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How to Forgive....

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Moriah_Conquering_Wind

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If we aren't moved by what we need from that person we can see them as they are without sinning against them.
If we do not dynamically engage with others, dancing the dance of needing and being needed, we do not see anyone as he truly bes, and we end up sinning against them most gravely indeed. We can start overguarding ourselves so fearful of opening the door to harm that we turn our backs on valuable feedback that matters. When we start counting an authentic expression of appreciation as seductive "flattery" -- or an authentic response of distress or dismay as some kind of sinister plot to manipulate -- we have cut ourselves off from not just the humanity of the other person but from our own. The pride of self-sufficiency frequently masquerades as spiritual confidence ... and the one caught in it will always be the last to know.

We can know that that person will strike or treat us badly and not allow any of it to get to us and we will never 'extend' our soul to anyone for approval or acceptance but God.
If we refuse to engage dynamically and authentically with others so as to permit them to touch and affect us, we have no hope for touching and affecting them -- not for ourselves in genuine relationship, and not for God in genuine or useful ministry. God made the human species to be interdependent and characterized it in its REDEEMED form (His own) as a BODY of many parts, all needing one another, for a reason.

Once you only 'care' what God thinks. People will just be people and you will live and move from the Holy Spirit in you.
The Holy Spirit living and moving through us does not divorce or distance or detach us from either our own humanity or that of others. Rather the Holy Spirit grounds us, fills us, deepens us into what it means to be fully human as God intended human to be, with all its passion, concern, meaning, energy, sincerity, earnestness, authenticity. God did not make us to be angels or aliens, not disembodied spirits with neither infirmity nor struggle nor sweat nor emotion, but men and women, human beings, as fully corporeal and messy as intelligent, self-aware, visionary and ennobled.

This in fact illustrates the fullest meaning of the INCARNATION of Christ -- God BECOMING Man, living as a Man, walking among men and women, touching, healing, comforting, encouraging, teaching, enlightening, awakening, FEELING with us, alongside us, hungering as we do, tiring as we do, thirsting as we do, needing human companionship and support as we do... Remember His plaintive pleas in Gethsemane for His closest friends to watch and pray WITH Him as He sorrowed? He NEEDED people in that fateful hour where the clarity of the Father's face first began to be withdrawn and sent Him into confusion and self-doubt. When He returned from the grave to life, He did not return as a ghost or disembodied "above it all" spirit -- but retained the human form in all its dusty, gritty, messy physicality and corporeality, now imbued with Life Eternal. And His plan does not point to some cloudsitting, harp-strumming, airsniffing upturned nose "above it all" existence for us when life here bes through, but to a new heavens and a new earth where His redeemed will dwell forever in corporeal forms made to last for eternity as they first came forth from His hand, fresh in Eden. This should say something about the value with which God invests His "messy" physical, corporeal, needy, longing, hungry, writhing material Creation. And while Moriah bes not typically the one to anthropocentrize either spirituality or salvation, it does seem that this reality should mean something special to human beings and suggest to them not to despise the image of God in which He has seen fit to create them.

To detach some mythic hyperspiritual "above it all" ism from the gritty realities of messy feelings and needs and longings of the human heart constitutes the original sin and fallacy of the classical Hellenic gnostic sects with their separation between the "spiritual" as pure and good and the "material" as corrupt and fallen and evil. The book of Genesis teaches a much different reality though: God CREATED all that messy material-ness in the soil and trees and fish and rocks and plants and birds and reptiles and mammals and humans, CREATED it to be that way, all physical and messy and full of needs and feelings and longings that way, and pronounced it GOOD. How DARE anyone, ANYONE, in the name of religion, suggest we exceed the original good plan of the Creator from the foundation of the world, to which the very route of salvation and reclamation He devised bes made to return us.

To live encased in spiritual latex suits, never actually touching nor being touched by others for fear of contamination, only reinforces the lies the abusive spirits loose in the world try to program into us: that nobody else has any real feelings, that others' feelings don't matter, that we and our feelings can never really matter to others, that nothing we do or say can ever really touch anyone else or affect them, etc. May God have mercy on those suffocating under these lies and deliver us all from those who contribute toward spreading them, deliberately or unknowingly.
 
