Understanding with the heart: (the ‘church’ is deaf, dumb & blind)
In Scripture the heart denotes the center of physical and spiritual life. It is the soul or mind, the fountain of the thoughts, passions, desires, appetites, affections, purposes, and endeavors. The faculty of human will and intelligence proceed from the heart. ‘out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks’ Matt12:34. Our will and character is fashioned by what originates in our hearts. ‘For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within and defile a man.’ Mk7:21
It’s the Heart (Mind) of man that needs healing; as illustrated in the Mark 5 Passage concerning the man possessed by a legion of demons. He dwelled among corruption and was of bound (an illustration of addiction to sin) by shackles and chains. His reasoning faculties were completely awry, but he could still recognize his desperate need for deliverance. When the miraculous work of Christ was done in his heart he was ‘sitting clothed and in his RIGHT Mind’Mk5:15.
Bound by the lust of the flesh, men have given themselves over to a reprobate mind that is out of kilter with reality. Therefore they twist the Word of God to correlate with their off-center perception of the world. What the religious establishment offers is a method that teaches them to reign in the intensity of their cravings in order to ‘tone down’ the hunger within that would drive them into further and more destructive addictions. Thus you have the ‘form of godliness without the power of a godly life’ 2Tim3:5. Man can be brought into an outward appearance of subjection but still have a Mind that is obsessed by the desires to please his flesh.
Society itself tries to maintain this thin veneer of sanity among men by sanctioning a rule of law that will punish wrong doers to various degrees of severity. But lurking just beneath the surface is an unrestrained evilness waiting for another opportunity to be unleashed. Consequently you have a combined force (the secular and the religious) that compels man to act in accordance to his carnal desires. The measurement between what is acceptable or unacceptable is always determined what originates in the ‘heart’ (mind) of man. If therefore the MIND is not renewed by the healing power of God the outcome will inevitably be skewed by what proceeds from within. (Mk7:21) So you have a miss-aligned perception between right and wrong among the religious and an all out malevolence in general society.
That’s why the Principle theme of Scripture is amendment of evil ways (and thoughts) and a restoration to Soundness (sanity) of Mind. Obviously this also requires a New Heart brought about by Real Repentance.
Let the wicked forsake his way, And the unrighteous man his thoughts; Let him return to the Lord, And He will have mercy on him; And to our God, For He will abundantly pardon. Isa55:7
For if you thoroughly amend your ways and your doings, if you thoroughly execute judgment between a man and his neighbor, Jer7:5
Now therefore, amend your ways and your doings, and obey the voice of the Lord your God; Jer26:13
Repent, and turn from all your transgressions, so that iniquity will not be your ruin. Cast away from you all the transgressions which you have committed, and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit. For why should you die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of one who dies,” says the Lord God. “Therefore turn and live!” Ezk18:30-32
This follows our theme as well. Since the heart is the central focus of man’s inner character, and has by all intense purposes been corrupted by his personal choice to indulge in wicked behavior, it requires a concentrated effort on the Word of God to restore it to sanity. The Ezekiel passage is telling man that by getting a new heart his innermost passions, emotions, intellect, desires, knowledge, and inclinations will be TRANSFORMED! And a New spirit will tame his dispositions, tempers, moral character, and restore his sense of reality.
Godly Sorrow that leads to a real Repentance, 2Cor7:10-11, is the Path men must take into this Newness of Life. For it Produces: a Diligent change of desires, a Clearing of wrong doing; hatred for sin, a healthy fear of God, zeal and a vehement desire to please the Lord. Herein is the denial (or death) to self life Christ placed on the Cost of Discipleship. It also requires an act of human Will and a change in desires. No one finds the truth unless they diligently seek it out! (Heb11:6, Mt7:7)
Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone desires (wills) to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. Matt16:24-25
The person desiring a ‘new heart and new spirit’ must SHARE in the fellowship of His sufferings and DIE to self life: ‘That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death,Phil3:10
In this the sin stops and the Mind can be renewed. (healed) ‘Therefore, since Christ suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same mind, for he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, that he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh for the lusts of men, but for the will of God. 1Pet4:1-2
Unbeknownst to the religious establishment is the actual Crucifying of the passions and desires in Repentance and ‘ceasing’ from sin. (Gal5:24) Their perceptive is that everything happens in Christ by Proxy. His ‘Provision’ provided the exchange necessary to reconcile man to God while he was still a sinner. It’s done as a Magic Moral transfer of Christ’s righteousness applied to man while his heart remains carnal and double-minded. Thus sanity is NEVER restored and the desires are not changed. Here we have a religion that meets man’s fancy and the opium he needs to satisfy his mind.
