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[lauriellen]

i just wanted to thank all who posted in this thread.  this has been one of the most BEAUTIFULLY TRUE, & HEALING things i have ever read.  we all live with a measure of pain, all from different sources, but nothing is too hard for God.  He is our healer and our comfort, if we would just keep our eyes on Him.
thankyou, thankyou, thankyou,
lauriellen

[aqrinc]

Amen Marlene.

Joh 15: 16-18 (MKJV)
16  You have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you and ordained you that you should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain; that whatever you shall ask of the Father in My name, He may give it to you.
17  These things I command you, that you love one another.
18  If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you.


george.

[Amrhrasach]

How do we obtain this love of truth, it is certainly not of self


Gary and Firefly to add to what George said

Many of us come from dysfunctional families but as we grow we learn more that we are not to focus on ourselves any more ….we are to die to self…  it does not matter that we are not loved


Beloved

Beloved, I couldn't agree with you more.   My point in that segment of this thread was merely to point out that sometimes coming from a dysfuntional family makes for difficult to learn love and trust........on a worldly level, and yes perhaps on the converted level as well.    Now, if I understand correctly to "die to self" is nothing that can be accomplished on our own since we are carnal by nature.  That is a transformation that only Christ in us can do.  But until that occurs, by his will, that transformation will NOT occur and we remain steadfast on wanting to receive love from the world.  Growing up in a dysfuntional family is not some "story" that everyone has at one time or another in their childhood and "events" that we should simply "get over" by our own will.   No, it's often lifetime baggage.  People from dysfuntional families live their entire lives attempting to shed low self esteem,  understanding how to care, and understanding love and how to give it, and receive it.  So when the holy spirit comes into a person of that caliber is that transformation absolutely "immediate"?   No, it isn't, not in my assessment.  And I could certainly be wrong.    My point is...and was... that the growing in that area takes some time.   It's one thing to say "die to self", it's an entirely another to accomplish that feat and even with that it certainly is no achievement we can claim and boast of.   I know YOU know these things.  It really isn't you I'm writing to, more so to me and others like me who have not had the pleasure of content and intact families as their childhood progressed.

I hope you understand.  And if I'm incorrect in my assessment, by all means, gently provide correction and I'll stretch even further, God willing, to understand and grow.  Because at this point I'm looking at myself and wondering two things:  if Christ is in me at all why can't I get past some things and "die to self" from events that happened in my early childhood that so affected my life; and another is: perhaps I have "head knowledge" only of who Christ is and what he was sent to accomplish.   If either is true I shouldn't be wasting time learning of the things of God and Christ, or being a member of this forum.

Head knowledge is a good thing.  But so is heart knowledge.

Gary

[mharrell08]

So when the holy spirit comes into a person of that caliber is that transformation absolutely "immediate"?   No, it isn't, not in my assessment.  And I could certainly be wrong.    My point is...and was... that the growing in that area takes some time.   It's one thing to say "die to self", it's an entirely another to accomplish that feat and even with that it certainly is no achievement we can claim and boast of.

No Gary, you're not wrong at all...there is no such thing as instant patience, repentance, love or any other fruit of the spirit.

Gal 5:22-23  But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.

Eph 5:8-10  For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light: (For the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth;) Proving what is acceptable unto the Lord.

1 Cor 15:22-23  For as in Adam all die [including dying to self] , even so in Christ shall all be made alive. [Gk. quickened or vivified] But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ's at his coming.

Ecc 1:1-8

1  To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

2  A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

3  A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

4  A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

5  A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

6  A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

7  A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

8  A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.


Like you said Gary, these all come in His appointed time.


Marques

[ez2u]

Gary and others     the original post that you express this loyalty in.  This i believe is a hope that Christ has place in you ( meaning a place in your being,  of God) not the hope of the world that disappoints  but the anticipation  of what is to come in Him.  We are helpless without Him,  our Lord and Savior  Jesus Christ   we are born in the damned nature  disappoints and beatings come  We all do have our stories  but every thing works together for the Good of them that love the Lord and call according to His purposed.  Jesus word says He is the author and the finisher of our faith  Praise God  He will do what he set out to do and WE will not be disappointed  MY personal trials or affection although I cry out at the time have taught me the most.  I wonder what happen to shadrach  ect  after they got thrown into the firer!  My God!  how life changing was that!
Jesus is loyal  Jesus is faithful.  i can trust Him much more than i can trust myself   Wasn't Paul; saying  he couldn't put his trust in himself  but in Christ?  peggy

[firefly77]

Gary,
Thanks for your explanation, I could not have said it any better. I have all this head knowledge and so desperately want it to be heart knowledge. I have to trust God's timing.
Do you ever feel like you hit a brick wall in your spiritual growth and you are confronted with the same problem or challenge over and over and over again, seemingly not learning anything from it? If the proverbial brick wall was real, I would exhibit some very severe bruising. I understand you completely!

