I want to throw one thing in the mix about believing. Something I've observed a lot (so has everybody else). I'm comparing 2 places; college campuses and workplaces.
As far back as I can remember, there's an atmosphere on college campuses that's really strong. Two of my siblings went to the U. of MI over a period of 7 years ('58-'65). I recall being 5 years old and going to visit my sister there. The whole city of Ann Arbor seems to have the campus atmosphere. To this day every time I go to a college that atmosphere is there. There's just something in the air; don't know what else to call it. Could be a big college like U. CA Berkley or the community college I got my Assoc. degree from. Once I'm on campus the world changes. So what causes it?
We used to hear in twi that 'learning is an exciting adventure'. I think that's true. ANY learning. College campuses have lots of mostly young people who are learning about something. Even outside the classroom there's a learning atmosphere. The student centers, peoples' dorm rooms, the cafeteria, etc. It all seems to become one. JL said that nobody's thoughts affect anything outside the person, but they DO affect things inside the person. So if you put thousands of young people in the same space interacting with each other, "believing" to learn and get educated, the result is an "atmosphere". They're not believing FOR anything except an education, I guess, but their collective interaction in that particular scenerio creates a consistent world apart. This is a tangible result.
OK now let's talk about workplaces. Totally different atmosphere. Some workplaces have everybody doing their best work, bubbling with excitement and enthusiasm. You feel it as soon as you walk in the door. Other workplaces are filled with burned out people who don't like their jobs as much as they once did and just can't get a better job. You feel that as soon as you walk in the door as well. Same dynamics in both places. Your thoughts (believing) won't affect anything outside of you directly, but they sure affect the contribution you make to the whole, whatever that is.
Nothing people do is absolute truth. People are fickle. You want absolute truth? Check out God through Jesus Christ's finished work.
quote: None of this has the least bit of anything to do with the "law of believing", as taught in PFAL.
Not from the soot colored glasses you look through.
John, rather than make this some sort of personal feud, I simply extend to you the challenge of demonstrating how your post is relevant to the "law of believing" that was taught in PFAL. That is, after all, the subject being discussed here.
I still kind of believe in it. I just refuse to invoke it.
Why..
there are a lot of things in life I would really, really like to have.
ah. The guy who runs dow corning. Just got a "bonus".. how many millions of dollars? And at the same time they make budget cuts, involving the few employees that are left there.
Maybe he "believed" for it. there ARE consequences, ya know..
what did what you "believe" for cost YOUR fellow human beings.
I could "believe" for a LOT of s*it..
Even if the illusion is true. You believe to move the mountain.. how many years will it take the victims to dig out..
I'd rather be buried, than to bury..
Have your fun fellas. Just wait for the debriefing on the other side of this existence..
Don't worry. It won't be so bad. You'll just lose everything.
:)
It's not much different from practical majik.. or practical kaballah..
quote: John, rather than make this some sort of personal feud, I simply extend to you the challenge of demonstrating how your post is relevant to the "law of believing" that was taught in PFAL. That is, after all, the subject being discussed here.
You started this thread didn't you? It's about JL denouncing the LOB. At least, that's what the top of this page SAYS I'm replying to. Make up your mind.
quote: John, rather than make this some sort of personal feud, I simply extend to you the challenge of demonstrating how your post is relevant to the "law of believing" that was taught in PFAL. That is, after all, the subject being discussed here.
You started this thread didn't you? It's about JL denouncing the LOB. At least, that's what the top of this page SAYS I'm replying to. Make up your mind.
"Once I'm on campus the world changes. So what causes it?"
Preparation, expectation, realization, memory. What you bring to an experience, what you think it's going to be, what it is, what you recall.
I subscribe somewhat to the gestalt view and process of learning, and one of the ways I define "life" is learning, where we are either learning or using what we know. Viewed that way life is always a process of being and becoming what we are up to that point, what we are experiencing at that point and what we will be past that point.
