No one thinks the Church is a building, unless i missed that part. I didn't read the whole thread.
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Do you ever look around at church and wonder what the heck is going on here?
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Waxwing
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I read Francis Chans book Crazy Love and although I loved the book, I kinda had a similar reaction to Church. I mean every Sunday people head to church for an hour, don't say a word to anyone on the way in and out (besides greeter) climb into their SUV/Cars and head to the mall, home for tv watching, movies etc and thats that. Yeah somehow its got to more all encompassing than this. Don't have a lot of answers but I come up with similar questions.
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- Mar 4, 2012
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The truth is, there really isn't any hope for us to actually change the entire picture. It's too big, and has gone on too long, and too many people, like in the Matrix, have a vested interest in keeping it that way. They don't want any trouble. They don't know what we're really here for.
They also don't realize that the church is not a corporate thing. It's not an institution. Rather, each individual is attached to Christ, or they are not at all. The church isn't what we 'see' with our human eyes. It's the spirits beneath, and as Paul told Timothy, 'The Lord knows those who are His.' If we think of Jesus' called out people as being a human institution, then we will be duped into 'assuming' that everyone who attends an assembly is a Christian. Remember that there were demon possessed people sitting in the Synagogue when Jesus came, and only His presence exposed them for who they really were.
Why would demons want to sit through a church service? Because they want to destroy the real purpose of the church, to confuse it, dilute it, strip it of its spiritual power, and divert it from the war against the very demons who are sitting there. There is no place on earth that the devil wants to be more than in the pulpit of the church, dictating and reinventing the image and calling of the church of Christ in the earth.
So the only real hope we have is that Satan stops being nice to the church, and start attacking it brutally, so that the chaff and false doctrines can be weeded out, and then the church will rediscover its true, original purpose again. It's the only way - except maybe if God graciously pours out His Spirit in a revival again. But that still won't remove the false believers and imitators.
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Brother, I am not sure about whether persecution will be needed, perhaps you are right. But there can be no doubt that Ezekiel 36 and 37 are intricutly tied to today and are prophecies for the last church under the new covenant, a church that has blasphemed His holy name wherever they have gone. Am I too harsh sounding? That was God's exact words.
Think about it, with persecution, will we be any more equipped to walk in purity, or just more serious about what has up till now led few into a walk of peace? In Ezekiel, God speaks and tells us that He is going to sanctify His great name, which we have blasphemed whereever we have gone, and listen....
"the heathen shal know that I am the Lord when I shall be sanctified IN YOU before their eyes."
He is just getting warmed up, and proceeds to run down the list of benefits that the new covenant was supposed to do for us in our walks, Finally He gets to the the place where He tells us that he will take out of us our heart of stone and give us a heart of flesh, a living heart, and them the promise I love...
"and I will cause you to walk in my statutes and do them."
There it is, the promise we have been satisfied without, the promise of obedience! An obedient heart! THAT is the new covenant, nothing less. Why did God do away with the old covenant? He told us:
"Becaue they continued not in it..."
Well, is that not the same with what we have been calling the new?
We obey as sporadically under the new as under the old. We are still found trying to clean our cups from outside.
And what will the world think of these virgins exposing the light within them for all to see? They will look in amazement and say that the place which was a den of briars now looks like the garden of Eden. Will this happen? Indeed, we are on the precipace of glory, guys. The bride of Christ is about to become without spot of wrinkle, right before our eyes,
It boggles our minds as to how though. We are so varied, so diverse, so....fleshly? And what if the flesh is reckoned dead? We will become one again, as mind blowing as it seems, but it is important that we realize how. We will not become one with each other for it si foolish to think we can without being one first with God. Do we see? We have been like the workers on the tower of Babel, each speaking his own language and telling others to come warm by his fire. Pitiful. We become one with Jesus, put on His nature as we cast off our fleshly robes and get a robe for the wedding feast, and THEN we find out that we sre automatically one with others who are one with Him as well. We must.....must become new creatures for this to happen. It all starts there.
God is not finished, He then warns us and tells us that He does not this amazing revival of our souls, of HIS church, for our sakes and reminds us again that we have blasphemed...ouch, what a word to choose.... blasphemed His holy name by our churchianity and lack of holiness and worse, lack of concern for our personal holiness...it simply was not something that bothered us....and it would be only afterward, that we would really see the magnitude of our sin and how far we had brought the church down from the glory for which she was intended.
