of all the animals of this planet, but a God who was a loving, guiding parent through the lives of all these creatures.
Of course, God heals in a way that only God can fully understand.
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Jesus left us a record of someone who completely "got it" regarding the nature of God and how to manifest God's life on Earth by answered prayer. All we have to do is copy His thoughts into the spaces of our life where we are required to think on certain things or pray. The ability from the Holy Spirit to take righteous acts will soon follow.
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He who wins souls is wise. We must have the wisdom to create revival. We must not be like those Christians who let their culture fall deeper and deeper into sin around them. As poverty can kill physically, it can also hinder people's spirituality by a focus on competitiveness when there does not need to be one.
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There are many mysteries in the Word of God, mysteries which do not go against the Biblical tenants of all the major Christian churches. What does it mean to "Labor for the meat which endures to everlasting life?"
The idea of God "sealing" someone can seem to be that there are no significant leaks, sealed by the Holy Spirit within. No leaks of anger or bitter emotions, but instead guided by a parental spirit of power, love, and joy, wisdom and conviction.
There are very advanced perceptions regarding the sinlessness of Christ and how sin affects the blood. We can look at it in a similar way to how stress (fear), anger, and hate affect the human bloodstream, which modern medical science proves.
Jesus called Himself the bread of heaven. He said His body was meant to be eaten. If we look at it in the sense that he has not sinned, and that sinning causes death in the body we can see that modern science shows how the wages of sin brings death in the form of even venereal diseases and how they will poison the body over time. Anger, fear, hatred, gluttony, lust, even lust unfulfilled, all have an effect on the human body. I believe this symbolic becoming one of the pureness with a life without sin is one aspect of taking communion.
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Start out with the personal revival Jesus mentioned, from being fishers of men who gather many "grapes" because they are not "thorns or thistles" -- seeing the Sermon on the Mount as how the blessing of life comes to the individual, moving towards the ability to follow the Book of Proverbs which gives one further spiritual treasure.
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Three Directions for Spiritual Blessing
1) Know God wants to bless us
2) Ask for forgiveness to "Be in Jesus name"
3) Accept as much of God's love and power for one's life as one can
In the morning, try to praise God for your new life and all the things answered that you prayed for. God is infinite in power, He can do all we ask of Him.
There is a separation between the prayers of the unrighteous and God, so they must continue to pray with deep sincerity in their hearts to be healed. Jesus taught to pray always and faint not. He wishes, God the Father wishes, we pray that way.
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When stillness is again a major component of Christian focus, it can help bring the gifts of wisdom for more difficult tasks and business.
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Forgiveness is a wonderful word to examine. Forgiveness can be seen as a word broken down into other words.
Forgiveness can be said to be read as: "For giveness," or "for giving ness," with "ness" to be read in the last instance as meaning, "the subject matter of."
What is "ness" in a different language? It was said somewhere that the angels created our human language, and if this is the case, there may be divine lessons written into it.
When someone commits sin against us, misses the mark, we move into givingness. We pray for them. We are for God's giving to them in order to bring them out of that place of insecurity which makes them operate outside of love.
"For giveness events" that are for giving show that we are a type of child of God verses a child of the Devil. Jesus himself said there were two types here on Earth. Or, "for giving" into ourselves that we can be pure again. "For giving to" the heretics and worldly that they are worthy of our prayer for their repentance. (Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believed. John 20:29 b). "For giving the person who offends over" to God and not holding on to them ourselves.
Only the tender can love. Love must reach the tender threshold.
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Concern for lost sheep must be studied. Having concern for someone's soul who is delusional, even lying due to false beliefs and mindsets from witchcraft and magic, is a challenge for many modern Christians today. There is instead fear or intense dislike for them, that is a commonly acquired trait. I imagine many who are considered "fundamentalist" or legalistic have a fear of those in false doctrines, instead of a concern for their welfare, and the fervent prayer that blossoms from this.
Who are the lost sheep? I believe it is true that a Christian can fall into severely false doctrine and be released from this in time.
The miracle workers, the helpers that we are to look for, have concern for Christians (the sheep) who are lost to strongholds that hinder further growth to be more like Jesus. To be more like a Pharisee is to be concerned with the letter of the Law over that of the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
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I would never be divisive between a Christian who does believe in praying in tongues and one who does not. Since I do believe in it I will make a few short statements about it.
Praying in tongues is not so effortless for many people otherwise many more people would be doing it. Going ahead with it and doing it as much as we can shows faith: faith in God, and faith in His word. It is also a form of worship, because it is bowing our will before the Lord in an active way.
Praying in tongues is a great privilege. It is said expressively that it can be a private prayer language by St. Paul. The example of it in Acts is only one way it can manifest, but St. Paul says that it is also sometimes not for other people to hear, but as a private prayer language to God. He is glad that he prays in tongues more than many. It really is abysmal how some Christians misread the Bible without an ability to semantically understand the entire text that is given.
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"In the way of righteousness is life, and in its pathway there is no death" (Proverbs 12:28).
The second half of the verse above describes the attitude of the person on the way of righteousness. He sees the unseen manifesting in the present: the righteous are not always the rich and powerful, as the world, the flesh and the devil want to delude us into thinking. Or, the one on the part of righteousness sees only the Zoe power of God's Spirit and the miracles it brings into life in the present. Zoe is the Greek word for life.
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Here are some ideas on how others affect us. The people one is around only produce certain types of thoughts in most people. One could call this the "thought matrix." This is why some people become violent, the thought matrix creates these certain types of thoughts in unstable people. This can become conscious to us and changed. Being around successful people who are not narcissitic and can care for others, triggers successful types of thoughts. In spiritual people, being around unsuccessful people can trigger thoughts of correcting them, which would be the thought matrix of these situations. In brain science, something called "mirror neurons" is described as a similar type of study. The mirror neurons are unconscious, but very present.
Think of the idea of a thought matrix when it comes to being more like Mother Teresa in terms of how we see our life:
1) What kind of behavior do I see these people having?
2) Will those behaviors influence how I think about my spiritual goals?
3) Will any conversation, either real or just in my daydreaming with these people in mind, help my spiritual goals?
This is a very simple idea that many people already follow. A simple idea made a little more explicit so that other people may copy it.
How to become less sensitive to the possible misdeeds of others:
1) Let Go and Let God
2) Pray for oneself
3) Pray for them
4) Pray for the situation
5) Speaking or praying in Tongues
6) Pray for others in regards to it
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The Bible speaks of moisture in a person as a good thing of the righteous and dryness as a bad thing. (Luke 8:6, Job 21:24, Proverbs 3:8, Proverbs 17:22). Ointment is spoken of as giving joy. Massage seems to give moisture to the flesh, whereas a lack of movement seems directly related to something freezing up, or metaphorically drying out, as due to a lack of stimulation of circulation. The Bible also says, "A wicked man hardeneth his face: but as for the upright, he directeth his way" (Proverbs 21:29). We think of the hardness of muscles contracted by anger, fear, overuse, or simply lack of wisdom spent in releasing the normal tension that life gives one.
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Loving God involves loving his creation and God may hold us accountable in such things as our health and our prosperity if we do not love the use of our mind to make our lives better. That is, if we do not see that the small things of life are to be loved, we may not see that God gives us the opportunity to prosper by activating our love in all we do, and all we can be. This obviously involves things like physical exercise but also enjoying things like great paintings, music, ornamental gardens and so on.
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A person's humility is the trait which frees them the most from the persecutor's efforts. They will store progress in the Lord quietly, not thinking they have arrived, or are greater than other Christians or even unbelievers. "Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" (Mathew 5:3).
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Someone said "you are the company you keep." Some of the spiritual think that it is not true for them personally, that they can handle any negative person's behavior, over and over again, even groups of negative people. But I wonder how much of this is a delusion? Are they using foul language? Are they angry with God at times? Do they debate God's truth or get in arguments with God about certain things? If so, it might be that they are much more influenced by unbelievers than they may understand. How could they still be around them and not be influenced by it?
They may try to ask themselves, after noticing negative effects, if the people they were around were especially unloving, perhaps not to they themselves, but to someone else. Why is the focus of loving a specific person so difficult in the person or people they were around?
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How some get deliverance from lust:
It is important first to divorce the concept of lust from the natural good feeling the opposite sexes have for each other. The desire for sex in marriage is not lust. Lust can be defined in some of these things:
1) See that it was against the sense of bonding with a member of the opposite
sex, it was against the way that completes our household. It is against a sense of
family and staying with someone who helps us when we are lonely, or even ill. Lust usually fights finding and bonding with someone to grow old with, someone to create a family of children with, and so on.
2) Seeing the single state as used to get close to God, and once God changes our
nature enough, matures us enough in Spirit and Truth, we are then able to move
into marriage. Lust takes us away from the fellowship of God.
3) Knowing that the doctrine of lust as an energy booster was completely
false, and yet deeply embedded on our culture. It is in the famous book, "Think and Grow Rich," which tens of millions have read worldwide, and all throughout the New Age or occult. It is also in the idea of how an "orgasm" is a release of stress or bad feelings.
4) Imagine a world that did not have lust, just the normal desire for the opposite sex that eventually led to marriage.
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The problem with more "educated" Christians not going to church is that they
are able to understand the cunning of men often better than those with less "education." I put "education" in quotes because of the problem with those who take offense at the idea that education has any benefit. I do not mean formal college education per se, someone can be very wise without college.
Do we have any examples of people saying there were unwise Christians destroying a culture? The Spanish inquisition, wars between sects in the reformation times, and the battles in recent times between Catholics and Protestants all caused the loss of life in the name of religion. Unwise Christians may by sins of omission take part in the destruction of the higher things in culture and community by not being involved, by staying away because of fears of contamination. I believe this was meaning of the Parable of the Talents. If you read what the man who buried his one talent thought, you can see it is the same thing that is being said by people who are sure that theirs is the exactly last generation alive. It is God's one talent, because without Him, each person would have no talents.
St. Paul said he was a debtor to the Greeks and the Barbarians. There is a trend to misunderstand the nature of what "wisdom" is, and making it seem like the wisdom that God gives us through His Word and His Spirit will not also give a person a degree of "worldly wisdom." People should know that the Bible often says things in opposites, showing the truth of both sides. Jesus told us to shine our light before men but He also told us not do our deeds before men so that we would be rewarded in Heaven.
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Jesus said, "A prophet is not without honor except in his own homeland" (Mark 6:4). This is often the typology, I believe, for the genius. Historically, a genius had sometimes to move to another land to survive. There may not be many "prophets" around today. The modern sense of the word "prophet" that exists today is used to describe a member of the fivefold manifestations of ministry (Ephesians 4:11).
For those of us that are creative Christians, that is, those putting new wine in new wineskins, we might see the term in a way as holy as this. That even in one's town or household, one must create a soul nourishing honor as far as the spiritual quality of the impressions one takes in. Jesus mentioned things like this when He said "do not give what is holy to the dogs" (Matthew 7:6) and "shake off the dust of your feet as a witness against them" (Matthew 10:14).
We should meditate on sections like this that show the genius of the Bible the most today. Would not the genius of it shine today like it did in the past, and would this not be the case, with the type of educational objectives we've had in the last several years?
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Problematic Aspects of Sensing Divine Discipline
1) It could be a natural mistake we make in the physical world, an accident
2) Like above, but in combination with or based solely on something in our unconscious, whereas #1 is not
3) It could be demonic and not divine - Satan comes as an angel of light
4) Other non-Judeo-Christian explanations that are common in New Age or other
non-Christian worldviews. An example: a departed human who has good intentions, which instructs someone from beyond the grave. We believe these are all wrong
There is a problem when a legalistic "fundamentalist" church, that is not a soul-winning church, can create "proofs" of their infallible guidance by God, just by the nature in which people have a masochistic element.
The destructive aspect of this is a "false test," a sense of God not trusting you, of God being the accuser, i.e. Satan. I wonder how important this idea of the "false test" is.
Perhaps, seeing through "tests" is the major test we need to pass, since all accomplishment takes effort, which to the weak and lazy seems like God is unfairly testing them.
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How does Satan steal our time and take us away from what benefits us?
We should turn this into a prayer: Lord God please show us how Satan steals our time and takes us away from what benefits us.
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Jesus said that his disciples could not stay awake and "watch" with Him for one hour. This can be seen as just staying awake to be with him or watching and praying with Him. I knew a man who healed himself of cancer he said by praying for three hours a day. There are those that say they are often in prayer during the day but it seems to me that I can have that attitude of "praying without ceasing" and it quickly becomes more of a matter of pride than actually time formulating prayers for myself and others.
On Distinctly Praying For Long Periods of Time
1) It does not have to be prayer for yourself.
2) Pray for what comes to mind, learn to "be instant in prayer" meaning, whenever a thought of a person comes up in your mind, whether you love them, fear them, or just
think about them in some other way, say a short prayer for them, in Jesus name. This overrides much of the wrestling with flesh and blood that goes on in life.
3) A way to pray three hours a day using charts as structuring time.
Three hours is just a symbol. Think of it as in the amount of value we should be creating a day by prayer. Three hours of prayer a day also involves praying for knowledge of God's will for us and the power to carry that out.
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The human brain is not an infinite set of chemical responses. It is something we can have mastery over. Understanding God's dealing with us is based on a human understanding of a mind that is dealing with infinite degrees of understanding events and particulars, and one that can only operate out of love.
What if our problem with being happy and achieving goals is really physical, that is, a type of spiritual depression that is in not only the blood chemistry but is in the muscular patterns that are etched somewhere in the brain? What do we do with focusing our attention that changes our body? Can that little attention that some have, build on itself somehow? This is a very common phenomena, what is called a "recursive function" in programming.
This is a practice that was in some of the earliest Christian church father's writings, and is represented in the anthology of writings called the Philokalia:
1) Breathing attention
2) Body observation
3) Stillness or slowing down of thought, which naturally happens with body observation
We should combine these with prayer for a general feeling of gratitude and willpower.
Willpower is what Satan is trying to take away from the body of Christ by dumbing down preaching. Preachers could be on an intellectual level to substitute divine cultural thinking for the crass thinking that is presented too often in popular media.
Will does not allow the lukewarm good to be the enemy of the best.
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The only way to achieve more lasting marriages is through each developing a parental consciousness even if there are no children involved. We must be willing to tolerate and parent the other when we feel they are wrong, and accept when the other is "parenting us" that it is indeed for our own good. The reason why some of the church has not been able to teach this very well is that it has seen itself as against psychological wisdom and has not really understood it.
