| Author | Message | ||
| Asurprise Registered user Username: Asurprise Post Number: 1538 Registered: 7-2007 |
For any Adventists (and others who are in cults); I'd like to point out these verses in Galatians 3:2-3... 2 "This only I want to learn from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? 3 Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh?" What do you think this means? When I was an Adventist, I would have said something like: "Oh, that's just we humans overcoming sin in Jesus' strength." I had no idea what the words meant: "DID YOU RECEIVE THE SPIRIT by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?" If someone had asked me, I probably would have just repeated that it meant me overcoming sin in Jesus strength and then I would have wanted to change the subject or hurry away from that person! There were passages that I just DIDN'T dwell on, when I was an Adventist - because they just didn't make sense from an Adventist point of view. | ||
| Asurprise Registered user Username: Asurprise Post Number: 1539 Registered: 7-2007 |
I'm reading a biography about Oswald Chambers, who wrote "My Utmost for His Highest." (The book is called; "Oswald Chambers: Abandoned to God" and written by David McCasland. Here's a quote in the book from a letter that Oswald wrote: quote: "Holiness is not an attainment at all, it is the gift of God, and the pietistic tendency is the introspection which makes me worship my own earnestness and not take the Lord seriously at all. It is a pious fraud that suits the natural man immensely". [In this next sentence, he underlined the word "He" three times, but I don't know how to underline things in these postings.] "He makes holy, He sanctifies, He does it all. All I have to do is come as a spiritual pauper, not ashamed to beg, to let go of my right to myself and act on Romans 12:1-2. It is never 'Do, do and you'll be' with the Lord, but 'Be, be, and I will do through you.' It is a case of 'hands up' and letting go, and then entire reliance on Him." That's a hard lesson for me to learn myself, after all those years - over 50 - as an Adventist - to depend entirely on Him for my righteousness! | ||
| Colleentinker Registered user Username: Colleentinker Post Number: 12029 Registered: 12-2003  |
What a wonderful quote, Asurprise. He articulated what I'm learning but never had said quite so well. It's revolutionary--and it's entirely about surrender and giving up my "rights" to the Lord Jesus. Because we were taught lies, it's hard to grasp the meanings of the plain words of Scripture...but we have literally received the Spirit if we have trusted Christ and His blood as payment for our sin. He changes us; He doesn't merely "cooperate" with us to bring about change, as EGW said. Our change is the result of an "alien Being" residing in our still-sinful flesh. (I say "alien" because He's not simply a divine force changing our minds; He is another Being—eternal God—and He literally lives in us.) Colleen |
