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[mharrell08]

Email reply from Ray (http://forums.bible-truths.com/index.php/topic,7618.0.html):

Dear Reader: Quite to the contrary. Many have left their initial belief and acceptance of God and Jesus and have gone back into the world with a spiritually-minded vengeance!  Thankfully, God recalls some out of that condition, as He has done with you. All we who have "left our First Love" have similar feelings about how stupid, and selfish, and carnal we became.  But it is good to feel guilt and shame. These emotions help to continuously keep us from committing the same sins or to the same degree. We have to "COME OUT"  of Babylon, and then we need to "STAY OUT."  And the staying out is often as difficult as the coming out. The more we spiritually grow and understand, the more we see our shortcomings.  It is good that God does not show us all of our sins all at once--it would be so over-powering and shameful, that we would have trouble facing another day.  Glad that you have seen the Light.
God be with you,
Ray

I thought of this particular subject after reading Dave's comments (http://forums.bible-truths.com/index.php/topic,9909.0.html) in the Testimonies page. Feel free to share your thoughts.

It is just so fascinating how the Lord uses all these feelings, events, circumstances, people, places, etc. to bring about true change in our lives.

2 Cor 7:9-10  Now I rejoice, not that ye were made sorry, but that ye sorrowed to repentance: for ye were made sorry after a godly manner, that ye might receive damage by us in nothing. For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death.


Thanks,

Marques

[meee]

Email reply from Ray (http://forums.bible-truths.com/index.php/topic,7618.0.html):

 The more we spiritually grow and understand, the more we see our shortcomings.  It is good that God does not show us all of our sins all at once--it would be so over-powering and shameful, that we would have trouble facing another day.  Ray [/color]

            Boy am I thankful for the fact that it is a process and God is soooo patient. I know I have to have patience too and not grow weary and give up on myself.
            meee

[Akira329]

Just to add..........
Ecc 7:3  Sorrow is better than laughter: for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better.

Ecc 8:5  Whoso keepeth the commandment shall feel no evil thing: and a wise man's heart discerneth both time and judgment.
Ecc 8:6  Because to every purpose there is time and judgment, therefore the misery of man is great upon him.

Isa 14:3  And it shall come to pass in the day that the LORD shall give thee rest from thy sorrow, and from thy fear, and from the hard bondage wherein thou wast made to serve,

Joh 16:20  Verily, verily, I say unto you, That ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice: and ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy.

guilt, sorrow, misery, and shame seems to be good for us.

Antaiwan

[Marlene]

I had fallen pretty low just before God brought me in here. God had shown me I could trust him. But, I got my pride hurt and could not forgive some one who hurt me. I ended up doing something worse then they, because of my unforgiving Spirit. Well, God used many circumstances to correct me. But, I wanted to share with you what verse in the Bible led me in here.

First of all God started me on a journey. It did not make sense to me at the time. Yes, I had lost my first love. Started out strong and then latter no growth. But, God brought me to repentance about this thing I had done. I had such great sorrow. All, I could think about is he is done with me. Then , I started reading the Bible and I was reading Hebrews.

But, Hebrews Chapter 10  vers 26 and 27  is what he choose for me to read. For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins. verse 27 But, a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation,  which shall devour the adversaries.
Since, I was blind and had no truth. I was thinking what Babylon taught . I was thinking I was hopeless  and should go to Hell. I did not even have the truth , but thought I did. That, scripture kept tormenting me till I finally said, to God let me die. Then I was between a rock and a hard place. I was afraid to die and face the fabled Hell of my mind, which was real to me.

After, a couple of weeks of true sorrow and wishing I could find a way to have joy. I began to pray for truth.  I never, first repented in a church. I repented in my Home alone with God almost 30 years ago . I then went into Babylon. But, having this sin in my life I got to where I could not even go to Babylon. Again, in my life God led me to repent at home.

Then, God began to make me pray for his truth. Not knowing , why I was doing that except I felt I did not have it. I began to hate the thought of Hell. I had no where to turn. I could not forgive myself or feel forgiven by him. One, night God led me to type in words Hell and that night and for 3 days and night I could not stop reading Ray's articles. I had joy like I had never had all my time in Babylon.  My repentance led to joy. Led to him showing me his truths.
Well, for sure this was all of God. I was like a prisoner set free of my shackles. My life was changed and I pray never let me forget this day Dear Jesus.

