7002	Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Is my new life philosophy biblical?	on: November 09, 2007, 03:36:05 PM
What is Gods will for our lives? To glorify Him and enjoy Him forever. Or to glorify Him in enjoying Him. So it is a matter of perspective. And since we have obtained such a great salvation the will of God is that we see His purpose for our lives starting from before we were born. We were called from our mothers. And even when we were in sins and trespasses He redeemed us. His purposing our salvation was when we were in sin to prepare us for salvation.  So we are called before we were able to understand. And some of us were taught lessons about sin very early in our lives. Some of us were protected from sin and we were brought along slowly and religiously. But all of us can rejoice that our salvation originated in the eternal counsel of God. And the purpose of us being saved was from eternity.  When we struggle with sin in our salvation, we can look back and have confidence that before we were saved we can remember when we were in bondage to sin so that we learn to rejoice in Gods eternal love for us, and His faithfulness when we were unfaithful, His kindness , when we were at enmity with Him, and His patience when we were living in sin. We are given life by His choice, and we were forgiven at an early age so that He does not remember the sins of our youth. We do not need to return to the blackness of the guilt of sin that goes back wards, but we can have confidence in His loving us over our past experience. His love breaks through time and experience. We can have confidence that He was a Father to us, and that before we were saved He kept us from dieing before we were given salvation. Our lives are under His eternal purpose.  It is to our advantage to listen to our Fathers voice in the word of God, and see how much He has determined to advance His purposes in the call of His divine revelation. Because it is terribly important for God to be the rock of our salvation. When we are standing on that rock we are lifted up above our circumstances and the people who have no regard for Gods purposes. When we experience this effect our Fathers voice from our finite view we experience His love that surpasses our finite relational past by His eternal love sustaining us by being filled with the eternal Spirit of God who gives us a vision of the eternal past. We are protected from the danger of being trapped in the damage of this terrible problem with past pain.This is experiencing Christ as the rock. The fleeing to Christ as our refuge is not just standing on the rock but it is His work in our lives to effect the transparency of our past and the weakness that we experience as a result of the pain of our past, and to shield us from the present pain that comes out of that past pain. When we know of our Fathers love in an experiential way , we know of His being present in our experiencing His eternal purpose for us to surpass this earthly struggle.  In the times that God hides Himself, we begin to be less confident in our struggles. Because God protects us by being our shield, we are so dependent upon the Holy Spirit to be a comfort in all of lifes trials. But God does things to effect the advancement of our faith. If we never experience Gods withdrawal then we would never grow in our faith.  In the souls declining into the depths of despair, these self righteous voices begin to sound louder, so that the self begins to be agitated by remembering the former ways of being under the power of , the course of the world, the power of the flesh, and the temptations of the Devil. God wants us to look for deliverance so that our looking on Christ will be more important than the experience of love flooding our souls and inflaming our desires. We are led down the road of tribulation and temptation. We are so easily led astray.  Because the world loves self righteousness, we are cast into the mold of self strength.  We grow tired, because we are not able to make God appear in the same way , but He seems to hide Himself. We want the same experiences of the eternal call of God, the sense of His love that fills our every longing, and the power of His right hand putting us on the rite path, so that we are raised up above our enemies, and the self righteous crowd. But we begin to falter. Oh, how low that sense of desertion feels. Oh how desperately we are led into this tension. We are as it were shaken in our faith as the world mocks at us, and the self righteous say, "I told you to listen to me." It is a dark age, that we are led into, as if there was no Martin Luther, only the idolatry of saint worship, and indulgences. The pull of the world begins to over take our devotion, and we are most misunderstood. Yes this is the state of a trial. It is very hard indeed to believe in an eternal present Father, who is fully able to come to our rescue without our help. It is so easy to fall into semi -plagenism.