The Religious Establishments of man: (the church)
Know nothing of God’s Will or Doctrine
Have no spiritual discernment whatsoever
Cannot make a Righteous Judgment because of an arbitrary moral code
And have turned Christ into a Minister of Sin
Truly, this only I have found: That God made man upright, But they have sought out many schemes. Ecc7:20
God made man UPRIGHT! This Word can also be translated: Straight, Righteous, Just, fitting or proper. In other words man was created by God with a Moral Conscience (Yetzer Tou) and natural human desires. (Yetzer Ra) The idea of a ‘sinful nature’ or inbred depravity is pagan fallacy. However when man rebels against his moral conscience the natural desires or appetites become corrupt and addicted over time by ‘longings’ to please and exult himself instead of honoring God. Back on page 4 of this text I described this ‘by nature’ phenomena and how it works.
The religious systems of history have provided man with a sanctuary for his ‘sickness’ of mind called the ‘church’. They have gone to extreme lengths to preserve this safe harbor for carnality, including the use of torture, coercion and deceptions. Even when the vast monopoly of the Catholic System was challenged during what historians call the Reformation, the duplicity continued. When the Bible was finally authorized to be translated into English by King James VI in 1604, the ‘esteemed’ translators were instructed to rigorously maintain the Episcopal structure of the Church of England and its belief in an ‘ordained’ clergy. So the Word ‘Ekklesia’ in the Greek text was ordered to be translated ‘Church’! (as it also appeared in the Geneva Bible the Anglo-Catholic Bishop’s Bible)
Thus it has been to this day. The ‘Church’ is still considered a sacred gathering place for ‘Christians’ and the clergy keeps the people in a state of ignorance and bliss. However GOD did not intend that His Ekklesia become an institutionalized religion.
He Called a people who would respond to His ‘reasonable service’, CHANGE their desires from earthly to heavenly, amend the evil of their doings, forsake all sin and FOLLOW Him! BUT the ‘body of sin’ had to be DONE away with first in the process of Repentance, so the Mind could be healed and a Newness of life would begin. This Cannot be accomplished by ‘repeating’ some words or joining a ‘Church’. The ‘Old Man’ (corrupted mind of sin, sickness of heart, addicted by nature) must DIE with Christ in order that the ‘heart’ can be freed from the corrupting influence of lust.
knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. For he who has died has been freed from sin. Rom6:6-7
as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. 2Pet1:3-4
To answer His Call a person MUST break ties with the religious establishment churches, CHANGE their way of thinking (come out of the box!) and then DILIGENTLY Seek after God with all their heart, mind, soul and strength! (Matt22:37-40) The System is counter productive to God’s Method of Redemption. (that’s why you must come out of it!) It teaches people they are born in sin, saved in sin and can NEVER stop sinning. Therefore the ‘sickness’ of mind becomes convinced that it lacks any ability to Change within, get clear of sin and obey God. This is reinforced by a long list of excuses built on heaps of intellectual fallacy that keeps man in a state of ‘ever learning but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth!’ 2Tim3:7.
They have an answer for every truth in Scripture as to why it either doesn’t apply to them or is impossible to apprehend. These saucy retorts are seen throughout the Bible when the establishment encountered Christ or any of His faithful followers. If they could ridicule or humiliate their opponent they were quick to speak, but if silenced by the unpretentious logic of Purity they would huff off with murder in their hearts. Nothing has changed in the Mind of ‘religious’ man. If he will not believe that it’s in his best interest to surrender his pride and follow after truth, God will give him over to a reprobate mind. (Rom1:23-32) CHOICE determines individual outcome in matters of the heart. God imposes Himself on no man.