Gestalt is a holistic approach which all sounds very psychedelic but is basically summed up in the phrase "the whole is (or can be I would say) greater than the sum ot it's parts".
The tendency of human perception is to "connect the dots" if you will, in order to store information for efficient recall and use. When we realize or recognize something at a given point in time for instance we may ask "what is this, and what does it mean?" We may also simply assume "I know what this is and what it means".
To me this is all loosely related to "believing" if we understand that word to be fundamentally a state of awareness and acceptance as opposed to only being a deliberate process that we hmmm, step through. It can certainly be seen as a process as there's a process involved in achieving that state of awareness and acceptance but it doesn't always and may not need to always be a deliberate action on our part. Preparation, expectation, realization, recall - imagine 10 people with COMPLETELY different content for each of those words, with no commonalities. Compare that to 10 people with the "same" or very similar content to those 4 words. The experience at a given point - what will it be for an 11th person coming into that mix, in either scenario? Different? I would think so, especially considering that the 11th person is now part of the whole. The net result of it all is something that couldn't exist without each of the components that contribute to it.
quote: It can certainly be seen as a process as there's a process involved in achieving that state of awareness and acceptance but it doesn't always and may not need to always be a deliberate action on our part.
That's kinda what I meant when I said the only thing college students are "believing FOR" is an education. In that case the state of awareness is whatever is gleaned from sustained exposure to the campus.
I don't think VP taught the LOB as the bible being the "universal believing playbook". He said that "you are where you are today because of where your believing has taken you". That's an individual thing for everybody. I worked with 2 guys in the 90s. Both about the same age (early 20s). One guy was the eldest of 3 boys, father abandoned the family when he was an adolescent, went in the military, good looking, was a supervisor, girls liked him. The other guy was overweight, impulsive, lived with his parents, envied the hell out of the other guy. Sure, each guy was where their 'believing' took them, but each of their backgrounds had a lot to do with how they turned out, IMO.
VPs angle was...OK, here's where you are now. Do you want to improve anything, or not? If so, God can help you, but you must do your part (believe). If you believe, then God will do the heavy lifting, but you must believe. I think people on their own morphed that into a godless philosophy; that if you scrunch your face up and believe then anything will come your way. I just don't think VP ever intended it that way. AND I didn't rub shoulders with too many in twi who talked like that.
VP once said that love is the badge of Christianity right after saying that believing is the genus of Christianity. As basic as breathing. So it's going to be talked about a lot, but most of the talk I heard was people believing for stuff they NEEDED with prayer and action, not for pie in the sky stuff they had no experience in that their whim for the day desired. That reminds me of a cartoon.
Mr. Wizard. This dufus named Tutor Turtle would say to Mr. Wizard, "Duh, I want to be a fireman". Then Mr. Wizard would wave his magic wand and chant something and TT'd be a fireman. After a few minutes TT would be in mortal danger, cry for help, and Mr. Wizard would wave his wand again and rescue him. Every episode was like that. Life doesn't work that way. Even people who win the lotto have usually already bought many tickets before getting the winner.
That may be what you think you heard VP teach but, it doesn't reflect the reality of what he taught in PFAL. "Works for saint and sinner alike" is what he said. No intervention from God required. Simply follow the recipe and the "law" will guarantee a perfectly baked cake. Don't even get me started on the camera analogy.
quote: Simply follow the recipe and the "law" will guarantee a perfectly baked cake.
VP didn't use those exact words, but if it was so obvious to you that THAT was the message, why didn't you get suspicious when it didn't work?
quote: I worked with 2 guys in the 90s. Both about the same age (early 20s). One guy was the eldest of 3 boys, father abandoned the family when he was an adolescent, went in the military, good looking, was a supervisor, girls liked him. The other guy was overweight, impulsive, lived with his parents, envied the hell out of the other guy. Sure, each guy was where their 'believing' took them, but each of their backgrounds had a lot to do with how they turned out, IMO.
