Kindle Notes & Highlights
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May 20 - May 26, 2020
For it is God Himself whose power creates within you the desire to do His gracious will and also brings about the accomplishment of the desire. Philippians 2:13 WNT
This desiring to do His will is not to be confuse...
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your volition which has always operated within your soul must be influenced by something deeper and stronger than your soul.
It is God whose power creates within you the desire to do His will! He initiates all the changes He does in you.
Your soul is the human personality within you.
Most of your problems did not come from other people but from something in you that wrongly reacted to them.
It is this false self which God is out to kill rather than cure.
Self is a master of disguise and hides behind good intentions and noble deeds, but in the Light of God’s Presence ...
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Who you think you are, who you may even feel you are, is not who you truly are!
It is sad to live out of the mental concept of who you are as you are doomed to perpetual frustrations, sensations of lack and unworthiness, and general negativity about yourself. But this is the sad state of many believers for the bulk of their natural lives.
It was about this self–the ego driven aspect of carnal life--to which Jesus addressed most of His parables.
Outward Suffering is Produced by Self
Collective Self Causes World Problems
Self Causes Religious Problems
It may or may not surprise you, depending on whether you have had previous experience with organized religion, to learn that the word “religion” in its Latin radix means bondage!
Self Causes Family Problems
Self Causes Your Problems
It is always correct not to resist negative situation,
You can remain free inside no matter how crazy others are in surface life.
Personal Inner Harmony
Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 1 Thessalonians 5:23 NASB
Nicodemus had to first “see” before he could “enter” the Kingdom of God (John 3:1-5).
His new birth would not guarantee that he would either “see” or “enter” it, but it would make both possible
Chapter 5 What Are You?
It is Paul’s belief that God desires metamorphosis for each of His children.
What did Jesus mean by “whole”? He meant that all of our parts are in perfect alignment: spirit, soul, and body.
There is no inner conflict between any of our parts; we are complete even as our Father is complete, undivided, always in total harmony within ourselves.
but simply that we would become one within ourselves even as our Father is one or whole, undivided and complete.
It is the transformative power of grace arising out of the spirit part of each of us that contains the capability of producing oneness between the spirit, soul and body.
This is authentic Christian living…we become lights in the world. Two verses after telling us “You are lights in the world” Jesus went on to explain our purpose toward others: “Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in Heaven” (Matt. 5:14, 15 NASB). Paul, taking his cue by meditating on his Master’s teaching expressed the same concept this way:
…so that you may always prove yourselves to be blameless and spotless--irreproachable children of God in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you are seen as heavenly lights in the world, holding out to them a Message of Life… Philippians 2:5, 6 WNT
the health of the outer body is influenced by the health of the inner body.
There is more energy when physical existence is not burdened by mental heaviness.
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Whether abased or exalted “the peace of God which passes all understanding keeps [their] minds and hearts in Christ Jesus”
A man’s life must consist of intangible yet real things that make for peace, spiritual things he can use to edify others. Paul said it this way:
Love, joy, and peace are not positive emotions, as is often believed. They are deeper than emotions. They are spiritual states of being.
Spiritual qualities originate in the new spirit part of you.
The world is always telling us we need to add something to us from the outside in order to make us complete inside. The truth for the believer is that you are already complete in Christ: “you are complete in Him” (Col. 2:10). Nothing from the outside needs to be added or even can be added to the New Creation you already are in your spirit. Everything that pertains to life and godliness has already been given to you. You are a partaker of the divine nature; you have been graced with every spiritual blessing (Eph. 1:3; 2 Pet. 1:4).
The carnal-mind, which is the thinking part of self, doesn’t believe this because it cannot (Rom. 8:6). If it cannot distract you with the acquisition of material things, it will tell you instead that if only you were more spiritual, more holy, more prayerful you could then achieve the peace you are lacking. If the sin-principled ego cannot get you into material pursuits, it will turn its attention to spiritual ones. But self is incapable of pursuing what is spiritual, so it confuses you with what is religious. Religion in any form cannot satisfy the real you, but it is capable of making the
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I told her Jesus had given me a peace that did not go away, but remained in me after I had yielded to Him and had allowed Him to dissolve the part of me that resisted His will.
Even though they may enjoy peace with God as a result of the born again experience they do not live in the peace of God.
It took me almost 40 years after the new birth before I realized I had been pursuing carrots too.
Jesus Bore All Our Regrets
One of the many things our Messiah bore for us on the Cross was all our regrets! Are you aware of this aspect of our redemption? It has been rarely seen and taught, but the word “sorrows” in Isaiah 53:4 is makobaw and includes in its meaning “sorrows, anguish, regrets for past failures, lingering shame” (see Gesenius, Wilson’s, JFB and other Hebrew resources). Thus Jesus carried (or “removed to a distance away from us”) our regrets, the anguish they cause us, and lingering shame. All of this becomes wonderfully real within your soul in transformation. This is Isaiah 53:4 in my alternate
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He Himself has lifted up upon Himself our sicknesses and pain, and has removed to a distance from us by carrying them upon Himself all our regrets, heartaches, inner pains, lingering shame, disappointments and emotional traumas.
Any “price” paid through years of circular wandering vanish in the beauty of the One Pearl of Great Price now held in the palm.
Chapter 6 The Process and Crisis of Metamorphosis
if they do accept God’s power as available and operative today, they limit His power to external situations and conditions.
Thoughts of whatever sort sometimes come but are observed in the new state as an outside entity.
