Foundations Home Meaning Bible Dictionary History Quotations

Emotional/Intellectual Response: Stony Places



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.

This response to the gospel of the Kingdom fails to discern the Body of Christ. Rather than lifting up Jesus and yielding to the Spirit, this response may yield itself to dogma, emotion-generating techniques, entertainments, false claims to authority, or rationalizations. They listen to people with fancy credentials who are just making stuff up, that is, lying. Their lies aren't even well-hidden because the people who are swallowing their lies love to be lied to. This type of reaction my exalt the intellect or self-effort, self-actualization, or self image.

Emotion and intellect, the natural, carnal mind, lacks Honor and respect for God. Honor and respect for God is the beginning of wisdom, Wisdom is the real source of righteousness, holiness, and redemption. This lack of honor and respect is the result of rejecting the Holy Spirit. Only the Spirit can break up the stony places. The natural mind hates the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the enemy of the natural mind and vice versa. They fight each other.

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. 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.

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)
Agnosticism And Agnostics (Go)
Agnostic Christianity (Go)
Atheists And Atheism (Go)
At Ease Christianity (Go)
Baha'i Faith (Go)
Buddhism (Go)
Christadelphianism (Go)
Church Of Christ Scientists, Christian Scientists, Mary Baker Eddy (Go)
Demagogue Christianity (Go)
Democracy Worship (Go)
Denominational Christianity (Go)
Disconnected Christianity (Go)
Dogma-based Christianity (Go)
Eckankar, ECK, And Sugmad (Go)
Emergent "Church" (Go)
Emotion-based Christianity (Go)
Entertainment Christianity (Go)
Evil For Good Christianity (Go)
Evanjellyfish Christianity (Go)
Evolutionism, The Cult Disguised As Science, But It Is Not Science. Evolution / Evolutionism is a Cult. (Go)
Evolutionistic Christianity (Go)
Gnostics and Gnosticism (Go)
Hinduism (Go)
The Human Goodness Cult (Go)
Humanism Also Known As Secular Humanism (Go)
The Human Potential Movement (HPM) (Go)
Intellectualism. Leaning On One's Own Understanding. When Does It Become A Cult? (Go)
Islam (Go)
Jehovah's Witnesses (Go)
The Latter Rain Movement and the Charismatic Movement (Go)
Liberalism, A Human Goodness Cult of Totalitarian Coercion (Go)
Liberal Christianity (Go)
Materialism, The Cult That Is Based On Nothing Other Than A Bald-faced Lie (Go)
The Cult, Modernism (Go)
Mormons--The Church Of The Latter Day Saints (Go)
Native American Religions (Go)
Naturalism, A Cult Based On A Bold-faced Lie (Go)
The New Age Movement (Go)
Old-Earth Fairy Tales Have Destroyed The Faith Of Many (Go)
The Occult (Go)
Pantheism: All Is God--God Is Everything There Is. (Go)
Post Modernism, The Last-Ditch Effort To Defend Evolution And Atheism (Go)
Rationalism: Why Is It A Cult? It Makes The Human Mind Into A False God, Giving It God-like Qualities That Don't Fit Reality. (Go)
Rationalized Christianity (Go)
Redefined Christianity (Go)
Relativism Is One Of The Chief Precepts Of Many Cults Including Post-Modernism (Go)
Self-Christianity (Go)
Scientism (Go)
Scientology (Go)
Secularism (Go)
Sikhism (Go)
Statism & Statists (Go)
Theosophy (Go)
Transhumanism (Go)
Unification Church of Sun Myung Moon (Go)
What is Uniformitarianism? (Go)
Unitarian / Unitarianism / Universalism / Universalists (Go)
Unity School Of Christianity (Go)
The Way International (Go)
Wiccan / Wicca / Witches / Witchcraft (Go)


Real Reality Books - FREE Books
The complexity of God’s Way understood in a single diagram Obey your flesh and descend into darkness

How can we know anything about anything? That’s the real question


Topic: The Sinful Flesh


We may wonder why, if we have been crucified with Christ, the flesh has any influence on us at all. It seems that crucifixion is a slow death. As soon as you are born again (by believing and trusting in Jesus) you ARE a new creature. However, you still HAVE a fleshly nature. Your REAL self is the Christ nature, that ministry that you have BECOME. This ministry, Christ in you,...


