Under A Foreign Yoke

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darkness, deception, discerning the spirits, dying to self, experience, God's goodness, heart, light, mind, prayer, Satan, sin, spiritual attacks, temptations, the, the cross, thoughts

Have you ever felt an increasing uneasiness as you pondered on the possibility to cave in to somebody’s pleading because you knew in your heart it would be the wrong thing to do? I do not know whether this is only a people pleaser problem, but I assume I am not the only one who is struggling with these thoughts and temptations.

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Getting Detached

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darkness, discerning the spirits, exhortation, experience, following Jesus, light, the Puritans, Thomas Brooks, Tim Challies

Is the following a mere assertion to you? I say,

Either we’re Christians or we jump on bandwagons.

In my experience, we either take a stand for Christ or we remain neutral toward whatever people might suggest to us. Imagine someone, let’s say a worldly person, approaches you by presenting a hair-raising conspiracy theory to you. Actually, that happened to me two times lately. One person was convinced that her child had become severely sick due to kerosene emission by aircraft… 🙄 Conclusion: this person finally found someone on the internet who not only sold grossly overpriced (and overdosed!) dietary supplement, but who also offered bloodcurdling nonsense to prove his theory. Since no doctor could help her in the past, as she said, yet this person on the net eventually could, she now seems to take everything this man utters at face value. Sigh.

The importance of Oneness with Christ for fellowshipping with one another

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agape, church, discerning the spirits, experience, family, fellowship, Fellowship with God, God's love, heart, Jesus Christ, mind, Oneness, T.A. Sparks, The Holy Spirit, the mind of Christ

My favorite public pool currently (Bibert Bad, Zirndorf)
– Picture taken from http://www.romantisches-franken.de

Strange… during the last two or three weeks I thought about writing another blog, but I was either too busy with visiting our family members who live scattered in Bavaria or I felt no inclination to start writing on the computer because of summer time. Many plants (about 130) on our two balconies and inside our flat need to be cared for, too. Honestly, I like gardening more than being on the internet and swimming in the outdoor public pool (s. picture above) was more attractive to me as well. It is only in water when several body pains disappear and therefore I swam more than I walked lately. 😉 In Germany we experienced a first heat wave in April, which was VERY unusual, and it seemed hot summer did not want to take a break in May, either. Eventually, today it began to rain a bit which has been much needed by nature and so I sat down in front of the computer, wondering what I was doing here. 🙄 Again, no inclination to write. As I checked the latest file on my thumb drive which is called “New Post”, I saw that I had written this very thing beneath on May 25^th already. Forgetful Susanne! 😊 So, now here you are… the rest of it at least… which means I deleted some details that did not speak to me today any more.

Are we indwelt by the Holy Spirit … or not (yet)?

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adultery, being led by the Holy Spirit, discerning the spirits, divorce, experience, false spirits, God's guidance, Indwelt by the Holy Spirit, remarried, separation from the world, sin, Spiritual Life, T.A. Sparks, this world, walking by the spirit

This question is not meant as an offense to anyone. Instead, I want to make sure that nobody misses out on something that would be theirs in Christ by their spiritual nature. So many struggles as to ‘keeping the law’ by living according to what is written in the Bible WITHOUT the power of the Holy Spirit could be avoided, I believe. T. Austin Sparks offers some very practical and helpful explanations on how we could discern whether the Holy Spirit is acting in and through us all the time or whether we might detect a lack of spiritual guidance in our everyday life. We do not need to worry if we cannot fully understand what TAS was talking about below. However, we might ask God to fill us with this divine life if we have not known it the way it has been described ourselves. Jesus affirmed this promise here as He said,

“If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Lk 11:13 ESV)

The Secret Fundament of Being Useful for God

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desert, discerning the spirits, dying in the wilderness, dying to self, eternal fire, experience, fellowship, fire, flesh, following Jesus, God's love, honesty, living water, Moses, natural life, revelation, Roger T. Forster, T.A. Sparks, true ministry

