Grace etc

[non-religious]

Jesus was clear that we would face trials and tribulations and suffering can come under that wide banner. However what form the suffering takes is a completely different question. Is sickness a form of suffering? Is being persecuted for your faith a form of suffering?

I wouldn't actively seek out a form of "suffering" in order to get me closer to God or even to be in a position whereby I can relate to others suffering. In other words I should experience a form of hardship before I can reach out or identify with those struggling with a hardship of some form or another. I don't see it that way.

I guess for me I know that things will come my way that will ask some serious questions of my faith and how faithful I am. When those trials come will I thank God for them? Perhaps I would, but I would rather see suffering as an unavoidable part of life that God will and has equipped me to deal with and come through out of the other end stronger and victorious. So my prayer is not "God I want to suffer so please allow these things to come to pass."

 

[FLANDIDLYANDERS]

We are in agreement here.

What I refer to is when we are in denial of taking the hard course of action. When we all choose consumer-ease over suffering for the sake of comfort, no matter the cost to other countries, or our very integrity; or when we ignore the bad feelings and gut-feelings that something is wrong, just to maintain the lukewarm life we tend to all fancy for ourselves - well, i do anyway.

The Cross of Christ is light, but it is still, nonetheless, a cross!

I am really just relaying my experience, as I am broken and honest in my brokenness and recovery/freedom, so others are with me. Call it Karma, call it Grace. But I will never avoid it again, if I can help it.

Havent you guys notice I tend towards expressing myself in extreme terms? Most people aent as extreme and so can hopefully make the emotional and logical jump back from my verbal terrorism, and weigh it within their own "7 breaths".

 

[Multi-Elis]

I have noticed that you are using extremish words. The guy's testamony whom I was reading over the weekend used extreme language, and the only real extremist-letter-of-the-law-fundumentalist I ever met used extreme language. And strangely enough they all talked alot about this subject. But the difference is that "grace" appears in your words in a much more gracious way, than the others...

But you didn't adress the "dying" part.
So basically you are saying "get over with the worst part first rather than hoping the easy short cuts will get you out of trouble later"
And that we need more honesty and trasparancy in friendships, cause if we don't, we will be harming ourselves.

But I still don't get the connection between Karma/Grace, suffering, and being honest about it with others. Mostly how grace ties in with what you are trying to say. (That's the most important, because it makes the biggest difference!)

 

[Im_A]

I have noticed that you are using extremish words. The guy's testamony whom I was reading over the weekend used extreme language, and the only real extremist-letter-of-the-law-fundumentalist I ever met used extreme language. And strangely enough they all talked alot about this subject. But the difference is that "grace" appears in your words in a much more gracious way, than the others...

But you didn't adress the "dying" part.
So basically you are saying "get over with the worst part first rather than hoping the easy short cuts will get you out of trouble later"
And that we need more honesty and trasparancy in friendships, cause if we don't, we will be harming ourselves.

But I still don't get the connection between Karma/Grace, suffering, and being honest about it with others. Mostly how grace ties in with what you are trying to say. (That's the most important, because it makes the biggest difference!)

i don't know if what i have to say will relate to anything and i'm coming in late on the discussion, but with suffering, i just see there is a time for it.

i'm going through my own right now, so i figure, it doesn't matter if there is grace to some degree. grace as well as hope gives me the hope that everything will be ok, but i want the suffering to take its full course. be honest, dont' lie about it. don't hide the effects but control it to be as holy as one can, and let the storm pass. because if we don't, we take a dangerous risk of it coming back to haunt us, and hurt us even more and even worse, hurt other people as well.

i don't know if this is what flandidlyanders is getting at, and i hope you all dont' mind me throwing my two cents in and i hope i'm even on topic.

 

[FLANDIDLYANDERS]

Indeed a season for stuff and junk, as some book says.

Grace allows us to let others do "what they feel they need to do", and it allows us to do the same. Grace allows us to dispense with "good advice" or moral guidance etc, and lets us love a person as they make their own way, consequences and all.

How anothers freedom impinges on our own is also an aspect of grace. The more we distribute grace, the more our personal freedoms are enabled despite suffering. This is a hard thing for me to do, but it must be done.

Grace in all things, suffering in some. Honesty thoughout.

 

[Gukkor]

Wow Multi, you dont do things by half!

