What, God? You want me to kill my son?

A woman drowns her five children in a bathtub. Her act is blamed on severe depression.
A woman straps her two sons, ages 3 years old and 7 months old, into their car seatbelts. Then she puts the car in gear and stands and watches as the car goes into a lake and sinks to the bottom drowning the two boys.
Right here in St. Louis about 15 years ago, a woman named Paula Simms was convicted of murdering one of her children and was strongly suspected of murdering another of her children a few years earlier.
The public is always outraged when any child is murdered. There is something about killing a young person that raises the anger of people in general. And especially when a parent kills their own child are there shouts of vengeance and rage.
In a day of very loose morality in many areas, a parent who kills their child is looked on as the ultimate law-breaker. The crime seems so senseless and impossible to conceive of that the public sees only two possible explanations: 1) that the killer is the most cold-blooded, evil person that could exist or 2) that the killer's mind must have snapped into a state of total insanity. In fact, in most people's minds, insanity is the only possible reason that a parent could kill their child. They do not think that anyone could be evil and cruel enough to murder their child, so they must be insane.
The story of Abraham and his son Isaac in the Bible has been viewed as a problem by some. A good Christian person recently said to me, "The whole story of God calling on Abraham to kill his son Isaac is just too much for me. There is no way, if a voice told me to kill my child, that I would do it. My children are precious to me. And if I got a message like that, I would know right away that it was not from God but probably from Satan. God would not demand that I break one of His Laws!"
The event spoken of is in the 22nd chapter of Genesis:
After a time, God tested Abraham's faith and obedience.
"Abraham!" God called.
"Yes, Lord?" he replied.
"Take with you your only son – yes, Isaac whom you love so much – and go to the land of Moriah and sacrifice him there as a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I'll point out to you."
The next morning Abraham got up early, chopped wood for a fire upon the altar, saddled his donkey, and took with him his son Isaac and two young men who were his servants, and started off to the place where God had told him to go. On the third day of the journey Abraham saw the place in the distance.
"Stay here with the donkey," Abraham told the young men, "and the lad and I will travel yonder and worship, and then come right back."
Abraham placed the wood for the burnt offering upon Isaac's shoulders, while he himself carried the knife and the flint for striking a fire. So the two of them went on together.
"Father," Isaac asked, "we have the wood and the flint to make the fire, but where is the lamb for the sacrifice?"
"God will see to it, my son," Abraham replied. And they went on.
When they arrived at the place where God had told Abraham to go, he built an altar and placed the wood in order, ready for the fire, and then tied Isaac and laid him on the altar over the wood. And Abraham took the knife and lifted it up to plunge it into his son, to slay him.
At that moment the Angel of God shouted to him from heaven, "Abraham! Abraham!"
"Yes, Lord!" he answered.
"Lay down the knife; don't hurt the lad in any way," the Angel said, "for I know that God is first in your life – you have not withheld even your beloved son from me."
Then Abraham noticed a ram caught by its horns in a bush. So he took the ram and sacrificed it, instead of his son, as a burnt offering on the altar. Abraham named the place "Jehovah provides".
Genesis 22:1-14 Living Bible version

Here is what Halley's Bible Handbook says about Abraham:
"In that pioneer age of the earth, while nations were still not much more than tribal communities, prospecting and settling the more favored lands, Abraham, a righteous man, a believer in God, not an idolater, one of the few still holding to the tradition of primitive Monotheism, was promised by God that his descendants:
1. Should inherit the land of Canaan.
2. They should become a Great Nation.
3. Through them all nations should be blessed.
"…Abraham was not an idolater. But he lived in a world of idolatry. In the beginning man had had ONE God; and, in the Garden of Eden, had lived in rather intimate communion with God. But with his sin and banishment, man lost his primeval knowledge of God; and groping in his darkness for a solution of the mysteries of existence, he came to worship the powers of Nature which seemed to him to be the sources of life.
"…And to make their gods more real, images were made to represent the gods; and then the images themselves came to be worshiped as gods. Thus, man took his nosedive from original Monotheism into the abyss of innumerable polytheistic idolatrous cultures, some of which, in their practices, were unspeakably vile and abominable.
"…Abraham's countrymen were idolaters. His father was an idolater (Joshua 24:2). There are legends of his being persecuted as a child for refusal to worship idols. How did Abraham know about God? No doubt, by direct revelation from God. And moreover, taking the age figures as they are given, Noah's life was overlapped by Methuselah by 600 years while Methuselah's life was overlapped by Adam for 243 years. So Abraham could have learned directly from Shem Noah's account of the Flood and Methuselah's account of Adam and the Garden of Eden." Pages 94-95 Halley's

So we see that Abraham grew up within a totally different cultural background than what we know today. Most people of his day had sacrifice to their gods as a regular routine – even, incredibly, on special times and under special circumstances, they sacrificed their children to the god Molech. Abraham had seen this done around him.
And let us not forget that this was long before Moses had received the codified form of God's Law on Mount Sinai. The few monotheistic people that existed in Abraham's day lived by their own code of "conscience". Any ideas of deity were of a God or "gods" that required humans to "tow the line" and do whatever is required to please the deity. Abraham believed in one God and wanted to be obedient to that God. The concepts of faith and obedience were the cornerstones of both monotheism and the polytheistic culture of that day.
So through whatever means God used to draw Abraham to Him, Abraham had total trust in God causing his full obedience to God as he knew Him.
Now as to the idea of recognizing whether God was talking or some other spirit, let us consider the time element involved in Abraham's relationship with God leading up to the message of Isaac's sacrifice.
The only way that God could deal with the people of that day was to speak to them directly or to speak through holy prophets. God first spoke to Abraham in Gen. 12:1-4 when Abraham was 75 years old. Other direct speaking from God is recorded in Gen. 12:7, 13:14-17, 15:1-21, 17:1-22 (Abraham is now 99 years old), 18:13-15, 18:23-32, 21:12-13. These are all messages that Isaac would be born and from Isaac would flow God's chosen people. Abraham believed God in spite of his apparent impotency and Sarah's age. And everything happened just as God said it would.
Now comes Genesis 22 where the sacrifice command is given. Josephus, the Jewish historian, supposes that Isaac was now 25 years old and that he was certainly not just a "boy". Based on the fact that Isaac is considered by theologians as a Type of his great Antitype, Jesus Christ, the Son of God who was sacrificed at 33 years of age, Isaac himself may have been as much as 33 years old. This would make Abraham between 125 and 133 years old then.
This means that Abraham had been speaking directly to and hearing directly from God for 50 to 63 years. HE KNEW GOD'S VOICE! Abraham knew every little inflection and distinction in God's voice. His whole life activity for 50 years had been based on what God had said. I am sure that there were many intimate conversations about the future between Abraham and God that were not recorded in the Bible. Abraham had a fellowship and a knowledge of the personal characteristics of God greater probably than of any human being around him.
Now I totally agree with my Christian friend that if a "voice" told me to kill my child, I would not do it. But the message of Isaac's sacrifice did not come from just a "voice". This came from a Personal God, a Personal Creator God who Abraham KNEW! For at least 50 years, Abraham walked and talked with the One God of all power and glory! Abraham KNEW what God had done for him, what God's plans were for Isaac, and what awesome power God had to bring about His will.
So, being wired with the culture of the age, to obey and please Deity, Abraham willed to do as God said. Sure, it was a far out thing for God to ask. But other "gods" of the culture around him had appeared to ask the same thing of their followers. Maybe, to Abraham, this was just a strange way for deity to test followers. And, remember, the 10 commandments had not been given.
Abraham knew, and he KNEW THAT HE KNEW, that God's promise was sure and reliable. Isaac would have children. Isaac would live on. There was no doubt of this in Abraham's mind, because God had said it! And Abraham trusted God! In verse 5, Abraham told the young men with him that he and Isaac would return again together to them. Abraham looked on this whole event as just some ritual which his God required of him. But he recognized that the bottom line of his whole relationship with God was that from him, and from Isaac, and from Isaac's children would come a nation of God's people on this earth. After all the personal conversations of at least 50 years, he could have no doubt about what was going to happen.
So what can we say is the lesson we are to glean from this event? WE ARE TO LEARN TO RECOGNIZE GOD'S VOICE! We, as converted new creatures with Christ living right within us in a living union, are to learn on a daily basis HOW Christ speaks to us, WHAT He sounds like, and HOW He would have us live. This can only come about when we take the time to have a "quiet time" with our Lord. I don't know in exactly what way God spoke to Abraham but Christ will speak to us if we will just tune out the world for a while and tune in the world of the spirit. This is what life is meant to be for our new species – the Christ-person. Life is a union of thought, word and action between my human soul and the Spirit of Christ within me.
I may not have 50 years as Abraham did to learn all the little shades of personality of Christ within me, but I can KNOW Jesus' voice when I hear it. Jesus sounds a lot different from Satan. AND AS I GROW DAILY IN MY AWARENESS OF UNION WITH CHRIST, I HEAR A SATAN WITH A LOT SHAKIER VOICE THAN HE USED TO HAVE! In fact, in some areas of my life, Satan has downright "lost his voice". He can only try to influence me by deception over who I am. Satan has no power over me except what I give him. He can send messages all he wants in his shaky voice, BUT THE POWERFUL VOICE WITH THE POWERFUL CONTENT IS THE ONE I CHOOSE TO HEAR – THE RESONANT VOICE OF CHRIST FROM WITHIN! I am perfect in Spirit, and am growing toward perfection in my soul.

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I'm Not Too Bad and I'm Not Too Good!

