Rest In Your Residency

[mjrhealth]

You're preaching a false Gospel that says grace applied to the heart does not change us, just God's opinion of the sin we continue to commit. Grace changes us completely.

And yet you said you sin just like the rest of us, you cant see it because you wont do this,

Joh 5:40 And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life.

Everything you do is of teh flesh and if its of teh flesh God will have no part in it,

 

[Heb 13:8]

Grace is BOTH pardon for sin AND power to overcome it, not just pardon.

I couldn't agree more. Except, I'm not trying to earn grace. I'm receiving grace and falling more in love with Jesus Christ. There's nothing more I can do but love Him back, and forgive others like He did for me. I'm a sinner, so I need grace to keep me in check.

When I receive grace I repent, because I can't repent on my own. This will be a continual process throughout my life, so I need God's love to show me how to walk with Him because His love is the only way out of death. You say our love fails Him, but His love will never fail us. That's true. Our love fails Him every day because we are sinners, and He is God.

That's the relationship we have with the Father, progressive sanctification. But the victory is not in man, it's at the cross. Man's love will always succeed and always fail, but God's love always succeeds and never fails. Do you understand?

1 Cor 13:4-8 4Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 8Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.

 

[skypair]

Grace is BOTH pardon for sin AND power to overcome it, not just pardon.

You have the wrong idea of "grace." Grace = the wisdom of God that, if we apply it to our lives (in salvation, that means "Repent and receive"), brings salvation and blessings. And so, yes, the power to overcome sin if we apply God's wisdom.

I'm not sure how people can work with any other concept of grace b/c all grace is received through the Word of God and applied to us by obedience to it. Well, except for our innate blessings of good looks, loving parents, a free society, etc. But even these come from the receipt of the wisdom of God/grace by our predecessors.

skypair

 

[Phoneman777]

I couldn't agree more. Except, I'm not trying to earn grace. I'm receiving grace and falling more in love with Jesus Christ. There's nothing more I can do but love Him back, and forgive others like He did for me. I'm a sinner, so I need grace to keep me in check.

When I receive grace I repent, because I can't repent on my own. This will be a continual process throughout my life, so I need God's love to show me how to walk with Him because His love is the only way out of death. You say our love fails Him, but His love will never fail us. That's true. Our love fails Him every day because we are sinners, and He is God.

That's the relationship we have with the Father, progressive sanctification. But the victory is not in man, it's at the cross. Man's love will always succeed and always fail, but God's love always succeeds and never fails. Do you understand?

1 Cor 13:4-8 4Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 8Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.

And the Bible differentiates between the believer who stumbles while daily growing in grace and striving against sin with him who professes to believe but deliberately continues to live in sin with no intention of seeking victory over it. Grace is always proffered to the first but never the second, according to succinct Proverbs 28:13 KJV and countless other verses like it. There were Jewish leaders in Israel during the early stages of the Babylonian captivity that told idolatrous Israel that God was with them, had forgiven them, and would soon deliver them from captivity, but these were all lies:

"Because with lies ye (Jewish leaders) have made the heart of the righteous sad, whom I have not made sad; and strengthened the hands of the wicked, that he should not return from his wicked way, by promising him life:" Ezekiel 13:22 KJV

When we promise "eternal life" to those who continue to live in wickedness by claiming God's grace is with them and will protect them, we are lying to them.

 

[bbyrd009]

amen

 

[Phoneman777]

You have the wrong idea of "grace." Grace = the wisdom of God that, if we apply it to our lives (in salvation, that means "Repent and receive"), brings salvation and blessings. And so, yes, the power to overcome sin if we apply God's wisdom.

I'm not sure how people can work with any other concept of grace b/c all grace is received through the Word of God and applied to us by obedience to it. Well, except for our innate blessings of good looks, loving parents, a free society, etc. But even these come from the receipt of the wisdom of God/grace by our predecessors.

skypair

Noah Webster's 1828 Dictionary, which was written in a time before public religious exercise and display had become so despised as it is today, has as its 3rd entry:

3. "Favorable influence of God; divine influence or the influence of the spirit, in renewing the heart and restraining from sin."

To deny "grace is power to obey" is to essentially assert "we may exercise restraint from sin in our own strength", which no doubt you, I, and Mr. Webster believe is absurd.

