| Author |
Message |
River
Registered user
Username: River
Post Number: 869
Registered: 9-2006
| | Posted on Friday, June 15, 2007 - 1:33 pm: |     |
Jim,
I wasn't speaking to your seeking to understand but just throwing what I had to say about Hell out there.
I do acknowledge that you are seeking answers to your Bible questions nor was I downing you or at least I never meant to.
I spoke as to a general audience and not to a particular person or thing.
As to your declaration of what you believe for now I would like to say that I do believe that God is a God of justice as well as mercy.
While I don't agree with your views as stated it is not with an unkind feeling toward you.
I do hope that through all these diffrent views that you may find balance in your life once again.
I would hope that what I say helps and not harms.
Do you see where at the top of my previous post I did not use your name? And on this post I did use your name.
I think (and I might be corrected), in a post where we do not use the persons name it is generally taken for granted that we are speaking to general audience.
Keep atter Jim, don't give up on us. I pray for you. We all do, please pray for us.
River |
Colleentinker
Registered user
Username: Colleentinker
Post Number: 6056
Registered: 12-2003
| | Posted on Friday, June 15, 2007 - 2:51 pm: | |
Jim, the only "thing" you have to trust is Jesus. You don't have to trust in doctrines, beliefs, interpretations. You just have to trust Jesus. As you trust Him, gradually more and more things will make sense.
None of us sees everything exactly the same. I believe, though, that most of here agree on the central issues: salvation is by faith ALONE through Christ ALONE by grace ALONE. As long as you hang your trust on Him, you can know that everything else will gradually fit together and make deeper and deeper sense.
As I've said before, He is faithful to teach me the truth in His time. The desire for truth is the desire He always fulfills when we are willing to see it as He reveals it.
Praying for you, Jim.
Again, thank you for your view and wisdom, River.
Colleen |
Jim02
Registered user
Username: Jim02
Post Number: 62
Registered: 5-2007
| | Posted on Saturday, June 16, 2007 - 8:51 am: | |
Thank You River, I appreciate that 
You mentioned Balance. That is a big part of it.
I don't know where I belong anymore.
This is a year of change for me.
A lot in my life had been in flux for a long time.
But this year it is as though God has stepped on the accelerator of change.
Somedays are hard, some days are amazing.
I wonder, where is it all leading. When will I know I am where I am supposed to be.
I feel like a bird looking for a home.
I chase after God's approval, just hoping that I am still under HIs wing and I wander in confusion, experimenting, learning, unlearning, sweeping out the closets, dumping the filters, remixing the basics.
I lay in bed last night thinking I need to avoid trying to be artistic or poetic about my postings, that too many words hide the important thoughts. Yet, when I type, it just keeps coming out and I don't know where it comes from. I think it is God's way to help me share and to discover.
I don't intend to stir up hornets nests nor to show how smart I am. In fact , sometimes I feel foolish and ignorant and sometimes my brain hurts just trying to grasp and hold onto to something. But it seems, God allows me to hold onto a peace of mind for only so long before he makes me swim some more, NEXT lesson !
Finding a sense of peace in life, that balance, that all encompassing trust. That is a relationship thing. I am learning and trying to grasp the hope that God does not cast me aside when I am tempted, when I make a mistake, when I act the fool. That sin , no sin game . Saved unsaved mindset. I haveto be able to count on God even when I cannot count on myself. That is what I am trying to learn and to grasp. That it is a truth that "IS" GOOD TO BE TRUE. I am so used to having the rug pulled out from under me.
I have learned to expect disapointment so much that I don't know how to accept good news or trust very well.
I went to my oldest sons Church this morning for Fathers Day breakfast. They held it in the main sanctuary (Worship center) I felt uneasy about that. But it was their way. (Sin 1),
In the parking lot , I was chatting with my boy.
In a casual converstation I used adjective Hell.
Right there in the parking lot of a Church ! (Sin 2) , these are examples of what I mean.
I feel like I blindfolded man in the middle of the expressway in rush hour. I can't get out of my own way with this legalism!
It sounds like I am being extreme here. (Really these were passing thoughts ), but they reveal how legalism works. It denys you any sense of peace. I need that ability to establish balance in my life and to feel safe being near God in the first place. The closer I get, the worse I feel sometimes.
I am not sure how much of this cross circuiting comes from SDA and how much comes from a TYPE A personality. Regardless, It aint't much fun.
So, River, please keep em coming. Yes I pray for this forum everyday !
I have shared a lot of personal thoughts on this forum, taking a risk, risking embarassment, censure, stigmaization, censure. But unless I am willing to share the problem, I amy never discover the solutions.
In many areas of life I run circles around people. I excel in my work. In others areas, I am ineffective. MOst of my instability is becaus ei am in a growth process right now. Licking some wounds and sorting out the messes.
I am not as hopeless as I sound and to everyone, don't let me confuse or depress you. This is about a journey to healing and discovery. It is a good thing !
Colleen, I agree , It is about Trust.
