Raven

What is good is true. What is bad is deception (untrue). Truth causes unconditional love. Deception causes fear. Evil suggests fear so it can feed of the fear of others. Fear is the lack of faith in God. Truth and Love is good and Holy. Deception and fear is bad and evil. IMHO

Thanks Carrie G. I will assume it is this first sentence... When we forgive someone, we actually relate to the other person. We understand how we ourselves make errors. When we cannot forgive, we still cannot relate to the other person. This indifference is our own. This can become difficult if we don't look at ourself deeply, like Truth does. For instance, as a child I was repeatedly physically abused by my alcoholic father. For years I could not forgive him. To forgive him I had to look deeply at myself to realize that I too have experienced losing the plot, acting out withoutout empathy, self-will run riot, etc. I then could relate, and was able to forgive him. In doing so, I realized my inforgiveness was from my denial of my own truth _ making judgments unfairly. Similar to ... John 8:7 When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, "Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her." Lots of people get caught up in a story about unfairness. While in that story, they cannot relate to the other person. In effect, they have denied their own truth of imperfection. Repentance is our way of looking deeply at our own truth.

Yes, I can relate. God knows our heart better than we do. Forgiveness is forgiving our self for needing to forgive. In other words, if we knew the Truth of the matter, we have no reason to forgive. So, God has forgiven us before we could forgive our self. The problem is that we tend to think, instead of knowing. Faith is knowing instead of thinking. All our knowing comes from the heart, the Spirit of Truth. Repentance is from the heart, and it recognizes the Truth, and wishes to return to the Truth. Repentance is ego (self-will) deflation at depth. The correct use of free-will is to humble the ego, to become humble to Truth, to God, to God's will. The more we do this, the more heart felt love for God, and God's love for us, is experienced. Love in our heart becomes a cup, bubbling over, with living water.

Only the ego fears repentance. It fears being vulnerable. exposed, and judged. In other words, it fears being unconditional. As long as a person fears repentance, they will never experience unconditional love for God. And uncoditional love of God. Repentance IS an act of unconditional love for God. Those that fear repentance are conditional, even with God, which is absurd.

Discernment is about knowing the truth. Truth is the ONLY reality. Anything not true is unreal. That is why it is so important.

The sinner does not know what they are truthfully doing. If the did, they would not sin. In other words, the sinner is deluded and untruthful. Sin is being untruthful and unreal. There is nothing to love about the sinner, or the sin.

Could be twisted pride. But just to clarify, I was talking about truth.

Thanks for reflected clarity.

All works of the flesh stem from the belief that one is the body, which is a falsehood. Jesus died on the cross to show that we are not the body. And then resurrected, and ascended, to push this truth home.

Yes, that is true, because most people do not yet understand the truth. So by being unloving could trigger hurt feelings. Not all people react the same way to what someone may have said. Why? Because everybody has different degrees of understanding the truth. It always boils down to our own interpretations. If someone called you a liar, and you still harbored guilt about some lie, you are more apt to feel hurt (exposed and vulnerable). But if you no longer lie, and made ammends to all previous lies, then you won't feel hurt. People with hidden, or harboured sins, are more apt to feel hurt when threatened by someones says. There is also a lot more to this problem, many carry shame around with them, and say things to themselves like "you idiot", "I am hopeless", etc. These will always re-open past hurts whenever someone mentions, or suggests, something of their shame / guilt. The humble and meek are more equiped to know their own truth, and are not easily hurt. I am not talking about humiliation, but being humble. So, if someone said to the humble "You are a liar", they will see that they have lied in the past (forgiven or not) and answer "Yes I am a liar". They have no need to protect themselves from the truth. Only the hurt fear the truth.

There is a question about what we may call sin. If we whittle it down to the ten commandments, then not sinning is doable. If sin points to being untrue (not the truth), then that becomes a lot harder, more like impossible.

Truth is, nobody can hurt anyone's feelings. What hurts is our own story about what someone said to us. Many say that truth hurts. But it does not, it actually liberates. What hurts is our ego squirming at losing self-esteem (humility, guilt, etc). Not even a lie hurts our feelings, for all our hurt feelings come from our ego, our false-self. Deeper truth is, we are spirit. We are not the body, though we have one. Getting lost in the idea of being the body is being absorbed by 'flesh'. We, the spirit, has a body to express God in this visible world. That is our goal, is to stop sinning so the false-self is humbled enough to allow the spirit express truth and unconditional love.

