The cure for our lukewarmness...

[Presbyterian Continuist]

This is because they are self professing Christians.
By that I mean they show by their action the truth of what they believe (or don't believe)
The term christian was coined by those at Antioch who were themselves not followers of Christ .but the people they described looked and acted so much like Christ the locals named them Christian.
The disciples of Jesus never called themselves that. Nor should any one unless they go,and do the things Christ did and behave as he behaved. since chritian means likechrist, how dare we take upon ourselves that title unless we are indeed,like him.
Out the hypocrisy that is rife among the religious.
But the sin of another never did never does and never will excuse ones own sin.
Nor are you excused from your rebellion. For all must repent of their own ways and their own thoughts and agree with God ,repent .,be baptised for the remission of your sin and you will receive the Holy Spirit of life.
-this,you know,this ,you thus far refuse to obey,and this is your own witness against you before God in whom you refuse to believe.

This reminds me of two lice-ridden, filthy beggars sitting in a ditch and one turns to the other and says, "You stink!"

The lesson in this is that we are all in the same boat. Our own righteousness stinks in the sight of God. Trying to become sinlessly perfect is nothing more than trying to be righteous in ourselves. I once asked God about my own sins and shortcomings, and He said to me, "If I don't like you, I will change you." What He was saying to me was not to struggle and try to be a better Christian, but to trust completely in Christ and the Holy Spirit to transform me into the believer He wants me to be. In the meantime, He assured me that I could stand before Him without any shame, guilt or inferiority, because He has clothed me with the righteousness of Christ, which covers up my own smelly old righteousness.

Just because we struggle with temptation and often succumb to it, doesn't mean that we are rebelling against God. We inhabit a sinful body which will die. The Scripture says that we have the sentence of death in ourselves that we should not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead. Paul asked, "Who shall free me from this body of death?" He went on to say that it was Christ who did that by taking all our sin on the cross with Him, releasing us from the guilt and punishment of it; then He clothed us with His righteousness, making us fully acceptable to God. Then we are filled with the Holy Spirit who works within us to developmentally sanctify us as we grow in grace and in the knowledge of Him.

Judgmental people will always see us from the outside and when they see us performing below their religious standards, they will accuse us of being rebellious, when, in fact, we are strugglers - wanting to follow the law of God in our hearts, but constantly battling to keep our bodies under subjection. What these judgmental people do not realise is that they are in exactly the same situation. This is why it is so hypocritical for one smelly, filthy, lice-ridden beggar to say to another sitting in the same ditch, "You stink!"

 

[Presbyterian Continuist]

How do you think a Christian ought to live so as to not be lukewarm? Are you living this life? Would you call yourself a Christian?

I think that anyone viewing the believers in churches could be put off religion. This is because Christians are not perfect, and if we judge the reality of God and of Christ by what we see in Christians, then we would be tempted to reject the whole thing. But is the Church God or Jesus? Are they the same entity? I don't think so. God revealed Himself to me in the middle of a park at night, right away from any church. I see church as a place where believers of like mind fellowship together and encourage each other in the faith. Nothing more. I know that some churches profess to be the voice of God to the nations. I don't believe a word of it.

What's needed is for skeptical folks to look away from the church to find the truth of the gospel of Christ and the reality of God, because they won't find it there.

Reading the Bible is the doorway to finding the reality of God. But it is important to see when the Bible is speaking for us, and not necessarily directly to us, and when it is speaking directly to us. The Old Testament is written for us and not to us. Same with the gospels. Some of what Jesus said is for us, and other statements are written to us. The letters of Paul are mostly written to us for our instruction and guidance.

But just reading the book is not enough. I spent two years studying the Bible and doing the religious stuff in a church that professed to be closer to God than all the others. But I still didn't know God as a real person in spite of all that. It was only when I went out alone in the middle of a park and told God that He was within earshot of my voice and I needed to know Him personally or else I was going to give it all up. I then introduced myself to God and said that I was glad to meet Him.

I cannot describe exactly what happened to me. It was not an emotional experience, because I my feet were cold, and it was a bit chilly in that park at 11pm. But I was somehow all lit up inside like a Christmas tree. One minute I had no knowledge of God, and the next I knew that He was very real. Then I heard a voice in the back of my head, not a actual voice; it was more like a thought in my mind but a type of thought that I have never had before. It was like a thought injected into my mind, rather than one I thought myself. I know that this is not a good description of it, but there it is. What that thought told me was this: "We have been waiting a long time for you to get away from the religious stuff and to come to Me directly." By that, my faith in Christ was strongly enhanced, and from that day, 50 years ago, I have had no doubts that God is real and Jesus is really alive.

This did not come through a church, and when I got back to my church, people still treated me as a problem case, which was quite different to God's attitude to me. He said that He accepted me as I was, and if He didn't like anything about me, He would change me. I have been through many situations and challenges over the years and I can say that God has changed things He didn't like about me, but He has always allowed me to be myself, and discouraged me from being over-religious to somehow compensate for my own failures and shortcomings.

If you examined my life and saw my failures and shortcomings, you would most certainly remain an athiest, because I am probably one of the worst examples of what a believer should be. But when you read the gospels and saw how Jesus behaved and dealt with people, then it is His example that should encourage you to rethink your position.

 

[Gideons300]

Read my answer. Kick the ball and not the player. He has brought up and good question and I have answered it. Sin consciousness is a big problem in our churches and is a definite hindrance to the effective working of the Holy Spirit and the ability of believers to exercise the faith needed to increase their passion and experience in God.

Oscar, we must ask ourselves the question..... are we sinning still because we are sin-conscious or are we sin-conscious because we are still sinning?

We are told that there is therefor now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus, and yet given a convicting (not condemning but convicting) sermon and you will see the alters full of those whose own hearts condemn them. Repeat the same message after 90 days are past, and you will see pretty much the same people upvthere again. Does that not set off red flags inour hearts that something is drastically amiss in our take on Christianity?

We are told clearly that if our hearts condemn us we should not think we will receive anything from the Lord. Yet we are now telling them to go anyway.
I hear talk about Christians needing to just " go out and do it".... heal the sick, raise the dead, preach on street corners, but until we give them the secret of how to finally obtain hearts that do not condemn us, and see sins, both secret ones and open ones, defeated in our lives, then invariably, unbelief will doom their going out to eventual failure. Oh, the initial excitement may sustain them for a while but eventually, their cup will run dry, they will tire of expecting and not obtaining, and go back into the safety of being hearers only.

Do we not see the resl problem? Believers need to be equipped with the knowledge of HOW to walk above the sins that have so easily beset them. And yet our pulpits are silent because those who lead us have no idea how to do it, and worse yet, are quite content to preach from thst position of defeat.

Until we as a whole admit to our God and to ourselves that we simply do not know how to possess our vessels in righteousness and holiness all day, every day, we will remain ridden with self condemnation. Shall we not cry out as wretched men, in the same way Paul did, confessing to our God that we are prisoners of Romans 7, captives to the flesh and thus to sin, and then seek the deliverer, our Jesus, to come do what He said He would do, to DELIVER US FROM EVIL?

When we do, we shall be awakened to the truth of who we are and walk in it in power, but until then, we can go into every corner of our city, our nstion, our world, and the best we will produce are saints forgiven, but with no concept ad to how to walk as men and women who are free indeed.

Blessings,

Gideon
,

 

[Gideons300]

No one who truly obeys does so from the flesh for it is only those born again of water And spirit who go on to not walk in disobedience .
John states those who continue to practice sin (it's sin we know is sin)do not love God do not even know God. They are not yet born of the spirit.they are still in the flesh.

May I ask you a question, and a sincere one? Perhaps you are right as to outward sins. If drink or drugs is our problem, simply stop. (Easier said than done). But what do you do with sins of the heart? I was bound by lust for 38 years and we both know that Jesus said that if you have lusted in your heart, you have already committed adultery, amen?

So what do you tell a prisoner of lust ad I was? How does one stop thinking sinful thoughts? What exercise csn you give them to insure victory? There is none.

I will say it again. Until we believe that the old us is dead, we stand no chance of truly seeing sins defeated in our lives. Let me share with you how it goes with me now.

