| Author |
Message |
Melissa
Registered user
Username: Melissa
Post Number: 1077
Registered: 7-2003
| | Posted on Monday, September 19, 2005 - 11:58 am: |     |
Yes, Stan, I have. Re: tongues/interpretation from God. It was in an AOG church where both are common. Most I don't remember after 20+ years away, but there was one I thought was "to" me. The interpretation was about turning to God. Paraphrasing... "you go to your friends, you go to your family, I want you to turn to me. Bring your problems and your heartaches to me, I want to be your friend and I will help you"....
Why would Satan encourage anyone to seek God's opinion/help rather than your friends and family? All of the interpretations I recall in any general sense were about having people turn to God, trust God, seek God's face. But that one, I remember very vividly as I was seeking a lot of people's opinion on something, but was reminded by that that I had not spent much time praying about it.
So, yes, I'm confident that was "from God". |
Colleentinker
Registered user
Username: Colleentinker
Post Number: 2566
Registered: 12-2003
| | Posted on Monday, September 19, 2005 - 12:23 pm: | |
Dreams are often vivid metaphoric descriptions of the truth of our own lives...if we're involved in a struggle or decision or ongoing point of non-resolution, dreams often "tell us the truth" which we actually know but are unwilling to acknowledge consciously.
And yes, God can and does give people dreams and visions. For example, think of the countless people to whom He has revealed the truth about Jesus and/or salvation by means of a dream or a vision. There is actually a story in the next Proclamation by a woman to whom God drove home the truth about salvation in this way.
Colleen |
Seekr777
Registered user
Username: Seekr777
Post Number: 275
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Monday, September 19, 2005 - 12:52 pm: | |
I've had to smile when I read the text I quoted above. It is the young people who will receive the visions and the older ones who will have the dreams. Maybe the visions take to much energy for the old folks? 
Richard
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Colleentinker
Registered user
Username: Colleentinker
Post Number: 2570
Registered: 12-2003
| | Posted on Monday, September 19, 2005 - 4:03 pm: | |
I do want to clarify that I do not believe God will reveal any new "truths" about salvation, God, or His will for that is not already revealed in the Bible. Any visions and dreams He gives will be to confirm Biblical truth.
I believe that people who claim to have new understanding or knowledge or theology as a result of dreams, vision, or other revelations from God are suspect. We need to stand firmly on the word of God. Period.
God uses whatever means He needs to use to reach people in all cultures, but His final revelation of Himself is Jesus.
Colleen |
Riverfonz
Registered user
Username: Riverfonz
Post Number: 824
Registered: 3-2005
| | Posted on Monday, September 19, 2005 - 4:31 pm: | |
It looks like we are having a parallel conversation on this thead and the Vineyard thread, but I find it interesting.
Melissa,
Thanks for sharing that. You may have very well received a message from God for your life. I don't want to knock or take away from it in any way. What I am doing here is sharing my own concerns about getting deceived again, as I was deceived in the past. Deception can be very subtle. Even some of EGW's messages seemed Biblical on the surface. Anyway, there is a lot of controversy on this issue of tongues, but it is only my personal belief that the Corinthian church was not the norm, and that once the canon of scripture closed, then all these signs ceased. I may have been influenced too much by the likes of J. Vernon McGee, John Macarthur, Charles Swindoll etc. who also believe that these sign gifts ceased with the closing of the canon.
Stan |
Lydell
Registered user
Username: Lydell
Post Number: 725
Registered: 7-2000
| | Posted on Monday, September 19, 2005 - 4:53 pm: | |
Yeah, I guess I do consider that a lot of great pastors may have some apostolic gifting, if they are church planters. Seems to me that is what the apostles in the NT were doing.
Stan, I wouldn't personally discount the "entire word of faith movement". I do think they get a thing or two right about our words being pretty powerful stuff. When a person continually speaks negativity, they seem to have the negative thinking to go along with it, and certainly never expect to receive anything good from God. Their constant negative words keep them engrained where they are. I see an example of this kind of thing in my mom.
Mom had a stroke in Dec. 2003. It took away all her ability to communicate. She has had to really struggle with relearning everything, and is still today only making incredibly small and slow progress. Mom has had a fear her whole life of "what would people think". It especially applies if she did something wrong (incorrect).
Now here she is daily having to cope with doing things incorrectly. Her speech teacher constantly has to prod her to TRY. The current way the problem is being manifest is with her handwriting. She has moved backward to using incredibly small letters we can only barely read. Her therapist has told me that, from her experience, mom's problem is not simply the stroke, it is magnified by the "what would people think" mindset.
I see the same thing happening spiritually to people. For instance, I have watched some folks receive prayer to lay down some burden they have been carrying for years. But they just stay stuck in the same rut. They have related to me that their breakthrough in walking away from that thing only came when they themselves stopped praying silently and instead began speaking the words out loud, "I give this to you God and I choose to walk away."
