Spiritual Shepherding

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Episkopos

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This I don't know.


This I know.


Why would you be lonely though? I don't find that. God is everything to me, I don't need something from others. I'm free to give.

Much love!

Depth is hard to convey. It's about scale. There are touches from God...then there is being led by the Spirit...then there is a full-blown walk in the Spirit where there is NO sin (In Him is NO sin). Until you get to the full walk in Christ you will sin at times at least.

You should read A.W. Tozer who talks about the loneliness of the saint. The saint walks with Christ but he is still in the world. The saint walks alone in this world. No one around him is like him at all. Jesus was a man of sorrows....no one understood Him...even His closest friends. So that loneliness leads us into prayer. But when we look around we are alone.
 

Episkopos

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Romans 8:9 KJV
But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.

Much love!
This brings people into confusion...the difference between Christ in you and you in Christ. So many will try to overturn the rest of the bible by misunderstanding a single verse. Even sinful believers have Christ in them. To BELONG to Christ one must enter INTO Him. How many believers will be rejected by the Lord on that day? If you are able to believe the words of Jesus...there are many. The lamp needs to be filled with oil. The lifeblood of a lamp is its oil. The lifeblood of Christ is only found by selling everything to purchase the full measure of grace...AFTER having received the initial grace at regeneration.

For those who disagree...that's fine. We will all appear before the Bema seat of Christ.
 

Episkopos

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The Saint Must Walk Alone (A.W. Tozer)
MOST OF THE WORLD'S GREAT SOULS have been lonely. Loneliness seems to be one price the saint must pay for his saintliness.

In the morning of the world (or should we say, in that strange darkness that came soon after the dawn of man's creation) that pious soul, Enoch, walked with God and was not, for God took him; and while it is not stated in so many words, a fair inference is that Enoch walked a path quite apart from his contemporaries.

Another lonely man was Noah who, of all the antediluvians, found grace in the sight of God; and every shred of evidence points to the aloneness of his life even while surrounded by his people.

Again, Abraham had Sarah and Lot, as well as many servants and herdmen, but who can read his story and the apostolic comment upon it without sensing instantly that he was a man "whose soul was alike a star and dwelt apart"? As far as we know not one word did God ever speak to him in the company of men. Face down he communed with his God, and the innate dignity of the man forbade that he assume this posture in the presence of others. How sweet and solemn was the scene that night of the sacrifice when he saw the lamps of fire moving between the pieces of offering. There alone with a horror of great darkness upon him he heard the voice of God and knew that he was a man marked for divine favor.

Moses also was a man apart. While yet attached to the court of Pharaoh he took long walks alone, and during one of these walks while far removed from the crowds he saw an Egyptian and a Hebrew fighting and came to the rescue of his countryman. After the resultant break with Egypt he dwelt in almost complete seclusion in the desert. There while he watched his sheep alone the wonder of the burning bush appeared to him, and later on the peak of Sinai he crouched alone to gaze in fascinated awe at the Presence, partly hidden, partly disclosed, within the cloud and fire.

The prophets of pre-Christian times differed widely from each other, but one mark they bore in common was their enforced loneliness. They loved their people and gloried in the religion of the fathers, but their loyalty to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and their zeal for the welfare of the nation of Israel drove them away from the crowd and into long periods of heaviness. "I am become a stranger unto my brethren, and an alien unto my mother's children," cried one and unwittingly spoke for all the rest.

Most revealing of all is the sight of that One of whom Moses and all the prophets did write treading His lonely way to the cross, His deep loneliness unrelieved by the presence of the multitudes.

'Tis midnight, and on Olive's brow

The star is dimmed that lately shone;

'Tis midnight; in the garden now,

The suffering Saviour prays alone.

'Tis midnight, and from all removed

The Saviour wrestles lone with fears,

E'en the disciple whom He loved

Heeds not his Master's grief and tears.

-WILLIAM B. TAPPAN

He died alone in the darkness hidden from the sight of mortal man and no one saw Him when He arose triumphant and walked out of the tomb, though many saw Him afterward and bore witness to what they saw.

There are some things too sacred for any eye but God's to look upon. The curiosity, the clamor, the well-meant but blundering effort to help can only hinder the waiting soul and make unlikely if not impossible the communication of the secret message of God to the worshiping heart.

Sometimes we react by a kind of religious reflex and repeat dutifully the proper words and phrases even though they fail to express our real feelings and lack the authenticity of personal experience. Right now is such a time. A certain conventional loyalty may lead some who hear this unfamiliar truth expressed for the first time to say brightly, "Oh, I am never lonely. Christ said, `I will never leave you nor forsake you,' and, `Lo, I am with you alway.' How can I be lonely when Jesus is with me?"