When the thought comes to lust, I stand fast in the faith, and that the thiught is a temptation seeking me to "bite on it" as my own. And when I hold up the shield of faith, guess what? The temptation is defeated, there is no playing with the thought until it concieves and becomes sin, and my walk is undisturbed.

I mean no harm, but to tell someone bound by Romans 7 failures to just stop, it is a recipe for frustration and more failures. But praise God, when we yield ourselves to God as those who are alive from the dead, everything changes. Everything.

Blessings,

Gideon

 

[Presbyterian Continuist]

Oscar, we must ask ourselves the question..... are we sinning still because we are sin-conscious or are we sin-conscious because we are still sinning?

We are sin conscious because we are still sinning in our natural body inclinations and desires. But Jesus has taken all that sin on Himself and has clothed us with His righteousness. We will not be completely sin free until we get to glory and are changed.

We are told that there is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus, and yet given a convicting (not condemning but convicting) sermon and you will see the alters full of those whose own hearts condemn them. Repeat the same message after 90 days are past, and you will see pretty much the same people up there again. Does that not set off red flags in our hearts that something is drastically amiss in our take on Christianity?

Not necessarily. I think that it is imperfect teaching that is given by some churches about the difference between justification and sanctification. The ones who are going up for continue ministry do not fully understand that sanctification is developmental and not instant. Also, they do not understand the full implications of justification and how that gives them perfect standing before God. This is why there is no condemnation for believers in Christ. The "walk not after the flesh" was added by a scribe who believed that if a person did not keep God's law perfectly was still subject to condemnation. Paul did not write that. He believed that as soon as a person was born again, they were completely free from condemnation.

We are told clearly that if our hearts condemn us we should not think we will receive anything from the Lord. Yet we are now telling them to go anyway.

That is correct. James says that a double minded man is unstable in all his ways. The reason why our hearts condemn us sometimes is that we forget how complete the righteousness of Christ is when we are clothed with it. Applying 1 John 1:9, confessing the sin and receiving instant and complete cleansing, is the antidote for a condemning heart. I use that scripture all the time!!

I hear talk about Christians needing to just " go out and do it".... heal the sick, raise the dead, preach on street corners, but until we give them the secret of how to finally obtain hearts that do not condemn us, and see sins, both secret ones and open ones, defeated in our lives, then invariably, unbelief will doom their going out to eventual failure. Oh, the initial excitement may sustain them for a while but eventually, their cup will run dry, they will tire of expecting and not obtaining, and go back into the safety of being hearers only.

Correct. The devil will being back past sins to shame us and water down our faith. But God has forgotten our past sins, so I quote that scripture to the lying, condemning, shaming demon that comes to me to remind me of past failures and tell that demon to get on his bike because I refuse to accept the guilt and shame. It works every time. God forgives us instantly when we speak to him about a failure to resist temptation on some issue; but we need to forgive ourselves. Sure we get brassed off with ourselves when we fail. We want to succeed but it doesn't always happen. Paul had this problem and he found the answer in Christ, according to Romans 7.

Do we not see the real problem? Believers need to be equipped with the knowledge of HOW to walk above the sins that have so easily beset them. And yet our pulpits are silent because those who lead us have no idea how to do it, and worse yet, are quite content to preach from that position of defeat.

Correct. Church teachers need to read Neil Anderson's "Bondage Breaker". You can download it if you want to read it for yourself. This shows effectively how to walk above sin and to maintain the right standing with God.

Until we as a whole admit to our God and to ourselves that we simply do not know how to possess our vessels in righteousness and holiness all day, every day, we will remain ridden with self condemnation. Shall we not cry out as wretched men, in the same way Paul did, confessing to our God that we are prisoners of Romans 7, captives to the flesh and thus to sin, and then seek the deliverer, our Jesus, to come do what He said He would do, to DELIVER US FROM EVIL?

You will see the end of Romans 7 where Paul found victory in Christ. What he did was to stop struggling to overcome his own shortcomings and failures, and to put it all over to Christ and to rest in Him. Instead of struggling to avoid sin and being super-spiritual to compensate for our sense of failure, we need to use 1 John 1:9 to talk with God about our failures, what we think caused them and ask for help to be stronger to develop a better level of holiness. We need to trust the Lord that what He doesn't like about us, He will change. Sometimes He might leave something in us to act as a thorn in the flesh to keep us humble and to keep us looking to Him as the foundation of our faith, instead of going up to altar calls to get more and more prayer from people who cannot help. Why get someone else to pray for you when you can personally go to God's throne of grace to find mercy and grace to help in your time of need. Going on altar calls and getting others to pray for you can be a lack of faith in Christ because people are going to get help from man instead of going directly to Christ. Getting a pastor to pray for you is the same as a Catholic getting the saints or Mary to pray for him. It is the same principle of trying to get help from man when we all have the Holy Spirit living right inside of us, and that the throne of grace is open to all of us to approach, and not just a privilege of the pastor or church leaders. Often church leaders will teach people that they have a better approach to God than the common herd. This comes from a lying demon whose purpose is to put the saints into bondage to man and to give man a greater respect than God Himself, who has made the way to His throne open to all of us. Jesus is not the high priest just for church leaders and pastors or priests. He is our great high priest who ministers to the Father for all of us.

When we do, we shall be awakened to the truth of who we are and walk in it in power, but until then, we can go into every corner of our city, our nation, our world, and the best we will produce are saints forgiven, but with no concept ad to how to walk as men and women who are free indeed.

Absolutely!

 

[Zayin7]

May I ask you a question, and a sincere one? Perhaps you are right as to outward sins. If drink or drugs is our problem, simply stop. (Easier said than done). But what do you do with sins of the heart? I was bound by lust for 38 years and we both know that Jesus said that if you have lusted in your heart, you have already committed adultery, amen?

So what do you tell a prisoner of lust ad I was? How does one stop thinking sinful thoughts? What exercise csn you give them to insure victory? There is none.

I will say it again. Until we believe that the old us is dead, we stand no chance of truly seeing sins defeated in our lives. Let me share with you how it goes with me now.

When the thought comes to lust, I stand fast in the faith, and that the thiught is a temptation seeking me to "bite on it" as my own. And when I hold up the shield of faith, guess what? The temptation is defeated, there is no playing with the thought until it concieves and becomes sin, and my walk is undisturbed.

I mean no harm, but to tell someone bound by Romans 7 failures to just stop, it is a recipe for frustration and more failures. But praise God, when we yield ourselves to God as those who are alive from the dead, everything changes. Everything.

Blessings,

Gideon

thinking sinful lustful thoughts is not sin. entertaining them and not taking them captive but allowing them to continue IS sinful .

if i think to myself ,wow that lawn needs mowing i must go and mow it . them begin to mow it .suddenly a sinful sexula thought pops into my inactive mind . -so i think to myself wow where did that come from i reject that thought in Jesus name and i refuse to continue on that line of thought . i take it captive and bring it into subjection to the knowledge of Christ . i shun it i turn away (repent ) from it .

i have not "sinned" .you see i did not think to myself ,"i will go and mow the lawn and think some evil thoughts" .. so where did the thoughts come from ? the holy Spirit or the flesh or the spirit of this world ?- answer : the flesh and the spirit of this world.

we are told that if we walk after the holy Spirit we will not fulfil the lusts of the flesh . we are told that we used to . 'among whom also all we walked IN TIMES PAST in the lust of Our flesh ,fulfilling the desire of the FLESH and of the MIND . '

but Jesus has set us free , though we have the ability to do those sins and follow those desires we do NOT do so . if we continue to do so then we show by our action that we do not love God . That's what the scripture plainly states .

sometimes
a person has along with their sin an evil accompanying spirit feeding off their sin to enforce bondage to it to their demise - no problem, we can lay hands on them and command that spirit to get out and it goes .
now they are free from its influence they must retrain their MIND to agree with god . repent is from the rot word metanoia, to turn ones mind . it is something we must do every day and moment of our lives in order to agree with and follow Jesus .(we die to self daily ) reckon ourselves as dead to sin.

note the verse -the weapons of our warfare ... people use this verse in the line of reasoning for praying big spiritual prayers about countries and nations and stronghold.. ,yet in the text he speak of thoughts and imaginations . the weapons of our warfare are powerful to pull down ungodly imaginations in our own minds .-interesting when you stop and look at it and see what it actually says isn't it .

a thought can only become and action if i choose to agree with the thought and follow it . But if I choose to disagree with the thought and demolish it(as Jesus has given us the POWER to do ) ,and obey the holy Spirit then it becomes impossible to follow that thought through to its conclusive action of sin .
in christ he makes us MORE the conquerors ..he makes us overcomers . but it remains our responsibility to walk in what he has prepared for us

 

[Zayin7]

This reminds me of two lice-ridden, filthy beggars sitting in a ditch and one turns to the other and says, "You stink!"

