Does Correct Doctrine Trump A Lukewarm Heart?

We need to understand that it is very possible to have all our i's dotted and all of our t's crossed on our grasp on the doctrine of salvation and of grace, have a nice tidy religious answer for all who would dare question if we could possibly be in error, and still have our hearts blinded to the truth of where we are in the Lord, and how far we are from walking as God intended. Why? Sin continuing on in our lives hardens our hearts.
THAT is the danger of promoting a grace that does not expect a response. Not a response of works but a response of heart. Walking in grace with not be wary of the devil and his devices, and with no hatred of sin, is a big open door by which satan has decieved millions. Eventually, our hearts get leathery and tough, our repentance less and less genuine, and our heart..... our spiritual center point, cannot see clearly any longer. We do not repent of limiting the Holy one of Israel by our unbelief in His power to deliver us from evil, yet we faithfully pray it, just as we have been told. We literally cannot see our error. And we have no fear of our error, for that is forgiven too!

It is our hearts, guys! He sees! He knows! What He does NOT understand is why we will not admit it and get this monkey off our backs? Does it seem too impossible? Your victory, my victory, is child's play to the Lord we serve. Do we not realize that the same power God used to raise Christ from the dead, the VERY SAME POWER, is available to us??

Shall measley drug addiction, or an out-of-control sexual appetite be too hard for God to corral and bring down to size?? Ha! NO weapon formed against us shall prosper! He can change our hearts. He WILL change our hearts, if we will but admit our going through the motions, cast off our unbelief and step into the robes He has for each of us, new natures that can stare down temptation without plucking out our eyes or cutting off our hands. Let each of us simply return to the Lord, turn our eyes FULLY upon our God, and ask God to DO IT FOR US!! He will, I promise. How do I know? He has promised it, and he is not a man that he should lie!! Praise God!

Fellow saints, I am talking about the condition of our HEARTS. Not our state before God. IN our state, as forgiven creatures, as sons of God, are we walking as the prodigal did, looking upon salvation of all the stuff WE get, foolishly thinking our way will be better than His, or, have we finally "come to ourselves", realized the most joy-filled and best place is safe as a bond servant to God, with Jesus as both savior and lord, and fully surrendered our hearts to be re-ignited? We do not have to drum up feeling one, or shed one tear. We simply have to admit our great need..... and ASK.

Satan has snared all of us to one degree or another, with me as chief. 38 years of walking as a "believer" and I spent most of it a prisoner to a sin I detested..... and yet loved. Perhaps this is you. Perhaps not. But make no mistake, our flesh is NOT improvable. Nor is it able to be morphed into spirit man by the passage of time. We are either flesh.... or we are spirit. Old man, where sin still reigns, or new creatures in Christ, where the promises work, where He indeed keeps us from falling.

Jesus told us that new wine must be poured into new wineskins, and we have been trying to pour new wine into our old wineskins in hopes it can soften the skin up. Instead, it allows the wine to leak out. We have been commanded by the one we love to either make the tree good or make the tree evil. We are not to "grow from darkess to light. It is a choice, a testimony of who we believe we are inside, either old men trying vainly to become new men (and it never happens) or new men who then grow IN grace.

I so long for the day the believers finally realize that God has more for us to believe for than just our forgiveness. There is a war to wage for each of us, a war we have been pre-destined to win. It is our good fight of faith. It is here that we learn to light our lamps and to finally put on the new man and become light in the Lord. No work. Just faith. ONLY believe. We are not in the flesh. God said it. Shall we disagree? We owe the flesh NOTHING. God said it. Now, will we believe it?? When we do and see how desperately we need to be kept by the power of God through faith, our entire lives will be revolutionized.

Our book of Acts awaits us. Time to light our lamps.

Blessings,
Gideon
 
You mean becoming like information packets?
No the heart for obedience is better than knowing everything correctly because God does not choose who is right over who is wrong. God chooses the humble over the prideful. Correct doctrine properly applied should produce gentleness and complete humility but it puffs up more often than not. That said I still choose correct doctrine. Those who don't understand sound doctrine are often blinded by pride too.
 
