Ive heard a lot of discussion as to whether Paul was ever married and I lean (in light pencil) toward yes because until you've been married you can not convince someone who is single that you will have less burdens and distractions. Marriage is good and God designed it for Companionship and for being fruitful and multiplying whether it be physical children or spiritual. Yet you certainly are more distracted and can't have the same undistracted devotion to the Lord. But it is better to be married then burn w lust. Yet marriage does not solve a purity problem either. As you wait on the Lord, wait! Allow Him to work on your heart and make you whole so you can attract a healthy person to you. If you are co-dependent and don't deal with your strongholds or baggage (or let the Lord deal with your heart to heal you is what I'm saying) you are going to attract someone w baggage. If you have a past history of relational dysfunction (whether you found yourself in a mess from an unhealthy background and used relationships as a crutch) work with the Lord and be committed to the process even if it takes months. Stay in the scriptures and poor out your needy self before the One who is safe and will not reprimand you. He searches your heart and knows why you are the way you are better than you do. He discerns the thoughts and intents of your heart along w your hidden faults. You are free to completely be undignified and even have the ugly cries in His presence and not look like a desperate fool! The Lord used to remind me that I didn't get in a stronghold over night and while He surely has the power to deliver me over night He was about relationship and intimacy and Him healing me of my co-dependence. If you always have to be in a relationship and it seems to define you and you aren't married...rest assured you have a problem if you can't be by yourself. I know it because I used to live it! If you have a problem with immorality In dating relationships and etc the bible says that your way of escape is to flee immorality all together. You are powerless to flirt around a pit of sin in that area and not fall in it. It sounds rigid but if you have continually found yourself giving a piece of yourself away do cheaply you need to flee any situation that would put you in an all too familiar place. Make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires. The more you feed that beast the more your appetite for the flesh grows. Gods word can be trusted. He will be proved right in what He says and He is for us in Christ not against us. Yet just like the Israelites (His chosen people) if we turn from Him and turn to idols we will not be able to stand against the enemy. You are not your own you were bought at a price therefore honor God with your temple. We are the set apart ones and house the precious Holy Spirit. He will help us when our flesh is weak. Yet hear me again your out for not falling into sexual sin is to flee. Any man or woman worth their salt really isn't looking for a trashy guy/girl. It sounds extreme but it's not legalistic. We live in perilous days and you can't drive down the road or stand in a check out line at the grocery store without billboards or magazines appealing to your flesh. Even television or internet... Garbage in garbage out. Just like Isaiah when He got a vision of the Lord he saw that he was ruined. He was a man of unclean lips and lived among a people of unclean lips. What we say reflects our heart. We can become so desensitized that we can harden our hearts and fall prey to the schemes of the enemy who wants to steal, kill, and destroy. He promises much and delivers total havoc. He is a liar and when he speaks he speaks his native language: LIES! He wants to steal your witness, cause you to live in shame and defeat that's his game. He will kiss you on the cheek and betray you. It's interesting that Judas betrayed Jesus for 20 shekels of silver and Joseph was sold by his brothers for that amount. That amount of money then could hardly purchase a slave or disabled servant. How many years have people reaped consequences for some little five minutes of pleasure only to be discarded like a piece of trash later. You are worth far more than that! If you will really get to know the Savior you an start to know deep down in your bone and marrow that He loves you with a love that surpasses knowledge. He also stands ready to save you from yourself and heal you of your past. He is a God of full redemption, with Him there is forgiveness therefore He is feared. There are none like Him. Back to Isaiah...he saw his condition when he got a small glimpse of Jesus. He recognized he was ruined and just as sinful as the people around him as he was a prophet to Gods people. We are all on level ground at the cross. Don't let people shame you regarding your past if the Lord has dealt with you on it and you have cooperated with Him to be free. People will keep you enslaved but sometimes it is your own self keeping you locked up. To me full redemption means full redemption. Yes we have consequences but God doesn't just have you here to waste away until you die. Get on your feet, strengthen your feeble knees so that you can turn back and help the lame to walk. Turn back and snatch others from the flames. Tell others what he has done. Also, the biggest lie from the enemy when you have blown it is to put down His word or drop out of corporate worship. More than anything...even if you took a huge fall 5 minutes before...pick up the word, keep going to church wen if you feel hypocritical and be around others who expose themselves to the light. You can't stay in the dark and work to be free.
Now for the matters you wrote about: It is good for a man not to marry. But since there is so much immorality, each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband. The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. (1 Corinthians 7:1-3 NIV84)
Sunday, June 3, 2012
Guarding your heart from a common pitfall
Posted by jennyhope at 4:05 PM
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I am reading a RGB (really great book...) called Humility by Andrew Murray (you can find it for free online). Here is a piece of it.
"..everything that inwardly stirs you or outwardly happens to you becomes good to you if it finds you in a humble state of mind. For nothing is in vain or without profit to the humble soul; it stands always in a state of divine growth, and everything that falls upon it is like dew from heaven. Close yourself, therefore, in this form of humility, all good is enclosed in it; it is a fresh spring from heaven that turns the fire of the fallen soul into the meekness of the divine life, and creates that oil out of which the love to God and man gets it s flame. Be always clothed in it; let it be as a garment wherewith you are always covered and a shield with which you are girded; breathe nothing but in and from its spirit; see nothing but with its eyes; hear nothing but with its ears. And then, whether you are in the church or out of the church, hearing the praises of God or receiving the wrongs of men and the world, all will be edification, and everything will help promote your growth in the life of God.!"
Can I hear an "AMEN"
Praying for you.
ok, and here is one more from Murray,
All God's dealings with man are characterized by two stages. There is the time of preparation, when command and promise, with the mingled experience of effort and impotence, of failure and partial success, with the holy expectancy of something better, that these waken, train and discipline men for a higher stage. Then comes the time of fulfillment, when faith inherits the promise and enjoys what it had so often struggled for in vain. This law holds good in every part of the Christian life and in the pursuit of every separate virtue. And that is because it is grounded in the very nature of things. In all that concerns our redemption, God must take the initiative. when that has been done, it is man's turn. In the effort after obedience and attainment, he must learn to know his powerlessness, in self-despair to die to himself, and so be fitted voluntarily and intelligently to receive from God at the end, the completion of that which he had accepted in the beginning in ignorance. So God who had been the Beginning before man rightly knew Him or fully understood what His purpose was, is longed for and welcomed as the End, as All in All.
Stuck in the first stage,
Doulas
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