The lesson in this is that we are all in the same boat. Our own righteousness stinks in the sight of God. Trying to become sinlessly perfect is nothing more than trying to be righteous in ourselves. I once asked God about my own sins and shortcomings, and He said to me, "If I don't like you, I will change you." What He was saying to me was not to struggle and try to be a better Christian, but to trust completely in Christ and the Holy Spirit to transform me into the believer He wants me to be. In the meantime, He assured me that I could stand before Him without any shame, guilt or inferiority, because He has clothed me with the righteousness of Christ, which covers up my own smelly old righteousness.

Just because we struggle with temptation and often succumb to it, doesn't mean that we are rebelling against God. We inhabit a sinful body which will die. The Scripture says that we have the sentence of death in ourselves that we should not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead. Paul asked, "Who shall free me from this body of death?" He went on to say that it was Christ who did that by taking all our sin on the cross with Him, releasing us from the guilt and punishment of it; then He clothed us with His righteousness, making us fully acceptable to God. Then we are filled with the Holy Spirit who works within us to developmentally sanctify us as we grow in grace and in the knowledge of Him.

Judgmental people will always see us from the outside and when they see us performing below their religious standards, they will accuse us of being rebellious, when, in fact, we are strugglers - wanting to follow the law of God in our hearts, but constantly battling to keep our bodies under subjection. What these judgmental people do not realise is that they are in exactly the same situation. This is why it is so hypocritical for one smelly, filthy, lice-ridden beggar to say to another sitting in the same ditch, "You stink!"

yet we are directly called to walk worthy of the calling .
we cannot just say because we cannot be righteous by our own efforts that we will give up living righteously because of what Christ has accomplished
a goat will BEHAVE like a Goat a dog will behave like a dog .. and man made righteous by Jesus will behave like a righteous man .
a goat that says ,"i am now a man ", but keeps behaving like a goat - is a liar .
a man who says i am made the righteousness of god in Christ Jesus but continues to behave like the unrighteous do .is equally a lair and the truth is not in him .

 

[Presbyterian Continuist]

May I ask you a question, and a sincere one? Perhaps you are right as to outward sins. If drink or drugs is our problem, simply stop. (Easier said than done). But what do you do with sins of the heart? I was bound by lust for 38 years and we both know that Jesus said that if you have lusted in your heart, you have already committed adultery, amen?

I believe as red-blooded males, when we walk behind a young lady in a short skirt on a windy day, we are going to have lustful thoughts. Also, we see it all in movies and on television. We see it all around us, at work, on the bus or train, at the beach. We can't get away from seeing it all and inwardly wishing we could see more. I believe that 95 percent of males, unless they are gay (and then they would have the same thoughts about other men), have lustful thoughts, and the other 5 percent are liars.

I wrote in my previous post about being clothed with the righteousness of Christ. This is what it is for. Talking with the Lord about lustful thoughts is the best way of dealing with them. Then, if someone in the judgment tries to accuse us, then the Lord will tell them that He knows about it already because you told Him all about it. That is what 1 John 1:9 tells us to do. Remember that the devil is the accuser of the brethren. He will come and try and shame you over your normal sexual desire and sex-drive, and will always present opportunities to view stuff that may inflame your desires. But he will not remind you of the righteousness of Christ and your ability to talk about all this with God. He will try to tell you that God does not love you any more because of the thoughts you are having. However, you can't stop birds landing on your head but you can stop them making nests there. Just looking at a scantily clad female and thinking that a thing of beauty is a joy forever, is not adultery in your heart. It become adultery when you take that second look with the aim of chatting that female up in order to seduce her into a sexual encounter. That intention is enough to cause the sin. But, when you have these thoughts, do you go about to put them into practice? Or do you try to resist them and feel like cr@p when you have them? If you do, then you have a right heart toward God.

A verse that I quote when I come under that type of temptation is this one: "I am not called to uncleanness, but to holiness." When I quote that verse, the temptation goes away and I receive peace again.

So what do you tell a prisoner of lust ad I was? How does one stop thinking sinful thoughts? What exercise csn you give them to insure victory? There is none.

Stop trying and struggling and go to God in prayer and talk honestly and openly about it. God is not shocked by the brutal truth. I have talked with God about stuff I would never ever share with any other living person. When people share with others some of their most scarlet sins, it causes others to devalue them in their eyes. It is better to keep your secrets between you and God. I know you have made certain confessions on this thread which have been rather specific. I think that it is better to keep them between you and God. People have confessed to others about addiction to inappropriate content and going to prostitutes etc., and these confessions have poisoned the minds of their fellow believers against them. I heard a guy in my fellowship group confess masturbation (which 95% of young men do, and the others are liars), and I could not think of him afterward without thinking of his masturbation. But when we keep those sorts of things from others, but talk openly about them to God, then those others don't need to know about it, because God then forgives and forgets (until next time, and then He continues to forgive seventy times seven, in other words, every time until you are transformed in glory!).

Get Neil Anderson's book "The Bondage Breaker" and use it to counsel people who you encounter in your ministry. You will be blessed see how those ones get free and start rejoicing in Christ!

I will say it again. Until we believe that the old us is dead, we stand no chance of truly seeing sins defeated in our lives. Let me share with you how it goes with me now.

When the thought comes to lust, I stand fast in the faith, and that the thought is a temptation seeking me to "bite on it" as my own. And when I hold up the shield of faith, guess what? The temptation is defeated, there is no playing with the thought until it concieves and becomes sin, and my walk is undisturbed.

Absolutely.

I mean no harm, but to tell someone bound by Romans 7 failures to just stop, it is a recipe for frustration and more failures. But praise God, when we yield ourselves to God as those who are alive from the dead, everything changes. Everything.

You are correct. We just cannot stop, because we are prisoners of these sinful bodies with their needs and desires. But going boldly to God's throne of grace and talking openly with Him is the act of yielding to Him. We are placing things in His hands.

 

[Gideons300]

We are sin conscious because we are still sinning in our natural body inclinations and desires. But Jesus has taken all that sin on Himself and has clothed us with His righteousness. We will not be completely sin free until we get to glory and are changed.



Not necessarily. I think that it is imperfect teaching that is given by some churches about the difference between justification and sanctification. The ones who are going up for continue ministry do not fully understand that sanctification is developmental and not instant. Also, they do not understand the full implications of justification and how that gives them perfect standing before God. This is why there is no condemnation for believers in Christ. The "walk not after the flesh" was added by a scribe who believed that if a person did not keep God's law perfectly was still subject to condemnation. Paul did not write that. He believed that as soon as a person was born again, they were completely free from condemnation.



That is correct. James says that a double minded man is unstable in all his ways. The reason why our hearts condemn us sometimes is that we forget how complete the righteousness of Christ is when we are clothed with it. Applying 1 John 1:9, confessing the sin and receiving instant and complete cleansing, is the antidote for a condemning heart. I use that scripture all the time!!



Correct. The devil will being back past sins to shame us and water down our faith. But God has forgotten our past sins, so I quote that scripture to the lying, condemning, shaming demon that comes to me to remind me of past failures and tell that demon to get on his bike because I refuse to accept the guilt and shame. It works every time. God forgives us instantly when we speak to him about a failure to resist temptation on some issue; but we need to forgive ourselves. Sure we get brassed off with ourselves when we fail. We want to succeed but it doesn't always happen. Paul had this problem and he found the answer in Christ, according to Romans 7.



