I'm about to fall apart...

Elijah2 said:

Peter, to be born-again, is to give your life to our Lord Jesus Christ, and renew your mind through the Gift of Salvation.

It's impossible to renew your mind if you are involved in martial arts. The Holy Spirit is struggling to lead and guide you because the deities that are involved with martial arts are not of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, I don't intend to get into a debate about whether martial arts is okay just because you attach Christian onto it. But, your problem is spiritual, no more, no less.

If you want to dabble in another relgion's religious practices, such as martial arts, then you will be confused and in doubt all the time.

There is much written on the falacies that some Christians push in regards to martial arts, and particularly those Christians who teach it.

Now you know as well as I do that martial art techniques are based on the concepts of Ch'i, which is one's life force of breath. There are many philosophies that comes from the East. I can assure you that you are not breathing in the Holy Spirit.

Now you know as well as I know that you are taught through breathing techniqus so you can project this "force" out side of your body in order to INJURE your assialants, it's not an art of defence.

You then become deceived that you are in control of a "special power". Well Pete, you special power isn't the HOLY SPIRIT, but another relgion's deity.

Now remember that our Lord Jesus Christ didn't use psychic powers to perform HIS miracles, it was the power of GOD, His Heavenly Father, working with and through HIM by faith.

The power feats that you experience, to a discerning Bible student, is none other than Satan and his forces of "unclean/unholy spirits" from the kingdom of darkness.

Be blessed in Jesus' Name.

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FaithfulWife said:

Spidey~

I've read through your thread and it seems to me two things: 1) people are not answering your root question, and 2) there are some terms that are being used that are being confused and intermingled together that may be SIMILAR but are not the same. If you don't mind let's start with the second issue--is that okay?

First, you say that you've read the bible and it appears or seems to you that God does not accept you and only wants That it seems to you that God Further,that you don't see a loving and forgiving God in the bible but rather Here's where some of those "terms" are being confused and mixed together--used as if they are synonyms when they are similar but not the same.

The whole ENTIRE Bible taken all together is the whole history of the salvation story. It is not meant to be Old Testament without New, nor New Testament without Old. If you focus so hard on the New Testament and don't understand the Old, it won't make sense to you and vice versa because you're only looking at half the story! Soooo...let's start with defining a few terms and proceed.

The first term I would define is "Justice" and here's why. Our God, YHWH-Jehovah-the Father, is a JUST God. He requires justice. So what does that mean? Justice is the administering of deserved punishment or reward. In our instance, when we were first created we (human beings) were in perfect harmony with God. Then they disobeyed and that harmony was broken--sin was introduced to the world. Once that occurred, our God is a JUST God so He had to administer the deserved punishment or reward.

Another term I would define is "Sin" and here's why. People talk about sin as if it were "not following the rules correctly." Sin is transgression of the divine law--so if God says something is a sin, it just IS. Now, I think back in the Garden of Eden days they knew God or knew of God well enough to know what He considered sin. Eventually as people moved further from Him, the need arose to write it down and say out loud that THIS was the way God wanted us to behave, and THAT was not! So it was defined a bit more. But even then, when people had it written right down for them, the problem was not "Hey if you guys do this stuff you'll be alright and get to heaven". NOPE!

Here's the thing. Once sin was introduced, we deserved hell. Period. End of sentence. There was no "good deeds" or right living or anything that could make any of us ever "earn" our way to God's presence. The JUST penalty/reward for our choice to SIN was eternal separation from God!! If we were perfect for our whole life and only did one teeny, tiny sin....we're done! So you know how people think adultery is a "big" sin and worse than say lying or swearing? Nope. Sin is sin is sin--we all do it--and each and every single one of us rightly deserves the justice of eternal separation from God.

This is some of the stuff you see in the Old Testament--where God is acting JUSTLY...giving people what they righteously deserve because of their sin. Sometimes it seems pretty cruel back then, and some things that occur now seem pretty cruel, but the main focus and point and thing to remember is that what we DESERVE is the punishment.

Also in the Old Testament you see a lot of instances where God will directly lay out for people "this kind of behavior pleases me" and "that pleases me"--and they sort of look like rules. Those rules are not given to us to actually attain perfection and somehow "earn" our way to God. They were given to us to point out just how HOPELESSLY SINFUL we really are! No one can live by all those rules, perfectly, for their whole life! Even me!! I have lied, cheated, stole, been sexually impure, been angry and abusive, been selfish, wanted to win and beat the other guy--and because of those things I personally JUSTLY DESERVE to go to hell.