Understanding developmental arrest as the inability to care for oneself as an adult includes understanding the need to protect the romantic relationship because "two are better than one." Understanding that two are better than one comes first, and then peacefulness can reign in the relationship, because God's people follow God's ways -peace and joy being one of them. It is clear that many Christian marriages have ended because the couple were no longer able to cultivate a lifestyle of peace and joy. It was not a primary aim of their life before marriage, and so was not one after marriage.
I saw the perfect image of the well adjusted married couple. There was a heavy set blind woman walking slowly down a curving wheelchair access, holding the hand of a man who looked also disabled in some way. He was guiding her slowly down the turn in the wheelchair ramp, as she tapped the ground ahead of her with her thin pointing stick. All happily married couples must in some way see themselves like this, both needing each other. The man needed the woman, no matter what her disabilities, because it is not good for a man to be alone. We assume the Lord meant also it is not good for a woman to be alone.
A sexology for the single Christian would be welcome, since, like no time in history, there are so many who are single.
The Christian religion at times and in various denominations becomes so anti-sex
that it is even against what the Bible teaches about this. Only good Bible students know about verses like:
1 Timothy 4: 1-3
1 Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils;
2 Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron;
3 Forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth.
Here are a few things to meditate on when this scrupulosity becomes a temptation. This is especially important for single Christians who God would use in a marriage to become even more fruitful for Him.
1) Dancing is in the Old Testament. (2 Samuel 6:16, Psalm 30:11, Psalm 149:3 Psalm 150:4 and over twenty others). Dancing sometimes involves both sexes, including a visual perception of the opposite sex.
2) Proverbs 30:18-19 talks about "Four wonderful things," one of which is "the way of a man with a maiden."
3) The entire "Song of Solomon."
4) Statements from Paul about not to worry about "touching" -- what do these things mean?
5) The interplay when courting between the sexes, as a healthy thing that keeps one fit, at one's best.
6) Titus 1:15 "Unto the pure all things are pure."
7) Why in the book of Genesis were Adam and Eve nude, and then when they
sinned they were forced to see their nakedness and quickly clothed themselves?
There are all points that false teachers have taken to the destruction of proper doctrine. Christians should know however about the opposite problem, in which one does not marry but burns with lust, which does not create a partnership that helps each other with more in life than just fulfilling that lust.
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Divisiveness is one of the sins that is most criticized in the Bible, and gossip is a close part of it. Much of what Jesus spoke about has indirectly something to do with unity over the problems and lack of love that comes from divisiveness. In the modern so-called post-Christian world, family relationships are often broken and need healing. There is something that could be called "family regard," which would mean how one feels about one's family. "A house divided cannot stand," is a good verse to ponder when thinking about positive "family regard" needs today.
This verse is also important when thinking about the health of a specific church. We must not judge those in church leadership, because what most likely will happen is that it is those who judge them that will leave. We should always pray, "Lord, keep me going to church" or "Lord, help me to get to church every week." We should not look at it as something within the capacity of our flesh to achieve.
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The liberal church does have one problem that it probably does not address very well. It often does not admit the female form of evil, but, taking cues from modern culture, often only can focus on the male forms of it, and glorifies the feminine so much that many things are lost this way.
Much like other Biblical archetypes or typologies, the "Jezebel" Archetype can be helpful in developing deeper understanding.
In dealing with women who are negatively feminist, it is important for men not to focus on them, but on good women in any group involvement. Some subject matters we can choose to not focus on at all, because we know Satan uses them to trap us in mental sin or obsessions. The Jezebel spirit can be defined as the female form of Satan.
The reason why we have abandoned much of our historical instructional methods starting around the 1930s and 1940's, and now children are taught simplistic material, is because it was seen as chauvinistic. Observe various books published before the Twentieth Century to see it as it was before historic gender roles were overridden. Sometimes it was of mutual benefit, but often it became destructive to marriage and to children.
The Bible talks often of the fatherless. It is the "Jezebel spirit" which enters into society and creates "the fatherless." Developing a "parental" state of consciousness or understanding is how all adults mature, even if they are single. To look towards the young as sex objects is the mark of a lack of maturity by its very nature. Thus, men have to move into father roles by focusing not on femme fatales, fallen women and the Jezebel types, which can be seen specifically as the females that have no real spiritual principles. The anger against them will only be damaging to such men who do not have a spiritual way of handling this subject. Such topics as gender, sexual orientation, immigration laws: while there may be righteous things that need to be thought about such topics, largely it is useless especially if there is love which must be focused on instead.
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Spiritual winners have a way of worshipping God that is supported by focusing on other spiritual winners. Those who cannot come to worship God seem to be unable to honor others as spiritual winners. Even if they are helping some who need help, they may still not know how to get the whole picture right in Christ. They could learn to focus on how some kinds of spiritual people help them to see the glory of God. Paul probably meant this when he said he gloried in other people. This is focusing on spiritual winners.
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Colossians 2: 8: Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.
Some of the church has been so anti-New Age (and for good reason) that we have forgotten that some of what they focus on as "rudiments of the world" are just the good common sense that God wants for us, too. Examples of such things are aromatherapy, the healing power of herbs, massage, and other common sense things that science can prove the value of, but which many Christians often have not recently focused on. Try going into a store that sells only large stones such as quartz and fossils, and notice if the atmosphere does not feel healthy. The Word of God frequently talks about stones, precious, semi-precious and so forth, and it is a possibility that in the future science will
determine that such things can have a positive effect on the body.
The "rudiments of the world" are not bad in themselves, they give us science, math, and health studies but we do not map our spirituality on them, but instead in Christ, and in the parts of the Mosaic Law that are still relevant today.
If we refused to study the rudiments, we probably will not be advanced as people and that is not what God wants for some of us. Think about what St. Paul said when he said that he became like all people to be able to win souls.
We need to focus on intellect and body. The power of darkness wants us to stay focused on emotion only, but there is also the heart of Christ for others even against the greater good of others and ourselves. Yet, the intellect is supposed to be in the heart, says St. Gregory Palamas in "On the Defense of Those Who Practice a Life of Stillness," and the same saint also tells us to keep our intellect on monitoring our body as a type of spiritual exercise.
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Love condenses into prayer and service.
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It is a wise thing to pray that the Lord makes one more generous.
Let's look at being blessed to be a vehicle for giving with what we have now.
Reading the great section of Scripture in Job Chapter Five, I had misread verses twenty- four and twenty-five, missing one word and looking at it in another way. This is the original verse: "Thou shall know also that thy seed shall be great and thine offspring shall be great and as the grass of the earth. " Job 5:25
I had read "offering" instead of "offspring" because I saw that instead of growing older and wanting to become more selfish, I wanted to grow older and become more generous. Our aim should be to give more of what we have, and pray that God would soften our heart to do this. Some probably want to give but do not think it is a right prayer. God is a gentleman and only enters in where He is invited.
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Regarding a revival, or a project regarding prosperity for those who need it the most.
The phrase, "preaching the gospel to the poor" wouldn't be the cheap so-called "prosperity gospel" but a gospel in which God empowers a poor man to draw wisdom and strength from Him and upon doing so year after year such a man very well might even learn to be what many call wealthy, if not 100% of a good chance to be middle class.
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When the Son of Man returns will He find faith left on the Earth?
What is faith? Praylessness to make the impossible possible is the complete lack of faith. It shows a lack of love because it is unwilling to put in the effort to help others. We must be able to formulate a prayer for what we see as impossible.
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God wants us to keep realizing and realizing that "people are heaven," which reverses that statement "hell is other people."
When we bless those that curse us, simply because by doing so we can stay in our positive emotional state, people are heaven. When we treat the least like they were Jesus, people are heaven.
We do this while still taking heed with all the cautions in the Word about the danger being around the sinful can cause (perhaps found in its most simple form in the Book of Proverbs).
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God wants to manifest the miraculous through us. God gets us "over on His side" by three responsibilities:
One, by our humility which is manifested by repentance.
Two, giving us the righteousness of Christ, which means the blood of Jesus, the cross of Christ, communion.
Three, having faith, which manifests by believing that we will receive what we ask for in prayer, having confidence before God, that there is no condemnation, because the first two, allow us to come boldly before God's throne of grace.
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What is useless and harmful religious addiction and what is godly spirituality?
1) God will not do for us what we can do for ourselves. God will not do for us what He wants us to do for ourselves. We can pray without ceasing and that does not mean action cannot happen simultaneously with prayer.
2) Humanity does not like to see this first point and argues against it.
3) We have to achieve by smaller things added up over time, like in understanding for our positive traits, they bring acknowledgment from our conscience, from others, from God. We should not detest the small beginnings of things because it is how great foundations are laid. Let patience have her perfect work.
4) Do not doubt what you want because false religion/hyperreligiosity wants to avoid this resoluteness. Do not work against yourself because you are afraid of what God might think.
5) Do not let others weigh you down in the name of virtuously helping them avoid what is routinely due them, avoid what is righteously due them. This may be as hard as any of the others. Some are objectively sinfully acting people. There is no good result this will ever bring in the area of success. The word cautions us in difficult passages such as Paul's saying not to fellowship with fornicators (1 Corinthians 5:11) and if they do not work they should not eat (2 Thessalonians 3:10).
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Love must reach a certain intensity or it is not completely love.
Will God love back if we do not love in a certain way?
Topics to Meditate and Pray on For Building the Energy of Love
1) Gospel to Those in Need
2) Build the Endurance of Love
3) Higher Executive Function of Love
4) Gratitude to God and Others
5) Health Focus as Loving
6) Look for the Helpers
#6 Means look for those in the community who are really doing something loving for others.
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Everything in the universe is about free will, that is why demons and evil strong human beings are able to do what they do. But God created the world, Jesus Christ has overcome the fallen creation, and we can reign in our own hearts and lives through Jesus, through His love, joy, peace and faith.
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This is how money and holiness can sometimes be related: it takes godly self-discipline for some people, often spiritually-inclined people, to overcome their character flaws to be able to be financially profitable. Holiness allows them to see this, and to be constantly humble in the right areas while not building at the same time inferiority complexes in areas like the ability to market oneself or one's product. God rewards people who diligently seek Him in this way, as they are praying, doing His will. He mentions this in the Word. It is very hard to understand this, as Jesus talked about the Lazarus the Beggar who went to Heaven while the rich man went to hell. We are not talking about becoming rich, because it is almost always delusional and grandiose for spiritually-minded people who are experiencing long term financial difficulties, to think they will easily become "rich," and be corrupted by great wealth.
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Going to church on Sunday is one very powerful way to show that we have one type of victory over the devil.
Too many people are critical of others who have been in the church longer than they.
Seeing going to church as a ministry. Supporting a local church helps in all kinds of ways. A church that focuses on good music, such as classical music, and has a beautiful interior, helps aesthetically, and if the more secular community was educated to this value, there may be additional benefits gained that great art produces in society. Churches often draw in the educated arts community by hosting classical music concerts. These events expose such people to religious art, some of which may have the Word of God as a part of them.
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Humility and Freedom
According to Scripture, demons want to attack us. They most likely want to attack us on each of these four points:
1) That we are sinners
2) That we have been saved by grace
3) That we respect the Bible
4) That we do not question the tenants of the historical Christian church
Notes on the Above
Some might find it is hard to believe they are being attacked by demons. In that case, they may still be able to confess that they struggle on some of these points.
Working on these points:
1) I may have committed recent sin - I am still saved. I still strive to please God.
Demons want to tempt us to sin and then want us to reject the idea of sin out
of a type of pride.
2) I am free to accept complete salvation by faith in and gratitude for God's love.
3) I am free of endless speculation on religious questions. I have the power of confidence.
4) I am free, unlike the demons and the rebellious men who are in chains of darkness. By not questioning God's wisdom, I am free to live in God's blessing.
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It is misidentification to identify only with oneself and one's own righteousness, and not instead to identify with Christ's righteousness that is freely given for us.
It seems like God's greater plan for an individual is no matter what their past, to not have to "identify" with the past. If one is an alcoholic or sex addict and converts to a spiritual path to overcome these issues, its good to not associate only in a therapeutic setting with people who also have those problems, but to also be in a church setting and to forget the past, but still have a servant attitude, in a larger sense.
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Satan's kingdom does what it can to get us to not worship or pray. It is entirely designed for that purpose. Demons do what they can to get us to not worship or pray. They often counterfeit God's spirit and voice to achieve this. They do this by actually interfering with mankind's ability to understand and be submissive to God's true way. Hence, we know if we pray for many things we overcome demons in a real way. They try to set up the person as God and the Bible as full of symbols and only metaphors, and how can a person pray to themselves? We know, they can worship themselves, however, and it is easy to see all the people that do.
In discerning God's spirit from the demons, do we feel a push or momentum towards spiritual goals that are building when we feel a certain presence, or do we feel the opposite, a major distraction?
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Consider creating your own contract with oneself, based on the most essential points in the Gospel you need to focus on. It could be a good personal note to refer back to.
Here is an example of one:
1) Done in a spirit of love and prayer, being capable of having a parental tone and attitude with others, including other family members. This could refer to letting one's yes be yes and one's no be no, any more than that being of the evil one. Non-Christian or lukewarm family members may influence one away from following Christ as closely as one desires.
2) Not thinking often of money but instead of our own generosity and actually giving things away or otherwise distributing similar assets in a generous way to others. This can be sales, or donation based giving, since it can still be done in a spirit of service, if prayed about.
3) See much in terms of what is arrogance and what is accusation. Arrogance on the side of self or others, accusation also takes the form of not praying enough, for enough, in enough areas.
4) Post-maturity confrontation - It is one thing to be confrontive when younger, another thing to lose some of that when growth of love and understanding occurs, but the apostles and especially Jesus gave us examples of confrontation. Maybe this is why we lost so much in the last hundred years. Not only were we unable to track and prove the value of the Word and the historic Church in the changes in understanding of religion due to the increased amount of Eastern philosophy and then occultism, we were unable to intelligently prove why church involvement was a necessary part of life, and how it could be beneficial to individual needs, even the need to do service in the community.
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Christ is the Way, yet there is still culture, physical health, mental health, and an income. He is the source of all life, but He does not want to do everything for us. He wants us to tend the garden.