 

[bbyrd009]

yes, interesting that the Webster's dictionary was bought, and several definitions were "adjusted," which i have just spent ten minutes finding the link for this in google--which i note it is not even on the first page any more, the first-page ones are all yack now--but i can't bring it here oh well.

 

[Heb 13:8]

with him who professes to believe but deliberately continues to live in sin with no intention of seeking victory over it.

Underline: What you're describing is a nonbeliever who is not in Christ, non born again. It sounds to me like you don't believe God.

Rom 6:14 For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace.

1 John 3:6 No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.

1 John 3:9 No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God's seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God.

1 John 5:18 We know that anyone born of God does not continue to sin; the One who was born of God keeps them safe, and the evil one cannot harm them.

 

[bbyrd009]

that's it, Heb. Attack! Lol

 

[Heb 13:8]

that's it, Heb. Attack! Lol

Luke 18:42

 

[Josho]

There is no time like the present for you to begin resting in your Father’s presence. He sees you there, in His beloved Son. It is a simple, scriptural matter of seeing yourself there “in full assurance of faith” (Heb 10:22). You are there in glory before the Father; not in the flesh, not in the body, but in spirit as a “new creation” in Christ Jesus.

This is not the time to visualize, or even to verbalize; and certainly not to fantasize. It is the time, by faith in the facts, to actualize. It is the time to rest in your residency, to personalize your position. The Father has seen you there before His face since the day you were saved. In eternity past He chose you for that position, “according as He hath chosen you in Him (Christ) before the foundation of the world” (Eph 1:4).

As you by faith in the positional facts realize that you are in the Father’s presence, you will not try to depend upon any sense of His presence. Adulthood supersedes childhood. Now you know His presence because you know that your position in the Christian life is a life of faith in the facts—nothing else. Thus the Father enables you to live by faith so as to draw you into His presence—not you, by sense, seeking to draw Him into yours.

Fellowship between you and your Father involves oneness, a commonality. As you in faith occupy your position, you find yourself not only in His presence, but in His life and nature—the human-divine* newness of the life of your rebirth. You are there in the full acceptance of His beloved Son (Eph 1:6), and that is what you are: beloved of God. “We are bound to give thanks always to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation” (2 Thes 2:13).

Your blessed responsibility and privilege for now is to quietly sit where you have been seated by the Father—and that is in His presence. You have no other place. This world is certainly not your home. The Father “hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Eph2:6). You occupy and abide in your position by faith; you will begin to experience the resultant fellowship as the Holy Spirit prepares you (2 Co 3:18).

As you rest, abiding above in your Source, in “Christ who is our life” (Col 3:4), you will have a new appreciation of a sound doctrinal foundation and superstructure. Without regeneration of course, you would not be where you are; without assurance and security, you would not be able to rest where you are.

Further, without knowledge of your identification with the Lord Jesus in His death unto sin and life unto God, you would not even know of your position before the Father, nor of your privilege to abide there in His Son. These same truths assure you that you have been freed from the old man by death and made a new man in the New Man, thereby being made “fit to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light” (Col 1:12). The basis upon which the Holy Spirit carries on the subjective work in you, is the objective truth of your eternal completeness in the Lord Jesus Christ: crucified, buried, risen and ascended (Gal 2:20; Rom 6:3-5; Eph 2:6; Col 3:3, 4).

As J.B. Stoney stated, “When I look at this place, He is not here; and when I look at myself naturally I am not fit for Him. How happy then to know that I belong to the place where He is; and that through grace I have been made suited to Him in that new position; so that I set my mind and affection there, as the place where my deepest joys are realized.”

- Miles J Stanford





Poster’s Opinion:

* “Human-divine”: Gill – ‘That by these you might be partakers of the divine nature’; not essentially, or of the essence of God, so as to be deified, this is impossible, for the nature, perfections, and glory of God, are incommunicable to creatures; nor, hypostatically and personally, so as the human nature of Christ, in union with the Son of God, is a partaker of the divine nature in Him.