[I think you hit quote="Intojoy, post: 292558, member: 12054"]You mean becoming like information packets?
No the heart for obedience is better than knowing everything correctly because God does not choose who is right over who is wrong. God chooses the humble over the prideful. Correct doctrine properly applied should produce gentleness and complete humility but it puffs up more often than not. That said I still choose correct doctrine. Those who don't understand sound doctrine are often blinded by pride too.[/quote]

I think you hit the nail on the head. Correct doctrine should produce fruits...gentleness, meekness, humility, love, joy. Should. So, if it does not, something is amiss. And if we look around at the church as a whole, and even our own lives, will we admit that something is not right?

Jesus said this:

"A good tree CANNOT bear bad fruit."

Did you hear what Jesus said? Cannot. So obviously, this is telling us that there is something in our understanding of the truth that is out of whack. The problem is, to admit this makes us very nervous. We want to think we have it all figured out, our nice doctrines all wrapped up with neat little bows, and when we contemplate that we might not really have everything perfect, it upsets us. I understand that.

But here as we near the end of time as we know it, we need to let our hunger for fruits of the Spirit so abound in us that we will go through whatever discomfort we might feel to insure we can find the secret to overcoming the enemy of our souls. NOTHING is more important in our lives then getting to the secret of how to walk in victory. If we do, the results that will occur within us will bless us to no end.

So what IS the problem? Why does our truth not set us free indeed as Jesus promised? The answer is back in the same chapter about Jesus talking about good trees, fruitful trees. Trees that do NOT bear bad fruits.

Jesus said:

"Either make the tree good or make the tree evil."

Ah, there's the rub! You see, we do not believe it is even possible to "make our tree good", and that we are a mixture of good tree and bad tree, and always will be, but this cannot be. We are told that we cannot serve two masters. We are told that a kingdom divided against itself cannot stand.

It is time we identified why we are weak, why our doctrine is off kilter, not setting us free as Jesus promised. We do not believe it possible to defeat our flesh, or even escape its grasp. But the word of God is clear, when Jesus died, so did our old man, our rebellious fleshly nature. We may not feel like it did, or even see the reults of it based on how we acted even a minute ago, but it makes NO difference. When Jesus rose from the dead, so did we! We are new! We are light! We are good trees! And if we will arm ourselves with this truth, using it as a shield when the enemy of our souls comes accusing, and CONTINUE in the truth of who we are in Christ, overcomers, we will begin to see fruits develop in us that will take our breath away.

THAT is the correct doctrine that will produce the heart we all want beating in our breasts, and God guarantees the results. Let us fight the good fight of faith that places us IN the victory from the very first step. Let us continue in that faith. Let us become established in that faith, for it is that faith by which we overcome the world, the flesh and the devil.

Blessings, sister

Gideon
 
Gideon[/quote]

I think you hit the nail on the head. Correct doctrine should produce fruits...gentleness, meekness, humility, love, joy. Should. So, if it does not, something is amiss. And if we look around at the church as a whole, and even our own lives, will we admit that something is not right?"






Gideon, the answer is simple. Grace is the power of God unto Salvation. The work of the Holy Spirit washing and renewing us- teaching us to deny ungodliness, putting the love of God into our hearts-thereby turning us into Samaritans...

That is the grace of God.

Without the work of grace manifested in your life you have no salvation- the doctrine of 'unmerited favor' is a joke and only supported with these new perverted Bible versions. Therein lies much of the problem..People have fallen away from sound doctrine and are now believing fables. They have heaped to themselves teachers that tickle their ears with false grace and they are being led down the wide path to destruction. Today's grace is lasciviousness...

TC
 
Gideon, the answer is simple. Grace is the power of God unto Salvation. The work of the Holy Spirit washing and renewing us- teaching us to deny ungodliness, putting the love of God into our hearts-thereby turning us into Samaritans...

That is the grace of God.

Without the work of grace manifested in your life you have no salvation- the doctrine of 'unmerited favor' is a joke and only supported with these new perverted Bible versions. Therein lies much of the problem..People have fallen away from sound doctrine and are now believing fables. They have heaped to themselves teachers that tickle their ears with false grace and they are being led down the wide path to destruction. Today's grace is lasciviousness...

TC[/quote]



TC, I would say "ouch" but instead, I will say "amen, ouch".

Even though we all are accountable for our shallow vision of what grace is capable of in our lives, I think it is the ministers that hold the most responsibility. Yet even there, most ministers have simply taught what they were taught, and those that taught them did the same.

