Sanctification and spiritual warfare 3

There are three ways a regenerate Christian provokes spiritual warfare:

1. Engaging the Word of God in a real way, and separating yourself unto it (i.e. taking nothing more seriously than the commands and teachings of Jesus Christ).

2. Being filled with the Holy Spirit.

3. Fearing only God. (Fearing/reverencing only God, and hence not fearing/reverencing man).

What church Christianity - churchianity - doesn't know is all three of these things involve energy. A unique energy that comes from God. The flesh wars with the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not an 'energy', but the Holy Spirit gives energy. When you are filled with the Holy Spirit it is an influence, a level of impressions, that comes from the third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit. You are a temple of the Holy Spirit once regenerated, but as a temple you are developing. It is possible for you to grieve the Holy Spirit. That happens when you use His energy to fuel features of the Old Man within you. Resentment, violence, depression, etc. Justified by vanity, worldly pride, and rebellious self-will. When the flesh wars with the Spirit the flesh uses the Spirit that is in you for indulging these lower things.

Struggling against this is spiritual warfare in yourself. You don't learn of it "in seminary." You don't learn of it in Village of Morality churches. You don't learn of it at "conferences" or on "ministry cruises." You learn of it by doing it; and until then you're worthless to God.

Of the three things listed above the second is most confusing to Christians. They've been burned the most on that one. Though the first one is considered by them to be 'not good form' all on their own. "Read the actual Bible complete? What? What are you, a Protestant or something?" Yeah, an old time Protestant, unlike all you modern day establishment Protestants who look and act more like Roman Catholics. But even you churchians who consider yourselves actual Protestants don't actually read your Bibles complete. And not humbly. Even when you affect to value the Word of God it's the defiled manuscripts your friends the atheists and spiritualists of the 19th century gave you allowing you to dictate to God and His Word just what it will be and mean. No, get the whole and pure Word of God - the Traditional Text in a literal translation (Geneva, or, better, the AV1611, expand your vocabulary if you have to, pilgrims) - and engage it humbly as if it is something above you. And stay away from asinine scholars with shallow degrees from modern day seminaries that are worth about 1/80th what an education the original Reformers (and translators) had.

If you don't know how many times you've read the Word of God complete, Genesis through Revelation - if any times - then you aren't serious about the faith.

The second thing listed above, as stated, really confuses (and angers, for various reasons) church Christians. You've either been burned by fools and devils in churches on the subject of being filled with the Holy Spirit or you've mocked them for good reasons. Meanwhile you miss all the truth in the subject. If you're not actively being filled with - accumulating - the Spirit you are not doing anything as a Christian. You're a still pool of water, dead and poisoned. (You'll justify your lack of activity in this area by throwing it all on your 'sacraments.' Yes, your baptism - which happened, what...once? - and your 'Lord's Supper' that asinine ritual where you drink from little plastic cups of grape juice and eat little crackers, all in the presence of a cleric who is pretending he knows what is happening while at the same time not wanting to come across like a priest engaging in priestcraft. Please stop engaging in and infecting others with this asinine behaviour. Really. If anything have a feast with wine and bread included. Put the clerics in a high chair is they insist on being singled out. Just throw the pagan ritual in the garbage can, once and for all. You picked it up from your Papist forebears (who you've never quite completely separated from).

You accumulate - you are filled with - the Spirit by prayer, meditation, reading the Word of God, and engaging in watchfulness, in real time, for duration, depth, and frequency. Based on having the basic level of internal presence every Christian should have. Think of that basic internal presence as the 'I', or the you that is realized when you pray to God, if you pray to God.

You then contain the Spirit within you and are able to use it by fearing only God. When the world, the flesh, and the devil demands that you fear man and get lost in the illusions and demands of the devil's kingdom and indulge all the features and desires of the devil inside you you have to stand your ground and fear only God. Otherwise the Spirit in you is wasted by being used and defiled by these lower aspects of your internal being. If you're not busy getting angry and resentful and indignant and violent on the one hand you lose it by being in a constant state of wide-eyed fascination with the illusions and shiny lights and objects of the devil's kingdom of death on the other.

The fear of God is a state. It makes you contained. It gives you a boundary [look at diagram 3 linked in the right hand margin].

This accumulating and containing of energy, of the Spirit, is how you provoke your limits and then struggle to extend your limits for being able to glorify God. This is spiritual warfare. Whether with yourself, the world, or the devil himself (or any two or all three at the same time). Ultimately you learn to use God's will in this struggle rather than self-will. This is active, progressive sanctification. It is taught in the New Testament. Don't allow churchianity and it's man-fearing leaders and followers to draw you into their Village of Morality where no real Christian resides. Avoid establishment Christianity whatever name it is going by. Avoid formalism, moralism, ritualsim, and clericalism. Read the Word of God, be filled with the Holy Spirit, and fear only God. You'll be in a war, but it is only by being in that war that you can develop as a Christian and glorify God to ever greater degree.