I know, that God will keep these scriptures in my mind till I die. I pray everyday help me endure God. Cause, when I think of the pain of my sin and hurting him it breaks my heart, if I should let him down.  Yes, I still have sin , but I know the truth now. He has been patient with all of us. All, of this came about because of God. Ray has been very blessed of God! To share Gods truths like this. I thank God he used Ray like this. But, I know All the Glory goes to God.
So, yes even the evil believe of Hell was used for good when God led me in here.

God causes us to repent and he chooses the circumstances to make us repent. Now, I know, it has been God judging me. This is for our own good. Repentance is good. All, the scriptures Antaiwan has showed us speak so loudly to me. I felt, all of this . I have only spoke to a very few people about Ray webstie. But, most that I can say. Since, coming in here the Scriptures have come alive. They were dead to me and I did not know it. I know, if I wilfully sin  and do not repent god will take what I have from me. I will not be chosen, but will have to face his fiery judgement in the second death.I would be most miserable should this happen. So, I pray I will not be a hypocrite. I will repent when he shows me and trust him to deliver me. I just don't want sin to rule me. I pray I will not go back to the dog vomit.

But, Hell to me is the prison of our mind we are in, when we have no truth. But, God is a fair judge and will not loose one of his children. So, Repentance is a good thing and can lead to joy. Now, I know I have the truth. Those verses in Hebrews are there for those who know the truth. I believe, to aid me to not sin and if I do repent. Do not go back to Babylon. Do not let sin rule your life. God can enable this. Not, me.

In His Love,
Marlene

[Akira329]

Hey Marlene!
I just realized the hope that lies in the scripture you gave
I remember reading that many times before and feeling no hope at all
Glad I was wrong.

Heb 10:26  For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins,
Heb 10:27  But a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries.

The more I read scripture now, the more hope I see in every verse.
God is good, indeed.

Thanks Marlene

Antaiwan

[aqrinc]

Marlene, Antaiwan,

That is a Revelation in these verses for me too just now. Ray tells us repeatedly to read all the words, we need to also look at where the punctuation marks are placed. And also what kind of punctuation it is, then with Prayer and Thanksgiving, ask our Lord for Enlightenment.

That is a Scripture that has been used to beat many including me to insensibility before.

Heb 10:27  But a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries.

We (humanity) are not the adversaries, the deeds, thoughts and beastly nature of us; are those adversaries.

Bingo.

george.

[Akira329]

Bingo 

Antaiwan

[cjwood]

bingo from me too! when i read vs. 27 (heb. 10). the Light went on when i saw what i had not seen before. if we sin willfully after we have been shown the Truth and Knowledge of the Spirit, we can't sacrifice a lamb or a heifer or a pair of doves, or Jesus Christ, it is through the shame and regret and remorse and sorrow we feel for sinning willfully after coming to His Knowledge, that leads us to Him in repentance, and it is that which will devour the adversaries within us; the beast of sin which is in our members. wow wow wow. bingo bingo bingo!

thank you God for working through marlene to bring that Scripture to the Table tonight.

and thank you God for working through marques to bring this topic up tonight and for what You have shown me through the words of your servant ray smith. 

coming out of babylon has more to do than just with coming out of the churches, but that coming out of babylon also means to come out of the willful sinful beastly ways, to come out of the worldly carnal lusts of our flesh, and once we are OUT of all OF BABYLON, and our Father has caused us to REPENT then we should STAY OUT and not return again to the vomit of our lusting flesh; but we should be living by the newness of our mind, which is the mind of Christ.

bingo...
claudia

[Samson]

Email reply from Ray (http://forums.bible-truths.com/index.php/topic,7618.0.html):

Dear Reader: Quite to the contrary. Many have left their initial belief and acceptance of God and Jesus and have gone back into the world with a spiritually-minded vengeance!  Thankfully, God recalls some out of that condition, as He has done with you. All we who have "left our First Love" have similar feelings about how stupid, and selfish, and carnal we became.  But it is good to feel guilt and shame. These emotions help to continuously keep us from committing the same sins or to the same degree. We have to "COME OUT"  of Babylon, and then we need to "STAY OUT."  And the staying out is often as difficult as the coming out. The more we spiritually grow and understand, the more we see our shortcomings.  It is good that God does not show us all of our sins all at once--it would be so over-powering and shameful, that we would have trouble facing another day.  Glad that you have seen the Light.
God be with you,
Ray

I thought of this particular subject after reading Dave's comments (http://forums.bible-truths.com/index.php/topic,9909.0.html) in the Testimonies page. Feel free to share your thoughts.

