Christ in you, the Hope of Glory

"Striving"

2011-08-14T12:29:00.001-07:00

Chaps, I always tend to get bent out of shape when I see the highlighted words attached of "striving" its like "trying" and that other word "must" & "should" all seeming words of flesh effort forgeting He causes us to walk in His ways (ezek 36:27), our actions would be effortless, not striven.
Your thoughts and insight always appreciated
Tony

Update to Striving: The photo above is from a daily devotional from Angus Buchan, the South African Farmer who was portrayed in the movie Faith Like Potatoes. While God moved me to tears and action through the movie, like Buchan, and everyone who is invaded by the Holy Spiirt, I have this angst to tell people the good news, this thought leads us to think we must tell everyone, and this leads us to examine the churches vehicle called "evangelism". I rushed out to buy more books that God used to open my eyes to the truth and gave them away thinking God will open everyones eyes. But guess what -no one responded like I did. No one seemed (those appearances again) to have been awoken at all. The wind blows where it wishes. The Father chooses those He calls His own. I don't like how this sounds, but its clear to me God chooses, He does the work, we can do nothing of ourselves. But, soon as I read "striving" I put the book down as its most likely you can hear the call to human effort in his book. This "evangelism", and "I must" and "I should", and "I must strive" to "read the word more", "pray harder", whatever, this fall back into flesh effort. This is very subtle. Im not bashing Buchan, I am just saying, Christ in me, chooses to turn away from this sign of flesh driven self-effort. As Dan Stone suggested in The Rest of the Gospel "some folks like oranges, some like apples". His life works all things together for good, in and through me. He causes me to walk in his ways. The Father and I are one. We do nothing of ourselves, only what we see the Father doing or directing us towards. Amen.

"No one comes to me unless the Father draws him"

Notes From Norman - Striving

2010-06-06T13:59:00.001-07:00

I feel a sense of striving coming into you, striving to ward off something, or to keep up to something. Striving is self, and therefore sin. Abide simply and happily in Jesus, just doing what He tells you, no more, no less. Forget the devil, there is Someone more interesting to be occupied with.

Daily Thought - His Keeping Power

2010-06-06T13:55:00.003-07:00

His Keeping Power
Watchman Nee
Jude 1:24 But to Him who is able to guard you from stumbling and to set you before His glory without blemish in exultation.
Joshua 14:10-11And now, look, Jehovah has kept me alive, as He said, for these forty-five years, since the time Jehovah spoke this word to Moses while Israel walked through the wilderness, and now, look, today I am eighty-five years old. Today I am still as strong as I was on the day Moses sent me out; as my strength was then, so my strength is now, for battle and for going out and coming in.
If your life is truly in His hands, then the promise of Jude 24 will be fulfilled in you. To stumble is to slip and strike against something when we are unconscious of any obstruction in the way. Praise God, He will preserve us not only from falling but also from the slightest slippage. Thank and praise the Lord, His preserving grace operates beyond the realm of our consciousness. Brothers and sisters, if we commit ourselves unreservedly into His care, we will marvel at the way we are kept. When temptation suddenly assails and love is required, we will find love spontaneously welling up from within. When a sudden temptation demands patience, without giving it a moment's thought, our patience will rise up to meet the need. Praise God, as the life we received from Adam spontaneously expresses itself, so also does the life we receive from Christ. We inherited our bad temper from Adam, and we can become angry without the slightest effort of will. We inherited pride from Adam, and we can become proud without any deliberate decision.
In the same way, those who have received the life of Christ and committed themselves into His keeping can be meek without making up their minds to be meek, and humble without any effort to be humble. The same spontaneity of manifestation that characterizes the life we have received from Adam also characterizes the life we have received from Christ. To work out what the Lord Jesus has given us does not require any effort on our part. If we trust in His promises and commit ourselves utterly to Him, we will be kept from this day to the day of His return, and we will be kept without blemish. Thank God, we have a salvation which is worthy of our trust and which will withstand every trial.
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Seeing the Land

2010-06-06T13:55:00.001-07:00

Seeing the Land
By Fred Pruitt
Deuteronomy 34:
(1) And Moses went up from the plains of Moab unto the mountain of Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, that is over against Jericho. And the LORD showed him all the land ...
(4) And the LORD said unto him, This is the land which I sware unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, saying, I will give it unto thy seed: I have caused thee to see it with thine eyes ...
This is about the death of Moses. As the children of Israel, after forty years of wandering in the desert, have finally come to the edge of the Promised Land and are about to enter, God calls Moses to the top of Mount Nebo to die, and to not enter the land with the people he'd led for all those years.
But before Moses passes out of this world, God gives him a vision of the land.
I've read this story for at least forty years. My mother bought me a children's Bible Story book when I was 9 or 10, and I read it over and over. I've always loved these stories.
But for a very long time I saw Moses as a sad character in the end. It seemed to me a small consolation that God let him see the land that he was never going to enter. That might be construed a punishment. Some see it that way, I'm sure.
But any way you cut it, it can be a sad sight to think of, Moses by himself about to die, able to remember everything that had happened as they lived day by day for 40 years in the wilderness, and they are going into the land but he is not. He just gets this beautiful view from afar.
I could see it from the standpoint that Moses in the scheme of things represents the law and the law cannot take us into the Promised Land.
That is a life-altering truth in itself, but it wasn't until recently that I saw it for Moses himself. Moses my human brother, aside from any typeology, remained sad to me. So somehow it becomes important that not only do I see Jesus Christ has come in the flesh, but that I also see Moses in the same way -- come in the flesh. What I mean by that is that I know Moses as a real living human man. Not a type or an historical figure. Just as a real living human man, perhaps me or you or someone right next to us. So if that real living person, the real Moses, is left sad in my heart, then that doesn't seem satisfactory.
The reason I got into all this in the first place is that I came home from a trip and got in late. I turned on the TV and there was a movie about Moses playing. It wasn't especially good and it wasn't especially bad, but for me more than anything it served to put a more human face on Moses. It struck me that if Moses was a real figure as I have believed and so do millions of others, then he would have been a man just like me or any other, and that he and Aaron and Miriam, and all the other characters in Moses' story, were also men and women as we all are.
Maybe minus the miracles, anyway.
The end of the movie corresponded with the Mount Nebo story I related above, and it shows Moses getting a view of the landscape from the top of Mount Nebo, getting what appeared to be a vision like one might hope to get on a clear day from Rock City, Tennesee, where one is reputed to be able to see 7 states. I've been there, and all 7 states are pretty hard to spot -- you have to sort of take it by faith that's what you're seeing.
I realized that that is how I have seen that final moment of Moses, as sort of a 25-cent telescopic view of the whole of the land of Palestine, a land he'd never see or enter, but getting this glimpse at the moment of his demise, of all he was going to miss out on. How pretty it was, how green, how luscious, how arable, how prosperous. He had come to the very brink of all its fulifillment, but he'd never actually be there and see it for himself.
I just hated that for Moses. Even if I saw the typology. Typology doesn't pay the rent (of life.)
But then I got the real story and my sadness for Moses left.
It was a not-too-good but not-too-bad television Moses movie that opened my eyes. They did such a good job showing the Promised Land in the distance in Moses' last moments. It was so good I realized that was what God had done with Moses.
God showed Moses the real Promised Land on the top of Mount Nebo. It may have started out with the physical views of the various territories occupied by Dan, Asher, Naphtali, and so on. But suddenly I saw it. Why would God give him a view of a temporal land? Moses had long before found the Eternal God -- I AM. Moses, surely more than any of the people, knew the true land to which they were being taken.
The well-watered gardens, luscious valleys and inviting paths spoke to Moses not of a land still in strife, with enemies to repel and fortresses to take. He could only have seen the Real Land, God Himself, the filler and upholder of all, unfolding and speaking all, providing all, loving all. He Himself as our Land of Promise.
And this is where we also join with Moses. These characters did not live their lives for themselves, but for us who would come later and know God in their lives, so that we would know God in our lives. So this Moses is also us, and it is true, that sadly, because of the law, we can never enter the land in the flesh of this world. We can only sit as if from afar and can never get a full view of the temporal land. It is always strife and temporary, and in it we can never find any lasting country of fulfillment.
But suddenly our sights are raised, and behind the misty view of the temporal land we see the Real Land appearing, and the clarity of the Real outshines the obscurity of the temporal.
The view of the temporal by itself can only be incomplete. It is only an appearance of truth, and we are only able to see its meaning and its meaning out of the solid substance of faith, as we have been given it and received it by the Holy Spirit -- faith as substance and faith as evidence.
And by grace this is our walk in the Spirit. That we see in the temporal, the Eternal, and find our truth in the Eternal, and not in the temporal. This is not as a mental exercise of the intellect, but a simple receiving through faith the word of God Who is our very life -- Christ our life.
Awake thou that sleepest --

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Notes From Norman - Faith Is Victory

2010-06-06T13:54:00.001-07:00

Faith Is Victory
Norman P. Grubb

''I still say that faith is the victory. We cannot help having heavy hearts, but when we give way to grief, we are really giving way to unbelief. If we dare to believe the God of the impossible, then we honor Him by rejoicing when things are darkest. Now is the moment to rejoice in a reigning Christ...''
Knight of Faith, Vol.I
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Daily Thought - The Measure of a Man

2010-06-06T13:53:00.001-07:00

The Measure of a Man
John Collings
True manhood is not a test of what we have or can accomplish. It is not a matter of wealth or accumulated possessions, or how well we can make it on our own. It is not how much we have learned, or how much we know. It is not how strong or how disciplined we have become.
True manhood is obtained by the ways in which we contribute to those around us, our families, our co-workers, our employees, our fellowship. How we give to those who cannot give back is a greater measure of our manhood than how we perform for those who will reward us.
Your maturity will become evident when you do not need to be first, when you do not require of others. When you need people, not for what you will receive from them, but for the way you are able to give to them from the gifts you possess, then, you have obtained True Manhood.
I began writing this for my son, then realized that it was for me, then understood that it was for my father. I have been understanding, and even teaching about fellowship, and about grace, and still revelation comes from many directions.
Fellowship: That all that is really important in our lives is about giving, and our interaction with those around us. I the purest sense, knowing the Father, and what gives him joy or sorrow. It is understanding his motives and purposes, and it is being his vessel, acting as his agent in this world.
Grace: That regardless of how the Father is known and understood, regardless of how he is treated or received, he manifests his Love to all his children by orchestrating their lives to the purpose of knowing him (having fellowship with him).
My first thought is that all that my son is, he is by the seeds that I have planted in him. He is by what I have given him. My son stands on my shoulders. He is who he is by the grace of his father.
And so are we all.

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Daily Thought - What Are We to Make of Jesus Christ?

2010-06-06T13:52:00.005-07:00

What Are We to Make of Jesus Christ?
C. S. Lewis
'What are we to make of Jesus Christ?' This is a question which has, in a sense, a frantically comic side. For the real question is not what are we to make of Christ, but what is He to make of us? The picture of a fly sitting deciding what it is going to make of an elephant has comic elements about it. But perhaps the questioner meant what are we to make of Him in the sense of 'How are we to solve the historical problem set us by the recorded sayings and acts of this Man?' This problem is to reconcile two things. On the one hand you have got the almost generally admitted depth and sanity of His moral teaching, which is not very seriously questioned, even by those who are opposed to Christianity. In fact, I find when I am arguing with very anti-God people that they rather make a point of saying, 'I am entirely in favour of the moral teaching of this Man and of His immediate followers, moral truth is exhibited at its purest and best. It is not sloppy idealism, it is full of wisdom and shrewdness. The whole thing is realistic, fresh to the highest degree, the product of a sane mind. That is one phenomenon.
The other phenomenon is the quite appalling nature of this Man's theological remarks. You all know what I mean, and I want rather to stress the point that the appalling claim which this Man seems to be making is not merely made at one moment of His career. there is, of course, the one moment which led to His execution. the moment at which the High Priest said to Him, 'Who are you?' I am the Anointed, the Son of the uncreated God, and you shall see Me appearing at the end of all history as the judge of the universe.' But that claim, in fact, does not rest on this one dramatic moment. When you look in to His conversation you will find this sort of claim running throughout the whole thing. For instance, He went about saying to people, 'I forgive your sins;. Now it is quite natural for a man to forgive something you do to him. Thus if somebody cheats me out of five pounds it is quite possible and reasonable for me to say, ;Well, I forgive him, we will say no more about it.' What on earth would you say if somebody had done you out of five pounds and I said, 'That is all right, I forgive him'? On one occasion this Man is sitting looking down on Jerusalem from the hill above it and suddenly in comes an extraordinary remark - 'I keep on sending you prophets and wise men.' Nobody comments on it. And yet, quite suddenly, almost incidentally, He is claiming to be the power that all through the centuries is sending wise men and leaders into the world. Here is another curious remark: in almost every religion there are unpleasant observances like fasting. This Man suddenly remarks one day, 'No one need fast while I am here.' Who is this Man who remarks that His mere presence suspends all normal rules? Who is the person who can suddenly tell the School they can have a half-holiday? Sometimes the statements put forward the assumption that He, the Speaker, is completely without sin or fault. This is always the attitude. 'You, to whom I am talking, are all sinners,' and He never remotely suggests that this same reproach can be brought against Him. He says again, 'I am the begotten of the One God, before Abraham was, I am,' and remember what the words 'I am' were in Hebrew. They were the name of God, which must not be spoken by any human being, the name which it was death to utter.
Well, that is the other side. On the one side clear, definite moral teaching. On the other, claims which, if not true, are those of a megalomaniac, compared with whom Hitler was the most same and humble of men. There is no half-way house and there is no parallel in other religions. If you had gone to Buddha and asked him: ;Are you the son of Bramah?' he would have said, 'My son, you are still in the bale of illusion.' If you had gone to Socrates and asked, 'Are you Zeus?' he would have laughed at you. If you had gone to Mohammed and asked, 'Are you Allah?' he would first have rent his clothes and then cut your head off. If you had asked Confucius, 'Are you heaven?', I think he would have probably replied, 'Remarks which are not in accordance with nature are in bad taste.' The idea of a great moral teacher saying what Christ said is out of the question. In my opinion, the only person who can say that sort of thing is either God or a complete lunatic suffering from that form of delusion which undermines the whole mind of man. If you think you are a poached egg, when you are not looking for a piece of toast to suit you may be sane, but if you think you are God, there is no chance for you. We may note in passing that He was never regarded as a mere moral teacher. he did not produce that effect on any of the people who actually met him. He produced mainly three effects - Hatred - Terror - Adoration. There was no trace of people expressing mild approval.
Taken from: ''God in the Dock'' by C.S.Lewis
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Notes From Norman - His Life in Us

2010-06-06T13:52:00.003-07:00

His Life in Us
Norman P. Grubb

His ways are not our ways. My life seems so much easier than yours, with time to spend in the things of God, and even one's work centering around Him. But all are God's ways. When once we have seen that it is nothing less than Christ Himself living His life in us, then that makes Him a very ordinary person, marking papers and preparing lessons, as you say. It is He Himself doing this; and as you recognize it in this fact, then you relax in Him, even though your mind has to be centered on these mundane things. Don't let resentment or rebellion against the way He has chosen to live His life in you mar the central rest which proceeds from the not I, but Christ relationship. That is living; and to "live in the truest sense" is only Christ living in His most mundane way through us, as He pleases. Christ is really seen in deeds of faithfulness, such as your teaching life, not in the many words and nice thoughts which make up so much of ours! So let Him live on in you!
From Knight of Faith, Vol.I
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Daily Thought - What Our Prisons Are For

2010-06-06T13:52:00.001-07:00

What Our Prisons Are For
Fred Pruitt
A while ago it came on me so strongly that I needed to thank God specifically for things that were more easily issues of complaint or self-pity or even perhaps somewhat ''begrudged'' faith. So I did, thanking the Lord for all the things I felt like I was hating and all the things I wished were different in my life. I thanked the Lord that things were specifically the way they were, including me and all the folks in my world. It cleared up some cobwebs.
One of the main things on my mind has been Joseph in the prison (if there was ever a place for lamentations and weeping and self-pity), and yet walking in the Spirit in the prison. Not knowing when his redemption would come, probably sensing it would come some day, probably getting his hopes up when the Pharaoh's butler went back to Pharaoh, only to find the hand of man seemingly let him down again -- how destroyed he must have been when he realized the butler had forgotten all about him -- yet still remaining God's man in the prison, for another two years.
His imaginations of various scenarios of human rescue had perhaps by that time subsided and he became content in God in prison. And that's when the dreams came to Pharaoh and the butler remembered Joseph from prison. Joseph was lifted out of prison by the Unseen Hand of God at the proper time, to become in the end a type of Christ the Son as the Father's agent throughout the whole land, and the redeemer of His people Israel who come to him out of the famine in Canaan.
And then we realize that this Joseph is us, and we he. Isn't it too much? In our past we were the hungry sojourners who came in from the desert out of a great famine, but the story of Joseph is how we are not just to be the rescued or the delivered, but in Joseph (Christ in us) we ourselves now become the Rescuer, the Deliverer. The sustainer, who has sustained us, now sustains others by us. This is our heritage and our commission, and what our prisons and sufferings are all for.
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Daily Thought - Soldiering For The Lord

2010-06-06T13:51:00.001-07:00

Soldiering For The Lord
Unknown
I am a soldier in the army of my God. The Lord Jesus Christ is my commanding officer. The Holy Bible is my code of conduct. Faith, prayer, and the Word are my weapons of warfare. I have been taught by the Holy Spirit, trained by experience, tried by adversity and tested by fire. I am a volunteer in this army, and I am enlisted for eternity.
I will either retire in this army at the rapture or die in this army; but I will not get out, sell out, be talked out, or pushed out. I am faithful, reliable, capable and dependable. If my God needs me, I am there. If He needs me in the Sunday school, to teach the children, work with the youth, help adults or just sit and learn.
He can use me because I am there! I am a soldier. I am not a baby. I do not need to be pampered, petted, primed up, pumped up, picked up or pepped up. I am a soldier. No one has to call me, remind me, write me, visit me, entice me, or lure me. I am a soldier. I am not a wimp. I am in place, saluting my King, obeying His orders, praising His name, and building His kingdom!
No one has to send me flowers, gifts, food, cards, candy or give me handouts. I do not need to be cuddled, cradled, cared for, or catered to. I am committed. I cannot have my feelings hurt bad enough to turn me around. I cannot be discouraged enough to turn me aside. I cannot lose enough to cause me to quit.
When Jesus called me into this army, I had nothing. If I end up with nothing, I will still come out ahead. I will win. My God has and will continue to supply all of my needs. I am more than a conqueror. I will always triumph. I can do all things through Christ. Devils cannot defeat me. People cannot disillusion me. Weather cannot weary me.
Sickness cannot stop me. Battles cannot beat me. Money cannot buy me. Governments cannot silence me and hell cannot handle me. I am a soldier. Even death cannot destroy me. For when my commander calls me from this battlefield, He will promote me to Captain and then allow me to rule with Him.
I am a soldier in the army, and I'm marching claiming victory. I will not give up. I will not turn around. I am a soldier, marching heaven bound. Here I stand!

