exodus 20 honor thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.
psalm 103.13 like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him.
proverbs 3.12 for whom the Lord loveth He correcteth; even as a father the son in whom he delighteth.
4.1 hear, ye children, the instruction of a father..
4.3f for i was my father's son, tender and only beloved in the sight of my mother. he taught me also and said unto me, let thine heart retain my words: keep my commandments, and live.
6.20f my son, keep thy fathers commandments..bind them continually upon thine heart and tie them about thy neck.
10.1 a wise son maketh a glad father..
17.21 he that begetteth a fool (psalm 53.1 the fool hath said in his heart (there is) no God.) doeth it to his sorrow; and the father of a fool hath no joy.
19.13 a foolish son is the calamity of his father..
20.20 whoso curseth his father or his mother, his lamp shall be put out in obscure darkness.
23.22 hearken unto thy father that begat thee..
23.24 the father of the righteous shall greatly rejoice and he that begetteth a wise child shall have joy of him.
28.7 whoso keepeth the law is a wise son, but he that is a companion of riotous men shameth his father.
30.11f there is a generation that curseth their father and doth not bless their mother. there is a generation that are pure in their own eyes and yet is not washed from their filthiness.
30.17 the eye that mocketh at his father and despiseth to obey his mother, the ravens of the valley shall pick it out and the young eagles shall eat it.
matt. 10.35f for I am come to set a man at variance against his father..and a man's foes shall be they of his own household. he that loveth father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. and he that taketh not his cross aned followeth after Me, is not worthy of Me.
phil. 2.22 ..for you know of his proven worth that as a son serveth his father...
Sunday, June 19, 2011
6.17.2011 LUKE 11.13 - HOLY SPIRIT
my father claimed to have what he called a second work of grace where he was filled with the Holy Spirit in the 1930s. after this he claimed to be, as a result, sinlessly perfect. sin that was conscious and willful. this was according to the doctrine of sinless perfection developed by john wesley in the 1700s. i must say that in many ways my father's life was remarkable and yet, even to my child mind i could see 'faults' that he did not.
anyway, as a result i have always been interested in the whole idea of a second experience with the Holy Spirit subsequent to salvation. several times i have actually been in situations where i sought this filling of the Holy Spirit...but no dice.
recently i learned something interesting. ephesians 5.18 which says, 'be filled with the Holy Spirit' actually does not have the word 'holy' in the original text. hmmm. the commentator i read did not at all attribute the phrase to the third person of the trinity but rather to 'spirit'....so i'm continuing to process. i used to, taking the tense of the verb 'be filled' to be a present passive, see this as literally 'continually/repeatedly be filled with the Holy Spirit' but was a little foggy on how that actually happened. i, especially from an experiential point of view understand the need for repeated 'filling' as brought out by the present tense but i didn't quite understand the passive mode of the verb because that means that it is not something i actively have a part in (active mode) but rather something that is done to me be another. so because it was present (REPETITIVE) it did not jive with a one time experience such as my father claimed. but because it was passive...it seemed...that it was not something i had any part in. so i seemed to be in a dead end with no answers.
in the last several months i read 'like a mighty wind' as told by mel tari..the story of the revival that occurred in thailand in 1965. that was powerfully persuasive. peoples lives were radically transformed and God did miraculous things in and through them. this was immensely attractive because 1. i liked the idea of 'knock your socks off' christianity that kind of bowls over the watching world. in the flesh i kind of like exciting things like that and i also like to be noticed by others, and 2. i am in a time of great spiritual weakness and 'darkness' of a sort and long to have power and light. i long for a daily victorious life over sin and a life that spills grace over into the lives of others. it all seemed so straightforward and 1-2-3. but although very needy and very desirous i found a fundamental block...there was not in my heart a willingness to give myself completely over to God. it was weird because i always thought that i was very willing but now found myself very unwilling.