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Tsadde

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What does it mean, then, please, if not this?


Excellent insight, this ... but if forgiveness does not require acting like the offense never happened then what exactly does it entail? Please enlighten Moriah.


Like you I would ask "Where is the forgetting button?"

Just because I have forgiven a thief for robbing me and do not require him to pay me back does not mean I shouldn't lock the door next time. Knowing that my brother is tempted in this area I would do him no favour by putting temption in his way either.

Or, to put it another way, I would not allow an unrepentent child abuser to babysit my child for a week. That's not turning the other cheek. That's inviting the wolf into the fold.
 
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Moriah_Conquering_Wind

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Like you I would ask "Where is the forgetting button?"

Just because I have forgiven a thief for robbing me and do not require him to pay me back does not mean I shouldn't lock the door next time. Knowing that my brother is tempted in this area I would do him no favour by putting temption in his way either.

Or, to put it another way, I would not allow an unrepentent child abuser to babysit my child for a week. That's not turning the other cheek. That's inviting the wolf into the fold.

Ahhhh OK, gotcha. Yes, that part it already knows (and knew) ... when you said something about forgiveness not meaning acting like the offense never happened, it thought you meant in terms of one's attitude and how one treats the person who wronged them.
 
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Elijah2

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Our Lord Jesus Christ made the forgiveness of our sins conditional upon our willingness to forgive the sins of others, alive or dead, and to love them. He doesn’t just forgive us because we have forgiven others, but solely because of His great mercy.

“For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matt. 6:14,15)!

These are consuming words that confront us continually, because most of us have anger, bitterness and hatred in an unforgiving heart. At times our pride doesn’t like to be told that our sins would not be forgiven, and we could say, “Who does HE think HE is?”

At times our complacency tend to make us believe that it doesn't matter what we believe, or what we do, because our Lord Jesus Christ is so loving that He wouldn't withhold forgiveness from us, or not allow us to enter His Kingdom. Such beliefs are not consistent with Scripture.

Due to much lack of understanding and knowledge of His Word, and sometimes complacency it becomes a challenge for us to tell ourself this uncompromising truth, and we can perish for this lack of understanding and knowledge.

We know, who we are in our Lord Jesus Christ, and He who is in us, via the Holy Spirit, will show those things that we need to face and handle. Deep down in us are many hurts and all our Lord Jesus Christ wants to do for us, is to cleanse us, and heal us from “any root of bitterness that will spring up from our heart causing further trouble” (see Heb. 12:15).

Bitterness is like a small root that grows into a large tree, which springs up in our heart and overshadows even our deepest relationship with others; it affects our “soul” deep down. A “bitter root” can be formed from simple hurts and offences that turn into disappointments, then into resentfulness, and then into anger as we nurture our hurts and offences. Any form of abuse takes this even further and deeper into our “soul”.

Our Lord Jesus Christ gave us a staggering warning about ‘forgiveness”, and if we refuse to forgive others, then He said that He will also refuse to forgive us.

Our Lord Jesus Christ's forgiveness of sin is not the direct result of our forgiving others, but it is based on our own realisation what really forgiveness means.

When we ask our Lord Jesus Christ to forgive us for our sins, and we should also ask Him to show us all those people who we haven’t forgiven, who had hurt, offended, wronged and abused us.

Whatever we may think or believe, we need to know that we have to forgive those people who have sinned against us, because our forgiveness is essential to our “Freedom in Christ”.

Through our forgiveness, it will remove those spiritual blocks placed there by Satan and his forces that have been robbing us from our blessings. Once the word of forgiveness is spoken aloud in open prayer, Satan's power that had been controlling us through our sin of unforgiveness will be broken, and then our steps to our “Freedom in Christ” can begin to take place.

There are a number of steps, and as we walk through the steps to our “Freedom in Christ” it will enable us to “heal our broken hearts”, “be set free from captivity”, “be healed of sicknesses and infirmities”, and “cast out our demons”.

Would you like to know those steps?

Be blessed in Jesus' Name.
 
