Can anyone tell me how to cleanse the inside of the cup and the plate?

[Guest]

Read the Word, Ethrayn.

 

God Bless you.

 

Your brother in Christ,

KPaulG.

Will do so.  Love my Bible—the favorite book I have.  God bless you as well.

 

[Earnest]

NO ONE CAN CLEANSE THE INSIDE OF THEIR OWN CUP. All we can do and are to do is love Jesus with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength.
 

Jesus cleanses us at the point of our  salvation. Thereafter, the more we draw closer to Jesus, God's one and only Son, who died for us and rose again, the more He changes our interests and desires away from junky stuff and toward honoring Him with our life.

 

If you are focusing on not sinning, or making yourself "clean" enough to have your prayers answered, you are not focusing on how much Jesus loves you and those around you.

 

In short, love Jesus, God's one and only Son, and spend quality time with Him everyday (30 to 60 minutes daily is reasonable), and then reflect Him to the world around you.

 

Heb 11:6 Faith is believing God is worth seeking and then seeking Him. If you don't have enough faith in, and love for, God to spend quality time with Him everyday, ask Him to help you understand His love for you better and to help you respond as He sees fit.

 

If you don't have enough faith to earnestly seek God daily, you don't have enough faith, IMHO.

[Ezra]

If you don't have enough faith to earnestly seek God daily, you don't have enough faith, IMHO.

And all you need is faith as tiny as a mustard seed. 

God does not demand a mountain of faith, but He says you can move mountains with a grain of mustard seed, because He's the One who will move those mountains. Except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build it.

[KPaulG]

Read the Word, Ethrayn.

 

God Bless you.

 

Your brother in Christ,

KPaulG.

Will do so.  Love my Bible—the favorite book I have.  God bless you as well.

 

Thanks, Ethrayn. How's everything going right now?

 

God Bless you.

 

Your brother in Christ,

KPaulG.

[Ezra]

I love to be able to help, but find my virtues are tested and

almost taken away when I engage in full-fledged spiritual battles.

It would help you to talk to some Christians you know personally and trust to (a) stand with you in prayer, (b) join with you in outreach and, (c) disciple you if they have the spiritual maturity and concern for your growth and strengthening.  In the early Church, Christians were freely sharing their resources.

[KPaulG]

Matthew 23:26

'Blind Pharisee! cleanse first the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside of them also may become clean.

Say the following scripture with me, Ethrayn.

Psalm 139:23-24New Living Translation (NLT)

23 Search me, O God, and know my heart;
    test me and know my anxious thoughts.
24 Point out anything in me that offends you,
    and lead me along the path of everlasting life.

Edited September 29, 2015 by KPaulG

[FreeinChrist]

Hello Ethryan, I really think Shiloh gave some great advice, and believe me I really understand how you feel.  We all fail God so badly, it is hard to understand how God can even care about us, even Paul the great Apostle speaks of this in Romans 7:14-23 over and over again saying the good that he would do, he does not; and the evil that he would not do, he ends up doing.  So Paul cries out at the end of this chapter these words:  24)  O wretched man that i am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?    25)  I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.  So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.   Romans 7:24-25   When speaking of stating that no man should glory in the  flesh Paul wrote in I Corinthians 1:29-31 that Jesus Christ is our wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption; Paul than states that we should glory in the Lord, because of ourselves we are miserable, but because of Christ Jesus we are perfect in the Father's eyes.. 

 

My only advice for any believer is never hold a grudge, we may think we have a right too, but Jesus tells us to be forgiven we must forgive other also, Matthew 6:14-15   The Christian is not known by his / her sinlessness; but Jesus says we are know by our love one for another--John 13:34-35; love that only the Holy Spirit can produce see Romans 5:5 and I Peter 1:22

[gdemoss]

Our body is a vessel.  A cup if you will.  It is our dwelling place.  Scripture teaches us to meditate on things that are pure and wholesome.  We are taught to resist evil desires through the spirit.  Exercising ourselves unto godliness is a progressive matter and one can become very strong in the spirit just as one can become lax and lazy and end up overcome by sin and wickedness all over again.  We are admonished to be strong in the Lord.

Exercise yourself to be as God is and evil will depart from you in short order.  Pride is that which all evil suffers from so when one resists evil the pride in that which is evil drives the evil away.  It is a controversial discussion but I am of the mind that devils (evil spirits) attack from within.  I respect those who believe otherwise but agree to disagree with them.  There are times when I realize that there is something very wicked in me that needs to leave.  There came a day when I finally understood what people were really saying when they said things like "I wonder what has gotten into him?".  Yet I believe they say it without knowing what they are really saying in truth.

I was once given over to a reprobate mind and even after coming to believe was reprobate concerning faith but through continued striving to grow by subjecting myself to that which is of God I have found relief from much of that which drove me to be so sinful before.  

My best weapon against evil is Gods Holy Spirit.  I stir up the Spirit in me through prayer, singing and speaking the word of God allowed especially proclaiming the truth about Jesus.  Declaring that Jesus is the Son of God who came in the flesh who is Lord of Lord and King of Kings and blessed above all.  I desire to be as he is, a savior, and exercise myself to refrain from that which destroys and give myself to the salvation of others through truth.

My biggest hurts are things that are selfish and self-centered in nature.  I have to be careful not to get lost in selfish pursuits of happiness through my flesh.  God made food to be consumed but I can forget that I need to eat to live and begin to live to eat.  Same with any of our God given instincts.  They can all be taken to excess.  I had to give up alcohol completely except for medicinal purposes because I found that I lost control over myself if I drank.  I also found that I needed a complete overhaul in the area of sexual matters.  When bothered by such things I give myself to ministering to the needs of others and the intimate connection of being deeply involved with them satisfies the longing for physical intimacy with another human being.  Especially if the work is intense and extensive like coming along side someone who is lost to the point of homelessness or shattered family life.  

I pray this gives you something that helps.

 

[Willa]

Usually when I was discouraged over my failures, God was working to change bad attudes of another nature.  But as said before, love is the key.  And if you read 1 Cor. 13 you know that we need God's love and not our own to love the unlovable and forgive the unforgivable.  So I asked God to fill me with His love and love them through me.  But it took time for me to realize that Christ really does live in me.  It took time for me to realize that others are either lost and in need of His love,, or else they are redeemed and in need of His love. We all need God's unconditional love that sees the needs and not the faults.  It is a growing process.  

We are indeed saved by grace through faith.  It is indeed a gift from God and no one is worthy.  Only Christ is worthy.  It is humbling when we let this fact sink into our hearts.  But it causes our hearts to break forth in to praise and worship, and thanksgiving.  No one can be good enough to go to heaven!  I am heir to God's blessings only because Christ lives in me and I am found to be in Christ.  Read Ephesians 1.

A chapter in the devotional Let Go by Fenelon states that dispair over our imperfections is a greater obsticle than the imperfection itself!.  How true.  Any time we are looking at ourselves with our imperfections we have taken our eyes off Christ and His beauty.  We can only walk on water when our eyes are firmly fixed on our Savior.  As soon as we look at the wind and the waves, we sink.   

Bless you my sister.  We all go through this and our continual struggle is to allow our old man to die and to keep our eyes on God.   

[KPaulG]

We all go through this and our continual struggle is to allow our old man to die and to keep our eyes on God.   

So Ethrayn, you are not the only one.

 

I struggle too.

 

God Bless you.

 

Your brother in Christ,

KPaulG.