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Notes From Norman - Life in Christ

2010-06-06T13:46:00.003-07:00

Life in Christ
Norman P. Grubb

It's grand to be alive in such days as these, although we are bound to share the suffering, sharing God's burden until "that day". More and more, as I go on in this wonderful life in Christ, I revel in the permanent ease and freshness of the abiding experience. I find it just like air. There is no effort to the lungs to live in the air unless they are diseased, and so the life in Christ becomes one's native element.
Knight of Faith

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Notes From Norman - HE AS US

2010-06-06T13:46:00.001-07:00

HE AS US
Norman P. Grubb

I'm glad about your kidney troubles. GOOD! I think the Spirit has been teaching you just to accept your body condition, for it is only clothing and be thankful for every healing touch in it such as you have now experienced in this kidney deliverance. Meanwhile we go as HE AS US, spirit joined to Spirit, and just thankfully use our soul-bodies as outer means of expression. You are right, love, to be ready for whatever the Lord had for you through the possible surgery etc, and as you freely accepted, He did His quickening. So we live, not bodily minded nor body-fussers, but Spirit expressors!
From Knight of Faith, Vol.I
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Notes From Norman - Adventure of Faith

2010-04-25T18:42:00.003-07:00

Adventure of Faith
Norman P. Grubb

TRIALS AND ADVENTURES; TEMPTATIONS & OPPORTUNITIES
There arises that constant question of our formerly sin-conscious selves. What about sin and temptation? This is where the revelation of no human nature but only the two Deity natures (we having been formerly Satan-I but now Christ-I) answers our ques¬tions.
The key is that temptation becomes asset instead of liability, just as James leads off his most practical of letters by saying, "My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into divers temptations (trials is the same word)" How can that be? Be¬cause we are now loosed from that former suspicion that temptation is sin, and that therefore my response to it are sin. Both are false. The temptation question is plainly settled by the invaluable letter to the Hebrews where we see Jesus in His full human nature, particularly in chapters two through four with the one outstanding word in Hebrews 4:15, "Jesus . . . the Son of God . . tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin". Perfect Jesus, perfectly tempted - Sinless.
Thus temptation is a necessary part of human living. The reason is obvious; we live in a world which is shot through with every form of self-sin solicitation, as we have said, so that in our mortal bodies we remain in contact with our fellow humans as light in a dark world, for we meet the same flesh-world assaults as all do, but we know how to turn them into assets and can show the way to others.
The vital difference is found in our new-mind consciousness. We used to mistake temptation for sin and were also suspicious of apparent sinful tendencies in the flesh. We rapidly took condemnation with every "drawing" of temptation on us - James 1:14 but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed.
Actually, the "lusts" are just normal strong desires (the correct meaning of that 'epithumia' word in the Greek) by which the Universe, on all levels, surges forward all the way from Einstein's equation which proves that all mass is really energy (E=mc²), right up to the love-drives of personhood in God and man.
So temptation is merely by whatever form our human desires of mind and body are excited to respond (by the drawings of the deity spirit) through our flesh (depending on which spirit). The philosopher Spencer rightly said, "Life is response to environment". We say, "which environment?"
Simple as This
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Notes From Norman - Adventure of Faith

2010-04-25T18:42:00.001-07:00

Adventure of Faith
Norman P. Grubb

TRIALS AND ADVENTURES; TEMPTATIONS & OPPORTUNITIES
There arises that constant question of our formerly sin-conscious selves. What about sin and temptation? This is where the revelation of no human nature but only the two Deity natures (we having been formerly Satan-I but now Christ-I) answers our ques¬tions.
The key is that temptation becomes asset instead of liability, just as James leads off his most practical of letters by saying, "My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into divers temptations (trials is the same word)" How can that be? Be¬cause we are now loosed from that former suspicion that temptation is sin, and that therefore my response to it are sin. Both are false. The temptation question is plainly settled by the invaluable letter to the Hebrews where we see Jesus in His full human nature, particularly in chapters two through four with the one outstanding word in Hebrews 4:15, "Jesus . . . the Son of God . . tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin". Perfect Jesus, perfectly tempted - Sinless.
Thus temptation is a necessary part of human living. The reason is obvious; we live in a world which is shot through with every form of self-sin solicitation, as we have said, so that in our mortal bodies we remain in contact with our fellow humans as light in a dark world, for we meet the same flesh-world assaults as all do, but we know how to turn them into assets and can show the way to others.
The vital difference is found in our new-mind consciousness. We used to mistake temptation for sin and were also suspicious of apparent sinful tendencies in the flesh. We rapidly took condemnation with every "drawing" of temptation on us - James 1:14 but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed.
Actually, the "lusts" are just normal strong desires (the correct meaning of that 'epithumia' word in the Greek) by which the Universe, on all levels, surges forward all the way from Einstein's equation which proves that all mass is really energy (E=mc²), right up to the love-drives of personhood in God and man.
So temptation is merely by whatever form our human desires of mind and body are excited to respond (by the drawings of the deity spirit) through our flesh (depending on which spirit). The philosopher Spencer rightly said, "Life is response to environment". We say, "which environment?"
Simple as This
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Daily Thought - Self-Consciousness and Christ Consiousness

2010-04-25T18:41:00.001-07:00

www.ChristAsUs.com
Self-Consciousness and Christ Consiousness
Norman P. Grubb
We are desperately conscious of the two opposing principles of good and evil through all life. They confront us in human nature, in the business, political and social world. They give rise to the constant tensions among nations, races, classes, right down to our own family circles; They are the theme of ethics and religion. They come closest home to us in our own personal lives, the conflict of flesh and spirit, the interweaving of prosperity and adversity, joy and sorrow, friendship and enmity, justice and injustice, health and disease, kindness and cruelty, through the whole garment of life. Now, though we are Christ's, we share in this divided world. We are part of it. We eat its food, partake in its activities, earn its money, taste of its sorrows and tragedies, and endure its temptations. Though one'd with Christ in spirit, we are still one with the world in body. Therefore, though new men in Christ, we still have a duality of consciousness: we have self-consciousness, world-consciousness, we are in the world (but not of it: John 17:13,16), in the flesh (but not of it: Gal.5:24), in self (but not of it: Gal.2:20). A great proportion of our waking hours must necessarily be spent in the affairs of this world, with Christ in the background rather than foreground of our consciousness. Sin only enters when we are consciously drawn into activities and attitudes which we know to be displeasing to Him. While we are in this divided world, we cannot have solely a Christ-consciousness. We must also have a self-consciousness: certainly it is the renewed self which knows how to maintain its abiding place: yet it is also a self-conscious self, responsive to al the stimuli of its environment, therefore as open to temptation fleshward as to Christ-control spiritward. It is still a case of "nevertheless I live", as well as, "yet not I, but Christ liveth in me".
The name God has given to humanity separated from Himself by the Fall - is "flesh" (Gen. 6:3). We are all flesh, Even the Savior, when He came to be among us, was "God manifested in the flesh". Not until the resurrection of the body, the final and complete state of unification with our ascended Head, can any member of the human race cease to be flesh. Flesh implies consciousness of separation from God, self-consciousness apart from Christ-consciousness. That does not necessarily mean something evil. Christ "in the days of His flesh" was conscious of his human self as apart from the Father with whom He was one (e.g.John 5:19). It is not flesh, which is evil, but the lusts of the flesh. And even they are not evil unless they are permitted to reign instead of serve. Self-consciousness, flesh-consciousness, is the normal and essential prerequisite, as members of this fallen human race, to a continuous life of faith, for it compels us constantly to "look away" from our helpless selves unto Jesus (Heb.12:2): and as we do so, flesh then becomes the servant and manifestor of Spirit. But the moment we fail to look away, then flesh becomes an evil thing, natural "desires of flesh and mind" have us in their grip, and become dominating, discordant lusts, and we their slaves.
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Daily Thought - Weaklings

2010-04-24T22:51:00.001-07:00

Weaklings
C. S. Lewis
You needn't worry about not feeling brave. Our Lord didn't -- see the scene in Gethsemane. How thankful I am that when God became man He did not choose to become a man of iron nerves; that would not have helped weaklings like you and me nearly so much.
''Letters of C.S. Lewis,'' July 17, 1953, Edited by W.H. Lewis (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1966), p.250
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Daily Thought - Moses

2010-04-24T22:50:00.007-07:00

Moses
Norman P. Grubb
Moses was a daring man. You all know the paragraph in Exodus 32, after the golden calf incident. But his words are so tremendous. Has the tremendousness of them ever struck you? He had this burden on him. He had the wrath of God and all that. He faced them with their sins and so on, and with repentance. And then, you remember, he went back up the mount after he had broken the tablets and brought judgment on the people-and brought repentance on them too.
Now he went back, and look what he said, verse 30, "Ye have sinned a great sin," he said to Israel, "Ye have sinned a great sin, and now I will go up unto the Lord. Peradventure I shall make an atonement for you." I like that. Think of that, a man saying that. "I will make an atonement for you." That's something there, you know. That's the Spirit of God. That's the Spirit of God in a person. Now, there's a sense in which we have to come and be substitutes for the people to whom we go. There is the same sense there. But now look what he said. My! Moses returned unto the Lord in verses 31-32 and said, "Oh, this people have sinned a great sin, and made them gods of gold. Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin,"-then evidently he saw doubt. Evidently something made him feel God wasn't prepared yet. And he shouts this out: he said, "If not, blot me I pray Thee out of Thy book which Thou hast written." In other words, "If you don't save them, damn me with them." What a statement! The man stakes not his body, but his soul on the souls of others. He says, "I won't go to heaven unless you take those with me." My, that's a statement! He said, "Damn my soul if you don't save them!" That's prayer. Others have said, "I'll give my body," but he said, "I'll give my immortal soul." Tremendous!
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Daily Thought - Love

2010-04-24T22:50:00.005-07:00

Love
Thomas Traherne
Love is so divine and perfect a thing, that it is worthy to be the very end and being of the Deity. It is His goodness, and it is His glory. We therefore so vastly delight in Love, because all these Excellencies and all other whatsoever lie within it. By Loving a Soul does propagate and beget itself. By Loving it does dilate and magnify itself. By Loving it does enlarge and delight itself. By Loving also it delighteth others, as by Loving it doth honour and enrich itself. But above all by Loving it does attain itself. Love also being the end of Souls, which are never perfect till they are in act what they are in power. They were made to love, and are dark and vain and comfortless till they do it. Love is so noble that it enjoyeth others enjoyments, delighteth in giving all unto its object, and in seeing all given to its object. So that whosoever loveth all mankind, he enjoyeth all the goodness of God to the whole world.
God is present by Love alone. By Love alone He is great and glorious. By Love alone He liveth and feeleth in other persons. By Love alone he enjoyeth all the creatures, by Love alone He is pleasing to Himself, by Love alone He is rich and blessed. O why dost not thou by Love alone seek to achieve all these, by Love alone attain another self, by Love alone live in others, by Love attain thy glory? The Soul is shriveled up and buried in a grave that does not Love. But that which does love wisely and truly in the joy and end of all the world, the King of Heaven, and the Friend of God, the shinning Light and Temple of Eternity: the Brother of Christ Jesus, and one Spirit with the Holy Ghost.
PRAYER TO THE HOLY TRINITY
O Adorable Trinity! What hast Thou done for me? Thou hast made me the end of all things, and all the end of me, I in all, and all in me. In every soul whom Thu hast created, Thou hast given me the Similitude of Thyself to enjoy! Could my desired have aspired unto such treasures? Could my wisdom have devised such sublime injoyments? Oh! Thou hast done more for us than we could ask or think. I praise and admire, and rejoice in Thee: who are infinitely infinite in all Thy doings.
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Notes From Norman - YES I AM

2010-04-24T22:50:00.003-07:00

YES I AM
Norman P. Grubb

Yes I Am
(An article introducing Norman's published book, "Yes, I Am")
Union Life Magazine Article - Jan-Feb 1983
By: Norman P. Grubb

I have to say again and again that this union life is different from a committed, dedicated relationship to Christ in which we still see ourselves as two and thus are occupied in depending upon Him and receiving from Him the immediate supplies for life. Union is different. It is radical because I have stepped right over the line into "Him as me" as well as acknowledging "Him in me." Yes, He is in me; I am I and He is He. We are two-yet that's not what I live by. It is union-and in the union He is so much my all, and I nothing, that I live with Him as me! I talk the language of Him being the one thinking, choosing, acting-when it is really I. Enormous, glorious paradox! I thus speak of "replacement".
Less than that is still short of a union leap, I may be saying "I have all-I in Him and He in me," but I'm having to keep closing a gap. Here am I, here is He-and he's doing these things for me: providing power, grace, victory, faith . . . and I receiving them. But this is not the same as you or I experiencing them all as me. No gap there!
This is why I gave this book the title of YES, I AM. It sounds bold and boastful, and is meant to be, because this is the missing truth about ourselves which is restored only in this union reality. We had, as selves, to go through the process of deceived self, then through self dead to sin and Satan, and thus out of self-condemnation into where the central fact now is, He is fully formed in us
(Gal. 4:19). But thereby we discover right self!
The whole purpose of God is that we should be the total persons by whom He can express His total self. So back we come again. Probably when we first experience our union reality it is He whom we are seeing and rejoicing about-He in us, as us. But then the further light dawns. We are real persons and are meant to be, just as a head can be in action only through the body. We rise and shine for our light has come. And how can we now accept and love ourselves as Jesus told us we must? Because we now know that He loves and accepts us to the total degree that He has made us His permanent abode. "The life I now live in the flesh," Paul confidently said, "I live by the faith-recognition that He has loved me and given Himself for me." So I then surely can love myself. If I'm good enough for Him, then I'm good enough for myself. This is something really new and fresh when it comes to us. At least it was to me. I am to drop those belittling, downgrading statements about myself. If I am an earthen vessel, it doesn't mean earthy in a derogatory sense, but "human"; and Jesus was human, and God was manifested in that humanity.
So I am no longer a wretched man, but a whole (and holy) man. I am to be myself! Unafraid. Yes, I am, and like Paul, I can do all things in Christ, as Christ. I am well able (like Caleb). I'm full of power and of judgment and of might (like Micah). I am my Beloved's and His desire is toward me (as His spouse) (Song of Solomon 7:10).
Once the Saviour knew at His baptism that the moment of His commissioning had come as the Christ of God, He never once hesitated in saying, "I am .", "I am .", "I am .", and they crucified Him for it. And I must not hesitate to be my "I am." If I am now an equipped, anointed, indwelt son of God, I say so.
Yes, I am.
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Notes From Norman - God In All

2010-04-24T22:50:00.001-07:00

God In All
Norman P. Grubb

GOD ALL IN ALL
While I was having lunch with a pastor of a large denomination, he men¬tioned that their main differences "are between theology and anthropology. We all have some agreements on our under¬standing of God," he said, "but many disagreements on our understanding of man." At his request I have written what follows. I have no trained theo¬logical background and only give what is my understanding of the Scriptures, as made plain to me by the Spirit, and helped by various writers who have in¬fluenced me through the years. I have written on this in more detail in my last book entitled YES I AM.
I have to start, however, with theology, for I have no understanding of man except in his relationship to God. I understand that God is the One Person in the Universe. Besides Him there is no other. He is Power, Peace, Joy. Christ is the Way, Truth, Life. He is made unto us Wisdom, Righteous¬ness, Sanctification. His name is "I AM", not "I HAVE". Finally He is de¬clared as "All in all"
I Corinthians 15:28 When He has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to Him who put everything under Him, so that God may be all in all.
So He can only manifest Himself in all these and a hundred other characteris¬tics by being Himself expressed in in¬finite variety of forms, not a Giver, but an Is-er.
God created man in His own image that He might have a visible means of expressing and manifesting Himself, The Invisible in visible form. Jesus said, "I am the light of the world", and then He also said, "Ye are the light of the world." Matthew 5:14 On the material level, light is invisible electricity, which can only manifest in visible form by a lamp, and in so doing, so possess¬es the lamp that we don't say, "Turn on the lamp," but, "Turn on the light". Thus we humans express Him in a union relationship.
It's As Simple As This
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Notes From Norman - Jesus, the Second Man

2010-04-24T22:49:00.007-07:00

Jesus, the Second Man
Norman P. Grubb

Jesus, The Second Man
Jesus, as God manifest in the flesh, is called "The Second Man" thus the perfect form of redeemed man.
1 Corinthians 15:47 The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven.
As such, He was His Father in manifestation. The Spirit of God in the visible form of a dove was seen by John to descend upon Him. From that time onward, it was the Spirit speaking and acting by Him.
Luke 4:14- 21
14Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside.
15He taught in their synagogues, and everyone praised him.
16He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. And he stood up to read.
17The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:
18''The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.''
20Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him,
21and he began by saying to them, ''Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.''
It was the Spirit who took Him to Calvary....
Hebrews 9:14 How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!
....and by the Spirit He rose again.
1 Peter 3:18 For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit.
At the supper table when about to leave His disciples, He said the purpose was that the same Spirit should possess them which was fulfilled at Pentecost and is spoken of by Paul in Romans 8:11 as dwelling in us. 11And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.
Thus, if He spoke of Himself as only seeing and speaking and doing what the Father was doing by Him, and doing nothing of Himself, and fi¬nally saying that, "if you See Me, you see the Father", then it is now the same of us, and those who see us see Him. So Paul says, 1 Corinthians 2:16 "We have the mind of Christ" and in Philippians 2:13 "God works in you to will and do of His good pleasure". In Colossians 3:4 Christ "our life" 4 When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
John, in his first epistle, caps it all by saying, 1 John 4:17 As He is, so are we in this world. 17In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him and thus we are "in the light as He is in the light"; we "walk as He walked, we "know as He knows"; we are "righteous as He is righteous"; we "love as He loves"; we "believe as He believes". Therefore, our humanity is expressing His deity in all the forms of His nature.
It's As Simple As This
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Notes From Norman - No Independent Self

2010-04-24T22:49:00.005-07:00

No Independent Self
Norman P. Grubb

NO SUCH THING AS AN INDEPENDENT SELF
Here also we see this great funda¬mental truth that there is no such thing as an independent self, for there is only One Self in the Universe; but Lucifer, now called Satan, was self-deceived into imagining he was independent. In actual fact, he forever remains God's convenient agent, fixed in his negativeness. Therefore, cast out of heaven, God uses him in His vitally necessary preparation of what He had planned from before the world's foundation -- to have a vast company of sons, created persons like Himself, by whom He would manage and develop by inheri¬tance, the Universe, together with His Son.
Hebrews 1:2 But in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe.
Romans 8:14 Because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.
These sons must come to their consciousness of being persons by being confronted with these same necessary opposites. So, while given all God's riches of good¬ness in the Garden, there was one tree they must not touch or they would die to their created privileges as His sons. God intended and purposed, by the fact of the presence of this cast- out devil in the form of a wily ser¬pent, to entice these first two, Adam and Eve, to choose Satan's self-for-self way and take what Eve was deceived into thinking would be beneficial to herself, though against the word of her Creator. By this means, the human family would learn to its depths the oppo¬site nature, not ours, but the nature of the "god of this world". This happened to them by receiving and eating that false fruit, just as it was said that to partake of the other Tree of Life and eat its fruit would mean receiving eternal life.
Genesis 3:22 And the LORD God said, ''The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.''
Showing that fruit to be symbolic of receiving Christ, our eternal life. Eating the false fruit meant receiving this opposite form of life which is really death, the nature of self-for-self; and Paul describes in the scripture below how that becomes a fact of us fallen humans, expressing, not a nature of our own of which there is no such thing, but the nature of our false father, expressing his lusts.
Ephesians 2:1 As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, 2in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. 3All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath.
It's As Simple As This
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Notes From Norman - No Independent Self

2010-04-24T22:49:00.003-07:00

No Independent Self
Norman P. Grubb

Jesus turned the spotlight on that fact when He told the self-righteous Pharisees (of whom we all were in our Satan-in-dwelt days), ye are of your father the devil and the lusts of your father ye will do."
John 8:44You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father's desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies

No Independent Self
Thus, Jesus exposed once for all that we humans by our fac¬ulties and appetites never have had a nature of our own, but either "take their nature from God and are His children," or "take their nature from the devil and are his children". 1 John 3:10 Amplified).
Therefore we were expressing Satan's lust nature in all its forms (the works of the flesh), which were not ours but his. In our fallen days we readily cooperated ("the lusts of your father ye WILL do"). He, Satan, is the sinner, but we are wholly accessory to the fact and have a like destiny.
But here we see the subtle deceit of the devil, which is our vital spot in our coming to a final understanding of who we really are. Satan deceived us into thinking that we are independent selves, even as he deceivedly thinks he himself is. `
Revelation 12:9 The great dragon was hurled down--that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.
This is a key Scripture on that where Satan's chief opera¬tion was deceiving the whole world, making us think we are who we are not. So we think we are committing those sins, being possessed by those lusts and negative responses, and we are de¬ceived. They are his expressed by us. He imparts that deceit into us as if it is us, but it is he masquerading AS us. God's sole purpose is to expose the lie of independent self. Because we are God's Sons and His means of expressing Himself in the Universe, we have to learn and drink to its bitter depths that great lie of the independent self --that lie of the author of lies with which he himself is self-deceived. The fact is we can always transmit what we are or think we are, and so Satan did that transmitting to us, his fellow- creatures, and we all normally think we just run ourselves, do our own things.
Isaiah 53:6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
Make up our own minds, and 'naturally' operate as self-relying. THE LIE.
We have to learn and ex¬perience it as THE LIE, so that once really seen as THE LIE and the remedy in Christ, we shan't be fooled again. We may slip by temptation (we speak later of this), but we know our slip and how to return. We thus become not only saved, but SAFE sons. Once bit, twice shy!