Man has always preferred Babble over Truth. They go to Church because it seems the right thing to do, as sending their children to Sunday school classes blindly accepting whatever they are taught. It provides them with a feeling of belonging and the euphoria that accompanies ‘religious’ service. Sometimes called ‘the opium of the masses’ religion has served to provide man with a surety that God loves him and everything will be all right in the end. Heaven is the pie in the sky when die by and by and earth is where they toil for material gain. The fact that life is filled with physical and mental illness, heinous crime that gets worse by the day and unrelenting hatred of our fellow man, can’t be helped. It’s what God has ordained and man can only hope for better times in the great beyond. (beam me up Scotty!!)
The Hungry and the thirsty:
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, For they shall be filled. Matt5:6
And the Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” And let him who hears say, “Come!” And let him who thirsts come. Whoever desires, let him take the water of life freely. Rev22:1
Another reason the religious establishments have never been able to know God is they refuse to take Him at His Word. They simply do not believe what He has said. Christ told the people to ‘hunger and thirst’ after God, appealing to their most powerful survival mechanism. The NEED for sustenance! This is the level of DESIRE God is looking for in man to bring him to that ‘Newness of life’. (Rom6:4) When a person grows weary of their ‘sickness’ within and has reached the point of disillusionment with the ways of life, he is ready to make a ‘Determined’ Choice and Resolved within himself to find a better path to follow.
In what the Establishment calls the ‘Be-attitudes’, Matt5:1-10, Jesus is appealing to the NEEDY; Those with an eager desire to be comforted, filled, pure and right. They are the truly ‘Blessed’ ones to God because they shall be Refreshed, Supported and Strengthened in their spirit! That’s why Peter said in Acts 3:19: Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, Here is the ‘Recovery of breath’ the human spirit desperately needs to be renewed and revived from its ‘carnal’ form to the Spiritual realm.
That ‘better path’ (the Narrow Way, Mt7:13) is found through repentance and conversion….a full-blown rotation from ‘sickness’ to health! The Mind is now restored to: love and obedience, wisdom and righteousness, purity and truth. You no longer require the use of drugs, alcohol, physiological counseling, addiction programs or advice from the church. The answer is found in CHRIST!! The old man (body of sin) is dead and buried. The distorted passions and desires of the flesh are subdued. NOTHING short of this kind of Spiritual transformation can save a person from the pangs of hell itself and from the depths of Satan inside some religious establishment here on earth. www.standingthegap.org
In Scripture the heart denotes the center of physical and spiritual life. It is the soul or mind, the fountain of the thoughts, passions, desires, appetites, affections, purposes, and endeavors. The faculty of human will and intelligence proceed from the heart. ‘out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks’ Matt12:34. Our will and character is fashioned by what originates in our hearts. ‘For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within and defile a man.’ Mk7:21
It’s the Heart (Mind) of man that needs healing; as illustrated in the Mark 5 Passage concerning the man possessed by a legion of demons. He dwelled among corruption and was of bound (an illustration of addiction to sin) by shackles and chains. His reasoning faculties were completely awry, but he could still recognize his desperate need for deliverance. When the miraculous work of Christ was done in his heart he was ‘sitting clothed and in his RIGHT Mind’Mk5:15.
Bound by the lust of the flesh, men have given themselves over to a reprobate mind that is out of kilter with reality. Therefore they twist the Word of God to correlate with their off-center perception of the world. What the religious establishment offers is a method that teaches them to reign in the intensity of their cravings in order to ‘tone down’ the hunger within that would drive them into further and more destructive addictions. Thus you have the ‘form of godliness without the power of a godly life’ 2Tim3:5. Man can be brought into an outward appearance of subjection but still have a Mind that is obsessed by the desires to please his flesh.
Society itself tries to maintain this thin veneer of sanity among men by sanctioning a rule of law that will punish wrong doers to various degrees of severity. But lurking just beneath the surface is an unrestrained evilness waiting for another opportunity to be unleashed. Consequently you have a combined force (the secular and the religious) that compels man to act in accordance to his carnal desires. The measurement between what is acceptable or unacceptable is always determined what originates in the ‘heart’ (mind) of man. If therefore the MIND is not renewed by the healing power of God the outcome will inevitably be skewed by what proceeds from within. (Mk7:21) So you have a miss-aligned perception between right and wrong among the religious and an all out malevolence in general society.
That’s why the Principle theme of Scripture is amendment of evil ways (and thoughts) and a restoration to Soundness (sanity) of Mind. Obviously this also requires a New Heart brought about by Real Repentance.
