| Author | Post |
|---|
junkyardboy
Member
|
Posted: Tue Jan 15th, 2008 11:56 am |
|
where does faith come from?
____________________
have we been abandoned by God?
http://www.apprising.org/archives/2006/11/dr_john_macarth.html
http://www.valleybible.net/position_papers.php
|
truthseeker
Administrator
| Joined: | Tue May 16th, 2006 |
| Location: | New Jersey USA |
| Posts: | 1322 |
| Status: |
Offline
|
| Mana: |    |
|
Posted: Tue Jan 15th, 2008 12:51 pm |
|
Hi Peter,
I would recommend Romans chapter 10. Verse 23 says that faith comes by hearing the Word of God. Also see Romans 1:20 and 2:14-5. I think that Jesus' parable of the sower also applies. I cannot begin to answer why some hearts are more fertile to grow that seed of faith, and why some are so hard that Satan steals it immediately.
TruthSeeker
|
Wilderness Voice
Member
| Joined: | Fri Jul 6th, 2007 |
| Location: | Arkansas USA |
| Posts: | 169 |
| Status: |
Offline
|
| Mana: | |
|
Posted: Tue Jan 15th, 2008 02:35 pm |
|
JYB and TS:
Faith is a substance and it is imparted by the Word of God. All things good were created by God through the Word. And the Spirit of the Word, Jesus, will enter the heart of the listener (by hearing Him) and create Faith in the willing heart.
But there is the secret, we must be really listening to hear the Word of God. For surely there are those who receive it with their outward ears, but it does not lodge in their hearts as Truthseeker said. This is born in the parable of the sower. There are those also in which the Word is choked because of the cares of this world.
As far as hearts being receptive to Faith goes - there are numerous places in the bible which explain just why people are spiritually blind and/or do not hear. Perhaps the simplest is this:
"And they became vain in their imaginations and their foolish heart was darkened."
A foolish heart will not truly listen to or perceive Faith nor make the right choices. A foolish heart will like the fruits of being unrighteous.
But a foolish heart is created by vain imaginations. Pride, vanity, that which puffeth up causes the heart to seek things that increase the self-perception, the fantasy of being envied, worshipped, sought after, admired, esteemed, desired by others. These fantasies will often merge into or center around sexual fantasy and the heart begins seeking and chasing after the fulfilment of these vain musings that become coupled with a pleasure response.
The heart becomes darkened and does not choose righteous things.
Humility thus becomes one of the key ingredients to receiving Faith. It is also one of the key ingredients in overcoming sexual bondage. For if the mind desires the satisfaction of the fantasy of attention, then the heart will seek that which satisfies the mind, and the body will be the enemy - continually desiring the pleasure fix.
But the mind can overcome the body and the heart can turn the mind. This is why it is so important for us to Love God with All Our Hearts. Such a heart will not become darkened and foolish. Such a heart will humbly seek the Face of God. Such a heart will find Faith abundantly and receive the very substance of Faith from the Word of God.
WV
|
guitarist63
Member
| Joined: | Mon Feb 12th, 2007 |
| Location: | |
| Posts: | 1337 |
| Status: |
Offline
|
| Mana: | |
|
Posted: Tue Jan 15th, 2008 06:44 pm |
|
My pastor recently told me that the Word of God will kill if the person who reads it is not filled with the Holy Spirit. Obviously he didn't mean literally kill but that without faith, without the Holy Spirit to breathe life into the words of the Bible, it can't be something alive, vibrant, life-affirming. It is the dead letter. A pack of dried seeds that will not grow until you put them in some soil (the right soil) and water them.
Last edited on Tue Jan 15th, 2008 06:53 pm by guitarist63
|
junkyardboy
Member
|
Posted: Tue Jan 15th, 2008 07:26 pm |
|
greetings,
wv, you said "we are to love God with all our hearts."
how are we to do that?
peter
____________________
have we been abandoned by God?
http://www.apprising.org/archives/2006/11/dr_john_macarth.html
http://www.valleybible.net/position_papers.php
|
Seeking God
Member
| Joined: | Wed Aug 15th, 2007 |
| Location: | Jakarta, Indonesia |
| Posts: | 221 |
| Status: |
Offline
|
| Mana: | |
|
Posted: Tue Jan 15th, 2008 09:52 pm |
|
Dear Junkyard
I have those questions also, but this verse really helps
"No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money. (Mat 6:24) Therefore do not be anxious, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. "Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. (Mat 6:31-34) Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Phi 4:4-7)
I don't have much time to explain what these verses are to me for now, but I believe that just reading these verses, listening to them will make us understand a lot more about loving God.
