Posted on 01/20/2007 8:06:33 AM PST by Louis Foxwell
THE PURPOSE OF THIS BOOK
If you believe that the world can satisfy your desire for meaning and purpose, that society can offer you all that you need, that politics and government are the solution to the world’s problems, you are not ready to live in the Spirit. Jesus made it clear that the world wars against the spirit. They are in fundamental conflict.
Salvation is the first step in the life of the Spirit. Paul talked about salvation as the death of the flesh and the birth of the spirit. The old man dies and the new man is born. This sounds like something more than simply making a decision, and it is.
Salvation comes at the end of believing that life holds the key to happiness, success, love and the meaning of life. When all else has failed the door to eternal life, life in the Spirit, opens.
One cannot have the riches of the world and the riches of the spirit. Preachers who teach that worldly wealth follows the spiritually mature Christian do not know anything about the life of the Spirit. They remain caught up in the world and its rewards.
To accept Christ you must surrender your life in the world. Christ does not make it easier to live in the world. He makes it infinitely difficult. He makes it impossible.
The life of the spirit denies the values of the world. Living in the spirit creates continuous conflicts with the world. Those who are alive in Christ find themselves at war with their neighbors, friends, fellow workers, family and church members.
Because of the terrible demands of living a spiritual life nearly all who are saved never pass beyond the first step in the life of the spirit. It is simply too difficult and demands too much of the believer.
This book attempts to simplify and clarify the life of the spirit as it is taught in the New Testament by Jesus, Paul, the Gospel writers and the authors of the letters. It is my fervent hope that the clear and simple steps outlined here will allow those who have surrendered themselves to Christ to progress in their spiritual journey.
There is nothing new in these steps. They are clearly described in scripture. References will be offered continuously not as a proof but as a tool for study and meditation. The New Testament is a how-to book on the spiritual life. That is what Jesus taught, the life of the Spirit.
Sorry, sounds too much like Warren/Osteen to me.
Stay with me on this. You won't find pablum here.
I don't know about anyone/anything else, but your intro just gave me peace with something I've been struggling with and burdened by for the last two or three days. Thanks, Amos. I mean, THANKS, AMOS.
It seems rather straight forward to begin with.
The next chapters of the book must be very short, one sentence chapters that contain only the words.
Read the Bible, get to know it, refer to it always.
Be led by the Holy Spirit.
Don't let yourself be deceived.
THE END
I will.
But here is my issue: the line "life holds the key to happiness, success, love and the meaning of life." I have a hard time with that statement. I know plenty of folks who became Christian and that was the beginning of all sorts of problems....
I for one would like to be on a ping for this.
As a pastor I know how hard it is to put these issues down in words.
So if you are really willing to stay the course I'll be there with you and I'll use the best of your book. Don't be put off brother.
You have misread the line. Perhaps I should change it. The intent is to say that if you believe life on this earth holds the key to happiness you will not be able to be saved.
Try rereading with this in mind. Perhaps you can suggest a better way to say what I am trying to communicate.
Current or retired?
Thank you for the encouragement. It is not my intention to play nice. I hope what I write will be difficult to accept because it places enormous demands on the Christian.
I just reread it and it still sounds like the prosperity gospel to me..
BTW, you are a humble guy for opening up editorial comments to the BaptiPresbyEpiscoLuthMethoCalvaIdyists on this thread!
Hi and thanks for asking. I minister in Wales looking after two small fellowships. They are a delight and they love to hear God's word. I also do secular work to get enough cash to live. This is a relatively poor area, and very few of my flock work (too young or too old).
Well said brother,
The Chrisitan life is counter-cultural (in John Stott's words). It is (as you rightly noted) IMPOSSIBLE to want to live or to be able to live without God's grace. So write the hard things - anyone can sooth, saying 'peace. peace. where there is no peace'.
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Please ping me to all note-worthy threads on Pro-Life or Catholic threads.
Keep up the good work.
Thanks for the encouragement!
In your book point out that it is against one of the Ten Commandments to covet thy neighors goods.
All this taxation to spread the wealth for government social programs and Democrat government employee jobs is in direct conflict with one of the Ten Commandments.