It is amazing how the so-called prosperity theology, which expects God to bless people miraculously just for being Christians, can influence some people to avoid doing their daily work, or even reaching out to the fallen who may be "poor." Such churches will attract people who are already prosperous by "fitting in" to the economy somehow. Those who must earn their money more creatively can go into financial trouble by expecting God to bless them just for being "righteous."
I believe the passages the Bible discusses about the righteous being prosperous is because they are now no longer lazy, addicts, gamblers, or sex addicts. They have many positive qualities because of getting God's help in various ways. The criminal way of life was often the style of ancient peoples that the Old Testament preached against. God promises the blessing of prosperity for repenting. Even in the Old Testament, the righteous often were persecuted. It is clear that Jesus said the beggar Lazarus would be in heaven, and that many of the righteous have died as martyrs. All this does not mean following God should lead to poverty, but the Word warns against those who focus on godliness only for financial gain.
"Perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the truth, supposing that gain is godliness: from such withdraw thyself. But godliness with contentment is great gain" (1 Timothy 6:5, 6).
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Creating value in the revival, seeing the difference between the focus on value and the focus on money, Both are needed but focusing on value and the quality of our behavior should come first. This is a type of the miracle of the loaves and fishes in that if kept to oneself, the fish and bread may have only been a little, but when going towards feeding the poor, there was more than enough and some left over. There seems to be a force that carries away into prosperity once generosity is fully accepted, and I believe this is why Christ said, "when you give, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing" (Matthew 6:3). To merely believe that God is measuring out through you and when God knows that you are a giver, He will give you more so that more will be able to be given through you.
Was this idea of creative value and focusing on it more than money an early Christian or Jewish focus? If so, when was it strongest in the body of Christ? Creating value to be an asset to others should be an aim of one's life, and even in a secular sense, one can see things start to take care of oneself when one follows it.
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Now that it is seen what free sex leads to, not just in a few lives, because at first we could just blame it on their lack of psychological maturity. Now that it is becoming more apparent that the fabric of society that we knew so well in Christendom has changed for so many. Children used to be able to play almost everywhere in America without fear of strangers, and now it is commonly known that they cannot.
There used to be a steady, constant stream of "morality movies" about the consequences of a non-Christian life. This started to dwindle in film after the 1940s. The message has to be made as intelligent as it can possibly be, and understand to have its dire consequences. It is not that we are told something is good for us, we must understand what we could get for ourselves that will be less painful than the pleasure the easy at first gives.
The modern person does not care what a church person "tells them" unless
that church person is actually under the direction of the Holy Spirit and/or
has an enormous amount of wisdom. The modern mind needs to understand why in the Bible, following the words of Jesus, will be good for them. Most likely, to the single cosmopolitan modern, the pastor will not be an influence by the kind of person the pastor is. Sometimes they may be but often not those who consider themselves post-Christian.
It is having the hope that being faithful to right living will help us, even after all our failure, to create a sense of family, a greater sense of community, of living with the old and young.
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A sense of "process theology" -- examining Biblical texts not just in how they play out in regarding our life towards being ready for heaven after death, but the immediate blessing of the day. This can be seen as taking sections of scripture as describing processes.
One example is "pray to the Lord of the harvest." Many examples are given in Proverbs of the need to "roast what one takes in harvest" and that the fool will not reap in times of harvest. The harvesting of the seed of the word of God in someone's life is for us to not judge a person as in their sin, but believe for them that they will be saved by faith in Christ. Others most likely have planted the seed, if they are in post Christian cultures they will understand it. Many people whom you would never suspect will confess Christ if they are addressed in a certain way about it. However, many Christians in so-called post-Christian societies are confusing cultural attributes of the faith -- how it manifests in different ways -- with the core issues of salvation.
"Sleeping" in the Word of God is when we do not think of each word as exact but we take too many things as vague generalities which can be interpreted with many different synonyms.
Focused wisdom from the Book of Proverbs and the Sermon on the Mount is often found to be the best "self-help" technique. And if one believes that the Word of God is mystically a part of God, one can see why it is so profitable. However, it always has to be defended in one's heart, and this is part of the "testimony" that is said to overcome the devil, in Revelations 12:11:
And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death.
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It has become a popular saying that, "God has only three answers: yes, wait, or there is something better."
We should look at this fact in light of what Zechariah says : The Lord God will save them on the day as the flock of His people they will sparkle in his land like jewels in a crown. (Zechariah 9: 16).
It is God's will that we become like that, and He will alter our will so that His will in this is manifested. So, the something better of the wise saying is that He is making us to sparkle as jewels. Some of us become partially that way, as if light was a psychological condition, and that is why things are said about "the light of the eyes," such as in Proverbs 15:30 and "righteousness as the noon day" in Psalm 37:6.
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It seems like God's greater plan for an individual is no matter what their past, for them to not have to be limited by their past. "As far as the East is from the West, so your sins shall be removed from you" (Psalm 103:12). To be in a church setting with people who strive to be righteous, and to personally forget the sinful aspects of one's past, is predominant in Christian conversion but is not always present in other methods of personal renewal.
It was the Christian faith that was the foundation of Alcoholics Anonymous which gave millions of alcoholics the ability to find God in a very basic way, enough to gain sobriety. This was much more than what many alcoholics had before. Many other "12 Step programs" gave support to many millions for their problems. But at times there is too much focus on the sin aspect, such as the alcoholic mostly associates only in a therapeutic setting with people who are also recovering from these conditions. Christianity promises a new life in which one has a constant "testimony" like those in Alcoholics Anonymous members share at every meeting. It can of course go hand in hand with such 12 Step group membership, yet being a part of a church gives one a type of societal recovery that merely staying in 12 Step groups alone does not always give one.
In a Christian rededication, we sometimes have to remember what we were. We have to remember this, that there has been growth, how rare this growth can be on earth, and give the credit where it is due. This is our testimony, which is said to be of such importance that it is how we overcome the devil. We do not need to regret the good from the past - bless God for this, but we are not blinded by pride or denial.
Christ has converted those of high culture and their national and foreign counterparts. He converted us over and over again, even when we seemed foreign to edification and hope for change. Many of us emotionally felt we needed our share of vices. It took more than a rededication or two to fill our emptiness enough that we didn't rely on substances in ways in which could be called addiction. We must never have the pride that says any one person cannot be converted and become an edified Christian.
More and more of Christians are becoming vocal that we have just as much right to present our worldview without fear when secularism and alternative worldviews are being presented and supported.
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Being like Joseph of the Old Testament:
Any time I take a person in their faults and merely focus on their mistakes I completely eclipse the power of God in the situation. I should instantly bring them up in prayer, instead. If I do not, not only do I become less but they become less. I lose all sense of what God can do for me and them in this situation. Previously, I became obsessed with thinking about them and that took my time away from more important things, because it does not take much time to focus on my love for them, and God's power in helping our communication be peaceful, effective, and even joyous. This I believe is how the story of Joseph operates in the Old Testament. I believe all who hear that story ask themselves, "How did Joseph get to be that way??? How did Joseph protect his heart from this kind of injury?"
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It should be clear that Christianity or Bible reading by itself is not always a system of achieving out of the ordinary accomplishments, even in ministry. We see the negative results sometimes by people who consider themselves very Christian, or very dedicated to the Bible. How much they actually are, or how much they are bringing in other doctrines is debatable. Many of the Christian cults could be seen as having very abnormal focuses, and even though these might echo verses, they twist them and focus on individual interpretations that are outside the historic body of Christ, and not allowing the rest of the Word any real chance.
God does not seem to always save from the survival of the fittest in the way marketing in the modern West tells us we must survive. How do we become wise as serpents except to interpret the Bible in a way that really works for everything that we need? Scrupulosity does not help a person, by definition.
Christianity often needs something else for those who need to mature psychologically, such as good parenting, or to become good in a business, and so on. These are not things that challenge its doctrine, just help with things that people have learned to be helpful by experience.
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"Remove the plank in your own eye and do not worry about the speck in your neighbor's eye" (Luke 6:42), is a great social philosophy of how we can interact with people and have spiritual and harmonious relationships. Similar to this, the spiritual prefer the model of "greatness" in human life that is always also a humble person in a certain way, as Socrates described it. Even a non-Christian can have this humble greatness, yet it seems a divine grace. The "great" I speak of do not buy into the great of the things of this world, even of the material things, which the religious say are the "riches, honor and life" of God's promise of Proverbs 22:4 (By humility and the fear of the LORD are riches, and honor, and life). They may have the wealth of material things, but they humble themselves before an art, a science, a virtue or a social goal.
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If we do not expect anything from God that is against our own good, then we will not be disappointed, and will not feel like we are being left out of anything. This can bring peace of mind. If we do not follow the "prosperity gospel", then we can aim at the virtue that comes from being humbly prayerful, and the rewards it surely bring. Much too often Christians do not focus in their thoughts on how God can make some prosperous as a guarantee of good ethical habits, they rather focus on the gamblers' version of prosperity through giving to others. It is humorous to think the idea of God rewarding the giver probably attracts some who are already well-off to a church that teaches prosperity. Equating financial wealth with spirituality was something that Jesus did not do. Many people are starved today for rest, for rewarding leisure, and are seeking a way out, and it is fascinating to think that the God of the Bible is promising rest in many verses.
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The following may reconcile how Jesus' teaching reconciles with Solomon's teachings in Proverbs: Jesus' teachings are the opposite of "social climbing" attitudes, and it seems Solomon's Proverbs guide these teachings of Jesus', so that one does not abandon oneself to foolishness, when avoiding the power that social climbers often have.
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The Word of God may promise material blessings for the faithful, but beware of those who try to get us to expect material things from God. No matter how much they try to attract more wealthy church members, the Word says, "Perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the truth, supposing that gain is godliness: from such withdraw yourself." 1 Timothy 6:5. Jesus also made reference to this mindset when he chased the money changers from the temple, saying that His house was to be a house of prayer, but that they made it a den of thieves.
Focus more on the material of hope, praying as Jesus taught us to pray, as a natural extension of what the Bible means by prosperity.
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Can we say, "Thank you Lord for showing me the power of your church"? We need to thank God for all that is in the local church, and ask God for the ability to keep seeing the power of the local church.
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The armor of God section of Ephesians 6 shows that God does not want us to wear states of condemnation in our thoughts. We can do miracles by fervent prayer because we show God that we believe He is a God of love - that the Word is true. Those miracles should be centered first on requests for only overtly righteous things like healing, ministry opportunities (even the arts), which in fact can enliven us socially, a spirit of generosity in us, a spirit of virtue in us, knowing the Word of God by heart, joy, laughter and so on. When we patiently see how abundantly God grants these requests, then we can really be "anxious for nothing" (Philippians 4:6-7), and request other types of needs to be met. We must always make sure we do not pray for our own lusts, for the pride of life in worldliness, because that separates us from God.
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About psychology and demonic persecution: when thinking about it, see both of these as going on at the same time in the affected individual:
1) Real enemies of God and the spiritual, that is, not people, but the demons.
2) Split off energy from ignorant understandings about psychodynamics, and the guidance of those who are not all knowing, these can animate the "introjects" more and make them worse. An introject is an attitude in ourselves which started out as an external attitude in others around us. Those who have abused us create negative introjects, but very spiritual and positive people can create positive introjects. Split off energy from ignorance about spiritual and psychological matters creates insufficient care and wisdom from others in fellowship, which animates personal problems more and makes them worse.
The solution is to have both of these going on at the same time, to fight each of the above in two different ways:
1 Be spiritual, focused on Jesus, praise, fellowship, gifts of the Holy Spirit, good teaching that improves us socially, financially, healthwise, possible also romantically, and of course speaking in tongues if one is so inclined, and the armor of God.
2 Be accepting of advanced psychoanalysis, brain sciences, attention and IQ building, making lists of things we are grateful for, and other secular means of empowerment.
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There are rough seas at times, an allegory for the fact that God is above us
and we must be willing to reach up.
"And I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them a heart of flesh."
Ezekiel 11:19
All the old compunctions, neurosis, idealizations, and self-justification, are part of the old heart of stone.
A heart of stone wants to find out who is to blame.
Only a broken and contrite heart can be aimed to grow.
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To be healed by God, stay in His glory. Praise Him. Pray for righteous actions.
Example: "I ask you God to make me more generous in everything."
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Solemnly praying directly. Cover a lot of ground. Let your voice be active.
He who is in us is greater than he who is in the world. He who is in us is greater than he who is in demons, is greater than any demon or the Satan, the accuser. Demons sense this instinctively and will flee when resisted, as it says in the Word. Always "vibe" a resistance against demons by the power of Christ. Ask also for angels or an angel to watch over us for healing, or consistent divine health.
Ask God the Father to rebuke the demons until they flee, as it says, they will in the Word.
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One of the key verses of a revival is:
"That the saying might be fulfilled, which he spake, Of them which thou gavest me have I lost none." (John 18:9)
We must say that to God. That has to be a consistent attitude with those the Father brings us. We must see all as potentially not the "children of the evil one." We must not ever give them up in our hearts or prayer life. We can do this at the same time as following what Jesus said about not giving what is holy to the dogs, nor casting our pearls before swine. Some people we should back away from, but they are those who are acting openly as bullies and mockers. If we ever get into a verbal contest with such as these, our
statements should be guided by God by prayer.
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The Wisdom of Spiritual Joy
There are many images of a laughing Jesus. One can get a few prints with this
type of theme of Christ. When we see a "Laughing Jesus" print, we could
see it as him smiling or laughing in joy with us at any number of positive outcomes. To see it sometimes as the recognition of Him being happy that we see our righteous prayers as already being accomplished.
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We can pray for help for everything we need help with. Everything we need help with is presented in hope because God's power is infinite.
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What is it like to track our prayers? Can we pray for one hour? Can one pray on paper by writing out prayers if one's attention is very weak? Can we pray according to the way our Jesus taught us to, expecting to have what we pray for?
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The destroyer is what the Devil is called in the Bible. Lack of focus on our goals causes us in some way to have our quality of life hindered, if those goals are in God's will. It is sad that so many go with the idea of a day by day trust and do not plan out longer range goals, because they somehow consciously or unconsciously believe to do so is to go against God's will.
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"He who ensures a matter before He hears it, it is folly and shame to him,"
Proverbs 18: 13
This verse can be seen to inspire one to deeper, longer prayer. God is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. Those who fear Satan's attacks get folly and shame, and they also do not win souls, so they do not have the promises of Daniel 12: 3:
"And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever."