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Elijah2

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What is forgetting? If I forgive Hitler for what he did to my family do I deny the halocaust ever happened? Do I somehow blot out those years from my memory?

Forgiveness has got nothing to do with "denying". Forgiveness is letting it all go and love those who hurt and abused you.

Of course you remember, BUT---when you can finally say that you love those people, then you will "remember no more".

If any Christian has really learnt to forgive, then Corris Ten Boom is the finest example of forgiveness and love.

Read her story, because she was there in the "Holocaust".

Be blessed in Jesus' Name.
 
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Tsadde

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Oh deary me, I remember our Lord Jesus Christ saying that when HE forgives, HE remembers no more.

Be blessed in Jesus' Name.


I am sorry. I interpreted your "deary me" as a judgement on those who cannot help remembering what happened in the past. I thought you were inferring that remembering a past event is a sign of unforgiveness.
 
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Elijah2

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Learning To Forgive by Corrie Ten Boon

There he was... one of the cruellest guards in the concentration camp. And now he asked her, “Will you forgive me?”

It was in a church in Munich that I saw him, a balding heavyset man in a grey overcoat, a brown felt hat clutched between his hands. People were filling out of the basement room where I had just spoken, moving along the rows of wooden chairs to the door at the rear. It was 1947 and I had come from Holland to defeated Germany with the message that God forgives.

It was the truth they needed most to hear in that bitter, bombed-out land, and I gave them my favourite mental picture. Maybe because the sea is never far from a Hollander's mind, I liked to think that that's where forgiven sins were thrown. "When we confess our sins," I said, "God casts them into the deepest ocean, gone forever."

The solemn faces stared back at me, not quite daring to believe. There were never questions after a talk in Germany in 1947. People stood up in silence, in silence collected their wraps, and in silence left the room.

And that's when 1 saw him, working his way forward against the others. One moment I saw the overcoat and the brown hat; the next, a blue uniform and a visored cap with its skull and crossbones. It came back with a rush: the huge room with its harsh overhead lights, the pathetic pile of dresses and shoes in the centre of the floor, the shame of walking naked past this man. I could see my sister's frail form ahead of me, ribs sharp beneath the parchment skin. Betsie, how thin you were!

Betsie and I had been arrested for concealing Jews in our home during the Nazi occupation of Holland; this man had been a guard at Ravensbruck concentration camp where we were sent.

Now he was in front of me, hand thrust out: "A fine message, fraulein! How good it is to know that, as you say, all our sins are at the bottom of the sea!"

And I, who had spoken so glibly of forgiveness, fumbled in my pocketbook rather than take that hand. He would not remember me, of course-how could he remember one prisoner among those thousands of women?

But I remembered him and the leather crop swinging from his belt. It was the first time since my release that I had been face to face with one of my captors and my blood seemed to freeze.

"You mentioned Ravensbruck in your talk," he was saying. I was a guard in there." No, he did not remember me.

"But since that time," he went on; I have become a Christian. I know that God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did there, but I would like to hear it from your lips as well. Fraulein"again the hand came out, "will you forgive me?"

And I stood there-I whose sins had every day to be forgiven, and could not. Betsie had died in that place, could he erase her slow terrible death simply for the asking?

It could not have been many seconds that he stood there, hand held out, but to me it seemed hours as I wrestled with the most difficult thing I had ever had to do.

For I had to do it, I knew that. The message that God forgives has a prior condition: that we forgive those who have injured us. If you do not forgive men their trespasses," Jesus says, "neither will your Father in Heaven forgive your trespasses."

I knew it not only as a commandment of God, but also as a daily experience. Since the end of the war I had had a home in Holland for victims of Nazi brutality. Those who were able to forgive their former enemies were able also to return to the outside world and rebuild their lives, no matter what the physical scars. Those who nursed their bitterness remained invalids. It was as simple and as horrible as that.

And still I stood there with the coldness clutching my heart. But forgiveness is not an emotion-I knew that too. Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart. "Jesus, help me!" I prayed silently. Ican lift my hand. I can do that much. You supply the feeling."

And so woodenly, mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me. And as I did, an incredible thing took place. The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes.

I forgive you, brother!" I cried, "With all my heart! "

For a long moment we grasped each other's hands, the former guard and the former prisoner. I had never known God's love so intensely as I did then.