Many books have been written about "abiding in Christ". If you're eternally in union with Christ, why would you have to be told to "abide" there?
Because, terrible but true, there can be a great difference between where God has placed us and how we act about it. It's as if a bride was standing at the altar being married to a really wonderful man, and as soon as the ceremony was over, she turned, yawned, sat down on the floor and read a newspaper.
Don't say, as many are apt to, "Well, this gung-ho attitude in caring for others around me is just more than I can handle. I'm not this type of person." NONE OF US IS – IN OURSELVES! "All we like sheep have gone astray." Non-Christians and Christians alike. Somehow we seem to get comfort from the fact that others are just as bad as we are. We like to think, "I'm not too good, and I'm not too bad. I'm human!"
But in that attitude you miss the very blessing, the very glory of the Christian life. You live like that and you'll settle for a half-life, and incomplete life.
"Not I, but Christ…" in Galatians 2:20 is the whole secret of abiding in Him. "He must become greater," said John the Baptist; "I must become less" (John 3:30).
Get it straight: You are either centered in Christ, abiding in Him, or you're centered in man. There is no alternative. Either Christ is the center of your universe and you are adjusting everything to Him, or you yourself have become the center, and you're struggling to make everything orbit around you and for you – and you either are miserable now, or you will be!
Some people are spiritual gypsies. They alternate between spiritual spurts and spiritual lethargy. For them there's no calm persistence in getting to know Christ within better each day. Some just "visit" Christ; they generally like Him, but they don't hang around too much. For some He's only a "shelter in the time of storm." For others He's an eternal home.
When we probe for ways of calm persistence, of course we must mention church going, prayer, Bible study, and so on. But Christians can have these things in their lives for years and yet never begin to abide in Christ.
Nevertheless, you can't abide in Him without prayer (John 15:7). To abide means to keep the fellowship and the worship lines open. It means opening ourselves up to every possible exposure of Him, every possible "means of grace".
George Fox, the founder of Quakerism in the mid-1600s, was a man with a passion to know God and to abide in Him; to know, not merely religion, but God in Christ Himself. He went everywhere inquiring of ministers of priests or laymen, anyone who could possibly tell him how he might really know God.
His relatives said, "What you need, George, is to get married." A priest advised him to smoke tobacco and sing psalms. Another minister got angry and wouldn't even answer because George had stepped in his flower bed! A doctor told him that what he needed was a good blood-letting.
George Fox eventually came to know the Lord Himself and came to write this:
"Unless you know God in Christ, every day communing with Him, rejoicing in Him, exulting in Him, opening your life in joyful obedience toward Him, and feeling Him speaking to you and guiding you into ever fuller obedience to Him – you aren't fit to be a minister."
Or we could apply this more broadly and say you're not even fit to be a Christian.
A man once visited his friend, a music teacher. The visitor said, "Well, what's the good news today?" (A modern greeting might be, "Well, what's up?") The teacher went over to a tuning fork, struck it, and said, "That, my friend, is A. It was A all day yesterday. It will be A all day today, tomorrow, next week, and for a thousand years. The soprano upstairs warbles off-key. The tenor next door flats out on the high notes. The piano across the hall is often out of tune. But that" - striking the tuning fork again – "that is A. And that's the good news today!"
Christian friends, the truth and the good news today is that Christ is "A"! He's where it's at! Terrible grammar but magnificent truth. Christ lives in you and you live in Christ, and the position of both of you is immovable.
In your new birth, God has given you natural talents and abilities. The Bible calls these "spiritual gifts". In this age of narcissism some Christians are pouncing on spiritual gifts in an over-emphasis on self-analyses and testings and comparisons. But no matter how you analyze what you have, you must not count them like treasures to be gloated over, but spend them immediately and remain "poor in spirit" (Matthew 5:3). Our talents become stagnant without an outflow and a replenishment in Christ.
There is a problem passage about the Vine and the branch in John 15:6. It says,
"If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch, and dries up; and they gather them and cast them into the fire, and they are burned."
By the new birth, Christians are forever united to Christ. He will never leave them or forsake them. There is no condemnation, only correction. But in this verse, here's a Christian who once drew strength from Christ, but now he doesn't. He's no longer abiding. If we want to interpret this scripture correctly, we must interpret it in the light of the great stream of the teaching of the Word of God. And that says, when you're a believer, God keeps you. That truth isn't just a thread through scripture, it's a thick rope – a life-saving rope.
So the branch, or the child of God, isn't to be lost. But it can be that he falls away from fruitbearing and usefulness, even though he doesn't fall away from salvation.
A key to this scripture may be the word-picture that comes out of Ezekiel 15:2-4, which says that the vine has two functions: one more noble, to bear fruit; the other, less noble, to serve as kindling wood. In John 15:6 the men gather the dead branches and throw them into a fire.
Christian, if you're not abiding, if you're not bearing fruit, God gives you over to less noble usefulness. He says, "All right, if that's all you want to be, so be it. If you simply want to be an accountant, then all you'll be is an accountant; that's it. Or you'll be just a housewife; that's all. Or if you're determined just to be a student, then study, study, study. That's all you'll be!"
People will use you. There's nothing wrong with that – you won't be a "zero", but neither will you be bearing fruit for God for eternity and glory for Him. There will be nothing supernatural, nothing really great, only momentary and lesser activities going on in your life.
In 1 Corinthians 3:15 Paul writes of the same thing: "If [a man's work] is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames."
Jesus gives yet another illustration of greater and lesser usefulness in the Sermon on the Mount. "You are the salt of the earth, but if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again?" (Matthew 5:13). Let me paraphrase the rest of the verse, if I may. It's no longer good for its highest intended use – salt for the table – but only to keep the ice off the ground in cold weather, to be thrown out and trampled down by men. That is a type of usefulness – to keep from slipping and falling down. But that's certainly a far lesser use.
Yes, bearing fruit beats burning for kindling wood. Yes, flavoring a good meal beats being thrown out on the ice.
And you're never to be static. John 15 talks about "fruit", "more fruit", "much fruit", and "fruit that will last". You, as a believer, are in the process of becoming and becoming and becoming.
Christians must not get locked into yesterday. You're either becoming or you're degenerating. Of course, it's hard to have the patience to develop this quality of life. We want success quickly. On television every mystery is solved in an hour; every laundry problem is taken care of in 30 seconds. But "becoming" in Christ takes time.
But let me tell you something wonderful. God began a process at your new birth which is IRREVERSIBLE. Like it or not, kick and scream if you will at times, if you have a new birth as a Christian, "He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus" (Philippians 1:6).
If you saw a tadpole when he's half frog, you wouldn't say he's a hypocrite, you'd say he's in the process of becoming a frog. And so with you and me. We're on our way from earthly to totally heavenly!
Kids progress, don't they? They're one thing when they're two years old and another when they're eight or fifteen or thirty or seventy (like me!).
Just be sure of this: just as genes dictate that a tadpole will someday be a frog, and that a baby will grow to be an adult human, so God's DNA in us dictates that we will someday be totally like Christ.
So, in conclusion, it is always a false premise when a Christian says that he is not too bad and not too good. We are not mediocre people. We used to have a totally sinful nature. But now by our new birth, we have a TOTALLY DIVINE NATURE because Jesus Christ came to indwell us. It is only as we understand and apply this knowledge that we can be fruit-bearing branches of the Divine Vine rather than be much less functional as kindling wood. It is only as we recognize who we are in union with Christ that we can be flavoring salt for the table rather than less functional salt to be thrown out on the ice.
The whole purpose of our life on earth is to grow by trial and error, by God's love and correction in our lives, to the understanding that "not too bad and not too good" has no real application in a Christian's life. As unbelievers we were "naturally" bad and anything we did which appeared good still had selfish motives.
As believers containing the indwelling Christ, we are now "naturally" good because the Father sees the righteousness of Christ within us. Any "badness" or sinful action we do now is a slipup of weakness in our own power. We "miss the mark" as the Hebrew root of the word "sin" indicates.
Sin in an unbeliever is serious AND fatal. "The wages of sin is death…" (Romans 6:23a). Without the work of Jesus on the Cross, ALL would earn death for their sin.
Sin in a believing Christian child of God is serious BUT non-fatal! "…but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Romans 6:23b).
A true Christian HAS eternal life in Christ right now. He will never leave us or forsake us. Nothing can separate us from the love of Christ. Jesus has applied the death sentence for our sin upon Himself by the Cross and all anyone must do is accept Him as Savior and Lord.
This is no mediocre "not too bad" or "not too good" situation. It is an either/or situation.
***
Either you are "bad" living independent from God – or you are "good" living in union with God through the indwelling Jesus Christ.