SG
|
truthseeker
Administrator
| Joined: | Tue May 16th, 2006 |
| Location: | New Jersey USA |
| Posts: | 1322 |
| Status: |
Offline
|
| Mana: | |
|
Posted: Wed Jan 16th, 2008 01:01 am |
|
Hi Peter,
Well, I'm obviously not WV, but I have a couple of thoughts.
We love, because He first loved us. If a heart fails to be stirred by God's love, it may be hard, indeed!
Once that initial reciprication response takes place, we are told that obedience demonstrates our love. "If you love me, keep my commandments."
Agape love, after all, is not a warm fuzzy feeling, but a daily choice, to love because He first loved us, because He is worthy of our love, and to do what He has taught.
TruthSeeker
|
Wilderness Voice
Member
| Joined: | Fri Jul 6th, 2007 |
| Location: | Arkansas USA |
| Posts: | 169 |
| Status: |
Offline
|
| Mana: | |
|
Posted: Wed Jan 16th, 2008 09:22 am |
|
Dittoes to Seeking and Truthseeker.
I would add childlike trust and awe of God. Looking at God in reverence and interest and adoration will instill Love. Learning about His Nature - His Character (His Name).
2 Cor. 3:18: But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.
This scripture really helped me to grow in Love for God. Along with asking Him to give me more of His Love for Him. Just as Jesus adores the Father and the Father adores the Son - so I pray that God would fill me with His Love. Not feeling a Love from Him for me - but to give me more Love for Him. That I might serve Him, be more willing, filled with Passion - the Pure Passion of Christ.
My wife shared with me her prayer, which I like: "God, please expand my heart to love you more. Please cause my heart to grow larger than it is."
Also to set our open face before God means to turn our face away from the stumblingblock of our iniquity. Cut off every piece of input that causes us to have the fantasy/sexual images in our mind. This is putting the stumblingblock of our iniquity in front of our face (where we can see it in our mind's eye). We need to turn our mind's eye toward the things of God. This is how we grow to be more like Him - by beholding Him - who He is - in our mind's eye.
This is the eye being single unto God and not double (one eye evil and one eye good - which causes a mixture of good and evil that is abhorrent).
Ezek. 14:3 Son of man, these men have set up their idols in their heart, and put the stumblingblock of their iniquity before their face: should I be inquired of at all by them?
God should be the one our hearts and eyes (inner and outer) turn to - not our sin - remove the sin from in front of our face and tear down the idols of our heart. Get it out of our eyes. Sexuality has far too much importance in our lives and has become the altar of sexual idolatry.
Make God the most important - leave no place at all for sexual sin - stop looking at it in the mind's eye or with the natural eyes - let Love Bloom. Fires die when there is no fuel. Also, refuse to like the fire - refuse to find the fire attractive - see it for the flames of hell that it is and you will never choose to provide fuel for it to start up or to grow. Eventually the fire dies.
We obtain or become a part of that which we love.
WV
Last edited on Wed Jan 16th, 2008 09:30 am by Wilderness Voice
|
junkyardboy
Member
|
Posted: Wed Jan 16th, 2008 10:20 am |
|
greetings all,
we all say and know the right things.
love God with all our heart, be perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect, etc.
how do we do that?
how do we even know we are saved?
how do we reconcile Romans 9 with our modernist thinking?
peter
____________________
have we been abandoned by God?
http://www.apprising.org/archives/2006/11/dr_john_macarth.html
http://www.valleybible.net/position_papers.php
|
Wilderness Voice
Member
| Joined: | Fri Jul 6th, 2007 |
| Location: | Arkansas USA |
| Posts: | 169 |
| Status: |
Offline
|
| Mana: | |
|
Posted: Wed Jan 16th, 2008 01:38 pm |
|
I can speak for no one else but I did not just write to say and demonstrate knowledge.