With Corrie's willingness came God's power to forgive her former captor.

When you and I are willing to see our need for God's forgiveness, He is willing and able to forgive all our sins. The Bible says that "all have sinned and come short of the glory of God" (Rom. 3:23) and that "the wages of sin is death" (Rom. 6:23). But it goes on to explain that "God demonstrates his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for US" (Rom. 4:8).

Through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God offers us His forgiveness. If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved” (Rom. 10:9).
 
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Angeloffire

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If we do not dynamically engage with others, dancing the dance of needing and being needed, we do not see anyone as he truly bes, and we end up sinning against them most gravely indeed. We can start overguarding ourselves so fearful of opening the door to harm that we turn our backs on valuable feedback that matters. When we start counting an authentic expression of appreciation as seductive "flattery" -- or an authentic response of distress or dismay as some kind of sinister plot to manipulate -- we have cut ourselves off from not just the humanity of the other person but from our own. The pride of self-sufficiency frequently masquerades as spiritual confidence ... and the one caught in it will always be the last to know.


Seduction and deceit are always a game. In this I agree with you and we will always end up deceiving ourselves in the attempt to manipulate others to get what we need.

[If we refuse to engage dynamically and authentically with others so as to permit them to touch and affect us, we have no hope for touching and affecting them -- not for ourselves in genuine relationship, and not for God in genuine or useful ministry. God made the human species to be interdependent and characterized it in its REDEEMED form (His own) as a BODY of many parts, all needing one another, for a reason.

I do not see it that way. If you only move when God does, you won't be using your mind but will move only from inspiration from Him.

When you 'need' from someone you place a 'huge' burdan on them.



The Holy Spirit living and moving through us does not divorce or distance or detach us from either our own humanity or that of others. Rather the Holy Spirit grounds us, fills us, deepens us into what it means to be fully human as God intended human to be, with all its passion, concern, meaning, energy, sincerity, earnestness, authenticity. God did not make us to be angels or aliens, not disembodied spirits with neither infirmity nor struggle nor sweat nor emotion, but men and women, human beings, as fully corporeal and messy as intelligent, self-aware, visionary and ennobled.

There is only the Spirit of Truth or the spirit of error to draw from. (1 John 4:6)

Mankind was only give the perrogative of 'choice'.

In life you are either allowing one or the other to move you. Though this may occur simultaneously as we see in the example of Peter and Jesus, when one moment he was the "Rock" and the next the voice of satan.

There is only good or evil, only black or white, right or wrong. A thought, an action can only be either of God or not. So look at each thought....who did it come from.....?

This in fact illustrates the fullest meaning of the INCARNATION of Christ -- God BECOMING Man, living as a Man, walking among men and women, touching, healing, comforting, encouraging, teaching, enlightening, awakening, FEELING with us, alongside us, hungering as we do, tiring as we do, thirsting as we do, needing human companionship and support as we do... Remember His plaintive pleas in Gethsemane for His closest friends to watch and pray WITH Him as He sorrowed? He NEEDED people in that fateful hour where the clarity of the Father's face first began to be withdrawn and sent Him into confusion and self-doubt. When He returned from the grave to life, He did not return as a ghost or disembodied "above it all" spirit -- but retained the human form in all its dusty, gritty, messy physicality and corporeality, now imbued with Life Eternal. And His plan does not point to some cloudsitting, harp-strumming, airsniffing upturned nose "above it all" existence for us when life here bes through, but to a new heavens and a new earth where His redeemed will dwell forever in corporeal forms made to last for eternity as they first came forth from His hand, fresh in Eden. This should say something about the value with which God invests His "messy" physical, corporeal, needy, longing, hungry, writhing material Creation. And while Moriah bes not typically the one to anthropocentrize either spirituality or salvation, it does seem that this reality should mean something special to human beings and suggest to them not to despise the image of God in which He has seen fit to create them.

All abandoned Jesus on that day when He died. It is wrong to get what we need from others. It may come through others and be the Holy Spirit in them speaking to us, but we will discern the difference.