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Separating Sin and Sinners

Many read the Old Testament of the Bible and complain that it is filled with violence, bloodshed and general mayhem: people killing people, God killing people, people killing animals, etc. What does it all mean? Why all the evil and death? Does God believe in all this violence?
In this present day, why is there so much murder, rape, abuse and other evil rampant in the world around us? What makes humans act like this? To call some of them "animals" is to actually insult the animal kingdom.
God loves people but He hates evil. God has "wrath" in His nature. But that wrath was never intended to be used against people but against evil. However, if a person clings to the evil that God condemns, they get hurt. Before Jesus came, there was no way to separate people from evil, so when God came against evil, people were destroyed! That is the reason for the flood. God did not hate those people; He hated evil and had to do something about it. Throughout the Old Testament, He commanded His people to do something about it as well. That is why there was all that killing in the name of God by God's nation, Israel. The nations that lacked a covenant relationship with God could only be "cut off" or destroyed before Jesus' death at Calvary. God's people were commanded to rise and destroy the evil, which in that day meant destroying the people as well.
All the rules of Leviticus and Deuteronomy called for death for most evil and the harsh "eye for an eye" principle for the remaining offenses. Where you have only Law, "The wages of sin is death!" (Romans 6:23). It seems likely that the reason God instituted the Mosaic system of animal sacrifices when people sinned was not only to point to Christ's sacrifice, which it did, but also to hit humans right were they were: in their human feelings.
We live in a day of "animal rights" activists. We see people and groups who have chosen to be the protectors of animals. They want to avoid animal pain, animal experimentation, and in extreme forms, vegetarians do not want the killing of animals for food. And I'm sure that similar groups existed even back in the Old Testament days.
The animal pet business is thriving in our culture and some take care of their animal "children" better than some others take care of their natural children. Our animal pets are very lovable, some say more than their human friends are.
The concept of animal sacrifices, therefore, is abhorrent to many minds today and it is hard to imagine for some why God would ask for the destruction of so many animals in ritual. But let's see if we can get some idea of God's thinking.
After the fall of Adam, men lived physically separated from God thinking that they were "doing their own thing". Men had their domesticated animals that they grew to "love" and even their "pets". Since God's overall goal for man is the elimination of evil (sin) in man, God probably wanted to physically show man the horrible nature of sin by causing the death of creatures which man had grown to care for.
Our city culture does not see much of lamb and calves and turtle-doves anymore. But any sheep rancher will tell you that a lamb is a cuddly, affectionate little creature of God. A calf is not quite as cuddly but just as affectionate. And as for turtle-doves, people who keep birds will tell you that you certainly can become attached to them. These are all God's creatures but do not have the created potential of eternal life as humans do. God owns them and can certainly use them for His purposes in making human beings into Sons of God.
Now men in those days certainly killed animals for food to eat. Any farmer must learn to do this, affection for animals notwithstanding. But here was God ordering men to kill these "loving" animals for no obvious reason, just because a man had sinned. I believe that God was showing man the horrible nature of sin and how it causes death, if not immediately in the sinner, at least the sinner would see death in the animal caused by his sinful action. The animal was destroyed for no earthly use. This had to hit man right where he was. Every time he sinned, he had to provide one of these cute, affectionate animals to be sacrificed. God was driving home a point about the utterly offensive and repugnant nature of sin, which is just basically man living apart from his God.
But the miracle of the cross of Jesus opened the way for God to SEPARATE MEN FROM THE EVIL THEY DO. We no longer kill animals as sin offerings. Christ died once and for all as the ultimate sin offering. We no longer should attack people to kill them in the name of God. But God does not want us to think our battle days are over! We are still to be men and women of battle. The only difference between those who battled in the Old Testament and those of us called to battle in the New Testament is HOW, WITH WHOM and BY WHAT POWER that we battle.
After the fall of man shortly after his creation, Satan and his fallen angels took control of the lives of human beings. People thought that they were in control of their own lives, that the choices they made were independent choices decided upon by them and them alone. That is, they thought they were exerting their "free-will" in every decision they made. But this was an illusion. It was not true in the "real" world of the spirit.
But what about this "free-will" to choose? We have free-will all right, but it consists only of the ability to make one of two, and only two, choices: we can accept this totally dependent relationship with our Creator OR we can choose to live our lives in our own strength, by our own human ability and knowledge. That is, we can choose to be INDEPENDENT-SELVES" and live our day to day lives under our own steam.
But being an independent self is an illusion. It is not true. It only seems on the human level like it is possible. But it is not. Human beings must be indwelt by a spirit deity nature. They cannot be independent. If you are not indwelt by God's nature, then you WILL BE indwelt by the nature of the god of this world, Satan. If you make the free-will choice to be an independent self, they EVERY day to day decision that you make will be controlled by Satan. That does not mean that every thing that you do will be "bad". Your life will be a mixture of apparent good and apparent evil just like the tree of the "knowledge of good and evil" in the garden. Satan wants to keep you under his control and away from dependence on God. The best way to do this is to keep you thinking that you are a mixture of good and evil and have the human strength to choose good most of the time over evil. But the real spiritual truth is that if you are not living in union with and dependent on God, then you ARE under Satan's control! And, amazingly, he will influence you to do many "good" things. But these are only to reinforce in your mind the illusion that you can be a "good" person as an independent self.
Before Jesus came and died and rose again, there was no concept among men of living in union with God. Some men thought they could live better with God's HELP, but God was always considered transcendent, that is, out there somewhere away from us but able to somehow help us. But after Jesus died for our sins, it became possible for Him to come and live in us, live in total control for us and make us "good" or "righteous" rather than having the nature of evil. In fact, this is the grand purpose of all human history and human experience: to drive people to the total understanding that we cannot live an independent life on our own steam. We are just not capable of being "righteous" without Jesus living in us. This was true of Jesus and God the Father when Jesus lived as a human being. He said that without His Father in Him, He could do nothing! He was totally dependent on the Father. And He said that He came to, in the same way, live in us and have us totally dependent on Him.
We can really say that Jesus came to create a new SPECIES of humans. The old species lived in with Satan's nature, were under his control and were evil by nature. The new species lives in union with Christ, is under His control and is righteous by nature. The old species was basically evil but sometimes did good things. The new species is basically good or righteous but sometimes does evil things, that is, sins.
In the old species, Satan is basically in control but sometimes God, on the outside of them, tempts them to do good things and they temporarily respond. In the new species, Christ is basically in control but sometimes Satan, on the outside of them tempts them to do evil things and they temporarily forget that Jesus is in charge and they temporarily try to live by their human strength and they temporarily fail and sin. But Jesus living in them immediately causes them to see their human failure drawing them to an even more stable relationship with Himself.
But what about personal responsibility? Is not a man basically responsible for his actions? Yes, he is! A man without God who makes a free choice to live as an independent self is, in a definite way, responsible for any human failures which result from his control by Satan and his human inability and lack of power. A man who makes a free choice to call on Jesus to come and live in him and direct his life is, in a definite way, responsible for any human successes which result from Christ's leadership and goodness. But all the specific little choices which a man makes in his day to day existence are not really free-will choices but are directed by the indwelling MASTER (Christ) or master (Satan). Our human free-will is only in deciding: one, whether to live as an independent self on our own power (which is an illusion and actually allow Satan to control us) or, two, whether to call out to God for forgiveness and renounce our ability to control our own actions.
But the problem comes when the new man, with Jesus living in him, still occasionally commits sin. This he does because he still lives in a body of flesh which is his contact with the material world around him. Satan can still exert an EXTERNAL influence and when we CHOOSE to temporarily ignore our dependence on Jesus and go it alone, we will invariably sin. And we are responsible! But we are not sinning BY NATURE as the old man does. The proof of this is that members of the new race are immediately sorry for having sinned and Christ reapplies the forgiveness of the cross. They return to the recognition of their union with Christ.
So we see that under the Old Testament Law there could be no mercy. Evil was always EVIL BY NATURE. Because everyone, except a few who God called, lived separate lives from God. Forgiveness of sin, under the Law, was impossible.
But today, because of Christ, we can SEPARATE THE SINNER FROM THE SIN HE COMMITS. We can and we must forgive the sinner even though we hate his sin. Incidents that violate us should not be allowed to linger in our minds after the event has taken place. However, Satan and his forces want us to focus on these negative events. Satan wants to capitalize on the offenses that come into our lives in the hope that he can propel us into envy, strife, confusion, anger, resentment, etc. By so doing, he can externally influence our lives by our thinking. Satan is just as interested in influencing us AFTER an offense comes as he was in instigating the incident to begin with! It is the potential aftermath of an offense that is the most destructive for us.
Forgiveness protects our lives from Satan's strategy by opposing the evil that tries to enter after an offense comes. Just as God forgives us by sending our offenses "as far as the east is from the west", we are to put the offense out of our thoughts.
Satan wants to dishearten and ultimately devastate us by keeping us focused on what happened. He loves to keep running "instant replays" of the event in our minds. To forgive, though, is to focus on JESUS instead of on the offense.
When we forgive, we are winners over the forces of evil and their schemes and NOT OVER PEOPLE. Remember that our struggle is not with them anyway. The believer should never think in terms of winning and losing when dealing with another person. Christ in us is bigger than that. Remember the people who offend us do so for various reasons: their fallen nature, Satan, the influence of a secular world filled with evil, misunderstanding, etc. Forgiveness deals with the EVIL behind why people do what they do. This is the first aspect of forgiveness.
The second aspect of forgiveness is that it releases the power of God toward offenders so that God can change them. When we forgive, God's holiness flows through our actions and attitudes toward the offender. Somehow this enables God to move within that person to overcome the evil that is dominating his life.
But forgiving someone who has hurt us or hurt someone we know is difficult! No, it is impossible! Humanly impossible! But we can do it! Because if we are a member of the new RACE with Christ living in us, then we passed our human control over to the spiritual control of Jesus. And HE can cause us to have a godly forgiveness of an offender. We may not FEEL humanly like forgiving. WE may not accept Jesus' direction totally in all areas at first. But we will continue to have a growing awareness of our union with Christ.
Yes, Satan's influences will reappear and failure will result, but each time we return to Him, the fresh power of forgiveness restores and refires us for victorious living.
So I hope that now the concept of all the death and destruction in the Old Testament has a clearer meaning to you. Then, evil had to be destroyed and people joined to evil were destroyed with the evil itself. There was no legal forgiveness in the Old Testament but rather just a temporary covering of sin within the congregation of God's people by the ritual of animal sacrifices. Whatever difficulty we have today in understanding these rituals of sacrifice must be factored into God's overall purposes of teaching man the seriousness of sin.
I am a dog "lover". You may be a cat "lover". People in general have a closeness to animals. We hate to see them die. But we also must grow to understand that GOD HATES TO SEE SINNERS DIE JUST AS MUCH! And so He devised a way to separate the sinner from the sin – He sent Jesus Christ to make it possible to have a whole new human species containing an indwelling Jesus Christ. In this new species, the person (with the Person of Christ united) WOULD BE SEPARATE from sin. The apostle Paul called it being "dead to sin". In the believing Christian, the "wages of sin" is not death as stated in Romans 6:23 but rather human consequences and spiritual correction (Hebrews 12 calls it "chastisement"). Whatever slips into sin a Christian commits are not "sins unto death" as we are told in 1 John 5:16.