I am convinced that the problem goes back generation after generation all the way back until when the grievous wolves entered the flock after Paul's death as he foretold. The church, which had turned the entire known world upside down in one generation, lost whatever anointing it had in the book of Acts. and drifted into becoming a religion. Oh, we possess some truth, but for the most part, we know little of the glorious liberty of the children of God.

Will God let the church begin with a bang and end with a whimper? Not a chance. He is going to breathe on the dry bones we have become and restore what the canker worm has eaten from our lives. The virgins with the oil WILL light their lamps in the last days and arm themselves with the truth of what grace has provided us....new natures. When we do, the world will again be turned upside down, and as God said: "The heathen shall know that I am the Lord, when I shall be sanctified IN YOU before their eyes."

They will be amazed but not nearly as much as we will. :)

Thank you for sharing.

Gideon
 
Amen Gideon...One final thought from this side. The lukewarm do not get sanctified- they get rejected. He is coming back to judge who served Him and who did not...

Mal 3:18 Then shall ye return, and discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him that serveth God and him that serveth him not.

Heb 12:28 Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear:


Rom 14:17 For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.
Rom 14:18 For he that in these things serveth Christ is acceptable to God, and approved of men.


We can only serve Him through His divine grace- without His power, love, and and spiritual influence in our hearts it is just 'works'( and they will not be accepted) Unfortunately that is where most are today- foolish 'workers of iniquity' because they have turned the grace of God into a hall pass to continue living unrighteous lives...

Tit 2:11 For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men,
Tit 2:12 Teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world;

Most have not received the grace of God because they have turned it into 'unmerited favor'...

Jas 4:3 Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.


Just trying to sound the alarm and wake up sleeping 'Christians' before He returns to separate the sheep from the goats!

God bless and great grace upon you Gideon,
TC
 
Thanks for writing and great scriptures. What we have missed in our gospel is that Jesus must be Lord as well as Savior. We cannot keep the lordship to ourselves with us remaining in our flesh, with us firmly calling the shots. This error is a lack of faith or a lack of desire to truly lose our lives to find His inside us.

How many there are who want all the goodies, eternal life, heaven, joy, peace, prosperity, but do not see that to lavish these on our old natures is dangerous indeed. This is why Jesus told us that to gain the pearl of great price, the cost is.....all our own pearls.

There is a scripture that is found in Luke 19, at the end of the parable of the talents. I can promise...this scripture will never be heard in any sermon in traditional business as usual church. The angry master had just taken away the initial gift from the servant who made no gain with it, and then he said this.

"Then bring all those who would not have me to reign over them, and slay them before me."

The scriptures you share are correct. We are to serve our God, lose our own lives to find His, and how we need the faith to believe it is possible to do so. We need to abandon our own efforts to beat our rebellious fleshes into submission, reckon our flesh as DEAD, not slowly trying to die over 40 years, and hold up our shield of faith that we are now new creatures, light in the Lord, and that sin no longer has authority over us. When I speak of sin here, I speak of willfull rebellion to obey the Lord, to say "NO, I want my will instead".

This is what God delivered us from, but until we believe it, hunger after it, weep over our lack of it, we will wander in the wilderness of unbelief, and our constant movement will always seem to assure us we must be making progress, but the truth is, we are simply wandering, and dying, far from the promised land. I am tired of running laps,and pray all the wheat will begin to examine their lives and realize the whole purpose of our walk with the lord is to come to the point where we finally fully surrender and fully trust Him to cause us to obey Him with joy in our hearts as we do it.

Is this possible? The promises guarantee it. Our part in the being yoked with God is to believe it and it starts with a hungry heart.

May more and more saints tire of a religion that has a form of godliness, but denies the clear promise that He will keep us from falling, that his shield of faith WILL quench all the fiery arrows of the enemy, that He will NOT allo0w us to be tempted above our ability to resist.

It is time we stopped limiting the Holy One of Israel with our unbelief. When we do, our God will amaze us with what He accomplishes IN us. Are we finally weary of our failure, our worldiness, our out-of-control lusts and love for a world under judgement, and hungry to be amazed at God in US?

It is time. Shields up! It is time to light our lamps and BE who we really are... new creatures.
 
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