Angie

[cjwood]

at this point I'm looking at myself and wondering two things:  if Christ is in me at all why can't I get past some things and "die to self" from events that happened in my early childhood that so affected my life; and another is: perhaps I have "head knowledge" only of who Christ is and what he was sent to accomplish.   If either is true I shouldn't be wasting time learning of the things of God and Christ, or being a member of this forum.

dear gary,
learning of the things of God and Christ is NEVER a waste of time. you have been shown many, many Truths of His Spirit by reading through ray's teachings and by reading all the threads and posts on this forum. you know that it was God who lead you here. learning of the things of God and Christ is necessary in order to be able to be shown the Truths of the Scriptures. AND for sure you are not wasting time being a member of this forum. as i mentioned already, GOD lead you here. and we love you. your past post contributions are a testament that His Spirit is working in you. Christ is in you gary, and you are in Christ. as marques and others have stated, replacing (carnal) head knowledge with a knowledge of His Truths takes time. it took years of dysfunction to put the scars on your heart and in your mind. although God could transform you in a moment, it is His will to do it otherwise. as ray has said before, overcoming can take our whole lifetime to achieve. BUT, we cannot stop yearning for and searching for His Truths.

i love you my brother gary,
claudia

[judith collier]

Gary, and even after you are mostly dead to carnality there will arise the beast again and again. Just know "IT" for what it is and suffer through it, pray you will not offend God during this time. "IT" will pretend to have died until it gets one little access into our minds. That's why I pray for God to guard my mind and heart. I said the other day I thought I would have to have a silver stake driven through my heart to end this torment at times. Judy

[G. Driggs]

Gary, and even after you are mostly dead to carnality there will arise the beast again and again. Just know "IT" for what it is and suffer through it, pray you will not offend God during this time. "IT" will pretend to have died until it gets one little access into our minds. That's why I pray for God to guard my mind and heart. I said the other day I thought I would have to have a silver stake driven through my heart to end this torment at times. Judy

So very true Judy, even after a year of reading Rays papers, Scriptures and the post here this beast of mine continues to arise. Sometimes I wish for death, or that I was not even born. Thanks Judy.

G.Driggs

[Ninny]

George, Gary and all,
Sometimes I think God is moving in all of us because we are all going through these things. I think we need to pull close and pray for each other all the more!
Kathy

[Robin]

Hebrews 4:9-11 (New American Standard Bible)

9So there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God.

10For the one who has entered His rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from His.

11Therefore let us be diligent to enter that rest, so that no one will fall, through following the same example of disobedience.

I learned that the work in me was God's work and I learned to rest. When I first started learning I used to toss and turn in my sleep and was told I was talking in my sleep about rest. I was striving to rest. I had my eyes on the beast and couldn't stand living with it. I was also afraid because I knew I wasn't ok the way I was. The one thing that forced me into rest is when I saw just how huge the beast was and knew without a doubt that I had no power what so ever to do anything about it. I knew that God and only God could take care of it. I surrendered.

Matthew 19
 25When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, "Who then can be saved?"

 26Jesus looked at them and said, "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible."


I had a terrible childhood with domestic violence. I was the family scapegoat and hated by all. I was raped when I was 10 years old. This all left me with gaping holes that I desperately wanted to fill. I wasn't able to have a stable relationship. I was physically abused. My husband took his own life. I blocked out the memories of the rape and other abuse so I didn't even remember what it was to even try to work on it. All I knew is that I was full of sin and didn't have the will power to fix or stop any of it. God pulled me out of the church and I was beginning to see the lies I had been taught. All I knew was that there was no free will and I was the beast.

Proverbs 20:
27 The lamp of the LORD searches the spirit of a man ;
       it searches out his inmost being.

I was full of pain and cried every day for at least 20 years. One day someone told me I should just stop crying. I told them I had tried everything and couldn't make the pain go away. In an instant God brought back a childhood memory and I felt like 2000 pounds of emotional pain had been healed instantly.

For the next 5 years God kept bringing all the hidden things to the surface. At the same time he was revealing the truth to me. Know the truth and the truth will set you free. It set me free from most of the dysfunctional behaviors and emotional pain. I must say it was quite terrifying reliving all those painful memories that I had blocked, but I was ok because I knew it was God doing it. He was working the truth into me and exposing the lies that held me captive to sin.

I still have PTSD from all the trauma, but I know that this too is being used by God as trials that mold me into the image of his son. The hardships I've gone through since then are incredible.

Romans 5:
2through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. 3Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4perseverance, character; and character, hope.

1 Peter 4

 1Therefore, since Christ suffered in his body, arm yourselves also with the same attitude, because he who has suffered in his body is done with sin. 2As a result, he does not live the rest of his earthly life for evil human desires, but rather for the will of God.