According to VP, if the 2nd guy wanted to improve he had to 1) drop the envy 2) realize the 1st guy had too great of a head start on him for the 2nd guy to get the exact same results, and 3) get serious about what he could do to build his own confidence. Come to think of it, I should've witnessed to the 2nd guy. My bad.
You want to see "believing" at work.. try going back to grad school for a degree in math at 54 years old..
and there are no certainties here, even with good academic standing, and five credits to go, in today's political and economic climate..
no guarantees, whatsoever..
never, light at the end of the tunnel.. but maybe there is.
I had a dream, a long, long time ago..
I was in a very large building, either it was constructed out of glass, or crystal.. the walls of glass or crystal were about twenty meters (metres for non-usa folk) high. There was a crowd of us, dressed in white.
I've had several other impressions, that followed the dreams, exactly. Not this one yet..
The closest it came for this one.. so far. I was in a graduation ceremony, and we were all dressed in black..
"If a person is afraid of not being able to hold his job, do you know what will happen? He will lose it. If one is afraid of a disease, he will manifest that disease because the law is that what one believes (in this case, what one negatively believes), he is going to receive.................The law of negative and positive believing works for both Christian and non-Christian. When we believe, we receive the results of our believing regardless of who or what we are."
I think we all (hopefully) realize by now that this is simply not true.
Furthermore, Wierwille stressed that any results that might be realized were not facilitated by the intervention of God, but, rather, by virtue of this being some sort of immutable "law", like gravity. For instance, we have the example of the little boy who was struck and killed by a car because of the fear (negative believing) in his mother's heart. Where does God fit into this scenario? According to the "law of believing", as stated by Wierwille, God was not necessary for this event to happen. The mother merely had to harbor fear.(ie: believe it was going to happen) And, according to Wierwille's definition of this so-called "law of believing", the incident was inevitable and unavoidable.
For decades, J.L taught that the law of believing is true. Now, he has done an about face and is teaching that it's false.
...........................................
"why didn't you get suspicious when it didn't work?"
Are you acknowledging by this, then, that, in fact, it didn't work?
Have you ever noticed how hard it is to make things come to pass with positive believing? Now, negative believing, on the other hand, is a piece of cake. Let one little fear creep into your mind and BOOM!, you own it, baby.
j-i-am wrote: "VP once said that love is the badge of Christianity right after saying that believing is the genus of Christianity. As basic as breathing. So it's going to be talked about a lot, but most of the talk I heard was people believing for stuff they NEEDED with prayer and action, not for pie in the sky stuff they had no experience in that their whim for the day desired. That reminds me of a cartoon."
Well, not to ignore red drapes and the like, but I get what you're getting at, I think. Or as C. H. Spurgeon once wrote - the best way to defend a lion is to let him out of his cage. Let God do His work.
I think we just have to accept that PFAL danced around this and when you dance, ya gotta pay the band as they say. Give the devil his due - he's a tricky boy.
Matt. 5:44, 45
"...But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? If you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect."
This message is pretty consistent throughout the gospels and N.T. writings. When God's love rains everything gets wet. "Shower the people you love with love" and even those we don't. There's plenty go go around.
We will always struggle, trying to do this by our lonesome because it seems out of reach if not impossible. Even impractical and dangerous. The "ability" to do this doesn't come by a mental effort to do so - when we're abiding in the vine, we bring forth fruit, we bear it. Christ is the true vine and now all the branches ,grafted and otherwise, can have life through Him. Etc. Etc. Etc. The balance of it all, the achievement, the realization becomes a recognition of the goodness of God.
There's no attraction, we can't bring God's love to ourselves like some bag of goodness we drag forward into our own laps and enjoy because we've created a place for it. Love supersedes and surpasses all of that and we're advised to be the same to others, good and bad, deserving and undeserving. And if God's love is at the center of all we're pretty much poking ourselves in the eye with a pencil trying to better see something that's right in front of us the whole time and that won't move an inch closer than it already is, by anything we do.