Had Adam and Eve Trusted God, we would not all be in this mess today. Trust goes all the way back to the begining of Earth.
Thanks, Jim |
Flyinglady
Registered user
Username: Flyinglady
Post Number: 3775
Registered: 3-2004
| | Posted on Saturday, June 16, 2007 - 9:46 am: | |
Jim, I am glad you are here with us. There is much I cannot relate to because my name was taken off the church books so long ago and I learned to trust God in my 12 step program. BUT, I can pray for you.
Father in Heaven, You are the I AM and I thank you for that. Because of what Jesus did we can come running to you and jump into your lap and call you Father. Well, father, I am asking you to be with Jim in this journey out of adventism. You know best what he needs and you do promise to supply all our needs. You even say before you call I will answer. Do this with Jim right now and help him to find that trust in You that is so important. Keep you arms around Jim. You are always awesome.
Diana |
Colleentinker
Registered user
Username: Colleentinker
Post Number: 6066
Registered: 12-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, June 16, 2007 - 5:50 pm: | |
Jim, thank you for being here and for sharing your thoughts and expressions as they come out during your thinking and writing. We understand your suffering, and we are praying for you. This is a long and painful process, but Jesus will bring you, as the old Shaker hymn says, into the valley of love and delight after He has turned you 'round right.
Colleen |
Grace_alone
Registered user
Username: Grace_alone
Post Number: 592
Registered: 6-2006
| | Posted on Saturday, June 16, 2007 - 8:01 pm: | |
Jim,
(((HUG!)))
Leigh Anne |
Dennis
Registered user
Username: Dennis
Post Number: 1103
Registered: 4-2000
| | Posted on Saturday, June 16, 2007 - 10:07 pm: | |
Richard,
The video link highlighting what Jesus said about hell is excellent. To not believe in hell is akin to not believing in heaven as well. Indeed, both eternal places are beyond human comprehension and understanding. If we truly doubt that hell can be forever, then how can we be sure that heaven will be forever? The reality of both eternal places requires genuine faith, a gift from God, based upon Scripture.
Truly, we can trust the words of Jesus Himself on this important topic of the afterlife. Paul concludes, "while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal" (2 Cor. 4:18 NASB). The truthfulness of traditionalism is confirmed by the fact that it coheres with other biblical teachings.
Dennis Fischer |
River
Registered user
Username: River
Post Number: 873
Registered: 9-2006
| | Posted on Sunday, June 17, 2007 - 7:40 am: | |
Jim,
Before this thread goes to the great bit bucket, I do want to say that there are many things you say that somehow makes me think that you and I have fought some of the same battles in life concerning our thinking process, I struggled with the logic of salvation, I accepted it but I could not see the mechanics of it, do you know what I mean?
Here was my point of struggle; logic would tell me that nothing imperfect could enter in to that that is perfect, otherwise that would make that that is perfect, imperfect. Now I knew that I was imperfect. Now I am referring to the death of the body here and also entry into heaven (or) Gods realm, logic would tell me that Gods realm is perfect, how could it be that I, an imperfect being, would ever be able to enter into that that is perfect because logic would tell me that that would inject an impurity and that would effect that purity. So I struggled on with this question for years.
Finally I prayed thusly, “Lord I know that you save imperfect people, I know you went to the cross to save us, please let me know how it works, the mechanics of it.
One morning as I studied and thought, I thought about my upcoming death, here on this earth I feel that I have some control over things, if something electrical or mechanical goes wrong I fix it, for instance, I wanted a drag mower to go behind my tractor because I was mowing four acres and I wanted to mow 84 inches at a time instead of 42, so I sat at my desk and designed one and then went to my shop and built the thing and mowed that field, if something breaks I fix it myself, if I want a building I design it and build it, remodel or paint my house, put new circuits in my house, tear down my computer system and modify it, I just do it, very seldom have I ever had to call for a repairman of any kind. People try to sell me stuff and ideas but I understand electronics, physics and engineering design well enough to know when it will work.
Now I am not putting on a brag show here, what I am trying to do is to show you where I feel a sense of control over my world. If you have studied pure logic such as computer programming you know what I mean by logic.
Now if you will hang with me I am going to try to get somewhere with this.
What I knew was I didn’t have any control over whatsoever, is death.
I cannot control what happens after death, from that point on I must be totally dependant on my maker, I would no longer be in control of anything. My knowledge will do me no good where I am going so I desperately needed to understand the mechanics of salvation so there the question loomed, how can an imperfect being such as I enter into his perfection? Logic would tell me that he will not, cannot allow any sort of imperfection into his realm and the book of Revelations bears that out and common sense bears that out.
Do you see what I am saying? So as I meditated on this dilemma that morning the Lord mercifully allowed me to see the mechanics of it.
No, we will not have control of any kind after death such as we have here and we must depend solely upon Jesus perfection, if we cannot then surely we will have no perfection, he takes our rags of imperfection and covers us with the garments of his perfection and he took the punishment for our sins upon himself in order to do this. In our own selves and our own perfection we cannot please God, but Jesus did please God “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased” God says. So we have to depend entirely on the one that pleases him, Christ Jesus, Christ the savior and Jesus our Lord.