People fear Satan's attacks by retreating when they are persecuted. No one seems to ever know about this kind of sin, of Christians, even pastors and priests, except the spiritually wise.
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We can pray that we would never dishonor God by having a negative spirit, or being full of negative emotions, having a lack of doing work around our home, failing to pray for the wisdom, power and positive attitude to make our lives better in practical ways.
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The accusation of the lukewarm against those God has filled with His Holy Spirit and are active as soul winners is that those filled with the Holy Spirit act as judgmental and hypercritical. The lukewarm do not see people going downhill to death, insanity, or jails. They like to think everything is as wonderful, good or average, as they may or may not have it. They may be blind to their own condition.
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Will, like many other things, is found in love. The center of gravity of will is in emotion, our affection. We must love service in the duty of our responsibilities and be a warrior for our will to be pure. God will help us with that.
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The radiance of the wisdom of the Word of God creates its unique position compared to all other patterns of thought, both written and mental. The radiance of the wisdom of God creates its position as high above all others, as Biblical light in the eyes and body, grounding and firmly supporting those who cherish it.
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If we are not operating under spiritual principles, we cycle out what we cycle in with our senses. We regurgitate what we take in with our senses. A person with a parental state of consciousness towards life can change what they take in with the senses and "digest" it so that they have positive impressions. These allow them to continue to be in the humility that is required to be under God's direction and yet not fall prey to societal and cultural restrictions that can sometimes build up in any one church. These sometimes fall into what Jesus called "the traditions of men." It is also to be able to look outside one's present time and see how the body of Christ operated in times past, but not just the "popular studies" but to see where in history the Spirit directs on.
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We should manifest more of a healing mentality in our prayer lives. We do this by claiming the promises of Jesus, such as "by His stripes we are healed," with peace and good sense. It takes time for some to heal but they will heal completely.
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We can experience something like a sinless state if we have truly repented. The Book of James describes it as coming from what we talk about. ("For in many things we offend all. If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man, and able also to bridle the whole body." James 3:3)
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Are we understanding how to draw on God's love more and more in our life? How much time have we spent in prayer, and how deeply we go with it, shows us and others how much we believe God is a God of pure love.
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Jesus taught us to pray expansively, to be anxious for nothing. The Word of God lovingly and repeated teaches us to draw on the love of God. This spreads out in how boldly we are in prayer. I boldly pray for favor with others.
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Delight thyself in the LORD; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.
(Psalm 37:4)
Our financial prosperity can sometimes, but not always, be based on how deeply we apply God's love. "Seek the kingdom of righteousness and all these things will be added to you" can mean other things than be "righteous and expect God to send you checks in the mail from sources you do not know you had," which is a paraphrase version of what some people teach always happens when one tithes. It can mean that God will help you work intelligently in getting all these things, which is what a wise Christian can do. People have to work. It is what people must do, because of the curse in the Garden of Eden.
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God's Holy Spirit is often loudest in a certain kind of tears we cry. "Blessed are they that mourn for they shall be comforted" (Matthew 5:4). Mourning is the opposite of the states of mind that lead to bitterness.
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One thing we can do to pray for a long time is to clasp our hands together, even to gently grip them. That way they will not be tempted to move around and fidget. Having one's eyes closed can free us from visual distraction, that comes from the associative thoughts that objects around us give us.
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The person in the flesh will react at offenses against them, the person
in the Spirit will not react at all - this is how we know who is in the flesh
or who is in the Spirit. It may not be able to be easily achieved and in trying to see other ways of being in the Spirit, we may even lose it - so when we are in the Spirit, pray to stay there.
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We should align ourselves with those of most conviction and history of being close in a church, but be able to spend loving time with new Christians.
When praying to build up your relationships in Christ, make sure to remember the verse, "my house shall be called a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves" (Matthew 21:13). This is a verse with an always present application. Those who "get things" from the church may be able to "press in" better but instead of putting good effort into building the church by soul-winning and a strong prayer life, they are putting effort into obtaining personal benefit from the church, sometimes at a detriment to the overall functioning of the church.
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Gratitude for God's love that helps us create a prosperity in which we are able to be the ones who give and provide for the needs of others. This is the opposite of the love of money. It becomes extra important in our prayer life to pray for fellowship with godly Christians. We may see this need if after some time in seeking God's will and trying to do it, that we still are unequally yoked with unbelievers. Even if we have to call prayer lines or churches, and talk to the pastors to get more Christian fellowship, we should do this, and not feel it is a unnecessary burden on them. They might need the fellowship that comes just from praying with them.
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We should not think anyone can endure endlessly those who live without Christ and not be affected by them. We have to "come out from them" yet still win souls among them. If we fear them, even unconsciously, we have not learned the lesson that the best defense is a good offense. Jesus did say for us to not "give what is holy to the dogs, nor cast our pearls before swine" (Matthew 7:6). There is a limit to what kinds of people we should witness to, and those who are openly mocking Christianity should be treated differently than honest agnostics.
We must also watch out for what Christ said about "wolves in sheep's clothing" (Matthew 7:15). Some of these steal what we have and try to sell it back to us, that is, by trying to seduce us with covetousness, they try to get us to become their pupil. "Ravenous wolves," can apply to someone who seems hungry to benefit from something that they do not have. The latter term can also apply to how they judge and accuse us.
The need to stay work and financially focused is wonderful, as this is mental and spiritual health. The Word teaches us the importance of having a degree of this. People who spend endless time talking about religious topics in general may be in denial of other responsibilities they may need to be doing, even praying to the Lord for the strength to help the poor, or be a vessel to Him where He needs them to be.
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See prayer as a part of our work day if we are not doing intelligent other work, not as a prosperity gospel type of mindset but instead to claim that God does not give us a spirit of fear, but of power, and love and a sound mind (2 Timothy 1:7).
Ask, Believe, Thank, Praise, Evangelize, Testify (the believe part is faith) and we are commanded to rejoice.
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A major area of healing that comes from praying is loosening the modalities of healing that we can do. It is as if our ignorance and lack of focus keeps us away from self-massage, herbs, exercise, and other things which can help us.
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We all are in need of each other in this post-Christian era. We each have different fruit to bring each other.
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I believe many people are completely behind not being lustful, yet they have nothing to put in its place. I believe this is similar to those who overeat, or have other compulsive problems, such as gambling, or overspending. They could try poetry, music, focus on exercise and other topics as a part of health, developing good polite qualities, kindness - this will bring them closer to people, some of which they may find attractive, which is the paradox of how lust works for most people - it takes one away from natural human beauty and affection. Also, do these people pray to God for the ability to not be lustful, to not overeat, and so on? It sometimes seems that we try to put the Lord away from us except when we are confessing a sin, instead of asking Him to take it away.
Gaining the sense of the spouse in our being takes more work for some than others.
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Satan wants us to be only family-of-origin focused instead of focusing primarily
on those who do the will of God, living now or in the past. Be future family focused towards heaven.
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Thoughts on how to be with birth family and relatives when they are not having or fulfilling spiritual goals:
1 Jesus said our family are those who do the will of God
2 God's power in us makes us stronger than them
3 God's power in us makes us safe from all damage
4 We can be instant in prayer for them.
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It is important to look at the modern science of the brain as helpful in gauging where we are in Christ. It is not such an unusual idea, as psychology is a good indication of where someone is in Christ. Jesus taught us to pray with faith in the final outcome of our prayer, while we were praying. We are in the highest brain states when we see everything accomplished according to our goals and God's will, and be able to do this before we are finished doing it. Psychology of one sort or the other has always existed.
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"God rewards us with prosperity" seems to be the exact opposite of being goal focused. It also allows the richest person in the congregation to seem like the most spiritual, or all those in the congregation who have the more money, to be the more righteous. This is exactly the opposite of what Jesus and His apostles taught.
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We lift up Jesus Christ as our example of a godly man, and we are grateful for God's mercy that He Himself is the sacrifice, not ourselves, our pastor, our families, or our congregation. Nor, even the unbelievers, for we aim to win their souls no matter who they are. Not to lift up the pastor as the goal, but instead lift up the process that God has created in the Gospel. Always, we follow principles before personalities, except the personality of Christ, which embodies the principles.
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The ungodliness of culture creates the culture of paranoid parents and predatory online "adult" "entertainment." This modern media has had few restrictions in what it considers humorous, and often affronts those who seek to become godly by grace and having the standards of the Word of God. One might even see on a secular level how some of the basic building blocks of a sane society are joked about by the media, and that the thrust of it is not education and edification as it was in primarily in Christendom up until about the early 20th Century. If one wants to see the results of the worst in modern entertainment, all one has to do is watch the modern news reports. Garbage in, garbage out. You cannot starve a culture of healthy ideas, and just give it a few healthy ideas every now and then, any more than you can do this to a person with a healthy diet.
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Utilizing the Holy Spirit in Us
1 Be sure the Holy Spirit is in us by prayer, including the Jesus prayer, speaking in tongues, and praise
2 We could use the power that we feel by the Holy Spirit's presence to focus on prophesying, healing prayers and laying of hands, or deliverance ministry.
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Some verses can really change a person's paradigms. Two are:
"For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine..."
2 Timothy 4: 3,4,5
Sound doctrine becomes something that people need to patiently endure and suffer under. I do not believe statements like these are for a certain time, but show repeating typologies of what can happen at any time in human history. I think of much of the Bible can be interpreted that way.
Another verse that very much transforms our whole life:
"Therefore, I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men. For Kings, and all who are in authority."
1 Timothy 2:1
This attitude is the opposite of the kind of knee-jerk fear that comprises most of
conspiracy theories. Instead of praying for government officials, individuals make up wild theories about them.
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When we see our life with God as more of a divine romance, the idea of giving at least ten percent away becomes more comfortable. Giving to spiritual causes, whether an established church, a new ministry effort or something that directly serves the poor, such as bringing them food, clothing, or contributing to their shelter or health care seems the least we can do. We experience by objective proof that God seems to bless us more because he knows that we will again give ten percent of that. If we care about winning souls and changing part of the world, tithing should never be seen as a problem. We should never tithe to ourselves if we are in ministry, as that seems to avoid the blessing from tithing. We should also not tithe for the added money, but instead just because it is putting our money where our mouth is, and rejecting the pride that judges the church.
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Self-created fear is against not only our inner child but against all our other ages in life, and against helping the widows and orphans and all others who need our help.
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God preserves and develops different human virtues by denominational differences.
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I read a paraphrase of this idea from somewhere and paraphrase it h:
The courageous is alereways looking at his fear in order to overcome it.
The courageous is always aiming at his fear in order to shoot it down.
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What happens when we think the worst of someone without their knowing it?
What happens when we pray for them or think the best of them?
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The loving are not double minded, they are there for others. They keep their word.
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It takes a special love to love New Agers when you were once one and are now
a Christian. The body of Christ at large states that these are people influenced by satanic ideas. This type of love is a love where God may perhaps give us miracles, if we also have superhuman faith, which is the faith that perseveres and faints not. The Word states that if we do His commands we can ask for what we will and it will be done for us. Most of the Body of Christ in Christian nations seems to have no interaction with New Agers in order to minister to them, but has a very "hands off" approach. It may be because there is a temptation to take the "easy way" that many New Agers have taken, and which some modern Christians in the West at various times may have followed.
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There is a weakness that allows us to be supple to the Spirit. There is also a weakness that is in defiance to Scriptures, or one can say against God. For example, we are required to follow the Word of God. It says, "God does not give us a spirit of fear but of power, love and a sound mind." It also mentions the effeminate and the cowardly as being worthy of going to hell. There are various verses against being fearful and unbelieving. Perfect love is supposed to be able to cast out fear.
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How does "My people perish for a lack of wisdom" (Hosea 4:6) apply to oneself?
Think of the regenerative effects of prayer, which can be channeled into a help for any vanity, related to good looks, or our imagined blessings on others when at times there is not anyone blessed by us.
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"For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus' sake that the life of Jesus may also may be manifested in our mortal flesh" (2 Corinthians 4:11).
"Delivered to death" may be read as we are put in situations where there is the result of sin, ignorance, or Satan's persecution, so that we may manifest God's power, love, and healing in these situations. Without doing this, could a post-Christian culture come back to Christianity?
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Everything is much better in the universe than it seems. Even demons serve a purpose for God and we can benefit by the lessons learned.
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A futureless man is he who is thrust constantly into his own past.
150
Many are still in that place where they cannot tell what is science, what is unlawful practice against God's Word, and what is within the boundaries of the truths God wants for us.
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"Giving all diligence add to your faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge, and to knowledge temperance, and to temperance patience... "
2 Peter 1 4-8
It is hard for some in the post-Christian "New Age Earth" to recognize that spirituality is about the full historical scope of virtue. It seems it cannot be accomplished without Jesus living within. The statement from Jesus that He did not come to abolish the Old Testament law, but to fulfill it. How do people know that when they deny the Gospel? How long do people know that when they see Jesus as just a master yogi? Such a Jesus cannot empower and live inside of one because that Jesus doesn't represent the divine law fulfilled which is truly in our hearts.
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"Wisdom to be more loving" - pray for this!
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Our pride makes the need for perseverance seem so profound; when in reality the world is set up according to natural physical principles. If you want to write a good book you must have the education, upbringing, time, skill in editing, and be able to either self publish it or convince a publisher to publish it. There is an immense amount of work there. It is the same thing with keeping a house or a business staying profitable.
Everything we do that is good for us needs to occupy more of our time, the idea of prayer even pushed to three hours a day, if possible. We can if we map it out like an architect building a house of prayer.
"My house shall be called a house of prayer" (Matthew 21:13) is another popular verse.
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Jesus and the angels have been around a lot longer than us; when we wait on God, and give God credit for our successes, they will help us. We can look at this as a "Matrix of Humility." All we have to do is ask for this help, and realize that they can do it better than us. That is first step to get us into this matrix of humility. Humility implies a reflection on us, what we cannot do, or what we are not without the Lord, or others. The idea of calling it a matrix is that we can see can be lifted higher in some sense by their help, and also that where God and the ages are there are the blessed.
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Imagine a state of poverty for one who was expecting prosperity from the Lord because of being a believer and having a dedication to a good work ethic. Imagine this person was taken out of the normal economic projections in life because of his addictions or other serious problems, and then he was converted to walking the straight and narrow. It may be dangerous for him to be around wealthy people, including siblings, in a Christian dedication if he is not nearly as wealthy as they.
