Sunday, August 23, 2009

Just As Lost

1 Corinthians 1:23-24 boldly states that the religious are in the same boat as the worldly: uncalled. The difference is that religious people appear called; they claim to believe in Christ, but believe in their belief in Christ (free will) instead; worldly people at least dispense with the hypocrisy and state plainly their disbelief in Christ. What qualifies a person as religious? Salvation by self. To the religious person, the cross is a snare in that it is too finished. Religion says that man must work for (finish) his salvation. The most subtle way to believe in salvation by works is to believe in human free will. Human free will substitutes the will of man for the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ as the final arbiter of salvation.
Martin Zender

Saturday, August 22, 2009

O' Lord You're Beautiful!



Oh Lord, You're beautiful
Your face is all I see
For when Your eyes are on this child
Your grace abounds to me

Oh Lord, please light the fire
That once burned bright and clean
Replace the lamp of my first love
That burns with holy fear

I want to take Your Word and shine it all around
But first help me just to live it, Lord
And when I'm doing well, help me to never seek a crown
For my reward is giving glory to You
Keith Green

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

A Collection of Sayings...


Fire Bride

I have a contact in Facebook who says the most amazing things about God and spirituality in his wall posts, so I save them. I find the things he has to say very uplifting and encouraging, and they speak to my mind and spirit. Here is a collection of his sayings:

Paul said, "To be carnally minded IS death." So that explains the death that must be cast into the lake of fire. Hell is torment that goes with carnality; all those works of the flesh, jealousy, envy, malice, etc. We should be asking God to cast us into that lake for a real cleansing!

Your old religious heavens, which were your former resting place where you felt so secure in the religious cradle your church mother rocked you in, is beginning to shake and fall, in the light of what this fire-word is revealing. Yes, they are passing away as if being shaken down by an earthquake, a great avalanche of truth. "The ELEMENTS shall melt... Read More with fervent heat; the earth also and the works that are there in shall be burned up." "The first man (of our inner nature) is of the earth, earthy." THAT is the earth which is to be burned up, our old Adam nature.

"Awake, thou that sleepeth and Christ shall give thee light." Awake! Learn a great and fundamental truth right here, we must all come through the fire (through the cleansing of God's word). That "lake of fire" of Rev. 20 is where the "death and hell" in everyone of us has to be cast. Fire, being God's word, is surely enough to burn out all the wood, hay, and stubble within you, and anybody else.

The rewards are surely wonderful for those who dwell with the devouring-fire, with everlasting burnings, because the devouring fire, that everlasting burnings is none other but our God who IS a consuming fire.

"When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee; when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee. Isa. 43:2 Remember that God loves you just as much when you are in the lake of fire, as when you are on the mountain top of God.

The Cross of Christ deals with our false identity and the influence it has had on our lives. Jesus Christ said that if we wanted to follow him, we had to do two things. One is that we must deny our “self,” because it has no existence in reality, for God did not created a SELF. The imaginary “self” we thought we were came from Adam, and is a sinner that has got to die.

The religious systems of the world have made SIN the centre of their theology, and then formed a humanistic solution for dealing with the problem. John records for us the truth saying, “For God sent not his son into the world to CONDEMN the world, but that the world through him might be saved." Jn 3:17. The sending of the “WORD” into the world had nothing to do with condemnation but to giving life to all mankind.

One of the most important things you will ever see is that God is not holding you accountable for your sin. You may say that’s impossible, but listen to the Word: "God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation" (2 Cor. 5:19).

God is impartial. He has, therefore, the same design in creating all men, that he had in creating the first man. God is good; and no good being can act with a bad design. The design which he had in creating man, and the design which He has in creating all men, must therefore be good. To create beings for misery, would be to create them with a bad design.

If we think we can escape the fire, we are in the greatest deception. There is no other way to become the temple of the Lord. "But who may abide the day of His coming? And who shall stand when He appears? For He is like a refiner's fire and like fuller's soap; and He shall sit as a purifier of silver; and He shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver...(Malachi Chapter 3)

God Himself is a consuming fire, and His ministers are also like a fire. "Is not my word like as a fire? saith the Lord." Jer. 23:29. Again He says, "Wherefore thus saith the Lord God of hosts, because ye speak this word, behold, I will make MY WORDS IN THY MOUTH FIRE, and this people wood, and it shall devour them." Jer. 5:14. "If any man's work ... Read Morebe burned he shall suffer loss." Oh, yes, you may wonder if anything is going to be left. And often times there isn't very much, if anything, to leave. "But he, himself, shall be saved; yet so as BY FIRE. Yes, if he is willing to separate himself from those dead and worthless religious words and let God's fire (word of truth) reveal them and burn them up, he can be saved.