Correct. Church teachers need to read Neil Anderson's "Bondage Breaker". You can download it if you want to read it for yourself. This shows effectively how to walk above sin and to maintain the right standing with God.



You will see the end of Romans 7 where Paul found victory in Christ. What he did was to stop struggling to overcome his own shortcomings and failures, and to put it all over to Christ and to rest in Him. Instead of struggling to avoid sin and being super-spiritual to compensate for our sense of failure, we need to use 1 John 1:9 to talk with God about our failures, what we think caused them and ask for help to be stronger to develop a better level of holiness. We need to trust the Lord that what He doesn't like about us, He will change. Sometimes He might leave something in us to act as a thorn in the flesh to keep us humble and to keep us looking to Him as the foundation of our faith, instead of going up to altar calls to get more and more prayer from people who cannot help. Why get someone else to pray for you when you can personally go to God's throne of grace to find mercy and grace to help in your time of need. Going on altar calls and getting others to pray for you can be a lack of faith in Christ because people are going to get help from man instead of going directly to Christ. Getting a pastor to pray for you is the same as a Catholic getting the saints or Mary to pray for him. It is the same principle of trying to get help from man when we all have the Holy Spirit living right inside of us, and that the throne of grace is open to all of us to approach, and not just a privilege of the pastor or church leaders. Often church leaders will teach people that they have a better approach to God than the common herd. This comes from a lying demon whose purpose is to put the saints into bondage to man and to give man a greater respect than God Himself, who has made the way to His throne open to all of us. Jesus is not the high priest just for church leaders and pastors or priests. He is our great high priest who ministers to the Father for all of us.



Absolutely!

You have made lots of different points. Let me ask one question. Once a man comes to Christ, can he fall back and be lost? In other words, are you a proponent of OSAS? That will save a lot of back and forth wranglings if we get that out of the way first.

Blessings,

Gideon

 

[Gideons300]

This reminds me of two lice-ridden, filthy beggars sitting in a ditch and one turns to the other and says, "You stink!"

The lesson in this is that we are all in the same boat. Our own righteousness stinks in the sight of God. Trying to become sinlessly perfect is nothing more than trying to be righteous in ourselves. I once asked God about my own sins and shortcomings, and He said to me, "If I don't like you, I will change you." What He was saying to me was not to struggle and try to be a better Christian, but to trust completely in Christ and the Holy Spirit to transform me into the believer He wants me to be. In the meantime, He assured me that I could stand before Him without any shame, guilt or inferiority, because He has clothed me with the righteousness of Christ, which covers up my own smelly old righteousness.

Just because we struggle with temptation and often succumb to it, doesn't mean that we are rebelling against God. We inhabit a sinful body which will die. The Scripture says that we have the sentence of death in ourselves that we should not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead. Paul asked, "Who shall free me from this body of death?" He went on to say that it was Christ who did that by taking all our sin on the cross with Him, releasing us from the guilt and punishment of it; then He clothed us with His righteousness, making us fully acceptable to God. Then we are filled with the Holy Spirit who works within us to developmentally sanctify us as we grow in grace and in the knowledge of Him.

Judgmental people will always see us from the outside and when they see us performing below their religious standards, they will accuse us of being rebellious, when, in fact, we are strugglers - wanting to follow the law of God in our hearts, but constantly battling to keep our bodies under subjection. What these judgmental people do not realise is that they are in exactly the same situation. This is why it is so hypocritical for one smelly, filthy, lice-ridden beggar to say to another sitting in the same ditch, "You stink!"

Brother, here I must part ways with what you are saying. Jesus came to free us from the power of sin, not just its guilt.

If what you are saying is true, the drug addict should be perfectly able to continue to use, come to our fellowships and be welcomed with open arms.

What you are saying is that we will never be freed from the power of sin, until death does for us what the indwelling Christ could not do, set is free indeed.

Sadly, it is this very teaching that has brought the chirch down low. No one believes that walking as an overcomer is truly possible, not in this life. And it is that unbelief that has kept the church locked into acceptance of sins in our lives that continue to harden our hearts and keep is tepid rather than joyously red hot.

When will we finally break before God and cry out not just for forgiveness but for holy, obedoent natires? How long will we walk on like the Israelites in the wilderness, refusing to simply believe our God that He can keep is from falling.

God has told is two things, two "witnesses" as it were that prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that God means for is to walk in victory over EVERY temptation.

1) He has equipped us with shields of faith that will quench EVERY arrow satan casts at us.

2) Our God has promised us that in EVERY temptation, He will make a way of escape for us by not allowing is to be tempted above that which we are able to bear.

No either God is a liar, a slick marketing advertiser, overpromising and under-delivering, or He was telling us the truth, truth we seem to choke on, because it tells us that the ground we have built our houses on will not stand up to the storm that approaches.

May God forgive is ans awaken is to the truth that He WILL cause usto walk obediently, just as He clearly promised us, using those exact words. But in order for Him to do so, we have to yield ourselves to Him, not IN our sins, but as those who have risen from the dead.

Until we see ourselves as truly "born again" in all of its full connotations instead as using it as a religious catch-phrase, unriil we can yield ourselves to God as those who were sinners but who are sinners no more, we will sleep on in our Laodecian lukewarmness.

May God breK through our excuses and blindness and let us finally just believe our God, no matter what it says about our current walk. If it causes us to hate our unbelief, our fleshly excuses, our old man, then praise God, we are finally on the right path.

Blessings,

Gideon

 

[Gideons300]

I believe as red-blooded males, when we walk behind a young lady in a short skirt on a windy day, we are going to have lustful thoughts. Also, we see it all in movies and on television. We see it all around us, at work, on the bus or train, at the beach. We can't get away from seeing it all and inwardly wishing we could see more. I believe that 95 percent of males, unless they are gay (and then they would have the same thoughts about other men), have lustful thoughts, and the other 5 percent are liars.

I wrote in my previous post about being clothed with the righteousness of Christ. This is what it is for. Talking with the Lord about lustful thoughts is the best way of dealing with them. Then, if someone in the judgment tries to accuse us, then the Lord will tell them that He knows about it already because you told Him all about it. That is what 1 John 1:9 tells us to do. Remember that the devil is the accuser of the brethren. He will come and try and shame you over your normal sexual desire and sex-drive, and will always present opportunities to view stuff that may inflame your desires. But he will not remind you of the righteousness of Christ and your ability to talk about all this with God. He will try to tell you that God does not love you any more because of the thoughts you are having. However, you can't stop birds landing on your head but you can stop them making nests there. Just looking at a scantily clad female and thinking that a thing of beauty is a joy forever, is not adultery in your heart. It become adultery when you take that second look with the aim of chatting that female up in order to seduce her into a sexual encounter. That intention is enough to cause the sin. But, when you have these thoughts, do you go about to put them into practice? Or do you try to resist them and feel like cr@p when you have them? If you do, then you have a right heart toward God.

A verse that I quote when I come under that type of temptation is this one: "I am not called to uncleanness, but to holiness." When I quote that verse, the temptation goes away and I receive peace again.

You are wrong. I was the 95%, and at the head of the line. List had me by the neck. But my cry, a cry thst never wavered no matter how much I struggled, was for God to make me pire in hesrt.

So here is the question. Did Jesus lust? If He wad fully man and tempted just as we were, did He lust? No, brother, He did not. He was no adulterer.

Now, the jump from the boat in the storm to walk on the water to Jesus. If Christ is in us, if it is no longer us that lives but Christ who now dwells in us, there can be only one conclusion. Just one.

We can choke on it, avoid it, reason with it, or accept it as truth, and let sin become exceedingly sinful to us. And when we finally see it is our old nature that is the culprit, the one that causes these failings, and realize the only escape is to get freed from its grip, only then are we ready to ONLY believe,

And when we do, and believe that His promises are yea and amen, we will see the woman with the blowing skirt, admire the beaity of the female figure God created, see her as a soul God loves, and walk on with our consciences totally pire and indefiled.

Impossible you say? I would have thought so too, until God proved it to me, IN me! You see, what is impossible to man, is not only possible with God, it is GUARANTEED?