Now I do not want to reflect on the sincerity of any Christian soul, but this stock testimony is too neat to be real. It is obviously what the speaker thinks should be true rather than what he has proved to be true by the test of experience. This cheerful denial of loneliness proves only that the speaker has never walked with God without the support and encouragement afforded him by society. The sense of companionship which he mistakenly attributes to the presence of Christ may and probably does arise from the presence of friendly people. Always remember: you cannot carry a cross in company. Though a man were surrounded by a vast crowd, his cross is his alone and his carrying of it marks him as a man apart. Society has turned against him; otherwise he would have no cross. No one is a friend to the man with a cross. "They all forsook him, and fled."

The pain of loneliness arises from the constitution of our nature. God made us for each other. The desire for human companionship is completely natural and right. The loneliness of the Christian results from his walk with God in an ungodly world, a walk that must often take him away from the fellowship of good Christians as well as from that of the unregenerate world. His Godgiven instincts cry out for companionship with others of his kind, others who can understand his longings, his aspirations, his absorption in the love of Christ; and because within his circle of friends there are so few who share his inner experiences he is forced to walk alone. The unsatisfied longings of the prophets for human understanding caused them to cry out in their complaint, and even our Lord Himself suffered in the same way.

The man who has passed on into the divine Presence in actual inner experience will not find many who understand him. A certain amount of social fellowship will of course be his as he mingles with religious persons in the regular activities of the church, but true spiritual fellowship will be hard to find. But he should not expect things to be otherwise. After all, he is a stranger and a pilgrim, and the journey he takes is not on his feet but in his heart. He walks with God in the garden of his own souland who but God can walk there with him? He is of another spirit from the multitudes that tread the courts of the Lord's house. He has seen that of which they have only heard, and he walks among them somewhat as Zacharias walked after his return from the altar when the people whispered, "He has seen a vision."

The truly spiritual man is indeed something of an oddity. He lives not for himself but to promote the interests of Another. He seeks to persuade people to give all to his Lord and asks no portion or share for himself. He delights not to be honored but to see his Saviour glorified in the eyes of men. His joy is to see his Lord promoted and himself neglected. He finds few who care to talk about that which is the supreme object of his interest, so he is often silent and preoccupied in the midst of noisy religious shoptalk. For this he earns the reputation of being dull and overserious, so he is avoided and the gulf between him and society widens. He searches for friends upon whose garments he can detect the smell of myrrh and aloes and cassia out of the ivory palaces, and finding few or none he, like Mary of old, keeps these things in his heart.

It is this very loneliness that throws him back upon God. "When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up." His inability to find human companionship drives him to seek in God what he can find nowhere else. He learns in inner solitude what he could not have learned in the crowd that Christ is All in All, that He is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption, that in Him we have and possess life's summum bonum.

Two things remain to be said. One, that the lonely man of whom we speak is not a haughty man, nor is he the holier-than-thou, austere saint so bitterly satirized in popular literature. He is likely to feel that he is the least of all men and is sure to blame himself for his very loneliness. He wants to share his feelings with others and to open his heart to some like-minded soul who will understand him, but the spiritual climate around him does not encourage it, so he remains silent and tells his griefs to God alone.

The second thing is that the lonely saint is not the withdrawn man who hardens himself against human suffering and spends his days contemplating the heavens. Just the opposite is true. His loneliness makes him sympathetic to the approach of the broken-hearted and the fallen and the sin-bruised. Because he is detached from the world he is all the more able to help it. Meister Eckhart taught his followers that if they should find themselves in prayer as it were caught up to the third heavens and happen to remember that a poor widow needed food, they should break off the prayer instantly and go care for the widow. "God will not suffer you to lose anything by it," he told them. "You can take up again in prayer where you left off and the Lord will make it up to you." This is typical of the great mystics and masters of the interior life from Paul to the present day.

The weakness of so many modern Christians is that they feel too much at home in the world. In their effort to achieve restful "adjustment" to unregenerate society they have lost their pilgrim character and become an essential part of the very moral order against which they are sent to protest. The world recognizes them and accepts them for what they are. And this is the saddest thing that can be said about them. They are not lonely, but neither are they saints.
 
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marks

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You should read A.W. Tozer who talks about the loneliness of the saint. The saint walks with Christ but he is still in the world. The saint walks alone in this world. No one around him is like him at all. Jesus was a man of sorrows....no one understood Him...even His closest friends. So that loneliness leads us into prayer. But when we look around we are alone.
Yes, Jesus was a man of sorrows, and that I also know.

But Jesus said, even though you all leave me I'm not alone, the Father is with me. We can have intimacy with God found in the righteousness of Christ that will fulfill all of our needs, that we need not be alone. We need to trust Him.

