Freedom to Fly!

First the Natural---Then the Spiritual (1 Cor. 15:46)

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Gal. 6:7

Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap.

Psalm 7           
    ⁹ Oh, let the wickedness of the wicked come to an end,
         But establish the just;
         For the righteous God tests the hearts and minds.
    ¹⁰ My defense is of God,
         Who saves the upright in heart. 
         
   ¹⁴ Behold, the wicked brings forth iniquity;
         Yes, he conceives trouble and brings forth falsehood.
     ¹⁵ He made a pit and dug it out,
          And has fallen into the ditch which he made.
     ¹⁶ His trouble shall return upon his own head,
          And his violent dealing shall come down on his own crown.
         
    ¹⁷ I will praise the LORD according to His righteousness,
         And will sing praise to the name of the LORD Most High.

Isaiah 45

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If you can be trusted in the small things, you will be trusted with larger things.  God never gives us more than we can be trusted with. His authority is only given to those who have been trained to handle it well. 

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1. Consequences: A man reaps what he sows.

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The name Lucifer appears in the Hebrew once in the KJV bible.  Most have assumed this is the Devil. 

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Ray Knight has written an excellent article on this subject.

Yom Kippur or the Day of Atonement is today on the Jewish calendar.  This is the day that the High Priest under the old covenant would go into the holy of holies with blood and make atonement for himself and for the children of Israel. You can read about this in Leviticus 16.

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Ok, let's have some fun with another look at the names of God.  This is fascinating!

Psalm 82 (King James with Correct Names of God inserted)

A psalm of Asaph

 ¹God (ELOHIM) standeth in the congregation of the mighty; he judgeth among the gods (ELOHIM).

 ²How long will ye judge unjustly, and accept the persons of the wicked? Selah.

Can this truly be Asaph (who is he by the way?) saying God judges unjustly?

 ³Defend the poor and fatherless: do justice to the afflicted and needy.

 ⁴Deliver the poor and needy: rid them out of the hand of the wicked.

 ⁵They know not, neither will they understand; they walk on in darkness: all the foundations of the earth are out of course.

 ⁶I have said, Ye are gods (ELOHIM); and all of you are children of the most High (El Elyon).

 ⁷But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes.

 ⁸Arise, O God (ELOHIM), judge the earth: for thou shalt inherit all nations.

Please admit you are as fascinated as I am at verse 6!  And how did the translators decide which words "elohim" to capitalize and translate "God" and which to not capitalize and translate 'gods'?

Reminds me of the passage from Genesis 3:

²And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:

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I love this passage from Paul's teachings!  Several years ago the Lord gave me insight into it's meaning and a new life began to rise up within me.  It is this insight that I want to share today.  There is so much that God has spoken through scripture that refers to a then present and NOW present reality but our understanding has been weakened by our flesh because we have sought to understand spiritual things through our natural minds.  I hope this will provide a morsel of new revelation to those who read and a confirmation of what your Spirit already knows to be true. 

For many this is a chapter that is all about future events that are to take place in the sweet by and by when our Lord returns.  I have often wondered why so many await the Saviour to bring mankind into perfection when He has already come even as scripture says in Hebrews 9:26 "once at the end of the ages, He has appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself."  If sin is already put away why are we waiting for Him to come and "put away sin"? 

There is a plague of unbelief that has permeated Christianity and has adulterated the precious words of scripture.  Doctrines of fear, doctrines of condemnation, doctrines of unbelief, fill the annals of church history.  Now is the time of His appearing in a new way upon the earth as we are brought out of the darkness of religion and into the glorious light of His truth.  It is a day of rest, rest from the labour of religion and self-salvation.  It is the day to acknowledge our utter helplessness and uselessness apart from Him who is our life.  It is the day to be rid of the natural mind and and all the religious practices it invents and enter into the supernatural with reckless abandon so that the Lord can at long last have HIS way in us. The creation has been, and is, groaning for the appearing of the sons of God, the birth pangs are everywhere. (Rom. 8:19) 

2 Cor. 5 presents us with a wonderful explanation of what it means to come into fullness.  Paul is not speaking of death being the entrance into eternal life in this passage, otherwise he would never have said 'death is the last enemy to be defeated' and 'the wages of sin is death' and so on.  There is not one place in scripture where physical death is anything other than a consequence of sin.  The first explanation came in Genesis 3 at the fall.  Praise God,  our Saviour bore our sin in His body on the cross so that sin would be done away with and the last enemy death would be defeated.  Our natural mind cannot comprehend this truth because it finds its explanations in natural things.  Just as our mortal bodies will be swallowed up by Life, so our mortal minds also need to be swallowed up by Life.

Let's read on to hear the word of the Lord and no longer put our trust in what our natural mind comprehends but give up our thinking in order that the mind of Christ may bring revelation.

My comments are inserted in blue.

1 For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed (literally means disolved), we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

This is a reference to the Spirit Man who dwells within us all.  Having been sick for years I once cried out to the Lord in despair of my bodily condition pleading, "Lord I want a new body."  He replied "You already have a new body."  His meaning was clear and He confirmed it for me with scripture.

