Category: Interior Life

suffering

How To Suffer – Part 2

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Last week we looked at ten tips for walking through suffering with God. This week we present ten more. God uses suffering to reveal our hidden corruption. Notice the new insights about yourself that the pressure of suffering brings to the surface. Seek God for help with what suffering reveals. Develop a better understanding about the ways in which fear influences your life. Suffering often generates fears. Don’t dwell on the pain. Focus on other things. Continue doing your tasks. Do not indulge in sin! Do not go back to your former destructive habits! Fight them every way you know how. Find someone to hold you accountable. Many people ruin their Spiritual lives with these former sins and it takes them years to recover. Do not start believing lies. Do not let your thinking get scrambled or drift from Scripture. Do not believe that God does not love you or Continue Reading →

suffering

How To Suffer – Part 1

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Following is a list of guidelines for walking through suffering with God. Find the ones that are helpful to you. Focusing on destiny helps to overcome trials. Spend a couple of minutes each day picturing your destiny in the perfect community of love with God and his followers. Honestly express your heart to God. Find Psalms or other passages that express your heart and use them to pray to God. If you are truly angry with God then respectfully express it to him with your emotions. Spend at least 20 minutes in solitude twice a week in order to become aware of the thoughts and feelings that are coming up inside. You can just sit and let them come or ask yourself some questions. When they come up then you can begin to process them. This will help keep the flow of your heart flowing freely and not bottled up. Continue Reading →

cross, suffering

Why Do The “King’s Kids” Suffer?

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Under the old covenant God promised much prosperity to his faithful followers instead of suffering. But under the new covenant God promises suffering to his true followers. Why the change? Shouldn’t we have more prosperity now that the Son has died for us? The answer is no because we live in the overlap of this present age and the age of the kingdom of God. Since the fulfillment of the old covenant by the new covenant of the kingdom the followers of God no longer need success in this world in order to fulfill the mission of God. He sends us to penetrate every culture but not with external political power, rather, with the internal power of the Spirit. All are invited to join God’s kingdom but people are also free to reject God and pursue destructive lives. This means that we still live in a destructive world that inflicts Continue Reading →

looking for holiness

5 Mighty Motivations For Pursuing Holiness

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The path of holiness can be daunting but God empathizes and encourages us with powerful motivations. Here are five motivations for seeking holiness. The first and biggest reason is that our Christian life should be powered by love for God. If we think of purification as something we do only because God asks us to then our motives are out of order. God wants us to want him because he is our good Father who gives us true life and everything else pales in comparison. Paul told the Corinthians that “I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ” (2 Cor. 11:2, ESV). This is why we cooperate with his purifying fires: we are yearning for our wedding day.   The second reason is similar to the first. Since we are destined to live as perfected new Adams in an eternal community of love Continue Reading →

pure gold money

The Beauty Of Holiness

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The directive to actively pursue purification is one of the most prevalent themes in the New Testament. We can think of pursuing holiness as wiping the mud out of our eyes so we can see God clearly. It is the restoration of our original Adamic image of God which includes freedom from the dirt and grime that robbed us of the vital and peaceful Spiritual life that God desires for us. Holiness becomes increasingly sweeter as we mature because we feel more of the peace and joy that comes with participating in the nature of God. As we grow in holiness we will feel ourselves becoming more at one with our bridegroom. We experience a foretaste of our future marital bliss. So we pursue holiness out of love. We begin to understand that this purity produces beauty and beauty produces delight. When someone finds a gold nugget in the ground Continue Reading →