Those Who Deny Sin in a Believer
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Let me explore something. Let me say I spend a whole day with one person.
We are working together, getting things done, going about our tasks, and in the
end we go home.
Now people talk about sin happening all the time. So imagine you say nothing,
focus on your work alone and nothing else, what sin are you commiting?
Then you expand this out further, is it possible to isolate actual points in time
when no sin is being commited at all?
Now I do not even come close to thinking like this, yet I hear people talking
about evil like it just happens all the time. Either I am miss-understanding
people or there are a lot more really messed up people than I imagined.
So please help me, what am I missing? Do I live with a bunch of people who
are about to seriously hurt me, steal from me, take all I have and leave me
destitute. And if this is not the case and we are commited to love one another
and serve and meet needs, is it guilt and super-sensitivity talking rather than
reality?
We are working together, getting things done, going about our tasks, and in the
end we go home.
Now people talk about sin happening all the time. So imagine you say nothing,
focus on your work alone and nothing else, what sin are you commiting?
Then you expand this out further, is it possible to isolate actual points in time
when no sin is being commited at all?
Now I do not even come close to thinking like this, yet I hear people talking
about evil like it just happens all the time. Either I am miss-understanding
people or there are a lot more really messed up people than I imagined.
So please help me, what am I missing? Do I live with a bunch of people who
are about to seriously hurt me, steal from me, take all I have and leave me
destitute. And if this is not the case and we are commited to love one another
and serve and meet needs, is it guilt and super-sensitivity talking rather than
reality?
Well...it depends on where you are, I think. He let me struggle with sin for what seems a long, long time to me. I was super aware of when I murdered. Good grief, I couldn't stop it. I spent great and agonizing amounts of time trying to work it out. I would go over all the reasons why I should just stop murdering and 15 seconds later, all the anger and resentment was right back, tormenting me. I went on that way for a long time. And as honest as I know how to be, I don't think I was trying to earn my salvation. That wasn't in my mind. There was just this burning desire to be good, to stop murdering, to be more loving, to not get my feelings hurt at how I was treated and get angry and resentful and say mean things, lashing out in my hurt. I don't think (though I could be wrong) that I was trying to earn my salvation. I think I was hungering for righteousness.
So if you had asked me a year ago, when I was there, I would have answered differently than I would now. And if you had asked me two years before that, I thought I was quite humble when I was no such thing, so I would have answered differently then because I thought I was quite good!
As for you working alone and what sin you could possibly be committing, only you and God could say. You could be murdering your wife for yelling at you that morning, murdering the man who cut you off in traffic, judging yourself as much better than the person you're working beside, worrying about money, having daydreams of revenge about someone, etc., etc. Don't forget, it is what comes from inside a man that defiles him. You could not be saying a word and working quietly and still be sinning in thought and heart. If you're thinking sin is only outward stuff, you're forgetting what Jesus said for the moment. You can be being disgusting in your heart and look like a wonderful godly man to everyone else.
Let me take a step back. Emotions are not sins. They are reactions to things, messages
of how oneself feels about the situation and what the response is. They are irrational, come
for many different reasons but are just letters in our in trays. Attached to each message is
a context and a summary. We have a very complex web in our personalities of connections,
implications, meanings which come to a conclusion about everything. Most is automatic, built
up over many years of interactions.
Now imagine I love this person, I want to encourage them yet they have done something that
makes me very angry. Now I can feed the anger response, and make in enormous, by working
through all the implications which will make me more angry, or I can choose to put the cause of
the anger into context, down play it, bring in all the good things the person has done, my desire
to encourage and the anger disapates. So the emotional response just emphasises things but
we can choose how we respond and our general attitude to everything.
Now what you have shared is I murdered ... These emotions keep firing up, every second, all the
time. Now if you are frustrated or want certain things to come about but blame individuals for their
response to the failure of this goal, anger rises everytime you think about this aspiration. In this case
it is the aspiration that is generating everything, not you have an issue with murder, it is frustration
and blame at not achieving things, being victimised etc.
So it sounds to me like you feel you are defined by your emotional responses, rather than you
can choose how you respond to them and resolve them. Walking in the Spirit resolves all the issues,
not just some. Most of our lives spent here is on dreams of something more than we have, yet in
reality we will only fulfill a small part of this and probably in ways we do not recognise.
And the answer really is, if we understand our emotional life and dwell in peace and love inside
ourselves, we can walk in the Spirit. This is a place of purity and holiness. But one has to understand
what we are as emotional beings and not let our emotional responses define who we are, but rather
let our response to life define what we encourage in our emotions and what we put in its place.
At least this is how I have experienced things.
I know some will respond to this is just manipulation. No this is life and waking up to it. Taking
ownership of who we are and walking in the light.
I read a testimony of a woman caught in anxiousness which grew into panic attacks and mental
breakdown. She was anxious about being anxious. And the answer was, accept the anxiousness and
put it in its place and balance it out with real risk and understanding. Her trust was in the Lord yet her
emotional life was is disbelief. It was a choice and it worked. The emotion did not grow and destroy her
life.