It's As Simple As This
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Notes From Norman - God Only

2010-04-24T22:49:00.001-07:00

God Only
Norman P. Grubb

We surely all go thru times when the outer conditions shout "darkness" at us, but once I know that inner Spirit-witness, that I am not really just I, as a human independent self, but I as fixed expression of Christ, then you and I know how to walk right on, don't we, and knowing that what looks like dark is "the shadow of His Hands".
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Notes From Norman - Fallacy of Two Natures

2010-04-24T22:48:00.005-07:00

Fallacy of Two Natures
Norman P. Grubb

THIS FALLACY OF TWO NATURES
In our first little children stage
1 John 2:12 I write to you, dear children, because your sins have been forgiven on account of his name.
13 I write to you, fathers, because you have known him who is from the beginning. I write to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one. I write to you, dear children, because you have known the Father.
Galatians 2:3 We only have our eyes opened by the law and Spirit to our outer sinfulness made plain by our committed sins. Therefore, our only understanding of Christ's atoning sacrifice is by Him being "evidently set forth crucified among you".
Romans 3:25 God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished
And being seen by us sinners as a person separate from us, dying on the cross. His death was evidenced by the shedding of the blood, going to hell for us and being "raised from the dead by the glory of the Father".
Romans 6:4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.
As we receive Him and confess Him by faith
John 1:12 Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God
Romans 10:9 That if you confess with your mouth, ''Jesus is Lord,'' and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
The Spirit bears witness to us
Romans 8:16 The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children.
Simple As This

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Notes From Norman - Our Real Problem

2010-04-24T22:48:00.003-07:00

Our Real Problem
Norman P. Grubb

But now begins our real problem. Sins are put out of sight forever, but what about the self that appears to keep sinning? Sins, the product, are no longer our problem; the sinner- producer is, which appears to be our sinful self. We, who are desperate for the fullness of God in our lives, start a second and deeper misery. The misery of the convicted sinner is his sins. The deeper misery of the born- again saint is his apparently inconsis¬tent self!! A radical discrepancy in-creasingly distresses him. He thank¬fully recognizes goodness (righteous¬ness) proceeding from him in new love, joy, peace and self-control, etc., and he is quick to deny they are from him but are the fruit of the Spirit now being manifested in his newborn life.
Galatians 5:22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
So then he says that he is twofold. Good things proceed from him, which are the fruit of the good Spirit, but then bad things are also evident which must mean he has some bad nature expressing them. That is where the fallacy, which has so taken over the evangelical church, is believed and accepted by the believer. If the good is from the Spirit, where does the bad came from? The answer supposedly is a bad nature still in me. There is the fallacy and deceit. We humans never had a nature of our own but were created to contain and mani¬fest God in His divine nature.
2 Peter 1:4 Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.
Temporarily, unless we choose to remain so, we manifest, through the Fall, our badness which we falsely attribute to our human selves. The question is, if we don't attribute our goodness to ourselves but to the Spirit of Righteousness, why then don't we attribute our badness to the spirit of badness? Why put our human selves in? We have been bemused and muddle-headed. So here is our agony, and we see the perfect purpose of God. Unless we see and experience the sin of sins, the lie of the independent self, and have come to a disillusionment and hatred of it (as Paul in Romans 7:14-24 "O wretched man that I am") as deep and thor¬ough as our disgust and hatred of our old life of sins, we might revert to it again.
Simple As This
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Notes From Norman - Truth of Ourselves

2010-04-24T22:48:00.001-07:00

Truth of Ourselves
Norman P. Grubb

Once we know the total truth of ourselves, we shall not revert to the falsity of independent self any more than a saved sinner reverts to his sin¬ful condition.
1 John 3:9 No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God's seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God.
We can be caught up again in a particular sin, but never again into occupation by that sin nature of Satan, the difference be¬tween sins and sin. We must get this clear.
Therefore, it has been of necessity that we humans, if we are for eternity to be spontaneous expressers of the God of Self-giving Love in His nature, must first have tasted to its roots the deceiving nature of the god of self-getting love, that god of de¬ceived independent self.
Isaiah 53:6 "every man turned to his own way"
And, at all cost, have sought deliverance from it (that "hunger and thirst after righteousness" of Matthew 5:6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
Even the perfect human, Jesus, the Son of God, called the "second man" as the ideal of humanity, was confronted for forty days with the spirit of error, being "driven" to that confrontation by the Spirit of Truth just entered Him.
Mark 1:12 At once the Spirit sent him out into the desert,
And it took Him that long time, of such intensity that He didn't even miss food Matthew 4:2 After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. (only, . . . "after", was He hungered).
To be confronted and finished with these temptations to be self-sufficient and self-acting. Even He had to "taste" that deceitfulness of sin, which we humans swallowed.

Simple As This
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Notes From Norman - The Secret Answer

2010-04-24T22:47:00.003-07:00

The Secret Answer

Norman P. Grubb

Paul must not say it for us, so he identifies himself with us in our stumbling, searching, faltering walk until we ourselves can say that "1 and 2" with him.
At last, by this second travail of the believer, the light is lit, and very simply. "Why do I keep doing things I hate doing, and not doing what I want to do?" cries Paul in agreeing with the tenth commandment not to cov¬et, setting himself not to do it, and then finding "sin wrought in me all manner of lusts".
Now here is the secret and the answer. It was sin that wrought these in me and caused me to do and have them. Yes, sin, but not I!! That was the flash of Spirit-light. 'why", Paul says, "I didn't want to do those things, so it wasn't I doing them."
Then who was it? Why, obviously that intruder who got into me through the Fall and has made me his dwelling place. It is not I, but "sin that dwelleth in me", which he repeats twice for emphasis in:
Romans 7:17As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me.
20Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
It was sin, Satan in his nature, operating in me, but by his supreme deceit he has made me, from Adam onwards, think it was I doing it, as if I have an inde-pendent nature of my own. But I am only a vessel, branch, temple, slave, body-member.
The doer is the one I contain! And so Paul saw it. He had, as in Romans 6, seen in his Arabia visit, this total meaning of Calvary -- that Christ's body represented ours and our body expresses the sin-spirit. So did His! But, as He died, out went that sin-spirit from His body as ours, and in His resurrection in came His Spirit of Truth in place of that false deceiving spirit cast out forever.

Simple As This
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Notes From Norman - Accept Ourselves

2010-04-24T22:47:00.001-07:00

Accept Ourselves
Norman P. Grubb

So, Paul moves on with his exclamation of delighted thanks in Romans 7:25Thanks be to God--through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin. To his total statement of Who he now is with no further condemnation, but set free and knowing he is set free by the law (the fixed principle) of the Spirit of life by Christ in him from that former law (fixed principle) of sin and death, that lie of independent self-relying self. Now it is Christ dwelling in him Romans 8:8 Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God. 9You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ, where it had been sin dwelling in him.
The whole key to this lies in the understanding that we humans never had a self-operating, self-relying nature, but were solely created to express God in His nature. But we only became con¬scious functioning humanity when we were voluntarily, though deceivingly, taken captive by that spirit of error, so that we each were Satan-I. Then, through our Last Adam and His Calvary death and resurrection, we change back to our True Owner-Creator and are Christ-I.
Many believers know and claim the reality of Christ in you, as in Ephesians 3:17;
Ephesians 3:17So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love.
But because we never knew the basic reality of formerly being Satan-sin dwelling in us, and mistak¬enly living in the deceit of a self- acting self, we have been falsely taught that we have a deposit of sin in our human selves (soul and body) and must therefore have some continual forms of warfare for the rest of our lives.
Yet the glory of the revelation is that there never was or has been anything wrong with our human selves (spirit, soul, and body), which God created as "very good".
All that happened to our selves was the misuse of self by the Satan-god, and now right use by our true Christ-Indweller. This means that we can boldly accept ourselves as right selves with nothing wrong with us, and that we have always been right selves with nothing wrong with us, and that we have always been right selves in wrong hands, but now in right hands.
Simple As This
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Notes From Norman - Accept Ourselves

2010-04-24T22:46:00.009-07:00

Accept Ourselves
Norman P. Grubb

So, Paul moves on with his exclamation of delighted thanks in Romans 7:25Thanks be to God--through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin. To his total statement of Who he now is with no further condemnation, but set free and knowing he is set free by the law (the fixed principle) of the Spirit of life by Christ in him from that former law (fixed principle) of sin and death, that lie of independent self-relying self. Now it is Christ dwelling in him Romans 8:8 Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God. 9You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ, where it had been sin dwelling in him.
The whole key to this lies in the understanding that we humans never had a self-operating, self-relying nature, but were solely created to express God in His nature. But we only became con¬scious functioning humanity when we were voluntarily, though deceivingly, taken captive by that spirit of error, so that we each were Satan-I. Then, through our Last Adam and His Calvary death and resurrection, we change back to our True Owner-Creator and are Christ-I.
Many believers know and claim the reality of Christ in you, as in Ephesians 3:17;
Ephesians 3:17So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love.
But because we never knew the basic reality of formerly being Satan-sin dwelling in us, and mistak¬enly living in the deceit of a self- acting self, we have been falsely taught that we have a deposit of sin in our human selves (soul and body) and must therefore have some continual forms of warfare for the rest of our lives.
Yet the glory of the revelation is that there never was or has been anything wrong with our human selves (spirit, soul, and body), which God created as "very good".
All that happened to our selves was the misuse of self by the Satan-god, and now right use by our true Christ-Indweller. This means that we can boldly accept ourselves as right selves with nothing wrong with us, and that we have always been right selves with nothing wrong with us, and that we have always been right selves in wrong hands, but now in right hands.
Simple As This
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Notes From Norman - The Flesh, Our Humanity

2010-04-24T22:46:00.007-07:00

The Flesh, Our Humanity
Norman P. Grubb

The flesh, Paul's common term for our humanity, is right in its right ownership, as with Jesus ("God manifest in the flesh"). With us, it had become "sinful flesh", but then in Christ the sin was condemned in the flesh.
Romans 8:3 For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man, and in Galatians 5:24 "they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with its affections and lusts"
And in Galatians 2:20 "the life I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God". Flesh as humanity is, of course, always available to temptations by its appetites Galatians 5:16 So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. 17For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want. 18But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law and can catch us out if we foolishly go back to struggle with self-effort.
But if we fully recognize the Spirit expressing Himself as us/by us, then that old pull of sin and the "you ought not" law on our deceived self has no further power Galatians 5:18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law.
Flesh is not in itself an evil thing any more than the eye is evil. It is the lusts, which are evil, not the flesh or the eyes 1 John 2:16 For everything in the world--the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does--comes not from the Father, but from the world.
Simple As This
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Notes From Norman - Expanded Understandings

2010-04-24T22:46:00.005-07:00

Expanded Understandings
Norman P. Grubb

We need expanded understand¬ings of the completeness of Christ being expressed by our humanity, with a growth, as in 1 Peter 3:18, For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit and an ever-expanding conformity to His likeness expressed in our humanity 2 Corinthians 4:18 So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal and Romans 8:29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.
We thus have rescued and regained our human selves from any blame in themselves and those false condemnations we lived in while in a Romans 7-deceived consciousness of our guilt.
We walk blameless and sanctified as Paul said in 1 Thessalonians 5:23 May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. We regain our human selves, mortal in the physical and thus remaining in our world to be a light in it, but holy in our spirit-selves expressed in our souls and bodies Hebrews 10:13 Since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool.
Simple As This

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Notes From Norman - Obedience...of Faith

2010-04-24T22:46:00.003-07:00

Obedience...of Faith
Norman P. Grubb

THE WAY IS THE OBEDIENCE, NOT OF WORKS, BUT OF FAITH
There is the faith entry into Who we all really are. That is why our real obedience is that which Paul names it to be in almost his first and last word in his Romans letter Romans 1:5 Through him and for his name's sake, we received grace and apostleship to call people from among all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith and Romans 16:19 -- the obedience, not of works and self effort, but of faith, which requires the one necessity of our inner heart acknowledgement of the actual truth concerning our Lord Jesus Christ as given us by Him.
This is as real a faith committal as was our first act of saving faith, which then produced the Spirit's witness. But this second faith committal may be said to be more difficult and radical because that first faith committal only concerned our sins and their hold on us and the guilt and fear rightly produced by them. This second committal is our very selves, the apparent producer of the sins, and self is all we have. This is why this further total committal cannot be fully made until the fundamental fact has been cleared in our understanding, by the Word con-firmed by the Spirit, that we never had a false self-acting self to give up its apparent selfhood. This was Satan's lie. We never were more than contain¬ers, vessels, branches, etc., with no such self-relying, self-acting self; and so this second step, or rather stride, is only a recognition of a given fact about us as participators in Christ's two-thousand-year-old-body death and resurrection.
This is serious and radical because we have had these deceived concepts of our independent selves in action, and that in¬cludes what we might call our "good" selves. It is radical to see in full¬ness that all the good we have done by our self-activity has been Satan-good (that "good" aspect of the false Edenic Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil). Thus trying to be and do good is as much the product of our satan-self for-self nature expressed by us as are any of our "bad" doings.
Perfect flesh living is really perfect sinning. Paul said in Romans 7:21 that "when I would do good, evil is present with me", and that was a "law", a set principle from which he could not by himself escape. By this he meant that while resolving to do good was right ("to will is pres¬ent with me" Romans 7:18), the actual attempt to "do good", though unknown to himself at the time, was that same self-for-self, self-relying Satan-spirit operating in his apparently good self-efforts.
Philippians 3:4 though I myself have reasons for such confidence. If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: 5 circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; 6as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless.
Simple As This
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Notes From Norman - Galatians 2:20

2010-04-24T22:46:00.001-07:00

Galatians 2:20
Norman P. Grubb

Just as an apple seed can bring forth only an apple tree, with apples being its only fruit (some good for eating and some not), so too the seed of Satan can bring forth only Satanic fruit, some good and some bad. Therefore, we cannot easily give up our total selves and move into our God relationship until we know that there never was any good in ourselves - Romans 7:18 I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. i.e., until we know the lie of independent self.
We cause great offense to our fellow believers when we make such statements of faith as this one: "once only Satan-I, now only Christ-I".
They still think of us as having a sinful nature. As a result, our opposition often comes from churches and pastors so long accustomed to self-condemnation in our apparent sins and failures.
To them, it is like blasphemy to say nothing was ever wrong with our human selfhood. This is why this stride of faith (really only the acknowledgment of fact in Christ) is well called by Kierkegaard (who deeply knew the human self) "the leap of faith".
When taken, it must be as serious and openly confessed and once-for-all as was our faith step into receiving Christ. Once made, it is as marked an act as a marriage vow and ceremony. It took me five hours in a Congo forest to say with finality that I, Norman Grubb, have been crucified with Christ and thus, in His death to sin, I have died to sin as an in¬dweller.
And then to say the Galatians 2:20 I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. But no! There is no such thing as independent living and therefore, with Paul, to say, "Yet not I, but Christ lives in me " (where before it had been Satan living in me). That was as far as I really got on that crisis occasion, confessing with my mouth, together with my precious wife doing the same, by writing my statement on an old envelope which was all I had deep in that for¬est. But, once said, my confession of faith became fixed and was never to be gone back on.
Simple As This
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Notes From Norman - A Settled Reality

2010-04-24T22:45:00.007-07:00

A Settled Reality
Norman P. Grubb

The witness of the Spirit, the substance of faith as in Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.
This reality comes when the believing is established enough to receive it. 1 John 5:10 Anyone who believes in the Son of God has this testimony in his heart. Anyone who does not believe God has made him out to be a liar, because he has not believed the testimony God has given about his Son
In the inner witness is a given part of the believing, and while we do the believing, the Spirit gives the witness. Sometimes that takes time -- for me two years; for my wife two weeks! I never went back on my established, spoken, written word of faith. The witness is from Him to me, not from me to Him, so I must avoid any seeking of it, or questioning my act of faith. No! Any delay only stirs me to confirm "my obedience of faith" in that five hour act of faith I made, and I just went on with my normal activities until one day He must have seen It was in a right con¬dition, the sudden quiet light was lit in me, "Yes, it really IS Christ in me, expressing Himself in my form, He as me, He living, thinking my thoughts, speaking my words, doing my deeds." This was so total that for a time I almost thought I was Christ! That didn't matter while the glory of the inner recognition settled in me.
Simple As This
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Notes From Norman - Daily Living

2010-04-24T22:45:00.005-07:00

Daily Living
Norman P. Grubb

THEN DAILY LIVING
What followed then was the real answer to this first question of "anthropology". What kind of person am I, now that it is settled by the Word and inner witness that my real inner self is Christ in me? How do I now in fact function as a human? Paul nicely slipped into his Galatians 2:20 statement, "Yet not I, but Christ lives in me".
He did not just say lives as if I am Christ. So back I come to realize that I am still the lamp -- now absorbed in reflecting the light but still the lamp. But now -- all important -- what a different understanding of the lamp!
Now it is no longer a soiled lamp under constant questioning, suspicion, and condemnation. I now accept myself as a right self. If I am good enough for Him to accept and dwell in and express Himself by, I am good enough to accept myself just as I am. That was perhaps the most important and revolutionary new recognition when at last I got Romans 7:17 into focus
Romans 7:17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me.
That I never was a bad self in my God-created humanity, any more than I was a "good" self. Nor was I a soiled-self, as if something had poisoned my humanity -- my being as a human.
No, I can accept myself because the bad or good is the expres¬sion of the deity nature in me/as me -- change of Deity, change of Owner, not change of my humanity -- except that my physical body is the mortal part of me in which I long for a change Romans 8:23-25
Romans 8:23 Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. 24For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? 25But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.
2 Corinthians 5:1-8
1 Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. 2Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, 3because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. 4For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. 5Now it is God who has made us for this very purpose and has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come. 6Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. 7We live by faith, not by sight. 8We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord.
So I am FREE TO BE. Where I used to live in a continuous warning red light on my failures, sins, and weak¬nesses, now I live in a green light. I think my thoughts, make my choices, do my daily jobs as right, not wrong. I refuse waves of that old sense of self- failure sweeping over me. Impossible indeed is that old false consciousness of a self-relying-self apparently running itself and merely "helped" by the Lord, and so often tricked by Satan. Now I do accept myself and act freely as a full self because I have that fixed inner witness that it is actually He as me.
Simple as This

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Notes From Norman - No Condemnation

2010-04-24T22:45:00.003-07:00

www.NormanGrubb.com
No Condemnation
Norman P. Grubb

I am to take no condemnation of myself - Romans 8:1 Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus or doubt that it is He as me.
That covers my whole range of activity of mind and body. I have so old a suspicion of the misuses of myself, whether of bodily appetites formerly misused and easily responsive to temptation, or soul reactions of disturbed negative emotions about conditions or people, or questionings and doubtings of the mind, that it is new for me to accept the fact that He has taken me over. I am not to doubt or question. It is for Him to keep what He has taken possession of.
I didn't choose Him. He chose me John 15:16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit--fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name so the "heat" is on Him to do the keeping. I might well question His choices, choosing me or you, but we are His choice, so I laugh and go free.
A pastor friend of mine, Keith Lamb of Kerrville, Texas, asked his folk, who are well-taught in Who they really are, "Hands up those who, like St. Augustine, say 'I love God and do as I like". He said very few hands went up because we bemused folk still suspect that if we do as we like, well go back down to the old flesh ways!
But no, no, we who now know Who we are, "do as we like" because what we like is His will and ways! It is no longer singing of myself "Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love" No! No! No more wandering or leaving for we are fixed as He. (We will talk a little later about temptation and soul-spirit responses.) This greatly changes our songs and prayers for why keep asking Him to bless when He has said He is blessing? Why keep asking for the power when we say with Paul, "1 can do all things through Christ who strengtheneth me"? Why not change "pray so" prayers into "say so" prayers?
Simple as This

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Notes From Norman - Being and Doing

2010-04-24T22:45:00.001-07:00

Being and Doing
Norman P. Grubb

As C. T. Studd in the Congo used to say to the Lord, "We are put here to see Jesus Christ running about in black [and white] bodies!" This makes my present daily living wholly "natural" and practical. I am just myself. I BE!
When I am practicing my profession, I am not always reminding myself I am a carpenter, plumber, lawyer, doctor, professor, nurse, or housewife. No! I just do my job as such, but I am really expressing that know-how of my profession which was not part of my human self but which I had desired, accepted, and trained for, and which became settled in me/as me so that I call myself by the name of my profession.
So also now, as a Christian, I am not always saying I am Christ in me/as me! No! I'm just myself most of the day, just BEING AND DOING. But underneath I now know Philippians 2:13 is fixedly continuously true to me. It is HE working in me "to will and do of His good pleasure", and I boldly turn my fear and trembling" of Philippians 2:12 Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed--not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence--continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, into the kind of confidence John speaks of in his 1 John 4:17 In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like Him.
Simple as This
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Notes From Norman - No Independent Self

2010-04-07T19:14:00.001-07:00

www.NormanGrubb.com
No Independent Self
Norman P. Grubb

Jesus turned the spotlight on that fact when He told the self-righteous Pharisees (of whom we all were in our Satan-in-dwelt days), ye are of your father the devil and the lusts of your father ye will do."
John 8:44You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father's desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies

No Independent Self
Thus, Jesus exposed once for all that we humans by our fac¬ulties and appetites never have had a nature of our own, but either "take their nature from God and are His children," or "take their nature from the devil and are his children". 1 John 3:10 Amplified).
Therefore we were expressing Satan's lust nature in all its forms (the works of the flesh), which were not ours but his. In our fallen days we readily cooperated ("the lusts of your father ye WILL do"). He, Satan, is the sinner, but we are wholly accessory to the fact and have a like destiny.
But here we see the subtle deceit of the devil, which is our vital spot in our coming to a final understanding of who we really are. Satan deceived us into thinking that we are independent selves, even as he deceivedly thinks he himself is. `
Revelation 12:9 The great dragon was hurled down--that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.
This is a key Scripture on that where Satan's chief opera¬tion was deceiving the whole world, making us think we are who we are not. So we think we are committing those sins, being possessed by those lusts and negative responses, and we are de¬ceived. They are his expressed by us. He imparts that deceit into us as if it is us, but it is he masquerading AS us. God's sole purpose is to expose the lie of independent self. Because we are God's Sons and His means of expressing Himself in the Universe, we have to learn and drink to its bitter depths that great lie of the independent self --that lie of the author of lies with which he himself is self-deceived. The fact is we can always transmit what we are or think we are, and so Satan did that transmitting to us, his fellow- creatures, and we all normally think we just run ourselves, do our own things.
Isaiah 53:6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
Make up our own minds, and 'naturally' operate as self-relying. THE LIE.
We have to learn and ex¬perience it as THE LIE, so that once really seen as THE LIE and the remedy in Christ, we shan't be fooled again. We may slip by temptation (we speak later of this), but we know our slip and how to return. We thus become not only saved, but SAFE sons. Once bit, twice shy!

It's As Simple As This
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Daily Thought - True Peace

2010-04-06T20:27:00.001-07:00

www.ChristAsUs.com
True Peace
John Fautley
When people ask me how can you have peace (I think the Americans use the word 'closure'), about the loss of your wife, or the loss of your daughter's mother, how can this be? Where does your 'proof' come from? Has your wife contacted you since her passing to show you she is OK, how do you Know she is OK? How do you know where she is? If you have had no 'sign' from her to show you that she is OK then, how can you have any peace about it?
I would have to answer, that my peace about my wife and my daughter's mother, is 'once removed'. I KNOW that Christ (God) is the Truth, and therefore the Truth cannot Lie, (because if it could, it would not be pure, and therefore no truth at all), it then follows when you KNOW what the Truth has said..... and promised... Then it follows that my wife and my daughter's mother is 'safe' and I can have Peace... The Peace that passes all understanding is indeed 'The Pearl' that those who seek it not, seek it not at their own peril.