Sanctification and spiritual warfare 2

Spiritual battle both comes to a Christian and is something that is provoked by the Christian. When you are regenerated by the Word and the Spirit you become marked. The devil, the world, confront you. The Old Man within you (the flesh, of the phrase: the world, the flesh, and the devil) will lay low until he is provoked by you; but once you start to provoke the Old Man within you the devil and the world will also focus on you with new intensity.

Provoking this three-front war and struggling to increase your limits for being able to glorify God in these battles is spiritual warfare, and it is part of sanctification. The very thing church Christians deny. Effort in sanctification.

Before any church Christians now fall back to the position that I've already given you to fall back on, seeing effort as God-reliant effort and therefore 'ok', I want to remind my audience that this is not what they say when you are in their environments. They even deny God-reliant effort. To them Christian (from the Pilgrim's Progress) should have stayed home with his family. (Bunyan's work is, by the way, a severe rebuke to these church Christians. Any of them that affect to be a fan of that book either hasn't read it or hasn't understood it.)

Sanctification and spiritual warfare 1

If you run into Christians who deny any effort is involved in sanctification - God-reliant effort, to use J. I. Packer's phrase - just ask them what they consider the necessity of spiritual warfare is in a Christian's life and development.

Village of Morality churchians (as opposed to Christians) not only confuse - because they don't yet know about - pre- and post-regeneration effort (once regenerated you are able to make effective efforts in your sanctification, and you'd better make efforts), they also often just flatly deny active, progressive sanctification (i.e. deny sanctification is active-progressive as-well-as passive-definitive) mainly because they can't get it straight that justification is not involved in it. Justification is the foundation that can't be done away with once it exists. Their confusion regarding justification vis-a-vis sanctification is in their own way as wild as Roman Catholic confusion on the subject; often with similar dark motives.

But if you can't get anywhere with the churchians by explaining the difference in effort regarding pre- and post-regeneration states, or the fact that sanctification is both passive and active, then hit them with this: spiritual warfare is taught in the Word of God, is it not?

They will deny it involves effort, of course. Village of Morality Christians want comfort over and above everything. They also don't want to have to see the prison they live in, the prison called the kingdom of Satan. (When you begin to awaken out of sleep [Rom. 13:11] you begin to see the prison you are in, and if you're not a warrior, with real faith, that can be overwhelmingly unpleasant. For Village of Morality Christians it is something they will do almost anything to avoid seeing.)

Jesus says "do this, do this, do this" all through the New Testament. You are given armour, defensive and offensive, to be used. The parable of the talents tells you what God thinks of people who make no effort to increase what they've been given. Church Christians will have a thousand justifications to avoid facing these biblical teachings. Don't allow them to steer you into their still-pool, poisoned existence.

Some sundry notes 3

Look at this reaction from one of the moderators of the PuritanBoard to posts like the previous two on this blog:

I figure it this way...we shouldn't be afraid to call a spade a spade. Let them read...we occasionally read them (and laugh...sometimes it sounds like 3rd grade..."he booted me, I'm not listing him or recommending him anymore" "me neither because he booted you"). Aiaiaiai!

Look at how deaf they are. It's the first thing you notice when you come into these Christian (actually 'churchian') internet realms: these people can't just talk to a person. They are nigh socially retarded. Why is it? It's due to the fact that they are squarely ensconced in Bunyan's Village of Morality. No real Christian lives in the Village of Morality, so real Christians scare the [blank] out of these types.

Look how dead their world is though. They protect themselves from any influence that can possibly challenge them and surround themselves with mirror images of themselves.

The only people who should be banned from a forum are people who clearly don't value the subject that the forum exists for, and people who are repetitive along a line of attack against what the forum exists for. Like FVist androids who no matter how many times you answer them pretend like you havn't and just android on. Yeah, those people don't value the very subject that the forum exists for (a forum that exists to discuss Calvinism, Reformed Theology, apostolic biblical doctrine, etc.).

Look at also their lack of desire to debate or teach anybody who isn't already like them. Part of that process is destructive too (which is why you simply CAN'T ban people all the time for the smallest of infractions and on the least whim of one of your ridiculous moderators). Yes, you sometimes have to tear a building down to build up a sound building. That also involves talking and interacting though. (Why is this so [edited] difficult?) Time is needed, but an environment chilled by asinine moderators looking to always ban people for any reason (usually if they see some heat in an enchange) denies that process being able to take place.