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A Woman and Her Fork

There was a young woman who had been diagnosed with a terminal illness and had been given three months to live.
So as she was getting her things "in order," she contacted her pastor and had him come to her house to discuss certain aspects of her final wishes.
She told him which songs she wanted sung at the service, what scriptures she would like read, and what outfit she wanted to be buried in.
Everything was in order and the minister was preparing to leave when the young woman suddenly remembered something very important to her.
"There's one more thing," she said excitedly.
"What's that?" came the minister's reply.
"This is very important," the young woman continued. "I want to be buried with a fork in my right hand."
The minister stood looking at the young woman, not knowing quite what to say.
"That surprises you, doesn't it?" the young woman asked.
"Well, to be honest, I'm puzzled by the request," said the minister.
The young woman explained. "My grandmother once told me this story, and from there on out, I have always done so. I have also, always tried to pass along its message to those I love and those who are in need of encouragement.
In all my years of attending socials and dinners, I always remember that when the dishes of the main course were being cleared, someone would inevitably lean over and say, "Keep your fork."
It was my favorite part because I knew that something better was coming...like velvety chocolate! or deep-dish apple pie.Something wonderful, and with substance !
So, I just want people to see me there in that casket with a fork in my hand and I want them to wonder "What's with the fork?"
Then I want you to tell them: 'Keep your fork ..The best is yet to come.'"

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We Are Not Fragile Little Christians

"Go you therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit; teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you. And lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world."
( Matthew 28:19-20)

"Don't be unequally yoked together with unbelievers; for what fellowship has righteousness with unrighteousness?… for you are the temple of the living God; as God has said, 'I will dwell in them and walk in them; and I will be their God and they shall be my people. Therefore come out from among them, and be you separate…"
(2 Corinthians 6:14-17)

What is going on here? Are Jesus and Paul giving a conflict of commands?
Jesus is making it very clear in the first verses that Christians are to go into the unbelieving world and attempt to make converts to the faith. In order to do this, it is obvious that Christians must mingle with these people and get to know them by associating with them.
Then Paul comes along and tells the Corinthians that they should "come out from among them, and be you separate"! How are Christians to ever draw people to Christ if they don't even get near them or interact with them?
Most of the teaching I've heard concerning Paul's passage has begun with the assumption that our Christianity is fragile, and our relationship to God delicate, and our righteousness and holiness easily shattered. Therefore we draw back in fear, afraid to touch this or be involved in that.
BUT IS OUR CHRISTIANITY FRAGILE?
We are kept by the power of God, and the power of God isn't fragile. It's the power that threw the worlds into space, and sustains solar systems. The solar system isn't fragile, and our salvation isn't fragile either. They were created by the same power. Our salvation isn't in any danger, and we don't have to be afraid of this or that contact or this or that association. It's not going to be somehow destructive of us.
We have Jesus Christ living in us in a living, eternal union with us. We can and do at times neglect this spiritual relationship because of external worldly influences drawing us to sin. This is going to happen as sure as and as long as we live in these material bodies.
Well then, why does God even allow His kids to remain in this unbelieving society where they are forced to mingle among worldly influences? God wants to use us to bring other new children to Him. And He is not afraid of losing His children in the midst of a separated world. Why? Because we are not fragile!
There is an old expression that applies very forcefully here: Hate the sin, but love the sinner! Jesus mingled purposefully among some of the most public sinners of His time – the tax-collectors, prostitutes, heavy drinkers, etc. He associated with them so often, in fact, that He was accused of being one of them, a "wine-bibber"!
But you say, "Well sure, Jesus could get away with this because He was perfect and didn't have to worry about being influenced to sin!" Wrong! Jesus had to consider the influence of sin just as we do. But He knew that the close relationship with the Father within Him would protect Him and that those around Him were not going to be destructive of Him.
And we, as Christians, draw on the same power of protection from destruction through our union with Christ that Jesus did by the power of the Father within Him. We can go out and comfort the sinner right in the middle of the sin which we hate. This is the way of Christ – and Christ is within and guiding and protecting us.
Now God certainly knew that, as we lived in the world so that He could use us to draw others, we would at times slip and be drawn into the sin with them. This didn't seem to worry God, and it should not worry us.
Sin is serious, and I don't mean to white-wash it. Sin is spiritually fatal to unbelievers. It is a spiritually terminal disease to those without God. And it hurts people physically in many ways that they do not even comprehend.
"By His stripes we are healed!" The Christian, by his union with Christ, has received "anti-bodies" to the disease of sin. We can still occasionally contract the disease of sin by associating with those who have it. We can even get some minor symptoms of pain and disfunction. But the powerful anti-bodies of Christ within will never allow the disease to consume us. We will always recover. God will not allow His children to be kidnapped away from Him and destroyed by the disease of sin.
This is why God is able to use His children in this material world and allow them to associate among sinners. The disease of sin will never kill us because we have the resistant anti-bodies within us. We are like doctors and nurses who have been immunized against smallpox and are thus able to work among and help and attempt to heal those who contract smallpox. We are not risking our lives to be near the sick because we are resistant and they need compassion, help and understanding.
The greater purpose of God overshadows the occasional hurt of sin to the Christian. God needs us to love sinners. Otherwise the best thing that could have happened to us would have been to drown us in the waters of baptism.
Paul is not talking about protecting ourselves from the world. A better wording might be: "STAND OUT from among them, and LOOK separate!" It is talking about distinguishing ourselves.
THE KEY TO CHRISTIANITY IS NOT WHERE A PERSON CAN'T GO, AND WHAT HE CAN'T DO. BUT IT IS WHAT A CHRISTIAN IS ABLE TO DO, AND THE POWER HE HAS. This is the manifestation of the life of God in him.
I am not talking about delicate little Christians who may get harmed if they move in the world. Instead, I am talking about a powerful new race of human beings with the life of God inside of them and anti-bodies to sin flooding throughout their systems.
A Christian transforms the things that he comes in contact with – he is not conformed to those things of the world.
The basic idea that Paul meant to get across is not that you should fear an association with the sinners of the world, but instead

that you be prepared to TRANSFORM them!

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Divine Expectation

Jesus bent down and scribbled in the sand.
"Let the one who is without sin among you cast the first stone."
One by one, the community's supposedly upstanding men trailed off until only Jesus and the woman remained--only those two, and His sacred scribbling.
Did Jesus scribble the specific sexual sins of the men looking on?
Did Jesus draw a line in the sand, silently daring even one sin-stained man to boldly cross it, stone in hand?
Did he write in a secret code only the woman caught in adultery was able to decipher, perhaps some words of comfort like, "Don't worry. I'll protect you"?
Or was He killing time, making the woman and her accusers squirm with discomfort for a few minutes before He spoke the words that would set her free?
"The men are gone," Jesus said to the disgraced woman, when the stones of condemnation had been dropped into a pile at their feet and the coast was clear. "I won't accuse you, either."
Of course, He could have accused her and left it at that. He deserved to, since He had committed no sin Himself and had all the stones in the world at His disposal.
But His unconditional love for her demanded more of Him than just that He avoid accusing her or judging her. His unconditional love required that He equip and expect her--in her newly forgiven state--to change.
"Go, and sin no more."
There's a difference between lack of accusation and expectation of change, a fine-tuned note of grace that deliniates one from the other. I believe the difference is unconditional love.
What if Jesus had turned to the woman and said, "Looks like this is your lucky day. I got those dudes to back off, didn't I? Go do your thing, and I'll go do Mine."
In order for her to make the changes in her life that she so desperately needed, He held her to a higher standard than she would have ever held herself. When He said Sin no more, she received the grace to obey. And with that grace, she truly understood His unconditional love.She didn't have to be perfect to receive His love, but once she experienced it, there was no way to remain unchanged.

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What Kind of a Nature Do You Have?

Much of Christianity has been missing the point concerning "human nature". Even knowing that we are new creatures in Christ with a new nature, we often mistakenly think we have an old, scarred nature – we sometimes call it "the flesh" – which persists in being like an albatross around our neck, a constant rival distracting our attention and stumbling us in our walk. We think it is precisely that which made Paul cry out, "O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" Was he wretched, yet a redeemed child of God?
It seems many Christians believe we acquired an old nature through the Fall, and now have a new nature in Christ, and the two remain deadly rivals, battling together, a struggle from which we are never free in this life – the old man-new man syndrome. And the best we can hope for is a means of the new counteracting the old; and yet with a sense that the old always remains in us, though we belong to Christ. It remains as a deadly element which Jeremiah calls "the heart deceitful above all things and desperately wicked."
Now understand that by "nature" I am not now meaning our natural faculties and capacities of body and soul. Our "nature", in that sense, means the type of characteristics we are wired with by God which are expressed through our soul and body. We may say someone has a kind nature or a harsh nature, a sensitive nature or an unfeeling nature, and so on. The nature I am speaking of goes much deeper than that. It is the true deep down personality of the person.