Jim, we must throw ourselves at his feet as imperfect beings and ask him for his perfection, his covering or we will not have perfection at all, ever, if we cannot depend on his.
That is the mechanics of it, the way it works, when we stand before a Holy God, his garment will cover us or we will have no covering but will stand naked in our imperfection before a perfect being and our imperfection would keep us separated from his realm, would logic say that?
Look Jim, we all might as well get at it and go too him and ask for his salvation, his perfection, his garment for covering because the time is fast coming when we will have no control over what we do at that point of death and where we will be going whatsoever. Nada, zilch.
It is not logical to keep struggling with something that is not going to happen which is that we will somehow become perfect at some point in time in this life, impurities of mind and heart will continue right up until we flat line and the doctors will look at their watch and record time of death or some such.
And so I realized I am totally dependant on him, his perfection, his cross and his salvation.
Yes, it still bothers me that there will come a time when I will no longer be able to have mastery over my surrounding, I guess I am just an independent person or at least I like to believe so, I like having control over this mechanical and electronic world we live in, the computer I am writing this on operates at 6.8 ghz while most of the computers are poking along at no more that 3 ghz and most not even that.
I was at a garage sale yesterday and there was a transmitter there with a price tag of 50 cents, you could hit the on button and the screen of the thing remained dark, no juice, so I brought it home and fixed it in about half and hour, this morning I have a nice digital transmitter setting here. It retails for over 300.00. Where they were helpless, I was in my realm.
Jesus is the same way, where we are helpless, he is in his realm.
The way we are we are worth about 50 cents, but when he covers us with his garment of perfection we are then valuable.
I recently bought a tractor that had been sitting in the rain for about 15 years, it was a useless peace of rusting junk, totally ugly, it was cheap, nobody wanted it, weeds were higher than the tractor, the engine was froze up, but I saw something there besides the rusting useless peace of iron and I snaked the thing out of the weeds where it sat forlorn and rejected and I loaded it up and brought it to my home, my realm, and I patiently and carefully removed all the parts and cleaned, sand blasted, repaired and painted and then put it back together with hands of love for that old iron. Today it sits out there in the shed, covered by the shelter that I built with my own hands, and it sits there ready to work, I can go out there and hit the starter and if fires up with a growl, shining once again in it new coat of paint. The grader blade out front, no longer a rusting worthless hulk but a useful and I present it proudly to every body, they ask “Is your tractor for sale?” and I say “No”.
Jesus see something in us that others don’t see, to them our lives are a wreck, but Jesus paid the price, brings us to his realm and begins to strip us down and clean us up with loving hands and he will present us to the father and the father will look at him with approval.
I no longer sit a forlorn and rejected a useless cursing, swearing alcoholic peace of crap tossed aside and given up hope on by the world, Jesus saw me and reached down and picked me up and took me to his realm, he saw something that others did not and now I am useful in his hands.
Jim, if you knew me you would probably say “and I thought I had hang-ups” “he makes me look good”, but God knows what he is doing.
I hope that I have said something that you can use here today.
River |
Bobj
Registered user
Username: Bobj
Post Number: 210
Registered: 1-2006
| | Posted on Sunday, June 17, 2007 - 8:07 am: | |
Hi Jim
There's an article by Verle Streifling entitled The Nature of Man and Death. I can't give a link right now, but it's at ratzlaf.com/streifling.
This article was a blessing to me--it's like a digest, loaded with scriptural references and brief explanations.
Happy Father's day!
Bob |
Flyinglady
Registered user
Username: Flyinglady
Post Number: 3789
Registered: 3-2004
| | Posted on Sunday, June 17, 2007 - 10:50 am: | |
River, Your analogy of the tractor and you is so right. I liken myself to a worthless old WW2 airplane that is rusted and falling apart. God took me, cleaned me up, sand blasted where necessary and now I soar like an eagle. Of course He is the pilot.
Thanks my friend. You brings tears to my eyes at time, like right now. Every time I read what you write, I am reminded of how awesome God is.
Diana |
Colleentinker
Registered user
Username: Colleentinker
Post Number: 6077
Registered: 12-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, June 17, 2007 - 9:25 pm: | |
Thank you, River.
Colleen |
Tricia
Registered user
Username: Tricia
Post Number: 60
Registered: 3-2006
| | Posted on Sunday, June 17, 2007 - 10:33 pm: | |
River, Thanks for the great post!
Tricia |
Jim02
Registered user
Username: Jim02
Post Number: 65
Registered: 5-2007
| | Posted on Monday, June 18, 2007 - 7:13 am: | |
Thank You River,
Yes we have a lot in common.
I am a hands on type as well.
Thank You for sharing your thoughts.
I am pondering and absorbing.
I appreciate everyones input and prayers.
I am taking Colleens advice. Contexual. |
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