Meaning
The Process
Wisdom: Righteousness & Reality
You Reap What You Sow
Emotional/Intellectual Response: Stony Places
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An Emotional or Intellectual Response: Stony Places
How can we know anything about anythingTo try to explain truth to him who loves it not is but to give him more plentiful material for misinterpretation. George Macdonald Do we have to make a choice between science and the Bible? NO! That is NOT where the problem is, but that is what everyone seems to want to talk about. Take science as an example. How can we know anything about the created material world around us? How can we know anything from what we can see using natural sciences? We all see the same things in the material world, but we don't come to the same answers. Why is that? How can we know anything about the Bible and what it teaches? Every person believes different things about the Bible and how it should be read. Why is that? Same scientific facts. Different answers. Same Bible. Different answers. Why is that? The true question is this: How do we come to our answers that we get from what we can see through science or what we can read in the Bible? How do we think about what we see using science or what we read in the Bible? How do we analyze what we have seen and read? How do we interpret what we have seen and read? We use logic, but logic always has a foundation. Jesus talked about building on the Rock. That Rock is Jesus Christ. He is the true foundation. There are also the false foundations of the ungodly. An example might help. Question: Why do you believe in evolution? Answer: Because my science teacher told me that evolution is scientific fact. Question: Why do you believe your science teacher? Answer: because he agrees with the textbook he assigned us to read. Now, we have asked, "Why?" twice. If we continued to ask, "Why?" we would come down to the foundation of this person's thoughts. When we get down to the foundations, there are no more questions that can be answered. So where to the foundations come from? There are three possibilities.
Question: Why do you believe in creation? Answer: Because God revealed this to me. He spoke to me through the Bible and gave me His faith so that I could believe Him. See how quickly we got to the foundation. This is a belief that has a foundation that is solid and that cannot be moved. In reality, the things that we make up, that are pulled from the air, are actually from demons and all the lies of demons spring from the prince of demons, Satan. So these are one and the same. Divine revelation comes from the Almighty, Creator, God, Jesus Christ. So there are only two choices, but how do we know there are only two choices? Because God has revealed this truth to us. The question then is how do we tell the difference between the revelation that comes from God and the lies of Satan? The answer is that everyone who sincerely wants to do the will of God will know. Jesus said, "If you really want to obey God, you will know if what I teach comes from God or from me" The rejection of the revelation that comes from God is not an intellectual problem. It is a moral problem. Jesus said, "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you: For everyone who asks receives; and he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks it shall be opened." Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to those who ask him? Matthew 7:7-11 You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. You can set the truth before someone, but you can't make anyone believe those things that they don't want to submit to. They have to want to obey God. How frequently it is brought to our attention that nothing good can be done if the will is wrong! Reason alone fails to justify itself. Richard M. Weaver Jesus said, "You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free" (John 8:32) "If we are not prepared to buy the truth at the cost of our own humbling we shall not receive it" Lies appear to have no price upon them. They seem cheap and they abound everywhere. But for the truth there is always an obvious price to pay. "[God] has set a day when He will judge all the world's people with fairness. And He has chosen the man Jesus to do the judging for Him. God has given proof of this to all of us by raising Jesus from death" (Acts 17:31). "There is a judge for the one who rejects Me [Jesus] and does not accept My words; that very word which I spoke will condemn him at the last day" (John 12:48) That also stands for every person who speaks the utterances of Jesus. When we hear them, we hear Jesus Christ, and we either accept or reject. Every person who follows Jesus Christ is commanded to only speak His utterances and not their own. "When we love others, we know that we belong to the truth, and we feel at ease in the presence of God" (1 John 3:19) Ravi Zacharias did two open forums in a university. On the second night, one man told him that he had brought two Atheists in the night before who said that the arguments presented were so strong that they could not contend with them, but they were going to remain Atheists because that is what they prefer to be true. In another case of just listening to an unbeliever and drawing out his reasoning, the unbeliever finally came to his foundations. They turned out to be assumptions that were pulled from the air. When asked why he believed his basic assumption, the unbeliever looked startled and blurted out, "I guess I'm making the whole thing up." It was quite a revelation to him since he hadn't even known that he had any assumptions. However, he decided to remain an Atheist because he didn't want God to rule over him. 