i'm not sure when it happened but somewhere along the line i took notice of luke 11.13. it was a verse i kept trying to ignore and not deal with but it's astounding claim finally drove me to spend some hours in a local theological library with a number of commentaries on this verse. the verse reads, 'if ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children; how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?
i went through any number of the finest commentaries and had about a quarter page of notes, none of which were crucial to understanding this claim. then, by the grace of God, i opened a book called something like 'treasury of the new testament' by charles haddon spurgeon. on a different plan than most, which did word by word/verse by verse, this selected certain passages and dealt with them in a kind of preaching manner. i walked from dry, arid desert into a lush, luxurious, green and vibrantly alive oasis and i jotted as much as i had time for from this life giving sermon on luke 11.1-13 on prayer. i only read the part on verse 13 which was pages long and a balm to my weary, aching soul. what follows are sort of spurgeon's words but a number of mine intermingled to try to suck the most marrow in the time allotted.
'O Spirit of God destroy Thou sin within us and work in us purity. Thou hast already given us the new birth by water and the Spirit..go on and complete Thy work til our whole nature shall be fashioned in the image of the Great Firstborn..God will give you this Spirit. You shall have it if you seek it..the Holly Spirit illuminates the mind..long to be taught of God..the Holy spirit is set..under the emblem of fire..He kindles enthusiasm of spirit and burning zeal in heart..a tongue of fire speaks with a matchless might..often..the holy Spirit is set forth as oil..divine anointing..as gentle dew that cheers and refreshes the grass..the Spirit will come and console our spirits
..some say we are not to pray for what we already have (by the new birth): pardon of sin/the Holy Spirit...if we have life we are to pray that we have it more abundantly. if we have pardon in one respect, we are to pray that we have it more abundantly. if we have pardon in one respect we are to ask for a fuller sense of it and if we have the Holy Spirit so that we are quickened and saved, we do not ask for him in that capacity, but we ask for His power in other directions and His grace in other forms. i do not go before God now and say, 'Lord, i am a dead sinner, quicken me by Thy Spirit, for i trust i am quickened in the Holy Spirit. but being quickened i now cry, 'Lord, let not the life Thou hast given me ebb down til it becomes very feeble, but give me of Thy Spirit that the life within me may become strong and mighty and may subdue all the power of death within my members, that i may put forth the vigor and energy which comes from Thyself through the Spirit.. SEEK THAT YET MORE AND MORE YOU MAY KNOW HIM and to this end ask God for Him in every situation of need, of weakness.
the text does not say the Father knows HOW to give the Holy Spirit (like wicked men know how to give good gifts to their children...and yet are many times unable)..it declares that he does give for in regard to God, to know is the same as to do!
THIS IS A TRUTH (asking for the Holy Spirit) THAT WE DO NOT PRACTICE!..we do not seek Him importunately because we either do not sense our deep, vast need or we do not believe the simple promise here stated.
dear brother, sit down with pencil in hand and a sheet of blank paper before you and write down ALL YOUR SPIRITUAL WANTS..to pray for all these might seem a very long exercise. my dear brother, just take the pencil and so as the school boys do when they add up the total of their sums.. you will find i comes to this - THE HOLY SPIRIT. if God the Father gives me the Holy Spirit i have all i need...all my needs are met in the blessed Spirit! ...the Holy Spirit takes the things of Christ and shows them to us...
your prayer is not just for yourself but also intercessory. the Holy Spirit is the answer to all the needs of those around you too. bless others by this prayer for them too..for the tender conscience.. the desire after Christ...coming to Christ for salvation..becoming a christian useful to God and others...and for the church to be united..holy..living!
so in the last several days i have been blessed to cry out numbers of times in response to what is happening within and around me..Father give me the Holy Spirit! i'm thinking that a garden is growing within and around me..oh may it be a garden filled with the sweet aroma of Jesus Christ so that only He may be seen.
in the half a nano second i have left here may You, my faithful, loving God, continue to lead and show me the way to know You intimately and to make You sweetly known...