Two Views of Two Natures

The church seems divided between two convictions concerning these natures. Each persuasion is antagonistic to the other. One, by far the largest, maintains that we have two natures when redeemed; and we must live with that fact, battling away against the old nature as it seems in Romans 7, and affirming that there is a deliverance in Romans 8 which we must daily apply to relieve us from the pressures of the two nature battle of 7!
The other section of the body of believers is strong, persistent, and stoutly convinced that theirs is the truth – though they are in the minority in the whole company of believers and often are considered dangerous or suspect. They are given the general title of "holiness people". They use such terms as "entire sanctification", "perfect love", "full salvation", and are usually considered to be followers of the sanctification teaching that was reestablished in the church through John and Charles Wesley and John Fletcher. Their sincere conviction is that after the first stage of our new birth, which centers in justification, we must have a second radical experience of the fullness of salvation in Christ by what is often called the "baptism of the Spirit" which will bring about the elimination of the old man and his total replacement by the new man with a "heart purified by faith" – and that becomes the full application of our salvation and identification with Christ in His death and resurrection.
Both say we have a human nature. One maintains that our old nature corrupted by the Fall is supplanted by a new nature in Christ, but that the old remains – so that our new way of living is by recognizing the two within, but the new has the power to counteract the old. The other agrees that we all start with a human nature which has been corrupted through the Fall, but holds that the new nature of Christ comes in its totality by a second work of grace, the baptism of the Spirit, which then totally replaces the old nature.
But I am saying that the true revelation of the Bible is that WE HUMANS HAVE NO NATURE! We're not created to HAVE a deep down intrinsic nature, but to be containers of a "deity nature", a divine nature, and we humans can only truly express the nature of the one within us. All the Bible symbols of our humanity are those of being containers and expressers of one who is not ourselves, but is a god. All that matters is, WHICH GOD?

Biblical Illustrations

The illustrations used of us in our humanity are vessels, branches, body members, slaves, wives, temples. In every case that means we are the agent by which the occupant operates.
As vessels, we are said to be either "vessels of wrath" or "vessels of mercy", but we must be either one or the other. The vessel of wrath, of course, is a container of the god by whom we experience wrath; and the vessel of mercy of Him by whom we receive mercy (Rom. 9:22-23). So it is not the type of vessel that is of importance, but the nature of the contents.
The branch illustration is even more explicit, for a branch is but part of a vine, the two being in life-union. A branch is merely the living means by which a vine reproduces itself in its fruit. A branch has no distinct nature; it has the nature of its vine. The fruit is of the vine, not of the branch. And when Jesus said, "I am the true vine and you are the branches," He was obviously implying that there is also a false vine producing its fruit.
We are called temples, and the temple was only the outer means by which the living God manifested His presence. Thus the Glory of God shone through the tabernacle; and His glory is seen in us as His temples. In every place, a temple is only the dwelling place of a deity and reveals his presence, not its own. We are either a temple that contains an idol god, or one in which the living God dwells and walks. A temple has no nature but that of the god in it.
We are called married wives, and Paul distinctly says we all in the human race are married to the one husband or the other. According to Romans 7, the moment we recognize that in Christ's death we are cut off from our old husband, Satan, then we are immediately united in a new marriage to Christ who is risen from the dead. No momentary gap between the marriages! And the point is that here he is speaking of marriage in what we might call a biological sense: the wife receives the seed of the husband and bears his children, whether "the motions of sin" or "fruit unto God." The wife is presented as merely the fruit bearer, not the fruit producer.
Then Paul, in Romans 6:16-23, calls us slaves (as it is in the Greek) and says all of us all the time are either slaves to sin or slaves to righteousness – slaves of Satan or slaves of Christ. But slaves are merely the property of their owners, with no kind of a life of their own and doing only the work of their owner.
Finally, we are members of the body of Christ, and any body operates by the mind and will of the head, and nothing else. It has no body-led activity of its own.
So in each case the human is only the agent – as temple, manifesting the presence of the deity; as branch, expressing the nature and producing the fruit of the vine; as body member, set in action by the head; as slave, doing the will of the owner; as wife, bearing the children of the husband; and as vessel, only a container and nothing else.

One Nature At a Time

We must become alerted to Jesus' words as He confronted those opposing Him, as recorded in John 8:38-44. "I speak what I have seen with My Father; and you do what you have seen with your father," stated Jesus. As religious Jews they resented that, and indignantly responded, "We're not born of fornication. We have one Father, God." Jesus answered, "If God were your Father, you would love Me." Then He broke the truth wide open and declared outright, "You are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father you will do." The second phrase should especially strike us: "…the lusts of your father you will do." Not that we are doing our own lusts, but the lusts of our father. Then all we are doing as humans is not a product of some supposed HUMAN fallen nature, but actually SATAN himself expressing his own lusting nature by us! All we are, therefore, is merely the outer expression of this spirit of error, this god of this world, living his own Satan-lifestyle by our humanity. That is revolutionary to many of us. I had always thought I was fulfilling my own natural desires; but not so, because we have no nature of our own. We have all been fulfilling the lusts of the god of self-centeredness before our conversion and new birth, and what we thought were just OUR sins are ours only in the sense that we were joined to the nature of Satan as branch to false vine, expressing his thoughts and deeds. So when the Bible says "All have sinned," the real inner truth is that the sinner is Satan, and we in a secondary sense are participating in his sinning.
Examine 1 John 3:12 closely, in which John exhorts us to love our brothers, and adds, "Not as Cain, who was of that wicked one, and slew his brother." When you read that you might ask, why are the words "of that wicked one" inserted? Why not just say, "Don't be like wicked Cain who slew his brother"? Because it was NOT "wicked Cain" who was the murderer, it was "that wicked one" who Jesus has said was "a murderer from the beginning," and HE murdered Abel by Cain's hands. "The lusts of your father you will do."
So there never has been a "human" nature. Therefore there is no point in considering whether we believers have two natures or one! No, we humans have NONE, but tragically or gloriously, we grow to express and manifest the nature of the deity in us.

We Are Free – Not Robots

What about choice and responsibility? Man is not a robot with no free expression of himself as a person. It is precisely the opposite. It is no paradox when freedom must make its choices and the free will then loves to be controlled by its choice. We still do what we WANT to do. There is no need to force a person's will. All the deity within need do is to attract and captivate our "want", and then we will love to act in harmony with him. People often ask, How can we conceive of God changing a person's will if he is free? The answer is: GOD CHANGES OUR "WANT", AND THE HUMAN WILL GROWS TO FOLLOW. Once God has captured our "wants" by drawing us back to Himself through Christ, then it is He in us who "wills and does of His good pleasure" (and it is always good!), and it is we who naturally, gladly freely work it out because we WANT to (Phil. 2:13-14).
It is because many Christian children of God still look back and see their pre-conversion days as simply themselves influenced by Satan, and doing their evil deeds, that much of the difficulty of the Christian life comes. When it is recognized that they were actually children of the devil and he was living his own lifestyle through them – he being the real sinner by nature – it is only then that true growth in the lifestyle of God can take place.
We are not battling two natures within us. In fact the container self does not HAVE a nature. God is instilling in our union with Him the WANTS of His NATURE. Christ will never leave us or forsake the process of directing our WANTS.

