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One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 3/17/2010 4:00 PM (GMT -6) |   | | You can watch the whole thing...or start at 3:56. In the last part, where there is "Receiving for the Sake of Giving"...what "pleasure" is received by the creature, but ONLY for the pleasure of the Creator? What is it that the Creator wants to give? They seem to give a hint graphically.
But here's one anyway: "To receive the Spirit is to receive God himself, because in the Spirit the Gift and the Giver are one."
My take. Receiving God's Spirit for God's sake empowers us humans to truly to give ourselves to others freely. (Love of God empowers Love of neighbor and self). When "God is our sufficiency" and our soul is satisfied in God, then we are FREED from our egocentric tendencies by God's self-communication to genuinely participate in "Giving for the Sake of Giving." We don't seek anything from our loving service to others because we are already "full" of God's Love, Peace, and Joy via the Holy Spirit we have as Gift.
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For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.
Ephesians 3:14-21
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We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. No, we declare God's wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. However, as it is written:
"What no eye has seen,
what no ear has heard,
and what no human mind has conceived—
these things God has prepared for those who love him"—
for God has revealed them to us by his Spirit.
The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who knows a person's thoughts except that person's own spirit within? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, for,
"Who has known the mind of the Lord
so as to instruct him?"
But we have the mind of Christ.
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An Invocation to the Holy Spirit
Come, true light.
Come, life eternal.
Come, hidden mystery.
Come, treasure without name.
Come, reality beyond all words.
Come, person beyond all understanding.
Come, rejoicing without end.
Come, light that knows no evening.
Come, unfailing expectation of the saved.
Come, raising of the fallen.
Come, resurrection of the dead.
Come, all-powerful, for unceasingly you create, refashion and change all things by your will alone.
Come, for your name fills our hearts with longing, and is ever on our lips.
Come, for you are yourself the desire that is within me.
Come, my breath and my life.
Come, the consolation of my humble soul.
Come, my joy, my glory, my endless delight.
St. Symeon the New Theologian
Post Edited (One Love) : 3/17/2010 6:28:44 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 3/17/2010 4:08 PM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 3/17/2010 9:11 PM (GMT -6) | | Tom, read this...in light of God circumscribing Creation by the "eternal event" of the Incarnation, like we've been talking about above...
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.
In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.
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BBBCanada
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Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 2763
| Posted 3/18/2010 10:06 AM (GMT -6) | | Just noticed that this thread is longer than the page the video is on but that video you put up One Love was fantastic. I've always thought that to get to that highest level was not so impossible with individuals (even though even here can something like that be done outside of living in a monastery on a consistent basis (the heart is desparately wicked, who can know it?) those seem very few and far in between, but on sociological scale this seems to be very rare indeed. Also, I'm just wondering if things should be divided like what is done in those categories. What do you think of Prof. John Stackhouse's article: "The Win-Win-Win Scenario of Christianity"
Brandon
It is the purpose that makes strong the vow, but vows to every purpose must not hold.--A friend.
To love without love is slavery--Mother Teresa
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 3/18/2010 1:15 PM (GMT -6) | | I think it comes down to inner intention.
Who is the supreme importance? Whatever we do, WHO are we ultimately doing it for? Are we doing everything "out of reverence for Christ" or not?
It gets this deep:
For WHOSE SAKE do we ultimately want our salvation: God's or our own?
Giving for the Sake of Receiving says "ours." God is the means to the eternalization and maximization of our "ever-well-being." We receive salvation from and serve God because it's ultimately in our (best) self-interests to do so. (Wasn't this Satan's test to God about Job?) Self-preservation and expansion is STILL a priority in the heart.
But...
if we get to the point of receiving salvation for God's sake alone (God is glorified in the human fully alive, right?), not only do we have salvation...but ALSO we truly live in the reality that "it is better to give than to receive"...as we give ourselves to God in love and gratitude through the active reception of our salvation.
Therefore, we begin taking on the heart of God. For in the heart of God, it truly IS better to give than to receive (even though receiving happens). Voila! Receiving for the Sake of Bestowing.
Think of it like this. You, Brandon, get your daughter gift she's always been wanting...and you get it for her because you love her. Let's say that she receives the gift with gladness. That's the objective part. But let's further focus on two different scenarios...
1) She receives it from you with gladness mainly because her desire for the object has been fulfilled. It's great that you got it for her, and she really is grateful that you got it for her, but she would have been just as happy if she had gotten it some other way.
2) She receives it from you with gladness mainly because she desires to acknowledge the love from you to her (and from her to you) and, in the enjoyment of the gift she's really wanted, she desires to give you the gift of herself through her love and gratitude.
As you see, there is a totally different thinking process.
So...Would it make a difference to you, emotionally speaking, whether your daughter's reasoning was 1 or 2? I understand that gifts are to be given freely. At the same time, would you say that one perspective was preferable to the other? If so, which one and why? I think you'd prefer #2...but that's just my guess. 
My thought is this: God doesn't NEED us to accept and reciprocate his love...but I'm pretty sure he finds it BEAUTIFUL when we do.
Make sense?
Post Edited (One Love) : 3/18/2010 1:23:14 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 3/18/2010 4:41 PM (GMT -6) | | "Whatever you do, do your work heartily as for the Lord rather than for men."
Thought: By doing everything "as for the Lord", we actually make ourselves more fully personalized. Think about Martin Buber's I-Thou thing. When a human being does everything ultimately only for himself [egocentricity] , then such an human is living "mere existence" as an individual. All other beings will be seen as merely "setting" for self-expression, self-protection, and self-expansion. But if a human being does everything ultimately for God (and because of God, for loving the neighbor as self), then such a human is truly PERSONAL. He is an "I am" before the Eternal "I Am" at all times, who doesn't exist in "himself" or any created world...but ONLY in God. He is in God and God is in him...and so he IS because he is in COMMUNION with God...and so is a created PERSON in God's Creation.
"I love, therefore I am."
Post Edited (One Love) : 3/18/2010 5:12:59 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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PotOnWheel
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 3/18/2010 8:38 PM (GMT -6) | | | | |
| 37 posts in this thread.
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