I don't think VP taught the LOB as the bible being the "universal believing playbook". He said that "you are where you are today because of where your believing has taken you". That's an individual thing for everybody. I worked with 2 guys in the 90s. Both about the same age (early 20s). One guy was the eldest of 3 boys, father abandoned the family when he was an adolescent, went in the military, good looking, was a supervisor, girls liked him. The other guy was overweight, impulsive, lived with his parents, envied the hell out of the other guy. Sure, each guy was where their 'believing' took them, but each of their backgrounds had a lot to do with how they turned out, IMO.
VPs angle was...OK, here's where you are now. Do you want to improve anything, or not? If so, God can help you, but you must do your part (believe). If you believe, then God will do the heavy lifting, but you must believe. I think people on their own morphed that into a godless philosophy; that if you scrunch your face up and believe then anything will come your way. I just don't think VP ever intended it that way. AND I didn't rub shoulders with too many in twi who talked like that.
VP once said that love is the badge of Christianity right after saying that believing is the genus of Christianity. As basic as breathing. So it's going to be talked about a lot, but most of the talk I heard was people believing for stuff they NEEDED with prayer and action, not for pie in the sky stuff they had no experience in that their whim for the day desired. That reminds me of a cartoon.
So shall we all take a moment to reflect on how well Saint Vic applied his own crock?
There he was a bully, an adulterer, yadda, yadda yadda, ad nauseam.
Did he have a lot to improve? I'd say yes. So what was his part? Where was his believing? Where did God do any heavy lifting for him? And love, yep he was the absolute model of love, wasn't he?
So shall I assume Saint Vic believed for women to seduce and people to bilk? This seems to be where his believing lead him and kept him until the day he died.
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johniam
Very interesting. OK, he's condescending, he's a 13 dollar bill, he's a wanna be cult leader...nobody seems to want to deal with his actual message. Haven't had any dealings with his group. It was go
geisha779
I think you are right. It is really good that he is coming to these things that have so hurt us....but, maybe, he should just stop trying to teach each realization he is coming to in his own life. May
waysider
I'm not sure where to begin to comment on this. :o
Thomas Loy Bumgarner
Thank you, Jimminy Cricket
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johniam
I want to throw one thing in the mix about believing. Something I've observed a lot (so has everybody else). I'm comparing 2 places; college campuses and workplaces.
As far back as I can remember, there's an atmosphere on college campuses that's really strong. Two of my siblings went to the U. of MI over a period of 7 years ('58-'65). I recall being 5 years old and going to visit my sister there. The whole city of Ann Arbor seems to have the campus atmosphere. To this day every time I go to a college that atmosphere is there. There's just something in the air; don't know what else to call it. Could be a big college like U. CA Berkley or the community college I got my Assoc. degree from. Once I'm on campus the world changes. So what causes it?
We used to hear in twi that 'learning is an exciting adventure'. I think that's true. ANY learning. College campuses have lots of mostly young people who are learning about something. Even outside the classroom there's a learning atmosphere. The student centers, peoples' dorm rooms, the cafeteria, etc. It all seems to become one. JL said that nobody's thoughts affect anything outside the person, but they DO affect things inside the person. So if you put thousands of young people in the same space interacting with each other, "believing" to learn and get educated, the result is an "atmosphere". They're not believing FOR anything except an education, I guess, but their collective interaction in that particular scenerio creates a consistent world apart. This is a tangible result.
OK now let's talk about workplaces. Totally different atmosphere. Some workplaces have everybody doing their best work, bubbling with excitement and enthusiasm. You feel it as soon as you walk in the door. Other workplaces are filled with burned out people who don't like their jobs as much as they once did and just can't get a better job. You feel that as soon as you walk in the door as well. Same dynamics in both places. Your thoughts (believing) won't affect anything outside of you directly, but they sure affect the contribution you make to the whole, whatever that is.
