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| IS YOUR IMAGINATION OF GOD STARVED?
Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created
these things.
Isaiah 40:26
The people of God in Isaiah's day had starved their imagination by
looking on the face of idols, and Isaiah made them look up at the
heavens, that is, he made them begin to use their imagination aright.
Nature to a saint is sacramental. If we are children of God, we have
a tremendous treasure in Nature. In every wind that blows, in every
night and day of the year, in every sign of the sky, in every
blossoming and in every withering of the earth, there is a real
coming of God to us if we will simply use our starved imagination to
realize it.
The test of spiritual concentration is bringing the imagination into
captivity. Is your imagination looking on the face of an idol? Is the
idol yourself? Your work? Your conception of what a worker should be?
Your experience of salvation and sanctification? Then your
imagination of God is starved, and when you are up against
difficulties you have no power, you can only endure in darkness. If
your imagination is starved, do not look back to your own experience;
it is God Whom you need. Go right out of yourself, away from the face
of your idols, away from everything that has been starving your
imagination. Rouse yourself, take the gibe that Isaiah gave the
people, and deliberately turn your imagination to God.
One of the reasons of stultification in prayer is that there is no
imagination, no power of putting ourselves deliberately before God.
We have to learn how to be broken bread and poured out wine on the
line of intercession more than on the line of personal contact.
Imagination is the power God gives a saint to posit himself out of
himself into relationships he never was in.
(not by me)
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DIE TO SELF
Death
is discussed about 300 seperate times in the Bible. We are all familiar
with the literal meaning of death, and in the Old Testament we see
death discussed numerous times with this literal meaning in mind: Gen.
15: Death of Abraham, 1 Kings 2: Death of Saul,throughout the book of
Psalms the psalmists cry out of being on the verge of death.
These are all instances of a physical death.
But as you move into the New Testament the discussions of death become more spiritual, and inherently not as easy to understand:
Romans 8 "Our old selves died with Christ on the cross" "Consdider yourself dead to sin."
Col. 3 "Put to death desires of the flesh." "As far as the world is concerned, you are already dead."
These discussions of death are
commands to die to specific things. So with such an emphasis put on the
necessity of our "death," we need to understand this spiritual meaning
of death.
Col. 3:5-8 (NIV) "Put to death,
therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality,
impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed, which is idolatry. It's
because of these things that the wrath of God is coming. You used to
walk in these in the life that you once lived. But now you must rid
yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander,
and filthy language from your lips."
Col. 3:5-8 (MSG) "And that means killing off everything
connected with that way of death: sexual promiscuity, impurity, lust,
doing whatever you feel like whenever you feel like it, and grabbing
whatever attracts your fancy. That's a life shaped by things and
feelings instead of by God. It's because of this kind of thing that God is about to explode in anger. It wasn't long ago that you were doing all that stuff and not knowing any better. But you know better now, so make sure it's all gone for good: bad temper, irritability, meanness, profanity, dirty talk."
The root of all sin is selfishness. There is no sin that you commit for someone else's good.
1 John 2:15-17 "Don't love the world's ways. Don't love the world's goods. Love of the world squeezes out love for the Father. Practically
everything that goes on in the world--wanting your own way, wanting
everything for yourself, wanting to appear important--has nothing to do
with the Father. It just isolates you from him. The world and all its wanting, wanting, wanting is on the way out--but whoever does what God wants is set for eternity."
So we see the ultimate command of all these verses is to die to selfish
desires. And to do this you give up EVERYTHING for other. Its not
talking about worldly things like money, because that is all God's
anyway.
This is why Jesus says "And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well." Because no amount of stuff you give away is enough to replace the love that people truly need.
There is a big difference between a student and a disciple. Students study to gain information and pass tests. Disciples study to be more like the teacher.
An atheist could be a student of Christ, to learn about him. But Christ
calls us to be his disciples. For me and you to learn about him, and
then shape our lives according to his. He is the perfect example of an
unselfish love.
1 John 3:16 "This is how we've come to understand and experience love: Christ
sacrificed his life for us. This is why we ought to live sacrificially
for our fellow believers, and not just be out for ourselves."
In "Counting The Cost" C.S. Lewis writes,
"The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing, is to hand over your whole self--all your wishes and precautions--to Christ.
Christ says 'Give me all. I dont want so much of your time, and so much
of your money and so much of your work; I want You. I have not come to
torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half measures are any
good. I dont want to cut off a branch here and there, I want to have
the whole tree down. Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires
you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked--the whole
outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you a
new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: my own will shall
become yours.'
Now, if I may put it that way, our Lord is like a dentist. If you go
seeking temporary relief of pain in one particular tooth, he will give
you it, but he will not leave it there. He will find other teeth which
are going to cause problems in the future. If you give him an inch he
will take a mile.