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Put On the Pads

The St. Louis Rams are on the move again. The people of St. Louis have football fever. When the Rams have been a winning team, it creates an excitement in this old sports town.
The Rams have made it to two of the last three Superbowls -–winning a close game in the year 2000 and losing a close game in 2002. Their exciting style of fast and open play has made them the darlings of football spectators across the country.
Every major metropolitan area in the U.S. (and even in Mexico, Canada, and Europe) is looking for an NFL franchise. It is as if a city does not have any real "personality" without a football team. People want to see the action of football. The players have to be tough.
The popular modern proverb states, "When the going gets tough, the tough get going!" Those in the Christian community know that life can be especially tough for those who decide to follow after Jesus Christ.
It seems silly to compare believers to unbelievers regarding the hardness of life, since life is pretty hard on everyone. Yet, it is quite important that Christians understand that they can deal with the tough life.
Jesus said that our heavenly Father "makes His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust" (Matthew 5:45). It any try to escape the toughness of life by becoming a Christian, they're in for a sad surprise.
Now that we understand that life is tough, what will we do about it? Taking the advice of the proverb above, the tough get going. What does this mean?
Football is a rough sport, and the players get knocked around pretty hard. It would be silly for a team playing NFL football to show up on the field without pads or helmets. To show up for the game in a T-shirt and sweat pants would be a bad choice.
For the Christian, it's even more critical to be prepared for the toughness of life – to have the right equipment. Satan isn't playing football! Your soul is his objective, and he never gives up. His "team" fights hard and rough.
Strangely, many Christians think that they are "not in the game". They sit in the stadium and watch life go by much like the spectators at a football game. They often have the attitude that the Church has fielded her team against the enemy, those "front-liners" who've sacrifice themselves to try to assure a winning Church.
Though they appreciate the team greatly, they just can't picture themselves getting into the game – getting down on the field and playing rough. They say that they are not in shape. They say that they couldn't make the team because they don't have the ability. They just want to be "fans".
What a deception! They need to wake up and realize that we're all front-liners, we're all on the team. The opposition of Satan doesn't allow any of us to sit and watch.
The game is not being played where we might think it is. Our own minds are the primary battlefield, and we are in the game whether we want to be or not. Don't be fooled – you're on the team and you're going to get roughed up!
There is a false concept that might be called "toughness avoidance". Simply, this idea proposes that the "rain of life" can be avoided by staying indoors and stress can be effectively handled by "going shopping" or "hitting the golf course" or "going fishing".
The problem is that our problems don't go away. A trip to Penney's or Famous-Barr's or Dillard's, with a brief stop at the frozen yogurt place or coffee shop isn't solving any of the problems of life. Nothing wrong with any of that, but if you think you can check out for an afternoon – that you can sit in the stands and not play the game – guess again.
No, the tough get going, They get equipped, they get determined, and they play the game. But the game we play is fantastically different than NFL football. The rules are weird.
The "Saints", our team, are playing the "Demons". Our team coach is Jesus Christ. Their coach is Satan.
Everyone on the Saints, you and I, are endowed with the ability to play our position with more talent than the opposing player can handle. Our coach, "JC", calls all the plays on offense and defense AND HE HAS STUDIED THE PLAYBOOK OF THE OPPOSING TEAM AND KNOWS EXACTLY HOW TO CONTROL EVERY SITUATION. In fact, Jesus is such a talented player Himself, that when things seem a little too rough, He comes out on the field and takes our place playing our position to perfection.
In all honesty, this game is not really a contest because it has been determined beforehand that THE SAINTS MUST WIN – THEY CAN'T LOSE!
What a weird football game! Who would ever pay to see a game that stacked so much in favor of one team?
And the equipment for offense and defense that we wear is "out of this world". Let's listen in to the pre-game "pep-talk" that Jesus gives to the team in the locker room before the game. The apostle Paul overheard it and recorded it in Ephesians 6:10-17:
OK, team, I want to remind you that your strength must come from My mighty power within you. Strap all of God's equipment tightly in place to use against all the strategies and tricks of Satan. That other team may look strong to the fans in the stands, but with what we know about them and with the talent that we have, they are just a bunch of "pussy-cats".
Every piece of your equipment is important to resist the attack of their team, and when it's all over, you will be celebrating and they will be flattened.
But to do this, you have the best-make hip pads of TRUTH and the shoulder pads of God's RIGHTEOUSNESS.
Your Nike football shoes have been constructed with the GOSPEL OF PEACE. Their cleats are perfect for the stadium turf allowing you perfect mobility.
And what a shield for the running-back that offensive line of FAITH is! The enemy will never get to the ball carrier.
You've got a helmet of SALVATION. Your helmets are electronically wired for sound directly to Me. They will protect your head and at the same time allow Me to direct your thinking.
And the quarterback has a "sword" of an arm which is the WORD OF GOD. He can pass the ball with perfection to any receiver and to any area of the field.
OK, team. This is it! Just remember that all you have to do is listen to Me at all times, and TRUST Me in every situation, and I will GUARANTEE that you CAN'T LOSE!
LET'S GO!
All right, so I did paraphrase Ephesians a little bit. But the idea is there, The tough get going. They get their faith locked upon Christ, they hold on hard until their knuckles turn white. They demonstrate their dedicated trust and undying devotion. They realize that there is nothing that Christ will allow to happen to the team. Every strategy can be met and answered by reliance upon His power and guidance.
No matter how much they continue to win, the St. Louis RAMS will never have this kind of team. They will never have the perfect Coach. They will never go undefeated. Because their equipment will never match the "Saint's".
BUT, ANYWAY, THAT'S OK –
GO RAMS!

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Confessions of a Teenage Christian

At a home Bible study group which I attend, the topic for the evening was “Lust”. The Bible verses involved were Matthew 5:27-28 – contained in the Sermon on the Mount.
You have heard that it was said, “Do not commit adultery.” But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
We discussed the meaning of adultery within marriage and fornication outside of marriage. We talked about imaginations, images and feelings which are common to the human mind.
We talked about the “Jimmy Carter Syndrome” where President Carter admitted to having lustful thoughts about women.
When it was my turn to inject my thoughts about the subject, I told the true story of my argument as a teenage boy with a Catholic priest in the church confessional.
As a teenage boy, I had raging hormones concerning sex. Like many teenagers, the testosterone in males and the estrogen in females flowed freely.
I tried to be a good little Catholic teenager but I liked girls! I thought a lot about girls!
In order to receive communion at Mass, you had to go to confession to a priest and receive forgiveness first.
My confessions usually went something like this: “Bless me Father for I have sinned….I have had impure thoughts!”
The priest would say, “Son, you must understand that we all have those fleeting thoughts at times. But the thought itself is not a sin. It is only when you hold on to the thought and deliberately mentally take pleasure in it that it becomes a sin.”
Then I said, “Father, I’m here to tell you that when I think about a pretty girl, I deliberately mentally take off all her clothes, I deliberately mentally take pleasure in thinking about what I would like to do with her body, and then I deliberately mentally hold this image for as long as possible releasing it only very reluctantly. Isn’t this a sin??” The priest responded, “Yes, I guess you’re right. It is a sin.”
My point is this: God put those hormones in us for two purposes: procreation of children and pleasure between spouses within marriage. The hormones do rage in teenagers. Thankfully, there is usually a gradual reduction in the raging as we grow older. At seventy-two years old, I couldn’t handle the quantity of my teenage hormones.
When we grow to understand that Jesus Christ comes to live right within us in a living union, we have His strength to draw on in our hormonal temptation weakness. As a teenager, I thought that I would never overcome lusting after girls. But I did not understand then my born again, living union with Christ. I thought I had to fight it in my own power and my hormones were just too powerful. But the Bible tells us in Hebrews 4:15 that “…He was in all points tempted like we are, yet without sin.” And in verse 2:18, “Because He Himself suffered when He was tempted, He is able to help those who are being tempted.”
My hormones now have slowed down a lot, but I still admit to some feelings when I see cheerleaders jiggle at a football game or see a beautiful woman at the mall. But Christ continually helps me understand God made women beautiful for His own purposes. And us men can appreciate that beauty of creation without getting worked up hormonally about it.

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God's Press Conference

Responding to recent events on Earth, God, the omniscient Creator-Deity worshipped by billions of followers of various faiths for more than 6,000 years, angrily clarified in a press conference yesterday His longtime stance against humans killing each other.
“Look, I don’t know, maybe I haven’t made myself completely clear, so for the record, here it is again,” said the Lord, His divine face betraying visible emotion. “Somehow, people keep coming up with the idea that I want them to kill their neighbor. Well, I don’t! And to be honest, I’m really getting sick and tired of it. Get it straight. Not only do I not want anybody to kill anyone, but I specifically commanded you not to, in really simple terms that anybody ought to be able to understand.”

Worshipped by Christians, Jews, and Muslims alike, God said His name has been invoked countless times over the centuries as a reason to kill in what He called “an unending cycle of violence.”

“I don’t care how holy somebody claims to be,” God said. “If a person tells you it’s My will that they kill someone, they’re wrong. Got it? I don’t care what religion you are, or who you think your enemy is, here it is one more time: No killing, in My name or anyone else’s, ever again.”

The press conference came as a surprise to humankind, as God rarely intervenes in earthly affairs. As a matter of longstanding policy, He has traditionally left the task of interpreting His message and divine will to clerics, priests, rabbis, imams, and His faithful followers. Theologians and laymen alike have been given the task of pondering His ineffable mysteries, deciding for themselves what to do as a matter of faith. His decision to manifest on the material plane was motivated by the deep sense of shock, outrage, and sorrow He felt over the Sept. 11th violence carried out in His name, over the continuing bloodshed in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East, and over its dire potential ramifications around the globe.

“I tried to put it in the simplest terms for you people, so you’d get it straight, because I thought it was pretty important,” said God. “I guess I figured I’d left no real room for confusion after putting it so plain on the tablets I gave to Moses. How much more clear can I get? But somehow, it all gets twisted around and, next thing you know, somebody’s spouting off some nonsense about, ‘God says I have to kill this guy, God wants me to kill that guy, it’s God’s will!’ It’s not God’s will, all right? News flash: ‘God’s will’ equals ‘Don’t murder people.”
“Worse yet, many of the worst violators claim that their actions are justified by passages in the Bible, Torah, and Qur’an. To be honest, there’s some stuff in there that may look contradictory at times, okay?“ God said. “Frankly, that old time violence that you read about was just meant to be a lesson in what doesn’t work! But so many haven’t learned the lesson and it absolutely drives Me up the wall.”

As an example, God praised the overwhelming majority of His Muslim followers as “wonderful, pious people,” calling the perpetrators of the Sept. 11th attacks and the wild extremists in Iraq and Afganistan as rare exceptions.

“This whole medieval concept of the jihad, or holy war, had all but vanished from the Muslim world in, like, the 10th century, and with good reason,” God said. “There’s no such thing as a holy war, only unholy ones. Most Muslims in this world reject the murderous actions of these radical extremists, just like the vast majority of Christians in America don’t want to see religious bloodshed.”
God continued, “Read the Muslim book: ‘Allah is kind, Allah is beautiful, Allah is merciful.’ It goes on and on that way, page after page. But, no, some nuts have to come along and revive this stupid holy-war idea just to further their own hateful agenda. So now everybody thinks Muslims are all murderous barbarians. Thanks Taliban: 1,000 years of Islamic cultural progress down the drain.”

God stressed that His remarks were not directed exclusively at Islamic extremists, but rather at anyone whose ideological zealotry overrides his or her ability to comprehend the core message of all world religions.