But until we believe it, for US, it may be the truth (and it is) but it will still not profit us, not being moxed with fsith in them tht heard it.

Unbelief is at the root of our lukewarmness and the only cure for our unbelief is confession and turning away from it, exercising the little faith that we have been given. That is all God asks of us. Will we do it?

Blessings,

Gideon

 

[Presbyterian Continuist]

You have made lots of different points. Let me ask one question. Once a man comes to Christ, can he fall back and be lost? In other words, are you a proponent of OSAS? That will save a lot of back and forth wranglings if we get that out of the way first.

I believe in OSAS for the continuing believer. The requirements for salvation is that we believe that Jesus is the Son of God and that He rose again from the dead. A true convert to Christ will always believe that and show the fruits of it in his life. As long as the believers remains a believer, his salvation is secure.

Now, we may have setbacks in our sanctification. We may go through events in life where we may reject the teachings of a church, or turn away from our mentors and decide to go it alone with God. These are not backsliding from Christ. Some churches believe that if we choose to leave the church, we are backsliding. Others may say that we reject what a pastor teaches we are being rebellious. This is called spiritual abuse. The church or that pastor is not Jesus. They only represent Jesus to us. If they fail to represent Jesus in a way that helps us maintain our faith in Him, then we are free to leave that church and/or reject that pastor.

Most accusations of backsliding arise from a person leaving a church which thinks they are closer to God than all the others. I was probably accused of backsliding when I left the Charismatic movement after being 12 years in it, and going to an Anglican church. I guess that some of my Charismatic friends would see me only restored to Christ if I rejoined the Charismatic movement.

But I never walked away from Christ when I became hurt and disillusioned by the Charismatic church I attended. I never rejected my Pentecostal theology and I always talked things through with God, even when I was doing stuff that He would not have approved of. He told me that I was not walking according to what He wanted for me, but we can talk our way through it. And so I did, and He brought me back to a more holy lifestyle. I did not consciously work on any of the changes, but as I shared with Him at each stage, I found that things happened which changed my direction and choices.

There was one point where I was on my way to College as an adult student. I was at my parents' home, halfway between the city I was leaving and the one I was going to. Suddenly I got a letter saying that I was not accepted at the College, even though I was approved by the whole College interview panel. I had to write to the Director General of Education to get his discretion to attend the College. When I went to God about it, He gave me a choice, go back to the city where I came from or go on to the other city where no one knew me, and was not sure where I was going to live, or whether my College application had been finally approved. He said, "No pressure, but if you go back to your former city I will not be with you." I told Him that I had no choice but to go on. So the next day I was on the train to the city, and found when I got there, He was waiting for me, found me a place to live, found new friends and a church, and had my application to College approved. That was when, after a couple of storm and stress years, my restoration began, and the rest is history.

 

[Nihilist Virus]

No,I refer to myself as a disciple of JESUS.one who is a student learning to become like his master.we go out we heal the sick ,preach the good news of Jesus,drive out devils,baptised people ,see them baptise in the Holy Spirit evidenced by tongues ,then we teach them to do the same.
I would hope one day when we learn to do it very well others maY call me "christlike".

Simply sell all that you have, give to the poor, and wander the world doing good works and preaching the gospel. Who would not call you Christ-like?

But none of this changes your own responsibility to repent from "your own ways" in order to be saved.

Actually it's not a responsibility in that I owe no one those actions. I'd rather suffer the consequences than be saved if you don't mind.

 

[Presbyterian Continuist]

Brother, here I must part ways with what you are saying. Jesus came to free us from the power of sin, not just its guilt.

Oh! That did come into my mind, but I didn't mention it because when we are released from the guilt and punishment of sin, it does lose its power over us. This is because our sinfulness no longer gets in the way of our fellowship with God. Because we are clothed with the righteousness of Christ, the way of fellowship with God is always open, because He does not see us in terms of our sinfulness, but in terms of the righteousness of Christ that covers it, and enables God to totally forget that we are sinful beings. In that sense, we are freed from the power of sin.

If what you are saying is true, the drug addict should be perfectly able to continue to use, come to our fellowships and be welcomed with open arms.

Yes. We should freely accept that person even if he is still a sinner and not yet converted. That is what the church is for: to save sinners. When a person is truly converted to Christ, he then has a strong desire to be free from anything that might compromise his new found faith. This means that he is going to cry out to God in prayer to be set free from his drug habit. He knows that only Christ can do that, so he stops trying in his own strength, and seeks the will of God about what to do to get free. He may need a deliverance prayer to assist, and much support (and not judgment) from the believers in the church. Converted drug addicts need total and loving support from Christians in a church to guide him to freedom. I was a smoker when I was first converted and I found it difficult to give it up in my own strength. A Christian brother told me that when God wants me to be free, He will give me up. I kept praying about it, and one day God told me to finish the packet I was smoking and not buy another one. I went one day without smoking and then borrowed a cigarette from a friend at work. Then it seems that the Holy Spirit said to me, "Throw that cigarette away in the Name of Jesus and be free!" So that's what I did. I went another three days without smoking, and I got free. Three weeks later I was in a suburban train unit where everyone was smoking except me and enjoying it. I had a real battle, but I resisted in the Name of Jesus, and, 50 years later, I have not had a single craving. And that is while my two parents and two brothers smoked heavily when I was at my parents' home. So God gives us up by the power of the Holy Spirit, but we have to seek Him, get His directions, activate our faith, and He does the rest.

But if a person decides to hang on to his habit, adultery, thieving, etc., then I would wonder if he is truly converted to Christ, because a true convert would be quite unhappy while still in that state.

What you are saying is that we will never be freed from the power of sin, until death does for us what the indwelling Christ could not do, set is free indeed.

I meant that we will never be completely free from our sinful nature. Paul said that in his heart he wanted to keep the law of God, but in his members, that is, his natural desires and urges, he found that he could not do what he wanted. He was very unhappy with that, because the desire of his heart was in direct conflict with the desires of his natural being. He turned to Christ, grabbed hold of Him, like grabbing hold of the horns of the altar for refuge, and that was the key to his victory.

The Holy Spirit will free a person from any sin that will being disrepute to his testimony, Christ, or his church. But there are personal things which would not affect anyone outside of himself and God, and some of those seem to remain like thorns in the flesh. I am not saying that we would be happy for them to remain, and we are like Paul, we pray repeatedly for God to free us from those things.

Sadly, it is this very teaching that has brought the church down low. No one believes that walking as an overcomer is truly possible, not in this life. And it is that unbelief that has kept the church locked into acceptance of sins in our lives that continue to harden our hearts and keep is tepid rather than joyously red hot.

The problem is that people are looking at the church, which although represents Christ in the world, it does it imperfectly. 'This is why it says that we have the treasure in earthen vessels. The reason why we look to Christ in faith is that He is the perfect One. The Church should more effectively point people away from itself and more toward Christ. Our faith is not in a church, but in the finished work of Christ on Calvary. Often the Church is not honest in its imperfections. When a church preaches that it is the true church, or that it is closer to God's will and purposes than others, then people can be put off, and because they cannot see that Christ is a totally different entity than His church, they tend to reject Christ along with the church. It's like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The church should be honest about its imperfections and shortcomings and concentrate on promoting the perfect Christ who has come to save sinners. It is not the church that saves sinners, it is Christ.

When will we finally break before God and cry out not just for forgiveness but for holy, obedient natures? How long will we walk on like the Israelites in the wilderness, refusing to simply believe our God that He can keep is from falling.

You are right in a sense. But often the church, when it teaches holiness, it is teaching compliance with the Law by saying that a person has to be perfectly holy and sinless before God will accept him. I think many churches are confused between justification and sanctification. Too many churches are teaching that people need to work on their holiness in their own strength. But that is promoting self-righteousness, which is odious to God. If we could become sinless by ourselves or at the insistence of others, then why did the Father make the effort to send His only Son to die for us on Calvary; and why did Jesus go through all that suffering for us, if we could become acceptable to God by our own selves. Hebrews says that after the sacrifice of Jesus, there is no more sacrifice for sin; yet many churches are demanding further sacrifices for sin at their members when in fact Jesus paid it all.