We walk with the King so everything can be taken captive and brought to the throne and the cross,
and left there in context. I know this works because it also defines my life.
of how oneself feels about the situation and what the response is. They are irrational, come
for many different reasons but are just letters in our in trays. Attached to each message is
a context and a summary. We have a very complex web in our personalities of connections,
implications, meanings which come to a conclusion about everything. Most is automatic, built
up over many years of interactions.
Now imagine I love this person, I want to encourage them yet they have done something that
makes me very angry. Now I can feed the anger response, and make in enormous, by working
through all the implications which will make me more angry, or I can choose to put the cause of
the anger into context, down play it, bring in all the good things the person has done, my desire
to encourage and the anger disapates. So the emotional response just emphasises things but
we can choose how we respond and our general attitude to everything.
Now what you have shared is I murdered ... These emotions keep firing up, every second, all the
time. Now if you are frustrated or want certain things to come about but blame individuals for their
response to the failure of this goal, anger rises everytime you think about this aspiration. In this case
it is the aspiration that is generating everything, not you have an issue with murder, it is frustration
and blame at not achieving things, being victimised etc.
So it sounds to me like you feel you are defined by your emotional responses, rather than you
can choose how you respond to them and resolve them. Walking in the Spirit resolves all the issues,
not just some. Most of our lives spent here is on dreams of something more than we have, yet in
reality we will only fulfill a small part of this and probably in ways we do not recognise.
And the answer really is, if we understand our emotional life and dwell in peace and love inside
ourselves, we can walk in the Spirit. This is a place of purity and holiness. But one has to understand
what we are as emotional beings and not let our emotional responses define who we are, but rather
let our response to life define what we encourage in our emotions and what we put in its place.
At least this is how I have experienced things.
I know some will respond to this is just manipulation. No this is life and waking up to it. Taking
ownership of who we are and walking in the light.
I read a testimony of a woman caught in anxiousness which grew into panic attacks and mental
breakdown. She was anxious about being anxious. And the answer was, accept the anxiousness and
put it in its place and balance it out with real risk and understanding. Her trust was in the Lord yet her
emotional life was is disbelief. It was a choice and it worked. The emotion did not grow and destroy her
life.
We walk with the King so everything can be taken captive and brought to the throne and the cross,
and left there in context. I know this works because it also defines my life.
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E
ROFL!!!!!!!!!!!!! 
Well, I have oodles of time, so that costs me nothing. I have plenty of energy, again costs me nothing. My money is limited, yet somehow even when I leave some outside for people to find, I always have enough left over. So AGAIN, that costs me nothing. And effort, yup have plenty of that too.
If YOU see your time, energy, money and efforts as a sacrifice that you may or may not want to make to help others, that's on you. MY time, energy, money and efforts are cheerfully given. ALWAYS.
Well, I have oodles of time, so that costs me nothing. I have plenty of energy, again costs me nothing. My money is limited, yet somehow even when I leave some outside for people to find, I always have enough left over.
So AGAIN, that costs me nothing. And effort, yup have plenty of that too. If YOU see your time, energy, money and efforts as a sacrifice that you may or may not want to make to help others, that's on you. MY time, energy, money and efforts are cheerfully given. ALWAYS.
some people do not believe in faith rest.. God said his commands are not burdensome.. Yet people think it is work.. when you have a works based mindset, thats what you get. ANd thats what they have
We talked about this, maybe a year ago. I remember now.
We talked about what our Lord said - you have heard do not murder, but I say to you if you are angry at your brother, you have already murdered. (paraphrasing there, all can look it up).
We have our intellect, our will and our emotions. They used to be all in the right order and in the subjection they were meant to be in. But the fall knocked it all out of alignment and our emotions can take control of us, which was never Gods' intent. Or our will can take control of the reins of our heart and cause us to walk all over others - the will not in the proper subjection to the intellect, reason and the heart.
We read that Cain murdered his brother because his brother was doing what was right and Cain was not. We read that he looked sad and dejected. This was a pout of the emotions, a coveting of the approval of his brother and the disapproval shown himself that led to murder. We also read: Sin desires to devour you but you must be its' master. (Genesis, after Cain murdered).
Gods' ways are above ours and His mind is above ours, and He says that if we are angry with our brother, we have already murdered. This is not heart purity. This is the heart befouled because of the fall. It is the useless life we inherited when we were born of fallen man.
This is difficult stuff we are discussing, I know, and I also know I am usually overly wordy to others, but there is something slightly...off when you say "if we understand our emotional life and dwell in peace and love, we can walk in the Spirit." It bespeaks the thought that a man can fix his emotions and heart without the Spirit and that he must do so before he can walk in the Spirit. Bt we are prisoners to the misaligned and fallen way we inherited, with all out of order and parts rising up and usurping that should be in subjection and not ruling.
It's true that psychology can help a man some and in society, we do a fair job of tamping down and teaching children to deny some self love and self will by using acceptance vs. shunning. (We then give opposite instruction by our own behaviors even AS we are trying to teach them to be good). But all of this is a tamping down. It isn't really a fixing of the heart or no one would ever fly into a murderous rage or covet and steal (and you know, we will even covet and steal a trifle, like a pen we admire or something we don't even need).