It is just so fascinating how the Lord uses all these feelings, events, circumstances, people, places, etc. to bring about true change in our lives.

2 Cor 7:9-10  Now I rejoice, not that ye were made sorry, but that ye sorrowed to repentance: for ye were made sorry after a godly manner, that ye might receive damage by us in nothing. For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death.


Thanks,

Marques

Marques,

              Thankyou for Posting this topic, it's something I often think about, my carnal sinfull nature and how I
              left the Legalistic Church that I formally belonged to. I remember trying so hard on my own to do what's
              right and feeling emotionally drained realizing I can't do anything on my own, that it's all of God.

              I had felt like a Spiritual failure and although I still believed in the Scriptures and their inspiration as
              expressed at 2Timothy. 3:16,17, I stopped worrying about trying to perfect myself, realizing it's an
              impossibility, so I got discouraged, having no desire for any Churches of any kind, no desire for any
              rituals like water baptism, communion or things like that. I noticed people practicing things like this
              and acting the same as they did before, no Spiritual improvement, so I didn't see any value in this,
              just a waste of time. After realizing that my former religion didn't have " The Truth ", therafter I sorta
              just did research and figured I'd just wing it, after two years or so I discovered Bible-Truths and don't
              know of anything better, Spiritually speaking.


              I included below some paragraphs from Ray's Repentance Talk from a 2005 Conference that might
              aid in the discussion.


                                            REPENTANCE 2005 CONFERENCE


             I never forgot there was a God.  I never stopped praying. But I was carnal.  You’d think that baptism and repentance was nothing!  I mean, that wasn’t doing anything for me.  I was now in TOTAL carnality.  Wine, women and song.  And I tried to study the bible off and on throughout those years.  I never put it away completely.  It was always there and I was reading it and so on.  But NOTHING…I mean, maybe I could learn some verses, maybe I learned a little about historical settings, some facts and so on, but spiritually I wasn’t going ANYWHERE.  I wasn’t going anywhere…I made a concerted effort to have a good time.  (As best I knew how with what little money I had and so on.)  And there were a few times God even let me make a few dollars.  I got into something once where I was making 40-50 thousand dollars a month and I thought, oh now I’m there!  No…He took that away. 

Anyway, I thought that was about the best you could do.  Boy, I was so thankful for one thing though:  GRACE.  Boy was I glad that this bible talked about Grace because there was nobody who needed grace more than me!  And I thought that I sort of understood it.  I was pretty convinced that there are no spiritually converted people because number one, I made a “jolly good” try at it.  I made a good stab at it.  I gave it the good college try.  And I wasn’t converted.  And you know what, I didn’t know of anybody else who was converted either.  I didn’t know of one human being on this earth that I could say, “that person is spiritually converted”.  I didn’t know of any, and I knew I wasn’t, so I thought it didn’t exist.  I thought true spiritual conversion did not even exist.  And that what Grace did:  you did the best you could, and where you didn’t do very good, it just filled in the gaps.  And that was about as spiritual as my mind would go for a long time. 

But God was working with me.  I didn’t know it.  I just thought I’m drifting through life.  But God was working with me, for me, sometimes against me (which was also for me).  I finally did come to the place where I started looking at this whole thing afresh, that this is God doing it, and I’m thinking about this repentance business again.  What good does it do to repent, if you can’t stop doing the things you repented of?  I mean, that’s just hypocrisy isn’t it?  You repent of all these sins and you keep doing them.  So… but I felt a guilt, there was a guilt in doing this or that, thinking this and thinking that, and the guilt would start to drive me away from it.  I couldn’t handle the guilt.  I just didn’t want to be guilty about this stuff so I would stop doing it.  Because I just wanted to get away from the guilty mind.  And so some things went by the wayside that way; that was the way it worked.  You know, just out of sheer guilt I didn’t want to do them anymore.  And I didn’t do them anymore, I quit this and that and so on…  and I guess God was turning me towards Him.  I was not learning anything new; there were no new revelations.  Just something was happening in my life. 