When a person goes to Christ and unburdens himself of all his sins by discussing them with Him, He cleanses that person from all unrighteousness. And He does that every time. I think that too many churches underestimate the power and effectiveness of 1 John 1:9. They may believe it in theory but go right against it in practice.

God has told is two things, two "witnesses" as it were that prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that God means for is to walk in victory over EVERY temptation.

1) He has equipped us with shields of faith that will quench EVERY arrow satan casts at us.

2) Our God has promised us that in EVERY temptation, He will make a way of escape for us by not allowing is to be tempted above that which we are able to bear.

No either God is a liar, a slick marketing advertiser, over-promising and under-delivering, or He was telling us the truth, truth we seem to choke on, because it tells us that the ground we have built our houses on will not stand up to the storm that approaches.

You are correct in your first points. I think that the rock on which we build our houses is Christ. If we try and build our house on our own level of sanctification, it will be on the sand and it will fall down every time. It is not God's fault that people don't have the victory. It is the defective teaching that many churches give to believers that makes them think they have to try and be fully sanctified by their own efforts. Paul called such people who came to the Galatian churches preaching the same stuff, false apostles. If we have teachers teaching people that they must be totally holy in every respect to be acceptable to God and to remain in His perfect will, they are false teachers teaching another gospel, and there is a curse that comes with that.

May God forgive is ans awaken is to the truth that He WILL cause us to walk obediently, just as He clearly promised us, using those exact words. But in order for Him to do so, we have to yield ourselves to Him, not IN our sins, but as those who have risen from the dead.

Obedience to Christ is not the making of self effort to be perfectly holy. It is putting our complete faith and trust in Him and seeking His will for our lives. Obedience is complying with 1 John 1:9, and loving God with all our hearts and minds, and loving others as we love ourselves. Jesus said the whole law of Moses is contained in loving God and loving one another. 1 Corinthians 13 defines what that love is. That is being obedient to Christ.

Until we see ourselves as truly "born again" in all of its full connotations instead as using it as a religious catch-phrase, unyiil we can yield ourselves to God as those who were sinners but who are sinners no more, we will sleep on in our Laodecian lukewarmness.

The way to achieve that is to go before God in prayer and for Him to show you the way. Just because the church has a lower standard doesn't mean that you should. I don't think that you are lukewarm at all, because you are seeking God to show you His will and are looking for ways to be closer to Him and to have a stronger faith in Christ.

May God break through our excuses and blindness and let us finally just believe our God, no matter what it says about our current walk. If it causes us to hate our unbelief, our fleshly excuses, our old man, then praise God, we are finally on the right path.

I think when people have that attitude, Jesus could come to them and say, "You are not far from the kingdom of God."

 

[Nihilist Virus]

I understand and respect your position because sadly the Church has not been able to show you convincingly that God is real and alive, and that Jesus actually rose from the dead and is alive today, influencing the lives of people in very meaningful ways.

What convinced the pagan world of the
First Century AD and overturned the Roman Empire, was that the original Apostles and believers had miraculous signs and wonders accompanying the gospel they preached. When Philip went to the Samaritans to preach the gospel to them, it was only when they saw the miraculous healings and people being set free form demon influence, that they gave heed to his teaching about the gospel. I reckon that if there were not miracles, then all he would have had to offer were just words, just like most churches today.

The fact that you have posted here shows that you could have second thoughts if you saw something that convinced you that God is real. It is sad that in most cases, the Church is unable to do that, and until it is able to show by signs, wonders, and miracles, accompanying the preaching of the gospel, Athiests will continue as they are, and who can blame them when all they can see is a powerless, word-based religion that cannot prove what it asserts?

I think that church-based people who read this post should take a lesson in this.

I had always just assumed that the claims in the Bible are untestable. You are the first person to have ever indicated otherwise to me.

I think that anyone viewing the believers in churches could be put off religion. This is because Christians are not perfect, and if we judge the reality of God and of Christ by what we see in Christians, then we would be tempted to reject the whole thing. But is the Church God or Jesus? Are they the same entity? I don't think so. God revealed Himself to me in the middle of a park at night, right away from any church. I see church as a place where believers of like mind fellowship together and encourage each other in the faith. Nothing more. I know that some churches profess to be the voice of God to the nations. I don't believe a word of it.

What's needed is for skeptical folks to look away from the church to find the truth of the gospel of Christ and the reality of God, because they won't find it there.

Reading the Bible is the doorway to finding the reality of God. But it is important to see when the Bible is speaking for us, and not necessarily directly to us, and when it is speaking directly to us. The Old Testament is written for us and not to us. Same with the gospels. Some of what Jesus said is for us, and other statements are written to us. The letters of Paul are mostly written to us for our instruction and guidance.

But just reading the book is not enough. I spent two years studying the Bible and doing the religious stuff in a church that professed to be closer to God than all the others. But I still didn't know God as a real person in spite of all that. It was only when I went out alone in the middle of a park and told God that He was within earshot of my voice and I needed to know Him personally or else I was going to give it all up. I then introduced myself to God and said that I was glad to meet Him.

I cannot describe exactly what happened to me. It was not an emotional experience, because I my feet were cold, and it was a bit chilly in that park at 11pm. But I was somehow all lit up inside like a Christmas tree. One minute I had no knowledge of God, and the next I knew that He was very real. Then I heard a voice in the back of my head, not a actual voice; it was more like a thought in my mind but a type of thought that I have never had before. It was like a thought injected into my mind, rather than one I thought myself. I know that this is not a good description of it, but there it is. What that thought told me was this: "We have been waiting a long time for you to get away from the religious stuff and to come to Me directly." By that, my faith in Christ was strongly enhanced, and from that day, 50 years ago, I have had no doubts that God is real and Jesus is really alive.

This did not come through a church, and when I got back to my church, people still treated me as a problem case, which was quite different to God's attitude to me. He said that He accepted me as I was, and if He didn't like anything about me, He would change me. I have been through many situations and challenges over the years and I can say that God has changed things He didn't like about me, but He has always allowed me to be myself, and discouraged me from being over-religious to somehow compensate for my own failures and shortcomings.

If you examined my life and saw my failures and shortcomings, you would most certainly remain an athiest, because I am probably one of the worst examples of what a believer should be. But when you read the gospels and saw how Jesus behaved and dealt with people, then it is His example that should encourage you to rethink your position.

I think your statement that God is not the same entity as Jesus is heretical in this forum and I would advise caution when expressing that. I also think that you should at least research inner voices and really you should consult a specialist.

As for me, I had a similar moment during my stage of apostasy at a beach in Hawaii. I gave God the same ultimatum and nothing happened.

 

[Presbyterian Continuist]

You are wrong. I was the 95%, and at the head of the line. List had me by the neck. But my cry, a cry thst never wavered no matter how much I struggled, was for God to make me pure in heart.

You are not at the head of the list. Paul got there first. He says that he is the chief of sinners because he persecuted the Church. So, unless you had Christians killed and thrown into prison, then you haven't toppled Paul off the top of the List! Notice that as the immediate result of his encounter with Christ on the Damascus Road, he started praying and crying out to God. That is the sign of a true conversion. That was what convinced Ananias to go and minister to Paul, because the Holy Spirit told him that Paul was praying!

So here is the question. Did Jesus lust? If He wad fully man and tempted just as we were, did He lust? No, brother, He did not. He was no adulterer.

The Scripture says that Jesus was tempted in all points as we are, that is why He could become our true Great High Priest. I believe that He did have lustful thoughts when He looked at attractive females, but He did not allow those thoughts to take root in His mind, nor did He contemplate doing anything about those thoughts. That is why in spite of those thoughts, He did not commit adultery in His heart.

Now, the jump from the boat in the storm to walk on the water to Jesus. If Christ is in us, if it is no longer us that lives but Christ who now dwells in us, there can be only one conclusion. Just one.

We can choke on it, avoid it, reason with it, or accept it as truth, and let sin become exceedingly sinful to us. And when we finally see it is our old nature that is the culprit, the one that causes these failings, and realize the only escape is to get freed from its grip, only then are we ready to ONLY believe,

Paul teaches that because we have Christ in us, we must keep our bodies under subjection. We do that through study of God's word, prayer and resisting the devil when temptations come. We get God's advice about how to activate our faith in the face of temptation, and when we follow that advice, we defeat the temptation.