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Notes From Norman - No Independent Self

2010-04-06T20:26:00.001-07:00

No Independent Self
Norman P. Grubb

NO SUCH THING AS AN INDEPENDENT SELF
Here also we see this great funda¬mental truth that there is no such thing as an independent self, for there is only One Self in the Universe; but Lucifer, now called Satan, was self-deceived into imagining he was independent. In actual fact, he forever remains God's convenient agent, fixed in his negativeness. Therefore, cast out of heaven, God uses him in His vitally necessary preparation of what He had planned from before the world's foundation -- to have a vast company of sons, created persons like Himself, by whom He would manage and develop by inheri¬tance, the Universe, together with His Son.
Hebrews 1:2 But in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe.
Romans 8:14 Because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.
These sons must come to their consciousness of being persons by being confronted with these same necessary opposites. So, while given all God's riches of good¬ness in the Garden, there was one tree they must not touch or they would die to their created privileges as His sons. God intended and purposed, by the fact of the presence of this cast- out devil in the form of a wily ser¬pent, to entice these first two, Adam and Eve, to choose Satan's self-for-self way and take what Eve was deceived into thinking would be beneficial to herself, though against the word of her Creator. By this means, the human family would learn to its depths the oppo¬site nature, not ours, but the nature of the "god of this world". This happened to them by receiving and eating that false fruit, just as it was said that to partake of the other Tree of Life and eat its fruit would mean receiving eternal life.
Genesis 3:22 And the LORD God said, ''The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.''
Showing that fruit to be symbolic of receiving Christ, our eternal life. Eating the false fruit meant receiving this opposite form of life which is really death, the nature of self-for-self; and Paul describes in the scripture below how that becomes a fact of us fallen humans, expressing, not a nature of our own of which there is no such thing, but the nature of our false father, expressing his lusts.
Ephesians 2:1 As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, 2in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. 3All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath.
It's As Simple As This
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Notes From Norman - Opposites (Part 2)

2010-04-05T20:02:00.001-07:00

Opposites
Norman P. Grubb

Opposites cont...
So, if the Eternal One is only The Love Person by virtue of a "death" to one alternative of being by Himself as a consuming fire, and a "life" in an eternal love interchange with His Son, so surely all created persons in His image as persons can only be conscious selves by being confronted with the possibility of expressing a self-for- self false spirit nature, or the self- for-others God-spirit nature. That is why the Scripture says God "created evil".
Isaiah. 45:7 I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the LORD, do all these things.
Evil is only a person expressing self-for-self and good is a person expressing self-for-others. If God Himself had to have that settled for Himself (when it says He "cannot lie" and thus express a Self-for-Self), so every created person must confront and have those opposites fixed in the one potential swallowing up the other. Therefore, when God created persons, He could only do so by persons having their freedom in those alternative choices. Thus, He "created evil" as the other necessary alternative which was "swallowed up" in Him, and He cannot create persons as persons without their having their freedom of choice as persons. Lucifer was the first person revealed by the Scriptures as made perfectly in Gods image (as we all are). By being so entranced by his own perfections.
Ezekiel 28:11
The word of the LORD came to me:
12''Son of man, take up a lament concerning the king of Tyre and say to him: `This is what the Sovereign LORD says: ''You were the model of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.
13You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone adorned you: ruby, topaz and emerald, chrysolite, onyx and jasper, sapphire, turquoise and beryl. Your settings and mountings were made of gold; on the day you were created they were prepared.
14You were anointed as a guardian cherub, for so I ordained you. You were on the holy mount of God; you walked among the fiery stones.
15You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created till wickedness was found in you.
16Through your widespread trade you were filled with violence, and you sinned. So I drove you in disgrace from the mount of God, and I expelled you, O guardian cherub, from among the fiery stones.
17Your heart became proud on account of your beauty, and you corrupted your wisdom because of your splendor. So I threw you to the earth; I made a spectacle of you before kings.
That he chose to be a self-for-self, even to appropriating the throne of God.

Isaiah 14:12 How you have fallen from heaven, O morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations!
13You said in your heart, ''I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of the sacred mountain.
14I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.''
15But you are brought down to the grave, to the depths of the pit.
He became the exposer of the necessary opposite swallowed up in God. Thus, he was named "the spirit of error", and in his nature as the opposite of God, was cast out of heaven".
It's As Simple As This

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Notes From Norman - Opposites (Part 1)

2010-04-05T20:01:00.001-07:00

Opposites
Norman P. Grubb

PAIRS OF OPPOSITES: THE OPERATING LAW OF THE UNIVERSE

All the Universe, from God Himself down through all His manifestations, only operates as pairs of opposites, and the one expresses itself by util¬izing the other to manifest itself e.g.
2 Corinthians 5:4 For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.
And there is no consciousness except by opposites. Light can only be seen by "swallowing up" dark; sweet/bitter; heat/cold; yes/no; hard/soft, and so ad infinitum. In an armchair, the soft must utilize the hard framework to make a comfortable chair. So too in a bed. A cook can only make a dish sweet by the sweetness overcoming the non sweetness. Our decisive "Yes" only has its strength by swallowing up the alternative "No". Electricity only functions by the interaction of positive and negative; the atom by the combination of proton and electron. And so, in our personal consciousness, we cannot let an infant go near a hot stove or he will burn himself, or near a pool of water, when he doesn't yet know the difference between water and dry ground.
But as this is so on every level of our material world, it is equally and fundamentally true of our inner selves. We are only conscious of ourselves when we have discovered we are either expressers of a self-getting nature (Satan), or a self-giving nature (Christ). Our human "being", with all its potential, can only express in its quantity the quality of the spirit- nature which indwells it, either that of 'the spirit of error" or alterna¬tively "the Spirit of Truth".
1 John 4:6 We are from God, and whoever knows God listens to us; but whoever is not from God does not listen to us. This is how we recognize the Spirit of truth and the spirit of falsehood.
It's As Simple As This
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drop.io - simple private sharing

2010-04-03T00:06:00.001-07:00

Thank you to @jayhawk100 for the connection to drop.io a new popular platform for simple private sharing. drop.io manager is great for organizing multiple drops from a single interface with powerful administrative, customization, and privacy options. Use drop.io as a:

Central hub for projects
Branded interface for client communications
Lower cost solution vs. FTPs and IT support-dependent sharing options

About drop.io: users can take anything [photos, videos, audio, web links, emails, etc.] and add them to a private, online space called a 'drop' to share by web, email, phone, fax, and more

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"The Son of Man" by Emil Ludwig

2010-04-01T20:08:00.001-07:00

Under a clear sky, it is cool when, late that evening, Jesus and his companions slowly make their way back to the Mount of Olives. The noise of the town, keeping high festival, pursues their footsteps, but the disciples heed it not, as they move onward in silence, meditating upon the words of the Master.
     In him there is a change. Perhaps it is only because the air strikes chill. It may be because of Judas' disappearance, which he cannot fail to have noticed. He may well have an increasingly urgent sense that danger pressing. This much is certain, that, after leaving the town, he grows livelier; his aspect is brisk, and almost combative. Maybe, at this last hour, he considers the possibility of retreat, for he says to the disciples; "When I sent you without purse and script and shoes, lacked ye anything?" "Nothing Master." "But now, he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise his script; and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one!"
     They are startled, as if caught in the act. Some of them have indeed been letting their thoughts run upon the chances of armed resistance. Two among them, emboldened by this remarkable utterance, now venture to draw forth the weapons they have concealed about their persons, saying: "Lord, behold, here are two swords.!" Whereupon he, shrinking back as of old when confronted with such actualities, recognizes at sight of these poor iron tools how contradictory is the use of physical measures of defense when spirit and force, when God and the world, have to measure strength one against the other. He puts from him the fancy he has toyed with for a few seconds, and, with a double meaning, says quietly:
   "It is enough."
Thoughts of the nearness of death are persistent. Sometimes he tries to mollify their bitterness by words from scripture. So now, he pauses in the ascent, and says (as if to put his disciples to the test): "All ye shall be offended because of me this night: for it is written, 'I will smite the Shepard, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad.' "
As at Caesarea Philippi, Peter, in the ardour of his youthful zeal, is the readiest with a reply: "Though all men shall be offended because of thee, yet will I never be offended!"
     Jesus looks at Peter sadly. He knows the young man's eagerness, but feels that none of his disciples are to be depended upon -- Peter no more than the rest. He shall be told as much in plain words: "Verily I say unto thee that this night, before the cock crows, thou shalt deny me thrice!"
     Peter rejoins: "Though I should die with thee, yet will I not deny thee." All the other disciples echo the words.
     In Jesus, conflicting motives are at work. Is he really to surrender unresistingly to his enemies? His disciples have just given him fresh assurances of loyalty. Some of them are armed. To-night he will not return to Bethany, the first place at which the authorities will look for him. If the vanished Judas be really in the plot, the traitor shall lead the foe thither in vain. Vestiges of combativeness flicker up in Jesus once more. Quitting the high road, he bids the others follow him, and sets out in search of a place of refuge. On this last day of his life, Jesus looks for a hiding place. He does so, without plan, and too late, as he did all things that were done by him in conflict with what is usually called the real world. In the dead of night, they squeeze through the quickset hedge surrounding one of the olive orchards watered by the Brook Cedron on the western slope of the hill -- a cactus hedge, doubtless, for these are burghers' fruit gardens, protected against thieves.
     At length they are all within the enclosure. To the Master, a man of gentle disposition, such an intrusion into a fenced orchard is a new and disturbing experience, seeing that never before, in all his thirty-one years, has he thrust his way anywhere except into human hearts.
     Death, whose shape he has hitherto contemplated only through a mist of obscuring pharaseology, now confronts him in hideous nakedness. The brooding stillness of the garden, the aromatic smell of the olives, the sheen of the stars, exercise their dur effect on his emotions. The foretellings of scripture are forgotten, or seem ambiguous. As a natural result of these mingled influences, he is assailed with a burning desire for life. He will beseech the Father to let him live! He is loath to unveil the confusion of his thoughts and feelings to the whole company of his followers. Drawing apart, therefore, with the three whom he love hest, and leaving the others at rest beneath the trees, he goes on a little way through the gloom. Trembling, afraid to be alone, he says to Peter, James, and John: "My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death; tarry ye here, and watch!"
      A few paces farther, and he throws himself on the ground. With forehead and hair bedewed by the herbage, he prays: "Father, all things are possible unto thee! Take away this cup from me! Nevertheless, not what I will, but what thou wilt!"
     He prays for life. Yet, as a dutiful son, even while doing so he leaves the fianl decision to his Father. Then, in agony of mind, he rises to his feet once more. He has a sense of being tracked down, like one who hears the voices of pursuers; he feels like a hunted beast when the hounds are close at hand. Weak and helpless, a poor mortal in sore distress, he turns back to his dear companions for solace. Will not they open their arms to receive him?
     He finds them sleeping. James, John, and Peter are all asleep.
"Simon, sleepest thou? Could'st thou not watch one hour?
     The disappointments of a lifetime are summed up in these few words. The men who lie there are the most devoted among his followers, the ones to whom he has pourd out his whole heart for a year and more. Now, the first time their friend and master craves aid from his fellow men, and does not lean for support on God alone; when Jesus has been turning over in his mind the enigma of his relation to God -- this is the moment when their senses are dulled by wine and by the darkness. They lie there asleep!
        Fresh doubts assail the prophet. Is it possible that he has chosen the wrong path? Had it all been a mistake? He could have spent his life in a quiet Galilean township. Where were those to whom he could point as awakened and made happy by his teaching? Simon, whom he had regarded as the rock upon which the faith was to be builded, and whom he had therefore called Peter; Simon was asleep in this hour of greatest need. John, who so often nestled into his breast like a child, was asleep. Not one of them knew that their friend was yearning for their help. They left him to suffer anguish and terror alone. Perhaps from first to last it had been an illusion? Perhaps the strangers who had listened to his words, and the sick whom he had cured, had long since forgotten his message? Maybe those whose hearts he had hoped to touch, drove the plough or sailed the fishing-smack with the same dull indifference as in the days before Jeusu had crossed their paths? If that and nothing more were the fruit of his gospel, was such a mission worth dying for? "Father, all things are possible unto thee! Take away this cup from me! Nevertheless, not what I will, but what thour wilt!"
Taken from "The Son of Man" by Emil Ludwig

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Leah's Tribute to Joanie

2010-03-29T21:35:00.001-07:00

Download now or listen on posterous

joanie-tribute-lv.mp3 (4048 KB)

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Notes From Norman - From Confusion to Clarity Part 2

2010-03-29T20:56:00.003-07:00

www.NormanGrubb.com
From Confusion to Clarity Part 2
Norman P. Grubb

The passage in Exodus 33 where Moses besought God to give him the absolute assurance of God's presence, power and purpose, "Show me Thy glory" became the key that unlocked for Luther the somewhat hidden mystery of God's dealings with His people. Moses was told in no uncertain terms that He should not see God's face, but would be given sight of God's back. This, to Luther indicates the dark side of God and the dealings with His people. Luther says that the contrary aspects of sin, suffering and failure and death constituted the raw material which God transforms into His own self in the human heart. God reveals Himself thus, but in contrary form. The back of God is shown to us as it was so painfully to Christ.
As God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, it is given to us to share in the continuance of that ministry, "filling up that which is still behind in the afflictions of Christ" as Paul says in Col. 1:24 - a most striking statement. But in all this it is imperative to see that we are not dealing with ideas, but we are in truth and experience being handled by a Person. One might say we have escaped into God in the redemption but have found that God lives and loves through us in the costly way He did in Christ; we are His body. Beauty, joy, peace, answers to prayer and such daily deliverances that are given, are to be balanced with the darker side which brings us into the "fellowship of His sufferings".

Therefore all that happens to us is God in action, affecting sometimes known and many times unknown and hidden purposes. In the matter of our Union in Christ, it is clear that it is all He in us and not we working out something by our own understanding and wisdom. Thus we are called to "give thanks in all things." This cannot mean that we are to give thanks for evil as such, but that God is in charge of even the darkest scenario that we call evil, as He was in the ministry of Christ's life and death. The resurrection is the light side of God and His unfailing dealings, but that for us comes later when we shall dwell in the light with Him.

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Daily Thought - David Heisler

2010-03-29T20:56:00.001-07:00

www.ChristAsUs.com
David Heisler
If - Then
This morning, for the umpteenth time, I suggested to Jesus that He make his return. "Come on, haven't we waited long enough?" "Hasn't there been enough sorrow and grief?"
His answer - "I'm not done with my story." "History" is HIS-STORY - nothing more, nothing less.
It occurs to me that all His-Story is already written. And, we already know, at least the major points. We only walk as He walked. The story and the path are already in the Book.
Then I thought about the "if-then" propositions. Christianity, as a religion, is full of "if you do this, then that will happen." It troubles me a bit that occasionally even Jesus mentioned an "if-then".
But, the greatest and highest "IF-THEN" ever is "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me." (John 12.32) And it is true. He has been lifted up. He now and always has, drawn ALL to Himself. What do we do? Just know it is true. Just walk in that truth - and be bold in that truth.

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Notes From Norman - From Confusion to Clarity Part 1

2010-03-29T07:53:00.001-07:00

www.NormanGrubb.com
From Confusion to Clarity Part 1
Norman P. Grubb

From Confusion to Clarity
by Norman Grubb

What a world of sad and frustrating confusion exists for us while we live in a world where duality governs our outlook. The moment comes to each of us in God's special way for the individual. It is a distorted life of disease and unrest, while we see with double vision. Is God really in charge of affairs, are all things a unity or a duality, for it certainly has the appearance of the latter "while we look at the things that are visible".
What a moment of great release and reconciliation of thought and action was given me when I heard the word that "God caused the light to shine out of darkness." I understood He caused light to shine into darkness, and was ready to applaud that action of God. But for Him to produce one out of the other simply was too good to be true. There comes for us all the moment when the veil is lifted for us concerning the mystery that surrounds the seeming contradiction in God and devil, Light and darkness, suffering and blessing. God says He makes one out of the other and does not have to juggle to keep things in what to us look like a sort of uneasy balance. A great saint and preacher I heard in my youth, Dr. F.B. Meyer, says with clear and affirming faith that suffering is the gift of God to His church and to us each as we "fill up that which is behind of the affliction of Christ," as Paul said concerning His life and ministry.
How strongly Paul speaks of the difference in the value of his being ''caught up into the heavenlies'', hearing words that were not lawful to utter, and the account that follows of his unending sufferings in his pursuit of his ministry in the church. The sufferings are what in his sight weighs the most for the extension of the kingdom of God, rather than the special privilege he had of any out-of-the-world experience. Suffering was for Paul that which enriched the church and fulfilled the purposes of God "in his flesh" as he said.
This seeming duality in the ways and acts of God has been the battleground for the faith of many a saintly and devoted servant of God. To my knowledge not much has been written about the battles some have had. The outstanding case to me as I have read through about this of late is that of Martin Luther. His writings and teachings concerning how he came to see the inner truth of the matter are most enlightening. He records how he struggled and agonized at a certain period of his life and ministry and how the enlightenment of the seeming contradiction came clear to him.

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Daily Thought - Your Cross

2010-03-29T07:47:00.001-07:00

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Your Cross
Saint Francis De Sales
The everlasting God has in His wisdom foreseen from eternity the cross that He now presents to you as a gift from His inmost heart. This cross He now sends you He has considered with His all-knowing eyes, understood with His divine mind, tested with His wise justice, warmed with loving arms and weighed with His own hands to see that it be not one inch too large and not one ounce too heavy for you. He has blessed it with His holy Name, anointed it with His consolation, taken one last glance at you and your courage, and then sent it to you from heaven, a special greeting from God to you, an alms of the all-merciful love of God.
--St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622), Doctor of the Church
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Daily Thought - The Will of God

2010-03-28T07:42:00.003-07:00

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The Will of God
Unknown
The will of God will never take you,
Where the grace of God cannot keep you.
Where the arms of God cannot support you,
Where the riches of God cannot supply your needs,
Where the power of God cannot endow you.
The will of God will never take you,
Where the spirit of God cannot work through you,
Where the wisdom of God cannot teach you,
Where the army of God cannot protect you,
Where the hands of God cannot mold you.
The will of God will never take you,
Where the love of God cannot enfold you,
Where the mercies of God cannot sustain you,
Where the peace of God cannot calm your fears,
Where the authority of God cannot overrule for you.
The will of God will never take you,
Where the comfort of God cannot dry your tears,
Where the Word of God cannot feed you,
Where the miracles of God cannot be done for you,
Where the omnipresence of God cannot find you.

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Notes From Norman - Purpose of Revival

2010-03-28T07:42:00.001-07:00

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Purpose of Revival
Norman P. Grubb

Revival Today
By Norman Grubb
August 1958

The Holy Spirit in the earthly Body of Christ has always been God's continuous answer to the assaults of Satan. He is now in His Body, ever seeking to release Himself in power through His people. And that is another way of speaking revival. We believe that God's answer to Satan today is constant, world-wide revival, and we do not believe this comes in some far-off event. Some of us are seeing Him working in revival power in our lives and those of others. It is no difficult thing. The Reviver always witnesses to the Blood. The Blood always cleanses from sin. Sin is always recognized when we call anything in our lives which is less than God's perfection, what He calls it, SIN, and no longer call it by some less humiliating name, such as infirmity, natural make-up, weak spot, nerves, difficult circumstances, or difficult neighbor.

To confess my sins is to call them what God calls them (for the word "confess" means to "speak the same thing") and the Blood never cleanses excuses, but always cleanses confessed sin. Conviction in the light of God, confessing, cleansing, cups running over - that is continuous revival. And when these continuous gracious dealings with the Lord in our daily lives are shared in fellowship with others, that is revival transmitted. It is as simple as that. Individuals and churches world-wide are beginning to experience and walk, this daily walk with Jesus, this revival walk with Him and one another.

Revival is as near to us as that; indeed it is in our heart and in our mouth, as Paul said. This is God's present-day answer to Satan and it is within reach of us all - to walk the revival way ourselves, to learn to walk it in two's and three's in our homes, to walk it as church communities and to pray for the immediate spread of it through the whole Church

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Notes From Norman - Prayer

2010-03-26T19:58:00.001-07:00

www.NormanGrubb.com
Prayer
Norman P. Grubb

Q. When you were in our area recently, one of the people at the fellowship meeting asked about prayer. You replied, "The God in you prays to the transcendent God." In the past, you have been quoted as saying, "I never pray." I know that there is a paradox here, but please explain what you mean.

A. A Prayer in the Spirit expressing His mind by us ("Praying in the Holy Ghost"-Jude 20; "The spirit of supplications"-Zech. 12:10). So it is He in us as us communing with the Father and the Son. When I say I don't pray, I am referring to the kind of prayer which is a formal duty. Paul says, "Pray without ceasing," so prayer can only be a continuity, a permanently inner relationship of communion, expressed in whatever inner or outer form the Spirit leads us.

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Notes From Norman - Two Natures

2010-03-25T22:00:00.003-07:00

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Two Natures
Norman P. Grubb

May-June 1985 Union Life
Q. Do Christians have evil tendencies? How do you explain the apparent downward pull in the born-again person? What about Paul's Romans Seven words: "sin that dwells in me," and "I see a law in my members warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members"? Please explain.