anyway, as a result i have always been interested in the whole idea of a second experience with the Holy Spirit subsequent to salvation. several times i have actually been in situations where i sought this filling of the Holy Spirit...but no dice.
recently i learned something interesting. ephesians 5.18 which says, 'be filled with the Holy Spirit' actually does not have the word 'holy' in the original text. hmmm. the commentator i read did not at all attribute the phrase to the third person of the trinity but rather to 'spirit'....so i'm continuing to process. i used to, taking the tense of the verb 'be filled' to be a present passive, see this as literally 'continually/repeatedly be filled with the Holy Spirit' but was a little foggy on how that actually happened. i, especially from an experiential point of view understand the need for repeated 'filling' as brought out by the present tense but i didn't quite understand the passive mode of the verb because that means that it is not something i actively have a part in (active mode) but rather something that is done to me be another. so because it was present (REPETITIVE) it did not jive with a one time experience such as my father claimed. but because it was passive...it seemed...that it was not something i had any part in. so i seemed to be in a dead end with no answers.
in the last several months i read 'like a mighty wind' as told by mel tari..the story of the revival that occurred in thailand in 1965. that was powerfully persuasive. peoples lives were radically transformed and God did miraculous things in and through them. this was immensely attractive because 1. i liked the idea of 'knock your socks off' christianity that kind of bowls over the watching world. in the flesh i kind of like exciting things like that and i also like to be noticed by others, and 2. i am in a time of great spiritual weakness and 'darkness' of a sort and long to have power and light. i long for a daily victorious life over sin and a life that spills grace over into the lives of others. it all seemed so straightforward and 1-2-3. but although very needy and very desirous i found a fundamental block...there was not in my heart a willingness to give myself completely over to God. it was weird because i always thought that i was very willing but now found myself very unwilling.
i'm not sure when it happened but somewhere along the line i took notice of luke 11.13. it was a verse i kept trying to ignore and not deal with but it's astounding claim finally drove me to spend some hours in a local theological library with a number of commentaries on this verse. the verse reads, 'if ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children; how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?
i went through any number of the finest commentaries and had about a quarter page of notes, none of which were crucial to understanding this claim. then, by the grace of God, i opened a book called something like 'treasury of the new testament' by charles haddon spurgeon. on a different plan than most, which did word by word/verse by verse, this selected certain passages and dealt with them in a kind of preaching manner. i walked from dry, arid desert into a lush, luxurious, green and vibrantly alive oasis and i jotted as much as i had time for from this life giving sermon on luke 11.1-13 on prayer. i only read the part on verse 13 which was pages long and a balm to my weary, aching soul. what follows are sort of spurgeon's words but a number of mine intermingled to try to suck the most marrow in the time allotted.
'O Spirit of God destroy Thou sin within us and work in us purity. Thou hast already given us the new birth by water and the Spirit..go on and complete Thy work til our whole nature shall be fashioned in the image of the Great Firstborn..God will give you this Spirit. You shall have it if you seek it..the Holly Spirit illuminates the mind..long to be taught of God..the Holy spirit is set..under the emblem of fire..He kindles enthusiasm of spirit and burning zeal in heart..a tongue of fire speaks with a matchless might..often..the holy Spirit is set forth as oil..divine anointing..as gentle dew that cheers and refreshes the grass..the Spirit will come and console our spirits
..some say we are not to pray for what we already have (by the new birth): pardon of sin/the Holy Spirit...if we have life we are to pray that we have it more abundantly. if we have pardon in one respect, we are to pray that we have it more abundantly. if we have pardon in one respect we are to ask for a fuller sense of it and if we have the Holy Spirit so that we are quickened and saved, we do not ask for him in that capacity, but we ask for His power in other directions and His grace in other forms. i do not go before God now and say, 'Lord, i am a dead sinner, quicken me by Thy Spirit, for i trust i am quickened in the Holy Spirit. but being quickened i now cry, 'Lord, let not the life Thou hast given me ebb down til it becomes very feeble, but give me of Thy Spirit that the life within me may become strong and mighty and may subdue all the power of death within my members, that i may put forth the vigor and energy which comes from Thyself through the Spirit.. SEEK THAT YET MORE AND MORE YOU MAY KNOW HIM and to this end ask God for Him in every situation of need, of weakness.
the text does not say the Father knows HOW to give the Holy Spirit (like wicked men know how to give good gifts to their children...and yet are many times unable)..it declares that he does give for in regard to God, to know is the same as to do!