But you know what is also in the Old Testament? A weird, old concept called propitiation. Propitiation is an atonement that renders something favorable. Propitiation is the act of appeasing the wrath; specifically it is the effects of the shedding of blood to appease the divine justice and conciliate divine favor. Another way to think of this word is like "covering." In the Old Testament the folks were sinful and had no way to get to God's presence (unlike we do now) so God gave them the imagery, illustration, analagy of sacrificing a lamb and the high priest would carry the blood of that sacrifice and sprinkle on the mercy seat (which is where the presence of God was). The idea, even way back then, was for the people to realize that on their own, they just could not be reconciled to God--that reconciliation required some BLOOD to be spilled.

I say that you can think of the word as "covering" because our JUST God required a sacrifice, and Christ became our substitute and assumed our obligations--he covered our sins by the punishment and death that he endured on our behalf. So when God looks at us, He does not see the sins that rightly separate us from Him for eternity. Our sins are "covered" by the sacrificial death of Christ. God looks at us and we are covered in the cloak of Christ's atonement and we are pardoned. And the beauty is that since God is a JUST God, He see that payment and it becomes consistent with His JUST character to pardon and bless the sinner. It doesn't procure His love or make Him loving--it renders it consistent for Him to exercise His love toward sinners.

The things you are confusing are the times when God said "these are the types of behaviors that please me" and that somehow we can do those things to "earn" our salvation. Or that if we don't do them, we "earn" salvation by being sorry at least! Nope. There is NOTHING we can do to participate in this. We don't come to God "sorry" or "perfect." HE COMES TO US. HE DID ALL THE WORK. IT IS ALL HIM. He is consistently JUST. In order to be in His presence eternally, there has to be NO SIN. We (human beings) chose to sin and we live sinfully. We deserve the JUST punishment for our choice. ~BUT~ God gave us the image/illustration that in order to be reconciled with Him, blood had to be spilled. Christ came to earth to live sinlessly. He actually deserved to be in God's eternal presence because He had no sin! And in that perfect, sinless state He willingly took on our obligation and paid the debt! See how that all works together? The mortgage of our sin was eternal bankruptcy, and instead Christ came along and paid the debt for us...and now God looks at our bank account and sees Christ's payment! WE did not do anything to deserve that payment or make any payments on our own. It was all 100% Christ.

Now Spidey, in your specific instance you say that you know you are sinful. You want to beat the guy in grappling and don't feel repentance for wanting to win. You lied and sometimes you apologized but other times you didn't and you aren't repentant. That's fine!! God is not saying "Hey you guys do THIS and I'll do THAT, and you'll get your way here." Nope! He says, "You guys can't be here, but I love you and I'm willing to do ALL THE WORK TO GET YOU HERE." And He did. The work is done and you have a way to God's presence--through the saving death of Christ.

The question now is this. Do you accept that this is true? If you do accept it and believe it, then you ARE saved even if you don't particularly "feel" some emotional or spiritual high. The fact is, the payment has been made! If you accept this, then God sees YOU as covered even when you come exactly as you are. The next step is to start learning about God and what pleases him. And now do you see how this comes full circle? In both the Old and New Testaments God has given us pretty specific details about what does and does not please Him. He has told us a WHOLE LOT about himself and what he likes and doesn't like and how he'd like to have his people live. I know we can't live that life perfectly, but the resulting response to learning that Christ has paid the price for us is to personally get to know God--intimately. This is why oftentimes people will "become a christian" and start to attend church, read their bible, and pray because the idea is that you would get to know God better by doing these things. In real life, we are humans and very fallible and sometimes churches are gossip-mills--reading the Bible is misinterpreted--and praying is by "ritual" rather than really talking to Him.

Sooooo...is any of this making more sense? Got any questions?

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jonathanbrickman0000 said:

It sounds to me that you bring quite a substantial repentance to the table!

Peter, there is only one item I could see possibly missing in your guidance so far; so far, I could not see that you have been urged to talk directly to God, person to Person, and ask Him to give you the sense of acceptance that you need. If you do this, He will give it to you, and will lead you to next steps.

J.E.B.

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