A regenerated person is somebody with understanding. Understanding of human nature and of the ways of the world. Understanding that people are at different levels of development and different stages of coming into understanding. A regenerated person with understanding can talk with anybody and deal with anything. But these Village of Morality churchians can't interact with people simply because they don't have understanding themselves. If somebody approaches me with a question I jump at the opportunity to give them what I have come into. I don't say and think: "So who is this person. Why is he here. How do we make him go away. Obviously he's not one of us." If strangers and people who are different from you threaten you you are not a Christian. You don't have the Spirit of Christ in you.

Get out of the Village of Morality, and get into the Way. Engage influences and activities that provoke and extend your current limits. You're just asinine now (and currently useless to God).

Some sundry notes 2

You see, the people who run the PuritanBoard have to accept the fact that they ban people like me for writing the exact same things I get banned from FVist (AAT, NPP) sites for. They are the same people. They are afraid of a real Calvinist who has a real, true and high, valuation for biblical doctrine. What the PuritanBoard types and the FVist types have in common is they are both as establishment (formalism, moralism, ritualism, clericalism) as the Roman Catholic church has ever been including in the time of the Reformation itself.

One common thing both types practice is the pornographically unbiblical practice of being respecters of persons. If a person in a business suit or with some worldly title walks into their church/forum they are like puppies who's owner just got home from work. If somebody who kind of looks suspiciously like they have been a little bit knocked down by the world, and who seems disagreeably like they are something of a stranger and pilgrim in this world, enters their church they huddle like a security force and discuss the matter, then when they break their huddle they plaster fake smiles on their face and approach the stranger with intent to 'deal with the problem.' Their main tactic is to put the stranger on a unique and impossible to live up to standard, and if the stranger is on to that and doesn't break their rules they take that itself as incriminating (as in: he's on to us, yet he's still here, that shows he maybe wants to play games with us or perhaps change us or something). Which is why God's elect can't be in their churches or on their forums or anywhere establishment Christians gather and control the environment.

God's elect can find each other, though, and that happens naturally. It's called the communion of the saints. The establishment church - Roman Catholic or Protestant or any other name it currently goes by - can't do anything about that. They can persecute us when they get worldly political power, but that is about all, and that just makes martyrs. They can't win. Rebellion against God though - it's called sin - is irrational to the core. You can annoy God's plan, but you can't defeat God's plan...

Some sundry notes 1

The people over at the PuritanBoard are wondering whether it would be better that their discussions be closed off from non-member viewership. Well, if you consider an endless, shallow tea-party conversation to be in need of protection from the public then I suppose... (When you routinely ban voices that have any degree of edge or confidence, no matter their level - high, low, or in-between - of understanding or valuation for on-the-mark biblical doctrine, you will end up with obsequious tea-party attendees engaging in lukewarm, shallow tea-party conversation.) They will counter that FVists were over there trying to distort in the usual way orthodox biblical doctrine, and use people like that as a blanket justification for all their banning activity. But why were FVist types doing that? Because people like myself who confront such things directly and boldly also get banned by the worthless, old-lady moderators (old ladies dressed in men's clothes). Non-lukewarm defense of the faith scares these old ladies (i.e. "This person actually believes this Bible stuff! Those non-establishment Calvinist types are scary. Pass a crumpet, Mildred?") Another problem is that forum has about 60 moderators. One moderator on a forum is often enough to keep anything interesting from developing. Put 60 in control, many of whom are young and "brilliant" (they were made moderators, weren't they?) and it's a forgone conclusion the most interesting voices will get banned (you know you just can't wound the vanity of a moderator! and you know how easily that is done!); so the forum ends up with a claque of old ladies dressed in men's clothes saying things like: "Anybody read this book? Is it OK for me to read it?" and "Here's a funny article!" and "I didn't know Sylvester Stallone is 60! Wow!" and then if some new person writes something like: "What can we say practically about active, progressive sanctification? Here are some ideas..." or "Time is an interesting subject to consider when seeing biblical doctrine..." or "The Puritans who are often mentioned here - it's in the title of this forum as a matter of fact - seem to have been more aware of practical approaches to the faith - actual doing of the faith - than I'm hearing discussed here. Why is that?", i.e. good subjects, maybe not everybody's current interest, but so what, it's a forum with 900 members; then one of the 60 old lady moderators dressed in men's clothes jumps in: "This thread is now closed." (You see, no talk about anything interesting on the PuritanBoard. The PuritanBoard is run by mainstream, Village of Morality, tame slaves in the devil's kingdom. They run their churches the same way they run their internet forums, which is why God's elect aren't walking through the doors of their churches...)