The danger is if he experiences a dullness after receiving a great but "relative" blessing instead of thanksgiving, praise, testimony, and the sureness that it was from God only and not ever from oneself. He must repeat supplications with humility towards God for improving one's business intelligence and just waiting on the Lord to see what will happen.
Redeemed gratitude, spiritual protection from the Lord and study of the Word,
preaching, prayer, praying in tongues, praise, working for the Lord (spirit of service, such as at least going to a church faithfully to make sure its doors stay open). This is what may happen to a person who grew up around the middle class or wealthy and must be around wealthy people for some family or work reason, and has his prayers answered but does not have his priorities straight so there is no real great wisdom to edify his life.
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"A Christian Revival Based on Historic Christian Art and Understanding,"
would really upgrade the current situation. Too much of the modern church,
as it may have always been, seems waiting for the new "wind of doctrine" even
though it may be very Biblical in aspects. Getting some of the best throughout
the last 2000 years shows us a more sound understanding of the Word. It is false
to assume that this is always in publication, or accurately represented in theological textbooks.
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You can never blame the devils for causing you to dishonor God because if you do dishonor Him, it is through you not them. If you want to be honored, honor the Lord whenever you think of Him, and perhaps He will be obliged to honor you.
It is important to lift up how we perceive the sounding of the name of Jesus Christ. I was in town where there were many Amish and I overheard two women talking. The only thing I heard in the conversation that they were talking about a religious subject and the name "Jesus Christ," but it was said with such purity and reverence that it really was in sharp contrast to much of how we hear the name pronounced in the media, with people saying it in vain.
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"You shall know the truth and the truth will set you free" (John 8:32). This could be seen as about many things, not only salvation. What enslaves us? How many things did Jesus' words cover? "I will show you the truth about how to be prosperous, and you will no longer be a slave, even if you are not as rich as they, you will be prosperous if you measure out abundantly."
I will show you the truth about how to become prosperous. It is about righteousness, loving others, by going the extra mile, with all, measuring out, which is "the law of the vacuum." The law of the vacuum states that the universe abhors a vacuum. Where there is a vacuum of value, the giving away of something there is a need for, people will rush in to fill it. It is true all the higher doors in the brain open more easily after positive emotion. See it developing this kind of prosperity in a longer range view of time and events.
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Peace is not a mysterious event. It can come by reducing what we allow ourselves to do. It can be one of the central focuses of our prayer life, if we see praying for it not in a self-pitying way, since many people will not take this attitude with God. A lack of peace does not need to be seen as anxiety, worry or depression. It can also be seen as agitation, overworking, periods of anger, constantly seeking entertainment instead of quieting oneself aiming towards the restfulness that is good for health.
Non-identification and detachment is the way of taking every thought captive.
The mind behind the mind can detach from what the mind is thinking, thus that
takes every thought captive.
How to stand fast in the liberty by which Christ has made us free? A spiritual practice of detachment or non-identification has something to do with it at times, but it is in fact the power of the Holy Spirit that makes this freedom what it really is.
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Probably the biggest understanding some people need to get is to see why God can want to spend any time with a person to help him or her even in something like a deep breathing exercise. God created seven billion people on earth. He is more impressed, according to Jesus, by those of us who do not think we are more worthy of God's attention than those who think they are. Jesus taught us to pray to be delivered from evil. One evil is avoiding God, avoiding prayer for little improvements. How many of the seven billion, instead of talking to God, spend more time being interested in the taste of food, technological toys, or even something openly displeasing to God? We should feel humble but not that God's intimate help is impossible. For us to turn to God in any way does not displease God like it displeases men and women who we might ask for many things. God probably cannot be bored like some people can be.
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It is sometimes hard for some to finally realize that many people around them do not "like people." That is, they hold grudges and unforgiveness towards others, or they just felt it right that they should put down someone else behind their back. One could also say that these people had enemies. Often, they told us their feelings and thoughts about someone in the form of insulting that person. They did not "like people" meaning, not all people, but some people they reserved their active dislike for. We must also hopefully realize, that we do "like people," and that we knew it was important to follow Jesus and forgive others.
Some could care for others who may be naturally less likeable to the average person. We try to make sure we did not "war with flesh and blood." We see that the enemy tries to get us to war with each other and generally, not "like people." In fact, these people who did not "like people" often did not like people who generally did like all people a little too much. Some people do have many bad habits, were dishonest or even criminal and we can rely on God to guide any thoughts and our heart around these people. The fact that many people do not "like people" does not mean we have to stay away of any of our natural liking of others they do not like, even though they do not just go in the flow of the natural love feeling that we believe God puts around other people.
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Why would a book written to help post-Christian culture have the audacity to talk about "the Devil" or Satan? It is because accusation is a giant force in life. There are two negative forces in life, arrogance and accusation. The Bible tells us that Satan represents both. Whatever this force is, the person who was brought up in a post-Christian culture needs to understand that it has an animated presence when one struggles against it. The whole Western world with all its great scientists and artists up to the early 1800's were comfortable understanding that the forces of arrogance and accusation were there and could be called "Satan." It is not the intent in this writing to "cater to" the needs of, or have the scope dictated by, unbelievers. It is only to better bridge a gap by a person who spent much of his adult life as a Christian in their presence and in friendship with them.
The demons do all they can to associate that first wrong hurtful action to God when it is Satan who attacks us, not God at all. This is the sole key to spiritual warfare: the demons accuse God, give us false "visions" of Jesus, and they have been doing this since the Garden of Eden when the serpent twisted God's words.
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We should omit the "demons'" parts in some observations sometimes to just see how the "flesh" or "world" would see something that is of concern to us, and which does not seem to be easily answered by prayer.
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Thoughts on Praising God
1 Praise God because God is love, and loves us
2 Praise God because God has answered our prayers
3 Praise God because His Spirit is in us
4 Praise God because He is not just anything and everything like the false religions teach
5 Praise God because He will judge the Earth and the spirit realms - He is all about justice
6 Praise God because He is stronger than our enemies and gives us the victory over them
Elaboration:
#1 All the "meek attributes" of God, that is, God as Jesus
#1 One strong statement yet "God is love" is the best wording
#4 This will help our witness and winning of souls of those in Eastern religions and the occult
#4 Praise God for his firmness and the conviction it gives us in difficult matters
#5 He wants us to praise Him because it links us with Him and we become greater together than he who is in the world, that is, the demons, and fallen humanity.
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In areas like Seattle, London and in Scandinavia, one aspect of the overall picture is that the darker weather of these areas may make one who lives there more depressed. Try to blanket the world with prayer requests for more problematic cities, to make a spiritual revival of the joy of God happen in those areas in particular. The body of Christ needs wisdom to know what to pray for, to really change the world in positive ways. Let us pray for more of this wisdom. God gives us minds to use and rewards us, above and beyond measure, for focusing our minds. Jesus said we must love God with all our mind. He rewards us if we use our minds, but not like a cold academic, but instead in unison with the Holy Spirit.
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The Bible says Satan is the god of this world, and hence demons keep some kind of order here. Demons only accept a compromise of spiritual and ethical values - otherwise, they attack people who could be a threat to them. This would be a reason why New Age or occult people do not seem morally sound, since largely, when examined, they accept what mainstream entertainment accepts as far as morals. If they were morally sound in all areas that Christians are, then they would be less guilty and more inclined to the full righteousness that comes by grace alone, since they would accept that they also fail morally.
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When we create ministry opportunities, we might examine events or channels which are already existing. For example, think of a written piece printed at Christmas time and the intellectual fleshing out of the Gospel message, which happened very well in older books, but is hard to find in many modern Christian authors in a post-Christian culture.
See how God uses the Christ child imagery, the young as in all of our lives - we were all as innocent as a baby - God remembers us before the world made us act the way we do. A risen state of Christmas consciousness is - every day it is possible to be in Christmas. Edified Christians often give testimony to this.
This is not the desires of the flesh but it is in every way as enticing: the Christmas Holiday decorations and memories, and the Holy Spirit to fill us beyond what we could ever get with lesser things.
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"Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt has lost its savor, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men" (Matthew 5:13).
Salt was a preservative in the times of the New Testament. The "salt" of Jesus' saying seen from a secular point of view would not be salt used as a preservative (since secular people might not agree with our idea of sanctification) but salt as seasoning. People feel grateful you have an unusual but beneficial character. It is interesting to see the full text of the Scripture as having both meanings.
It's a common criticism of church people that they lose some of their character and become boring. In order for us to stay under the yoke of the Holy Spirit, we might think of making a list of things we can have and which we cannot have.
An example:
Things we can have:
1) Music and other arts, socializing via these things
2) Learning how to cook better, cooking for others.
3) Naps, massage, spending time on our health
4) Writing journals
5) Study money and being wise in business
Things we cannot have:
1) Foul language
2) Unrighteous Anger
3) Cluttered house (shows lack of generosity)
4) Too much low entertainment, such watching too many mainstream movies, or listening to too much secular music
5) Breaking the Ten Commandments
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The Word of God always contains in it wisdom that is above the ordinary level of the wisdom of any culture. With the Word of God there was always science, such as Job 38: 24, which says, "Where is the way that the light is divided, or the East wind scattered on the Earth?"
"The light is divided," gives men something to think about regarding scientific
thought as we can see all the different types of light in the spectrum such as ultraviolet light and others, and how light is a wave or energy that is the basis of all electronics.
Such could be our scientific future with the verse, "Or the east wind scattered on the Earth." This could be the beginning of a futuristic science based on the powers and types of wind current and floating objects that are sensitive to gravity, heat, coldness, or other things.
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Proverbs 11: 24-26 are good revival verses:
"There is that scattereth, and yet increaseth; and there is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty. The liberal soul shall be made fat: and he that watereth shall be watered also himself. He that withholdeth corn, the people shall curse him: but blessing shall be upon the head of him that selleth it."
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Christians who do not achieve much in the Lord will always say "God does it through them" and it is not their own will. Often, these Christians do not do very much, and the world around them seems to have many areas of need, with very little soul-winning.
"Will" is a dirty word to them, because for them, will would be dangerous - they would disrupt too much. Their angers, resentments, prejudices would exist on a bigger scale if they had will. But for the tested, those who have proven to have self-control, they must focus on will because human self-control and self-discipline -- or one can say "will" -- is the main way things can happen on Earth.
We are judged in the next life by our efforts, not just efforts in what we pray for but our efforts in what we will do. We can see the exercise of will in Paul's letters, it is described in detail. A Christian who achieves no soul-winning or positive changes in the life around them is perhaps filled with ungodly fear based on insecurity, but they may not realize they are. In fact, they may put up a tough front. Only the truly strong can be vulnerable to another's rejection. Only the secure in Christ can truly love, and focus on doing things that take will power.
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Jesus said "without Him we can do nothing" but then again it is impossible to hold in check the level of virtue on Earth, if it was all up to God, the world would be completely virtuous. We are always the weakest link in the chain.
The Biblical condemnation of the "effeminate," "fearful," "cowardly," (Revelation 21:8, Proverbs 28:1, Matthew 25:14-30) allows us to humbly understand the sinfulness of these kinds of people and not feel morally responsible for them, which is a typical "politically correct" New Age or otherwise hyperreligious response to them. It understands the energy of freedom that comes from not considering justifying those who openly reject the Word, it understands the futility and destructiveness of resisting evil with evil, and so on. It allows one the freedom to think and work within oneself, not need to rely on God or others for things we can do for ourselves.
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The past does not have to be perfect and in understanding that we do allow ourselves to make improvements on the future in the present.
One way to forgive someone completely is allowing them freedom, the freedom to do whatever they please in life, in the past, present and future.
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People can be on average future oriented, present oriented or past oriented. Future oriented people who make exciting goals for themselves, have more structure in their days, weeks, months and years in the present time, than those who do not make strong goals. Why do we sometimes only associate this quality with money or wealth when it need not have only that quality?
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We are not looking for "psychosomatic healing" in prayer, and if you try to "psych yourself up" you are missing the point of seeking divine Christian healing.
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Whatever we work on in ourselves, our prayers and meditations, aim towards that humbling of ourselves that God can exalt together with Him, the holy angels, and believers, for God's glory and to build up others. It is just the natural byproduct of humility, that it exalts a person ("And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted." Matthew 23:12). It can become the aim of our behavior, the reason for which will give us light. It may even show God's light to others by His using us more.
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Everything good or bad takes place by a usage of language. Language is what human beings at one vital level of experience use to overcome boundaries that hold them back. The book of James talks about the danger that comes from language, and Proverbs talks about both the good and bad that can come from it.
I am tempted to put lines of what may only be called poetry in this revival writing because that might be the clearest way to overcome some of the boundaries of language.
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Examine the beautiful word "believe"
be - to be present - be awake -- redeem the time
lie - to combat the devil's reality with the promise of God, in this sense, a holy surrealism, or "lie" - what "lies" beneath the surface of this world is something stronger if we only trust
eve - on the brink of something, it is always about to come to pass this is how it seems, too, when I do see my faith click - I must be present and more awake than my average. I must state what I wish God would do. I must affirm God's goodness, which is against the devil's lie, and the lie of atheists including the atheistic mystics who deny a maternally caring God but claim a type of spirituality. God's beautiful reality and victory always lies behind this world.
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Christmas is the time when we connect with a higher source, a higher source of life. It is the higher source that is always with us and is always jealous for our attention. It calls us to move in its direction and stay there. The virtues of Christmas should be explored with non-believers, ultimately pointing them to Christ, the source of the virtues. Peace brings with it at least more health, and, in a relative way, to have joy as a goal can only be activated by practicing the virtues. It proves to have the yearning and focus on generosity large in our hearts because our selfishness is never rewarded. When we strive for easy pleasure the more enduring pleasures of loyalty among people are not ours anymore.
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There is a term for a person which is somewhat derogatory but not always seen as such by people who would consider it to be a legitimate lifestyle. That term is the "dandy." The artistic "dandy" being the opposite of the father or "generative" man - the man of means. The dandy's tendencies are always immature and whatever versions he or she might have of culture are probably immature developments. That is, there are many "vain artists," similar to the "vain persons" that the Book of Proverbs warns us not to follow. One could easily see some popular music celebrities as being such people. Post-Christian cultures create a lot of these kinds of people, the immature "dandies" of both sexes, and of relatively all ages. They often fall into substance abuse, addiction, and early death. The Pied Piper mythology plays into this typology or Archetype.
