pg4Him

As a small side note, I believe this is one reason why unity in the body is important. When elections come around, half of us pray for one side to win and half pray for the other side to win. A preacher grows his ministry and starts to be influential — half the church prays for God to “expose him as a fraud” while the other half prays for God to guard him from his enemies. Some Christians pray for Facebook to implode, others pray for their Facebook ministry to be protected. Speaking of the body as a whole, there is no discernment, no cohesive strategy, no teamwork, no mutual submission, and only a shallow common message that Jesus loves us or something. No wonder we can’t make a difference.

The best way to increase our prayers’ effectiveness is to 1) Be righteous 2) Pray earnestly 3) Align our prayers to the will and purpose of God’s heart 4) Pray through Holy Spirit inspiration

It’s difficult for me to avoid this topic — and thus avoid supporting my like-minded brethren — when there are so many threads about this topic. Sometimes I try to pop in to give moral support. But I can’t anymore. I really can’t. Knowing how much strife this topic causes, I don’t understand why there are multiple concurrent threads about it. Wouldn’t it be simpler to converge all 0f this into one thread and put it in its own arena? I’m trying resist, I really am, but sometimes half the new comments are on this topic.

Saying words with your mouth while your mind/heart doesn’t feel it. This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me. — Matthew‬ ‭15:8‬ Praying out loud for approval from others. And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. — ‭‭Matthew‬ ‭6:5‬ Praying for God to bless/protect others while He is the one chastising them. Therefore pray not thou for this people, neither lift up a cry or prayer for them: for I will not hear them in the time that they cry unto me for their trouble. — ‭‭Jeremiah‬ ‭11:14‬

Sorry @Cletus I can’t. Gotta ignore this topic for the sake of my blood pressure.

Works tried by fire in 1 Corinthians = “I will spit you out” in Revelation This has to be a joke. Seriously. This cannot be real Bible study.

Yeah what a losing battle that would be... stand over the man’s casket and use his funeral to preach about homosexuals. Then the church would be accused of stomping on his grave. People don’t attend funerals to hear sermons about the dead person’s children. How can a gay man in that lifestyle get up on a stage and sing a gospel song? According to the news report, he was invited to attend as long as he sat somewhere and didn’t bring his boyfriend. You can’t have a gay man attend with his boyfriend to sing a gospel song on the stage. The fact that many Christians can no longer see this is a sign of the times.

If the church charges a fee to do funerals like a business, I can foresee real legal trouble, especially if there was some sort of contract with no clause for immoral behavior. If they were doing it for free as a ministry, that’s a different story.

As I understand it, the Torah is neither the culture of the Jews, the culture of the Romans, or the culture of modern America. It is precisely the culture of the kingdom of heaven from Genesis to Revelation. When we begin to understand how to think like a heavenly Citizen, only then do we understand the culture of the Bible

I disagree with Michael Heiser about the historical cultural thing in the Old Testament. The Torah is Christ in a mystery revealed later to the church. This is what Paul told us. Every word of the Bible matters to us regardless of culture. One need not believe cultural obsolescence in order to believe gap theory. as I said, you can get there purely on doctrinal grounds just reading the Bible as it is. Truth is established by two or three witnesses. The full counsel of the word of God shows us the truth. This particular idea makes the most sense to me in reading the entire Bible plainly and seeing how it all works together.

Well don’t be shy @Tzephanyahu tell us how you really feel. Since I came to Worthy, I’ve been compared to everything from a Satanist to a Judaizer to a simpleton. All because of how I read the Bible. Not much grace around here, let me you tell you. I can hardly comment on a thread without being accused of something.

Watchman Nee was an eloquent talker who used persuasive words? Are you sure you know who Watchman Nee was? I’m not saying to take his word for it, but you should at least be willing to look into what he said and let him make his case. It’s not worth an argument, so I won’t keep replying to this, but I’m a little disappointed to see someone speak so dismissively on one of the great modern martyrs. but I suppose to each his own. Have a nice night.

