9415	Forums / Theology Forum / Freedom Of The Will Jonathan Edwards	on: March 12, 2006, 05:31:16 PM
Quote MBG Having just read that last post of yours brings a question to main. At the  end of your post you said: "But if the word says that God is X then the concept though not experimentally understood yet by faith is what God is and no more. That is how God communicates to us that He is really in reality that very X. There is no other reality beyond that reality. I think thats my frustration ML." You speak of faith, which by definition has some slight variations, but I guess here you mean trust. Now to trust in something you can't touch, see, or what have you takes a blind trust. But you might say it isn't blind because of the Bible. But yet don't you need blind trust to trust that the Bible is the cornerstone from which you go forward? How do you know God is communicating to you that he is indeed X? The communication comes through spiritual eyes. Now dont get me wrong here i agree with ML when i talk about experience. I agree that there is this spiritual side, we have sight, touch, feel in the spiritual sense. That does transcend in experience our ability to understand the true nature of the concept. Never the less the truth is the truth. How can you not transcend in experience when you have the Holy Ghost living inside of us. What does fellowship with  the Holy Spirit entail. And not only that but man is a deep river, i mean,  there are layers and layers of spiritual in us. Here we are having all of these eternal desires, these new desires, and so we respond to these new desires that come in us when we are illuminated by the Spirit, and so we transcend our understanding in a sense perception. If i have given you the impression that this is merely intellectual then i have left out 80 percent of the reason we have faith. I think we have a hard time grasping this as a working principle in the doctrinal churches. There must be some inward change in a working on the heart that is an experience. There must be a new vision, a new renewal, a direct effect of these doctrines. What draws me to study, to do the elbow work? It is understanding these truths and then experiencing the vitality from the desire aspect. We are thinking beings, who over think and under feel in the spiritual realm. How can we truly understand God unless we get a taste of who He is. What kind of religion is cold and heartless? If God is God then He is God in reality. If there is time, an it is moving to a final event, then that is Gods purpose, and in that purpose is the pleasure of Him working these things out in time. If there were no pleasure in Him working in me then there would be little faith in believing that He is present. How can i have a profound understanding of His sovereign if i do not experience that absolute peace in any circumstance, tho a fight to get. Yet if the peace does not drop upon me in infusions and then transcend my circumstance, my disposition, then that providence is only a concept and not a taste. Have you ever been so at peace that you could hear the whisper of angels? Have you ever experienced the quieting on the inside so that the thoughts and desires are enraptured in God? Has God ever come like a mighty rushing wind and raptures you in you desires so that you were so much filled with a sense of heaven, a mighty confidence, looking into time in the future of you circumstances hand sensing God releasing you from that bad circumstance? Wow desires, spiritual transcendence, invisible confidence!