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

A Spiritual Self Check

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ads, discerning the spirits, exhortation, experience, flesh, following Jesus, fruit of the Spirit, God's love, pornography, salvation, Satan, spirit, the devil, the fear of God, worldly spirits

A Biblical Self Check
(Picture taken from https://goffwilson.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/self_check.jpg)

We should be aware that the devil does not sleep. Last Thursday as I checked my blog “Entering the Promised Land” on the cell phone when I was sitting at the hairdresser, I saw four ads popping up beneath one of my articles which I normally do not see when I am logged in on WordPress. One of these ads showed a sort of pornographic picture. We who may use WordPress for free, that means, all who are logged in on WordPress as bloggers ourselves won’t see those often offensive ads other visitors might be confronted with.

Regaining a Peaceful Mind and Heart

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confusion, faith, feeling, flesh, God, heart, hope, hopelessness, Jesus Christ, mind, Oswald Chambers, pain, peace, psychology, rest, restlessness, Satan, the devil

There is always hope…
(Photo by Susanne Schuberth)

“For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.” (Rom 8:6 ESV)

Basically, it would be so easy to discern whether we have set our mind on the Spirit or on the flesh if we only took a short glance into our hearts and check them for their peaceful or restless condition. The problem is, as soon as we sense that there is NO peace at all, we might be inclined to look at our own failures or to those of others instead of taking a short glance to God who allowed Satan to bring us into that confused, disheartened, sometimes even hopeless condition. We can be sure that the devil always tries everything in order to keep us restless and discouraged. He does not cease telling us about our wrongdoings or about those of others in order to keep our thoughts running like a hamster in his wheel – from past events to the future, back to the past, and so on and so forth. The sorrow and those negative feelings that go with these thoughts ALWAYS come from the devil, too.

Knowing God…

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agape, being born again, ecstasy, eros, experience, eyes of the heart, feeling, flesh, God's love, intimacy, Jesus Christ, joy, knowing God, Oswald Chambers, peace, prayer, relationship with God, spiritual power, the Kingdom of God

Knowing God… and Being Known by Him
(Source http://pixgood.com/intimacy-with-god-quotes.html)

Instead of boring you to death with a new article written right from my blank mind, 😉 I decided to copy and paste two daily devotionals from Oswald Chambers that really hit home as for the consequences of being intimate with God. We will see and feel it in our own lives, and others will too, when all our thinking and doing eventually spring from being one with God as we abide in His love. If we are really as intimate with Jesus as Jesus was with His Father, the fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5:22-23) cannot be ignored, neither by us nor by anyone else, for it is written,

“A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits.” (Mt 7:18-20 ESV)

Wanna be a Law-keeper?

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Charlton Heston, conscience, flesh, following Jesus, freedom, Jesus Christ, justification, light, Martin Luther, sin

“The Ten Commandments” [Charlton Heston as Moses (1956)]

Let’s say someone were hell-bent on being a good person, which is not a bad thing in itself, that’s for sure. However, imagine whenever that person observes something evil or uncomfortable emerging from his heart, such as pride, hatred, wrath, jealousy, covetousness, aggressiveness, enmity against God, or grief over a great loss, such a one would either follow a ritual of sorts by confessing his sins to God in the hope of getting rid of them or he would try to take his mind off these things by devoting himself fully to something which does not cause these bad feelings.

Do we believe that this procedure will be successful?

Let’s get real, friends!

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darkness, flesh, good works, justification, light, Martin Luther, psychology, sanctification, true faith, unconscious mind

Straw Field (Photo by Susanne Schuberth)

I am fully aware that this article might offend some people. However, we should know that the truth almost always offends our flesh. Letting His light shine into our very heart is NEVER comfortable. It is painful!

So, only if you want to let the great heart surgeon have more than a casual glance into the dark cellar of your unconscious mind any time soon, you should go on reading. If not, it would be better to cling to the dangerous delusion of believing Jesus came to make you a better human being. In fact, He came to save sinners from perishing in their (unconscious) sinfulness by giving them the light to see their lostness and hopelessness without Him.

Some thoughts on our thought life…

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Carl Gustav Jung, darkness, flesh, God, Jesus Christ, light, psychology, sanctification, Satan, Sigmund Freud, spirit, thought life

Light and Darkness (Photo by Paul Schuberth)

During the years before God freed me completely as regards to my thought life, I struggled a lot with my self-made mind control, which, honestly, never worked at all. Thoughts come and they go. They always “go together” with those good and bad feelings they cause. And they don’t ask me, “May I stay or should I go?” Instead, they seemingly do what they want. The reason for their impertinent “behavior” lies in the fact that every recurring thought or dream has an invisible root that is hidden deep within our hearts. Recurring thoughts use to bother us and therefore we are often lost in them or speak about them if possible and appropriate. If we don’t have anyone with whom we can share the thoughts which grieve us for example, or which reveal our deepest longings, then the thoughts will ”reveal themselves” somehow automatically by coming out of our mouth in inappropriate situations as well. Here I am reminded of Jesus who said that the mouth speaks “out of the abundance of the heart” (Lk 6:45).

INTRODUCTION

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adultery, being born again, divorce, ecstasy, flesh, Jesus Christ, poems, spirit, the Kingdom of God, the promised land

In advance, some thoughts on exploring the idea of walking in the spirit vs. walking in the flesh …

As for walking in the spirit, indeed, there will be no ordinary days any more because I know for sure that He brings the unexpected things. And there’s something new about His Love that will catch you by surprise (it’s all about those extra things personally provided by Him). What I mean here is in particular the unexpected experience of being transformed from a fleshly-minded person into a spiritually-minded being without doing anything yourself in order to get there. It is the exclusive work of the Holy Spirit to give birth to a new creation in Christ (Jn 3:3-8; 2 Cor 5:17; Gal 6:15).

I guess that God chose the picture of “birth” to remind us of our own helplessness during that process of being born again. We are like babies who are born when it’s time to experience a completely unknown, new world outside the comfortable womb. Another thing which is fully consistent with the image of a newborn baby is that we, too, forget everything about our experiences inside the womb as soon as we have learned to survive in the spiritual promised land (i.e., the Kingdom of God). We learn to walk by the spirit, and we learn to speak another language that not necessarily needs words which could be heard by anyone. But most of all, we learn to forget, namely our past sins, the sins of others, our past pain, our previous likes and dislikes – and last but not least, we forget the desires of the flesh.

In order to illustrate that experience, I’d like to choose a situation taken out of the Bible but described in my own words.