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Faith keeps us up in the air, closer to heaven. God likes that.
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Here are some ideas on how to not let others affect us. The people one is around only produce certain types of thoughts in most people. One could call this the "thought matrix." This is why some insecure people become violent, the thought matrix create these certain types of thoughts in unstable people. This can become conscious to us and changed. Being around successful people who are not narcissitic and can care for others, triggers successful types of thoughts. In spiritual people, being around unsuccessful people can trigger thoughts of correcting them, which would be the thought matrix of these situations. In brain science, something called mirror neurons is described as a similar type of study. The mirror neurons are unconscious, but very present.
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The Eastern Orthodox Church has a canon of saints, such as St. Gregory of Sinai and St. Gregory Palamas, that focus on these issues often:
1 Breathing attention
2 Body observation, which is also called "watchfulness"
I would add the focus on meditation and prayer for happiness and willpower, because these two things should not be taken for granted.
What if our problem with being happy and achieving goals is really physical, that is, a deep depression that is related to consistent shallow breathing of impure air, a lack of adequate nutrition, and a lack of proper blood chemistry that comes from a mind-body interaction? What do we do with focusing our attention that changes our body?
Can that little attention that some have build on itself somehow, like what they call a recursive function in programming?
Some Christians cannot distinguish this area of health that comes from breathing
and body work as merely physical subjects that God can bless, and insist on putting Eastern philosophical roots to them simply because they are not aware of where they are spoken of by earlier Christian writers.
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The opposite of fear is what?
Most people will say the opposite of fear is faith, or love, which I would agree with. But after the opportunities for faith and love are able to be specified and utilized, what about seeing what many people already see and use in this world, that being the range of assertive energy that even goes to righteous indignation? Perfect love casts out fear (1 John 4:18), as "perfect love" is a high positive emotion.
We are told to be faithful and also to "Be angry and sin not."
Ephesians 4: 26.
The opposite of fear in the unbeliever is an easy, sinful rage. It takes place in those who have not developed any psychological or spiritual maturity. Rage is a low negative emotion, except for righteous indignation, such as Christ's throwing out the money changers.
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Thoughts on waiting on God in prayer.
An affirmation: "Thank you Jesus for what I want is coming to pass."
"Jesus said to her, 'Did I not say to you that if you would believe you would see the glory of God?'"
John 11: 40
I believe here "see the glory of God" can also be interpreted as experiencing the glory of God in this life as many do claim to experience it.
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What is the tension of a culturally balanced Christian? They may be saying, "How can I make three times as much good from any misfortune that occurs to me, and teach others to have this kind of attitude?" It is the Joseph of the Old Testament's kind of faith, the mentality of David when he was being chased by Saul, never to retaliate to whom God put over him.
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God is infinite so the blood of the Lamb is in an infinite supply for our needs.
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If one is not changing, and twice as much effort is needed to change, one must have twice as much motivation. One may see one is still living in a relative hell to one's relative heaven. Repent, ask forgiveness, pray, deep breathe, focus on the body, it is relaxation and symmetry, be out in nature, seek to be harmonious with others in Christ.
Realize twice as much effort and prayer is needed if one desires will, it can apply to better things like being able to control negative social manifestations, eliminate destructive thinking (such as judging successful and good people), housekeeping, business powers and so on.
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It is a very sophisticated view that allows us our free will from God, and also one that believes in a positive help from God. We can mature in that complete understanding. Due to the masochistic tendency from experiencing a life in the ignorance of God's truths, and the abuse of Earth, people tend to see God as only punishing, or as prominently, having a mystical instructive quality to His actions which only seem painful and not leading to joy, power and peace.
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Ask, believe, thank, praise, evangelize, testify, and we are commanded to rejoice. Over time, after practice, some days we might even get to three hours of focused prayer alone. If you focus your religious or spiritual life on something particular that has a socially understandable value, you are sure not to get into what is called hyperreligiosity, or religious addiction and delusion.
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"Heir not by the law, but by the righteousness of faith" (Romans 4:13) is a good verse when disempowered people judge the prosperous and happy Christians. They are then trying to be justified by the law, which is shown by their need to judge people based on what they think is the law of Jesus.
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Since we believe God's help is a reality, the key is knowing how one can personally depend on God that is actually depending on God throughout the day. This does not have to be "religious addiction." The trouble with religious addiction may not come from praying, it comes more from the assumption one is always praying. Although I sometime do not like the separation people make between the words "religious" and "spiritual," we can say that religion can exist without much spirituality, but the fullness of spirituality almost always uses the form of revealed religion, at least as a backdrop to evolve one's behavior to spiritual levels. Religious addiction does not come from trying to be spiritual, it comes from the lack of humility that makes one need to see oneself as spiritual, when instead one needs to see oneself as poor in spirit and in need of God's grace.
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The spiritual virtues of "Do not identify with," "detachment" or being "dispassionate" equates with, "cast all your cares upon Him." It is superior to get to the stage of casting all one's cares on God than what work on non-identifying or dispassion usually means to a non-believer in the Gospel but who is following another religious path. One has the ability to not be stressed, but to become more than one can be by oneself, by identifying with Christ. So, it becomes not so much non-identification but mis-identification with one's limitations, and identification with Christ living within, and the promise that our prayers can be answered, by faith.
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What are ways that anger and love relate? Love is the opposite to anger in many ways, and people get angry because of others' lack of love. The opposite of bondage to fear according to the Word of God is the spirit that cries out "Abba Father" (Romans 8:15), for bravery, courage, wisdom, and providential help, and knowing, full well, one is entitled to do that without any anxiety.
"Be anxious for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God."
Philippians 4:6
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Ephesians Chapter Six tells us, paraphrased, "We should not fight with people but instead we should wrestle with a demonic order in this world, but only fight in the way that God has clearly outlined." We wrestle also with possible strongholds of our own flesh, as Jesus said we must deny ourselves and take up our own cross.
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The road to hell is paved with good intentions but so is the road to heaven.
We should be instant in prayer and instant in deconstructing the false "wisdom" that is in the world around us so that a Christian re-sanctification of much of culture can take place.
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With our goals, we can be present to the best in life and in God. When we see our goals, we can remember an aspect of ourselves in our best nature. When we see our goals, we can be still to all the negative voices of ourselves saying that we cannot do it, or that it is too hard now.
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Jesus said, "I have not lost one that you gave me." Have you not lost one that God gave you?
He who wins souls is wise in glorying in God for His work in our families, in developing positive family regard after insight, which keeps us in positive places in the brain.
Why Jesus can be seen to be God in some human aspect was that He could be with harlots without using them sexually, to converse and befriend them; and he could be with publicans without bending to their ways of crudeness, insults and so on. If we could not be corrupted to be like drunks, gluttons, porn users, and fearful, we too could be more like Jesus if we could befriend the whole world.
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That obedience that God is calling for, Satan says is an illusion.
That obedience that Satan says God is calling for, is an illusion.
Satan wants to take us out of our peace, out of our poor in Spirit mindset.
Can you be energetic and poor in spirit at the same time? Yes.
Seeing the poor-in-spirit mindset as the person who will accept Godly self-discipline. As the non-judgmental spirit. Do not add other qualities that are not necessary. Imitate the best Christians.
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"Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye measure out, it shall be measured to you again." (Mathew 7: 1,2).
How to use Mathew 7: 1 and 2 to our great advantage?
Start finding people you currently judge and pray to stop it and pray for communication with them.
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Watchfulness, prayerfulness and humility before God is not as rare as Satan wants it to seem. It can be part of the highest Christianity because we are supposed to be as sinless as possible so we need a strong deterrent. The possibility of the loss of spiritual joy, peace, sobriety, and wisdom is a deterrent that is easily understood by all.
That is Christ's gospel: that you can have salvation by grace, and with this grace comes spiritual joy, peace, health and wisdom. It also comes with it the promise of being "fishers of men" - which can be seen to be a type of inclusion in the Body of Christ. In fact, developing in people that deep sense of gratitude that it was we who helped them see the Gospel in the way God wants them to see it.
The three activities of watchfulness, prayerfulness, and humility before God is not all, of course. It is this sense of doing godly works for others, part of which is sharing with them the true message of God's Word. We must share with them a
fresh understanding of God's promises. Not a false prosperity gospel, nor its opposite, a complete lack of promises.
Affirmations used at the present time in one's life would probably be very different than the affirmations used at other times in one's life.
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"My meat is to do the will of Him who sent me" (John 4:34). What does this mean?
Our meat can be translated as the thing we really like, as in the meat we both love to eat because it tastes good but also because it nourishes us and we have a drive to consume it. It can be seen as a joyful fervent desire to live in the wisdom to win souls.
We should be praying for their conversion, instead of fearing them, because
we think they may corrupt our walk.
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I do not exclude anyone from claiming authentic Christianity who does not believe in the manifestations of the gifts of the Holy Spirit such as speaking in tongues today, I believe that most Christians today admit that it is now a mainstream occurrence in the Body of Christ. A new intellectual and Pentecostal revival starts as a prayer for it. Catholic Charismatics do not dumb down their faith. There is no reason that Protestant Pentecostals have to.
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Neither the prosperity gospel is true, nor the idea that the Bible wants us to commit to a life of poverty. The Bible helps us with good living patterns and skills which helps us earn money, and not waste it in the foolish ways the world wastes money. Prayer for our behavior being pleasing to others can also help our finances.
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The discernment sections of this work can also be read psychologically. That is, some see the animation of negative forces in human psychology as the demons.
The enemy tries to stress us, and in some ways grieve the Holy Spirit, by getting us to negatively focus on another. Instead, when we sense this happening, we should instantly pray for these people.
After prayer for them, when can then say a good affirmation or use a pattern for meditation for difficult people: "I have no interest in what I think about this person because they are in God's hands. In Jesus name, I banish these thoughts."
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Aftermath Theology/Modality of Working: all we can sometimes do is deal with the aftermath of the world becoming a harder and more competitive place to live: the loneliness, poor health, poor small business performance and so on. Many people who make major decisions can make the world more or less brutal. But we wrestle not with flesh and blood (Ephesians 6:12).
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Attention versus will. Control over one's attention is always godly, our will can be self-willed to the exclusion of God and defiant. When we are in God's will and have the Holy Spirit in our life the term "self-will" is not accurate, because we enjoy willing that which pleases God, so it is still "self-will." Self-will is a delusive, unclear spiritual term, as is "self-seeking." Paul said those who do not provide for their own are worse than an infidel.
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In helping to win and settle souls in Christ, we must never let newcomers in Christ be "socially cornered." This means, not let them feel that they are in only one area of the body of Christ, where they are dependent on specific people, or a group. Offenses come from many, and it is perhaps always Satan's plan to make it seem as if one is being offended by a Christian. Often the economically disempowered will do this with business people or with the financially empowered. For homeless people this might even be "people with homes." If a person fails you, then you may associate them with "a denomination" or "business people."
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When Christ said, "If you did not visit me in prison"(Matthew 25:36), have we ever thought that prison was a principle of many things and not only a literal prison? The means "you did not mentor the one who needed your help the most. You did not tell me about how you got sober or support me when I asked for your fellowship."
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Narcissism is rampant in the post-Christian culture from the overcompetiveness that arises from a sensuous life, and thus greater artists, thinkers and innovators have a tougher time succeeding and nourishing the world. If a Christian entrepreneur is narcissistic, this is sure to guarantee failure.
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Dealing with Various Types of Unbelief
1) Unbelief that we must do the commandments of Jesus foremost in our spiritual life
2) Unbelief that things really do get better when we are free from all reasonably conquerable sin
3) Unbelief that the way the Body of Christ follows God is the right way, including things like no premarital sex, no pornography, and so on
4) Unbelief that to get to higher places in God, we have to give Him more and more
5) Unbelief about some people being in blindness, not willfully sinning. In our desire for the new life in Christ, not needing to experience memories of the past, we will not forget that people are not so much evil by choice, as we were probably not, but are blind to what they are, and even blind to what they believe. They do not see exactly "what" is doing "what" to them. This could be called the deceptive power of blindness. Optimism is a gift of the Holy Spirit. We must look at all those who were like we once were as being in blindness not unredeemable sinners. That would be hypocrisy.
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Ask, Believe, Thank, Praise, Testify, Evangelize, and we are commanded to Rejoice. The believe part is our faith, we can pray without ceasing along the way.
John D. Rice said, "Prayerlessness shows by a lack of real enjoyment of God."
This should be understood in a focus on revival.
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The Bible says "Be glad in the Lord and rejoice you righteous"( Psalm 32:11), but some Christians say none are righteous. Isn't instead what the Bible is saying is that "our righteousness is as filthy rags to the Lord," (Isaiah 64:6) and that we cannot be saved except by grace? That does not mean that we should not rejoice as a way of distinguishing us from the worst of the faithless and openly rebellious. The Bible also says, "Be not deceived, he who does righteousness is righteous, as even He is righteous" (1 John 3:7).
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Because of Christ's righteousness we are good enough for anything we ask of God that is in His will, so we thank Him whether we currently have it or not, but if it is not right for us, God will not help us get it. It is that simple.
The idea of praying to God of the Lord of the Harvest. Think about the implications of saying "put the love of God in him instead of the expression "put the fear of God in him." How could we "put the love of God" in a person? God desires our praise because it takes our focus off the world of sin, which is the earth, and onto the world of heaven, which is God's world. This is why the Pentecostal and Evangelical is sometimes in a bad place psychologically and physically, because they are substituting the godly peace that Jesus promises with their own inner voices, which reflect the world of sin, which is the Earth. They ascribe many of their own thoughts to God including judgements of Christians who are different than them.
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Hatred shared among men and women of lower moral development is like alcohol, it frees them of their personal inhibitions that comes from knowing their own failings, and frees them from all forms of anxiety, allowing them to bond. It says in Scripture that God hates hurtful gossip (Proverbs 6:16-19). One can see this lure that gossip has to hate and bond with another yet against someone else.
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Some people fear others who have had a disease, but that is exactly the opposite of what Scripture is teaching us to be like. Some look at it as being cursed by God, not an opportunity to be a vessel of God's healing powers. We should always see it as the latter, which of course is against ideas of reincarnation.
