The heart of it all
You can't reach into the ground and pull wheat up by your own effort. You have to plow and plant the seed. Then it grows (or it doesn't) by God's will. The difference between the wheat and the seed is the difference between levels of being.
The Word of God is not just a 'book'. It is living language. It is 'seed'. You can't pull understanding out of it any more than you can reach into the Earth and pull wheat up. You have to plow and plant the seed in you, and it has to grow. It will only become increased level of being and understanding - if it does - in time by God's will.
This is why having the goal to read the Bible humbly, complete, once, three times, seven times is so powerful and simple and effective a goal and so much gets to the heart of everything.
All the talk, talk, talk, day in, day out, and all the reading - however diligent or desultory - of books written by man, no matter how worthwhile and vetted by time means nothing regarding real awakening and development without this effort to get the Word of God written in your heart.
In these complete readings you have to see the Bible as an influence that is above you. If you approach it as an influence your intellect has surveyed and measured and weighed and put in its place your approach and your effort will be vain.
The Bible is not a 'book' like other books. It is living language. It contains the Holy Spirit and is the actual Word of God. It meets you where you meet it. What it gives is not the same for everybody. The subject here is not doctrine. Foundational, on-the-mark doctrine exists and can be found. With the Word of God, though, there is depth and there are heights in the very basics that are revealed to understanding by degree and only by the result of zealous, humble effort to engage the Word of God as an influence that is above you.
Talk and opinion and complaints and compliments for this that and the other thing made all the day long and then tomorrow again and then tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow is all meaningless, vain activity and noise. When you die what you'll need is the living Word of God in your heart, in your essence, in your soul. You'll need things you can only acquire in this life by diligent plowing and planting and waiting on the Lord. Doing the most needed, most serious things now that have effect in time...
5 Comments:
Mr. Bouyer's on solid ground on that. When, though, he attempts to blame the Reformation for the existence of liberal, non-Bible-believing Protestants he is on thin ground. (I don't mean to write a default critical response, but Mr. Bouyer's name is often invoked by neo-orthodox and similar type Protestants to further their own agenda which is not pure, bold biblical doctrine, and is not the Faith.
But once anybody starts valuing the reading of the Word of God in a serious, complete way you begin to potentially transcend the doctrinal disputes if not the cultural ones. You don't transcend biblical doctrine, but when you begin to engage the Bible seriously you enter territory where regeneration is effected, and that gives one the Spirit of Truth and ability to see Truth, so you'll leave the fear of man and the camp of darkness of your own volition...
Thank you, Jeff. I have a vibe that scares them. So they sit back and hold back and hold me to a ridiculous moralising (and dishonest) standard (dishonest because it's designed solely for me and not anybody else) and once I step over their ridiculous, Village of Morality line then they make their move; so often the VERY FIRST words one of them would speak to me was some bizarre accusation or expression of impatience or contempt (and I mean before even any initial 'hello'). They are scared rabbits. They fear man. They've yet to separate from the world in a real way. Even when they make a show of male bluster their whipped boy status just becomes highlighted despite themselves.
They've never known anybody or run into anybody who is on-the-mark doctrinally and who also is truly separated from the world and fully on the Way. They sense there is knowledge and understanding and influences they have never encountered, and they're right.
To connect with it is rare... But you got to come back from the Village of Morality detour to even have the potential... That's what I'm currently doing for them. I'm convicting them in their current detoured, stumblingblocked status...
In other environments I find that the ones that do see something in the practical level have no problem making themselves known, but in this mainstream, churchianity environment the fear of man is so strong and coercive that all one can really do is just influence 'once removed' (i.e. influence from a position of being once removed from them).
So, I'm not frustrated regarding this environment. I understand it. The ability they have and diligence they exercise in protecting themselves via deleting and banning and collectively shunning can be frustrating, but even that can be gotten around...
The thing is, though, if there's no self-interest in it for me it ends. I mean, I initially came here to consolidate some things such as finding language for the practical level from the Bible itself. It's not evangelism when you are begging or pleading with people to see the truth. Evangelism is giving people the truth boldly and letting God do the rest...
On the subject of choral works, I just heard a movement from John Rutter's Requiem and was intrigued...
When I went through a stage of learning classical music I basically cut it off at post WWII works (though Shostakovich kind of bleeds over into the post-WWII era). Just being practical I wasn't looking to be up on all the new composers and works. That's kind of a different thing than to get the great works down. I have some new works, but I don't have understanding of them in the sense of seeing them in context of their times and styles and all that. Arvo Part was recommended to me by someone, so I bought some of his works. When I was really going through the process of learning and getting real understanding of classical music I would have to hear everything in the best recordings and just do whatever it took to get the entire field into understanding. Doing that with modern composers is a really completely different endeavor. So, when I mention a John Rutter I do it knowing really nothing about him or his work (in his case I know absolute zero, other than hearing yesterday a movement from his Requiem, a setting of the 23th Psalm)... For what you usually get on classical music radio "Coming up next we have a piece from Telemann..." (nothing against Telemann) it stood out as more than the usual listenable...
Yes, there's another environment, and yes it was made up of a different level of the Faith, so to speak (the practical level), but it's dissolved now. People at that level are rare. Not even all of them want to be on the internet talking about it. I use to have sites where there'd be regulars who would contribute publically, then privately I'd have sometimes even more correspondents via email who just didn't want to be public. There's alot of eye-brow raising that I'm currently in this current realm (and no surprise I'm not exactly accepted). The fact is Calvinism is useful to people at the practical level because Reformed Theology says what the Bible says and it can be used as a solid standard; but not only that, Calvinism - and I will use the Puritans as the best example - promotes the practical level of the faith. Eventually people who can 'see' biblical truth and doctrine can also see that it is the practical level of the Faith that is the necessary goal; and that effort is required. Calvinism also, because it is purely biblical, elucidates the 'new thinking' and hard truths of the Word of God, often despite Reformed theologians, classic and modern and amateur, and when you've been involved in on-the-mark practical teaching in other areas you can 'see' what Calvinism is teaching. You can see it better and with more understanding than the mainstream who self-identify as Calvinist can see it, because you have a perspective they don't have. It's just all about finding the 'on-the-mark' teaching (I use the terms 'on-the-mark' and 'off-the-mark' alot), and Calvinism is the most on-the-mark teaching at the mainstream level for biblical doctrine (which is just to say it is the 'purest' theology, or, the most biblical, or, the most in the category of 'what the Bible actually says')...
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