I must never ask anyone to save me, to heal me, to bring joy to me, or hate to my heart, to hand them my past, my future, my soul. I must always know that I have only ONE Creator who takes care of me and live only unto ONE God.

To detach some mythic hyperspiritual "above it all" ism from the gritty realities of messy feelings and needs and longings of the human heart constitutes the original sin and fallacy of the classical Hellenic gnostic sects with their separation between the "spiritual" as pure and good and the "material" as corrupt and fallen and evil. The book of Genesis teaches a much different reality though: God CREATED all that messy material-ness in the soil and trees and fish and rocks and plants and birds and reptiles and mammals and humans, CREATED it to be that way, all physical and messy and full of needs and feelings and longings that way, and pronounced it GOOD. How DARE anyone, ANYONE, in the name of religion, suggest we exceed the original good plan of the Creator from the foundation of the world, to which the very route of salvation and reclamation He devised bes made to return us.

I agree that we should honor God's hand, but fallacy comes into play when we decide what it is with our corrupt minds instead of having it given to us through divine revelation.

To live encased in spiritual latex suits, never actually touching nor being touched by others for fear of contamination, only reinforces the lies the abusive spirits loose in the world try to program into us: that nobody else has any real feelings, that others' feelings don't matter, that we and our feelings can never really matter to others, that nothing we do or say can ever really touch anyone else or affect them, etc. May God have mercy on those suffocating under these lies and deliver us all from those who contribute toward spreading them, deliberately or unknowingly.

I am not saying that 'feelings' don't matter, but each person's 'feelings' are between them and God. If I base all I do on other's feelings, then when they are moved incorrectly from the spirit of error, I will be too because I am moving from any feeling.

It isn't cold at all. It allows each person to live freely unto God as He meant it to be.

We are not to judge or control each other to get what we need, but rather commit our ways unto God and overlook, be patient, kind and obey our Father.

To encourage Truth in anyone must be our goal. Jesus said that that was why he came. (John 18:37)

It would be very wrong for me to encourage others to depend on me in a way that removes them from God who is their only Savior.


:) thanks for making it easier to read :clap:
 
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Angeloffire

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Our Lord Jesus Christ made the forgiveness of our sins conditional upon our willingness to forgive the sins of others, alive or dead, and to love them. He doesn’t just forgive us because we have forgiven others, but solely because of His great mercy.

“For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matt. 6:14,15)!

.

When you think of the implication that we can ONLY be forgive IF we forgive, you realise how huge this really is.

There will be no EXCUSE big enough to get around this. We must, as children of God, be able to easily forgive.

This is either life or death for us as you pointed out.

And as you consider the shortcomings we all have and the odvious realisation that we will no doubt and most likely all offend someone somehow someway in our lives, possibly daily, we must reach true understanding on the issue of forgiveness.
 
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Tsadde

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Learning To Forgive by Corrie Ten Boon

There he was... one of the cruellest guards in the concentration camp. And now he asked her, “Will you forgive me?”

And that's when 1 saw him, working his way forward against the others. One moment I saw the overcoat and the brown hat; the next, a blue uniform and a visored cap with its skull and crossbones. It came back with a rush: the huge room with its harsh overhead lights, the pathetic pile of dresses and shoes in the centre of the floor, the shame of walking naked past this man. I could see my sister's frail form ahead of me, ribs sharp beneath the parchment skin. Betsie, how thin you were!

Betsie and I had been arrested for concealing Jews in our home during the Nazi occupation of Holland; this man had been a guard at Ravensbruck concentration camp where we were sent.

...

But I remembered him and the leather crop swinging from his belt. It was the first time since my release that I had been face to face with one of my captors and my blood seemed to freeze.

...



Obviously Ten Boom did not forget after she forgave the man for here she is writing about him and his crime for all to read.

Nevertheless it is a fine story of forgiveness.

I have been told that forgiving someone means we never ever mention it again. I question that. If that were the case would forgiving someone also preclude warning others about them?
 
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Angeloffire

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Also, Elijah2 thank you for the post on Corrie Ten Boom. It has been years since I read that book.

Sometimes when people try and hurt me or I get caught up in my own flesh and hurt someone I am reminded of Star Wars and the villian Darth VAder, "Come to the dark side Luke"....(lol).