OK. I am going to resolve this. This is supposed to be a screed against prosperity theology.
I said:
"One cannot have the riches of the world and the riches of the spirit. Preachers who teach that worldly wealth follows the spiritually mature Christian do not know anything about the life of the Spirit."
and:
"Salvation comes at the end of believing that life holds the key to happiness, success, love and the meaning of life."
I think I see the problem.
I will change the words "at the end of believing" to "when you can no longer believe" So it reads:
"Salvation comes when you can no longer believe that life holds the key to happiness, success, love and the meaning of life. When all else has failed the door to eternal life, life in the Spirit, opens."
Does that help?
ATP,..If I may be so bold as to offer one slight correction to your perspective...
Consider John 3:16
God so love the 'World'... The word for mankind wasn't used, not the word for globe, nor for the entire earth, nor humanity,..He chose the expression of 'World'. In the Greek, KOSMOS. The same word used to describe a method of thinking by those who thought independent of Him.
Now what is the defintiion of that word?
KOSMOS might be thought of as "Making order out of CHAOS".
In our soul, prior to eternal life, man has a tendency to seek to make order out of the CHAOS he faces. When man does this independent of God, man is living in that worldly system.
On the other hand, consider the dream in Scripture of the believer shown a sheet with many defiling things on it being lowered from heaven and being commanded to eat. Even though the believer rejected them because he thought he was being obedient to the law, the believer was corrected and told that nothing God creates is defiled.
Note, that after the fall of Lucifer, and chaos abounded, there is still room for putting things into an order through faith in Him. That type of order is good in His perspective. The trick is to remain in fellowship with Him whenever we pursue placing things in order.
There is nothing wrong with a believer being well blessed in physical, mental, luxury and pleasurable adornments.
Consider sex. God created sex. Nothing wrong with the pleasures of sex for those who abide in His will. Look at Solomon. He was wealthy and well blessed. Nothing wrong with that blessing.
Worldly systems are not limited to lasciviousness and living in agnostic or atheistic systems. Many believers backslide, by first sinning in a little thing, then using religion as a crutch to promote order out of chaos, BUT without returning to God through faith in Christ AND without confessing, thinking that sin in private to Him, through faith in Christ and allowing His promise of 1stJohn 1:9 to handle the situation.
Instead, many degenerate believers fall into a state of substituting religious morality for their world, again independent of thinking through faith in Christ in all things, leading to asceticism.
Another weakness is to confuse the submission of our volition with emotional behavior. God isn't looking for a bunch of mealy mouthed milquetoasts whining and sniveling up to his ankles pleading forgiveness. He simply states to return to Him (object of our thinking), confess our sin to Him (the process of thinking with Him as the object and recounting the sin as the indirect object) thereby resetting our condition with Him such that He may continue to do ALL the work in our faith and in our further sanctification.
There are many degenerate believers who fall back onto emotion as a worldly system of thinking if they just whine and cry, then they will get their way and they form their worldly system of crybabies whining to God and then He will forgive them.
His forgiveness isn't based upon our emotion, but upon the object of our faith.
On the contrary, always whining to God without faith in Christ, might actually result in further divine discipline.
If the degenerate believer doesn't awake, he just becomes one of of the most miserable of all creatures, namely a backsliden believer who is constantly being disciplined by God. If that backsliden believer continues to seek solace from whining and crying, he might just make his life worse by not rutrning to Him through faith in Christ.
This again stresses why bible doctrine is so important. In order to know His will, we have to study His Word, think it, put on the mind of Christ, renewing our mind daily. In order to do His will, we have to have the power to do it, which is available through the Holy Spirit and only available while we remain in fellowship with Him.
Some people confuse breaking our will to think independent of Him, with emotional cataclysm. It really is alot simpler than that. What could possibly be simpler than letting God do all the work? Our perspective that it must be difficult merely manifests how scarred our thinking has become in the past by always returning to a worldly form of living anf thinking independent of Him, instead of begining with basics first through faith in Christ.
BTW, the only difficulty with remaining faithful is from the consequences of evil and sin which existed before we were created and will remain after our first death. We might not be able to remove them, but we can be affected by them when we fail to remain in fellowship with Him.
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