As you've said, we all live in different measures of all the different aspects that make up our lives, and how to compare one to the other? But we can each encourage the other in the faith, and to press into that upward call.

Much love!
 
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marks

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This brings people into confusion...the difference between Christ in you and you in Christ. So many will try to overturn the rest of the bible by misunderstanding a single verse. Even sinful believers have Christ in them. To BELONG to Christ one must enter INTO Him. How many believers will be rejected by the Lord on that day? If you are able to believe the words of Jesus...there are many. The lamp needs to be filled with oil. The lifeblood of a lamp is its oil. The lifeblood of Christ is only found by selling everything to purchase the full measure of grace...AFTER having received the initial grace at regeneration.

For those who disagree...that's fine. We will all appear before the Bema seat of Christ.
It's a simple verse, but it gives us the order for how to think of these things.

No Scriptures will contradict the simplicity of this passage, and any perceived contradictions simply show a lack of understanding. When we find the harmony between the passages that use to seem contradictory, I think this shows our improved understanding.

Christ in you is the hope of glory.

Much love!
 

marks

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Another lonely man was Noah
We can only each make our guesses over how these people felt emotionally over the courses of their lives. Personally I don't know why those who walk with God would not find their emotional needs being met by Him.

That is what He does for me, I think it's what He will do for all if we trust Him.

Much love!
 
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marks

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It is this very loneliness that throws him back upon God. "When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up." His inability to find human companionship drives him to seek in God what he can find nowhere else.
Shouldn't we expect communion with our Creator to be fully transcendent over what passes for communion with our fellow man? So that the yearnings of fellowship with other men are surpassingly fulfilled by communion with God?

Much love!
 

Episkopos

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Yes, Jesus was a man of sorrows, and that I also know.

But Jesus said, even though you all leave me I'm not alone, the Father is with me. We can have intimacy with God found in the righteousness of Christ that will fulfill all of our needs, that we need not be alone. We need to trust Him.

As you've said, we all live in different measures of all the different aspects that make up our lives, and how to compare one to the other? But we can each encourage the other in the faith, and to press into that upward call.

Much love!


This is where humility and the fear of God come to play. Believers nowadays are taught to become arrogant and make outlandish claims that go directly against humility and the fear of the Lord. How many times have I heard such things as...Tell the person sitting next to you...you ARE seated with Christ!!!! Or else I HAVE the righteousness of God!!!! Is that true...or just said for theatrical effect? If you dare point out the fantasies being preached...then you are seen as "divisive."

Assumptions and presumptions abound so that there is no truth or reality in what people are saying. I love to encourage the brethren. But let the brother know himself and the standard he speaks of. Speak with the appropriate grasp of reality and invite the reproof and correction of God.

this generation can only tolerate positive sounding compliments...very far from the love of God that invites harsh rebukes and corrections. No wonder the church has gone so far astray. So I don't trust what sounds easy and only positive. Does God cater to the part of us he wants to crucify? only when you go to a modern church do you get such ideas.
 

Episkopos

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Shouldn't we expect communion with our Creator to be fully transcendent over what passes for communion with our fellow man? So that the yearnings of fellowship with other men are surpassingly fulfilled by communion with God?

Much love!


Only in theory. You would challenge Tozer so that you would appear to be better informed than him. I'm sure I could find many who testify of the deeper walk that you would disagree with. So do you always think you know more than these?
 

marks

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So I don't trust what sounds easy and only positive.
That is good.

Romans 7:4-6 KJV
4) Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God.
5) For when we were in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death.
6) But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter.

Much love!
 

marks

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Only in theory. You would challenge Tozer so that you would appear to be better informed than him. I'm sure I could find many who testify of the deeper walk that you would disagree with. So do you always think you know more than these?
I'm sorry, what? Do you disagree with what I said? Or is it that you disbelieve my personal experience? I'm talking about this loneliness you feel, I don't feel that. Maybe you'll ascribe my lack of a negative emotion as indicating a lack of spiritual communion, but that really seems backwards to me as I write it, and the thing is, I never really feel alone, or lonely, and it's not because of all my scintilating social connections. ;)

Appeals to authority aside. Jesus said that others would leave him, but he would not be alone. Would you challenge Jesus? ;)

The more consistently I walk in the Spirit, the more consistently I'm fulfilled by God's presence. Isn't that how the Bible shows us?

Galatians 5:22-26 KJV
22) But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,
23) Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.
24) And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.
25) If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.
26) Let us not be desirous of vain glory, provoking one another, envying one another.

Much love!
 

marks

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So do you always think you know more than these?
Complex question, that is, logical fallacy. The questions is false on it's face, so posting it makes one wonder . . .

Do you always think you know more than others, or only part of the time? This sort of question doesn't really add to the discussion I don't think.