The prosperity gospel type of selfish Christianity, consciously or unconsciously, believes in the above fear of people with illness or poverty. We welcome them because it shows the power of God in us. A different kind of "selfish" Christianity that is based on praying for all people that God brings into your life. It is not selfish as far as trying to manipulate others but sees oneself as a good influence that we wish to continue to be for those God brings in our life.
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We may sometimes have to see what the benefits of faith are from a secular point of view in order to receive the things we pray for. This cheats the world, flesh and the devil from causing us to doubt. Faith allows the best attitude even from a secular perspective. Always having hope for the desires of our heart to come to pass is how Jesus taught us to pray. Praying for God's will to be done has the added benefit that God will prevent what harms us in this situation.
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How do we get in the Holy Spirit? A point of contact helps, such as Jesus name repeated as in the Jesus Prayer. The Jesus Prayer is an ancient prayer in the Eastern Christian tradition, that is simply the words, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have Mercy on me." Sometimes it is said with "....a sinner" on the end, and sometimes it is not. Other points of contact are: Thanking God. Focusing on love, even those who do we not feel love us enough. That is, praying for those we think do not love us enough. Making a list of such people and praying for them.
How do we get in the Holy Spirit? Saying "Hallelujah" or other expressions of praise from the heart. Thanking God. An immediate need prayed for that we may not always have the ability to flourish in, such as housekeeping, vacuuming, and so on.
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Chart for the Beatitudes
1) Poor in Spirit
2) Mourn
3) Meekness
4) Hunger for Righteousness
5) Merciful
6) Pure in Heart
7) Peacemakers
8) Accept Risk and Persecution
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How much we are gentle with ourselves, and allow ourselves to ask God to teach us, even things which would seem to embarrass us, such as, "God please show me how to have more faith that my prayer will be granted by You." Or, if we ask for help in housekeeping, or doing a business activity that others might find not in the possible canon of allowable prayers. The Holy Spirit can be with us in any of these needs, that we may see as our responsibilities, and unworthy of prayers.
This mercy is also shown in how much we love others, who may need to grow much more than ourselves in some areas. Not feeling jealousy from other's material prosperity is a manifestation of love. It is strongest when those people are rewarded who are lacking in spiritual development.
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The world gives us a spirit of fear because there is a lack of love. This should be a primary thought we have about the world. God does not love the spirit of the world, which is the spirit that works through fear instead of love (1 John 2:15). God is love. God does not give us a spirit of fear, but of love, power, and a sound mind (2 Timothy 1:7). Perfect love casts out fear, especially since it knows that fear attracts to use negative things, and hinders positive things coming into our lives.
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Jesus criticized his disciples when they could not "even watch one hour." Can we do other activities that are related to prayer and health for three hours a day? To do quiet sitting, Bible study, meditation, deep breathing, muscle relaxation, with prayer alternating with these things, for up to 3 hours a day is very possible, and it is good to track it over time. See it as a part of our business day if we are not doing intelligent other work because for some people getting into better parts of their brain and becoming healthier will increase their profit.
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The only act required for a miracle may be a patient, loving request for it. Jesus said, "I give you the power to trample on serpents and scorpions" (Luke 10:19). We can take this promise to possibly give us power over political change by prayer warfare - or even economic change such as the policies of the local power utilities and the like. It is for whatever that God will allow to change for a better world.
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What does it mean to be someone whose soul was won, or is now saved? Why do some not like to see people this way? From what is one saved? Can we tangibly feel the freedom of being saved? If we study the hundreds of verses about God giving believers power, we can know that we are saved by being able to partake of this power by serving God.
Do some who always see their generation as the absolute last before Jesus comes back unknowingly sometimes sin against the lost who need them? Is it not right because it is championing oneself above others, and not helping them? So the element of being saved should not lose the humility that comes from having a heart for reaching the lost, and not just giving up on them.
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Worshipping God is simply washing away what the devil tries to do to God's image. We see this since the Garden of Eden.
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There is no other model for full recovery from dysfunctional families or habits than Jesus Christ. Only holiness overcomes human dysfunction. Jesus is the only model for recovery. Forgiving the abusers. "Grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Christ Jesus" (Romans 5:21). "Sin shall have no more dominion over you" (Romans 6:14).
This is our new condition, of regeneration; sin reigned in death, that is the old condition.
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A major tactic of the demons is to get us to think of the offense instead of forgiveness. This is almost their whole responsibility when it comes to how they try to injure our social being.
"No one has ever really let me down," is what those who forgive can say. It is an honorable thing to say. It shows others' respect, such as a man for a woman, and even if it is not true in your reality, you make it true by active forgiveness. Actively finding a way to give to the person who needed to slight, or tried to injure you in some way, is to negate much evil. If everyone could do this, the world would be a recognizably different place. As Jesus said, sufficient is the evil of the day.
Often we focus wrongly on a sense that we are owed something by other people.
The meditation mentioned above, "No one has ever really let me down," can be a theme for reflection when we think of truly forgiving others, how we might blame people that do not deserve blame, and how we might otherwise avoid our own responsibility. This statement brings us to the state of being a giver, a blessing, and not feeling resentment and unforgiveness.
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One problem in some preaching is presupposing a negative condition in listeners instead of the overwhelming victorious condition that God freely gives by grace when we are humble. This focusing on "misery management" in the modern population actually pushes backwards the percentage of people who are naturally overcoming because of the power in Jesus Christ, and who are therefore able to be soul winners. What is good is when someone is doing serious teaching as to how something like modern brain science can relate to the Bible, or how a scripturally sound body of work like the Orthodox canon of saints writings called "The Philokalia" can combat false teachings that focus on meditation and energies. One does not just read through these books in a sleep, as a type of misery management, but can gain from them by loving God with all their mind.
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Levels of Altruism
1) They who win souls are wise. What does it mean to be saved?
2) How the Bible and its salvation is about life more the way a sensible person wants it in whatever circumstance.
3) The Bible has more truth than any one person can contain.
This is a reason why unity is important, different denominations are all different colors of a rainbow, each can educate the other about certain things.
4) All truth is God's truth.
5) Why do we praise God?
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Humility Verses Ignorance
Humility is how we are in prayer and have the new life, but only by intelligent humility. We cannot use an idea of "humility" to disempower us away from God's best.
When one wants to be humble, does one build up the rebellious by accident? That is unwise humility. Do we think that we should not use Biblical standards in looking at human behavior, because to do so, would not be humble, since we all sin?
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Our thoughts do not have as much moral consequences as we sometimes think.
The enemy can influence our thoughts, but unless we will the thoughts in some part of ourselves, unless we really say that we really believe something, or want to state something, there is no sin involved in it. Often, we are weighing out the things in mind, using memory to remember what is going in the world around us, and there is no sin in merely remembering something. Some people are so nervous that simply remembering the next day something they saw on the news makes them feel sinful. Examining this fact is probably a good lesson in testing the level of a Christian's robustness in ministry.
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Think of wholesome, attention gathering methods for promoting a spiritual revival. One possible example: think of having a child call the churches and say, "This is Angel Headquarters NW and we are making Revival Readiness Preparation calls. We would like to ask you a few questions." I wonder what the person answering the phone would think. Or, if getting an answering machine, one could play a recording of the various points but done in a non-commercialized way, and leave a legitimate message of a community event or phone number for a return call.
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I believe it is a fault of the modern age to focus too much on the division between spirituality and religion. In earlier generations, it was considered sinful to call oneself spiritual, but this seems to be completely a foreign idea to many people living at the time of this writing, young and old. There are some legitimate differences between the two words, but to call oneself spiritual really should be seen as a possible sign of pride. One thing religion does that spirituality does not do, is it wants to take the idea of a loving God too far, and helps make some of its weaker converts into lazy, frightened and even sometimes hateful people.
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There is a sin that comes from accusing God of small mindedness - like not using herbs, medication, or various types of physical exercises.
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Forgiveness is one area to repeatedly focus on:
Why didn't we just go to God in prayer about people who did things to disturb us?
We should get to that point when we think about difficult people, or difficult relationship dynamics with people, that we can be "instant in prayer." A start for this is to pray, repeatedly, "Lord God bless every one that I think about, including myself."
Freedom is about losing what unhelpful belief system we hold. Being in the parental mode, not the mode of people taking care of us.
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There are two things which "the world, the flesh, and the devil" have over us which are hard to get, but which are possible to get. They are the public's attention, and our own attention. It may be hard to get good teaching out because it costs money to advertise, although things still do travel by word of mouth. One has to be humble about how much of the public's attention one believes one can get. The other problem is getting control over our attention. People talk about Attention Deficit Disorder like it was a rare thing, but in reality, people in many countries have far more taking their attention away, and far less leisure time than in generations past. Focusing on something that tracks the amount of time one is actually spending on positive thoughts, studies and actions is a good idea.
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Humanization and Christianity
We have fallen short in so many areas, because God's righteousness is so high. It is very sad when people do not have a humane level of behavior but instead are too focused on their own needs. We can pray for the creation of an understanding that sees that the power of loving others blossom when people can feel secure. All human cruelty, even the cruelty of neglect in all its forms, comes from insecurity. The abusive should not be feared and respected, but pitied because they do not have the inner security that comes from resting in love.
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The better nature of the family relationship can be built when lust is deprecated - this must be stressed, along with the fact that one is better off in a good family situation. This is what the church can give, more of an extended family. One does not have to be married or in a romantic relationship.
Creating the good family situation/mentality can be better done by not buying into all the things the world says is important. This has to go hand in hand with psychological maturity, which sometimes for some people can only be achieved with the help of a good therapist.
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As it is used in the Bible, the word "abominable" is an interesting one. Think of a very good and successful person, not unimaginably so, but like the top 10% of people that have all good things working out for them because they have made many right decisions in life...and then think of the crazy ideas and practices of the people who have made many wrong decisions, with their inability to socialize lovingly, their bad diets, gambling, and other bad habits. To the people who have made right decisions, such bad decisions were an "abomination" to them, and for good reason. Look at the results. Such is how we should understand a God of love who also says things are abominations to Him. He wants us to all have a good, successful life, without any prejudice. This is why it is best to be humble, poor in spirit, so we can right ourselves as quickly as possible, without following on in pride.
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How much of the "this is the day that the Lord has made, we will rejoice and be glad in it" did we experience today?
How much of the "this is the day that the Lord has made, we will rejoice and be glad in it" do we experience after 5 PM during any given day?
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Religiosity always wants us to put a label on something that spirituality is comfortable in not naming.
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"I believe, please help my unbelief." Faith is a ratio of belief impulses over the substance of things seen.
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"Fundamentalism" should not be the term people use when criticizing someone with an overly narrow yet Biblical worldview, because it is fine to use the Bible as the main source of living. "Reductionism" is what we might call it when people reduce God and others to something smaller than what they are.
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We force ourselves to grow or "evolve" in spite of what religion sometimes teaches and even perhaps the way some Christians live their faith.
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Why should not we use science to prove our faith? Christians created most of the social and political atmospheres for some of greatest scientific advances in history.
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A contrite heart means someone who can be objective, who can see all the lost
opportunity in their lives, the lost opportunities that really come to most human beings because they cannot exist on the level that God is able to communicate to us.
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If we separate God and financial worth, we can have a good work ethic, and bless God that He helps us with being sober and having good ethical qualities. It may seem like God may not make some a partner to fight evil by giving them an easy, material life, yet how many who have those lives are truly active in fighting evil?
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The devils want us to resent people, who did not have the same chemistry as us, to force a relationship in our imagination, and blame the other person for criticizing us in our imagination of them. We are responsible for letting such people go from our thoughts when we need to let them go. Sometimes it is a blessing to know what to "mind our own business."
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Some people you meet you can identify ahead of time, that you want God to keep their destructiveness away from you. They seem to give opportunity to Satan to come into our lives. We bind these people's power away from us in Jesus' name. We forgive them but we ask God to comfort us in His justice and mercy. "For giving" them, ahead of time, recognize the vessel for what it might bring, and ask God for the power of love to forgive, and the wisdom to be delivered from evil.
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Growing in Prayer:
1) Get God to help with deep breathing, so we can do more difficult things
2) Then try to pray for at least ten different things. Could write down short notes
to list them.
3) Then thank God for them, one by one, experience what it feels like to have the prayers answered.
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These two moving into God's power of healing:
1) Be up in glory rejoicing over God's loving, kindhearted patient nature that naturally heals mankind. Have this attitude in one's heart. The Word reinforces it.
2) Having no doubts about complete healing, or any other godly prayer request, showing all manner of aspects of faith, expectation of promises glorying in our heart over the things which are yet unseen but which will shortly be seen
Approaching Being in God's Glory
1 When we see the glory, we praise God
2 The needed power of reconciliation
3 They know not what they do attitude
4 Unconditional love of others
5 Praying long for others
6 Pray for those who do not love us enough
7 Unselfish living
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About having wisdom for difficult questions, such as "do animals have an afterlife?":
1) I reverence God
2) I reverence the answer
3) I do not reverence this as necessarily the time to know the answer, unless God wills it.
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When we pray for healing, something always does happen, as long as the Spirit of God that is in us is stronger than any demon persecution. We have to add all these "somethings" together and see that our prayers for healing are always needed if we are sick, and answered, even if it at first they seem mostly for deliverance.
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The misguided have their Bible, it is called "Resentment," subtitled, "Unforgiveness."
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Satan wants to destroy human humility and he is able to do just that to many people. Blessed are the poor in Spirit (Matthew 5:3). God like a loving father with the last name "Humble," invites us all back to the wondrous inheritances of the meek. It was said that Jesus was the "man of sorrows" (Isaiah 53:3) and by this, we can understand the nature of the Father.
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Song of Thanksgiving
Hallelujah, our Lord is a Lord of the people, and the people of the Christ shall come more together, and help each other, and help those who have been too weak to free themselves into the body of Christ and its light. Help us Lord to always see that we repent and walk closely to You, because that is your desire and pleasure. Please help that be a strong theme of our lives and by that chase out much false teaching and wrong ideas about life.
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Being humble before the elements of the goal.
Being humble before the great opportunities of the past.
Being humble before the great opportunities of the present. Humble but not stupid, carefully dividing the difference.