A. This is a big question to answer in a few words. Put shortly, we humans have no nature of our own. We are branches manifesting the fruit of a vine (Rom. 6:21, 22), and so our nature is to produce the fruit of the vine of which we are a member.
But, you ask, what about the downward pulls experienced by Christians? Temptations, according to James 1:13, are the pulls on our humanity-the normal flesh impulses of body or soul (physical or emotional). When we were in our former condition as branches of the Satanic vine, the pulls were from the Holy Spirit without to return to God (just as God "temped" Abraham-Genesis 22:1). Now in our fixed union with Christ as branch to Him our Vine, the outer pull on our flesh is Satan tempting us. We might even succumb to the temptation, and thus sin, finding our restoration as indicated in 1 John 1:9.
But the "pulls" do not mean that we have two natures, but, rather, that our humanity is created in its aliveness to "respond to environment." It expresses the one "deity" nature indwelling us, but it is also open to the temptation of the other spirit (see those who spirits named in 1 John 4:6).
Paul speaks of "sin that dwells in me" in the present tense of Romans 7:17, because he speaks as in the illusory condition of all believers, until by personal act of faith they move into the victory of Romans Eight. Paul exchanges his 7:17 statement of indwelling sin for the freedom of Romans 8:2. What he had once reckoned by faith (Rom. 6:11), he now realized in inner Spirit-knowing (Rom. 8:2). He finally recognized that the expressions of "sinful nature" which still appeared in him from time to time were the operations of, not he, but sin in him (7:17); and now he knew that it was "deceiving" him (7:11). Paul knew that "indwelling sin" had been cast out in Christ's death and resurrection, but he had to recognize that fact by personal faith before it would become experience.

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Daily Thought - The Abandonment of God

2010-03-25T22:00:00.001-07:00

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The Abandonment of God
Oswald Chambers
''God so loved the world that He gave . . . '' John iii. 16.
Salvation is not merely deliverance from sin, nor the experience of personal holiness; the salvation of God is deliverance out of self entirely into union with Himself. My experimental knowledge of salvation will be along the line of deliverance from sin and of personal holiness; but salvation means that the Spirit of God has brought me into touch with God's personality, and I am thrilled with something infinitely grater than myself, I am caught up into the abandonment of God. To say that we are called to preach holiness or sanctification, is to get into a side eddy. We are called to proclaim Jesus Christ. The fact that He saves from sin and makes us holy is part of the effect of the wonderful abandonment of God.
Abandonment never produces the consciousness of its own effort, because the whole life is taken up with the One to Whom we abandon. Beware of talking about abandonment if you know nothing about it, and you will never know anything about it until you have realized that John 3:16 means that God gave Himself absolutely. In our abandonment we give ourselves over to God just as God gave Himself for us, without any calculation. The consequence of abandonment never enters into our outlook because our life is taken up with Him.
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Moon (Canon SX10is 80x handheld, 3/25/2010)

2010-03-25T21:32:00.001-07:00

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Memories of Dad, Natalie & Mum (UK 2001)

2010-03-20T15:55:00.001-07:00

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Daily Thought - The Sword of Christ

2010-03-09T20:37:00.003-08:00

www.ChristAsUs.com
The Sword of Christ
Soren Kierkegaard
Christianity does not join people together. No, it separates them--in order to unite every single individual with God. And when a person has become such that he can belong to God and to God alone, he has died away from that which usually joins people together.
Every call from God is always addressed to one person, the single inidvidual. Precisely in this lies the difficulty and the examination, that the one who is called must stand alone, walk alone, alone with God. Hence, everything that makes its appearance statistically is not from above. If anyone construes this as a call, you can be sure it is from below.
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Notes From Norman - The Exchanged Life

2010-03-09T20:37:00.001-08:00

www.NormanGrubb.com
The Exchanged Life
Norman P. Grubb

Many Victorious Life teachers give a good dishful of Gal.2:20, and many are blessed, but I always knew from the first 'revelation' in Congo in 1924 that there was something radical about the "I am crucified" part of our great Gal. 2:20, and I saw but couldn't put it in clear form, and almost spoke as if we are Christ! So my earlier writings had not got it FULLY CLEAR THAT THE "exchanged life" is not exchanging Christ for self, which is the 'normal' teaching, but exchanging Christ for SATAN, and this beautiful created self BUT ONLY AS CONTAINER AND CHOOSER (John 7:17), and then ALL THE REST IS HE, HE, HE, but starting with the false "He" - that VAST, VAST LIE which has "drowned" still most of even the redeemed!
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The Big Lie and the Big Truth

2010-03-09T05:22:00.001-08:00

Subject: Re: The Big Lie and the Big Truth

Wonderful David. Self-improvement is defining oneself by what one DOES. Being a Son or Daughter in the Kingdom of God is defined by who we ARE. The devil's ploys are always out to cause us to think we have to become something else or do something else to 'fix us up' to what we are now. Who hasn't been through this?

Love Nancy

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His Story IN us

2010-03-07T19:42:00.001-08:00

Subject: His Story

This morning, for the umpteenth time, I suggested to Jesus that He make his return. “Come on, haven’t we waited long enough?” “Hasn’t there been enough sorrow and grief?”

His answer - “I’m not done with my story.” “History” is HIS-STORY – nothing more, nothing less.

It occurs to me that all His-Story is already written. And, we already know, at least the major points. We only walk as He walked. The story and the path are already in the Book.

Then I thought about the “if-then” propositions. Christianity, as a religion, is full of “if you do this, then that will happen.” It troubles me a bit that occasionally even Jesus mentioned an “it-then”.

But, the greatest and highest “IF-THEN” ever is “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.” (John 12.32) And it is true. He has been lifted up. He now and always has, drawn ALL to Himself. What do we do? Just know it is true. Just walk in that truth – and be bold in that truth.

Love, David

Sent: Tuesday, March 02, 2010 9:08 PM

Subject: Re: His Story

"as He returns again and again living in men and women, as He has done for the last two thousand years!"

"He returns again and again living in men and women"

"in men and women"

"IN"

"Christ IN you, the hope of Glory" (COL 1:27)

HE (JESUS) RETURNS IN US, AS US, THRU US.....

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The Big Lie and the Big Truth

2010-03-07T19:40:00.001-08:00

The Big Lie and the Big Truth

Organized Christianity – high church, Low Church, Pentecostal, evangelical – whatever – the Big Lie is pervasive.

Satan is the author of lies – and the father of lies. But he is not an independent operator. Check Job 1.6.

Let me sum up the Big Lie as told by the evil one, “Christianity is a self-improvement plan.”

The reality is that “as He is so are we in this world”. There is no room for self-improvement only realization of your person as an expression of Him.

The corollary to the Big Lie is that Satan spends all his time creating evil in the world – which we must fight.

The reality is that Satan spends little time creating evil (check Isaiah 45.7) and most of his time getting Christians to waste their time on self-improvement so they never get to the “work of the kingdom”.

So what is the “work of the kingdom”? However you define it for yourself it will start with rest. Rest in the truth of the reality that He lives his life in you, as you, to your world. No self-improvement, only self-expression.

You are the Savior of your world. That is the Big Truth. Don’t be afraid of that. Renew your mind to that reality. Go be -

Love, David

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Daily Thought - Wretchedness

2010-02-16T04:51:00.001-08:00

Wretchedness

Watchman Nee
''O wretched man that I am!'' cried Paul, ''who shall deliver me from this body of death?'' There is nothing more musical in the ears of the Lord. This cry is the most spiritual and the most scriptural cry a man can utter. He only utters it when he knows he can do nothing, and gives up making any further resolutions. At last he discovers there is no use in his making up his mind any more.
Have you despaired of yourself, or do you hope that if you read and pray more you will be a better Christian? Bible reading and prayer are not wrong, and God forbid that we should suggest that they are, but IT IS WRONG TO TRUST EVEN IN THEM FOR VICTORY. ''Who shall deliver me?'' ''WHO?'' Hitherto he has looked within for some THING; now his hope is in a Person. He no longer puts forth self-effort; all his expectation is now in Another.
We know that justification is ours through the Lord Jesus and requires no work on our part, but we think sanctification is dependent on our own efforts. We know we can receive forgiveness only by entire reliance on the Lord; yet we believe we can obtain deliverance by doing something ourselves. We fear that if we do nothing, nothing will happen. After salvation, the old habit of ''doing'' reasserts itself and we begin our old self-efforts again. Then God's word comes afresh to us: ''It is finished.'' He has done everything on the Cross for our forgiveness and He will do everything in us for our deliverance. In both cases HE is the doer. ''It is God that worketh in you.'' God wants to do all the work, for he must have all the glory. If we did some of it, then we could claim some of the glory ourselves. But God must have it all. He does all the work from beginning to end.
taken from Normal Christian Life by Nee-To-Sheng.
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Notes from Norman - His Holy Commission

2010-02-16T04:50:00.001-08:00

His Holy Commission

Norman P. Grubb
But-I say this in passing, brothers and sisters-that's why I am always so dead terrified of this professionalism. I am so dead terrified of us missions. I'm terrified of the W.E.C. I'm terrified of the T.E.A.M. I'm terrified of the whole lot because we go dead in no time at all with organization. You overload yourselves with professionalism, and you become people who are appointed by a mission, paid so much by them, told to do so many years of duty, and retire at such and such an age, and then go to heaven as quick as you can. And the thing becomes professionalism instead of a holy calling. Somehow or other, we who are in missions have to keep elbow-free and put our elbows in the committee members. Shove your elbows into your Board members and clear them out of the way. Try that! Get your secretaries and directors out of the way so that you can be free to follow. You're not a profession. I wonder if anybody of us will ever get truly free until they die on that.
Now some of you here don't truly follow God through because you are afraid of your denomination. That's a fact. There are some of you here who don't truly follow all the truth you know because your denomination would kick you out. There are some of you who are afraid to move because you might lose your status, or your salary, or something. You're bound! I wonder whether any of us will ever get free until something happens in our lives in which, in spirit, we are free to follow Jesus whether every mission in the world is against us. That doesn't make us disloyal. It makes you truly loyal in the end. But loyal with limitations, not unlimitedly loyal. You're only unlimitedly loyal to One. You're limitedly loyal to other people.
A deadly professionalism comes into the church of Christ, and I assure you that that's what kills every denomination one by one, one by one-a deadly professionalism. It becomes a paid business-under its laws and rules. I say, burn every book of rules we have. We're just bringing out a new "Principles and Practices." I've told the mission already the best thing to do is to chuck it into the wastepaper basket as soon as you get it, and forget all about it. This Word of God is the only principles and practices worth having. And the only One to order it is the One inside.
Karuizawa Japan Conference of 1954
Topic: "Saviourhood"

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Consciousness of Christ: the Why of Everything

2010-01-29T13:47:00.001-08:00

Consciousness of Christ: the Why of Everything

(Note: This is a repeat. This is wrapping up pretty much everything there is to say from my perspective. It may be worth a re-read. Yes, it's long, the first part maybe a bit technical, but the unsearchable riches of Christ, I believe, are here expressed! It was a feast for me to write it and may it be a sumptous feast for the hungry reader. More than one has told me it has been that for them.)

Consciousness of Christ: the Why of Everything

By Fred Pruitt

Someone recently wrote and asked me two questions: 1) By whose power did Adam and Eve decide to listen to Satan in the garden? and 2) Also in your book "Hearts of Flesh" you compare Abraham and Saul in that they were both doing God's work regardless of what it looked like - both were men of God. In other words, some Christians can look like a Saul and keep going down a road towards destruction and still be a Christian. Did I understand you correctly?

Here is the reply:

(This is a little different from what I usually write, and may not appeal to all readers. When I have spoken of these things like this in the past some have commented that I am too complicated. I apologize if some of this comes across that way. I believe the reader who perseveres all the way through will be satisfied -- at least I hope so.)

You have an interesting way of phrasing your first question -- "by whose power did Adam and Eve decide to listen to Satan in the garden? I don't think I've ever heard anyone phrase it that way before -- "by whose power."

So that's an easy answer, since there is no power except the power which is God. Satan is a misuse of the One Power, using in a sense the substance/being/existence of God Himself to create for himself in singularity, or dense concentration of self, or what I might call a vortex of sucking self, like a black hole -- a dark fire that has almost infinite heat but which emits no light or warmth, that exists only to feed itself by the consumption of everything that comes within its reach -- to use it all to feed and build up himself by the death and destruction of all.

God is also Consuming Fire, but only consuming in the sense that everything which He attracts into Himself for consumption is re-emitted as Light, Heat, and Life (Luke 20:18). This is because God has eternally determined to be Love, exhibited eternally by the Son in the form of a Lamb Slain forever in the center of the Eternal Godhead and Throne. Satan seeks to bring only death and is anti-life, whereas God's principle includes death, first of all in a sense in Himself when in His out-going to express Himself in the Son, He eternally dies to or says "NO" to that sucking self-for-self which seeks to live by feeding on the death of others so that it is supreme and without competition. Then by that death (Cross) or "NO" to self-seeking, He rises as the Son, whose eternal characteristic is to give His Life as a ransom and means of Life to others. Satan's principle is death only; God in Trinity's Principle is death AND resurrection, both death to self-seeking (by the Cross), and resurrection in the Deity out of "NO" to "YES," by which Giving-Life is out-splayed with infinite energy and infinite power to inseminate the Universe with Life unto Life. The motion of the resurrection out of death (from the lowest depths to the highest heights) is what fuels the dynamo that empowers everything that is. It is like an atomic explosion without destruction, but instead an infinitely energetic perpetual effluence of light and life in every direction.

So I would think the question, then, isn't really "whose" power it is, but where does their freedom come from that allows them to choose or follow the wrong path, or to disobey?

And the answer there is again the same. The Bible mentions liberty and freedom often, especially in the New Testament. God is Free and IS Freedom, so therefore freedom, like all things, originates in God and is first of all His principle. Freedom is having the option to choose between alternatives. We may have a limited set of alternatives, but freedom is the divine principle of personhood -- that which makes a person a person. A tree cannot choose anything for itself. Even a dog cannot do this. Because the type of choosing we are speaking of is the choice of what kind of person I'm going to be, and who I will be hooked up with.

What I say "Yes" to determines what I say "No" to, and visa versa. That "choice," as I explained above regarding the Deity, originated in God the Father in the eternal, so that eternally He has chosen or determined to be nothing but Love -- Life which does not seek its own good primarily (a "NO" to self-seeking), but preeminently the good of another (a "YES" to other-love). Satan made the eternal choice to be for himself, which is also an eternal trap because he became a caricature of True Self, by rejecting union with the Light and death to self-seeking, to live in what is really an unreality, a false fantasy, a self-delusion of himself as just himself, all by himself alone, an island of self, a closed-up fortress, having his own power, his own beauty, his own goodness, out of his own fire. Since like all sentient beings God created, he only exists to be a re-expression in limited or particular form of the Unlimited Universal Deity, but out of the same freedom by which God chose to be love, Lucifer/Satan chose to be only himself and reject Another to be his life, and thereby "fell."

So that is the same freedom, and the same power, and the same set of alternatives that confronted Adam and Eve and us all in our infancy and lack of consciousness. With this fundamental and important difference. The temptation of Adam and Eve was in the temporal, given them (with God of course knowing the outcome and MEANING IT) for their ultimate redemption and subsequent consciousness of their identity in God.

Now I haven't mentioned consciousness at this point, but God's desire to be the Son is not limited to the Eternal Trinity which is an infinite circumincession within Themselves of love loving by going out of itself to extend and propagate love. Love in not seeking itself, must instead propagate itself, expand itself, go out of itself. In other words, for love to love, there must be something for love to love and expand into. Therefore the Son must not be just the One Eternal Son, but that the Son might be reproduced and expanded into a family, the whole family being individual unique expressions of that One Son, Who is both the Eternal Object of the Father's Love, and IS the Eternal Father's Love.

Now this is what has created the tremendous tension in the universe, which Paul alludes to in Romans 8:18-22, i.e. the whole universe groaning and travailing, awaiting the final manifestation of the Sons of God. And this is about consciousness -- because for the Sons to be finally and fully manifest, they must know themselves as the Son in the sons, after having freely desired, sought and received the Sonship, raised by the Father/Son/Spirit into the full understanding and comprehension of the heights, depths, and fullness of Christ -- in them! Unto a perfect MAN, as Ephesians says, raised into the Head, which is Christ. MAN raised fully into CHRIST!

And that is WHY there was a fall and WHY there was the giving of the Law and WHY Israel, as God's lamb for the whole world, had to rise and fall, rise and fall, and WHY there had to be a Saul followed by a David, and WHY, ultimately, the Son of God had to come to be the Son of Man, and WHY there had to be a Calvary in space and time as there is an Eternal Lamb Slain in the heart of eternity, and WHY there had to be the time of the Gentiles and WHY, even though the promises have been given and fulfilled there HAD to be a time when it continues to look like He has forsaken His People and has delayed His Coming, and WHY even though we are even now recipients of the Promises we still, for this time, wander in sheepskins and goatskins and find in this world no continuing city. It is all part of this ultimate tension which will explode into that final manifestation of God as His Fully Formed and Conscious Sons to the glory and unbounded benefit of the entire universal creation!

There is coming a time, and it now is, when God is beginning to peel back the layers, to give understanding, to reveal the mysteries of the kingdom. Jesus said He could not speak plainly the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but must speak them in dark sayings and parables, in order to hide them from the "wise and prudent" and only reveal them unto "babes." All the stories of the Old Testament have this quality to them. While infantile Christians are arguing with "the world" and trying to convince those whose natural minds cannot see the things of God, that these things are literal histories or descriptions of the creation scientifically, in their zeal they are straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel. They miss the tremendous riches of Christ, redemption, and the New Birth revealed in the stories -- which are intended not just for information's sake, knowledge of the sake of knowledge, but for the purpose of CONSCIOUSNESS OF CHRIST, because as we see Him we know Him and these stories are all about HIS LIFE IN US.

Rather than focusing on Saul's behavior and whether he still attained heaven because of the way he turned out, as we all have at one time or another, the far greater riches are found in seeing Saul and David as counterparts of essentially the same man. And it is ALL ABOUT coming to consciousness. Because we are all like Jesus -- we learn obedience through the things we suffer (Heb 5:8), and we come to maturity (raised consciousness) by the exercise of the senses discerning good and evil (Heb 5:14). Not good and evil in the temporal "be good to be accepted" sense that the world knows, but good and evil in the ultimate sense, i.e., that which is God and that which is anti-God, and that the "knowing" of that is really coming to oneness with the truth -- as Adam "knew" Eve, became one flesh with her, so we "know" Christ in truth, and are One Spirit with Him. I've spoken much about what being "one" means elsewhere, so won't repeat that here.

There is a recurring theme in the Old Testament, which Jesus just summed up in, "The first shall be last, the last shall be first." You can see it beginning to be successively plainer in the Genesis stories; in Cain and Abel, Ishmael and Isaac, in Jacob and Esau, in Joseph and his brethren, in the generation of Israel born in Egypt which perished in the wilderness, and the generation born in the wilderness which went across the Jordan into the Promise, and so on. It is picked up again in Saul and David.

I can only briefly speak of it, because it is deep mystery but the Lord is unfolding it more and more day by day. This has been percolating in me for several years and I've tried to write and speak about it, but it is still fresh and unformed. So be patient with me.

First a bit about types and shadows. If we realize that the Scriptures were put together by the Holy Spirit for the revelation of Christ, and not thematically by men who were following an outline or plan, then we can also realize that they are not systematic in unfolding these mysteries. The mysteries of God are revealed by the revelation of the Spirit, not a systematic theology which always holds that a certain type remains the same type throughout. For instance, Esau in one sense by the Spirit represents fallen Adam whom God the Father (Old Isaac) would love to bless but cannot because he has spurned his birthright by selling it for a mess of pottage, as Adam traded his divine birthright (rights of the firstborn who gets the lion's share of the father's heritage) for an animal skin, and in other cases Esau represents the flesh which lusts against the things of the Spirit and therefore must be spurned. So the types change even within the life of a the same person. Sometimes Pharaoh represents God the Father, as in the story of Joseph, and sometimes he represents the devil who has stolen man and enslaved him, as the Pharaoh of Moses' time. Only the Spirit can reveal these things.

So then we come to Saul. You begin to see what is going on in the story when the people of Israel tell Samuel that they want a king, just like all the other nations around them have a king. In a way it is like Adam and Eve all over again, because they were under, at the time, the direct kingship of God, through the prophet and judge, Samuel. The prior years they had been the same -- no king, but a series of judges and rescuers in their ongoing battles with the Philistines and their on-again/off-again relationship with the Baals and idolatries. That might not seem like such a hunky-dory situation, but when they seek a king "like the other nations," God's reaction is pretty negative. He says they are rejecting him as King by wanting a king they can see, feel, touch, etc.

Remember, keep our eyes on the prize -- the goal here, for God and Israel (which God knows but Israel does not), is consciousness. Sons who know who they are by the exercise of their senses. In other words, they must find out by experience; they must know the wrong way in order to know the right way. And even though they were not very steadfast in their dealings with God under the judges -- they were always falling away and worshipping other gods, etc. -- still in essence they were under the kingship of God, Who they could not see -- they had to believe and follow Him in His invisibility, and in their dim and infantile consciousness, it was necessary that they reject this invisibility by which God kept them in their unconsciousness, and find a visible palpable king that would protect them from their enemies and make them great. All of this to the benefit of us all. Their lack of consciousness leads to our consciousness when we see.