“No matter what faith you are, everybody’s been making this same mistake since the dawn of time,” God said. “The Muslims massacre the Hindus, the Hindus massacre the Muslims. The Buddhists, everybody massacres the Buddhists. The Jews, don’t even get me started on the hardline, right-wing, Meir Kahane-loving Israeli nationlists, man. And the Christians? You people believe in a Messiah who says, ‘Turn the other cheek,’ but you’ve been killing everybody you can get your hands on since the Crusades.”
Growing increasingly wrathful, God continued: “Can’t you people see? What are you, morons? There are a ton of different religious traditions out there, and different cultures worship Me in different ways. But the basic message is always the same: Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Shintoism…every religious belief system under the sun, they all say you’re supposed to love your neighbor’s, folks! It’s not that hard a concept to grasp. Why would you think I’d want anything else? Humans don’t need religion or God as an excuse to kill each other – you’ve been doing that without any help from Me since God knows when. The whole point of believing in God is to have a higher standard of behavior. How obvious can you get?”
“I’m talking to all of you, here!” continued God, His voice rising to a shout. “Do you hear Me? I don’t want you to kill anybody. I’m against it, across the board. How many times do I have to say it? DON’T KILL EACH OTHER ANYMORE – EVER! I’M SERIOUS!”

Upon completing His outburst, God fell silent, standing quietly at the podium for several moments. Then, witnesses reported, God’s shoulders began to shake, and He wept.

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We Have a New Name

God is known for changing people’s names. Names mean something to God. Let me give you three examples from the Bible – two from the Old Testament and one from the New.
Genesis 17:3-5 God changed Abram’s name to Abraham. “Abram” in Hebrew means he is an exalted father. “Abraham” means he is father of many. Abraham was appointed by God to be the father of the Israelite nation.
Genesis 32:27-28 God changed Jacob’s name to Israel. “Jacob” in Hebrew means he grasps the heel. “Israel” means he struggles with God. This name change came after Jacob had wrestled with an angel of God.
Acts 13:9 God changed Saul’s name to Paul. “Saul” in Greek means he asked. “Paul” means he quits or desists. Paul henceforth quit persecuting the Jews.
Yes, after a person comes to God, He likes to change their name and give it a new meaning.
Even in the present civilization of man, most women change their last name to that of their husbands when they become married. This is a logical way of showing that the two are one in marriage. Of course, in the present climate of women’s liberation, some women keep their maiden names or attach the husband’s name to their own such as: Mary Smith-Brown. That’s okay. There is still a union shown in the name.
When we Christians come to accept Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, we are “born again” – we are new in spirit nature and are in union with the living Life of Christ (see Galatians 2:20). With this kind of “marriage” union with Christ, God the Father CHANGES OUR NAME. When the Father looks at us from this point on, He sees Christ within us as our source of life and our very basic nature. This changes WHO we are and our real relationship in the Family of God. I see this as prompting God to change our name to a more descriptive title.
My first name is Lou. After Christ comes into a living union with me at my new birth, I believe the Father starts to name me: “Christ-Lou”. Sound egotistical? Not really! ALL Christians of the new birth get the same name change – Christ-Mary, Christ-David, Christ-Susan, Christ-any Christian!
And this name change is permanent for eternity! We Christians mess up in our human lives many times, but God still sees Christ in us and continues to call us by our CHRISTian names.
In the stage version of Man of La Mancha (based on Cervantes’ novel, Don Quixote De La Mancha), the hero Don Quixote meets a woman named Aldonza in a little town in Spain. She is a harlot at night, while during the day she is a waitress.
Don Quixote falls in love with Aldonza, telling her that he believes that one day he will be a knight, and of course every knight must have a lady. He tells Aldonza that he has decided that she will be his lady.
Don Quixote declares his love for Aldonza, refusing to see her as the fallen woman she is but as what she can become – his lady. [God sees all humans as what they can become.]
“Sweet lady…fair virgin, I dare not gaze upon thy countenance lest I be blinded by beauty. I will give you a name, a new name, Dulcinea. I have sought thee, sung thee, dreamed thee, and the world shall know thy glory, Dulcinea!”
Aldonza is a hardened veteran of the real world, where men use and abuse her. She responds, “My name is Aldonza. Men make passes at me.”
But Don Quixote is undaunted. Each time he sees her he says, “Dulcinea, my lady. You are my lady.” She responds to his kindness by spitting on the ground and bargaining for more money with a potential customer.
With this background the play takes a sudden turn. The curtain rises to an empty stage. Suddenly Aldonza runs across the stage barefooted, wet with sweat, straw clinging to her clothing that has been ripped and torn away from her. She has been raped.
She’s weeping, almost hysterical. Suddenly the man of La Mancha appears and runs to her side. “Oh, my lady,” he says with love and compassion. But she can’t accept his grace. She screams at him, “O my God, don’t call me your lady. Look at me, can’t you see me for what I really am? I was born in a ditch, by a mother who left me there, naked, cold and too hungry to cry. I never blamed her. I’m sure she left hoping I would have the good sense to die. Look at me. I’m no lady. I’m only a kitchen slut oozing with sweat, a horror that men use and forget. Don’t call me a lady. I am nothing. Nothing at all.” And she runs off the stage.
Don Quixote, the man of La Mancha is unmoved. He stares at her as she runs away and insists, “But you are my lady, you are my lady.” Then the curtain drops.
When the curtain rises for the next act, Don Quixote is on his deathbed. The dreamer of impossible dreams is dying. He is despised and rejected by others. He is a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. [See Isaiah 53:3.]
A beautiful woman comes to his deathbed, dressed in a mantilla made of black lace that covers her head and shoulders and veils he face. She kneels and prays, then looks at him and says, “My Lord…”
Quixote does not recognize her and asks, “Who are you?”
She responds, “My Lord, don’t you remember? Try to remember. You sang a song, remember?

To dream the impossible dream,
To fight the unbeatable foe,
To bear with unbearable sorrow,
To run where the brave dare not go.
This is my quest, to follow that star,
No matter how hopeless, no matter how
far.
And I know, if I’ll only be true to this
glorious quest
That my heart will lie peaceful and calm
When I’m laid to my rest.
And the world will be better for this,
That one man, scorned and covered with
scars,
Still strove, with his last ounce of courage
To reach the unreachable stars!

She is crying. “Don’t you remember my Lord?” She draws her mantilla back and she says, “You gave me a new name. You called me Dulcinea.” With his last human effort the man of La Mancha tries to rise out of his bed, but cannot, and falling back to die, with his last words he says, “My lady.”
Aldonza faces the audience and pronounces, “My name is Dulcinea.”
God has given you and me a new name. We are regenerated – God gives us new life in Christ. We are His children, spiritually re-born and adopted – God confers upon us His special favor, grace, and all the benefits of being His very children. He makes us heirs of His Kingdom.
The blood of Christ has atoned for our sin – He substituted for us, bearing the penalty and debt of our sin once and for all.
We are forgiven – God pardoned our wrongdoing. He eliminated our debt, the penalty of our sin. His forgiveness empowers us to do the same for others.
We are redeemed – Christ bought us out of slavery and gave us freedom in Him.
We are reconciled – God removed the barrier of sin and removed the separation from Him.
God has justified us – declared us righteous because of the finished work of Christ coming to dwell in us.
God has sanctified us – God pronounces us holy and by the Holy Spirit works in us to conform us to Christ by bringing our soul’s moral condition into conformity with the legal status established in justification.
Yes, God has saved us, is saving us and will save us, by Christ alone, by faith alone, and by grace alone.
God will never let you go, never give up on you, or never forsake you. There are only two kinds of people in the world: He has either already saved you by His grace, or His hand is stretched out welcoming you into the world of His grace.
If you have not received His salvation, IT’S TIME TO GET A NEW NAME.
If you are presently a child of God by a new birth, IT’S TIME TO KEEP RECOGNIZING THAT YOU HAVE A NEW NAME – YOU ARE A
CHRIST-PERSON.

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My Greatest Bible Verse

If you had to pick out the one verse in the Bible with the greatest spiritual impact, the one with the most significance, which one would it be?
The one that might come to mind first is the one most seen on signs at football games and often quoted in church, John 3:16 - "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life." This is a good one! It gives an insight into God's thinking concerning how to take care of the fallen, misguided human race. Jesus had to come to die as a penalty for our sins. We need a verse like this when we cry out to God for forgiveness of our repeatedly sinful actions. It is a good verse to memorize. But it is not that one verse that I call the greatest.
How about John 14:2-3? "In my Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there you may also be." This also is a good verse to help you think about your future happiness in God's spirit realm. But it, too, is not that one verse that I call the greatest.
How about the Twenty-third Psalm? You hear it at just about every funeral as the hope of the believer. "The Lord is my shepherd.....surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever." This is a fine exposition of how the love of God removes fear from our lives. It really helps to console the loved ones of those who have died in faith. It is good to commit to memory not only for the content but for the beautiful literary makeup. But - I can't consider this the focal point area of the Bible.
Well, let's get to it! The verse which makes the story of God's Plan come alive to me is GALATIANS 2:20:

I AM CRUCIFIED WITH CHRIST!

NEVERTHELESS, I LIVE!

YET NOT I!

BUT CHRIST LIVES IN ME!

AND THE LIFE WHICH I NOW LIVE IN THE FLESH

I LIVE BY THE FAITH OF THE SON OF GOD!

WHO LOVED ME AND GAVE HIMSELF FOR ME!