As Jesus walked we ought to walk with the same mind and relationship from God. We need to come to that place in our life where we are able to instruct the young in mind into the deeper revelations of God. We should not continue as sheep throughout our entire life. There comes a time and a season when we must elevate our standing and move into the heart of God.

All I am truly doing is watering and nurturing that seed (Christ) that is in every man. Then everything that is contained in the seed can begin to grow and as it overtakes you in the garden of your soul, your "old man" is suffocated and killed and thus Christ is produced in your life.

Since Jesus is the resurrection, we have to be in Him in order to be in the resurrection! If we have been born of the Spirit, we are spiritual beings. We have been raised out of our death in Adam, and we have been put into the life of Christ! If Christ is in us, resurrection is in us; if we are in Christ, we are in the resurrection!

I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?'' He is not the God of the dead but of the living."(Matt 22:32) The fact that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are alive today proves that they are no longer dead. Although the bodies of the fathers are still in their graves, yet the fathers are alive.

When Jesus said, "I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies," He gave us a new concept of resurrection. Notice that Jesus did not say that He was bringing resurrection, or that resurrection was a future event in history. Instead, He brought us a new understanding of resurrection when He said, "I am the resurrection". When Christ, the resurrection, dwells within us, we don't need to wait for what we already possess. Our physical death cannot stop the continuation of our resurrection life.

Do you THINK or FEEL that God condemns you ? According to the scriptures, God DOES NOT CONDEMNS US. "God was in Christ, reconcialing the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses to them." [2 Cor. 5: 19.] '' Therefore, there is now NO CONDEMNATION FOR THOSE WHO ARE IN CHRIST because through Christ the law of the Spirit of life SET ME FREE from the law of sin and death'' [ Rom. 8: 1 -2 ].

If the wages of sin is death, then Jesus did pay the price for the sin of the world in being made flesh, overcoming all things, dying on the cross, and being raised again on the third day. He experienced the spiritual aspect of death ( the carnal mind ) and the physical aspect of death ( His crucifixion ).

There is only one God and only one life - His life. All else is only a manifestation of that life. God's life can never be separated from Himself, or given to another to make him a god. In Jesus Christ we have the revelation of who God is and what He is. He is the One who comes into our understanding and awareness of spiritual things, to cast down all our imaginations, idols, or wrong ideas of God.

Sin in man has its origin in the flesh, or in his animal nature, and this animal nature is destined to be destroyed. Nothing but the spiritual nature of man can survive the tomb. Hence, in a future state of existence he will be free from those passions, appetites and desires, which in this world lead him astray and entice him from the path of virtue.

Do you believe that you have a choice in salvation? There is a great difference between offering to give a thing, and actually giving it. Nothing is said about offering to give eternal life; but on the contrary, it is said, "The free gift came upon all men unto justification of life." This free gift is to result in justification of life to all to whom it came.

Predestination. This comes next. . . and it is not a frightening word. It simply means "to mark out beforehand." When I seek God and live for Him and seek to walk in His ways, I am not framing my own destiny. I am rather fulfilling a destiny that was predetermined from the foundation of the world. That is why "there remaineth therefore a rest [a sabbath] to the people of God" (Heb. 4:9). Once we recognize that He foreknew and predestinated us, then we know for sure that His call was a creative Word, and not a mere invitation. There is a cause behind the call that reaches back and beyond the foundations of the world. And the cause is hidden in His own heart of Love—He doesn’t tell us why He loved us so.

I can assure you that hell is right here on this very earth. Odd that not one reference to hell in the Bible refers to any other place. Mainly I believe that torment and suffering are more between the ears of man. To escape is to be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then and only then are you free. Otherwise the flames entrenching the lost is a necessity for some will be saved so as by fire.