Much love!
 

marks

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What John is describing in the above verse is an invitation to fellowship with people who are already in fellowship with God. The early church was a place that formed disciples. There was an apprenticeship tradition established in the younger believers towards the deeper fellowship of a direct connection with God. The leadership of the church walked with God and nurtured that walk in the lives of others. At least, it did so in earlier times. But a man can’t lead another into a relationship that he doesn’t have himself.

To me, the most effective and attractive spiritual shepherd is the one who shows in their countenance and their actions the love and grace of God towards all, and unless the one who would be an overseer has that loving and joyous and faithful life, I agree with you fully here, how can someone pass that along?

That's one of the problems with Christian internet forums is that they allow people to "self promote" to "teacher" whom have not been called as "teacher", but anyone who can register has their pulpit.

And in all the debates and disagreements, even in a medium where we can edit and revise our comments endlessly before posting them, even still the malice and backbiting and misrepresentation come pouring through. And the person who can't seem to help themselves from the bad behavior, is this the example we should be following?

Much love!
 
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stunnedbygrace

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Do you see being dead in Christ to be reversible? That your flesh could revive?

I honestly don’t know…after I went some time in this odd where did I go state, I experienced anger suddenly one morning. It was not a righteous anger. It was a biting back in my mind at someone attacking me, so it was a rising up of my flesh/ego. It was very brief and my immediate thought was, oh no, what I had feared has happened and I’ve come back. But I didn’t come back, so I’m not sure what that brief reverting was. I’ve thought maybe it was…a warning to me to not ever, ever think I had somehow brought this grace upon myself? I don’t know.

Then, since that brief reverting, I’ve once experienced an anger that was very different than any anger I’d ever experienced. It WAS anger at what I saw someone doing to someone else that was quite wrong and self serving but…it was without my previous…self involved in it. It was an anger but…mixed with pity? Compassion? They could no more help what they were doing than I previously could.

I think maybe…I’m not aware of any flesh remaining alive (except for that one brief reverting). I do appear to be dead to me and there’s nothing left there for people or satan or the world to control me by or stir me up by. But…there’s maybe some deep things I can’t see in me but that God sees? I only know that I wish to remain in this emptiness as long as God wishes for me to remain in it. Trusting Him has only ever brought me good so I will keep trusting Him.
 

DuckieLady

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To me, the most effective and attractive spiritual shepherd is the one who shows in their countenance and their actions the love and grace of God towards all, and unless the one who would be an overseer has that loving and joyous and faithful life, I agree with you fully here, how can someone pass that along?

That's one of the problems with Christian internet forums is that they allow people to "self promote" to "teacher" whom have not been called as "teacher", but anyone who can register has their pulpit.

And in all the debates and disagreements, even in a medium where we can edit and revise our comments endlessly before posting them, even still the malice and backbiting and misrepresentation come pouring through. And the person who can't seem to help themselves from the bad behavior, is this the example we should be following?

Much love!
I would really like to see the old way to return.

I'm really not sure that there is much in the way of sound theology or instruction for Christian home life anymore.

Who is interested in providing instruction for living out a holy life?

Because having a concept of something is one thing, but applying it to daily life and making it a practice is another.

For example, as a parent, I am experiencing difficulty with application of James 1:26 on an extreme level at this very moment.

Mothers cannot replace fathers.


That's not my point though- my point is few teachers consider practical application, few teachers consider daily life.
 
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stunnedbygrace

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Have you lost something essential in yourself?

You know I care about you.

I have only lost what tortured, harassed and made me miserable. I would have lived and then died in that miserable and tortured state if He hadn’t shown me mercy and given me the grace to die now. It’s torture to want true righteousness in your heart and mind and to see there is an enemy in you that prevents it.
 
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stunnedbygrace

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The Saint Must Walk Alone (A.W. Tozer)
.

At one point I had so many books (hundreds, no joke) I couldn’t even believe it. When I got rid of most of them, Tozer was one of the few men I could not part with. I never pick him up where I don’t learn something new or get some encouragement. I have more dead helpers than live ones. Sad, but true.
You’ve made me want to spend some time with Tozer again. :)
 
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Lambano

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I have only lost what tortured, harassed and made me miserable. I would have lived and then died in that miserable and tortured state if He hadn’t shown me mercy and given me the grace to die now. It’s torture to want true righteousness in your heart and mind and to see there is an enemy in you that prevents it.
It’s been…almost ten months. I sit here empty of them. I can’t even muster my own will for anything if it isn’t completely necessary to do.
But in gaining peace, you left a void. You lost some part of yourself, something important, something you need. I hear the echo in the emptiness.

If I know you, though, I’m sure you’d make the trade again in a heartbeat.

Or maybe I’m in over my head, and this is what the Walk is supposed to be. Is it?
 
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