Isaiah 30:18
Yet the LORD longs to be gracious to you; he rises to show you compassion. For the LORD is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for him!

[aqrinc]

Hebrews 4:9-11 (New American Standard Bible)

9So there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God.

10For the one who has entered His rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from His.

11Therefore let us be diligent to enter that rest, so that no one will fall, through following the same example of disobedience.

I learned that the work in me was God's work and I learned to rest. When I first started learning I used to toss and turn in my sleep and was told I was talking in my sleep about rest. I was striving to rest. I had my eyes on the beast and couldn't stand living with it. I was also afraid because I knew I wasn't ok the way I was. The one thing that forced me into rest is when I saw just how huge the beast was and knew without a doubt that I had no power what so ever to do anything about it. I knew that God and only God could take care of it. I surrendered.

Gary, Angie,

I will side with M.G, this is exactly where we need to be always. As Ray has taught, keep The Sabbath All day Every day (IN THE SPIRIT), and you will then rest from all the worrying about self and place.

This too is vanity, and a waste of the little time we have in this life. Hold fast to the things that you have been taught By The Holy Spirit and keep your eyes on our Lord And Saviour Jesus Christ, Who Is The Righteousness of us all.

HOW MANY DAYS DO WE ENTER INTO GOD’S REST

Excerpt from Keeping Sabbath: http://forums.bible-truths.com/index.php/topic,6310.msg50887.html#msg50887

So people ask me about everything from circumcision to fasting, Passover, the Lord’s supper, baptism and all these things.  They ask me a lot, ‘do you keep the Sabbath day.’  In other words do I stop working and stop doing everything on Friday night until Sat. night, don’t go anywhere, don’t do anything, just study and pray or whatever and go to church. 
So they say, ‘do you keep the Sabbath?’  I say absolutely, everyday of the week. They don’t know what to make of that.  I keep the Sabbath everyday of the week.  How do I keep the Sabbath everyday of the week?  Because I know what the Sabbath means.  If you know what the Sabbath means, you can not possibly keep it on Saturday only, you can’t.  If you know what it means and you do it on Saturday only, it’s proof that you don’t know what it means.  And I’ll show you that.  If you can’t keep the Sabbath on everyday, then you are not keeping the Sabbath in the spirit of truth at all. 
Further you can’t do any of these things.  We’ll go through these things, the Lord’s supper, communion, what the Catholics call mass and so on. 

Now the Catholics do keep mass, at least the big churches have it everyday.  But especially in the Protestant world, some keep it just once a year, not too many and some every six months, and some once a month. 
I was a Methodist and we kept it four times a year.  Why four times?  Well they thought that was a good amount of times.  Why, what was it based on?  Nothing, just human reasoning. 
Some keep it once a week on Sunday.  Why do they do that?  Because they don’t know what it means or not only would they keep it everyday, like the Catholics do, but they would keep it all day.  Not just everyday, but all day everyday.  Everything in this Bible if all it is, is physical ritual, then it’s of no value to you and you are just a religious person.

george.

[Beloved]

Gary I understand what you have written I myself have been raised in orphanages and foster homes and can attest to the problem of "loving and being loved" so you are talking to the choir here.

In the past when asked why I was not married I would say "I could never put all my egos into one *******".

For most part we humans are occupied with Eros or Phileo type of love. It is only when our ears are opened that we truly become aware of the Agape Love of God. His Love is magnified more and more as we gain knowledge of His Way. The revelation of His word is like chocolate to our soul. Reread Rays paper on Love because it explains that God both Agape and Phileo his sons and daughter.

We in ourselves are incapable of love except in a selfish way. Many think that human parental love is unconditionalte. But is it really always so?

Children are a means of passing on our genes, they are only means of physical immortality, therefore they prolonging our own line, They are a means fulfilling goals or achieving sucess in areas that we failed in. They can be a vicarious enrichment of our own lives .

I love the line in one movie that a mother makes to her daughter.....I love you but I do not like you. The parental child bond is strongest because it is the closest physically to SELF. It is a biological mirror.  

You are right because those of us without parental bonds were never the recipents of this "particular form of self love" . You are very right that it is a learned behavior.

Children on the other hand are natural at loving, they lose it as their self gains more knowlege and power. That is why a child can still love their abusive parents when they are at a younger age. Young children have that perfect state of trust.

Because we are in the infant stage spiritually, my point of my post was that  we need to focus more on the Christ in us..like George said..He is the Love of truth and only He can change us and help us regain that childlike trust. It is a constant battle because that "ugly old dead man" is always there in the flesh, using our desire and fear to lead us off course.  

Today I prayed that God would help me see the Love of God in each of my patients, well I was not very sucessful because I could not keep my little brain focused. On the way home I repented and all I can do is keep trying and praying.