Understand please, I have flat no use for the "blab it and grab it" theology that comes down to some attempt to command God to act. But they do have stuff to teach us about watching the words we speak. What we speak comes from our thoughts, but hearing those thoughts spoken out loud from our own mouths certainly also has a role to play in either keeping our feet stuck in negativity and doubt or encouraging us toward trusting God. |
Honestwitness
Registered user
Username: Honestwitness
Post Number: 5
Registered: 7-2005
| | Posted on Monday, September 19, 2005 - 5:02 pm: | |
How sad to think that God's gifts ended with the closing of the canon. That thought makes me shudder, just as the "shut door" doctrine makes me shudder. Jesus talked about new wine bursting old wine skins. His Spirit continues to bring new life and operate through his gifts, and continues to burst the old wine skins of obsolete traditions even today.
As far as being deceived goes, I choose not to fret about that. I choose instead to focus on the verse that says, "I am confident He is able to keep that which I've committed to Him against that day."
He will keep us safe from deception. Sometimes, He may allow us to receive a measured dose of deception, but only so we will be "innoculated" against it. As long as we're intimately familiar with the real thing, it will be glaringly obvious when, and if, He allows a counterfeit to come along.
He is just in requiring an accounting from us, but He is also merciful, gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He's our tender Shepherd. Let's put our trust in Him. |
Lydell
Registered user
Username: Lydell
Post Number: 727
Registered: 7-2000
| | Posted on Tuesday, September 20, 2005 - 7:11 am: | |
Yes absolutely Honestwitness! I was thinking this morning about how my understanding of God has changed over the last handful of years. I was blessed to grow up in a Christian home. I have never doubted that God was real. I have heard all my life that God loves me and that the Bible is His word and believed that it was true.
But it has only been in the last few years that I have come to really grasp something. He is not a God who gave us this written word then backed away and became silent and uninvolved in the earth or in our lives.
It just blows me away. The great God who created all things and sustains all life, the God of all justice, vengeance, majesty, glory, honor, and sovereignty is a God who also is involved intimately with me. With me!
He talks to me personally. He is willing to do ANYTHING to reach me.
That He may speak to me on the rare occassion by dreams or visions is awesome. But it is absolutely the same thing as when he uses the words of a song to suddenly help me understand something He has said in the Bible. Or when reading the Bible and a verse suddenly has vibrant meaning. Or when I walk away from a sermon with something that grabbed me that the person next to me didn't even notice. It is ALL God speaking to ME intimately.
He is the same God today as when He gave that poor widow instruction to gather up all the empty containers she could lay her hands on because she was about to need them. He's the same God who spoke to Peter in a dream about animals in a sheet.....didn't just tell him to get off his butt and go, instead He first broke down man's narrow thinking.
He didn't just work through signs and wonders to testify to His power and the truth of His word for those first century Christians. He still does the same in our "more sophisticated" culture today. He didn't just infuse the apostles with spiritual gifts so they could accomplish what He gave them to do, no, He knows we are just as weak and needy of help as they were. Like the shepherd who walks along with His staff gently laid against the side of one of the sheep....simply to let it know He is there.
God is SO real! Not a distant authoritative uninvolved Father. Not the bridegroom of this concept of "church". No, He's MY dad, and MY bridegroom. The one who is absolutely, unquestioningly worthy of our love and trust.
WOW |
Colleentinker
Registered user
Username: Colleentinker
Post Number: 2577
Registered: 12-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, September 20, 2005 - 8:29 am: | |
Lydell, You make such a good point. If God had given us His word and the revelation of Jesus and had left us simply with that, we would be only incrementally more informed than the Israelites. We'd simply have an expanded "torah".
By giving us the Holy Spirit, however, we are far better offóas Jesus Himself told His disciples they would beóthan if He merely stayed here. He left so the Holy Spirit would come and give us new birth, filling us with all the power and promises of God (see Epehsians 1:17-18). It is the Holy Spirit Who makes the Bible make sense, who give us the power to live lives worthy of the gospel, who makes it possible for us to know what we must surrender and to actually surrender to Him.
Like you, Lydell, I've had such a growing amazement "over the last handful of years" at the astonishing reality that the new birth really makes us new creatures, born from above and gifted with an inheritance from God, not from humans.
WOW, indeed!
Colleen |
Melissa
Registered user
Username: Melissa
Post Number: 1080
Registered: 7-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, September 20, 2005 - 1:33 pm: | |
Hey, Honestwitness....glad to see you're still around |
Seekr777
Registered user
Username: Seekr777
Post Number: 283
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, September 20, 2005 - 4:35 pm: | |
Colleen,
And "WOW, again! ! !"
Richard |
Honestwitness
Registered user
Username: Honestwitness
Post Number: 6
Registered: 7-2005
| | Posted on Tuesday, September 20, 2005 - 7:29 pm: | |
Thanks for the welcoming words, Melissa. I've been quite busy lately, but just had to pop in for a nip of the sweet honey I find here. Lydell and Colleen, your messages are truly a ministry. |
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