THIS IS A TRUTH (asking for the Holy Spirit) THAT WE DO NOT PRACTICE!..we do not seek Him importunately because we either do not sense our deep, vast need or we do not believe the simple promise here stated.
dear brother, sit down with pencil in hand and a sheet of blank paper before you and write down ALL YOUR SPIRITUAL WANTS..to pray for all these might seem a very long exercise. my dear brother, just take the pencil and so as the school boys do when they add up the total of their sums.. you will find i comes to this - THE HOLY SPIRIT. if God the Father gives me the Holy Spirit i have all i need...all my needs are met in the blessed Spirit! ...the Holy Spirit takes the things of Christ and shows them to us...
your prayer is not just for yourself but also intercessory. the Holy Spirit is the answer to all the needs of those around you too. bless others by this prayer for them too..for the tender conscience.. the desire after Christ...coming to Christ for salvation..becoming a christian useful to God and others...and for the church to be united..holy..living!
so in the last several days i have been blessed to cry out numbers of times in response to what is happening within and around me..Father give me the Holy Spirit! i'm thinking that a garden is growing within and around me..oh may it be a garden filled with the sweet aroma of Jesus Christ so that only He may be seen.
in the half a nano second i have left here may You, my faithful, loving God, continue to lead and show me the way to know You intimately and to make You sweetly known...
Saturday, June 11, 2011
6.12.2011 THE RISE AND FALL OF CIVILIZATIONS
terrific energy is expended - civilizations are built up - excellent institutions devised; but each time something goes wrong. some fatal flaw always brings the selfish and cruel people to the top and it all slides back into misery and ruin. c.s. lewis
..socialogists and historians have attempted to unlock the keys of this rise and fall pattern.
for his 1934 classic work, sex and culture, british anthropologist j.d. unwin studied 80 societies, analyzing their cultural beliefs and practices, especially as related to sex and marriage. this study included the primitive societis of history and his own time, as well as ancient cultures likde the sumerians, babylonians, persians, greeks, romans, ango-saxons, english and others.
unwin examined the 'cultual conditin' of these societies, by which he meant the developmental status and energy they manifested. was the culture growing - demonstrating what he called 'expansive energy' - and then, later in its history, was it improving what it had built - what he called 'productive energy'.
whether or not a society had moved from an uncivilized state to a civilized state, and whether it was manifesting creative energy, was a direct product, unwin said, of how sexually permissive the culture was. he defined this by identifying various degrees of 'sexual opportunity'. the more sexual opportunity a society's people had - that is , the fewer restraints placed upon sexual habits - the less energetic it would be.
penalies for breaching the moral code might take the form of cultural disapproval, punishment, banishment, or even death. together the variations of social reproach limited sexual opportunity.
these restraints were mormally tied to marriage and the historical evidence showed that absolutely monogamous cultures were the strongest.
'in the records of history, indeed, there is no example of a society displaying great energy for any appreciable period unless it has been absolutely monogamous', unwin said. 'moreover, i do not know of a case in which an absolutely monogamous society has failed to display great energy'.
on the positive side of this theory, unwin argued that limiting sexual opportunity in a societ allowed energy to be directed toward creative ends. creativity required 'sacrifices in the gratification of innate desires', he said.
