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BACK TO SPIRITUAL BASICS

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hillsbororiver:
There are times when getting back to some basic truths are very necessary for me (maybe you too), what I am saying is that the cares of this world no matter what they may be can erode the faith and peace we have been given and what we all strive for as followers of Christ.

It can be personal or family problems, health issues, problems at work or even being employed at all, sometimes these "cares" are what we are presently dealing with and at other times these "cares" are things we have done in the past that we now despise and are totally ashamed of.

What an incredible thing it is when we can see all of this as God's purifying Fire and that it is the Hand of a Loving God directing the events in our lives to bring us to Him as Sons and Daughters, losing sight of this "Spiritual Basic" can produce carnal fruits such as impatience, anger, faithlessness and worse.

The following bit is from LOF Part 3 and rereading this just recently was a balm for my spirit;

 BACK TO SPIRITUAL BASICS

God gives us a perfectly simple and understandable examples of HOW He deals with our sins and faults. In Hebrews 12:6 we read:

"For whom the LORD loves He chastens, and scourges every son whom he receives. If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chastens not?"

Of course when we ask this question today, the answer is not so obvious as back when the writer of Hebrews asked it. Less and less children are chastened by their fathers today, and look at the disastrous results. But ideally a son should be chastened -- chastened, not BEATEN! Maybe I need to investigate this matter one day. Just maybe those who teach the hardest for an eternal hell of pain are those who were physically molested and beaten as children, rather than lovingly chastised. Continuing:

"Furthermore we have had fathers of our FLESH which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of SPIRITS, and live? For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but He for our profit, that we might be partakers of His HOLINESS.

Now no chastening for the present seems to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby" (Heb. 12:9-11).

This is not difficult to understand. Our fathers in the FLESH have corrected us with rods, straps, belts, sticks, paddles, and the back of their hand. This was done for our teaching and correcting. And it worked, "... we gave them reverence ..." Now then, "... shall we not MUCH RATHER be in subjection unto the Father of SPIRITS ..."?

Our Heavenly Father is NOT FLESH, but is the Father of SPIRITS! God is SPIRIT. God is working with our SPIRITUAL life. God does not chasten and correct us believers in Christ Jesus with physical rods, straps, belts, sticks, paddles, and the back of His hand! So how is it that God our Father of spirits accomplishes on a spiritual level what our physical fathers tried to accomplish on a physical level? Verse 29 gives us the answer: "For our God is a CONSUMING FIRE !"

As trash is burned and precious metals are purified by the use of LITERAL and PHYSICAL fire, so God burns our spiritual trash and purifies those qualities of character worth saving by His SYMBOLIC and SPIRITUAL fire. Physical fire is inanimate and uncaring. God’s spiritual fire is caring and loving.

There it is. There’s the gospel; there’s the purpose for human existence; there’s the plan of God. God is forming man into the very image of Himself. This requires not only a knowledge of good and evil, but an experience of good and evil. God provides both. He is calling just a few select ones out of this world now, and He will call the remainder of the human race later.

Some sinners are called, given faith, brought to Christ, repent, receive God’s spirit and are saved NOW. All the rest of the world’s sinners will also be called, given faith, brought to Christ, repent, receive God’s spirit and will be saved LATER. And God uses the same method to convert and save both groups of sinners. That’s because God CHANGES NOT and God is NO RESPECTER of persons, and God WILLS to save all mankind, and God will performs ALL HIS WILL, PURPOSE, AND PLEASURE!!

All of the above verses regarding fire are used in a figurative and symbolic manner. Christ does not literally "baptize" (IMMERSE) His saints in REAL PHYSICAL FIRE. It would burn them all up, and there wouldn’t be any saints or believers! Likewise we saw in Part I that the "lake of fire" is also symbolic and used in a metaphor to describe a SPIRITUAL TRUTH. Some more on this later.

And so we are assured that EVERYONE will be "revealed," "tried," "salted," and "baptized" "in FIRE." And these fiery trials as Peter calls them go on for a lifetime. If it were real, physical fire, all believers’ lives would be short indeed. God is SPIRIT, and God is a CONSUMING FIRE. It is God’s SPIRIT that is likened to fire. The spiritual teaching in this symbol is to recognize what real fire accomplishes and to then use that as an analogy as to what God DOES TO US (or more properly FOR US).

Fire does a number of things:

Fire CHANGES things. Fire brings about molecular changes in the materials that are burned. God’s spiritual fire will make changes in our mind, heart, and spirit.

Fire PURGES. In times past if a building were diseased and rat-infested, they would purge away the filth by burning it down. We are to be purged from all our diseases of sin and carnality. Jesus Christ paid the penalty of sin for us, but now God wants to get at the root and core of what caused us to sin in the first place. We all need desperately to be CHANGED and PURGED.

Fire BURNS UP combustible materials that have no value in saving. God will burn out of all of us the straw, grass, and stubble, which represent evil and wrong doctrines, idols of the heart, and philosophies that exalt themselves against God.

Fire PURIFIES things of value which we do want to retain. The analogy is used in the Scriptures of purifying gold by fire to make it more beautiful and more valuable. Gold represents the highest doctrines of spiritual understanding such as the Love of God and the Sovereignty of God, and salvation of all.

No one teaches us more regarding the fiery trials of life than the apostle to the nations, Paul. Paul was "revealed, tried, salted, and baptized" in God’s "CONSUMING FIRE," and yet never a single hair on his head was ever singed.

Read the entire article here:  http://bible-truths.com/lake3.html

(Judgement By Fire Must Begin At The House Of God)

His Peace to you,

Joe

rjsurfs:
Joe,

I love that section of LOF.