“But by way of resemblance and likeness, the new man or principle of grace, being formed in the heart in regeneration, after the image of God, and bearing a likeness to the image of His Son (Col 3:10), and this is styled, Christ formed in the heart, into which image and likeness the saints are more and more changed, from glory to glory (2 Co 3:18), through the application of the Gospel, and the promises of it, by which they have such sights of Christ as do transform them, and assimilate them to Him; and which resemblance will be perfected hereafter, when they shall be entirely like Him, and ‘see Him as He is’” (1 Jhn 3:2).


Miles J Stanford Devotional: http://www.abideabove.com/hungry-heart/

Great post i strongly agree, this is what one of the most important things of all, that a great number of Christians don't do, it's to rest in the Holy Spirit's presence, if you are worn out or stressed, it's the best thing you can do, sit in the quiet, don't have to say anything, don't have to do anything, just sit or lay down, relax, rest in the presence of God, it's really some of the best quality time you can spend with God.

 

[Netchaplain]

Great post i strongly agree, this is what one of the most important things of all, that a great number of Christians don't do, it's to rest in the Holy Spirit's presence, if you are worn out or stressed, it's the best thing you can do, sit in the quiet, don't have to say anything, don't have to do anything, just sit or lay down, relax, rest in the presence of God, it's really some of the best quality time you can spend with God.

Hi J and thanks for your reply!

 

[bbyrd009]

"Those you will wish to be someday are risking their lives in schemes of peaceful resistance."

so iow the opinion should at least be contemplated that you might wanna crawl out of that grave, that you crawled in to, and stop funding both sides of a perpetual war on the other side of the planet, or at the very least stop outright voting for it, and showing God right where your "allegiance" is. With all due respect.

 

[bbyrd009]

which i'm not meaning to be mean, or rude, here, and for anyone who can characterize themselves as already being in the Promised Land well then, by all means, rest, and maybe go read about Nehushtan, while you're at it; but for the rest of us, Wanderers, who might be better characterized as getting bitten by snakes, perhaps, or possibly even be suffering somewhat in the manner of Job right about now, i suggest that you got seven days in a week, what are you doing with six of them? And isn't Saturday your big shopping day? "Small Business Day" now, your leader has made it. With your enthusiastic blessing, of course. So at least see how even God's "rest" can be manipulated which i don't mean that's what the OP is doing, but it doesn't hurt to look at all sides of a matter, and i notice that Shabbat has already been dismissed, more or less.

 

[mjrhealth]

Those dying to get to the Promised Land aren't following Moses up the Mountain...

Exo 19:12 And thou shalt set bounds unto the people round about, saying, Take heed to yourselves, that ye go not up into the mount, or touch the border of it: whosoever toucheth the mount shall be surely put to death:
Exo 19:13 There shall not an hand touch it, but he shall surely be stoned, or shot through; whether it be beast or man, it shall not live: when the trumpet soundeth long, they shall come up to the mount.

The rest where not found worthy.

 

[bbyrd009]

Exo 19:12 And thou shalt set bounds unto the people round about, saying, Take heed to yourselves, that ye go not up into the mount, or touch the border of it: whosoever toucheth the mount shall be surely put to death:
Exo 19:13 There shall not an hand touch it, but he shall surely be stoned, or shot through; whether it be beast or man, it shall not live: when the trumpet soundeth long, they shall come up to the mount.

The rest where not found worthy.

yes.

and look, i liked the op too, there is def a time and place for that, for rest, don't get me wrong. But i see new seekers being told they are now "saved" after a little declaration, a little conversation, and somehow they are convinced that they have made it to the Promised Land, no wandering required; they walked through the door covered in Passover Blood, and right into the Promised Land, somehow.

So, if that is your current model, then fine, nothing i can do about it, except to say that you might consider what the fate of those who you are following was. First, we are told that they worshipped Nehushtan, the Snake on a Pole; meaning that they associated themselves with the snakebit, and looked to their ancestors' "risen lord" to deliver them from this snakebit state--compare to many, half or whatever, of current-day Christians' replies to you, to the simple question "do you think yesterday was better than today?" (let the reader understand). Which of course if you ask a Christian who has read enough, they would "confess" that "no, i don't," even if they really do, say, believe that life was better back in 2007 or whatever, when they were making a grand a week, and everyone was fully employed, or even think 1957 was better than today, whatever, so you would have to ask them more obliquely, to get their "true" confession, because it doesn't matter what their answer to the question is, if they turn around in the next half-hour and make some little comment that reveals their heart to be different on the matter. I think 1970 was better than today, too. In a way. But we know that this is not wise.