Only the Holy Spirit can take out the stony places. With an emotional or intellectual response, there is no hope of discerning the Body of Christ. The natural man cannot receive the things of the Spirit. There is no hope for the natural man to see the Kingdom of the Heavens, the Kingdom of God. The emotional and intellectual response cannot deal with the stony places--these fail to successfully deal with the stoney heart.
There is a downward spiral: You listen to your flesh which is a slave of Satan and then you sin. Sin plants evil seed in your heart and your heart is made harder and more resistent to God. Your spiritual senses are dulled. It is harder for you to receive the things of God. The seeds of sin grow up as weeds to choke out any blessing God would give you. You find it hard to be in the presence of God. You find the Bible hard to read. You have trouble finding time to pray or to have family devotions. You are drawn to the many influences of the world and these trample any blessing that God would give you. You are drawn to entertainments. You may even be drawn toward things that you know are wrong. You start to make excuses and to defend yourself before the throne of God. You contend with God. You begin to die spiritually, at the level of heart, mind, and soul, and finally your body. All the while, there is an upward spiral available to you. Every time Satan speaks to you through your flesh, the Holy Spirit also speaks. You can listen to the Spirit of God and ignore the spirit of error. If you believe God, you can't really take credit for that, since it is God who has prepared your heart. This is not about showing how good you are. It is about going from glory to glory by the Spirit of the Lord, the Holy Spirit. When you hear God, faith comes. Faith comes by hearing and hearing comes by the word [literally: hearing by God's utterance]. And faith gives us access to God's grace. Grace is the free gift of God. The Holy Spirit is the free gift from God. Forgiveness is the free gift from God. Righteousness is the free gift from God. Your part is to yield--to not fight against God. That is all we, as humans, are capable of, and even that is motivated by God's power to help us to submit and cooperate with the Spirit. The sin against the Holy Spirit, the one that cannot be forgiven, is the sin of not cooperating with the Holy Spirit. When God does His righteousness in us, this plants the seed of the Kingdom into our heart gardens. The soil of our hearts is softened and made more receptive to God's seed. As the seed matures, it brings it's own fruit, the fruit of the Spirit. The fleshly veil begins to fade and the fleshly nature dies a little. You begin to see reality more clearly. When you see reality, sin and impurity is obviously stupid and purity and righteousness is obviously smart. Without this vision, you may obey out of shear obedience without understanding why because your were blind, but now you see because of God's amazing grace. What you are is changed. In some measure, you are a new person with a new mind. This is what holiness is. It is an inner stability and steadfastness and faithfulness. Your mind is renewed and this causes you to be transfigured to some degree. You come more to completeness. This is accomplished by that which every joint supplies--it requires the Body of Christ. Some people have listened to their flesh and think that they can walk into the fullness of these promises without the Body of Christ. They think they can be independent. Others have been deceived into thinking that a perverted Body of Christ would be able to help. There are many perversions. There are governments that are not in Scripture, such as democracies, boards, monarchies, oligarchies, one-man ministries, hired and paid preachers, singular pastors in the local church, chief pastors or chief elders, hierarchies, popes, presidents, and more. None of these appear in Scripture. The order of Scripture is plain. The Holy Scriptures teach that both the universal and the local Church in Scripture have a government consisting of elders and deacons. The elders and deacons of the universal church are also called apostles. An alternate name for an elder is "bishop," meaning overseer. There is no independent, singular, preeminent, or chief elder in the order of either the local or universal Church in Scripture. Apostles are to receive a living since they travel and cannot really hold a job, while local elders receive a double measure of honor while they work for their living in the same pattern as a father in the home. The elders are indicated by the Holy Spirit and set to oversee and rule the local Church but as servants--not to lord it over anyone. In both the local and universal Church, each elder is in submission and under the government of every other elder--elders don't function as semi-independent consortiums. When the Church fell away from the orders of God, many disorders, distortions, perversions came in. Now, we see worship services that are a show, an entertainment, or dead form and ritual instead of 1 Corinthians 14 services. The head covering is seldom seen, but there it is in 1 Corinthians 11. Every ungodly means of fund-raising is used instead of tithes and offerings as the Bible prescribes. For the Gifts of the Spirit, people takes tests or do self evaluations or just declare themselves to have them. The Bible tells us that these are imparted by prophecy and laying on of hands of the presbytery. And then, there are all the people who were never sent by God, yet they are running around and prophesying gifts and ministries over people. We see formula-type sales masquerading as Christian witness to "get people saved." When we listen to our flesh, these are the types of results that can be expected. And the natural mind is very resistant to correction in these matters. Any day of the week, you can probably turn on Christian radio or read a Christian book that attacks the orders of God and substitutes and defends human generated orders and the precepts of men.