So what's the first thing God does? He tells them what's what, but He honors their request. He gives them the kind of king that they, in their immaturity, think they want. He gives them a great-looking guy, who stands a head taller than everybody else. A man impressive to the flesh, and intimidating to their enemies. Someone they can put their hopes and dreams into, who will take care of all their needs, protect the land, and give them peaceful lives in security and prosperity. (Something which mankind is still doing, apparently!)

When we consider this spiritually in our own lives, when we come to God and do not yet know who we are, thinking it's about being good and obeying rules, etc., this "Saul" is who we want to reign over us. It is ourselves, our selves that we have always known ourselves to be, helped and improved by God and made into a fit and proper king. Impressive to our friends for our spirituality, and hopefully intimidating to our enemy, the devil. "Make me, Lord, be this and that. Here is this person that I am, Lord. O make me better, give me more love, more patience, more kindness." We want to stand up and be the one who is a head taller than everyone else. In our unconsciousness and immaturity, still having only a consciousness of flesh or independent self, we cannot help but think and pray this way. We do not know that we are praying for the kingship of a false hope, a wisp of self that is a persona the devil has created. Oh, our real self is in there somewhere, and there is the anointing of God, but God is a God who grants our desires, even those which are wrong sometimes for us, in order to bring us to the fullness of Himself by our failure. And that self, like Saul, must fail.

Because that self thinks that it is where the holiness resides. It is a presumptuous self, a self that takes upon itself the right to sacrifice, thinking, wrongly, that itself is the life of God, in control, the decider.

Now let's step back a moment and consider Saul. He is first of all, as above, "goodlier" than any other in Israel. He looks the part, and at first is humbled by the fact he has been chosen of God. And God puts His Spirit upon him, and anoints him king. Now, why is this so, if God already knew Saul was not going to work out, which of course He did know?

This is where this purpose of God to bring us into consciousness of our sonship begins to be revealed. Saul, in ourselves, as I said above, is the false image of ourselves that we are born with, that we know as ourselves all our lives even into our new birth into Christ, and God honors it, anoints it, blesses it, leads it, thus granting our desires in order to finally bring that self to its own self-destruction, as Saul at Gilboa fell on his sword before he was overrun by the Philistines. The first generation out of Egypt into the wilderness is the same. They are given the law and they all agree to keep the law, which of course they cannot do. They are presumptuous, rebelling against Moses who they think is no better than they. They complain. Everytime they are challenged they revert to their former selves they have always been, but are rescued by God anyway. Even after they refuse to go into the Promised Land the first time, afraid of the giants and great walled cities thereby receiving God's curse on their generation, by which they must all perish in the wilderness and never see the Promise, STILL God leads them by His Spirit in the form of a cloudy pillar by day and a fiery pillar by night. God honors them, cares for them, leads them by His Spirit, feeds them bread from heaven, gives them Christ in the form of water out of a rock, yet they cannot come to the Promise. They were born in Egypt and are perpetually in consciousness only flesh, so that they cannot touch the mountain of God.

And Saul is this same first generation, ourselves in false independence but which we in our wrong consciousness think is what and who God blesses and uses. And for a time God goes along with that. He blesses this false self, loves it, anoints it, even while it presumes upon itself its own deity. Not consciously in the sense that it believes it is God, but unconsciously in a de facto sense, because its lifelong independence is something it cannot part with, it MUST remain the chooser, the doer, the decider, thereby making itself as God. The false self created by reaching out and taking the fruit cannot change. It can only die.

Then David enters the story. Now David is the type of the new man, Christ in us, who first sprouts as a very small seed within us. At first Saul is delighted with David. David will serve him, will do his bidding, will kill his enemies. He is glad to have such a champion. But things change as Saul begins to see the handwriting on the wall. He senses David is going to replace him as king, and he cannot accept this. It is his own posterity he protects and lifts up, and, forgetting that he is a servant of the Lord God, he begins persecuting David who clearly is God's man. His favor toward David turns to anger as his visible presumption of taking the things of God to himself causes him to lose the favor of God, which is transferred to David. Even though David comforts him with his songs when he is overtaken by his melancholia, which happens more and more often (this is the beginning of Romans 7 struggle), still he begins to hate David more and more. And so the struggle begins, with Saul some days loving David and some days trying to kill him. When he is confronted with his ill treatment of David and with David's continuing loyalty to him, even after David has been anointed to be the next king, Saul repents over and over, but he cannot change. He "rededicates," but, he still wants to be king. He still wants the people to follow him, to love him, to recognize that HE is their leader and is greater than David. This is a perfect picture of the wrong self that we have been deceived into believing all our lives IS our self. It is gearing up to know and finally accept its own death, but this struggle between Saul and David, between the mind of the flesh and the mind of the Spirit, is what finally brings him to that final self-destruction on Mt. Gilboa. Because finally it cannot do what it is supposed to do -- defeat the enemies of the Lord. They are finally too much for Saul, and overrun him, so that he becomes the "O wretched man," and falls on his own sword. He takes the death that must be, "I am crucified with Christ," so that "it is no longer I, but Christ" can then take the throne.

Looking at it from David's perspective, this true man, this man who we really are in Christ, which is Christ in us as one with us, as I said above, starts in humble beginnings. He is the man of the Spirit, who we hardly know at first. He is ourselves, but our unified self in Christ, and because we are still carnal in our minds he is as if he is separate from us. At first we delight in him, but like Saul, we become suspicious of him. He is too free. He is dangerous. We are afraid to let him live.

David, unlike Saul, takes nothing to himself or for himself. Though he is continually tempted to reach out and take the kingdom from Saul, he knows he cannot touch Saul, for he is still God's beloved, still the "anointed of the Lord," and he cannot reach out and take for himself. Even though he knows that the kingdom is his, still he must receive it as a gift, and not as something he presumptuously takes. He becomes Saul's secret helper, in that he protects the borders of Israel from marauders, from the Philistines. Little by little the people begin to come to him, though he finds himself hiding in caves and in the desert. Many of his followers urge him to kill Saul and take the kingdom, and though he easily could do this, David continually refuses, knowing that if the kingdom is to be his, and he does know it, it will be given as a promise and a gift of grace, and that he won't gain it by his own hand.

That is akin to Abraham's story with Ishmael and Isaac. God gave the promise which was to be fulfilled in Sarah, but Abraham and Sarah decided to hurry things up a bit and bring a son by Hagar. Like Saul, God does bless Ishmael and has a plan for him, but he is not the son of Promise, but of the presumption of the flesh. All this is for our understanding and consciousness of this same point: the first birth, Adam, Cain, Ishmael, Esau, Reuben, the generation born in Egypt, Saul, etc., all point at the man of the flesh who is deceived into thinking he is the ruler and should reign on earth, while the second birth, Christ (2nd Adam), Abel, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, the generation born in the wilderness, David, etc., all point at the new man, Christ in us as one with us, who as the Stone Cut out without Hands, smashes the image of iron and clay -- our false selves in independence, so that that Stone fills the whole earth (Dan 2:34,35), and we finally recognize Christ in us as All in all, and therefore, as us.

This is the mystery of Christ revealed in simple stories by the Holy Spirit, that we might know that He does the same in us, to accomplish the same, to move us in consciousness from Cain to Abel (Christ Who died) and Seth (Christ Who rose), from Ishmael to Isaac, from Esau to Jacob, from Saul to David, that we might come in our understanding into the fullness of Him who fills all in all, in and through ourselves. All this is the fulfillment of Galatians 2:20, told over and over and over throughout the scriptures, because it is really all there is.

Once Christ is formed in us in consciousness, then we stand up as David, as Moses, as Paul, as the fathers John spoke of, living out of the eternal water of life that we now recognize flows out of us, not by anything we have done, could do, should do, but by the grace of the One Who favors us, WHo is pleased with us, Who sees us as "the beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased ... hear ye Him!"

It is the inner mystery of the whole Scripture. It's all about Christ in us and how he comes to fullness in us. It is not something we instigate, make happen, help along, but solely and purely grace in action by His Spirit Who has come to dwell in us, his human temples, making us fruitful branches on the Vine which is Christ.

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Hearts of Flesh 2

2010-01-19T18:30:00.001-08:00

The Secret Name
(2nd Chapter of Hearts of Flesh)
I have this misty image that is always with me. I am a young child, and I have a fever. In the delirium of the fever, when consciousness is swirling between dream, sleep, and wakefulness, I hear a voice that seems to come from a distance, from an unseen and unperceived source. It comes from somewhere beyond the swirl in my mind. I’m only vaguely conscious of the swirl, since I am caught up in the fever and simply living in it without will, being carried along on its waves.
The voice seems the most familiar voice in all the world; and it's a loving voice, comforting, soothing me in my fevered confusion. Though not quite asleep, not quite awake and not quite aware, still in that dimness I can hear the voice saying only one thing -- my name.
“Fred… Fred… Fred.”
Finally I am aware enough to know that it's my mother, speaking only my name. I can only barely comprehend who she is, but it doesn’t matter that my mind can't grasp the fullness of who she is, because her voice is enough, just saying my name, and by her voice she sends peace into my fever
…
That image has stayed with me all these years, and more and more it has grown in me that God speaks in us in this way. He speaks out of a mist, out of the unknown, out of the unfamiliar, as a distinct voice and within all the other voices.
From Him we hear our “secret name” that no one else can hear. Each of us, in the center of our own existence, where no one else can be, is intimately alone with God. And the reason hearing our Name is secret is because He speaks our Name in the secret place, where only He and I are, and we cannot speak of that place, nor describe it.
When we hear Him, He is calling our names from out of the mist of the confusion and chaos of the world. When He says our names, He speaks our individual lives into existence.
“Samuel, Samuel!”
“Speak, Lord, thy servant heareth.”
He has spoken each of our names from eternity. He has seen each of us in His mind and heart and desired to live in the midst of everything that we are, by walking in us and being our God. And so with the force of a billion-megaton atomic bomb, in a rushing heat of eternal Divine desire, His Love spun the universe out of His Word. He did it so that He could fulfill His own pleasure, by being the fire in our inward parts, the light in our minds, and the love that comes out of our deepest center.
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Hearts of Flesh 1

2010-01-19T18:22:00.001-08:00

This below is the Introduction & Chapter One of "Hearts of Flesh."

Introduction
What is contained in the following pages is not a systematic presentation of Christian religious principles or teaching. We have our basis there, but from that foundation we move into what is for many the rest and peace of God, which we find when we experience the Living God as our “personal” inner Life. This is what we discover when we consciously move into living in union with God as the source of, and everyday moment-by-moment sustenance of, our own self and everything else of life.
This book has been written from a perspective of life in Jesus Christ, but anyone, regardless of confession, may find something joyously familiar here, because “Christ in us” is a universal truth, and may be known by any of us in everything that is.
That truth is this:
“The mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to his saints … which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”  (Col 1:27)

There are no principles presented here to memorize and start practicing. There are no instructions whatsoever except one: to believe God.
I read a story a long time ago about a man who was walking somewhere in a light mist, so light that it was almost unnoticeable and he gave it no mind. When he got to where he was going, he realized he had become soaking wet.
That is what the kingdom of God is like.
May you look and find yourself soaking wet as well.

Hearts of Flesh

Someone once said that the first time his son’s toy truck broke he realized that his son was beginning his acquaintance with the Man of Sorrows. It made him want to tear his heart out, but at the same time he knew it had to be, and that the end result would one day be overwhelming joy.
Paul said that the sign of Christ in us, rather than the rote keeping of the Law, is that we would have hearts of flesh, instead of hearts of stone. (2 Cor 3:3; Ez11:19)
A heart of flesh has known what it means to have no hope. It has wallowed in its aloneness and fear of the dark. It knows disappointment, failure and barrenness, and more than once perhaps has wished it could die and be no more.
But this heart has also found light in the furthest parts of darkness, unexpectedly, seemingly undeserved, but nonetheless certain, solid and perceptible in the substance of faith. In its rising the heat of that light melts the cold stone of our hearts, changing them to soft, innocent, guile-free hearts of warm, loving flesh.
Then  -- we have become flesh instead of stone, and our hearts, through joy and sorrow, have been penetrated through and through with love that spills out of us like water.
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Notes From Norman - Sin is Illicit Love

2010-01-14T21:43:00.001-08:00

Sin is Illicit Love
Norman P. Grubb

Because we always follow our love, that is why you cannot help people on the act level. Now many young people have come to me and unburdened their hearts. They have secret impurity in their lives. They can't conquer secret abuse in their lives. And I have said to them, "Brother, you won't conquer that on the act level. You'll conquer it on the love level." The trouble at bottom is, you love to do it but you won't face it. Now you have to have that love transferred into hate. You have to have God's holy hatred. "Thou hast loved righteousness and hated iniquity." God has a hatred. And you have to learn that, the moment the desires first come to you and you want to begin to practice evil practices, to say, "I've no business to have that love." And then God gives you the grace to turn it to hate. It is as quick as lightning.
That's what resisting the devil is. You see that word; it comes in verse 7 of chapter 4, "resist the devil." That is how you resist the devil. "Resist the devil and he will flee from you." To illustrate that a little further, let me tell you something I learned in Africa. Tomorrow morning I shall probably tell you a few more things I learned in Africa recently. But one lesson I learned was how the people learn to walk closely with God. Now I lived and worked in Africa in a time when the people hadn't learned to live so closely with God. And in those days, those early days, our tragedy was sin in the open which had to be judged. You would have a fine young evangelist and his wife but you didn't know what was going on inside. But one day there would be an adultery committed and your heart would be broken by the fact that some fine fellow had gone into adultery. Of course the church had to judge him, excommunicate him, and maybe even lose him. But that wasn't the beginning of the sin. The beginning was way down inside where you didn't see it.
Karuizawa Japan Conference of 1954
Topic: "Temptation"

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Daily Thought - Intercession

2010-01-14T21:41:00.001-08:00

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Intercession
Norman P. Grubb
''You will be for me a kingdom of priests'' - Exodus 19:6.
The highest vocation for which God has destined man has not changed through the centuries. When He was preparing a peculiar people to be His agent of world redemption, He told Moses that the true sign that He had sent him to rescue them from Egypt would be what He would say to them when they reached Mount Horeb. Evidently, therefore, the important point would be His commission to them. That would be the way they were to serve Him in the future. And what did He say to them? He reminded them of the way He had delivered them from their oppressors and brought them to Himself ''on eagles' wings,'' to be His peculiar treasure (although His eye and heart were really on all peoples, for ''all the earth is Mine''), and that His purpose was for them to be a ''kingdom of priests'' (Exodus 19:46).
Priests are not priests for their own benefit, but for others. Thus if the whole of Israel was to be a kingdom of priests, it could only have been as intercessors for a lost world. It was for that reason, doubtless, that when God gave them this calling He added the words, ''for all the earth is Mine.'' Not a specially selected number to be priests among them, but all to be priests. That is of great significance. And not only priests, but ''a kingdom of priests,'' called by Peter, when applying this statement to the church, ''a royal priesthood.''
- The Liberating Secret

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Daily Thought - Disarm Hostility

2010-01-12T20:57:00.003-08:00

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Disarm Hostility
Henry W. Longfellow
If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each person's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.
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Notes From Norman - Sexual Defeats on the Mission Field

2010-01-12T20:57:00.001-08:00

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Sexual Defeats on the Mission Field
Norman P. Grubb

I tell you that many of the breakdowns of the mission field are due to sex frustration or sex defeat. Many, many young people are still under private habits of self abuse. I know that when they come as students to our headquarters they still are. And some of these things come back on the mission field. There is homosexuality that goes on the mission field-woman with woman and man with man among missionaries -not to mention fornication and adultery. I tell you we need to face these things. We need to face them. First of all, we will get the thing in its perspective if we realize that the sex instinct is a dominant instinct and it will always be an instinct. And there are mighty few of us who will not be immediately attracted by sex. I can't speak that from the women's point of view, but I can from the men's. Most men are immediately attracted by sex. And we tend immediately to look at something sexual. If there is something showing about a woman's figure, we tend to look. We tend to look at an advertisement that exposes a woman. All that kind of thing. It's our nature. Because a man has a strong sex instinct. Women have their own ways as I say. Now we have to face it. That is not wrong, but to follow it is wrong. So I have to learn to differentiate between the first attraction and retaining the attraction. That's the point.
Karuizawa Japan Conference of 1954
Topic: "Temptation"

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Compassion: A Project for Awareness

2010-01-12T19:14:00.001-08:00

This film was made by Natalie Parker with the support and encouragement of the Humane Society of Atchison, Kansas.
The music belongs to Michael Brook.

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Penetrating to the Root by Fred Pruitt

2010-01-12T16:08:00.001-08:00

Penetrating to the Root

By Fred Pruitt

It is the definition of sin that needs updating for all of us. People think "sin" is stuff we do or don't do, evil deeds or lack of good deeds, etc. But sin is from a spiritual source and that is what makes it sin. That is why I could say I do not see you in error the other night because you are not OF the spirit of error. We are OF whatever spirit that drives us. So a man's works may be "good works" but his spirit is held captive by the spirit of error and so, while we do not repudiate good works from anyone, we also may recognize the source of good works may be the spirit of sin. So sin is the "sin spirit." Righteousness, conversely, is the "righteousness spirit" within us. Bottom line, both "spirits" are spirit persons and each person is the originator of sin or righteousness. This is VITAL. It is the reason why we cannot just change our deeds or gain "knowledge" to attain salvation: first, because "salvation" is not "something" but SOMEONE (Christ), and secondly because it is impossible for us to do it except He does it in us.

That is why many other world spiritual philosophies, though they has many beautiful and wonderful truths in them, cannot gain the kingdom of heaven for us, because for many it is merely a matter of making our way out of ignorance (which is their reason for the state of man) through good works, e.g., the 8-fold path to Buddhahood. All humanistic philosophies, gnosticism, etc. have this as their basis. Our problem, they say, is we just don't know our own innate "goodness" and if we know it we can live from it.

Many Christians accuse us of saying this, but miss that it is ONLY through the Cross and the shed blood and broken body of Jesus that this is made available to us, and then by His resurrection through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in us.

So deliverance from "sin" is not just a change of deeds, but a change of persons within us, from Satan to Christ. The religious mind, whether "Christian" or some other, doesn't really grasp this, and therefore tries to attain salvation or being "pleasing" to God by ordering our lives according to set patterns and certain deeds, and therefore fails, and often creates the very thing it seeks to avoid, self-righteousness rather than the righteousness which is God's alone but which he imputes to us in the Son.

So I think it important to penetrate to the ultimate root, rather than just "religion." This sort of "religion" is a symptom of the problem, but not the problem itself. The problem itself is the lie in all of humanity, "independent self mindedness," which is the chief lie, but a lie which is real to us until it is destroyed by the LIght of Christ who Himself brings it to nothing when He shines in us. But it is a lie which at some point we must become conscious so that in our consciousness or understanding we see that it is departed from us and in fact never was the case. We were never independent selves doing our own thing, but were always either a container of wrath or mercy, a temple indwelt by an idol-god or now the temple of Christ through the Holy SPirit.

So we always go for the root, not just the stem, when getting out the weeds! "The axe is laid to the root of the tree," said John the Baptist, and He was speaking of the Redeemer who had come to cut out the root -- Satan -- who had hidden himself everywhere -- in the religious mind, in the good works of man, as well as in the blatantly evil things -- even making mankind believe that he doesn't exist at all, that it's a silly thing to believe in -- thus making US the responsible parties (we are responsible in our cooperation but not in its origins), as evil always does, shifts the blame to someone else while proclaiming its own good intentions. Like the serpent in the Garden who seemed to be a "friend" to Eve, giving her some much needed advice to help her become "wise as gods, by implying the Lord God was holding out on her, and then subtly undermining the clear Word Eve well knew, "Ye shall not surely die."

Again, legalism, moralism, ethics, humanism, aren't the problems per se, but the spirit behind them and the lie that fuels it -- independent self, i.e., we are only ourselves alone and we can add to or improve ourselves to become "wise as gods." That IS moralism, ethics, or legalism in a nutshell, but we must penetrate to the bottom and find the snake hissing there. Shining the light of Christ in us and ONLY CHRIST IN US, he slithers away as fast as he can to any hiding place he can find, which is where anyone will believe his lies.

But Christ has overcome Him fully, and this foul snake has no more place in us, and we can now say, as did Jesus, "the prince of this world comes, but he has nothing in me."