When you speak of the "cares of the world"... these carnal desires or idols of the flesh... they can be so subtle... they can be presented in a pretty package... looking good on the outside but in reality "full of dead man's bones"...  I have to watch out for these constantly.  And when I come to despise one of these idols and move away from it, I am too often then discovering a new one. 

The process of chastening... I also like what Ray presents in Part 1 of the Lake of Fire:

--- Quote ---We will also see from the Scriptures that God never punishes for the sole purpose of torturing. God always punishes and chastises for the ultimate purpose of correcting, righting, amending, changing, fixing, rectifying, redeeming and saving. That God can and will accomplish these things with every creature in heaven and earth is fully substantiated by hundreds of Scriptures in His Word.
--- End quote ---

This makes so much sense now.  Do we not have a perfect God who will save all of his children?  Do we not realize the greatness of our God when we begin to see these truths?  There would be no purpose in an endless torturous hell.  Ray even goes on in the section you referenced Joe to show us that through chastening our God is gracing us.  Great stuff.

How fire has been twisted by many to mean something evil... when we are told in Hebrews 12:29 that "For our God is a consuming fire".

We read in 1st Corinthians 3:12-15:  “Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble; every man's work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is.  If any man's work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward.  If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire”.

We are not tortured by fire, but rather we are saved by it.  The Good News is actually good!

Bobby

Kat:

Hi Joe,

Very good refresher on why we 'need' to endure chastening.  And I like what you said;


--- Quote ---What an incredible thing it is when we can see all of this as God's purifying Fire and that it is the Hand of a Loving God directing the events in our lives to bring us to Him as Sons and Daughters,
--- End quote ---

These emails further speak on the judgments and trials we go through now.

http://bible-truths.com/email4.htm#trial --------------------------

Not everything in the Bible is "easy" to understand. It takes God's spirit and it take wisdom. God supplies both.

God does send custom made trials to all of us. He does NOT, however, do the "trying" in these trials.

A trial is where evidence is presented to determine one's guilt or innocence. God is far above us carnal matters. God already knows IN ADVANCE what we will or will not do under our trials.

Therefore, He does not determine from the evidence whether we passed or failed the trial; whether we are guilt or innocent. The trial is for OUR benefit, not HIS!

Hope that helps you a little.

Sincerely,

Ray

http://bible-truths.com/email11.htm#temptation -----------------

Why would Jesus tell us to pray that God should NOT lead us into temptation [Gk: trial] when, in reality, we DO go through trials?

After all, Jesus was led of the spirit into the wilderness for the express purpose of being "tried."

Then James comes along and says

"Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, NEITHER TEMPTS HE ANY MANY." (James 1:13).

And if that is bad enough, James first tells us in James 1:2 to

"...COUNT IT ALL JOY WHEN YE FALL INTO DIVERS TEMPTATIONS"!

What is going on here?

Although this might sound like a triple contradiction, it is not.

First let's be abundantly clear that God, HIMSELF, does not ever do the actual "trying or tempting."

"And the SERPENT said unto Eve... And when the woman SAW that the tree was good for food,  and that it was PLEASANT TO THE EYES ['...the lust of the eyes ... is NOT OF the Father...' John 2:16], and a tree to be DESIRED to make one wise, she TOOK of the fruit thereof, and DID EAT... And the woman said, THE SERPENT BEGUILED [deceived] ME..." (Gen. 3:6 & 13).

"And lead us not into temptation but DELIVER US FROM THE EVIL ONE [Satan]" (Matt. 6:13).

"...when YOU  FALL into divers [various] temptations [trials]..." (James 1:2).

"But every man is tempted, when he is DRAWN AWAY OF HIS OWN LUST, and enticed. THEN when lust has conceived, it brings forth SIN: and sin, when it is finished [full grown], brings DEATH" (James 1:14-15).

From all of these examples it is abundantly clear that it is not the OBJECT that is the TEMPTATION, but rather the temptation COMES FROM WITHIN, not from without. It was not the "tree" that MADE Eve lust. It is not the "pretty woman" that MAKES a man lust. The LUST IS IN THE MIND, IN THE HEART, and therefore, the trial IS IN THE HEART AND MIND, not in the literal flesh.

And so we pray that God should not lead us into temptation, but rather DELIVER US FROM THE EVIL ONE [Satan] WHO DOES LEAD US INTO TEMPTATION.

But notice again, we pray that we should be "DELIVERED." We cannot be 'delivered' from something UNLESS WE ARE ALREADY IN IT! God intends that we get "IN IT"--trials and temptations, which are GOOD FOR US, AFTER we have gone through them.

The longer we live the Christian walk, the better we should get at this. Hence Paul tells us,

"For if we would JUDGE OURSELVES, we should not be judged" (I Cor. 11:31).

The MORE we 'judge ourselves' the LESS we are "lead into temptation." We learn to cut it off at the pass, as they say. It is by God's divine counsel that we are led into temptation (even if God never DIRECTLY tries or tempts us), and it is by God's divine counsel that He delivers us from the "evil one."

Hope that helps a little.

God be with you,

Ray

LittleBear:
Thanks Joe for bringing that bit of teaching forward. It is a real comfort to know that God gives us a handpicked trial when you are in the midst of it. And that it is for a divine and glorious purpose of His. That knowledge is a soothing balm.

Ursula

Chris R:
Hi Joe,

Thanks for posting the link,  When Adam and Eve had both eaten of the tree, it contained two things, Good and Evil....So in my reckoning If the fruit contained both, which would mean 50/50, then hopefully our lives represent both.

God gives us a perfectly simple and understandable examples of HOW He deals with our sins and faults

And God also gives us examples of how he blesses us.


Just a thought.

Peace

Chris R

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