Nothing people do is absolute truth. People are fickle. You want absolute truth? Check out God through Jesus Christ's finished work.
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waysider
None of this has the least bit of anything to do with the "law of believing", as taught in PFAL.
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Broken Arrow
I believe I knew the man I wish to be?
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johniam
quote: None of this has the least bit of anything to do with the "law of believing", as taught in PFAL.
Not from the soot colored glasses you look through.
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waysider
John, rather than make this some sort of personal feud, I simply extend to you the challenge of demonstrating how your post is relevant to the "law of believing" that was taught in PFAL. That is, after all, the subject being discussed here.
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Ham
I still kind of believe in it. I just refuse to invoke it.
Why..
there are a lot of things in life I would really, really like to have.
ah. The guy who runs dow corning. Just got a "bonus".. how many millions of dollars? And at the same time they make budget cuts, involving the few employees that are left there.
Maybe he "believed" for it. there ARE consequences, ya know..
what did what you "believe" for cost YOUR fellow human beings.
I could "believe" for a LOT of s*it..
Even if the illusion is true. You believe to move the mountain.. how many years will it take the victims to dig out..
I'd rather be buried, than to bury..
Have your fun fellas. Just wait for the debriefing on the other side of this existence..
Don't worry. It won't be so bad. You'll just lose everything.
:)
It's not much different from practical majik.. or practical kaballah..
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Ham
every religion has screwed this up..
I hope my little domain and claim to testosterone.. makes sense here..
sowy. I am what I am.. though I dread it..
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johniam
quote: John, rather than make this some sort of personal feud, I simply extend to you the challenge of demonstrating how your post is relevant to the "law of believing" that was taught in PFAL. That is, after all, the subject being discussed here.
You started this thread didn't you? It's about JL denouncing the LOB. At least, that's what the top of this page SAYS I'm replying to. Make up your mind.
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waysider
...........................................................
How does this explain the relevance of the post I inquired about? (#103)
edit
This, incidentally, is an Ad Hominem:
"Not from the soot colored glasses you look through." (post #106)
(It doesn't strengthen your position, in case you haven't noticed.)
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socks
"Once I'm on campus the world changes. So what causes it?"
Preparation, expectation, realization, memory. What you bring to an experience, what you think it's going to be, what it is, what you recall.
I subscribe somewhat to the gestalt view and process of learning, and one of the ways I define "life" is learning, where we are either learning or using what we know. Viewed that way life is always a process of being and becoming what we are up to that point, what we are experiencing at that point and what we will be past that point.
Gestalt is a holistic approach which all sounds very psychedelic but is basically summed up in the phrase "the whole is (or can be I would say) greater than the sum ot it's parts".
The tendency of human perception is to "connect the dots" if you will, in order to store information for efficient recall and use. When we realize or recognize something at a given point in time for instance we may ask "what is this, and what does it mean?" We may also simply assume "I know what this is and what it means".
To me this is all loosely related to "believing" if we understand that word to be fundamentally a state of awareness and acceptance as opposed to only being a deliberate process that we hmmm, step through. It can certainly be seen as a process as there's a process involved in achieving that state of awareness and acceptance but it doesn't always and may not need to always be a deliberate action on our part. Preparation, expectation, realization, recall - imagine 10 people with COMPLETELY different content for each of those words, with no commonalities. Compare that to 10 people with the "same" or very similar content to those 4 words. The experience at a given point - what will it be for an 11th person coming into that mix, in either scenario? Different? I would think so, especially considering that the 11th person is now part of the whole. The net result of it all is something that couldn't exist without each of the components that contribute to it.
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Steve Lortz
groupthink
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Jbarrax
care to elucidate on that thought, Steve?
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johniam
quote: It can certainly be seen as a process as there's a process involved in achieving that state of awareness and acceptance but it doesn't always and may not need to always be a deliberate action on our part.