In the Protestant churches that affect to hold to orthodox biblical doctrine (Calvinism) the devil reigns as much as he reigns in the liberal churches. Formalism, moralism, ritualism, clericalism. The fear of man enforced over and above the fear of God. And any who these old ladies instinctively suspect fears God more than man is seen as the enemy.

And we rightly are their enemy. Their instincts are good.

Walking in the fear of God

It's very powerful to have understanding of the command - the practice - to fear God and to fear God only.

If you are able to be awake and watchful and to fear God only and to maintain that state through all the warring of the Old Man with the New Man and the New Man with the World and the Devil you will be involved in the process of sanctification as a fusing of your inner being towards the understanding, conscience, and real will that is the image of God.

You have to get to where you can feel the difference (in real time, in real events and situations and circumstances) of walking in the fear of God vs. walking in the fear of man. You're surrounded by the world and the devil, and it's all inside you as well, so to walk in the fear of God requires effort and attention and valuation to get performed. Walking in the fear of man just happens without effort. It happens in the comfort and sleep of everyday life. And the fears and desires of everyday life. You, though, have to actually awaken in the moment to walk in the fear of God. You have to come out of the fear of man to be in the fear of God.

In fact all that the Bible tells you to do requires you to make an effort to awaken in the moment. To love God and neighbor is not natural and doesn't happen in the sleep of life.

And you have to have something within you to awaken to. Some basic internal presence to stand on. Some degree of real 'I' within you. It is that 'I' that prays, when you do pray. That still-weak little - often overwhelmed - unsteady yet strong and growing, slightly embarassed 'I' that is present within you when you engage in simple prayer to God. Find that I, and consciously come into the fear of God only. And be prepared for the battles with the world, the devil, and yourself that will inevitably follow.

What is prayer?

I read this request on a forum:

What is prayer?

I'm not interested in the systematic theological definition. I don't want a three page quote from one of the confessions (I know where to find the confessions). I don't want the exhaustive list of all scripture verses regarding prayer.

Synthesizing the systematics, the confessions and the verses, I want a short paragraph that gives a working, everyday, practical, down-and-dirty understanding and explanation of what prayer is and what it is supposed to accomplish in and for the Kingdom. Brevity is next to godliness.

Here's a reply that will be rare, and on-the-mark:

The most important and practical aspect of prayer is its forcing you to humble yourself by simply recognizing that there is something higher than you. Vanity, worldly pride, and rebellious self-will refuse to recognize anything higher than them. They control a human being. Once you begin to recognize God, recognize He that created you, that is higher than you, it begins to mortify the vanity, worldly pride, and rebellious self-will within you. This is a practical result of simple prayer. God knows what we need, and what we need isn't always what we desire or think we need; but nevertheless the act of prayer at its most simple level is an act of the new man within a believer and it cultivates the new man inside you by morifying the old man inside you. Everytime you turn to God in prayer and recognize him - literally just talk to him - it mortifies the old man. That is why it is hard and it seems embarassing even at times. The old man within you doesn't want you recognizing that which is higher than you and that is real. That's the death of the old man in you. So the simple act of prayer actually cultivates and develops the new man in you in this way.

Again, just the simple act of recognizing God (who is higher than you) when you pray mortifies the old man in you and cultivates the new man in you. You will feel friction in the act for this very reason. This is the practical element of basic, simple prayer.

On not getting what you prayer for... Obviously we can all see how our prayers can be answered but in ways we can't predict, or that we don't expect. (A woman prays that an abusive person will get out of her world, and she expects him to then move away, but she finds herself moving away. The prayer is answered, just in a way she didn't expect.) I prayed once for a nephew who was in a bad situation. I prayed to God that the infant would be taken care of and all that. About three days later the infant was dead of SIDS. There's a shock to your system! Since the child had been born with drugs in his system, and since his parents were the worst kind of drug addicts, maybe delivering the child from that by taking him to be with God was the answer. Who can know? Maybe God took the child out of his time and allowed him to be born in a healthy body to real parents who would care for him? (Theologians who think they understand time, and even what the Bible says about time, will scowl, but so be it. There's more going on there than exists in your seminary professor's world... Time's a wildcard, kind of like the Word of God is, in how God operates regarding his sovereignty in creation, providence, and grace; and God is above time...but I digress...)

I have full, confident faith that what I pray for will be answered. I don't question God though if the result is not what I expected. It may also go against God's will in a way you can't know about. Still, I have confidence God still accomodates the prayer of his elect.