And when we do, and believe that His promises are yea and amen, we will see the woman with the blowing skirt, admire the beauty of the female figure God created, see her as a soul God loves, and walk on with our consciences totally pure and undefiled.

Correct. That's where the verse "You have not been called to uncleanness but to holiness" is the sword of the Spirit that we wield when we are resisting the devil.

[quote[Impossible you say? I would have thought so too, until God proved it to me, IN me! You see, what is impossible to man, is not only possible with God, it is GUARANTEED?[/quote]

I'm not saying that it is impossible, because all things are possible with God, as you have said.

But until we believe it, for US, it may be the truth (and it is) but it will still not profit us, not being mixed with faith in them tht heard it.

Unbelief is at the root of our lukewarmness and the only cure for our unbelief is confession and turning away from it, exercising the little faith that we have been given. That is all God asks of us. Will we do it?

Absolutely. I will say that faith does not come in measures. We either have faith or we don't. We either believe God's Word or we don't. There is no middle way. I know that Jesus said to His disciples, "Oh ye of little faith." But seeing that we have the Holy Spirit living right inside of us, we can have all the faith we need to move mountains, if that is what God intends for us to do.

 

[Presbyterian Continuist]

Simply sell all that you have, give to the poor, and wander the world doing good works and preaching the gospel. Who would not call you Christ-like?

Actually it's not a responsibility in that I owe no one those actions. I'd rather suffer the consequences than be saved if you don't mind.

Because you say you have read the Bible, then of course you would have seen this verse: "The god of this world has blinded the minds of those who believe not lest they should see the glorious gospel of Christ and be saved from their sins."

So, because you are identifying yourself as an athiest, would you not accept, that as an non-believer, you might not be able to understand what the gospel of Christ is really about?

Before I accepted Christ as my Saviour, I had no idea of what the gospel was about. All I saw was religious people in churches, but I had no understanding at all about why Jesus really died on the cross. I read through the gospels and watched Christian films but they were just stories to me. I found the letters of Paul difficult to understand. I read the words but did not comprehend the message.

I don't think it was because I was unintelligent or could not understand English. It was because I was essentially an unbeliever and so could not comprehend what the gospel was really about.

It was only after I made a decision to accept Christ as my Saviour that I started to understand what Jesus was all about, and that He rose from the dead and is alive right now. I also started to understand what Paul was teaching and how it was important for basic Christian faith and life.

In my 50 years of experience as a Christian believer, I have heard basically the same things you are saying, and every non believer I have heard or spoken with has demonstrated the same lack of understanding of the true nature of the gospel.

You may not like that, but there it is. The truth of the gospel comes by revelation. Jesus, through the work of the Holy Spirit reveals it to believers, because it is not perceived through the natural mind, but is spiritually discerned. But for an unbeliever, that spiritual function is dead in them. What being "born again" is, that the person's spirit is brought to life because of the person's decision to accept Christ as Saviour. Because the spirit has now been made alive, it can receive revelation from the Holy Spirit who comes and indwells the new believer's spirit. Then, the new believer is able to understand the true nature of the gospel and Paul's teaching. In effect, the Bible becomes a new book to that person.

So you can read the Bible and look at churches until the cows come home, but you will never fully understand it until you genuinely accept Christ as Saviour.

Hey, what if at the end you find yourself standing before the God you don't believe in. What then?

 

[Presbyterian Continuist]

I had always just assumed that the claims in the Bible are untestable. You are the first person to have ever indicated otherwise to me.



I think your statement that God is not the same entity as Jesus is heretical in this forum and I would advise caution when expressing that. I also think that you should at least research inner voices and really you should consult a specialist.

As for me, I had a similar moment during my stage of apostasy at a beach in Hawaii. I gave God the same ultimatum and nothing happened.

No. I said that God and Jesus are not the same entity as the Church. The Roman Catholic Church believes that it has direct authority from God which essentially makes it so much in unity with God that it could be viewed as the same entity. But that is not correct.

Jesus is the Head of the universal Church, but He is not so connected with it to make Him and it the same entity. I can leave all churches and live in a shack in the Sahara desert and still have total faith in Christ and be fully accepted by Him as a believer.

There is a difference between as an unbeliever demanding that God proves Himself to you, than as a believer asking God to reveal Himself to you.

The unbelieving Jews demanded a sign from Jesus that He was the true Messiah. He told them that they would receive no sign other than that of Jonah. Jonah was the guy who spent three days in the belly of the whale. What Jesus was saying here is that Jonah's experience was symbolic of His own death on the cross, three days in the tomb and then rising from the dead on the third day. In fact, Jesus was saying to the Jews that the sign they needed was that Jesus was going to rise from the dead. When the Apostles preached the resurrection of Christ, many Jews became believers in Christ because they believed the sign. What caused the Jews to have Paul imprisoned was that he preached the resurrection of Christ, something which the unbelieving Jewish leaders hated to hear.

So, the only message to any unbeliever, is not to go out and demand that God reveals Himself to him, but to believe that Jesus is the Son of God and that He did rise from the dead and is alive today. When a person decides to believe that, then God is able to reveal Himself to that person.

But because God knows the hearts of people, just doing it as a ritual, and not from the heart, will not work, because He will see that it was not genuine, and any professed conversion will be false.

 

[Presbyterian Continuist]

You are wrong. I was the 95%, and at the head of the line. List had me by the neck. But my cry, a cry that never wavered no matter how much I struggled, was for God to make me pure in heart.

I must say that my views about holiness and the finished work of Christ have come about through my intense struggles and self-doubts about my own level of holiness. I have often said the Lord that if Jesus had not have died for me on the cross I would be well and truly sunk!

I am reminded of the story of a pastor in a communist country. He was arrested, and the interrogator brought up all his sins and shortcomings in order to break him. He told the pastor how he could continue being a pastor when he had committed such bad sins that had brought discredit on the Church and himself, and that if he was being honest, he would resign from the church and live a private life, never preaching the gospel again.

That pastor, instead of trying to defend himself, kept totally agreeing with the interrogator concerning the accusations, saying that the interrogator was saying the absolute truth about him. In the end it was the interrogator who had to give up and release the pastor because he could not break him.

The reason why the interrogator could not break the pastor was that the pastor accepted his own sinfulness fully, and acknowledged it as the truth every time. What the interrogator didn't realise was that pastor knew that Jesus has taken all his sin with Him on the cross and covered him with His righteousness. Therefore he was able to stand firm in his heart and mind that he was called of God to be a pastor, in spite of all the accusations levelled against him.

You see, we can agree with every accusation that is brought against us either from fellow believers, unbelievers, or even the devil himself; but that would not break us because we know what Jesus did for us on the cross and how He has taken all our sin upon Himself and set us free from the shame and guilt of that sin. Those accusations, even self-accusations. would not stop us from being in the centre of God's will for our lives and continuing in it no matter what our fault and shortcoming may be. That is why the gospel is such good news to us!

 

[Gideons300]

Oh! That did come into my mind, but I didn't mention it because when we are released from the guilt and punishment of sin, it does lose its power over us. This is because our sinfulness no longer gets in the way of our fellowship with God. Because we are clothed with the righteousness of Christ, the way of fellowship with God is always open, because He does not see us in terms of our sinfulness, but in terms of the righteousness of Christ that covers it, and enables God to totally forget that we are sinful beings. In that sense, we are freed from the power of sin.