That's kinda what I meant when I said the only thing college students are "believing FOR" is an education. In that case the state of awareness is whatever is gleaned from sustained exposure to the campus.
I don't think VP taught the LOB as the bible being the "universal believing playbook". He said that "you are where you are today because of where your believing has taken you". That's an individual thing for everybody. I worked with 2 guys in the 90s. Both about the same age (early 20s). One guy was the eldest of 3 boys, father abandoned the family when he was an adolescent, went in the military, good looking, was a supervisor, girls liked him. The other guy was overweight, impulsive, lived with his parents, envied the hell out of the other guy. Sure, each guy was where their 'believing' took them, but each of their backgrounds had a lot to do with how they turned out, IMO.
VPs angle was...OK, here's where you are now. Do you want to improve anything, or not? If so, God can help you, but you must do your part (believe). If you believe, then God will do the heavy lifting, but you must believe. I think people on their own morphed that into a godless philosophy; that if you scrunch your face up and believe then anything will come your way. I just don't think VP ever intended it that way. AND I didn't rub shoulders with too many in twi who talked like that.
VP once said that love is the badge of Christianity right after saying that believing is the genus of Christianity. As basic as breathing. So it's going to be talked about a lot, but most of the talk I heard was people believing for stuff they NEEDED with prayer and action, not for pie in the sky stuff they had no experience in that their whim for the day desired. That reminds me of a cartoon.
Mr. Wizard. This dufus named Tutor Turtle would say to Mr. Wizard, "Duh, I want to be a fireman". Then Mr. Wizard would wave his magic wand and chant something and TT'd be a fireman. After a few minutes TT would be in mortal danger, cry for help, and Mr. Wizard would wave his wand again and rescue him. Every episode was like that. Life doesn't work that way. Even people who win the lotto have usually already bought many tickets before getting the winner.
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waysider
That may be what you think you heard VP teach but, it doesn't reflect the reality of what he taught in PFAL. "Works for saint and sinner alike" is what he said. No intervention from God required. Simply follow the recipe and the "law" will guarantee a perfectly baked cake. Don't even get me started on the camera analogy.
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johniam
quote: Simply follow the recipe and the "law" will guarantee a perfectly baked cake.
VP didn't use those exact words, but if it was so obvious to you that THAT was the message, why didn't you get suspicious when it didn't work?
quote: I worked with 2 guys in the 90s. Both about the same age (early 20s). One guy was the eldest of 3 boys, father abandoned the family when he was an adolescent, went in the military, good looking, was a supervisor, girls liked him. The other guy was overweight, impulsive, lived with his parents, envied the hell out of the other guy. Sure, each guy was where their 'believing' took them, but each of their backgrounds had a lot to do with how they turned out, IMO.
According to VP, if the 2nd guy wanted to improve he had to 1) drop the envy 2) realize the 1st guy had too great of a head start on him for the 2nd guy to get the exact same results, and 3) get serious about what he could do to build his own confidence. Come to think of it, I should've witnessed to the 2nd guy. My bad.
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Ham
You want to see "believing" at work.. try going back to grad school for a degree in math at 54 years old..
and there are no certainties here, even with good academic standing, and five credits to go, in today's political and economic climate..
no guarantees, whatsoever..
never, light at the end of the tunnel.. but maybe there is.
I had a dream, a long, long time ago..
I was in a very large building, either it was constructed out of glass, or crystal.. the walls of glass or crystal were about twenty meters (metres for non-usa folk) high. There was a crowd of us, dressed in white.
I've had several other impressions, that followed the dreams, exactly. Not this one yet..
The closest it came for this one.. so far. I was in a graduation ceremony, and we were all dressed in black..
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waysider
I said:
quote: Simply follow the recipe and the "law" will guarantee a perfectly baked cake.
To which you replied:
VP didn't use those exact words, but if it was so obvious to you that THAT was the message
...............................................................