I am beginning to understand endurance a little better recenly I heard this analagy. It is like being blindfolded and all you can see are your feet. You are told the goal is to climb a mountain peak. He is there calling you. We cannot see where we are going but He can see us. All we can do is follow His voice. if we fall we get back up. We do not know where we are but he always does. He is able to We have to keep going because h will keep us from falling in ravines and we just have to trust Him to get us up there.

Beloved

[firefly77]

This has been an amazing thread and I am sad and glad at the same time to know that we have many very painful experiences in common; we are not alone and are all in this together.
PTSD, domestic violence, sexual assault, emotional abuse... all of it helps us to be more compassionate and loving. Yes, God is the ONLY ONE who can heal those wounds... going back and revisiting some of those painful events in our lives is hard and heart wrenching. I feel for all of you because I have been there and am still there at times. If God doesn't do it, it cannot be done and coming to a place of rest and acceptance of His timing is very hard for some of us. I am one of the movers and shakers and like to see results. Naaaah, that's not how God is doing it in me. Sometimes I feel like I am choking when I see the sinister side of me and am so helpless to change it. I am broken about my sinfulness.
Thank you all for your transparency and honesty; it is so very much appreciated.

Angie

[Amrhrasach]

This has been an amazing thread Angie

Indeed it has.   So many personalities have been shown, so much heartache, so much overcoming, so much bravery of heart and emotional scars being shown as becoming healed.  So much sharing.

More importantly so much loyalty TO Christ and even in that nothing boasted because that loyalty was in him first and with compassion provided to us.   Yes that is AMAZING!.

No need to quote a scripture here as the scriptures already provided from many are needle on.  Leadership.  And I admire all of it.

For me personally one of the many things I've learned through Ray's teachings is that everyone deserves a measure of mercy and forgiveness as our Lord so does over and over.  So even now with as much hatred as I've carried for many years against my birth parents I'm finding a corner of my own heart where forgiveness is growing. 

Ray explained it perfectly and the Lord is working it in his perfect time.  Amazing indeed.

~S~! all.

Gary

 

[aqrinc]

A lesson i have learned, desire Mercy and Justice, but Mercy over Justice and do the same to your neighbor. This is exactly what GOD IS DOING for each and every person (sinners All) who justifiably deserve death.

 Zec 7: 8-10 (GNB)
8  The LORD gave this message to Zechariah:
9  "Long ago I gave these commands to my people: 'You must see that justice is done, and must show kindness and mercy to one another.
10  Do not oppress widows, orphans, foreigners who live among you, or anyone else in need. And do not plan ways of harming one another.'

Witness
Mat 23:23 (GNB)
"How terrible for you, teachers of the Law and Pharisees! You hypocrites! You give to God one tenth even of the seasoning herbs, such as mint, dill, and cumin, but you neglect to obey the really important teachings of the Law, such as justice and mercy and honesty. These you should practice, without neglecting the others.

george.

[firefly77]

So even now with as much hatred as I've carried for many years against my birth parents I'm finding a corner of my own heart where forgiveness is growing.

Gary,
That's good... sometimes forgiveness doesn't come fast and easy, it does take time for your heart to catch up to your head, depending on the severity of the transgression.
I love both of my parents now. My mother left me when I was 5 years old to get married to a man who's catholic upbringing and family considered me a b*****d child and therefore non-existent, my father I never knew personally. My mom and I never "reconciled". She wanted a daughter when I turned into a young adult; at that time she was a stranger to me and it was only for her wanting to "show me off" to her friends. She died very young (42), and at that time had pretty much alienated all of her children and family. I am not sure if my father is still alive. I initiated several contacts since I moved to the States, but the German pride on my father's side and family prevented it from ever happening. This is still one of those unfulfilled "desires of my heart"... God knows! One thing that I found out from my aunt is the fact that my mom and dad loved each other; it brought some healing to my heart. However, the "fallout" of being abandoned is still ours to carry and deal with God's help and grace.  Psalm 27:10 "Though my father and mother forsake me, the LORD will receive me." is of comfort to me.

Angie

[meee]

Psalm 27:10 "Though my father and mother forsake me, the LORD will receive me." is of comfort to me.

Angie

         Wow you cling to this too Angie!? Once when a sister visited, she was looking through a little book I had with the promises of God in it, and I had this one underlined. She and her husband looked at each other and she said ,I see you feel the same as me. Meaning the feeling of abandonment and her not wanting to have anything to do with us.
 meee       

[firefly77]

     Wow you cling to this too Angie!? Once when a sister visited, she was looking through a little book I had with the promises of God in it, and I had this one underlined. She and her husband looked at each other and she said ,I see you feel the same as me. Meaning the feeling of abandonment and her not wanting to have anything to do with us.
 meee       

Yes, I cling to this too, meee.