Yes. We should freely accept that person even if he is still a sinner and not yet converted. That is what the church is for: to save sinners. When a person is truly converted to Christ, he then has a strong desire to be free from anything that might compromise his new found faith. This means that he is going to cry out to God in prayer to be set free from his drug habit. He knows that only Christ can do that, so he stops trying in his own strength, and seeks the will of God about what to do to get free. He may need a deliverance prayer to assist, and much support (and not judgment) from the believers in the church. Converted drug addicts need total and loving support from Christians in a church to guide him to freedom. I was a smoker when I was first converted and I found it difficult to give it up in my own strength. A Christian brother told me that when God wants me to be free, He will give me up. I kept praying about it, and one day God told me to finish the packet I was smoking and not buy another one. I went one day without smoking and then borrowed a cigarette from a friend at work. Then it seems that the Holy Spirit said to me, "Throw that cigarette away in the Name of Jesus and be free!" So that's what I did. I went another three days without smoking, and I got free. Three weeks later I was in a suburban train unit where everyone was smoking except me and enjoying it. I had a real battle, but I resisted in the Name of Jesus, and, 50 years later, I have not had a single craving. And that is while my two parents and two brothers smoked heavily when I was at my parents' home. So God gives us up by the power of the Holy Spirit, but we have to seek Him, get His directions, activate our faith, and He does the rest.

But if a person decides to hang on to his habit, adultery, thieving, etc., then I would wonder if he is truly converted to Christ, because a true convert would be quite unhappy while still in that state.



I meant that we will never be completely free from our sinful nature. Paul said that in his heart he wanted to keep the law of God, but in his members, that is, his natural desires and urges, he found that he could not do what he wanted. He was very unhappy with that, because the desire of his heart was in direct conflict with the desires of his natural being. He turned to Christ, grabbed hold of Him, like grabbing hold of the horns of the altar for refuge, and that was the key to his victory.

The Holy Spirit will free a person from any sin that will being disrepute to his testimony, Christ, or his church. But there are personal things which would not affect anyone outside of himself and God, and some of those seem to remain like thorns in the flesh. I am not saying that we would be happy for them to remain, and we are like Paul, we pray repeatedly for God to free us from those things.



The problem is that people are looking at the church, which although represents Christ in the world, it does it imperfectly. 'This is why it says that we have the treasure in earthen vessels. The reason why we look to Christ in faith is that He is the perfect One. The Church should more effectively point people away from itself and more toward Christ. Our faith is not in a church, but in the finished work of Christ on Calvary. Often the Church is not honest in its imperfections. When a church preaches that it is the true church, or that it is closer to God's will and purposes than others, then people can be put off, and because they cannot see that Christ is a totally different entity than His church, they tend to reject Christ along with the church. It's like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The church should be honest about its imperfections and shortcomings and concentrate on promoting the perfect Christ who has come to save sinners. It is not the church that saves sinners, it is Christ.



You are right in a sense. But often the church, when it teaches holiness, it is teaching compliance with the Law by saying that a person has to be perfectly holy and sinless before God will accept him. I think many churches are confused between justification and sanctification. Too many churches are teaching that people need to work on their holiness in their own strength. But that is promoting self-righteousness, which is odious to God. If we could become sinless by ourselves or at the insistence of others, then why did the Father make the effort to send His only Son to die for us on Calvary; and why did Jesus go through all that suffering for us, if we could become acceptable to God by our own selves. Hebrews says that after the sacrifice of Jesus, there is no more sacrifice for sin; yet many churches are demanding further sacrifices for sin at their members when in fact Jesus paid it all.

When a person goes to Christ and unburdens himself of all his sins by discussing them with Him, He cleanses that person from all unrighteousness. And He does that every time. I think that too many churches underestimate the power and effectiveness of 1 John 1:9. They may believe it in theory but go right against it in practice.



You are correct in your first points. I think that the rock on which we build our houses is Christ. If we try and build our house on our own level of sanctification, it will be on the sand and it will fall down every time. It is not God's fault that people don't have the victory. It is the defective teaching that many churches give to believers that makes them think they have to try and be fully sanctified by their own efforts. Paul called such people who came to the Galatian churches preaching the same stuff, false apostles. If we have teachers teaching people that they must be totally holy in every respect to be acceptable to God and to remain in His perfect will, they are false teachers teaching another gospel, and there is a curse that comes with that.



Obedience to Christ is not the making of self effort to be perfectly holy. It is putting our complete faith and trust in Him and seeking His will for our lives. Obedience is complying with 1 John 1:9, and loving God with all our hearts and minds, and loving others as we love ourselves. Jesus said the whole law of Moses is contained in loving God and loving one another. 1 Corinthians 13 defines what that love is. That is being obedient to Christ.



The way to achieve that is to go before God in prayer and for Him to show you the way. Just because the church has a lower standard doesn't mean that you should. I don't think that you are lukewarm at all, because you are seeking God to show you His will and are looking for ways to be closer to Him and to have a stronger faith in Christ.



I think when people have that attitude, Jesus could come to them and say, "You are not far from the kingdom of God."

Oscar, what you have said, if I am understanding you correctly, is basically that once converted, no matter what sins we may commit, we are still bound for Heaven. OSAS.

And I am saying that it is this mindset that forces us so ignore a multitude of warnings in the Word that if we build again that which He destroyed, we make ourselves transgressors again and our end will be worse than before we were saved.

I will not list the numerous clear warnings that tell us that sin can harden the heart to such an extent that faith is finally completely uprooted. There is one verse though that clarifies the error without a doubt.

"For if we sin willfully after having received the knowledge of the truth, there remains no more sacrifice for sins, but a fearful looking for of judgment, seeing we have put the Son of God to an open shame."

It is this teaching, this watering down of grace, this turning the grace of God into lasciviousness (license to sin without danger) that is one of the main reasons for our current lukewarm Christianity.

You put forth the notion that the only obedience that Christ asks of us is that we love God with all of our hearts and love our neighbors as we love ourselves. I disagree. What God asks for in our obedience is a charge that we are to make Him fully Lord of our lives, with us as His faithful servants, delighting to do everything and anything He asks of us.

But for the sake of argument, let's assume what you say is correct. So, how are we doing? Are we as His followers completely single eyed, loving our God with ALL of our hearts? Or do we love the freedom to sin a bit when the mood strikes us? Are we loving each other with the same depth and intensity that we love ourselves? Really? If any of us says yes to either question, I would be amazed and completely doubtful.

The truth is, if we will be honest with ourselves, is that our current Christianity has not made us able to say yes to either command, and yet, it doesn't bother us at all. There is the real sin. There is the Laodecian "I have need of nothing" mindset.

And instead of hitting our knees and crying out to God to change us, we pat each other on the back that it is all ok because of grace, and that all He wants us to do is to try our best. And with this, we sadly piggyback an addition layer of self deception upon us, for are we really wanting that? Really seeking God to bribg us to complete surrender? Do we truly hunger for loving the difficult to love saint in the same way we adore and pamper ourselves? We both know the answers here.

I think that what you are espousing is actually contrary to the purpose of the OP. The assuring saints bound by sins that all is still well because of what Jesus accomplished on the cross is simply another huge reason that we ARE lukewarm. If you wouldn't mind, let's not get off topic. If you feel led to start a post on the stances that you take, that is more than fine.

It is one thing to be bound by sin. If a man is overcome by lust, if a woman cannot stop gossiping about others, and yet both feel bad about it, and long to be freed from sin's grasp, God is more than forgiving if they have never been told HOW to get freed from their grip.

BUT, if those same saints have be ome accepting of these sins, offending their consciences over and over, with no godly sorrow that leads to repentance, their once "sins of ignorance" are now willful sins, and extreme danger lurks.

May God awaken our consciences to seek the answer to our bondages to sin, instead of duplicating the error of the Laodecians. That attitude made God sick then, and the same attitude today bears the same response from God. Thst should break our hearts. The fact that it does not is the best revealer of all as to how lukewarm we have grown.

God spoke of us.... this generation.... when He said in Ezekiel 36 that we have blasphemed His holy name wherever we have gone. Thank God He will awaken us and remove the blinders that have led us so far astray, but lest we forget, all were awakened, not all responded.

Do we long to please God and to live holy lives pleasing to Him? That is the question of the hour. Many may not have the answers.... yet..... but I can promise one thing. Those who cry out to God as wretched men, hating their fleshly nature that cannot love God nor man with all their hearts, that refuses to obey Jesus as their Lord, they are in for a joyous awakening. However, those living in Romans 7, living quite peacefully because their consciences have been so hardened that sin is not seen as a threat or an afront to a Holy God, their foundation is pure sand, and when the approaching storm comes, and it is, their salvation is no sure thing.

Blessings,

Gideon