We do not see it possible to have the church reformed to His image, but can it not be re-formed? It can, and will. Do we remember the story of Nehemiah, who went nack to Jerusalem when he heard the walls of the city were down. He led the re-building and how he did it is how we will do it- we will each build up the part of the wall in front of our own lives to withstand the attacks of the enemy. It will be in this way that the church will regain her glory of living stones and be fully walled off from evil.
Only God can rescue the church, and even those churches overrseas that are now thriving under persecution still have the same weakness we do, no one is telling them how to build the walls to keep satan out of their hearts.....yet.
God has our answer. Are we finally ready to admit our sad state and believe that He is the God that causes obedient hearts to be created in us? The church triumphant is about to be revealed.
Live bones, live!
Blessings,
Gideon
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- Mar 4, 2012
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I'm always astounded when I hear Ezekiel, Jeremiah, and Amos, crying out the very obvious to a people who just couldn't get it... until the sound of the hooves approached. But was that enough? No, even after Israel had been totally wiped out of existence, and Jerusalem had been destroyed, and then the temple, and then the royals taken captive, it still did not prevent the next kings and the people from committing idolatry, going to Egypt and even arguing with Jeremiah of how they did better when they were serving the queen of heaven! They had to be wiped out down to nearly the last soul - and today they can't see!
I really don't know. When I consider my own life of repeated backsliding into adultery with this world, I realize that there was something there - something in the roots of my being that was so real, and so pure and sweet, and so romantic in a spiritual love, that I just couldn't stay away, because the pain of the heartache for that sweet love I was missing was so great, and the emptiness so deep.
Life without Jesus cannot compare to the feeling, the fulfillment, the rightness of my place with Him, in Him, beside Him, filled with Him, but only tends to incredible loneliness and emptiness of soul. All the stimulation and laughter of the world can't take away the nights, lying there looking up at the sky, knowing that God is looking back with love like the Father of the prodigal, waiting ever so longingly for me to wake up, and return to my senses, to miss what I gave up, realizing that anything less is just an illusion, a lie.
People who have never experienced God himself in that way, really don't have anything to make them turn back to God. Religion may just be the closest they have to hope for. Churchianity may be the best substitute for Christ that they can hope for.
They can only thank God for the 'things' he has given them - the so-called 'blessings' which are only the gifts of Satan out of the world he owns. They just don't know how it feels to have to say, 'Lord, take everything! everything! Just don't leave me. Don't take your presence and your word from me! I can live without anything, and endure anything if I have to, but please don't take your word from me, or I'll die!!! How can I live without you? How can I endure suffering without your word?'
They have never seen how big God really is. He is just a little figurine on their dashboard, a good luck charm to rub and hope that life will continue to favor them with good things, and that they will get to see their kids grow up and be successful in love and career; and they themselves can retire to die of old age in a peaceful rocking chair on the porch, honored, and buried with flowers.
It is the most worldly, earthly dream one can have; but one the rest of the world does not know, and they so look forward to heaven alone, because every earthly freedom and possession has been removed from clouding their eyes.
How I wish I could just embrace each professor of Christ, and somehow enable them to experience His real presence and glory like we do who have been born of the Spirit. I wish for myself that I could revive those early days when my heart was sooo sensitive to His Spirit and His holiness, and wouldn't dare do anything to profane or offend him, to break that precious fellowship. May God be real to us, not just a holiday.
I really don't know. When I consider my own life of repeated backsliding into adultery with this world, I realize that there was something there - something in the roots of my being that was so real, and so pure and sweet, and so romantic in a spiritual love, that I just couldn't stay away, because the pain of the heartache for that sweet love I was missing was so great, and the emptiness so deep.
Life without Jesus cannot compare to the feeling, the fulfillment, the rightness of my place with Him, in Him, beside Him, filled with Him, but only tends to incredible loneliness and emptiness of soul. All the stimulation and laughter of the world can't take away the nights, lying there looking up at the sky, knowing that God is looking back with love like the Father of the prodigal, waiting ever so longingly for me to wake up, and return to my senses, to miss what I gave up, realizing that anything less is just an illusion, a lie.
People who have never experienced God himself in that way, really don't have anything to make them turn back to God. Religion may just be the closest they have to hope for. Churchianity may be the best substitute for Christ that they can hope for.