For the record, @Still Alive is not teaching some fringy secular idea. I first learned of this in the Watchman Nee study Bible. No science or carbon dating to it. Watchman Nee got there purely on doctrinal grounds. I literally believe creation took seven days, but the countdown didn’t start until after there was such a thing as a day. it answers a lot of theological questions about why this whole plan of salvation thing got started. we don’t need to have a big discussion of it here, but I’m not sure why Thomas is so viscerally against it.

We know John was quite familiar with Genesis 1, so there’s that...

Heh @Still Alive we crossed each other!

We don’t know how much time passed between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:3. Some theologians say it could have been a long stretch where many of the “fallen angel” happenings took place. There was no concept of a day until God brought light to our planetary system.

@BeauJangles I wish we had a reaction button for a hug.

I tend to go with Justin on this one. He saved us to demonstrate the depth of His love and to astound the principalities at the sight of regenerated pagans once written off as destitute. Paul spoke of this in Ephesians. And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord — ‭Ephesians‬ ‭3:9-11 There is a reason why we have the possibility of judging angels, and it isn’t simply because Jesus made us super-duper righteous.

For what it’s worth, you can successfully talk to an atheist without having an answer for everything. Once I had an atheist who confronted me demanding to know if I believed in a literal six day creation. Instead of having a drawn-out debate on microbiology, I simply said “don’t ask me what happened, I wasn’t there.” He couldn’t think of a rebuttal, and he ended up giving me grudging approval that I answered him well. I’m not saying this answer would work on every atheist in every moment, but God gave me the exact words I needed to shut this man up. I’ve told other unbelieving friends “if I had a human answer it would be a human theology.” You’d be surprised at how many are willing to accept this.

You are essentially asking us how to show colors to a blind person. You see it, but you can’t show others. There’s no way around this. Most things of the heavenly kingdom are beyond the human thinking of this 3D universe. If we could fit them here, they wouldn’t be heavenly. It’s rather like a child asking why mother won’t let him stay home from school if she loves him. Why all the worksheets, the times tables, the summer classes when he doesn’t get it. Mother tries very patiently to explain to him, but his little mind cannot grasp this thing called physics. So he must obey her because she said so. You are looking for some kind of way to make the child see his mother’s perspective. Only God can bring that kind of knowledge to them.

The ideal outcome for us is to align our emotions in agreement with our spirit. We weep for what grieves our Lord, we smile at what pleases Him, we worry for those who betray Him, and we rejoice in what exalts Him. This is transformation in His image.

ask a dozen people and you’ll get a dozen answers. My own personal answer would probably go over like a lead balloon here, so I will let others provide answers.

Ok

I will make one last comment on this thread. Statements in Scripture we find the hardest to accept tend to be the very keys we need to level-up in our theology. Ignore them to your peril. Just as failure to learn math will eventually kick your butt in algebra, ignoring the hard stuff in Scripture will forever handicap your theology. You cannot explain it all away when you don’t want to hear it. This is why Christians stay stuck on milk instead of learning to digest meat. The things you don’t want to hear are probably the meat. Paul lived in a different culture 2,000 years ago? So what? He met Jesus in living color. Have you? Moses stood face to face with God as Christ was wrapped around a law — did you? Abraham was God’s personal friend who negotiated on the judgment of a city — have you ever done that? Elijah made it stop raining for three years — have you? You know more than them because you were lucky enough to have been born in 20th century America? Are you seriously willing to bet your theology on that? Christ draws us into a great unsearchable mystery. Even the brilliant apostle Paul had to settle for calling it a mystery because he couldn’t get it across. Plenty of human philosophers (it’s really all they are) can supply excuses to ignore the parts we don’t like. History, culture, grammar, you name it. All based on some human function which secular philosophers have been complicit in changing. Wait, you mean godless people will change your culture out from under you and then say the Bible is irrelevant because our culture changed? Well now there’s that... Shall I trust human logic looking for ways to not have to learn the math, or shall I trust that men chosen by God to write His word just might have known Him a little better than me? Each of us must choose for ourselves.

I strongly believe that a woman finds her highest dignity only within the mystery of Christ. Everything else will lead us to fruitless abasement.