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One Love
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888

Posted 7/14/2009 7:01 PM (GMT -6)

I've been incommunicato for a minute. Just going through mad life right now. But I did preach at Woodland this week. God moved, I think. Praise him... biggrin

7/12/2009 – Air and Opportunity, Dwayne Polk – sermon length is 41:09 minutes
God has given us the Holy Spirit as a “deposit” and guarantee of things to come. But we are expected to wisely invest this “deposit” in the world today.

	Audio - 4.8 mb High-Quality Audio - 18.9 mb QuickTime Video (mp4) - 117.8 mb Windows Media Video (wmv) - 102.2 mb	Presentation Slides Covenant Group Study Guide Individual Study Guide

I'll try to get back in some mode here pretty soon...

Love to each and all. :-)

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

"I love, therefore I am in I Am. God is my life."

"God in Christ by His Spirit empowers, enables, energizes and enacts all Christian behavior and ministry as the dynamic expression of the life of Jesus Christ. Christianity is Christ. Christian living is the life and character of Jesus Christ lived out through the Christian." -James Fowler

One Love
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888

Posted 7/14/2009 9:13 PM (GMT -6)

Also...

I just saw the movie "Jesus Camp" for the first time.

Sigh...

The only thing that I can say is this: Lord have mercy. shakehead

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

"I love, therefore I am in I Am. God is my life."

might-be-don
Registered Member

Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 830

Posted 7/15/2009 11:23 AM (GMT -6)

Curious... you said,"God moved, I think." .

Nothing visible? No testimony? Doubt in your mind?

If you had said, "God moved." . I would have asked... what was visible? what testimony? No doubt in your mind?

peace, don

^{The world's perfect, wouldn't change a thing.}

Corey
Five with a Four-wing

Date Joined Feb 2003
Total Posts : 1893

Posted 7/15/2009 1:09 PM (GMT -6)

I came up afterward to thank you for what you had to say, but you were engaged in conversation already. So ... thanks!

One Love
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888

Posted 7/16/2009 1:39 PM (GMT -6)

Corey, no problem, man. All glory to Jesus, baby!

MBD, I was just saying something. I DO believe that God moved, via testimonies. Some people came up to me afterwards and said that God confirmed some things to them through the message. We prayed and everything. God seemed to really be releasing some people into new phases of life and service. Again, all glory is the Lord's!

Something else, y'all. I want y'all to pray for me. I know I've been out of "sight" and all...but I'm really struggling with something. Rather, struggling FOR something. I really do want this "purity of heart" thing...but it makes one seem crazy. It's completely countercultural to our egoic society...and frankly, discontinuous with my deeply embedded desire for self-rule. It's hard...and hopefully, you can see why. Please pray for me., siblings. The cares of this world are very hard for me to get away from. I told my wife and friends just yesterday that I sometimes feel like I'm going crazy, because things are so new. But I'm just trusting God that I'm not going off the deep end in a dishonorable way to Him! rotfl

Thanks, family!

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On purity of heart which is to be sought above all things
If your desire and aim is to reach the destination of the path and home of true happiness, of grace and glory, by a straight and safe way then earnestly apply your mind to seek constant purity of heart, clarity of mind and calm of the senses. Gather up your heart's desire and fix it continually on the Lord God above. To do so you must withdraw yourself so far as you can from friends and from everyone else, and from the activities that hinder you from such a purpose. Grasp every opportunity when you can find the place, time and means to devote yourself to silence and contemplation, and gathering the secret fruits of silence, so that you can escape the shipwreck of this present age and avoid the restless agitation of the noisy world. For this reason apply yourself at all times to purity, clarity and peace of heart above all things, so that, so far as possible, you can keep the doors of your heart resolutely barred to the forms and images of the physical senses and worldly imaginations by shutting off the doors of the physical senses and turning within yourself. After all, purity of heart is recognised as the most important thing among all spiritual practices, as its final aim, and the reward for all the labours that a spiritual-minded person and true religious may undertake in this life.

For this reason you should with all care, intelligence and effort free your heart, senses and desires from everything that can hinder their liberty, and above all from everything in the world that could possibly bind and overcome you. So struggle in this way to draw together all the distractions of your heart and desires of your mind into one true, simple and supreme good, to keep them gathered within yourself in one place, and by this means to remain always joined to things divine and to God in your mind, to abandon the unreliable things of earth, and be able to translate your mind continually to the things above within yourself in Jesus Christ.