This is a progressive cycle, and the entire usually takes place very quickly. Every moment, we are tempted by being drawn away by our own desires, and, at the same time, we are being led by the Holy Spirit. We make no provision for the flesh. Sometimes, we are deceived, and we follow our own flesh when we thing we are following God. If we keep walking, God will even lead us out of these situations. See also: Alien & UFO Cults (Go)
Don't Frustrate Yourself By Stumbling Over Suffering, Sin, And Death. Death And Suffering Are The Results Of Mankind's Sin. The Sinful FleshDead to Self (Go) 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 For Though We Walk In The Flesh, We Do Not War After The Flesh: (For The Weapons Of Our Warfare Are Not Carnal (Go) Can God have fellowship with me without saving me from my lower nature? (Go) Isaiah 48:10-11 Refined in the Furnace of Affliction (Go) Sowing and ReapingThe Parable of the Sower Illustrates What Stops You--It Deals With Failure and Success (Go) Satan's Lies Work Against Everything that is Real and Genuine (Go) No Response: The Seed that Falls by the Way Side, the Trampled Path (Go) Christians Who Submit Their Minds to Ungodly Counsel Lack Wisdom (Go) The Fruitless Response: Among Thorns, The Cares of this world and Straining to be Rich (Go) Sowing Bad Seed (Go) Following people who were not sent by God (Go) Following Hireling Preachers: The hireling fleeth, because he is an hireling, and careth not for the sheep. (Go) Author/Compiler Last updated: Dec, 2011 |
This is the only sub-topic of Emotional/Intellectual Response: Stony Places:
Response to Suffering
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God has established the pattern of Scripture, for life and for the Church. You can feel free to use the Contact Form further down on this page to ask any question regarding this pattern of Scripture. The Church, the Body of Christ, and discernment of this Body, is the method that God is using to finish the work in His Body. The Body of Christ, God's Temple, is built up by that which every joint supplies, building each other up in love, and the Temple must be built according to the pattern of Scripture. 
We believe the Holy Scriptures teach:
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Contact FormYou can feel free to use this Contact Form to ask any question regarding this pattern of Scripture. The Church, the Body of Christ, and discernment of this Body, is the method that God is using to finish the work in His Body. The Body of Christ, God's Temple, is built up by that which every joint supplies, building each other up in love, and the Temple must be built according to the pattern of Scripture. If you would like to ask any other question on any subject or submit a correction or suggestion you may use this form.Please remember to include your email address if you want an answer. John 10:35b the Scripture cannot be broken, Put a Link To This Page on Your Site. HTML Code: Links: SeekFind.net ~ An Emotional or Intellectual Response: Stony Places An Emotional or Intellectual Response: Stony Places Human theology and reasoning is not necessarily correct, but the Bible is without error. The Bible can only be understood by revelation, and revelation is given by the Spirit of God. God does reveal in His own way. But we only know in part. If we think we know any thing, we do not know it as we ought. We are instructed, by God, to keep seeking Him. The Holy Spirit will lead us into all truth. The truth sets us free. Lies bind us. Whoever seeks Jesus does find Him. Jesus is the truth. 
THE CONCLUSION |
It is the sin of contending with the Spirit. When we contend with the Holy Spirit, God no longer leads us. He will not force Himself on us, so He cannot lead us out of our sin. But when you yield, then God does His righteousness through you. He gives you of His thoughts, His words, and His acts. We never have anything good that we have not been given.