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There is not anything ungodly about some basic concepts of psychology, when they describe things that already exist, and do not make statements against the truth of God's word. One helpful concept is the idea of the Id, Ego and SuperEgo. I'll suffice it to say that the SuperEgo is that part of our mind that sees things as above us. It is said to be in the sense of conscience. It can also be corrupted, and be the type of false conscience as seen in the mentally ill. This section may be difficult for some to understand but I believe it will be helpful for those already familiar with the term "SuperEgo."
The key to a Christian revival is the investment in the spirituality we can achieve, not the fantasy spirituality of the SuperEgo.
The key to a Christian revival is the investment in the community growth we can achieve, not the fantasy community growth of the SuperEgo.
The key to a Christian revival is the investment in the fellowship we can achieve, not the fantasy fellowship of the SuperEgo.
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"Who was delivered up because of our offenses and was raised because of our justification." Romans 4: 25
Since Van Gogh is now one of the creators of the most expensive paintings, he has been justified. Jesus was raised from the dead because God justified us - because of the righteousness of Jesus. God is love and raised up Jesus from the dead to show our justification. At one point in his life, Van Gogh was serious about his Christianity, and if we study his life, we can see how Satan tried to stop him and torment him. Yet, in spite of this, Van Gogh persisted as long as he could, and created many masterpieces in the process.
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We are only sane when we are grateful because we see our lives are the effect of the cause we created. By grace through faith in Him, our life over time was rewarded by God, the Great I AM.
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People need to have enough humility, even enough longing, for the spiritual level to reach the point where things really start to happen with God. The modern person from a post-Christian culture is not used to thinking in this manner.
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Life Blood of the Word
The different books all provide different nutrients
which we feel in our hearts
like old neighborly friends
The Gospels, Paul's letters
Psalms, the Book of Job
Remembering,
the armor of God is
Christ living within
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We should accept that everything is beautiful that is following God's will. Often,
the enemy tries to sow seeds into culture when in the end leads to atheism. Atheism is the end result of a series of blasphemies, which may not be seen as such, but could be repented of by seeing them in that way.
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The ferocity of moths to an outdoor lightbulb, shows a sermon in nature on how we are to perceive the light.
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We can get something precisely because it is difficult.
We can get something precisely because it is different.
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If we postulate that there are two types of spirituality, the "help me God" spirituality, and the "I'll show God what I can do" spirituality, one might say both are needed in the measure that is most spiritual at the time. Jesus was trying to show us an example of being both at the same time. We can see to a larger extent much of the world is divided into these two camps, those who follow a more works based path, such as Buddhism, or one that follows more of a devotion with submission to God and, to a degree, others.
The "help me God" spirituality is the one that David represents so well in the Psalms. The "help me God" spirituality is the religion of praising the Lord, keeping a positive attitude but being honest with God and others about things which seem to test us beyond our comfortable limits, or limits of prosperity which we believe God wants for us. Some people have no problem praying for thousand dollar sales for their business, while others feel guilty about praying for ten dollar sales. In either case, believers will tell you praying for sales makes a difference.
The "solely based in self-responsibility" spirituality people focus on doing spiritual works to get by, which they can even interpret in ways that seem solely related to them, such as getting a massage, taking expensive supplements, and buying expensive books and courses. The "help me God" spirituality people often donate money for church causes, which help the poor, keep a communal building able to pay utility bills, and pay for a minister's salary who is therefore free to visit the sick, spend time with the grieving and organize the weekly, bi-weekly or even more active church services.
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Have we the sense of "praying through"? It is basically defined as a way to stay in positive relationship with God long enough and praying often enough until the result is manifested in one's life. It can be seen as staying in positive emotion with God through any trial, always making the request, and thanking Him for the result. This can be manifested as thanking Him for healing us, accepting that by His stripes we are healed, over and over until the healing comes, either by faith alone or by medical assistance. We should remember that medical assistance does not always work with some people, so we can even be thankful to God for His miraculous help when it does work for believers, as for an unbeliever, there is a chance that they are not helped.
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Delighting in the Lord, sharing a state that is near humor. Reasoning with the Lord's presence in a manner in which other people may have thought as comic, we see as delightful, and profitable, it gives us a great joy if sustained in a spirit of humility.
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Satan has developed a very good theology in which all the blame can be put onto God or "old wineskins" who go undetected and idolized.
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Whenever we see someone do something that is not loving, and in any way, in fact, avoids who we are as a person, we can be sure that this person is not be flowing in the love and power that comes from God.
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As a rule, the immature often think wise men are crazy, and that the prosperous are always too evil.
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Whether or not you hate someone is defined "further levels down" in the volition of what you would do to the person. In the modern age, it is in such things as rejecting their social networking request, which could hurt them financially, even very indirectly, and so on. These are all acceptable forms of hatred, and it is a modern problem that hatred in these ways has become socially acceptable and not even seen as hatred. Hatred really is just the opposite of love when it is obvious that love should be the response. It is not if they irritate you by the sound of their voice, or if something they did to you in an offensive way offends your sense of dignity. That does not make you unspiritual.
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A nice meditation can be, "It is all part of the crises, from the love of money. We all avoid the crises, from the love of money." How many news headlines are part of a crises from the love of money?
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There is a separation between the prayers of the unrighteous and God, so they must continue to pray with deep sincerity in their hearts to be healed. Jesus taught to pray always and faint not. God the Father wishes that we pray that way. It changes in the time being spent in prayer, by drawing us closer to God's Spirit.
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First thing in the morning, afternoon, and in the night praise God for your new life and all the things answered that you pray for. First thing, praise God for your new life and all the things answered that you pray for.
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In God's goodness He has created in us psychologically awesome scientific principles, such as brain science, so that in understanding some things that are of crucial importance to us, we would also grow as rational creatures.
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The achievement of miracles is sometimes hidden in accomplishing the goals we have set for ourselves. That is the accuracy and that is the gratitude: to call them miracles and be primarily thankful to God, and then perhaps our parents, family, friends, church members and acquaintances.
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Like others do in their life, I look for an opening in my life where I can really see God's Spirit manifested. It could be just dedicating time for Him to create a state of greater physical health. A person without a health problem could use this, as well as one with a health problem, because there can always be more abundant health. Perhaps one will receive a healing for a problem that is only dormant, or could possibly manifest.
Focused praying for people that make us feel that they are not in our tribe. Since we feel different when dismissed by them, sometimes they make us feel fear that they are in some way contaminating us. This is sometimes possibly demonic. Pray that they become more spiritual during these times instead of taking it personally.
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Look at gratitude deficit disorder as a health diagnoses, how does lack of gratitude make one less healthy? It allows one greater opportunities to be angry, hateful, and tense. The prosperity gospel thinking can do this because one is waiting for God to bless one financially instead of working intelligently on things other than gaining financial favor through spirituality. The Word described this kind of behavior in 1 Timothy 6:5: "Perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the truth, supposing that gain is godliness: from such withdraw thyself."
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Faith is, more or less, the creation of what we ask for in prayer. "We call things that are not as if they are." Romans 4:17. We thank God for our complete healing even while getting medical attention, walking by faith, and not by sight. We do this to form a steady point of contact with God's infinite power.
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About being a witness to non-Christians:
Our only intention is to have the Savior's heart to such people.
Non-Christians often need our faith for them to get by, but we should let them know why we have the power to give it to them. Hope is a commodity that is precious, and can be seen as like gold, as Proverbs Chapter 8 tells us:
1 Doth not wisdom cry? and understanding put forth her voice?
2 She standeth in the top of high places, by the way in the places of the paths.
3 She crieth at the gates, at the entry of the city, at the coming in at the doors.
4 Unto you, O men, I call; and my voice is to the sons of man.
5 O ye simple, understand wisdom: and, ye fools, be ye of an understanding heart.
6 Hear; for I will speak of excellent things; and the opening of my lips shall be right things.
7 For my mouth shall speak truth; and wickedness is an abomination to my lips.
8 All the words of my mouth are in righteousness; there is nothing froward or perverse in them.
9 They are all plain to him that understandeth, and right to them that find knowledge.
10 Receive my instruction, and not silver; and knowledge rather than choice gold.
11 For wisdom is better than rubies; and all the things that may be desired are not to be compared to it.
12 I wisdom dwell with prudence, and find out knowledge of witty inventions.
13 The fear of the LORD is to hate evil: pride, and arrogancy, and the evil way, and the froward mouth, do I hate.
14 Counsel is mine, and sound wisdom: I am understanding; I have strength.
15 By me kings reign, and princes decree justice.
16 By me princes rule, and nobles, even all the judges of the earth.
17 I love them that love me; and those that seek me early shall find me.
18 Riches and honour are with me; yea, durable riches and righteousness.
19 My fruit is better than gold, yea, than fine gold; and my revenue than choice silver.
20 I lead in the way of righteousness, in the midst of the paths of judgment:
21 That I may cause those that love me to inherit substance; and I will fill their treasures.
22 The LORD possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old.
23 I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was.
24 When there were no depths, I was brought forth; when there were no fountains abounding with water.
25 Before the mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought forth:
26 While as yet he had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the highest part of the dust of the world.
27 When he prepared the heavens, I was there: when he set a compass upon the face of the depth:
28 When he established the clouds above: when he strengthened the fountains of the deep:
29 When he gave to the sea his decree, that the waters should not pass his commandment: when he appointed the foundations of the earth:
30 Then I was by him, as one brought up with him: and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him;
31 Rejoicing in the habitable part of his earth; and my delights were with the sons of men.
32 Now therefore hearken unto me, O ye children: for blessed are they that keep my ways.
33 Hear instruction, and be wise, and refuse it not.
34 Blessed is the man that heareth me, watching daily at my gates, waiting at the posts of my doors.
35 For whoso findeth me findeth life, and shall obtain favour of the LORD.
36 But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul: all they that hate me love death.
Proverbs Chapter 8: 1-36
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We praise God for the things He will do when we pray for healing, as He taught us to pray, and also for what He has done, and also what and Who He is.
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The impact of meditation on certain Bible verses is what puts us in higher brain states, and ability to focus on the tasks in the plans we can make.
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We pray in the name of Jesus partly so that we do not turn the prayer session into a vain justification of ourselves. This explains some of the value we get when we pray in Jesus name, and why God requires it.
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God's Holy Spirit could not stay long with us because of our unbelief. What is this unbelief?
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When there is an insecurity in a person or some group based on them not admitting their flaws, it is the opposite of courage and manliness but is instead corruption and cowardice. Governments must also watch out for this hence if they do not, they will invite the inevitable bad results from bad actions. Accountability is a wonderful thing and is like the balance of science acting on behavior.
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It is good to understand why some people are ineffective at winning souls.
There must be times of real humility, staying weak so that the Lord can be strong. This focus of a believing person is necessary and the basis of a major paradigm shift. In some people, they are sometimes in danger of being overly fearful instead of wearing the armor of God and giving God the glory for feeling confident and courageous. The Word says "cast not off your confidence which has great reward" (Hebrews 10:35). It is God's will that we are sometimes weak in order to humble ourselves, and have mercy on the weak, but not become cowardly. Some may be physically weak because they are unwilling to exercise, and they think gluttony is the allowable sin. A wrong type of weakness can manifest in this way. Some are weak because of legitimate health problems which they have no power over. A person who wins souls may be often in mastery in many areas of life and able to achieve many other goals.
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All the strongholds, the images of people that Satan tries to say didn't treat us right, to that we must say, "Do not talk to it and it will not talk to you." God says, "talk to Me and I'll talk to you."
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We contrast God the creator with Satan the destroyer.
The Lord: Creator, Friend, Teacher, Protector, Provider.
"Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil." Hebrews 2: 14, 15
To heal, we must build up Jesus in our heart and mind.
We contrast this with the furnace of accusation, Satan, whom the Word says seeks to devour you.
"Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour." 1 Peter 5:8
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"For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us." 2 Corinthians 1:20
In Jesus all the promises of God are yes. I understand the positive pure state of Yes does not come without watchfulness, self-awareness and stillness, which is really just the main latch on self-control. Observing oneself is an easy latch on oneself to get this better control.
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Some thoughts on social relationships and the overcoming lifestyle:
1) When Jesus said that no greater love has another person than to lay down his life for his friends (John 15:13), we should not cheat Him and think because we
are not being called to martyrdom, we have a right to ignore this verse. That is probably the chief sin of much of the Christian church of all time. We have to remember that we can lose our lives in the worldly sense, in worldly eyes, by visiting those in prison, by giving away our extra coat, helping the unattractive and so on. And least a person think that they have to do these things in their own power, God Himself will give us the power to do this kind of virtue, and perhaps even be blessed in this life by doing it, but perhaps not, perhaps the blessing is only for the next.
2) The Biblical concept of "godspeed" and "quickening" are important. The nature of the change is an energetic change, has some manifestation in something that is tangible in our real, measurable world. God can give us competence to do what we could not do before, but it does take patience, and applied prayer.
3) Power is commensurate with one's own ability to tolerate other's destructiveness, one does not need to be destructive.
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We have to realize that the earth somewhat is the way it is for a reason. That it cannot improve tremendously for everyone, but for ourselves it can, and the way we get it to improve for ourselves is to be also focused on improving it for the people who accept Jesus and are His sheep. This mindset helps create a revival and keeps local churches healthy.
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Jesus often taught us to sleep not. If we look at this in a brain science type way,
we can say a wakeful man realizes how he is constructed, how others are constructed, what is possible, and what is not possible.
The satanic part of the brain is the part that accuses others, ourselves and God, as well as events or objects.
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The truth is a multivariate equation that is so complex that it just keeps opening up more sub-equations of proof in many of its variables - but the overall averages clarifies to Christianity, at least for those who are "elected" to be Christian.
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We see these weeds which choke out the Word of God. How shall they be plucked out? To lift the Word of God to its rightful place! By defending it, on its highest level.
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When we sense God loves all people, we can praise God in Spirit and in a truthful, righteous way.
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The word love repeated in our mind at times can guide us, can even help us create the energy of love. Try focusing on love and stillness at times versus spiritual warfare, when the latter gives us too much stress.
How many times can we say the word love, as we focus on our breath? Or, for how many minutes?
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To get miracles from God, make ourselves precious to God by doing things which always show extraordinary love.
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Greed does not allow any true enjoyment from any financial or physical gain.
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Faith as a grain of mustard seed that all the time we put into spirituality will pay off, will be fruitful, not only in the spiritual nature but in hard work to support ourselves well. The Word of God makes much reference to the importance of being a good householder, and working to be the best of one's abilities to pay one's way through life.