Those things I wrote, I practice to the best of my ability by the Grace of God. My wife and I pray daily asking for God's Grace to actually obey His Word, not just hear it. And so that is what we actually do.
I do not attempt to reconcile anything to modernist thinking. I believe it when the Word said: "In the last days perilous times shall come, men shall be lovers of themselves, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God."
I believe thats exactly where modernism is and that it is of the world and therefore impossible to reconcile with God. My wife and I believe that mankind's thinking (in general) has never been further away from God. It is as the days of Noah, as Sodom and Gomorrah, as when the angels fell from heaven.
I write here to try to help those who have utterly lost their way as I had. My attempts at persuasion are not so much geared toward what one believes, but rather what one should do. I really mean it when I said to shut one's eyes to sin. I'm not kidding or stabbing at theory. I mean do not look at it at all. Not with your eyes or the eyes of your mind. How could this be said any plainer?
My wife and I are not Catholic, but perhaps it would do some people good to take a walk through a good Catholic Church and stop at each of the stations of the cross and really think about what Christ did for us. This would be putting pictures of Jesus in our minds instead of all the garbage that the world offers. Or rent the Passion of the Christ and watch it prayerfully. My wife and I read pages of Spiritual materials daily, but I would have to say that none of it is modernist. We have only good movies and music in our home and listen to and watch only that. We surround ourselves with good things and try to do good works as led by God. Not thinking once that such things will earn us Heaven or Salvation, but that such things honor the God we profess to love. The world is very, very wicked and is poisoning people to the point of helplessness.
I know. I used to live a terrible life. I went to every Rolling Stones concert I could and knew the words of all their songs. Believe me, Mick Jagger knows the bible very well and quotes it often, but "At his Satanic majesty's request." All they sing about is evil deviltry and lust and vanity. I lived swallowed up in the vanity of this world and the sexuality of pornography and self-abuse. Drugs and money and the education of this world. Movies and Broadway plays and concerts. I'd been to the capitals of the world and sat at tables of power. I;ve listened to those who truly have the spirit of the Antichrist at work in their hearts. Through all this, somehow I believed that I was a Christian because I'd given my life to the Lord when I was a teenager. This was until the day the Lord began to open my eyes and I saw that I was no different at all than the sinners of the world. Not a bit different. I was so ashamed that I had been so unfaithful and unbelieving to God. I repented and repented and the repentance went deeper and deeper. But so did the love emerging in my soul for God.
I cannot say exactly where the line is for everybody. I can only say I have no desire to push the envelope to see how much God will allow. That kind of life does not appeal to me for my Saviour is not in it. Perhaps it is because I fell so far that I am so against all of the worldly things and modernist thinking. My soul has found the fount of Living Water and I want to drink and drink and drink from it. I did hunger and thirst after righteousness and God is so gracious to grant our sincere requests. But being satisfied in God does not make me complacent but only seeking deeper into the Heart of God for more of His Precious Love.
Read the story of Hezekiah in Chronicles and you will see the pattern of Love. Love is a consuming fire from above and will burn out the dross if we will seek it instead of the fire that burns with lust in the belly.
WV
|
junkyardboy
Member
|
Posted: Wed Jan 16th, 2008 02:37 pm |
|
dear wilderness voice,
AND ALL OF GOD'S PEOPLE SAID "AMEN"
thanks be to God for His unspeakable gift,
peter
____________________
have we been abandoned by God?
http://www.apprising.org/archives/2006/11/dr_john_macarth.html
http://www.valleybible.net/position_papers.php
|
junkyardboy
Member
|
Posted: Wed Jan 16th, 2008 05:31 pm |
|
here is a great link if anyone would like to do their own study of God's attributes
http://www.preceptaustin.org/notes_on_attributes_of_god_(2b).htm#WRATH%20OF%20GOD
peter
____________________
have we been abandoned by God?
http://www.apprising.org/archives/2006/11/dr_john_macarth.html
http://www.valleybible.net/position_papers.php
|
junkyardboy
Member
|
Posted: Sat Jan 19th, 2008 08:38 pm |
|
"Tell me, you vain professor,
when did you shed a tear for the deadness, hardness,
unbelief, or earthliness of your heart?
