Something I read today.... - Page 3

*AQuietPlace* · #21 06-06-2009, 10:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mizpeh

Thanks.

I feel like I'm in my own little world over here.

I'm peeping over your shoulder.

mizpeh · #22 06-06-2009, 10:51 PM

More from the article by NT Wright:

Quote:

The thing about painting portraits of God is that, if they do their job properly, they should become icons. That is, they should invite not just cool appraisal, but worship though the mind must be involved as well as the heart and soul and strength in our response to this God. That is fair enough, and I believe that this God is worthy of the fullest and richest worship that we can offer. But, as with some icons, not least the famous Rublev painting of the three men visiting Abraham, the focal point of the painting is not at the back of the painting but on the viewer. Once we have glimpsed the true portrait of God, the onus is on us to reflect it: to reflect it as a community, to reflect it as individuals. The image of the true and living God, once revealed in all its glory, is to be reflected into all the world, as was always God’s intention. The mission of the Church can be summed up in the phrase “reflected glory.” When we see, as Paul says, the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, we see this not for our own benefit, but so that the glory may shine in us and through us to bring light to the world that still waits in darkness and the shadow of death.

*AQuietPlace* · #23 06-07-2009, 06:45 AM

Once we have glimpsed the true portrait of God, the onus is on us to reflect it: to reflect it as a community, to reflect it as individuals. The image of the true and living God, once revealed in all its glory, is to be reflected into all the world, as was always God’s intention. The mission of the Church can be summed up in the phrase “reflected glory.” When we see, as Paul says, the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, we see this not for our own benefit, but so that the glory may shine in us and through us to bring light to the world that still waits in darkness and the shadow of death.

This is EXACTLY what I've been thinking about lately. About our mission in the world being to BE Christ on earth. I was thinking about all of the people who don't feel loved... who don't feel that God loves them. They often feel that way because they've never felt strongly and personally loved by people.

If people are often short-tempered and impatient with you, you'll start to feel that God feels that way about you, too. If people are uninterested in you, you'll feel that God is, too. If people think you can't do anything right, you'll usually think that God feels that way, too. God is made visible to us through the people around us.

What a burden that places on us to reflect Jesus to those around us! I've become very convicted about this! I'm not a people person, so it's very easy for me to push people away. But that's not what God called me to do. I'm praying for God to help me to start reflecting his love.

mizpeh · #24 06-07-2009, 08:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by *AQuietPlace*

Once we have glimpsed the true portrait of God, the onus is on us to reflect it: to reflect it as a community, to reflect it as individuals. The image of the true and living God, once revealed in all its glory, is to be reflected into all the world, as was always God’s intention. The mission of the Church can be summed up in the phrase “reflected glory.” When we see, as Paul says, the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, we see this not for our own benefit, but so that the glory may shine in us and through us to bring light to the world that still waits in darkness and the shadow of death.

This is EXACTLY what I've been thinking about lately. About our mission in the world being to BE Christ on earth. I was thinking about all of the people who don't feel loved... who don't feel that God loves them. They often feel that way because they've never felt strongly and personally loved by people.

If people are often short-tempered and impatient with you, you'll start to feel that God feels that way about you, too. If people are uninterested in you, you'll feel that God is, too. If people think you can't do anything right, you'll usually think that God feels that way, too. God is made visible to us through the people around us.

What a burden that places on us to reflect Jesus to those around us! I've become very convicted about this! I'm not a people person, so it's very easy for me to push people away. But that's not what God called me to do. I'm praying for God to help me to start reflecting his love.

Good thoughts!

It helps to write things down. It solidifies them in our minds.

mizpeh · #25 06-07-2009, 08:38 AM

I've been slowly doing a self study on following Christ's example. A few books I'd read over a year or so ago sent me in that direction even though at the time I was searching for revival keys.

*The Knowledge of the Holy by A W Tozer is a good, easy to read, short book on the attributes of God. Some chapters brought me to a place of the awe of the divine. God is amazing! But it was the very last chapter that sparked me. I have it in paperback and have written all over it! http://www.heavendwellers.com/hdt_kn...f_the_holy.htm

*The Price of God's Miracle Working Power by A A Allen I knew almost nothing about A A Allen before I read this book except that he had a high profile healing ministry in the middle of the last century and died under questionable circumstances but none of that changes what he wrote in this book. http://www.spiritoffire.org/ebooks/T...A_%20Allen.htm

*Lastly, a series of preaching videos by Nona Freeman on " The Power Dimension". http://video.google.com/videosearch?...Freeman&hl=en#

If you get a chance, check these out. I set out looking for revival and to know Christ and came away with a desire to follow in the footsteps of the One who died for me even into the path of suffering.