Goal is an objective to aim at. Without it, you won't know which way, or how, to go. Which is better understood. "Go, and sin no more", or "go, and try not to sin"? Humans always look for an easier way out. The second option invites compromise, excuses, and sin.

God will alter your perception if you ask for it, even though you may not know what exactly you are asking for. For instance, you may ask God for patience. Then you may start perceiving all sorts of trials and tribulations to practice patience in. After all, one simply does not become patient without first learning how to become patient. This happened to me long time ago, where I thought my friends were giving me a hard time, but in fact they weren't any different to how they normally are. What happened was that my perceptions were altered to see 'a hard time'. I know, that at this moment, my perceptions are not necessarily my own. However, whatever they are, they are for my benefit. So, I simple accept everything and be grateful for whatever lessons I need to experience and learn. Another example. I have asked God to put me into His service. So now I get led to all sorts of people and places, including this forum, right this moment, typing a post to your thread. It's no coincidence. As a famous Christian said as a mantra "My God, my all".

Jesus said: . . go, and sin no more. He gave her a goal.

How do you know that your prayers have not been answered. Most things come our way through learning. For instance, if you wish to be wealthy you may first need to learn how to overcome poverty. If you find yourself in poverty, then this is your training ground, set up just for you. If you want patience, you will find lots of trials and tribulations for you to practice patience. We don't just get patience, we have to practice it to grasp it.

Firstly, Jesus forgave her up to that point. Secondly, Jesus did not say "go, and you won't sin no more". It's a gift to start afresh. But now she is aware, and needs to stay aware (keep her oil lamp lit) to sin no more.

Dear @Sanctum Here is the tough-love version. You don't even trust yourself to stay alive. It is almost impossible to trust others if you cannot trust yourself. One's expectations always shift, always in doubt, and always find something in others that won't match up to your shifting expectations. Solution. Start practicing to stay on track with your own principles. Make a list of things to do that are doable and do them without deviation as best as you can. The first one on the list is to promise yourself to no longer harm yourself. The others are up to you. Your goal is to be able to rely or trust yourself to stick to good healthy principles. Always seek to do the right thing. Start praying and meditating on what God's will is for you today, and everyday. Doing this will bring you closer to God, and develop Good Orderly Direction in life.

Acceptance is the key to all our problems. Accept it when you feel down, and accept it when you feel up. In both cases, stay in touch with Christ, stay in touch with The Shepherd and He will lead you along the right path of acceptance. Once you can accept it, everything that you would not accept vanishes. When we have a story about feeling down, that story makes it feel worse and we suffer for it. Through acceptance, the story vanishes. Though we may still feel down, it no longer bothers us because we have accepted it. This liberation from our suffering makes us feel grateful. In that gratitude, we are back to loving God unconditionally. To accept, I usually let go of an old belief I had from my old nature (without Christ in my life) that if things don't go MY way, I won't be/feel okay. But my new nature (with Christ in my life) knows I will still be okay if things don't go MY way. So it's okay if I am down or up or whatever. Knowing I am okay regardless, helps me to accept it.

Shocking! Praying for all concerned.

So sad and shocked the read about the mass shooting of Christians in a Texas Baptist Church today. Sorry for the grief of those effected by it. May God console you. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/05/us/church-shooting-texas.html

First of all, how do you know you did not ask to be born before you were born? The Greater Reality of Truth (All truth, not facts) stem from the realm of the invisible. From the realm of what all things (including matter) stem from. This realm is invisible to us. To have any idea of the invisible realm is to use faith, not knowledge of this visible world. To have faith is to become unconditional. To trust in the Greater Reality of Truth (God) without reservation. If you have reservation, then one is still looking back at the visible (worldly thoughts). When one becomes faithful, they are open to see the truth. And part of that truth is that everybody is totally responsible for their own thoughts and actions. What this means, is there is no more blame, no more forgiveness, all is accepted. Peace and harmony comes from having no fear, no deceptions, no tension. Love and truth is the new way of life. In that state of mind of truth, one realizes they are not here for 'self'. What does not want to be here is the fearful 'self'.

Loves our faith, truth and love unconditionally. In other words, innocence.

Do not fear, have faith. Do not fear checking voice messages. Your friend maybe asking for reconciliation.

Regardless of religions or sciences there is a truth which is so profoundly real and doubtless that surpasses all reasoning. It is this Truth, when revealed to a person, that no amount of logic can shift it. To change from this Truth is like asking somebody to return to a world of fear and deception and not know any difference. But that can never happen because we do know the difference. It is only the non-believers that suffers from no differences. They don't know any different and therefore cannot understand us. But since we do know the difference we have chosen the better side.