To respond to someone elses wrong with a wrong like unforgiveness, punishment, hate, spite, etc. is to go to the dark side with the afflicter/demon and join him as one for that moment.

People in general often use a system of reward/punishment to control others. We learn it from our parents and it actually is witchcraft/controlling others. Sadly most everyone does it, most don't realise that they do.

That's just another reason to live unto God only! People who do that simply cannot control you with that game and you will see it in yourself and be able to repent quickly.

Blessings,

Angel of Fire
 
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Moriah_Conquering_Wind

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:) thanks for making it easier to read :clap:
please don't do that. it means having to copy/paste the entire freaking thing by hand to respond. next time please give consideration to others and use the proper quote tags.

now then.

Seduction and deceit are always a game. In this I agree with you and we will always end up deceiving ourselves in the attempt to manipulate others to get what we need.
You missed its point entirely though. Once again:
When we start counting an authentic expression of appreciation as seductive "flattery" -- or an authentic response of distress or dismay as some kind of sinister plot to manipulate -- we have cut ourselves off from not just the humanity of the other person but from our own.
You seemed to focus on actual seduction and deceit as the message here when in reality it meant to illustrate what happens when we read those INTO someone else in place of what THEY have actually offered.

[If we refuse to engage dynamically and authentically with others so as to permit them to touch and affect us, we have no hope for touching and affecting them -- not for ourselves in genuine relationship, and not for God in genuine or useful ministry. God made the human species to be interdependent and characterized it in its REDEEMED form (His own) as a BODY of many parts, all needing one another, for a reason.

I do not see it that way. If you only move when God does, you won't be using your mind but will move only from inspiration from Him.
Then you would be mistaken. Believing that it even bes possible to do anything from within some imaginarily "pure" hermetically sealed vacuum that does not include your own mind in the process constitutes the absolute WORST folly befalling the human species ESPECIALLY among its more spiritually inclined specimens. Upon WHAT do you suppose God's "inspiration" to be descending, if not your mind? It bes impossible to remove your own mind and being from the equation. This bes an absolute lie and leads to the worst delusion of all: spiritual pride, wherein the individual loses the capacity to distinguish between his flesh and the moving of God because he imagines most foolishly that his own being can be removed from the equation. But God does not magically eliminate you from the equation when He seeks to work in and through you.

Your concept of inspiration contains error leading you to these conclusions. It strongly suggests you investigate this matter before you become even worse ensnared. Take heart, you bes not alone -- many others suffer this delusion as well, and then become just as puzzled and distressed when their efforts bear no fruit or worse bear wrong fruit. This delusion precipitates a multitude of failures and indeed can suspend your entire walk with God until it gets sorted. Unfortunately it can also cause an absolute state of spiritual anosognosis, too. :(

When you 'need' from someone you place a 'huge' burdan on them.
God created humans to be an interdependent species. The problem does not lie in experiencing need, in needing others and being needed. The problem lies in unrealistic expectations that can arise from the sense of need and lack of communication and open negotiation with regard to meeting those needs. Human beings have been toxically -- dare we even say SATANICALLY?? -- programmed to regard need as a horrible flaw, a toxic evil, etc. something to be shunned. But adopting these attitudes suffocates us and prevents us from being fully human.

Jesus left us an example of what it means to enter flesh and become fully human, to FEEL FOR AND FEEL ALONGSIDE us as our High Priest touched by the feelings of our infirmities -- all our needy, broken places. We can do all things through Him who strengthens us, in particular where this applies to ministering to others. It costs us nothing.

Ironic that in one breath you can claim to have some kind of "pure" inspiration from the Holy Spirit which goes so far as to REMOVE YOURSELF from the equation -- yet in the very next breath shrink back from involvement in a way that can only indicate the undeniable presence of self not wanting to risk feeling "burdened". Well, you do whatever pleases you then, whatever you feel YOU need. It will continue speaking of what God designs for us.