Let the wicked forsake his way, And the unrighteous man his thoughts; Let him return to the Lord, And He will have mercy on him; And to our God, For He will abundantly pardon. Isa55:7
For if you thoroughly amend your ways and your doings, if you thoroughly execute judgment between a man and his neighbor, Jer7:5
Now therefore, amend your ways and your doings, and obey the voice of the Lord your God; Jer26:13
Repent, and turn from all your transgressions, so that iniquity will not be your ruin. Cast away from you all the transgressions which you have committed, and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit. For why should you die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of one who dies,” says the Lord God. “Therefore turn and live!” Ezk18:30-32
This follows our theme as well. Since the heart is the central focus of man’s inner character, and has by all intense purposes been corrupted by his personal choice to indulge in wicked behavior, it requires a concentrated effort on the Word of God to restore it to sanity. The Ezekiel passage is telling man that by getting a new heart his innermost passions, emotions, intellect, desires, knowledge, and inclinations will be TRANSFORMED! And a New spirit will tame his dispositions, tempers, moral character, and restore his sense of reality.
Godly Sorrow that leads to a real Repentance, 2Cor7:10-11, is the Path men must take into this Newness of Life. For it Produces: a Diligent change of desires, a Clearing of wrong doing; hatred for sin, a healthy fear of God, zeal and a vehement desire to please the Lord. Herein is the denial (or death) to self life Christ placed on the Cost of Discipleship. It also requires an act of human Will and a change in desires. No one finds the truth unless they diligently seek it out! (Heb11:6, Mt7:7)
Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone desires (wills) to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. Matt16:24-25
The person desiring a ‘new heart and new spirit’ must SHARE in the fellowship of His sufferings and DIE to self life: ‘That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death,Phil3:10
In this the sin stops and the Mind can be renewed. (healed) ‘Therefore, since Christ suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same mind, for he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, that he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh for the lusts of men, but for the will of God. 1Pet4:1-2
Unbeknownst to the religious establishment is the actual Crucifying of the passions and desires in Repentance and ‘ceasing’ from sin. (Gal5:24) Their perceptive is that everything happens in Christ by Proxy. His ‘Provision’ provided the exchange necessary to reconcile man to God while he was still a sinner. It’s done as a Magic Moral transfer of Christ’s righteousness applied to man while his heart remains carnal and double-minded. Thus sanity is NEVER restored and the desires are not changed. Here we have a religion that meets man’s fancy and the opium he needs to satisfy his mind.
The Religious Establishments of man: (the church)
Know nothing of God’s Will or Doctrine
Have no spiritual discernment whatsoever
Cannot make a Righteous Judgment because of an arbitrary moral code
And have turned Christ into a Minister of Sin
Truly, this only I have found: That God made man upright, But they have sought out many schemes. Ecc7:20
God made man UPRIGHT! This Word can also be translated: Straight, Righteous, Just, fitting or proper. In other words man was created by God with a Moral Conscience (Yetzer Tou) and natural human desires. (Yetzer Ra) The idea of a ‘sinful nature’ or inbred depravity is pagan fallacy. However when man rebels against his moral conscience the natural desires or appetites become corrupt and addicted over time by ‘longings’ to please and exult himself instead of honoring God. Back on page 4 of this text I described this ‘by nature’ phenomena and how it works.
The religious systems of history have provided man with a sanctuary for his ‘sickness’ of mind called the ‘church’. They have gone to extreme lengths to preserve this safe harbor for carnality, including the use of torture, coercion and deceptions. Even when the vast monopoly of the Catholic System was challenged during what historians call the Reformation, the duplicity continued. When the Bible was finally authorized to be translated into English by King James VI in 1604, the ‘esteemed’ translators were instructed to rigorously maintain the Episcopal structure of the Church of England and its belief in an ‘ordained’ clergy. So the Word ‘Ekklesia’ in the Greek text was ordered to be translated ‘Church’! (as it also appeared in the Geneva Bible the Anglo-Catholic Bishop’s Bible)
Thus it has been to this day. The ‘Church’ is still considered a sacred gathering place for ‘Christians’ and the clergy keeps the people in a state of ignorance and bliss. However GOD did not intend that His Ekklesia become an institutionalized religion.