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, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;)  Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ; Many have tried by carnal means.  They have...


1 John 1:5 This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. Ezekiel 39:7 So will I make my holy name known in the midst of my people Israel; and I will not [let them] pollute my holy name any more: and the heathen shall know that I [am] the LORD, the Holy...


Isaiah 48:10-11 Behold, I have refined thee, but not with silver; I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction. For mine own sake, even for mine own sake, will I do it: for how should my name be polluted? and I will not give my glory to another. Many are called, but few are chosen.  Look at the place where the chosen are chosen: the furnace of affliction.  God does...


Topic: Sowing and Reaping


You reap what you sow. You need to sow good seed into good ground. The parable of the sower illustrates what stops you--Failure or Success, Success or Failure. God has a vision for our completeness, our fulfillment or success in Jesus. What stops you from seeing the vision? The lies of Satan. What brings you to Failure? The same lies. You know this is a spiritual war, and you know the...


Satan tries to vaporize truth and reality and to cement lies and the phony. That is what Evolution is all about, trying to vaporize the creation, the creator, the fall into sin, and the flood in our minds and cement Naturalism. That is what amusement and entertainment is all about. We have a great number of churches that no longer deal with reality but try to draw in the crowds...


This particular response happens more often in those who have been born again than it does in those who have not been born again. The seed, the gospel of the Kingdom of the Heavens, lands on the trampled path of the heart in a Christian. How did that path get trampled and hardened? Isn\'t a Christian\'s heart supposed to be soft toward God? The heart becomes hardened by repeatedly missing...


Many Christians almost worship the universities, the scholars, the many books, the magazines, the news papers, the many web sites, the entertainments in all their forms, plays, TV, comedies, music, etc. These molders of public opinion are not godly people. There is a program of message-control among them. Their message is that of the Secular Humanist, the Atheist. As they rise and give the same message from many outlets, they...


The seed, the gospel of the Kingdom, that fell among thorns, does not bear the fruit of the Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit is that which grows when we yield to the Holy Spirit. If we yield to the cares of this world or strain to be rich, we will not yield to the Holy Spirit. You cannot serve two masters; you cannot serve God and Mammon. If you...


There is a law of sowing and reaping. It goes like this: You reap what you sow. You reap later than you sow. You reap more than you sow. This is true in the natural and in the spiritual realm. Galatians 6:7 Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. 8 For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption;...


There was a Christian radio personality who used his position on the airwaves to preach against any modern-day apostles. The word, apostle, means \"one sent.\" In other words, he was preaching against any who seem to be sent by God. He claimed that anyone who does not believe what he believes (and a lot of what he believes is very speculative) does not have the Spirit of God. He claimed...


There was a man who got a job as pastor in a medium-sized church.  The man had a vision for the big city near his church, so he said.  He generated a lot of support for his vision among pastors of other small churches and became a bit of a folk hero among them.  He spoke with lots of passion.  In these circles, various winds of doctrine would sweep through...



click here to learn more about being redeemed from sin and set free to serve God in spirit and in truth. click here to learn more about holiness click here to learn more about being changed into the same image click here to learn more about sowing and reaping click here to learn more about the free gift of righteousness. click here to learn more about how faith gives us access to grace and grace does the works. click here to learn more about faith and how it comes. click here to learn more about acknowledging Jesus click here to learn more about how God speaks Who will you listen to?  Click here to learn more. click here to learn more about the pattern of God. click here to learn more about the pattern of God for individuals, marriage, and family. click here to learn more about the pattern of God for the local church click here to learn more about the Church universal