They can only thank God for the 'things' he has given them - the so-called 'blessings' which are only the gifts of Satan out of the world he owns. They just don't know how it feels to have to say, 'Lord, take everything! everything! Just don't leave me. Don't take your presence and your word from me! I can live without anything, and endure anything if I have to, but please don't take your word from me, or I'll die!!! How can I live without you? How can I endure suffering without your word?'
They have never seen how big God really is. He is just a little figurine on their dashboard, a good luck charm to rub and hope that life will continue to favor them with good things, and that they will get to see their kids grow up and be successful in love and career; and they themselves can retire to die of old age in a peaceful rocking chair on the porch, honored, and buried with flowers.
It is the most worldly, earthly dream one can have; but one the rest of the world does not know, and they so look forward to heaven alone, because every earthly freedom and possession has been removed from clouding their eyes.
How I wish I could just embrace each professor of Christ, and somehow enable them to experience His real presence and glory like we do who have been born of the Spirit. I wish for myself that I could revive those early days when my heart was sooo sensitive to His Spirit and His holiness, and wouldn't dare do anything to profane or offend him, to break that precious fellowship. May God be real to us, not just a holiday.
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x141
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- Sep 25, 2011
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To return to your first love is to leave babylon (in picture) this is to lose your thoughts. What we see with our five senses is not the truth. The path is within. We go past the holy place. The holy place with in us is our soul. You lose your soul/thoughts to gain them. It can not be both. The tree is either seeded from within or seeded without. We must become a garden/soul enclosed. Our thoughts seeded from within. My beloved is a garden enclosed. The harlot answers to jerusalem which answers to our soul/woman seeded from without, many husbands, she plays the harlot. She is not the wife of one husband, Christ and this Christ is in us and here is where we are hid, our thoughts. He who has the bride is the bridegroom. His kingdom as our kingdom is within.
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gideons300
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We are asked:
"Can two walk together unless they be agreed?"
I would think that would be a good place to start.
He said:
Without me, you can do nothing.
He said we are nrew creatures, and no longer in the flesh.
He said that we were now light in the Lord.
He said we could do all things through Christ who strengthens us.
He said we owe our old man, our fleshly nature NOTHING.
He said He would set us free indeed and when they pressed to define "freedom", He told us that He that sins is a servant, a slave to it.
If we are to walk with Him, abide in the vine, produce MUCH fruit, our testimony about us must line up with His. How did the saints in Revelations 19 overcome and walk in victory?
1) The blood of the lamb. Check.
2) the word of OUR testimony. Hmmmmm......
Blessings,
Gideon
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x141
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Isa 28:6 And for a spirit of judgment/victory to him that sitteth in judgment/christ, and for strength to them that turn the battle to the gate/mouth.
Jer 7:2 Stand in the gate of the LORD'S house, (not your local church), and proclaim there this word ...
Jer 7:2 Stand in the gate of the LORD'S house, (not your local church), and proclaim there this word ...
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Sadly, I do not know. Isn't that terrible? There are things I did in the past. I can tell you that watching the Keith Green biography dvd really worked. Just seeing someone so filled with the Spirit, over and over again put me on the floor for days!
The other was just falling down and admitting to God that I lost it. I sinned so many times and ways that my heart had become callused and desensitized, and no one could be blamed but me. I chose. I despised the spirit of grace, and trod the Son of God underfoot. I sold myself to sin, choosing pleasure over the love of Christ, and now the prodigal doesn't even know how to come home anymore.
I stayed on my knees, fasted, and confessed every single thing I ever did, renounced them in prayer, and confessed what God said was the correct thing to have done was.
I went to church every day, all kinds of churches to fill up my schedule, and not to socialize, but for prayer, discipleship, accountability, and to serve others.
I also committed to obey every written or 'perceived' command of God.
There is still hope for many others that these things will work.
It is a work of grace, and we have to admit to God that although we were the ones who got ourselves in trouble, only he can get us out. Then read the gospels over and over to learn the true character of God, and meditate on those words.
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gideons300
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Alpha, is it working yet? You know I love you and your heart is an honest one, and a very hungry one, just the heart God is searching for! Whether or not you see it yet, it is a great advantage you have. I have full confidence that He which has begun a good work in you WILL perform it unto the day of Jesus Christ.
So here is the question we really are asking......