Tons of people go to God to be cured of some one particular sin which
they are ashamed of or which is obviously spoiling daily life (like bad
temper or drunkenness). Well, He will cure it alright, but he will not
stop there. That may be all you ask ; but once you call him in, He will
give you the full treatment. That is why He warned people to 'count the
cost' before becoming Christians. 'Make no mistake,' He says, 'If you
let me, I will make you perfect. The moment you put yourself in my
hands, that is what you are in for. Nothing less or other than that.'
'Whatever suffering it may cost you in your earthly life... whatever it
cost me, I will never rest, nor let you rest, until you are literally
perfect--until my Father can say without reservation that He is well
pleased with you....Imagine yourselves as a living house. God comes in
to rebuild that house. At first you can understand what he is doing. He
is getting the drains right and stopping leaks in the roof and so on:
you know those jobs need doing and you are not surprised. But then he
starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does
not seem to make sense. What on earth is he up to? The explanation is
that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought
of--throwing a new wing here, an extra floor there, running up towers,
making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent
little cottage, but he is building a palace. He intends to come and
live in it, in you, Himself!"
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| - From the Mouth of Gath Comes Terror - Every verse in the New Testament which talks about the love of God for his people is directly referring to the cross:
"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son . . . (John 3:16)
“But God put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to him.” (Romans 5:8)
“I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Galatians 2:20)
God certainly offers love in the form of inner peace, joy, and comfort to saved believers. However, to the unrepentant sinner, God offers no other form of love but the cross. For us as witnesses that means to promise an unsaved sinner anything more than the full mercy and compassion of the cross is to go beyond Scripture. As Paul said to the sinful Corinthians, “When I came to you … I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” (1 Corinthians 2:1,2)
"For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” (1 Corinthians 1:18) To someone who does not understand what they are being saved from, the cross seems ridiculous. If they do not understand that they have lied, stolen, and committed adultrey and murder in their heart, and that the just punishment for these acts is hell, then they cannot appreciate the amount of love it takes for God to offer us a pardon. God offers anyone who recognizes their sin and trusts in Jesus to save them a complete pardon of their sin, and promises eternity in heaven.
Brothers and Sisters, do you understand that love yourself? Do you understand what you were saved from? Have you ever looked for yourself into the mirror of God’s Law and seen your own heart’s exceedingly sinful reflection? Have you ever wept tears of gratitude for the precious blood of Jesus spilled to save you?
http://wayofthemaster.com | | |
| where do you find the love to offer he who betrays you?
and offer to wash my feet as i offer to disobey you,
your beauty does bereave me, and how my words do fail,
so faithfully and dutifully i award you with betrayal
"What will you give me if I hand him over to you?" They settled on thirty silver pieces. 16He began looking for just the right moment to betray him. (Mat 26)
Jesus my heart is all i have to give to you, so weak and so unworthy,
this simply will not do, no alabaster jar, no diamond in the rough,
for your body that was broken, how can this be enough?
by me you were abandoned, by me you were betrayed,
yet in your arms and in your heart forever i have stayed
16"This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. (John 3)
Weather: Phoenix, AZ
 Sunny 80° | | |
| If
we could shrink the earth's population to a village of
precisely 100 people, with all the existing human ratios
remaining the same, it would look something like the following. There
would be:
57
Asians
21 Europeans
14 from the Western Hemisphere, both north and south
8 Africans
52 would be female
48 would be male
70 would be nonwhite
30 would be white
70 would be non Christian (not the same 70)
30 would be Christian (not the same 30)
89 would be heterosexual
11 would be homosexual
6 people would possess 59% of the entire world's wealth.
All 6 would be from the United States.
80 would live in substandard housing
70 would be unable to read
50 would suffer from malnutrition
1 would be near death; 1 would be near birth
1 (yes, only 1) would have a college education
1 would own a computer
14If my people, my God-defined people,
respond by humbling themselves, praying, seeking my presence, and
turning their backs on their wicked lives, I'll be there ready for you:
I'll listen from heaven, forgive their sins, and restore their land to
health. (2 Chronicles 7)
Say what you want about Bush and his government, corporate America
and its commercialism and greed, America's disgusting use of resources;
speak about the negativity of any of those things and I will probably
aree with you 100%. But do not blame the way the world is on them.
During the Christmas season there is always lots of talk about "peace
on earth," but God gave us the recipe for peace already. I encourage
you, humble yourself, seek God, PRAY, and stop doing what you know is
not right. (oh, and please pray for me to do the same) Christmas celebrates the coming of the Christ.
John said of Jesus' coming, "I'm baptizing you
here in the river. But the main character in this play, to whom I'm a mere
stagehand, will ignite the kingdom life, a FIRE, the Holy Spirit within
you, changing you from the inside out. 17He's
going to clean house--make a clean sweep of your lives. He'll place
everything true in its proper place before God; everything false he'll
put out with the trash to be burned." (Luke 3)
8...Touch the untouchables...You have been treated
generously, so live generously. (Matt. 10)
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