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The following are excerpts taken from a book called "Final Steps in Christian Maturity" which is itself an English translation of various excerpts taken from a much larger, three volume, work entitled JUSTIFICATIONS.  Jeanne Guyon wrote "Justifications" (1200 pages!) to clarify and defend her beliefs before she appeared, by order of the King of France, before the Archbishop Boussuet for interrogation.  She was later imprisoned for her beliefs.  The three volume work has never been translated into English and it is thought that it was only published once in French. 

So much of Madame Guyon's work is about how to live in a deep and abiding love relationship with God.  She is considered one of the Christian Mystics, which really just means that she believed God speaks to His people and that we can have a deeply personal love relationship with Him.  Mystics do not hold to any one doctrinal belief system, they cross over denominational barriers, but they endeavor to live in a deeply personal communicative relationship that is characterized by increasing self-abandonment and increasing spiritual connection with God.

Wikipedia defines it in this way:

Mysticism, from the Greek μυω (muo, "to conceal"), is the pursuit of achieving communion with or conscious awareness of God (the divine ultimate reality) through direct, personal experience, intuition or insight; the belief in the existence of realities beyond ordinary perceptual or intellectual apprehension that are central to being and directly accessible through personal experience; or the belief that such experiences are an important source of knowledge.

My personal endeavor is perhaps best expressed in Colossians 1 by Paul.  He states that God has chosen him to reveal "26 the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the saints. 27 To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory." I see life as a journey of discovery.  Our hope of glory is not in something outside of ourselves but within ourselves.  Once the layer of flesh that keeps it concealed is removed, the vibrant life force that is Christ in us begins to manifest and we enter into the resurrection experience that Paul speaks of in Philippians 3: 

10 that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, 11 if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.

Ok enough said...now for some quotes from Chapter 4 of Mdme Guyon's "Final Steps in Christian Maturity". 

I find it impossible to believe that one who places his whole happiness, his whole state, in the hands of God alone could then continue to have a list of desires for his own happiness to bring to his Lord.  None but that one who dwells in God by love can place all his happiness in God alone.  To seek to place your happiness in God by the strength of your will, or out of fear, or even "to please God" are all horrible states and poor motives.

Love alone should cause anyone to yield up his will to the Lord.  If it is not love that produces submission, eventually that submission will come out as something brutish.  When the believer relinquishes his soul, his will, his all to his Lord, desires nothing of himself and desires only God for the sake of God (and that, in a state of passionate love), then we see that he has made a good beginning.  Why? Because here is a state where there is no enjoyment with self as and end in view!

The glory of heaven is not the motive.  Nor can the motive be the wonderful feeling of the Lord's presence.  There must be no object, earthly or heavenly, that is your ultimate desire.  It is only that you have loved Him, have fallin in love with Him, and are in a state of loving Him.

It has been wisely said, "Motive is but the child of love."  If I love God alone, I will desire God alone.  If I love God alone for Himself alone, with no thought of self, then my desire will be in Him alone.  Later, to be sure, whatever comes from within will be pure and without selfish motive.

...Pure motive and pure desire are quiet and restful, filled and satisfied.  If a love is expressed toward an infinite God, and if that love itself has its origins in Him, and if the believer has no goal but the blessedness of God, then the desires withint the heart of that believer could not be manifested in something as common as restlessness or unsatisfied wants.  There must be present a sense of rest, a sense that "I have no ungratified wish, no unfullfilled personal desire."

Please realize that this foundation alone can be the true foundation--and the only unshakable foundation--for the believer to build his spiritual life upon.  Be mindful that most believers love God with some other state than this mixed in.  There is love for God that has within it a regard for the self and its needs.  Even worse, and perhaps more common, is the believer whose love for God is actually a love (and a seeking) for gratification of his own being.  He is seeking God because of what he feels when he loves his Lord.  When that dies (that is, when the feeling that goes along with that love dies), this Christian loses a great deal of interest in God!

This is a self seeking state, and it must be abandoned if we are to know true spiritual growth.  We must love Him without an end in view and even--as must come--without any feeling present to buttress us!  We must love Him with total disregard to dry spells and to times of spiritual abundance.  Our love must pass beyond the gratification that we get in loving God....otherwise we are built on shifting sand.

...The desire that is born within the self, that has reference to the self, is the result of a will that is still unpurified.  It is your Lord's desire to bring that will to nothing....until the will is one with your Lord.  Therefore your Lord must, from time to time, absorb--yes, and destoy--self originating desires.

...A believer who has been persecuted and becomes bitter...a believer who has known disappointment because of the conduct of another believer (or someone in the world) and is resentful...and most of all, that Christian who has been disappointed in God because of what He has done, and is unhappy with God and with the state he is in at the hands of so unfair a God...surely a Christian who experiences these emotions is not in a state where his will is in concert with God; he is, rather, in a state where self is originating the desires of the heart.

We do not always understand the will of God, but to trust His sovereignty completely is another matter.

When the Christian fixes his mind on what God should be, and then when God does not act according to his expectation, he will surely suffer disappointment....

...As the believer deepens in his abandonment to Christ, outward things (caused by persecution, injustice, and even pleasure of God) are things no longer percieved nor reacted to.

Phew!  I would change her last statement here to say "outward things are things no longer"... controlling us or our reactions."

Deep stuff!  This really has me thinking.