Moriah said:
The Holy Spirit living and moving through us does not divorce or distance or detach us from either our own humanity or that of others. Rather the Holy Spirit grounds us, fills us, deepens us into what it means to be fully human as God intended human to be, with all its passion, concern, meaning, energy, sincerity, earnestness, authenticity. God did not make us to be angels or aliens, not disembodied spirits with neither infirmity nor struggle nor sweat nor emotion, but men and women, human beings, as fully corporeal and messy as intelligent, self-aware, visionary and ennobled.

There is only the Spirit of Truth or the spirit of error to draw from. (1 John 4:6) Mankind was only give the perrogative of 'choice'. In life you are either allowing one or the other to move you. Though this may occur simultaneously as we see in the example of Peter and Jesus, when one moment he was the "Rock" and the next the voice of satan.
There is only good or evil, only black or white, right or wrong. A thought, an action can only be either of God or not. So look at each thought....who did it come from.....?
Non sequitur. Will you please show what part of Moriah's original statement you intended this to respond to? It does not see anywhere in its statement quoted above this one where it has denied this or anything that would call this forth as a response. Black/white, all/nothing, either/or thinking bes either childish literalism or deviant extremism; in either case it certainly does not constitute the mind of Christ. Paul states that when we bes children we speak like children, think like children, act like children. Take everything literally, take everything concrete, imagine this to be superior to how adults think. But when we grow up, we put childish things away.

God created man in HIS image. An action, a thought, can be simply that: from man, of man, partaking of humanity as God made it. You cannot erase humanity from the plan of salvation or from the equation of human interactions. The attempt to do so reads frankly as insane and untenable. The rest of your post reads as frightened nonsense. If you so despise engagement with humanity then by all means, kindly never put yourself forward as one intending to in any way minister to human beings. You cannot, by willing it or insisting upon it, erase your entire human being self and replace it with Pure God. It simply cannot be done. Like the rest of us, you bes stuck in this flesh, this world, this life, till the next one comes or until you die. Anyone who cannot cope with that has no business hanging out a shingle or passing themselves off as a minister of any sort. God pronounced His corporeal, physical, material creation GOOD.

All abandoned Jesus on that day when He died. It is wrong to get what we need from others.

Incorrect. Not only bes it right and good for human beings to minister to one another, to "feed" one another, but this in fact bes the very ordained order of God Himself in making the human species. Deny this if you insist, but it changes nothing.

It may come through others and be the Holy Spirit in them speaking to us, but we will discern the difference.

OK then YOU explain why Christ inaugurated the Church, His Body. YOU explain the purpose of ministry, human beings connecting with other human beings to worship together, pray, praise, study, encourage, uplift, edify, heal. YOU explain why God does not just wipe all humans out of the way and sit around on earth Himself speaking directly to everyone so that no one can possibly make a mistake or get their messy monkey brain in the middle of it. Because your model not only makes no sense -- considering you JUST contradicted yourself immediately by stating first it bes "wrong" to get what we need from others THEN immediately saying it "may" come through them -- but it simply does not work. God does not magically erase us in the process of using us!!! And anyone imagining He does bes confused in the extreme!!!

I must never ask anyone to save me, to heal me, to bring joy to me, or hate to my heart, to hand them my past, my future, my soul.

No one ever suggested this. You made this up in your own imagination. Moriah never stated this nor even suggested or hinted at it. Wow, do you always do such convoluted gymnastics to avoid seeing what others have actually said???

I agree that we should honor God's hand, but fallacy comes into play when we decide what it is with our corrupt minds instead of having it given to us through divine revelation.
The real problem here being that your writings seem to indicate you imagine everything coming into YOUR mind to constitute divine revelation but everything which comes into someone ELSE's mind to constitute "corrupt fallacy". Those who have failed to demonstrate any sense of objectivity whatsoever about such things simply have no business making these types of pronouncements, because they corrupt said notions themselves by automatically assigning to themselves an imaginary hermetically sealed chamber in which all their thoughts come directly from God without passing through their OWN BRAINS (which bes impossible, again, if God touches you He touches YOU which means He impresses YOUR mind, YOUR brain, YOUR YOU CANNOT BE REMOVED FROM THE EQUATION NO MATTER WHAT) but also imagining that everyone else must be "dirtying" the process somehow by involving their own minds. Again, this bes not religion nor divine revelation. This bes the sure sign of psychosis and delusion of grandeur.