Roger T. Forster, whose article “Making History with God” I found in T. Austin Sparks’ library online, would write,

“God is writing history, but He is drawing men into fellowship with Himself as He does so, making them the occasion for a chapter in His book of the story of humanity. There is a chapter for Noah, a chapter for Abraham, a chapter for Moses and many others, and a chapter for you and me. He calls us to share in His great declaration, ‘I am bringing to pass what I am bringing to pass’, encouraging us to be like Moses, a hole in the ground filled with His living water, or a common bush, aflame with the unquenchable fire of His love, so that He can use us in His great movement of liberation.”

https://www.austin-sparks.net/mags/ttm01-5.html

What Really Counts in Life

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aging, blessings, books, commandments, death, disaster, discerning the spirits, exhortation, experience, following Jesus, God's love, hurry, Judgment, mind, obedience, rest, restlessness, the fear of God, the Kingdom of God, the new self, the old self, this world, thought life, waiting, wisdom, youth

If someone nurtures soaring hopes and plans, we might tell them to stay more grounded or earthed instead. But have you ever heard someone suggest to you to get more ‘heavened’? 🙄 If you, like me, often times wonder about the seeming hopelessness of our existence as we cannot sense the presence of God while (sometimes ridiculous) everyday troubles keep preying on our minds, you might have also observed non-Christians who can seemingly live their lives confronted with less problems and difficulties than we can. Yet, in the long run, that is not the truth. The Book of Ecclesiastes tells us some sobering facts.

Christianity does not equal the Kingdom of God

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being born again, blogging, Christianity, eternal life, experience, eyes of the heart, following Jesus, Jesus Christ, joy, knowing God, pain, peace, reading, spiritual power, sting of death, writing

Not that I was hell-bent on publishing another blog post. However, since I was housebound until craftsmen had done their work in our flat, I decided to read a bit on the internet which I had not done often lately. Still, it seems to me a pretty boring matter to get back on the internet after having experienced LIFE, real LIFE that is a gift from God, divine LIFE that cannot be conferred on anybody, esp. not in such an artificial place as the internet is. Presenting truths to people whom we most probably will never ever come to know personally in this life time has become a frustrating experience over the last months (years?) to me. Having said this, you might wonder why I keep writing, though.

“Hath God really said…? “

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accusations, adultery, condemnation, deception, discerning the spirits, divorce, doubts, exhortation, experience, faith, false guilt, following Jesus, God's voice, peace, prayer, Satan, sin, the new self, the old self, thought life, Zarah Leander

Maybe, you are familiar with what has been going on in me lately. Imagine, after careful consideration aka prayer, you finally do something of which you are convinced that it must be God’s will for your life. I am not thinking of big things here, only of some small obedience of ours. As long as you are indecisive, you might feel weak, even confused. But as soon as you decide to give in to God’s tender ‘nudgings’, you sense some supernatural strength coming back to you. As you follow His leading and do what was needed, eventually, His peace surrounds you to show you His pleasure. How wonderful an experience! 😊 But then…

Everyone can hear the Voice of God

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dreams, encouragement, experience, God's love, Heaven and Hell, Jesus Christ, joy, light of life, ransom, redemption, righteousness by faith, salvation, sin, suffering, visions

As my closer walk with God through Jesus in 1995 had just begun, one of the first books He nudged me to read was the Book of Job, again and again. It was not ‘fun’ to read but important for me to know beforehand about these years of suffering and pain that were still ahead of me back then. I decided to copy and paste a longer Scripture that deals with the WHY and HOW God speaks to ALL people in this world through dreams, visions, and more often than not through adverse circumstances. To Job who would think he was a righteous man Elihu said,

Are we too sure of ourselves?

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carnal mind, compromise, discerning the spirits, dying in the wilderness, exhortation, experience, false spirits, fullness, satisfaction, T.A. Sparks, walking by the spirit

The following post is meant to provoke some thoughts in my readers. I could have added my own experiences as I usually do in order to illustrate the message below. However, I decided to copy and paste this exhortation by T. Austin Sparks without joining in.