To which end, if you have begun to strip and purify yourself of images and imaginations and to simplify and still your heart and mind in the Lord God so that you can draw and taste the well of divine grace in everything within yourself, and so that you are united to God in your mind by a good will, then this itself is enough for you in place of all study and reading of holy scripture, and as demonstration of love of God and neighbour, as devotion itself testifies.

So simplify your heart with all care, diligence and effort so that still and at peace from the products of the imagination you can turn round and remain always in the Lord within yourself, as if your mind were already in the now of eternity, that is of the godhead. In this way you will be able to renounce yourself through love of Jesus Christ, with a pure heart, clean conscience and unfeigned faith, and commit yourself completely and fully to God in all difficulties and eventualities, and be willing to submit yourself patiently to his will and good pleasure at all times.

For this to come about you must repeatedly retreat into your heart and remain there, keeping yourself free from everything, so far as is possible. You must always keep the eye of your mind clear and still. You must guard your understanding from daydreams and thoughts of earthly things. You must completely free the inclination of your will from worldly cares and cling will all your being to the supreme true good with fervent love. You must keep your memory always lifted up and firmly anchored in that same true supreme good and only uncreated reality. In just this way your whole mind gathered up with all its powers and faculties in God, may become one spirit with him, in whom the supreme perfection of life is known to consist.

This is the true union of spirit and love by which a man is made compliant to all the impulses of the supreme and eternal will, so that he becomes by grace what God is by nature.

At the same time it should be noted that in the very moment in which one is able, by God's help, to overcome one's own will, that is to cast away from oneself inordinate love or strong feeling, in other words so as to dare simply to trust God completely in all one's needs, by this very fact one becomes so pleasing to God that his grace is imparted to one, and through that very grace one experiences that true love and devotion which drives out all uncertainty and fear and has full confidence in God. What is more, there can be no greater happiness than to place one's all in him who lacks nothing.

So why do you still remain in yourself where you cannot stay. Cast yourself, all of yourself, with confidence into God and he will sustain you, heal you and make you safe. If you dwell on these things faithfully within, they will do more to confer a happy life on you than all riches, pleasures and honours, and above all the wisdom and knowledge of this present deceitful world and its life, even if you were to excel in them all that ever lived.

(Here's the main document/thread)

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The condition we find ourselves in can best be described as one of entanglement. By contrast, the condition we must move to is that is single-minded focus upon doing the will of God in everything, distracted by nothing.

C.T. Studd once upset some of his missionary comrades in the Congo by what he called his “DCD Campaign.” “DCD” stood for “Don’t Care a Damn” for anything but Christ. He made up a skull and crossbones insignia and imposed “DCD” upon it, to wear on jackets and caps and to stick on buildings and equipment. “His intention was that he and his missionary team should care for nothing before Christ (not even his family and friends). Nothing should be allowed to detract from that or conflict with it. All lesser desires had to be done to death (hence the macabre badge!) “ Some people, of course, were more concerned about language they thought was wrong than about hearts not set wholly on Christ.

In our fallen world, we have very few people live with a focused will, even a will focused on an evil. We have heard from W.B. Yeats that “the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” But, in fact—and we can be thankful for this—even “the worst” rarely have much intensity about them. There are always the “Hitlers” of this world, however. Evil people who are genuinely focused can gain the great power they do over others because of the fact that good people and evil people alike are, for the most part, simply drifting through life.

The “CEO” of the self has abandoned its post to other dimensions of the self and is dragged hither and thither by them. In our culture today the direction of the self is usually left to feelings; and the will, if it is recognized at all, is either identified with feelings or else regarded as helpless in the face of feelings. The cognitive side of the mind is hijacked to rationalize it all by producing or borrowing suitable “insights”, usually lying ready to hand in surrounding culture.

David Hume’s eighteenth-century claim that “reason is and ought only to be the slave of the passions” was prophetic of a world to come—our present world—to the existence of which he significantly contributed: a world of perpetual drift in which manipulation and entanglement of the will is simply unavoidable.

“Purity of heart,” Kierkegaard once said, “is to will one thing.” Before we can come to rest in such single-mindedness as the habitual orientation of all dimensions of our being, to allow it and to sustain it, a serious battle is required. But the call of grace and wisdom is nonetheless to “lay aside every encumbrance, and the sin which so easily entangles us, and … run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus” (Hebrews 12:1-2) and on his own example of single-minded pursuit of God’s will, even to the point of death.