And then, I started to take an interest in the scriptures again.  And I don’t know that my understanding was all that much better, but I was trying.  I was reading and trying.  And I can’t even remember when I started to see things.  (Where did that come from?)  And I kept wanting to change.  I just felt that, that was necessary:  change.  You know, be more like God wants me to be.  And I wanted to understand the scriptures and I clearly didn’t.  I mean, I had a superficial understanding of them.  I even knew about the reconciliation of ALL.  I had come to understand that we don’t have a free will.  I was that far along…but I was still not really changing my life. 

But then God started to make me feel convicted about my sins that I still had.  But I was convinced you couldn’t overcome them!  You know, when you are in your 50’s and still not able to conquer these sins…when?   How?  Will it ever happen?  I was pretty convinced it wouldn’t happen.  But I’m thinking about these things more and I’m studying.  And then I started finding that some things I was doing I didn’t need to do anymore.  And it isn’t anything I did.  God just took something away from me.  Took away a burden, a sin, a guilty conscience about something.  Just took it away and it was no longer a struggle.  But I never stopped wanting to get rid of it ALL.  That was always there.  Get rid of it all.  (You all want to know what those things were….it doesn’t matter, they’re all the same!)  You know, lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, pride of life….

You can’t take credit for it; in His time He will do it.  If you are going to be one of the few that are actually chosen, then God is going to do it.  So why am I up here telling you if He’s going to do it, just go home and let Him do it!  Right?   Because God uses the “foolishness of teaching”, that’s why.  That’s the only reason I’m up here.  He uses the foolishness of preaching.  Some of you will remember this day.  It will be a turning point in your life!  You’ll say, “that Saturday afternoon Ray was preaching about Repentance, it changed my life forever!”   That is, if God has decided that is what today will do for you…

So I was wanting to repent of everything.  EVERYTHING.  I didn’t want to hold on to anything!  Give it all up.  And in my heart and mind, I was able to do it.  And I didn’t have to struggle!  I mean, I struggled all my life against these sins and now I didn’t have to struggle anymore.  The temptations would come up, but I would just put a stop on it.  That was it; God put me in control.  And I didn’t have to fight it night and day.  It just started to take care of itself.  Because there was a power working in my mind that I didn’t have before.  It was now God’s time to do that. 

And when I had nothing more to repent of, that I knew of, then the scriptures started opening up.  I started understanding the scriptures that I never understood before.  And I would learn something every month.  Every week, and then almost every day!  New things, spiritual things, lofty things.  So, if the spirit of God is going to be between your ears (you understand your heart is in your brain…), when the spirit of God starts to motivate your mind then you have greater capacity.  If you have a glass of water and you want to pour a coke into it, you’ve got to pour the water out, you’ve got to make room.  And that’s what happens in your life when you make room for God. 

If you read my series on the Lake of Fire, you know I talk about the “man of sin” who sits on the throne claiming that he is god.  That’s in you!  That throne is in you.  That man of perdition is you.  And he sits in there claiming to be god.  And you can’t serve two masters.  Before Jesus Christ can sit on the throne of your heart, the man of perdition has got to get out!  And of course, the presence of the Lord is what drives out the man of perdition.  The presence of God coming into your life will drive out this beast (the carnal mind).  And then you’ll begin to understand things that you never understood before. 

Who knows what the first word was that Jesus Christ said in his ministry?  According to Matthew it was, “Repent.”  So if that’s the first word out of our Savior’s mouth, maybe we ought to look at it a little bit…

Repent means to turn around, to go the other way.  Whatever you are doing that’s wrong and sinful and evil and carnal and worldly and everything else, you turn around, you “repent” and you go the other direction.  The scriptures mention a couple of words:

Matthew 18:3 talks about being converted
Matthew 19:28 talks about being regenerated
1Peter 1:3 talks about being born again
John 3:3 talks about being born again

What are all those things?  They’re all one and the same, there’s no difference.  Being begotten anew, being born again, being regenerated, being converted…they are all the same.  And this is what we all want to do, so that we can take on more knowledge and live more Godly, and reach this goal.  We all sin.  Sin has to go through three things:  cleansing, repentance, forgiveness.  Does anybody know the order of these things?

This is the order of what happens to sin:

1.   Forgiveness
2.   Repentance
3.   Cleansing


                                      Kind Regards, Samson.