You ask questions that relate on a very personal level, and, to be honest, I have no all-encompassing ideals to share, for I just try to live each day at a time.

Let me catagorically state that I am not advocating long-suffering as a means to personal piety!

As Samurai, I would say when there is a course to take, even if it is very difficult, it is best to dash in headlong. While I realise that to act impulsively is not always best, there are times when a restlessness will only promote "illegitimate suffering".

Of course, I ramble in all things. As is my way, but in answer to yer question, I believe that a policy of "safe" relationships within church - or anywhere - which attempts to cushion one another from pain or from facing fears, will eventually dillute us all. When we are transparent, resolved to be open about our pain and "reality", well, we find that others cant help but repond.

But i recognise that I have a tendency to bare all to all, rather than keep it in. I dont mean in a blurty way, just in my manner. How does this relate to grace?

Well, when we are gracious with oursleves we are automatically gracious to others, and they to us. Maybe.

Didnt answer much did I? Do press and share some more, Multi.

(BTW I got 110% for my Design Degree )

Brother in faith AND in code! Not the thread for this, I know, but I would most certainly take you up on that mead and curry offer, were we not separated by an ocean.

 

[FLANDIDLYANDERS]

Yo Guk, walk the water, dog. What not enough faith?

(I would, but I'm too busy levitating small children out of burning buildings)

 

[Rick Otto]

Pope Flanders already here as I venture into Liberal Waters...
I see you've been usin' that drill to keep your mind open!
(that's my "back-handed grace")

 

[FLANDIDLYANDERS]

LOL. You got it Otto.

Well folks, the pain and suffering in my life has just got a whole lot worse. Does there come a point where we reject those who cause it and say "enough is enough"? Even when, logically, we should have done it a long time ago, or even when it could look like we are being a push-over.

Well I say forgiveness is daily and redemption can still come through Grace. My marriage is long over, but people can still find redemption, eh?

So here I stand, suffering with 4 kids, and ya know what? I've always done the honourable thing, now I fight to do the hard thing. There is no honour in War, but often there are decisions to make and lives to choose; so I choose life, for I am alreay dead an have nothing else to lose. I can but be what I am, as can we all. And by Grace, we reflect the intimate Godlike-humanity of Jesus.

(I wonder how many of yer realised what I might be going through?)

Pope Flanders in more ways than one. Flanders the Celibate, Father Flanders. Oh, and Flan the Inappropriate, daring to dereal a thread about Grace with his personal problems!

LOL. If yer cant be honest, then just dont bother.

 

[non-religious]

[FLANDIDLYANDERS]LOL. You got it Otto.

Well folks, the pain and suffering in my life has just got a whole lot worse. Does there come a point where we reject those who cause it and say "enough is enough"? Even when, logically, we should have done it a long time ago, or even when it could look like we are being a push-over.

Well I say forgiveness is daily and redemption can still come through Grace. My marriage is long over, but people can still find redemption, eh?

So here I stand, suffering with 4 kids, and ya know what? I've always done the honourable thing, now I fight to do the hard thing. There is no honour in War, but often there are decisions to make and lives to choose; so I choose life, for I am alreay dead an have nothing else to lose. I can but be what I am, as can we all. And by Grace, we reflect the intimate Godlike-humanity of Jesus.

(I wonder how many of yer realised what I might be going through?)

Pope Flanders in more ways than one. Flanders the Celibate, Father Flanders. Oh, and Flan the Inappropriate, daring to dereal a thread about Grace with his personal problems!

LOL. If yer cant be honest, then just dont bother.

Amen......

I appreciate your honesty brother

 

[FLANDIDLYANDERS]

Aw shucks, bless yer Nonny.


(on an aside: being best friends with the mother of my children while she falls for someone else is so confusing, but right)

 

[Rick Otto]

Sometimes pain is a blessing.
i remember being 5yrs old and watchin' my 9yr old brother writhin' in pain from an appendicitus attack. After the ambulance left, i noticed i was covered with big red blotches. They didn't hurt, but they sure freaked me out. The doctor said it was just "hives" from my nerves, reactin' to my brother's pain.

never had again until a few years ago when my wife had a 3/4 inch tumor removed from her brain. A menigioma was wrapped around her optic nerve, about 2 inches in from her ear, causin' her eye to twitch. This time instead of red blotches, i got hard scabs that itched like the devil. The itching, and not scratching, drove me just crazy enough to forget about my wife for awhile.
Must be some 'bad blood' in the family. it's still a mystery wether my bootleggin' grandpa was to drunk or to depressed to make it across the RR bridge on his way home late one night, before the train came bearin' down.
Dad did some serious boozin', but it wasn't until he became compulsively obssesed with an engineering problem from his job, that my mom & his brother decided to lure him into a hospital for awhile.