“No soldier in active service entangles himself in the affairs of everyday life,” Paul reminded Timothy, “so that he may please the one who enlisted him as a soldier” (2 Timothy 2:4). Dear Martha was “worried and bothered about so many things,” as Jesus pointed out, while only a few things are necessary, really only one, “Mary has chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her” (Luke 10:41-42). And Paul’s own testimony was that he really did only one thing, which was to “press on toward the goal for the prized of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Phillipians 3:13-14).

Dallas Willard. Renovation of the Heart: Putting on the Character of Christ. Pp. 152-153

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I'm gonna strive for this until, by Grace, it happens... until I die in striving. Straight up. So, y'all pray for me. I may end up in a psych ward before all this is over. But at least y'all will know where my heart was at. "Theistic bootlicker" to the end, I suppose. Nah. Theophiliac. Yeah. That. ;)

What else is life for anyways, but God? Seriously.

I love you all beyond words. Thanks for everything.

In Christ Alone,

PS: Random old school...

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

"I love, therefore I am in I Am. God is my life."

Post Edited (One Love) : 7/16/2009 2:03:12 PM (GMT-5)

One Love
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888

Posted 7/16/2009 2:09 PM (GMT -6)

THAT'S IT. I know how to say it...

I'm striving to enter the "desert" of my heart, worship Christ-the-Logos in that sanctuary...and STAY there with Him forevermore, seeing God everywhere through His Spirit, living in His World only. ("One Storey" Universe)

And that crap's HARD.

H
A
R
D
!

Reposting...

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Important terms:
theosis (Union with Christ, Christification, Image and Likeness, etc)
hesychasm (Jesus Prayer)
epiklesis (Eucharist)
synapheia (between Christ and human believing "heart"
mimicry (identification and free expressionn of acquired personal values, concepts and behaviors from interpersonal relationship)
re-presentation (multiple contextualized expressions of singular content)

And the stance:

Through practicing the "Sacrament of the Present Moment" in "orans"-like humble, active reception of the Holy Spirit, focusing on Divine Presence (Jesus Prayer, etc) and experiencing inner "stillness" and "apatheia" in God in one's "heart" (hesychasm), the core of us beyond all sensory or intellectual deliberation, one can experience one's own "logoi", thereby experiencing the Holy Spirit of Christ-the-Logos, the Divine Center of All Things, in the deepest center of our most unique and particular "selves." The meeting place of the created "I am" and the Uncreated "I AM...Immanuel" that Satan has NO ACCESS to. In that holy sanctuary of the Self, we offer ourselves as "living sacrifices" to God in faith, we experience God "willing" and "doing" in us, as Christ-the-Logos lives "in, as, and through" us...and we actively participate in God's energies, in God's very life. We are truly "one with the Lord in Spirit."

We become most ourselves when we have a transparent relationship to our Divine Center...when the deepest core of ourselves is sealed into a love covenant with God...when we become irreducibly unique, creative living pray-ers to God.

-------------------------------

Role Model...

Contrition before God and the need for not depending upon our piety and our strength:

Father Moses (St. Moses the Black) increased in piety and in the struggle with himself to a great extent; but in spite of these desperate measures, the vigilance and the defeat of the self, he could not avoid imagining the lustful ghosts that were intensified as his struggle increased. His additional abstentions were probably without the permission of his spiritual mentor, for when he went to him to complain about his situation, he said to him, "My son, stop fighting the devils for the human being's strength has its limits. (One Love's Thought: Only God is infinitely strong.) However, if God does not have mercy upon you and He alone gives victory over them, you will never overpower them. Go now and submit yourself to God with repentance before Him. Persevere in humility, He will have mercy upon you." Moses answered,

"I trust in God in whom I have placed all my hope that I be constantly armed against the devils, and never stop fighting them until they depart from me."

When St. Isidorus saw this faith in him, he said, "And I also believe in my Lord Jesus Christ, and in the name of Jesus Christ, from this moment the devils will stop fighting you." He added, "Go to the Holy church and partake of the Holy Sacraments." St. Moses continued to do as the Elder had said with perseverance, and God gave him a great blessing, humility and serenity. (One Love's Thought: The "Peace" that passes all understanding.) The power of thought came upon him, and from that moment Moses lived in peace and grew in wisdom.

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

"I love, therefore I am in I Am. God is my life."

Post Edited (One Love) : 7/16/2009 2:33:41 PM (GMT-5)

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