"What must we do that we might work the works of God?"
We can either:
a) I stayed on my knees, fasted, and confessed every single thing I ever did, renounced them in prayer, and confessed what God said was the correct thing to have done was. I went to church every day, all kinds of churches to fill up my schedule, and not to socialize, but for prayer, discipleship, accountability, and to serve others. I also committed to obey every written or 'perceived' command of God.
or b) "Believe on Him whom He has sent".
We can either look to ourselves and our sickness or we can look to the brazen serpent on the pole, our Jesus, our great physician.
We can either run with the footmen and have the horsemen come upon us, or we can forget about our paultry efforts at pleasing Him with our righteousness (i.e. filthy rags), and admit what is plain for us to see but what we seemingly refuse to acknowledge.
"Without me, you can do NOTHING".
"Nothing profits but a new creature."
When I broke before God several years ago and told Him that I quit, I was a failure, bound by sins big and small, and His demands were simply too high, too hard, impossible for me to perform, He answered...audibly.
"For this my son I am well pleased with you."
I was not only an awe-struck puddle of tears flat on my face, I was a very CONFUSED puddle. He simply continued to explain and His answer says it all.
"I knew all along you could not obey, but YOU did not know it."
Alpha, my sweet brother in the Lord, think. Who is it that increases in might?
And unto him that has NO strength, He increases might.
Not a little left. NONE. It is not that we are not strong enough to obey, we are not weak enough.....yet.
Blessings,
Gideon
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Hey boys.. Thanks for the reply! I asked because a lot of people say that they see things, and feel things, and have dreams and visions.. But I am a christian since I was born, and never felt nothing supernatural... Then when somebody tries to mock and bash Christianity, I would like to say: "Doesn't matter what you say to me, I know the God I follow because I had a real experience with Him, that no reasoning could explain." But I can't say that yet. In spite of everything, I trust in God, and I know that He doesn't owe me any proof, sign, or anything. I love Him for dying for and saving a sinner like me. But it just make me feel miserable and forgotten sometimes.
Hey alpha, I will check out the Keith Green video! Thanks.
Hey alpha, I will check out the Keith Green video! Thanks.
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I know what you mean. I think I'm just missing the way it used to be, and that was before I knew anything.
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It's nice if you can experience that supernatural blessing... but so many of my friends who do, seem to detach it from the person of God. Feelings are the tool of the flesh and Satan, and miracles can be imitated by demons.
I've had many miracles in my life, and many, many demonic encounters, but if I want to have a miracle in my life, it is only to see the glory of God's reflection in it, and one day we will. For now I have to trust what the ancients experienced.
The bottom line is trust and love for God. Without those, supernatural stuff will only create a self-serving person. But with those, we can face the furnace of Babylon, and cross the sea to save the lost. It matters more what WE do in response to our experience and faith, not what God does to reveal himself to us.
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If I had written a criticism of people in the church I could easily agree with you, but I didn't. It is the systematic form of worship, the universal definitions of church, worship, service, and the forms and methods we have become familiar with. I don't have anything to say against the sheep because they are not the ones responsible for this evolution or devolution that has occurred. They don't have that kind of power. We are commanded not to judge another man's servant because to his Lord he will stand or fall; and I always keep that in mind. But Jesus put His body under the charge of Shepherds, and when those shepherds deviate from the Christ, then someone has to awaken the sheep to warn them or at least bring their attention to the fact that we aren't just grazing on green heavenly mountains anymore.
We can hold to the man made conviction that it isn't our responsibility to care; but if that's the attitude we take in life, God help us. No wonder the entire nation is in the condition it's in. We can ignore every problem in humanity the same way. That kind of self centered thinking is just the reason that slavery lasted so long! We would have still been there with those kind of arguments! The adage still holds true, the all that is necessary for evil to succeed, is for good men and women to do (and say) nothing. Everything negative sounds like an annoying complaint to people who think that way, so we should all cover our heads and mention nothing about all the evils of the world so long as we have God in our little corner. Call me the bad guy if you want. I can bear it, so long as history remembers that when the lights go out forever, one light went silent fighting against the darkness. I don't expect to win, just to go down fighting, so the world will know whose side I was on, and what I stood for.
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I hear you too as that is also the cry of my heart. Praise God that you are able to see it for what it is. Many don't. Therefore God sends upon them a strong delusion, to make them believe what is false.
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