So, the comparisons to those in the Promised Land in Scripture are just too stark to ignore, imo, you got Ezekiel condemning women's "pillows," (or "soft landings") as a doctrine, and you got descendants worshipping Nehushtan, and you even got people not observing the Sabbath, and i haven't looked, but i bet either the Asherah poles or the other one are rites to some fertility goddess, all that "under every green tree" stuff going on, doesn't matter if they called it Easter or Ishtar or what they called it, doesn't matter, if rest is being related to you as "surely saved"--which the OP may have had no intention of doing, don't get me wrong--then at least plot yourself on the Exodus journey somewhere, which you have to put yourself in the Promised Land with that model, "Rest," and then understand that all of those people first split into warring factions with each other over doctrine, and then got defeated and carried off to a foreign land, more than once, a third time, even, time number 3, in 70 AD, right.

So, it might initially sound scary, or God forbid even sound like blasphemy, but personally i am comfortable in my tent in the Wilderness, for now, you might "say that you know, for a fact" that you are saved, right now, which i can't help but hear as "i don't have to learn anything else, i have learned that i am already saved, already in the Promised Land, so why should i listen to you?" but when you show me the verses that Witness this, they don't come out right, do they? They work great, in the KJV, as long as you avoid the Lex, but they fall apart pretty quick there, so fine, either avoid the Lex and keep believing that, or don't, but at least deal with the story that even Queenie gets right about those in the Promised Land. And if you don't think that they apply, to those who are convinced that they are saved, right now, and you are able to interpret those some other way, then more power to you, there are explanations out there, for all of those passages, that might work for you, but it doesn't matter if you can apply the lessons of those in the PL or not, if you then go on to manifest them for all to see anyway.

and who among us is not aware of someone who fools no one but themselves?

 

[bbyrd009]

also, something i notice that usually occurs is, "tares" get turned into "weeds" among those people. Are "tares" defined as "weeds" to you now? Then just understand that you are plainly defining right where you are in your walk, every time you repeat that.

And i notice that it gets a little harder every year to even get a definition of tares off the www that is not "weeds," i think every hit on the first page in google is "weeds" now. Hmphf.

 

[bbyrd009]

what did you confess and what did you believe

so, a more pertinent question might be where do i put myself on the timeline of the Exodus generation, after i have confessed and believed?

because honestly, way back at my initial confession and belief, i confessed faith in a Snake on a Pole, and believed that i was escaping hell.

And i am glad that i did, don't get me wrong, even if my mind has changed since then.

 

[bbyrd009]

but i came back here to say something else about this "Contract for Jesus," which search led me to this page, or thread, but i can't find it now.

because i don't want to seem condescending to people who have signed a 501 c3. I just meant to point out that a conflict of interest has been introduced there, that a pastor now has to deal with. I think most of them do pretty well. If your church has outreach, and/or missions stuff going on, food programs, whatever, then these are a credit to all concerned.

And He said to them, "But now, whoever has a money belt is to take it along, likewise also a bag, and whoever has no sword is to sell his coat and buy one.

 

[Phoneman777]

Underline: What you're describing is a nonbeliever who is not in Christ, non born again. It sounds to me like you don't believe God.

Rom 6:14 For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace.

1 John 3:6 No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.

1 John 3:9 No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God's seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God.

1 John 5:18 We know that anyone born of God does not continue to sin; the One who was born of God keeps them safe, and the evil one cannot harm them.

It sounds like to me that you you don't want Jesus' example in your life. Jesus said, "Not my will, but Thy will be done", but you seem to say "Not THY will, but MY will be done unless YOU force me to do otherwise."

Yes, a born again believer is no longer a slave to sin, cannot sin because Jesus is in him, and will cease from sin, but NONE OF THIS is accomplished without our consent! God is not some cosmic rapist who forces Himself on anyone - He is a Gentleman Who asks us for permission before He empowers us to cease from sin, cease to be a slave to sin, and be endowed with power to live upright. It's not a "one and done" deal, it's a daily relationship where we are tempted daily and we are called to overcome by His grace daily. In this way, we cease from sin, cease to be a slave to sin, and are guaranteed not to sin.