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Notes From Norman - Singleness & Marriage on the Mission Field

2010-01-11T19:41:00.003-08:00

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Singleness & Marriage on the Mission Field
Norman P. Grubb

The single woman who has gone through is the finest missionary on earth. Because she has suffered as we haven't. You married men and women be careful of selfishness. I never like to see, in the company of two or three, husbands always sitting by wives. "Oh darling this and darling that." I leave mine behind. It's far the best thing to do. My wife and I have an understanding. I'm not first in her life-I'm about a bad number three. Jesus Christ is first, the children are second, and I'm forgotten. She is not first in my life, Jesus Christ is, and then the children have to fit in somewhere. And she has to fit in nowhere. Get out of this business of "lovey, dovey" stuff! Be soldiers. Every missionary ought to be a soldier, the husband as much as the wife and the wife as much as the husband. A lot of the illnesses of husbands come about by the dear wife saying, "Oh, you poor dear, you are so tired." Of course that makes him tired. And, "Oh dear wife you must be looked after." We can get noble single women to go anywhere for Jesus alone, but if it's a wife! "Oh no I couldn't leave my wife alone there. Oh dear no, no!" Somebody might come in and attack her or something. Well, let her be attacked for Jesus' sake. It won't hurt. Can't we do a little soldiering for Jesus? Our soldiers fight and die; can't we fight and die for a higher army?
So you husbands and wives watch this lovey-dovey business. At least keep it in secret. And not more than one minute a day! And when we are in a community, be in a community. Don't make the single one feel that there is something special about you two, and that the other one has to fit in as best she can. That is why I always have a deep sympathy for single women. They have a battle that only eternity will reveal. I'll never forget a fine missionary whom I met the last time I was in Africa. She was about 50. She stirred my heart when she said, "Brother, I never got through until God showed me that the sin (she called it a sin; I think she wrongly used the word there) I had deep down and unconquered was my desire for marriage." But it wasn't a sin. What she meant was that deep down in her heart there was resentment, a certain resentment that she hadn't a partner in life. But she said, "When I realized that, I looked it in the face and saw that this was God's purpose for me. I took it to the cleansing Blood and had real deliverance." And that's some deliverance! After all, I've had a wife for 4 and 30 years, so I can't talk. That is why I say single missionaries are first line and all the rest of us are second line missionaries. Look up I Cor. 7 if you don't know what I mean.
Karuizawa Japan Conference of 1954
Topic: "Temptation"

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Daily Thought - Valley High

2010-01-11T19:41:00.001-08:00

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Valley High
Burt Rosenberg
Filled with the power that made Van Gogh great,
The Muse's excuses abuse then abate,
Abiding abandonment,
In between eloquent
Impressions & sessions
Of learning too late
That every cliche was right all along,
While cleverness,
Ever less,
Longs to belong
To that which don't fade, or falter, or flee,
Or flail, or fail to be fragrantly free
From swings and narrows of fortunes outrageous,
While wings of new sparrows spring up courageous,
But then find they fall into paying the price
That is charged when you've barged
Into betting on life
That is played with dice thrown down like a gauntlet,
thrown out like a challenge,
thrown up like a lunch,
thrown in like a towel,
thrown over like a lover who's lost her allure,
And makes you hunger for less and makes way to make sure
That every surrender submits to the purge
That leaves the serene between numbness and surge,
For a change from a sorry sight to behold,
Into Light, through the dark starry night of the soul.
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Notes From Norman - Temptation - Sexual Desire & Condemnation

2010-01-10T19:56:00.001-08:00

Temptation - Sexual Desire & Condemnation
Norman P. Grubb

Now the point I am trying to get at is that many get under condemnation because they feel sex desire. We have to face this as so often many people are stimulated on the mission field, possibly because of the climate or the loneliness, or because the devil is so rampant on a foreign mission field, in a non-Christian country, or maybe because of the habits and ways of the people. You have desires stimulated that you thought you never had perhaps, or which you thought had disappeared. And some people get under terrible condemnation. I spoke to a middle-aged sister in distress, a godly missionary. When I was home recently she spoke to me. She opened herself up. She spoke of unbearable condemnation that she had because she couldn't bear herself. She is a nurse working with a doctor, a single nurse and I suppose the doctor is a married man. I don't know how, but in the course of their working, their hands sometimes touched and she got a thrill out of it. And she thought that she was a filthy creature. Oh, no, sister; you are under false condemnation. You can't help responding sexually but you must take every means to see that you don't deliberately do it. Probably in a case like that you must take some means to see that you don't touch his hand, but in a professional situation like that you can't always help yourself. You work for a doctor and these things are bound to happen. Just jump on it, that's all. Don't take condemnation. You can't help a sex desire going out in that direction because it is a natural desire. All you need to see is that the moment you see that it is being attracted in the wrong direction, cut!
I speak of that strongly because it is deep in us; deep in us. We have to do something about handling our natural desires. We men are, of course, far better off (I'm always on the side of the women) because we can search about and find a wife. Of course, women have ways of searching too! But you know, as I said before and say again, I think the noblest missionaries on earth are the single people who walk alone with God and become married to the Lord Jesus Christ, and find their children in the Spirit. It may not always be because they want to, because they are human-we are all human. The natural human instinct in every one of us is marriage. Of course it is. So there is a real battle when you don't have marriage. You are human. You have the natural sex set up which we all have. I wonder if Heaven won't reveal that the greatest victories in history are the victories of noble, godly women who could have married just like that at home but they went to places where there was no husband for them. And they went through with God through the lonely years until He took the place of their loneliness and they were married to the Lord and produced their spiritual children.
Karuizawa Japan Conference of 1954
Topic: "Temptation"

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Daily Thought - The Imprisoned Splendor

2010-01-10T19:33:00.001-08:00

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The Imprisoned Splendor
Robert Browning
Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise
From outward things, whate're you may believe.
There is an inmost center in us all,
Where truth abides in fullness; and around
Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in.
This perfect clear perception -- which is truth
A baffling and perverting carnal mesh
Binds it and makes all error and to KNOW
Rather consists in opening out a way
Whence THE IMPRISONED SPLENDOUR may escape
Than in effecting entry for a light
Supposed to be without.
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Toward A Divine Nature Understanding by Fred Pruitt

2010-01-10T17:17:00.001-08:00

Toward A Divine Nature Understanding
by Fred Pruitt
From an email exchange:
I won't wait for an answer to this, but I would like to start by asking you this question which you can answer for yourself -- why are you wanting to know about one nature vs. two nature doctrines? Is it for some purely academic reason, that is, just which is the "right" way to interpret scripture, or is your desire coming from something more personal than that? I mean, are you PRESSED somehow to NEED to know this? Because the answer to this both does not come as an academic premise nor is it found as merely an academic answer, that is, something you need to know in order to score well on a test in school.
This whole truth came about through the desperation of one man's journey, the Apostle Paul, who came to a very real and existential point of desperation whereby he cried, "O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me?" I think that is why this is issue is so confusing to so many and there are so many different viewpoints of Paul's writings, because unless one comes within himself as a believer to this same struggle against "indwelling sin" (Rom 7:17), and then to the same point of final desperation, i.e., having nowhere else to go, no solution except more misery it seems, having no more joy in life except he finds some respite in his struggle, then I do not think one can really find in a real sense this answer. It is something the Holy Spirit works in our spirits and inner knowing first, and often the outer conscious mind is left out in the cold to flail about in fear until some light breaks through. But we MUST have that light break through -- something which we simply cannot do ourselves but which MUST come from God!
Really, to me, the discovery of truth cannot be like a battle of two gunslingers, each armed with his six-gun full of scriptures or his view of scriptures, where they do battle and the one with the most scriptures on his side wins, or the one who has the most convincing arguments for what the scriptures mean. No, this must come from deep within us, where God dwells -- we must know the Spirit is our teacher, and that He will lead us into all truth, which is Christ, not only through the words of scripture, but through the circumstances of life which will give flesh to the Word we have believed. That said, let's get on with this.
Though I do not know Greek or Hebrew nor any other language except English and therefore am at the mercy of the translators of the many versions of the Bible into English, in all my reading I have never read in scripture that there is a purely "human nature." (I will tell you I primarily use the King James but helped by many others, too.) The only "natures" referred to in scripture are the "nature of wrath" (Eph 2:3) and the "divine nature." (2 Pet 1:4).
This is the basis for our saying man has only one nature -- at a time. Before the new birth, we all participated in the nature of wrath and did the "lusts of our father, the devil." (Jn 8:44). We were of the nature of "self-for-self," that is, we were naturally inclined to do things in our own separated will and false consciousness of independent self, for the benefit of ourselves, whether good works (trying to be good or pious or religious) or plainly evil works. Either way, at bottom, we were for ourselves as primary.
That does not mean we were totally out of God's sight and hearing, because as we see from the first moment of the Fall in the Garden, Adam "heard" the Lord God calling him. So we are not so far gone into the kingdom of wrath as to have become wholly devils as Satan and his legions are. But we are held captive by him, usually unwittingly, because he has convinced us, starting with our first parents, that we are just ourselves alone (independent selves) doing good or evil, which is the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. And also, God left His calling card in all of us, the Seed of the Woman (Gen 3:15), the "light that lights every man that comes into the world." (John 1:9).
This is parenthetical, but some have actually parted with me because I state to me what the scriptures state, that even in our fallen condition, Christ is still at the heart (though unknown) of very man. The reason why I say this, not just because I believe scripture to say this, is that "deep calls unto deep" (Ps 42:7), that is, there must be something in man of God in order for man to be able to hear and respond to God. We are not yet totally out of his kingdom while we are caught in this trap of the "Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil." There is still some faint whisper of divinity within us, enough in us that the little flame can be fanned into a fire that may burst into Christ, when or if we respond to the call. God calls all men to Him, (John 12:32), and all may not respond, but except there be some "deep" in us to respond to the "deep" of God, we could not hear and respond to Him, even as the devils can no longer hear Him, except in eternal wrath and judgment. Even Paul takes the liberty to call the unredeemed Athenians who heard him on Mars Hill, "the offspring of God." So if we are God's offspring, even in our pre-redeemed state, there must of necessity be something of God in us, for no one has an offspring without receiving something of the parent within it -- the "Seed" of the parent, whether a daffodil, apple, duck, lion, human being, or God. The visible manifests in parable form the invisible, and therefore we can see that each "seed" brings forth its life, and the "seed" of God must be somehow within us, perhaps faint and hardly an ember, but still there buried under the layers of the lie in which we are trapped. (2 Tim 2:26).
But it is plain, even that being the case, that we are trapped in the nature of wrath and we live our lives "according to the prince of the power of the air, the "spirit that works in the children of disobedience." That is or was the state of all mankind since Adam. Now, many call that an "Adamic nature," but I take issue with that, because the nature does not come from Adam, but from the one who entered Adam, and through Adam all of his offspring. That is, the serpent became for all of us our inner motivator of life, our inner director, and to repeat what Jesus told the Pharisees, it was "his lusts" we did. We were part and parcel of the spirit of error, deceived and deceiving others in our false independence and own-willfulness.
It is vital to see this if we are to move into total liberty. We are all children of Adam first, which simply means human, earthly, of the earth. But that is not the determining factor of our lives. It is spirit which is the inner director of flesh/earth, and as we remain in the spiritual life we inherited from the first Adam, living according to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, we remain children of wrath, even as Adam and Eve became when they took the fruit. But the way back was made immediately to them in the symbol of the Second, Redeeming Adam, in the "seed of the woman" who would crush the head of the serpent. Spoken in the form of a dark (to the understanding) parable, but nevertheless the Light of Truth when one's eyes are opened to see that even there in the moment of the Fall the Redeemer appeared on the scene, to be finally and fully revealed in Jesus Christ in the fullness of time.
But in order to demonstrate that the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil could not possibly save man, that he could not by "knowing good and evil" become "wise as gods," man had necessarily to walk that road. And we all do walk that road, until by the Spirit's intervention something happens in us where we realize our need for something or someone greater than or outside our independent minds to come through and rescue us.
Now, before this gets too long and becomes a book, let me skip to the "divine nature." Peter tells us that we have now the "divine nature" and that in that "nature," that is, in what has entered us and has become for us NATURE, that is, what is now "natural" to us, we have everything we need, EVERYTHING, which pertains to life and godliness. It's ALL within us.
The Bible makes many such illustrations of this one truth -- that we WERE children of wrath and did by NATURE the lusts of our father the devil, and now we are children of the "divine nature" and that now it is "natural" to us to do the works of God.
Some of the Bible pictures are the vine/branch picture in John 15. Jesus refers to Himself as the True Vine, which presupposes a "false" vine of which we were a branch before we were in Christ. But now that we are in Christ, in Jesus as our True Vine, we abide (or remain) in Him and bear His fruit, simply by our abiding or remaining -- staying where we are. That's not hard to do, to just sit there! We bear the naturally occurring fruit of the vine to which we are joined. Like a pear tree bears pears, an apple tree bears apples. A tulip bulb grows tulips! We are part of the righteousness vine so we bear righteousness.
Another simple Biblical illustration is Paul's description of us as "vessels," either vessels of "wrath" or "dishonor" or vessels of
"honor" or "mercy." (Rom 9:21,22). A vessel is simply a container that contains something. We formerly "contained" wrath and now we "contain" mercy. We have not become the mercy, just as we were not the wrath. Wrath originates in the spirit of error and mercy in the spirit of truth. We are one or the other, never a mixture of the two! We may be deceived or wrongly think we are a mixture of the two, and many of us think that or are taught that, but that is not what Paul has plainly said. We are one or the other.
Likewise, we are also described as temples of the Holy Spirit, and formerly we were a temple of idols. A temple to ancient minds was where the gods lived, or where you went to do business with the gods or with God, and ancient minds understood this concept well. So Paul draws upon that to say that now we are temples, houses, containers, where the Living God dwells, and many New Testament scriptures say this very clearly. Even the writer to the Hebrews makes reference to it in Heb 3:6, saying we are the "house" of Christ. That's pretty strong language. Now, can darkness dwell where light dwells? Of course not. Turn on the light and where is the darkness? Will Christ share His house with a lie or falsehood? Absolutely not!
Jesus cleansed the temple, not just to irritate the Pharisees and drive them mad enough to kill Him, but to demonstrate that He had come to clean out the REAL TEMPLE, which is man, to clean it of the den of thieves it had become, and to replace that den of thieves with the GLORY He had with the Father -- the Shekinah glory, represented in the Old Testament as a shining Cloud and which many Christians these days are seeking to repeat, not realizing that very glory now, even this moment, is indwelling them and overshadowing their lives. Is this not what Jesus prayed in John 17, and dare we believe the Father has not answered His prayer? The whole of John 17 testifies that we are one with Christ and the Father even as Jesus was one with the Father, and that we have been given the same glory -- the ULTIMATE glory -- that Jesus has, because He has given it to us in Him: "And the glory thou gavest me I have given them."
Now, where is "two natures simultaneously" in all this? How can darkness dwell in this light? It cannot. Light swallows it up. Darkness flees this light, and this is the light we have come to in Christ.
Let me then get to your specific scriptures you asked me about, so I won't go on too far with this.
When Paul is speaking of "putting on Christ" and "putting off" the old man, etc., even reason would have to agree that he cannot be talking about "faking it." That is, "acting like" Christ. Our works are either God's or they are not. We either walk "in the Spirit" or we do not. It is not a moment by moment thing we do by effort or some kind of technique we learn but a level of faith that God opens to us. "After the flesh" is Paul's way of saying we are living according to our old understanding of who we are -- that is, we are just ourselves alone trying to avoid evil and trying to do God's will.
When we come into Christ, we think we are what we have always thought we were, independent selves doing our own thing. We now think that we can "become pleasing" to God by ordering our life now by His principles. We really cannot do this, but we do not know it at first, and God lets this mind still be in us in order to bring us to a point of desperation that we MUST BURST THROUGH into light.

Because this Christian life isn't something we just "put on" like we put on a suit of clothes. It must be something we ARE. Everything I have written above testifies to this. Have you ever "tried to act like Jesus?" Were you successful? I have tried, and was not very successful. I tried harder and was still unsuccessful. In fact, the harder I tried, the worse it got!
Now, what I have written above about WHO we are through the Cross and our being born again by the Spirit, is our inner truth from the moment of our new birth, but like little children who know nothing at birth, we don't know really who we are in our spiritual infancy. We must learn it, be taught it by the Spirit, that we might grow up into "Him, the Head, which is Christ." There is a travailing in our lives, "until Christ be formed in us," as Paul told the Galatians.
What does that mean, "Christ formed in us?" After all, He is already in us, is He not?
Yes, He is, but not in our understanding or consciousness. God wants us to grow up to be CONSCIOUS, UNDERSTANDING sons, who do the will of the Father in knowledge and love, i.e., not by just being "made" to do it, but who know what we do and why we do it, for the most part. As the psalmist said, he made known to the children of Israel the "acts of God," but to Moses he made known his "ways." (Ps 103:7). That is what the Father is growing us up into. I see masses of spiritual children looking for God's "acts," wanting to see signs, wonders and miracles, but not so many willing to leave all and lose all to discover his "ways." It cost Moses everything he had; the same for Paul and certainly for Jesus. David as well who hid in caves and deserts pursued by Saul, until Saul was dead and David received his kingdom from the Lord and not by his own hand. Even so we ourselves walk this same way -- to find, with Paul, that "in me dwells no good thing" (notice he does not say in me dwells evil, but simply the absence of good), in order to be taken down to the ground in dust and ashes not able to help himself, finally only able to be pulled through by the Holy Spirit in Christ Jesus into the glorious liberation of Romans 8, where nothing, life, death, etc., could separate Paul from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord!
Paul in that famous Romans 7 passage makes reference to "sin that dwells within me, in my flesh" and many have made of that an opposing nature, that Paul fought, and therefore we fight, all our lives, but the crux of Romans 7 is the going through to the victory of Romans 8, where that false consciousness of "sin in the flesh" (false consciousness of independence, self-effort, etc.) is never mentioned again. Because once the consciousness or understanding of the Truth overwhelms you, you cannot go back to that dog-eat-dog-never-getting-through-tiring-life-or-death that is Romans 7. Paul is NOT trapped forever in Romans 7, but by the Spirit is pulled past it, because it is caused by his false sense or consciousness or self-mindedness of independence, and that is what is broken for good in that struggle, as happened to Jacob when he wrestled with the angel at Peniel (Gen 32). Jacob tried everything he could think of to avoid or appease Esau, and was down to his last vestige of hope, that at least he could run away if Esau chased him, and the Man he wrestled with crippled him so that he could not run, and he was finally bereft of all hope except in God, and that was where he "prevailed" and received the name, "Israel," the prince who prevailed!
So that's what all this one nature/two nature stuff means to me. It is Life itself. In Romans 7 it seems like we are two, one always struggling against the other, sometimes one "nature" on top, sometimes the other, but in pressing through into Romans 8, the "law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus sets us free from the law of sin and death." The "law of sin and death" is the law or consciousness that says we "have to" sin, we "have to fall," we cannot help our inconsistencies. Many many live there their whole lives, like the children of Israel who would not go into the land of Promise through unbelief, and died in the wilderness. God's children still, but never seeing the glory realized in this life. But many go on through into a continual life in Romans 8, a life of living out of the nature of that which we are by faith, through grace, the divine nature, and learning that even though we continue in human "weakness" as Paul learned in 2 Cor 12:9 and even Jesus crucified in human weakness in 2 Cor 13:4, it is through this apparent infirmity (to the sight of man) God's Life comes forth in love and divine humanity for others.
This is an almost inexhaustible subject, and I could go on and on, but I'll let it rest here and let you think on this a while.
www.thesingleeye.com

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Yard veggie patch rework

2010-01-09T19:03:00.001-08:00

I would like receive quotes to remove the dead shrubs in the corner of the yard to transform back to this state, move the rocks to the perimeter, till the ground, work in manure and top soil ready for planting flowers and vegetables. No chemical fertilizers.

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Daily Thought - In Your Time of Need

2010-01-09T12:54:00.001-08:00

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In Your Time of Need
Unknown
There comes a time in life when we have to let go and trust all we are and can be to the Giver of life. There is a time of hurt that only God can understand, a time of deepest need that cannot be ministered to by a human friend. There is an anxiety that cannot be resolved, a pain that cannot be relieved, a feeling that cannot be healed by anything another may say or do.
It is only as we give up our desperate efforts and give God total control that we can experience true healing. This healing may not be as we expect, but entrusting our life to the Good Shepherd will ultimately be the best choice that can be made. For in giving your life to Him, He will take your burdens and hold you in His comforting arms. He is the only one who can truly understand. You are upheld in love and in prayer.
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Notes From Norman - Temptation and Sex

2010-01-09T12:53:00.001-08:00

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Temptation and Sex
Norman P. Grubb

Sex is by far the greatest problem in nearly all our lives and in the lives of our converts. It's by far the biggest curse as well as blessing of the world. Unless and until we've handled the sex problem to the bottom in our lives and found a way through, we are neither ourselves on safe ground nor can we lead others on to safe ground. It's our strongest instinct; our strongest appetite. It's love in its physical level- God is love, so that's strong! We're enticed by every appetite. An appetite is a desire. Now it's rightful to desire food. It's natural to enjoy food. When we see a nice thing on the table, it's natural to say in appreciation, "My, that's nice"-that fried chicken or something. That's natural; we've an appetite and that's all right as long as it does not become illicit. Then it becomes greed. As long as the enjoyment is a minor matter and the major matter is that we're just eating to keep our bodies fit, that's all right. To enjoy is the minor matter; the major matter is the big objective, but if we live for the enjoyment, then we are getting illicit; it's becoming greed.
The same with rest. We all like to lie down, stretch out, and rest. We like to; we have an appetite that likes to rest. That's not wrong; we should enjoy our rest. But as long as that is the minor motive and the major motive is that I must rest to keep fit, it is legitimate. But when we just go on resting and resting, we become slothful.
Now sex is the same. Now the proof that sex is the dominant factor in life is that the whole world shouts sex at us. Nothing is comparable in this world. For everything which possibly can draws attention to illicit sex. The advertisements, the pictures, the way people dress, all center around the exposure of the female form because that is the chief temptation to man. Women have their own sex temptations. They have to be faced to the bottom too. Men have theirs starting through the eye. "Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her, has committed adultery with her already in his heart." And the whole world is set on diverting my eye to look, and desire to look, on something that stimulates me sexually.
Karuizawa Japan Conference of 1954
Topic: "Temptation"

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Notes From Norman - The Why of Temptation - Part Four

2010-01-09T12:52:00.005-08:00

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The Why of Temptation - Part Four
Norman P. Grubb

Strengthens Our Trust
Another partial reason may be that the impact of temptation fixes us ever more strongly in God. It drives us to God. The wrestling with and conquest of temptation forces us further and further into Him. That, taken in balance with the fact that inwardly we are holy, we are purified, we are Christ-indwelt, accounts for temptation. And yet, although we are that inwardly in heart and spirit, we are constantly, unceasingly assaulted by temptation which is channelled both through a corruptible body and a personality which is open all the time to the corrupt environment in which we live. So, of course, we come to this conclusion, as we well know: that never, until the day either of our death or that glorious coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, shall we be out of the temptation environment. We're going to be tempted and tempted and tempted until the day of our death. So get that quite clear.
Karuizawa Japan Conference of 1954
Topic: "Temptation"

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Daily Thought - Greed

2010-01-09T12:52:00.003-08:00

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Greed
Fynn
One day I ask Fin for som sweet and Fin say no and I was sad and I cry som ters and I cry som ters to wash my eye window becaus my eye window was all dirty, dirty with greedy for sweets. And Fin did not say nothing and Fin piket me up and put me to a luking glas to see my face reflecshun and it was all funy like rain on a hows window. And I cud not see proper and then I stop the cry and see Fin Face reflecshun and it was all smilig. And so I smil too and then I see my eye sparklin becas I can see good. And then I see that Fin say no, becas he have got no mony, becas he give it all to Missus Barkr to buy som penuts to sell to get some mony to buy som food and I did not see good, becase I have got a dirty eye window and it was all splosht with greedy dirty.
Everybody has got a eye window and a hart window. Fin teech me how to clean my eye window and my hart window. And if you know Fin then you have got a very spechal Fin window. And this is very nice to have. If you take some dirt to Fin he say about it and make it like dimons and if you take to Fin a tram tiket he make it like a butefall but you have to be little inside or you can not see propre.
from ''Anna's Book'' by Fynn
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Daily Thought - Lord! Thy Will be Done!