The fire of God is His judgment in our lives that consumes the refuse in us, which is WOOD, HAY, AND STUBBLE! God’s fire is for PURIFICATION, NOT ETERNAL TORTURE! Nothing was tortured in "Gehenna", only consumed and changed into another form. Your FIERY TRIALS are the process in which God is consuming your carnality and CHANGING YOU INTO THE VERY IMAGE OF THE SON OF GOD.

"Gehenna" was the city dump of Jerusalem, the Holy City, where every unclean and unnecessary thing was burned and consumed. The antitypical "Gehenna" to which our Lord alluded in His teaching is the process of PURIFICATION by which every unclean and unnecessary thing in the lives of His Holy People is purged and consumed by the fires of His judgment.

If God prepared a place in which He was going to torture billions of the human beings He created, how could He say it never entered His mind? (Jer 19:5, Jer 32:35, Jer 7:31)

To move from something that is only a noun to something dynamic and unpredictable, to something living and present tense, is to move from the law to grace.

Dale Thompson

Tuesday, August 4, 2009


Hannah Whitall Smith

Because of her long personal search for God out of the strongly non-creedal religion of the Society of Friends, Hannah’s understanding of truth did not always match the formal doctrines of the evangelicalism of her day, doctrines which had been fashioned into evangelical orthodoxy after centuries of theological debate. Most Christians who knew her or of her were aware of these differences. Some had a real problem with her “broadness,” but most did not.

Several factors contributed to the wide-hearing her spiritual counsels received among evangelicals in her time and up to the present time: (1). She never chose to ride a hobby or promote her differences publically. Total submission to God and following Christ were the key notes of her writing and preaching. (2). Her readers and hearers were in a revivalistic tradition which was loyal to basic evangelical doctrine which believed that life not doctrine was the true test of pure Christianity. (3). She had the skill of a spiritual genius in getting to the heart of relational spirituality. Her God was the Omnipotent Lord, but above all, the Loving Father, and she was his devoted child. God was family, like her father, her mother, her sisters and her brother, only so much more.

Hannah’s heresies have not been emphasized in these limited selections from the thousands of entries available. Many today who know her only through her writings know very little about them, or, if they do, like those who knew her best, they still accept her spiritual insights as valid in the same way that most evangelicals of her own generation did and for the same reasons. Like Job, God put her to the test. And like Job she put God to the test. Her ability to tell us about it is what still helps us home to God today.

To a Friend, The Cedars, August 8, 1876

BROAD, BROADER, BROADEST

And now what do you think of it all? I think one of two things, but which one is right, I don’t know. Perhaps you can tell me. Either I was awfully wicked in the whole matter, and God was not in it anywhere and all the success was because of our natural gifts and talents. Or else I was awfully good, so good as to have lost sight of myself to such a degree as to be only a straw wafted on the wind of the Spirit and so consecrated as not to be able to form a desire even, except that the will of God might be fully done. I waver about myself continually. Sometimes I feel sure I have progressed wonderfully, and that my present sphinx-like calm and indifference to everything whether inward or outward except the will of God, is very grand. And then again I think I am an utterly irreligious and lazy fatalist, with not a spark of the divine in me. I do wish I could find out which I am.

But at all events my orthodoxy has fled to the winds. I am Broad, Broader, Broadest! So Broad that I believe everything is good, or has a germ of good in it, and “nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving.” I agree with every body, and always think it likely everybody’s “view” is better than my own. I hold all sorts of heresies and feel myself to have got out into a limitless ocean of the love of God that overflows all things. My theology is complete, if you but grant me an omnipotent and just Creator. I need nothing more.

“God is love,” comprises my whole system of ethics. And, as you say, it seems to take it all in. There is certainly a very grave defect in any doctrine that universally makes its holders narrow and uncharitable, and this is always the case with strict, so called orthodoxy. Whereas, as soon as Christian love comes in, the boundaries widen infinitely. I find that everyone who has travelled this highway of holiness for any length of time, has invariably cut loose from their old moorings. I bring out my heresies to such, expecting reproof, when lo! I find sympathy. We are “out on the ocean sailing” that is certain. And if it is the ocean of God’s love, as I believe; it is grand.

But, enough! Now, what will you do with it all?

Reblogged from: http://not1lost.blogspot.com/