I was diagnosed schizophrenic w/psychotic episodes at 14, but I wasn't haunted with visual or auditory hallucinations, just deep depression & some delusion that ranged from megalomaniacaly grandiose to apocolypticaly paranoid.
The one time I was seriously contemplating suicide, i remember thinking, "If my personality survives my physical death, & I end up someplace worse, i might not get to play that card again." i went pretty deep. Besides all the scripture i was familiar with, I had been reading all the New Age, occult stuff I could get my hands on. Plus self-help psychology books that were starting to fill the shelves in the early 70's... in addition to some heavyweight stuff my brother would bring home from Harvard where he was earning his degree under B.F. Skinner ("Beyond Freedom & Dignity") the "godfather of Biological Determinism".
I was a busy kid. i played keyboards & guitars in 2 bands, a workin' rock & rythm band & a blues & jazz ensemble in the hood. I also painted & drew posters, & stage props, etc.

The bad blood thing hit my older brother a couple years after college. He chose to let 4 stories of gravity end his pain on the concrete below. I had joined the Air Force a year after Vietnam in a sort of act of surrender/going underground move. I was to street wise to fit in college. The pain of surviving the loss of my brother revisits me occaisionaly, putting the rest of my life in perspective.

My 1st son seems to have been spared - 30yrs old, happily married a few years now, both him & his wife having great jobs, tho she has to deal with chronic pain from being an auto accident victim, & he has a herniated disc from a few years of truck driving.

17yr old son #2 is not so lucky. We just got him back from his 2nd trip to the hospital in 2 yrs, after going into a bi-polar maniacal rage. He had managed to reduce his lithium intake after a year & 1/2, but he got cocky, thought he could both do without meds & smoke cannabis again. Now he has to take even more lithium & will have to be on abilify & halidol + a drug to counter the side effects of the halidol, for at leat 2 months, before goin' back to just lithium, & hopefully reducing that again over time. i'm prayin' he grows out of it like I seem to have.

The agony & the ecstacy, eh?

I'm just prayin that no matter whatever pain & loss of dignity i may face, God grants me the grace to die at least smiling, if not outright laughin'.

Living well is the best revenge.

Pass the mead, brother.

 

[FLANDIDLYANDERS]

Yo. You cant make stuff like that up!

Yeah. Grace keeps it all going.

Everyday I meet some random someone who has a pain to share, or who wants to share mine. Humans can be beautiful. Inside the muck and addictions and selfishness, people are still reflecting God in so many ways. It is only thru Grace that we as church will see this in the other. Grace, not Love, is the great equaliser. When you realise how gracious God is in even hanging around us, let alone wanting us or "blessing" us; we annot help but be likewise to all others. Even those whose every action seems like direct revenge or vindictive... but knowing under it all is simply the desire for freedom.

I am about to experince more freedom than I have ever known... but do I want it? Seriously. True freedom is finally becoming aware of consequence. And I dont know if I have enough Grace to live with the positive and negative consequences of "ultimate" freedom.

I feel I am about to be offered al I have ever wanted... and I know that it wont be what I fanticised it to be. Sadly, it will be real. And real is messy and hardwork.

It is Grace that allows us to remain focussed on reality over fantasy, and it is Grace that allows us to slowly remove each fantasy one at a time, untill we are truly ready for God, for life to "hit home".

(On yer suicide tip; i had exactly the same realisation. My past attempts were ended because of family duty or being a chrstian... 3 weeks ago I put the knife away because I realised that I couldnt guarantee that the horrible feelings I felt then would not simply live with me beyond the grave. So, I suppose, I have looked into Hell, and decided not to go there. Sorry my Liberal friends, I may yet beleve in Hell.)

Grace in all things. Then Mead.

 

[Multi-Elis]

(I wonder how many of yer realised what I might be going through?)