Page 38/PFAL
"If a person is afraid of not being able to hold his job, do you know what will happen? He will lose it. If one is afraid of a disease, he will manifest that disease because the law is that what one believes (in this case, what one negatively believes), he is going to receive.................The law of negative and positive believing works for both Christian and non-Christian. When we believe, we receive the results of our believing regardless of who or what we are."
................................................................
I think we all (hopefully) realize by now that this is simply not true.
Furthermore, Wierwille stressed that any results that might be realized were not facilitated by the intervention of God, but, rather, by virtue of this being some sort of immutable "law", like gravity. For instance, we have the example of the little boy who was struck and killed by a car because of the fear (negative believing) in his mother's heart. Where does God fit into this scenario? According to the "law of believing", as stated by Wierwille, God was not necessary for this event to happen. The mother merely had to harbor fear.(ie: believe it was going to happen) And, according to Wierwille's definition of this so-called "law of believing", the incident was inevitable and unavoidable.
For decades, J.L taught that the law of believing is true. Now, he has done an about face and is teaching that it's false.
...........................................
"why didn't you get suspicious when it didn't work?"
Are you acknowledging by this, then, that, in fact, it didn't work?
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waysider
Have you ever noticed how hard it is to make things come to pass with positive believing? Now, negative believing, on the other hand, is a piece of cake. Let one little fear creep into your mind and BOOM!, you own it, baby.
What's up with that?
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socks
j-i-am wrote: "VP once said that love is the badge of Christianity right after saying that believing is the genus of Christianity. As basic as breathing. So it's going to be talked about a lot, but most of the talk I heard was people believing for stuff they NEEDED with prayer and action, not for pie in the sky stuff they had no experience in that their whim for the day desired. That reminds me of a cartoon."
Well, not to ignore red drapes and the like, but I get what you're getting at, I think. Or as C. H. Spurgeon once wrote - the best way to defend a lion is to let him out of his cage. Let God do His work.
I think we just have to accept that PFAL danced around this and when you dance, ya gotta pay the band as they say. Give the devil his due - he's a tricky boy.
Matt. 5:44, 45
"...But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? If you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect."
This message is pretty consistent throughout the gospels and N.T. writings. When God's love rains everything gets wet. "Shower the people you love with love" and even those we don't. There's plenty go go around.
We will always struggle, trying to do this by our lonesome because it seems out of reach if not impossible. Even impractical and dangerous. The "ability" to do this doesn't come by a mental effort to do so - when we're abiding in the vine, we bring forth fruit, we bear it. Christ is the true vine and now all the branches ,grafted and otherwise, can have life through Him. Etc. Etc. Etc. The balance of it all, the achievement, the realization becomes a recognition of the goodness of God.
There's no attraction, we can't bring God's love to ourselves like some bag of goodness we drag forward into our own laps and enjoy because we've created a place for it. Love supersedes and surpasses all of that and we're advised to be the same to others, good and bad, deserving and undeserving. And if God's love is at the center of all we're pretty much poking ourselves in the eye with a pencil trying to better see something that's right in front of us the whole time and that won't move an inch closer than it already is, by anything we do.
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Thomas Loy Bumgarner
we will now take up the offering, oops Abundant sharing at this time. now where are those horns of plenty?
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So_crates
So shall we all take a moment to reflect on how well Saint Vic applied his own crock?
There he was a bully, an adulterer, yadda, yadda yadda, ad nauseam.
Did he have a lot to improve? I'd say yes. So what was his part? Where was his believing? Where did God do any heavy lifting for him? And love, yep he was the absolute model of love, wasn't he?
So shall I assume Saint Vic believed for women to seduce and people to bilk? This seems to be where his believing lead him and kept him until the day he died.
SoCrates
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excathedra
veepee couldn't decide what he wanted to preach -- well actually he could -- whatever would bring them in
the magic of thinking big -- i could go on -- it's just too boring
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100% Free
About JL, I feel sorry for him. I wonder if he ever has any fun?
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