I have added six exclamation points to the text to accentuate six important subdivisions of the verse. This verse, to me, is the greatest because it tells the whole story, in rapid fire form, of man's purpose in being.

When we first bump into Christianity, we hear about the Trinity of God; about how there is God the Father, God the Son Who became Jesus Christ, and God the Holy Spirit. How can this be? Three Persons in one God? All equal? In some kind of a union? Who is the boss? Who decides? Who takes the orders? It is all presented as a vast mystery. And it is! As we grow in understanding, we begin to see some of the qualities and powers of these Persons, but the true awesome mystery remains.

Well, the fact is that man was created to have a living union with Jesus Christ. And this union, although just as mysterious as the union of the Trinity of God, is just as real and glorious! Our human minds cannot really comprehend how a spirit being like Christ can live within us. Our material senses are overwhelmed by this kind of thinking. But the Bible over and over demonstrates that man is the only creature in the material universe that also contains a spirit essence from another realm, the spirit realm.

Let's go over these subdivisions of Galatians 2:20 in some depth.

I AM CRUCIFIED WITH CHRIST

Life on earth is nothing more than a schoolhouse to drive us to the recognition and appreciation of the fact that we don't have the human power and strength to live a moral life. At first, we may not even accept that our pulls toward morality come from a God. We may think that it is just some kind of an "evolutionary" conscience, or something. But whatever this moral pull is, we seem to go the other way a good part of the time. We look around us at the complexity of the world and practically all of us sooner or later come to see that there must be a "God", a higher power, a "Creator". We hear about Jesus Christ and Christianity. Then one day, when we reach the depths of guilt over our immorality and our inability to make life work, we call out to God for a Savior. We accept Jesus Christ as that Savior. We acknowledge that if the punishment for our sins can be removed from us and given to Him as the Bible says, then we gratefully accept forgiveness. In other words, we are crucified with Christ. Two thousand years ago, when Christ died a human death punishment, the whole sinful human race died with Him. Not figuratively, not positionally, but actually!

But how can this be? At conversion, I didn't suddenly drop dead and then get up and live again. Or did I? Maybe I just did it too fast for anybody to see! The Bible says that at conversion, I became a "new creation", a new person. So the old Lou must have died, even if only for an instant in eternity. And the new Lou instantly appeared, so quick that if you blinked your eyes, you missed it!

NEVERTHELESS I LIVE

The new Lou looks just like the old Lou. The new converted person looks just like the old unconverted person. The death and new birth goes totally unrecognized physically. In order to understand how this works, we need to study the composition of man and the function of his parts.

1 Thessalonians 5:23 says that man is composed of:

SPIRIT - SOUL - BODY.

I AM a spirit. I HAVE a soul. I LIVE IN a body. My spirit is that part of the spiritual realm placed in me by God making me different from other physical creatures. But that spirit is only a container form meant to contain God. At the creation of the first man, Adam, this spirit container was empty. God gave Adam the choice of how to fill it. Adam decided to go his independent way unknowinly leaving his spirit container empty! But this spirit vacuum needed to be filled. And since the intended Spirit, God, was not invited in, an independent spirit from the other realm, Satan's nature, came to dwell in Adam's spirit.

The soul is made up of the intellect, the emotions and the will. It resides in the physical brain. The soul is the control panel to direct the actions of the body. The animals of the earth have souls! The word translated "soul" is the Hebrew word "nephesh". And this word is used in Genesis One three times for lower life forms before it is ever used in connection with man. The term "immortal soul" is not found in the Bible. Men have confused the spirit, which IS immortal, with the soul. Souls can die! "The soul that sins, it shall die." (Ezek. 18:4 and 20).

When Christ is in your spirit, most of the soul's input is from Him, but Satan can exert external influences at times interfering with the intellect, emotions and will. When the nature of Satan is in your spirit, most of the soul's input is from him, but God can exert external godly influences at times on the intellect, emotions and will.

The third part of man, the body, is the material shell that the spirit and soul live in. It is the contact we have with the schoolhouse world around us. As I said, the body is controlled by the soul, mostly through internal spirit input but occasionally through external influences.

YET NOT [JUST] I

Paul came to see that we never live alone. Either Satan's nature or Christ's nature lives in our spirit. The whole idea of human life is UNION LIFE. Our spirit always houses a deity nature - it just depends on what deity, Satan or Christ.

How many times have I heard someone say, "How in the world can a human being act like that? Why, he acts like an animal!" We find it hard to understand that any unconverted person is controlled by Satan's independent spirit. We can, at least, start to see how the independence can be so evilly expressed.

But what about individual choice and responsibility? The only real "choice" a person has is whether to have a "dependent' or an "independent' lifestyle. Do you depend on Christ in you to direct your ways? Or do you choose to act independently by your own direction and power? If the nature of Satan lives in you, he causes you to sin. If his nature have been removed and Christ lives in you, then Satan exerts external influences on you to sin. But we do not make all the "little" choices over particular good or bad acts. We make the one big choice of dependence or independence. And we ARE RESPONSIBLE for our choice.

BUT CHRIST LIVES IN ME

At conversion, we become this new man, this new species, so to speak, with Christ living in our spirit to direct our soul. We have chosen a new deity nature to contain: the God of heaven rather than the god of this world, Satan. And Christ is here within us to direct our lives NOW. Conversion is not just for a forgiven past and a heavenly future, but it is for a JOYFUL PRESENT! You can't live a joyful present as the old species. Fear and guilt over sin takes away real joy. But knowing who you are in union with Christ brings real joy, even in adverse circumstances. Because we know that anything we go through, Christ in us is more than a conqueror. He is more than able to supply all that we need to carry on.

But what about when we slip, and sin, by temporarily listening to Satan's external influences? The Bible does say that we can and do sin after conversion. Here is a great mystery of this union between Christ and yoou: Christ is in you; you are in Christ; the two of you are in union; you are ONE. Then how can YOU sin? Did Christ sin with you? Never! Did Christ leave? No, once He comes to form a union with you, He said that He would never leave you. NO, CHRST DOES NOT LEAVE WHEN YOU SIN! The answer is that sin is nothing more than acting independently from God's direction. Christ said that He could do nothing of Himself. It was the Father in Him who did things. He was the perfect man because He never acted independently of His Father. That is how we are to "follow" Christ; not by trying to do the good things that He did. We do not have and can never develop the human ability and power to live the Christian life. We "follow" Christ, we "imitate" Christ, by having His lifestyle of living from within His spirit. Christ said that just as He lived by the power of His Father within, we must live only by the power of Christ Himself within us.

AND THE LIFE WHICH I NOW LIVE IN THE FLESH

I LIVE BY THE FAITH OF THE SON OF GOD

These days there is more talk about faith than ever before. In fact, I am told that more books are written on the subject of faith than any other subject in all of Christianity. But many a believer has faith in his own human ability for most circumstances and calls on Christ for "help" in the tough times.

Most of our faith ideas come from the historical ministry of Jesus where God's dealings with men were still on the level of man's efforts. It was not until the Day of Pentecost and after that grace took its final place in God's plan; from that point forward, it would never again be men's faith - only God's. If Christ lived in Paul and Christ was Paul's everything, then Paul has to use the faith OF Christ. The message is clear. Believers have to grow from a self-motivation to a Christ-motivation. In the beginning of their conversion, they had to believe on their own that Christ died for them and they could be saved. Even this faith was not theirs though; it was a God-given measure of faith. After the Holy Spirit came to reveal Christ as the believer's life, then even the believer's faith would be of Christ. We are limited now because faith is looked on as a thing of man. Satan relishes this since the more men there are who exercise their own faith, the more Satan's knowledge abounds.

GOD LOVED ME AND GAVE HIMSELF FOR ME

In Revelation 13:8 it says that Christ was "slain before the foundation of the world." This is an awesome thought. You may have thought that Jesus died just for your sins. He did, really, but not primarily. This verse says that Christ's death must have embraced something other than just keeping you from punishment and getting you saved, because God took His own Son and killed Him, in His mind, before He ever created the world.

What does that mean? It simply means God saw this great truth - how He could have sons who would please Him by taking His only Son, Christ, and birthing Him in evey believer. Then God would have a Family of TRUE SONS with the actual nature of God. But God did not want a family of cloned robots who mechanically followed God's will. There must be a choosing by the person to be a son of God. And since independence from God causes death, there was a death penalty to be paid. Justice demanded it. And by the death of a part of God, Jesus Christ, justice was satisfied.

1 John 4:16 says, "God IS love!" Not that God has love to give. All true love is a characteristic of God. God must be present to find love. The Father manifested love to His future sons in the giving of His Son on Calvary. And now we believers who have Christ living in us now manifest love to others in the world and in a circle of love back to the Father.

The key is that we get to know Christ within by prayer, study and meditation. Our mysterious supernatural relationship becomes "natural"! Our soul, that is, our intellect, emotions and will, learns to receive practically all of its input from our spirit. But we will slip and accept the wront input at times, causing the wrong output, sin. We will probably pay some material penalty for the sin, but Christ will immediately call our attention to Him. By desiring forgiveness, we will be renewed further in the mind.

The Bible seems to conflict when in some places it says that the converted person is BECOMING perfect, and in other places says that he IS perfect! When we understand soul and spirit, we understand the spirit is MADE PERFECT IMMEDIATELY ONCE AND FOREVER at conversion, but the soul is the part that is BECOMING PERFECT ON A DAY TO DAY BASIS.

So remember all the ramifications of Galatians 2:20. There is no better verse in the Bible to describe what man was, what man is to become, and how man is to live!

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