( I realise that there is something you are going through, but that you don't want to talk about it too explicitly and openly, at least not here where people you don't know can read it all)

Well folks, the pain and suffering in my life has just got a whole lot worse. Does there come a point where we reject those who cause it and say "enough is enough"? Even when, logically, we should have done it a long time ago, or even when it could look like we are being a push-over.

That's always the question on the tip on my lips: in willing to accept suffering, do we sometimes suffer more than what we really need to, because we think that suffering is such a virtue? Or is that extra suffering the deciding moment of whether we will attain an extra virtue or not?

I feel I am about to be offered al I have ever wanted...

This makes me wonder why you weren't offered everything you wanted before... or if you had many layers of all you wanted, and that the earlier one's didn't offer what you really wanted...

and I know that it wont be what I fanticised it to be.

I find that profound. I sometimes wonder if "all we ever wanted" is something differnt than what we think it is... or if it is what we thought it was, only we need to work torwards it because it doen't come so easily... or if it is better than what we thought once we get past what we get past the dissillusionment with what it isn't...

Bon courage!

 

[FLANDIDLYANDERS]

Exactly!

We need goals, but the goals exist to place us foot by foot on the journey, the final destination rarely looks as it does in the Brochure or on the horizon.

 

[Rick Otto]

arriving at the destination=realizing it was the journey that counted.

After disappointing myself with the "path of least resistance" I realized there IS no "easy way".

Back to the samuri, teeth gritting determination, not to return evil for evil.

have to apply that to myself as well, but not at the expense of the innocent(children)
I'll smile at you from my cross, if you'll laugh at me on mine.

Maybe we need to add a couple of verses to "All Along The Watchtower".

 

[FLANDIDLYANDERS]

Grace indeed. And journey.

So I met him today. Fraked him out, scared him. I just sat next to him, told him there is no vendetta, she feels she doesnt love me enough, but she loves him in that way. So I am resolved.

This is not about honour, it is about resolution; when it is raining, walk. Be resolved to a thourough soaking.

Also, if he comes near my kids, there will be consequences.

He said that I am a bigger man than he. Yes. I am. And the mother of my children knows this, but without love, there is no marriage. Tonight she moves out, with visiting for meals and bedtimes and babysiting.

Grace in all things. We all sin. We all abuse freedom and ignore boundaries. I am free-er now, but I am no holier than those two!

Tonight I rest as a single dad with 4 kids, free in who I am. Peace, until the next irrational mood swings!

Grace will bring people, lure them scandilously towards conviction and repentance, and true freedom - rather than escape!!!!

Peace out

 

[Rick Otto]

And prayer for the children.
I can only painfully imagine how they're going to try & make sense of it.

Small consolation, but it sounds like they both know they're taking the low road.

How one could do that in a child's face is puzzling.

 

[FLANDIDLYANDERS]

Cheers dog. Low road, I like that.

 

[stanleyg]

I have a fascination to study the etymology of words. A majority of English words derive its origin from Latin. Often times I will look up a word to trace its root meaning. Moreover, I examine each word that shares the same root. The latter aids to provoke my thoughts to delve deeper into God's word.

I randomly selected the University of Notre Dame online Latin Dictionary and Grammar Aid to perform my research. Let me explain the steps I followed.

I went to the Latin Wordlist and Grammar Aid at the lower half of the page. I typed in the following list of words that share the same stem or root as grace:

1. Grace
2. Gracious
3. Grateful
4. Gratitude
5. Grave
6. Gravity

I have found that each word has a significant relationship. In my opinion grace is contingent upon Christians demonstrating a spirit of gratitude towards God. I believe that after our physical body has been buried beneath the earth in our grave, then our human soul will begin to gravitate downward towards the Magma Chamber. I believe that fire and brimstone is the same as the molten rock that melts as the Lake of fire. I believe that the Magma Chamber is the perdition of fire to purify each ungrateful soul. I believe that the Devil is the king over all the children of pride and has deceived the world to follow after the spirit of pride which is an ungrateful spirit. I believe that God will cast the Devil into the Lake of fire. Strange as it may sound, I also believe that each grateful soul that has resisted the spirit of pride or accepted Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior will bypass its second death. Instead, our soul will be resurrected from the dead by the grace of God.

Job41
[34] He beholdeth all high things: he is a king over all the children of pride.

Jas4
[6] But hegiveth more grace. Wherefore he saith, God resisteththe proud, but giveth grace unto the humble.

Rev20
[10] And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.

Amen!