Do you think that such an easy religion can save you?
If so, we may invert Christ's words and say, 'Wide is the gate,
and broad is the way,
that leadeth to life, and many there be that go in there.'"
-JOHN FLAVEL
"Preach the gospel to yourself everyday..."
-JERRY BRIDGES
if you would like to read more:
http://www.stevenjcamp.blogspot.com/
peter
____________________
have we been abandoned by God?
http://www.apprising.org/archives/2006/11/dr_john_macarth.html
http://www.valleybible.net/position_papers.php
|
junkyardboy
Member
|
Posted: Wed Jan 23rd, 2008 12:28 am |
|
from the insightful pen of C.H.Spurgeon
The thought struck me, How did you come to be a Christian? I sought the Lord. But how did you come to seek the Lord? The truth flashed across my mind in a moment—I should not have sought Him unless there had been some previous influence in my mind to make me seek Him. I prayed, thought I, but then I asked myself, How came I to pray? I was induced to pray by reading the Scriptures. How came I to read the Scriptures? I did read them, but what led me to do so? Then, in a moment, I saw that God was at the bottom of it all, and that He was the Author of my faith, and so the whole doctrine of grace opened up to me, and from that doctrine I have not departed to this day, and I desire to make this my constant confession, "I ascribe my change wholly to God."
the complete text:
http://www.spurgeon.org/calvinis.htm
thanks for your attention,
peter
____________________
have we been abandoned by God?
http://www.apprising.org/archives/2006/11/dr_john_macarth.html
http://www.valleybible.net/position_papers.php
|
guitarist63
Member
| Joined: | Mon Feb 12th, 2007 |
| Location: | |
| Posts: | 1337 |
| Status: |
Offline
|
| Mana: | |
|
Posted: Wed Jan 23rd, 2008 12:59 am |
|
Charles Spurgeon. One of the more inspiring preachers of past centuries. Thanks for this contribution, Peter.
Earlier you asked the question about faith. A great chapter to read on the subject is Hebrews 11. The whole chapter is that subject.
|
junkyardboy
Member
|
Posted: Sat Feb 2nd, 2008 01:06 am |
|
just sitting here wondering..... how did the disciples ever have victory over their sexual lusts without a 12 step program or the latest self-help book?
____________________
have we been abandoned by God?
http://www.apprising.org/archives/2006/11/dr_john_macarth.html
http://www.valleybible.net/position_papers.php
|
guitarist63
Member
| Joined: | Mon Feb 12th, 2007 |
| Location: | |
| Posts: | 1337 |
| Status: |
Offline
|
| Mana: | |
|
Posted: Sat Feb 2nd, 2008 09:08 pm |
|
How many of them were married? I suppose married or single, they were no different from 12 men today, chosen out of the world. I should think they were worked very hard, healing the sick, feeding the poor, etc., doing a lot of traveling, looking after other's needs, rather than their own. Not much energy or inclination, perhaps, to sin that way. I would have thought that being with Jesus all the time, His character must have rubbed off a little.
|
junkyardboy
Member
|
Posted: Sun Feb 3rd, 2008 01:16 pm |
|
dear stephen,
you have clearly expressed the key to victory in just one easily understood
sentence,
i praise God and rejoice for your wisdom.
praying that we all desire to know Him more and more,
peter
____________________
have we been abandoned by God?
http://www.apprising.org/archives/2006/11/dr_john_macarth.html
http://www.valleybible.net/position_papers.php
|
guitarist63
Member
| Joined: | Mon Feb 12th, 2007 |
| Location: | |
| Posts: | 1337 |
| Status: |
Offline
|
| Mana: | |
|
Posted: Sun Feb 3rd, 2008 08:44 pm |
|
Thank you Peter for your kind words. I'm just an ordinary man who tries to answer such questions. I am sure others here could have supplied you a better answer.
I thank God for the courage He gives you in the face of great adversity as well as challenges.
|
Current time is 04:50 am | |
|
RSS