He Called a people who would respond to His ‘reasonable service’, CHANGE their desires from earthly to heavenly, amend the evil of their doings, forsake all sin and FOLLOW Him! BUT the ‘body of sin’ had to be DONE away with first in the process of Repentance, so the Mind could be healed and a Newness of life would begin. This Cannot be accomplished by ‘repeating’ some words or joining a ‘Church’. The ‘Old Man’ (corrupted mind of sin, sickness of heart, addicted by nature) must DIE with Christ in order that the ‘heart’ can be freed from the corrupting influence of lust.
knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. For he who has died has been freed from sin. Rom6:6-7
as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. 2Pet1:3-4
To answer His Call a person MUST break ties with the religious establishment churches, CHANGE their way of thinking (come out of the box!) and then DILIGENTLY Seek after God with all their heart, mind, soul and strength! (Matt22:37-40) The System is counter productive to God’s Method of Redemption. (that’s why you must come out of it!) It teaches people they are born in sin, saved in sin and can NEVER stop sinning. Therefore the ‘sickness’ of mind becomes convinced that it lacks any ability to Change within, get clear of sin and obey God. This is reinforced by a long list of excuses built on heaps of intellectual fallacy that keeps man in a state of ‘ever learning but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth!’ 2Tim3:7.
They have an answer for every truth in Scripture as to why it either doesn’t apply to them or is impossible to apprehend. These saucy retorts are seen throughout the Bible when the establishment encountered Christ or any of His faithful followers. If they could ridicule or humiliate their opponent they were quick to speak, but if silenced by the unpretentious logic of Purity they would huff off with murder in their hearts. Nothing has changed in the Mind of ‘religious’ man. If he will not believe that it’s in his best interest to surrender his pride and follow after truth, God will give him over to a reprobate mind. (Rom1:23-32) CHOICE determines individual outcome in matters of the heart. God imposes Himself on no man.
Man has always preferred Babble over Truth. They go to Church because it seems the right thing to do, as sending their children to Sunday school classes blindly accepting whatever they are taught. It provides them with a feeling of belonging and the euphoria that accompanies ‘religious’ service. Sometimes called ‘the opium of the masses’ religion has served to provide man with a surety that God loves him and everything will be all right in the end. Heaven is the pie in the sky when die by and by and earth is where they toil for material gain. The fact that life is filled with physical and mental illness, heinous crime that gets worse by the day and unrelenting hatred of our fellow man, can’t be helped. It’s what God has ordained and man can only hope for better times in the great beyond. (beam me up Scotty!!)
The Hungry and the thirsty:
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, For they shall be filled. Matt5:6
And the Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” And let him who hears say, “Come!” And let him who thirsts come. Whoever desires, let him take the water of life freely. Rev22:1
Another reason the religious establishments have never been able to know God is they refuse to take Him at His Word. They simply do not believe what He has said. Christ told the people to ‘hunger and thirst’ after God, appealing to their most powerful survival mechanism. The NEED for sustenance! This is the level of DESIRE God is looking for in man to bring him to that ‘Newness of life’. (Rom6:4) When a person grows weary of their ‘sickness’ within and has reached the point of disillusionment with the ways of life, he is ready to make a ‘Determined’ Choice and Resolved within himself to find a better path to follow.
In what the Establishment calls the ‘Be-attitudes’, Matt5:1-10, Jesus is appealing to the NEEDY; Those with an eager desire to be comforted, filled, pure and right. They are the truly ‘Blessed’ ones to God because they shall be Refreshed, Supported and Strengthened in their spirit! That’s why Peter said in Acts 3:19: Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, Here is the ‘Recovery of breath’ the human spirit desperately needs to be renewed and revived from its ‘carnal’ form to the Spiritual realm.
That ‘better path’ (the Narrow Way, Mt7:13) is found through repentance and conversion….a full-blown rotation from ‘sickness’ to health! The Mind is now restored to: love and obedience, wisdom and righteousness, purity and truth. You no longer require the use of drugs, alcohol, physiological counseling, addiction programs or advice from the church. The answer is found in CHRIST!! The old man (body of sin) is dead and buried. The distorted passions and desires of the flesh are subdued. NOTHING short of this kind of Spiritual transformation can save a person from the pangs of hell itself and from the depths of Satan inside some religious establishment here on earth. www.standingthegap.org