In fact, what we teach our children is mostly based on a manipulation of our desire to be accepted and approved of by men. But the problem is still there and can rise up (and often does, as we see how peoples emotions torment them and how self love and care often wins out over love and putting others first).
But God wants to cleanse our conscience and heal us of this unhealthy in which we are imprisoned to usurpers subjecting what they were meant to be in subjection TO.
We have to move away from the thought that we are the way He made Adam and Eve. God made everything to bring forth of its' own kind. But then he fell and was corrupted and so he brought forth children with this same corruption because he was made to bring forth of his own kind. So we have to move away from the thought that our emotions are the way God made us or intended for us. And we have to move away from the notion that our hearts can be really and truly fixed without having received Gods' Spirit, His teaching, His fixing. Psychology and society and our raising can do a bit to help but corrections are not true healing. Even a man raised very well can be swept away by his emotions in the right circumstance and murder. Even our courts recognize this and so have differing degrees of punishment based on whether it was heat of the moment or planned out. So when you say a man can make a choice of how to respond to his emotions, he can do some, he can gain some mastery on the outside, but inside there is not purity of heart and there is still seething resentment and anger, he's just controlling his outside with the help of acceptance vs. shunning, some help of psychology, etc. But the problem still lies hidden, crouching at the door, desiring to devour him.
I don't know if I've got that across well or not...
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I wish I could say in a summaried description, this is off or not off.
Are you saying you can walk in the Spirit while in sin or possessed by some overpowering
emotion? I was making the simple point peace and rest in the heart is important.
Now the point of how we achieve this is another question.
There is an underlying fear you seem to be expressing, without God, if we achieve this
we do not need Him. Sounds like a God of the gaps idea.
The Lord is in everything, we just need to discover the truth and see how He works through
it.
And it is a little discouraging if sharing is based on approval or not. It is following a chain of
thought and experience and then seeing where it ends up. If I worried about how it comes
across everytime, I would not explore lots of things, and thereby limit the very truth God
wants us to discover. Ofcourse I can be totally wrong sometimes, because I get things
mixed up, but equally I can come across something I go wow at.
Walking as Christ walked, wow. Sharing in His suffering as a praise offering, wow.
Sacrifices to Him are something He desires, though they are not costly in the way we
think of them.
Are you saying you can walk in the Spirit while in sin or possessed by some overpowering
emotion? I was making the simple point peace and rest in the heart is important.
Now the point of how we achieve this is another question.
There is an underlying fear you seem to be expressing, without God, if we achieve this
we do not need Him. Sounds like a God of the gaps idea.
The Lord is in everything, we just need to discover the truth and see how He works through
it.
And it is a little discouraging if sharing is based on approval or not. It is following a chain of
thought and experience and then seeing where it ends up. If I worried about how it comes
across everytime, I would not explore lots of things, and thereby limit the very truth God
wants us to discover. Ofcourse I can be totally wrong sometimes, because I get things
mixed up, but equally I can come across something I go wow at.
Walking as Christ walked, wow. Sharing in His suffering as a praise offering, wow.
Sacrifices to Him are something He desires, though they are not costly in the way we
think of them.
Romans 4:5-8
David Celebrates the Same Truth
But to him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness, just as David also describes the blessedness of the man to whom God imputes righteousness apart from works:
“Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven,
And whose sins are covered;
Blessed is the man to whom the Lord shall not impute sin.”
David Celebrates the Same Truth
But to him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness, just as David also describes the blessedness of the man to whom God imputes righteousness apart from works:
“Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven,
And whose sins are covered;
Blessed is the man to whom the Lord shall not impute sin.”
Genesis 12:3
I will bless those who bless you and curse those who treat you with contempt. All the families on earth will be blessed through you.”
Galatians 3:8-9
What’s more, the Scriptures looked forward to this time when God would declare the Gentiles to be righteous because of their faith. God proclaimed this good news to Abraham long ago when he said, “All nations will be blessed through you.” So all who put their faith in Christ share the same blessing Abraham received because of his faith.
I will bless those who bless you and curse those who treat you with contempt. All the families on earth will be blessed through you.”
Galatians 3:8-9
What’s more, the Scriptures looked forward to this time when God would declare the Gentiles to be righteous because of their faith. God proclaimed this good news to Abraham long ago when he said, “All nations will be blessed through you.” So all who put their faith in Christ share the same blessing Abraham received because of his faith.
Nope...ok to be imperfect. It's actually a healthier state of mind to know that you can't be perfect in everything you do everyday. To think that you are and can be has a whole list of mental disorders that go right along with it. You guys are advocating for your narcissism to reign supreme. Nice work... keep it up and you'll eventually completely alienate yourself from having any connection with other people. Lol
"Son of man, if a country sins against Me by committing unfaithfulness, and I stretch out My hand against it, destroy its supply of bread, send famine against it and cut off from it both man and beast, even though these three men, Noah, Daniel and Job were in its midst, by their own righteousness they could only deliver themselves," declares the Lord GOD.