*One other book that blessed me immensely is called In His Steps by Charles Sheldon. I stumbled upon it while browsing through Salvation Army's thrift store. It sparked the bracelets WWJD (what would Jesus do). I got through about half of the book before I realized it was fictional!
http://books.google.com/books?id=cHV...esult&resnum=4

*The next book on my agenda in being like Christ is Thomas Kempis The Imitation of Christ
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/kempis/imitation.toc.html

*But there is one other book I will read first called The Mortification of Sin by John Owen, a Puritan writer during the Great Awakening. http://www.ccel.org/ccel/owen/mort.toc.html I tried to read it last year but struggled with what Owen was saying. I found a teaching series on the book and will try to follow along with them. http://www.westernavenue.org/eujeffspry I believe the book is an exposition of Romans 8:13 For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live. (and we know there is now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. Rom 8:1) I know we all struggle to live a crucified life. Once again I'm looking for some keys on how to crucify my flesh with the help of the Spirit. I have a feeling the key is prayer and a daily transformed mind.

Disclaimer: None of these books are written by Oneness Pentecostals. I don't agree with nor do I endorse everything that is taught in them but there are some pearls of wisdom and edification that will bless you.

mizpeh · #26 06-07-2009, 10:19 AM

A recent inductive study of the book of Philippians with Kay Arthur really cemented in my mind the future hope of our resurrection and life with Christ in the New Jerusalem and helped me to take my eyes off the temporal. We are pilgrims passing through this wilderness. http://www.oneplace.com/ministries/P...?bcd=4/13/2009

Do we really believe what we believe?

commonsense · #27 06-08-2009, 08:56 AM

Good thoughts.

mizpeh · #28 06-18-2009, 08:10 PM

I like how Andrew Murray worded this:

As wonderful as the blood-shedding for our redemption is the blood-sprinkling for our cleansing. Here is indeed another of the spiritual mysteries of the New Covenant, which lose their power when understood in human wisdom, without the ministration of the Spirit of life. When Scripture speaks of “having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience,” of “the blood of Christ cleansing our conscience,” of our singing here on earth (Rev. i. 5), “To Him that washed us from our sins in His blood,” it brings this mighty, quickening blood of the Lamb into direct contact with our hearts. It gives the assurance that that blood, in its infinite worth, in its Divine sin-cleansing power, can keep us clean in our walk in the sight and the light of God. It is as this blood of the New Covenant is known, and trusted, and waited for, and received from God, in the Spirit’s mighty operation in the heart, that we shall begin to believe that the blessed promise of a New Covenant life and walk can be fulfilled.

By Andrew Murray, The Two Covenants

http://www.ccel.org/ccel/murray/covenants.iii.ix.html

mizpeh · #29 06-25-2009, 07:53 PM

Why I Don’t Have a Television and Rarely Go to Movies by John Piper (a nonapostolic)

......There are, perhaps, a few extraordinary men who can watch action-packed, suspenseful, sexually explicit films and come away more godly. But there are not many. And I am certainly not one of them.

I have a high tolerance for violence, high tolerance for bad language, and zero tolerance for nudity. There is a reason for these differences. The violence is make-believe. They don’t really mean those bad words. But that lady is really naked, and I am really watching. And somewhere she has a brokenhearted father.

I’ll put it bluntly. The only nude female body a guy should ever lay his eyes on is his wife’s. The few exceptions include doctors, morticians, and fathers changing diapers. “I have made a covenant with my eyes; how then could I gaze at a virgin?” (Job 31:1). What the eyes see really matters. “Everyone who looks at a woman to desire her has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:28). Better to gouge your eye than go to hell (verse 29).

Brothers, that is serious. Really serious. Jesus is violent about this. What we do with our eyes can ........ us. One reason is that it is virtually impossible to transition from being entertained by nudity to an act of “beholding the glory of the Lord.” But this means the entire Christian life is threatened by the deadening effects of sexual titillation.

All Christ-exalting transformation comes from “beholding the glory of Christ.” “Beholding the glory of the Lord, [we] are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Corinthians 3:18). Whatever dulls the eyes of our mind from seeing Christ powerfully and purely is destroying us. There is not one man in a thousand whose spiritual eyes are more readily moved by the beauty of Christ because he has just seen a bare breast with his buddies........To Read the Rest go to : http://ow.ly/fRb4

mizpeh · #30 07-01-2009, 12:17 PM

From the July 1 devotional of Volume 1 of " For the Love of God" by D A Carson

Fourth, alone among the songs of ascent this one [Psalm 127] is ascribed to Solomon. Sadly, Solomon is a figure whose great wisdom was sometimes not followed in his own life: his own building program, both physical and metaphorical, became foolish (1 Kings 9:10-19), his kingdom a ruin (1 Kings 11:11-13), and his household--not least his multiplied pagan marriages--a systematic denial of the claims of the living God (1 Kings 11: 1-9).

How important to ask God for the grace to live up to what we understand!!