2010-01-09T12:52:00.001-08:00

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Lord! Thy Will be Done!
Society of Friends
When Thou hast mastered me,
Then shall I be victor:
When Thou hast enslaved me,
Then shall I be free:
When Thou hast humbled me,
Then shall I be exalted.
When Thou hast prostrated me,
Then shall I be strong:
When Thou hast impoverished me,
Then shall I be wealthy:
When Thou hast emptied me,
Then shall I be full:
When Thou hast taken all,
Then shall I have all.
My Master, Lo, I come to Thee:
Fulfill Thy paradox in me.

SOCIETY OF FRIENDS QUOTATION
He called for my life--and I offered it at His footstool; but He gave it me again with unspeakable addition. He called for my will, and I resigned it at His call; but He returned me His own in token of His love. He called for the world, and I laid it at His Feet with the crowns thereof; I withheld them not at the beckoning of His Hand. But mark the benefit of the exchange;....For He gave me instead of earth, a Kingdom of eternal peace; and in lieu of the crowns of vanity, a crown of Glory. He gave me joy which no tongue can express and peace which passeth understanding. He gave me power to do wonders also and to keep His commandments through His Holy Spirit, and to walk in the paths of righteousness with joyful songs. I begged Himself and He gave me ALL..................
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Notes From Norman - The Why of Temptation - Part Three

2010-01-09T12:51:00.001-08:00

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The Why of Temptation - Part Three
Norman P. Grubb

Regenerated but Temptable
Now through our great second Adam, the last Adam, the Pioneer of our Salvation, the Captain of our Salvation, there is cut open a new way for us, the way out of that kingdom, translating us into the Kingdom of His dear Son. By His Cross, by His resurrection, by His ascension, by Pentecost, He has cut that broad road for us. And we have followed along that road and have been taken out in heart-taken clean out in heart and spirit from that old realm and we've been identified with Him in heart and spirit. So once again our desires in heart and spirit are redirected and we're here as wholehearted lovers of the Lord Jesus, lovers of God, lovers of our brethren by the Spirit Who lives in us. But, as I've stressed these days, in another sense that deliverance, that re-fixing of us in that for which we were originally created, is only partial because we're still left in a corrupt body-in the Bible our body is called mortal and corrupt. "Then shall the corruptible become incorruptible." I Cor. 15:53.
We're dwelling in a totally corrupt world-"The whole world lies in wickedness." We're dwelling in a personal clothing which has an element of corruption even though it is the temple of the Holy Ghost. Even though its members are instruments of righteousness unto God, it has the elements of corruption in it and it dwells in an environment which is totally corrupt. One reason is that in the total darkness we may shine as lights in the world, that in total corruption we are the salt of the earth. That's our great privilege-that we may be the lights of the world. We are the preachers of the Gospel to every creature.
Karuizawa Japan Conference of 1954
Topic: "Temptation"

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Daily Thought - God's Book

2010-01-09T12:50:00.001-08:00

God's Book
Jacob Boehme
If I have no other book than the only book I myself am, yet I have books enough. All of the bible is in me if only I have Christ's spirit.
In reading myself I read God's book. You my brothers are the alphabet to be read in me, for my spirit discovers you within me. From my heart I desire that you too should find me in your reading. . .
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Notes From Norman - The Why of Temptation - Part Two

2010-01-09T12:49:00.001-08:00

The Why of Temptation - Part Two
Norman P. Grubb

Desires Darkened by Sin
Our desires are now being directed downward into selfish ends. So the desires of which we are compounded are now in between the two. In the devil's case, there is nothing between the two-they're all going downwards. They have become channels for self ends. So you get covetousness, pride, envy, lust, in place of love, joy, and peace, gentleness, meekness, faith.
That same evil person infected our forefather, Adam. He was warned, "if you eat of that false tree you will know good and evil." He was never meant to know evil. Evil was supposed to have been an unknown, undiscoverable thing. He was only meant to know good which meant that everything he had was to God. All powers and desires and delights of his being were in the service and worship of God and his brother beings. But he took of that false tree and so he entered into that false knowledge of which Satan is the progenitor, the evil use of desires, and all humanity entered right into that realm. So all our desires have been occupied in our lusts. We've been following selfishness, covetousness, vanity, pride, lust. We've become familiarized with that kingdom of darkness.

Karuizawa Japan Conference of 1954
Topic: "Temptation"

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Notes From Norman - The Why of Temptation - Part One

2010-01-08T21:25:00.003-08:00

The Why of Temptation - Part One
Norman P. Grubb

Now we're asking the question today: Why then are we not as consistent as we ought to be? Why then are we tempted? And why also do we often fall into temptation? How does that fit in with this glorious position, "by grace through faith" into which we've been introduced into this living relationship with Him? So although it is going to cover a great deal of ground which we know already, we are going to examine this with some detail so that it may be profitable to us, possibly in helping our younger brethren around us who are growing up in Christ.
So we'll examine that question.
Man Is Compounded of Desires
If we ask, "Why temptation?" of course, we'll have to go back to our origins again. Man is compounded of desire. The first form of life is desire-in every way. The first form of love is desire. A man is compounded of love because God is Love. So man is a whole conglomerated mass of desires. Now the original purpose of God was that there should be only one form of desire in His creation, that is, desire to love Him, delight in Him, and desire to serve Him and serve one another-only good, no evil ever known. So all those desires were channelled up permanently into Him in loving worship, service, everything. There wasn't a "down"; only an "up." Now, as we know, in one period of history, way back in the unknown ages, an awful thing happened when a new kingdom was broken open by Lucifer and his followers. It never should have been there, never should have been known-the kingdom of darkness, the kingdom of self-centeredness instead of God-centeredness. And Lucifer brought this awful thing into the world, which is hell, of which the center is self-centeredness.

Karuizawa Japan Conference of 1954
Topic: "Temptation"

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Daily Thought - All things

2010-01-08T21:25:00.001-08:00

All things
Steve Pettit
Ask the Crucified One who authored his death and He will reply, ''My Father.'' If crucified by the will of God, as horrifying as the experience was, it must end in triumph! ''The fullness of joy is to behold God in every-thing!.
Seen rightly, even pain and suffering are agents of God's steadfast love, escorting us into glory. He will expose our inadequacies, but only to reveal Himself as our adequacy. He will identify our weaknesses, so his strength might become ours by experience.
when we begin to see life with GOD at the center, we have ears to hear Him say, ''I dug your pits of fear, in order to intimately fill you with my perfect love. I dashed your house of dreams to personally build your house of life on unshakable reality. I meant your hellish despair . . .it drove you into my heavenly hope. I caused you to experience that haunting hollowness of heart so you might be filled, intimately and personally filled . . . with MY LIFE.''
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Daily Thought - The Divine Center

2010-01-08T21:24:00.005-08:00

The Divine Center
Richard J. Foster
''Earlier I spoke of God on the periphery of my life. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that I was on the periphery of His life. It was I who needed to come into the Center, the Core. It is one thing for God to come into us (and a very necessary thing), but it is quite another for us to come into God. In the first instance we are still the center of attention: in the second God is the focal point. When God comes into us we still have a certain kind of autonomy: . . . when we come into God we have come IN. He is in all and through all and above all. This is no infantile pantheism, as if God could be captured in His creation: it is a marvelous majestic monotheism - one God from whom all life is sustained. It is life out of the Divine Center.
The focus of Christian simplicity becomes more clear when we change the image flow from God coming into us to our coming in to God. ''Christ in you'' was certainly an important theme in Paul's teaching, but his favorite and more frequent image was of us ''in Christ''. In the latter case, Christ has become the reference point and we are making the movement into Him. When we are in Christ, our deeds and words are of one piece because they both flow from a single Spring''.
From: Freedom of Simplicity by Richard J. Foster
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Notes From Norman - The Person of the Holy Spirit

2010-01-08T21:24:00.003-08:00

The Person of the Holy Spirit
Norman P. Grubb

Life is being introduced into a permanent living relationship with all that is involved thus in individuality, in originality. You can't tape down the Holy Spirit. You can't legalize Him down, thank God. He will be original-that's why He has burst out in about fifty new missions in Japan! He will be original. He won't be tied up. He'll go His own way and we missions inside missions must allow the same. We must be very careful we don't tape down people or the Holy Ghost will burst the tape and start something else. Oh no, He's original; He's Himself; He's a Person. I'm a person. We're funny people but even we are original to a point. If we're original a little bit, what about Him? He's original also and so it's an unpredictable relationship. "The wind bloweth where it listeth; you cannot tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit"-not the Spirit but the person who is born of the Spirit; it is not the Spirit. The Spirit in us is like that. We who are born of the Spirit are unpredictable. Certainly the W.E.C.-ers aren't predictable-that's my headache all the time. I don't know about the T.E.A.M.-ites and the others, I don't know what they are like. Praise the Lord we want unpredictability; we want that because that's the Holy Spirit.
So we enter into a blessedly simple and living relationship; not a thing called Holiness, not a thing called Sanctification, not a thing called perfect love, or anything else, but just a Lover within us and we loving by His love within us and so on. Just that.
Karuizawa Japan Conference of 1954
Topic: "Temptation"

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Notes From Norman - Purity of Heart

2010-01-08T21:24:00.001-08:00

Purity of Heart
Norman P. Grubb

Purity of heart means the intent of our heart becomes solely to love with all our heart and mind and soul and strength and our neighbor as ourself. That is a pure heart-a single heart. So the blessing into which we are introduced by grace through faith is a pure Person living in a pure center-a pure Spirit in a pure heart. Ours is the pure heart, purified by the Blood, purified by faith, purified by the Holy Ghost, making our identification real to us, and then that pure Person living in us. That is the rest of faith because the rest is Jesus. The rest is seeing that Perfect, Almighty, Unconquerable Person living in us, fulfilling exactly His own purposes through us. All that comes to us is a sharing of what comes to Him but it comes to Him first of all. We're the very minor junior partner-He's the partner. He takes care of us. That's entering into His rest. That is the rest of faith. That's the secret of power. He is the Power. He's the Mighty Power, the One that spoils principalities and powers and makes a show of them openly. And the One who made a show of them openly on Calvary will make a show of them by us, as we walk on in faith and fight on in faith. Let us be satisfied with nothing less than an open show of Satan in redeemed and sanctified lives. So He is the Power and as we read in that phrase in Galatians, "He is mighty in us towards others."
Karuizawa Japan Conference of 1954
Topic: "Temptation"

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Leah's Tribute to Joanie

2010-01-08T11:46:00.001-08:00


Download now or listen on posterous
joanie-tribute-lv.WMA (1036 KB)

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Daily Thought - Faith is the light of time

2009-12-31T21:42:00.001-08:00

Faith is the light of time
Jean-Pierre de Crussade
Time is............too slow for those who wait; too
swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve;
too short for those who rejoice; but for those who love......
time is eternity..............

Jean-Pierre de Crussade insisted that:
Faith is the light of time, it alone recognizes truth without seeing it, touches what it cannot feel, looks upon this world as though it did not exist, sees what is not apparent. It is the key to celestial treasures, the key to the unfathomable mystery and knowledge of God. Faith conquers all the fantasy of falsehood; through faith God reveals and manifests Himself, defying all things. Faith removes the veil and uncovers eternal truth. When souls are given the understanding of faith, God speaks to them through all creation, and the universe becomes for them a living testimony which the finger of God continually traces before their eyes, the record of every passing moment, a sacred scripture. The sacred books which the Holy Spirit has dictated are only the beginnings of divine guidance for us. Everything that happens is a continuation of the scriptures, expounding for us what has not been written. Faith explains the one through the other, in which souls can discover the key to all its mysteries......
Faith is only living at its best when sensible appearances contradict and attempt to destroy it.......
To find God is good in the trivial and most ordinary events as in the greatest; is to have not an ordinary, but a great and extraordinary faith..............How delightful the peace one enjoys when one has learned by faith to see God in this way through all creatures as through a transparent veil. Darkness
becomes light and bitterness sweet...........There is nothing that faith does not penetrate and seek out. It passes beyond darkness, and no matter how deep the shadows, it passes through them to the truth which it always finally embraces, and from which it is never separated
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Notes From Norman - Purity of Heart

2009-12-31T21:41:00.001-08:00

Purity of Heart
Norman P. Grubb

Purity of heart means the intent of our heart becomes solely to love with all our heart and mind and soul and strength and our neighbor as ourself. That is a pure heart-a single heart. So the blessing into which we are introduced by grace through faith is a pure Person living in a pure center-a pure Spirit in a pure heart. Ours is the pure heart, purified by the Blood, purified by faith, purified by the Holy Ghost, making our identification real to us, and then that pure Person living in us. That is the rest of faith because the rest is Jesus. The rest is seeing that Perfect, Almighty, Unconquerable Person living in us, fulfilling exactly His own purposes through us. All that comes to us is a sharing of what comes to Him but it comes to Him first of all. We're the very minor junior partner-He's the partner. He takes care of us. That's entering into His rest. That is the rest of faith. That's the secret of power. He is the Power. He's the Mighty Power, the One that spoils principalities and powers and makes a show of them openly. And the One who made a show of them openly on Calvary will make a show of them by us, as we walk on in faith and fight on in faith. Let us be satisfied with nothing less than an open show of Satan in redeemed and sanctified lives. So He is the Power and as we read in that phrase in Galatians, "He is mighty in us towards others."
Karuizawa Japan Conference of 1954
Topic: "Temptation"

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WHO BY TAKING THOUGHT

2009-12-31T21:32:00.001-08:00

WHO BY TAKING THOUGHT

You are asked a very pertinent and definite question. "Who by taking thought can ...?"
Thought is like a rope tied to a captive balloon. An Idea is borne in upon you. You either accept it, or take thought about it. If you take thought about it - nothing but frustration happens. The energy that is used in taking thought is that which would have sustained the idea into manifestation.
All this seems vague and hypothetical until you become silent and see how true it is. "Take no thought" about the idea, and you will have manifestation in due season. You are told to "go" without thought, "carry neither purse, nor scrip, nor shoes," what you shall eat, etc. The moment the idea is accepted and forgotten, then all the energy which would have gone into thought hastens the manifestation of the IDEA.
I stood once in a London Pea Soup Fog. Had I not been told that yonder in the fog lay London, Westminster Abbey, Trafalgar Square, and a thousand and one other well known places, but as far as I was concerned there was nothing but obscurity. Yet, there it lay, and as I stood there I remembered the account of the Mist that went up and watered the face of the whole earth and that the perfect creation lay there in all its beauty. Yet through looking at the mist, I had spent many life times trying to re-create a new universe which would have to be super-imposed upon the perfect creation, and this Adam creation would be constructed on a basis of judging from appearances, and finding everything in the last analysis wrong. Even man had finally invented an instrument which would take him and his kind out of the picture, and so he hurried to try to make an agreement not to use it.
Gradually, we begin to see that the LAWS as Spoken into being by Jesus Christ are actually the laws which operate one hundred percent, and when recognized produce the manifestation out of the invisible substance.
The Mist that went up covered the whole face of the earth and hid - not destroyed - everything. What a revelation to know this, for it again substantiates the law that Creation is finished and done and called very good and this also applies to you - created in the image and likeness of God.
Now a new dimension comes into view which we are beginning to discover, not create or demonstrate, and as the mystification in your mind gets thinner, then, the IDEAS begin to show through, and if we can accept them, we will be able to see them and experience them.
The perfect creation begins to project itself through the mist of belief and the balloon is free to ascend to the higher heavens of inventions.
Who by taking thought? You answer it, and begin to see how much energy and power is expended in thinking of and about, instead of being used to substantiate the IDEA.

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Daily Thought - All of Life is Inner Conciousness

2009-12-30T19:36:00.003-08:00

All of Life is Inner Conciousness
Fred Pruitt
''All of life is inner conciousness.'' That means more and more to me daily. We want so much for the so-called ''outer'' to manifest something, to change, to be different, to give us some evidence, when I realized that the inner IS the outer and there is no change coming of that sort whatsoever, it already IS, and what IS (Love, Joy, Wisdom, Truth) is already manifest in fulness. People want to argue with that on some sort of dogmatic level, and on that level it makes no sense.
On that level, outer and inner are always two, and posititional truth is the only thing that makes sense, because like the children of Israel before us, we deny the truth in front of our eyes, which is, ''the Lord will fight for you,'' (which is and has been the evident truth for all of life if we could but for a moment see it -- Rom 8:28 has been and IS and forever will be always operative), and when we are ready, again like the children of Israel who walked 40 yrs in the wilderness (where they were sustained day by day even in unbelieving), we walk over Jordan and possess the land that has always been ours and in which we have been walking around possessing without even knowing it. We are shepherds who one day a prophet walks by and pours oil on our head and says now we're a king.
It isn't a matter of right dogma and correct perceptual believing, but of knowing. People in twoness cannot understand this, because oneness (God's manifest fulness in everything that is) swallows up distinction between inner and outer because in God there is no distinction. You can't legislate that. We are it.
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Notes From Norman - Full Salvation in Grace

2009-12-30T19:36:00.001-08:00

Full Salvation in Grace
Norman P. Grubb

We have seen from God's Word those glorious inner mysteries and inner facts of union with Him, by identification with Him in that which cut Him off from sin, the world, and the flesh-His death-He died unto sin once; identification with Him in that real death, our real death with Him, real burial with Him, and real resurrection with Him. Only the resurrection is by the power of Another; and thus in the resurrection Another has come into us, He Himself-Christ living in us. So we've seen our title in grace to a full salvation. That is purity of heart because a crucified self that is the independent self that has died to sin and risen to God through our Lord Jesus Christ is a pure heart.
Karuizawa Japan Conference of 1954
Topic: "Temptation"

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Science is Truth

2009-12-30T09:49:00.001-08:00

I remember what George Washington Carver said, something like science is truth...

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Notes From Norman - Christian Living

2009-12-30T06:35:00.003-08:00

Christian Living
Norman P. Grubb

I think the answer, in so many who have grown up in the evangelical faith, is the almost universal situation - that the only life they knew has been as born again believers, to hope for a gradual spiritual growth by the practiced habits of prayer, Scripture reading, church going and activities, and always with responses to assaults in the flesh which carry guilt and condemnation, even with recourse to I John 1.9: and the general heavy weight of exhortation on fresh commitments, more devoted dedication and so on. And even the best taught regarding that Paul's ''Reckon yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin and alive unto God'' as positional rather than attainable.
But the fixed certain reality of a total end to a self operated by indwelling sin (the spirit of error), and as totally that same self inwardly joined to the Spirit of Truth, through the blood and body death and resurrection of the Saviour, and with no rival indweller, bringing with it the total inner consciousness by the Spirit's witness (1 John 5.10) of fearless freedom to be themselves, first of all seems too hopelessly ''out of this world'', or even too terrifyingly dangerous after years of soaking in the life of 'Live fearfully, carefully' and thus it meets with shock, caution, even opposition (Isn't that license??); and usually only after a period, the very hungry, who can't remain in the old bondages, are brought to see the amazement of this total faith, not works, reality, and the final ''leap'' of faith-affirmation, that ''word of faith, by which they transfer all their shivering self-doubts into this given glorious Bible-attested fact of such words as Gal. 2.20; and they firmly say it of themselves, and usually such ''dangerous'' interpretations - that they are now themselves human forms of Christ, branches expressing that Vine, or Christ in their human forms; and usually it takes that bold sold-out word to being the ''confessing with their mouths''. And then the rest, such as we have outlined, followed in their lives, and they say, ''There's nothing else! This is all there is!''

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