'the placing of a compulsory check upon the sexual impulses, that is , a limitation of sexual opportunity, produces thought, reflection and energy', unwin insisted.
on the negative side, however, was what happened when a people began to transgress its own moral codes - when sexual opportunity began to be extended in both premarital and extra-marital sexual freedom. across the board, unwin found, such cultures began to decay.
in his 1956 work, the american sex revolution, pitirim a. sorokin, who founded the sociology department at harvard university, examined this phenomenon as well. he explained: 'since a disorderly sexual life tends to undermine the physical and mental health, the morality and the creativity of its devotees, it has a similar effect upon a society that is composed largely of profligates. and the greater the number of profligates and the more debached their behavior, the graver are the consequences for the whole society. and if sexual anarchists compose any considerable proportion of its membership, they eventually destroy the society itself'.
..when energy is expended outwardly, self-discipline if exerted to achieve the envisioned goals. it is easy to gratify every desire immediately, but it takes self-control to corral those desires and channel them in ways that benefit society. that means the society that is restricting its desires and keeping them in their proper place is likely to also possess the self-discipline to work in the lab to develop a better light bulb rather than watch movies every night.
..both unwin and sorokin noted that history is filled with remarkably consistent manifestations of this process of corruption.
afa journal, june 2011
..socialogists and historians have attempted to unlock the keys of this rise and fall pattern.
for his 1934 classic work, sex and culture, british anthropologist j.d. unwin studied 80 societies, analyzing their cultural beliefs and practices, especially as related to sex and marriage. this study included the primitive societis of history and his own time, as well as ancient cultures likde the sumerians, babylonians, persians, greeks, romans, ango-saxons, english and others.
unwin examined the 'cultual conditin' of these societies, by which he meant the developmental status and energy they manifested. was the culture growing - demonstrating what he called 'expansive energy' - and then, later in its history, was it improving what it had built - what he called 'productive energy'.
whether or not a society had moved from an uncivilized state to a civilized state, and whether it was manifesting creative energy, was a direct product, unwin said, of how sexually permissive the culture was. he defined this by identifying various degrees of 'sexual opportunity'. the more sexual opportunity a society's people had - that is , the fewer restraints placed upon sexual habits - the less energetic it would be.
penalies for breaching the moral code might take the form of cultural disapproval, punishment, banishment, or even death. together the variations of social reproach limited sexual opportunity.
these restraints were mormally tied to marriage and the historical evidence showed that absolutely monogamous cultures were the strongest.
'in the records of history, indeed, there is no example of a society displaying great energy for any appreciable period unless it has been absolutely monogamous', unwin said. 'moreover, i do not know of a case in which an absolutely monogamous society has failed to display great energy'.
on the positive side of this theory, unwin argued that limiting sexual opportunity in a societ allowed energy to be directed toward creative ends. creativity required 'sacrifices in the gratification of innate desires', he said.
'the placing of a compulsory check upon the sexual impulses, that is , a limitation of sexual opportunity, produces thought, reflection and energy', unwin insisted.
on the negative side, however, was what happened when a people began to transgress its own moral codes - when sexual opportunity began to be extended in both premarital and extra-marital sexual freedom. across the board, unwin found, such cultures began to decay.
in his 1956 work, the american sex revolution, pitirim a. sorokin, who founded the sociology department at harvard university, examined this phenomenon as well. he explained: 'since a disorderly sexual life tends to undermine the physical and mental health, the morality and the creativity of its devotees, it has a similar effect upon a society that is composed largely of profligates. and the greater the number of profligates and the more debached their behavior, the graver are the consequences for the whole society. and if sexual anarchists compose any considerable proportion of its membership, they eventually destroy the society itself'.
..when energy is expended outwardly, self-discipline if exerted to achieve the envisioned goals. it is easy to gratify every desire immediately, but it takes self-control to corral those desires and channel them in ways that benefit society. that means the society that is restricting its desires and keeping them in their proper place is likely to also possess the self-discipline to work in the lab to develop a better light bulb rather than watch movies every night.
..both unwin and sorokin noted that history is filled with remarkably consistent manifestations of this process of corruption.
afa journal, june 2011
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