As it stated before:
How DARE anyone, ANYONE, in the name of religion, suggest we exceed the original good plan of the Creator from the foundation of the world, to which the very route of salvation and reclamation He devised bes made to return us.

And once more because it happens to be true:
To live encased in spiritual latex suits, never actually touching nor being touched by others for fear of contamination, only reinforces the lies the abusive spirits loose in the world try to program into us: that nobody else has any real feelings, that others' feelings don't matter, that we and our feelings can never really matter to others, that nothing we do or say can ever really touch anyone else or affect them, etc. May God have mercy on those suffocating under these lies and deliver us all from those who contribute toward spreading them, deliberately or unknowingly.

 
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Moriah_Conquering_Wind

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When you think of the implication that we can ONLY be forgive IF we forgive, you realise how huge this really is.

There will be no EXCUSE big enough to get around this. We must, as children of God, be able to easily forgive.
Lest wanton dealers of offense get too comfortable with this proposition, let it also be pointed out that God intends to remove from His Kingdom ALL who offend, and Christ stated explicitly that it would be better for a millstone to be tied around the neck drowning them in the sea than for anyone to cause one of HIS little ones to stumble.

It cuts both ways. Offenders don't get to dance away going nyah nyah, we get the kingdom and you don't. If anything, their penalty shall be even more severe.
 
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Moriah_Conquering_Wind

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People in general often use a system of reward/punishment to control others. We learn it from our parents and it actually is witchcraft/controlling others. Sadly most everyone does it, most don't realise that they do.
Oh the irony. Let's not forget that frequently those who engage in the control freak game will constantly seek to deflect attention away from themselves by attempting to point the finger at someone else. Hiding in plain sight bes one of the oldest and most pathetic human games out there. Or "name your blame" ... just do it with a finger extended in any direction but home....good grief, does anyone really fall for that crap anymore? :scratch: Sometimes a pipe may be just a pipe, yeah, but sometimes? whomever smelt it ... dealt it....
 
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Elijah2

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Learning To Forgive by Corrie Ten Boon

There he was... one of the cruellest guards in the concentration camp. And now he asked her, “Will you forgive me?”

And that's when 1 saw him, working his way forward against the others. One moment I saw the overcoat and the brown hat; the next, a blue uniform and a visored cap with its skull and crossbones. It came back with a rush: the huge room with its harsh overhead lights, the pathetic pile of dresses and shoes in the centre of the floor, the shame of walking naked past this man. I could see my sister's frail form ahead of me, ribs sharp beneath the parchment skin. Betsie, how thin you were!

Betsie and I had been arrested for concealing Jews in our home during the Nazi occupation of Holland; this man had been a guard at Ravensbruck concentration camp where we were sent.

...

But I remembered him and the leather crop swinging from his belt. It was the first time since my release that I had been face to face with one of my captors and my blood seemed to freeze.

...



Obviously Ten Boom did not forget after she forgave the man for here she is writing about him and his crime for all to read.

Nevertheless it is a fine story of forgiveness.

I have been told that forgiving someone means we never ever mention it again. I question that. If that were the case would forgiving someone also preclude warning others about them?

I am sorry T, but you have a doubting spirit, which is no wonder you are so confused about forgiveness.

Corrie Ten Boom is sharing it with others so that they can understand what forgiveness is.

When you forgive and love that person, you will never DOUBT AGAIN!

Be blessed in Jesus' Name.
 
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Elijah2

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When you think of the implication that we can ONLY be forgive IF we forgive, you realise how huge this really is.

There will be no EXCUSE big enough to get around this. We must, as children of God, be able to easily forgive.

This is either life or death for us as you pointed out.

And as you consider the shortcomings we all have and the odvious realisation that we will no doubt and most likely all offend someone somehow someway in our lives, possibly daily, we must reach true understanding on the issue of forgiveness.

Removing that fishhook from our skin is the hardest and the only way to do so, is to love that person as well. Many say, they forgive, but they don't love. And secondly, they need to also forgive themself!:)

Be blessed in Jesus' Name.
 
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