Hello again, Gerald,
Your entry#12: appears to indicate that you identify with the hope of 'The Bride'. I this so, Gerald?
Regarding 'faith': I have a little illustration, concerning three characters, 'Faith', 'Hope', and 'Experience', who were walking along a wall together. Faith was in front, followed by Hope, and Experience followed on behind. Hope was fine as long as he kept his eyes on Faith, but when he turned around to look at Experience, he fell off the wall along with Experience, but Faith went marching on. --- This illustrates the need to fix our Hope on The Divine Facts our Faith rests on, and not rely on experiences.
We walk by faith and not by sight. Praise God!
In Christ Jesus
Chris
Do I believe that not only is the Lord preparing a Bride? Yes I do.
I also believe that the Bride herself is to "get herself ready" also.
I also believe that every true born child of God is called to that "high calling" Even as each and every child of God must make sure that not only is thier lamp lit but thier vessels full as well . and to remeber the words of the Lord "be ye also ready"
As for your point about experience ,I would agree with you .
I would add though that we do not live in a bubble of 'now' .
But we have from the moment we responded by the grace to Gods love and mercy by the preaching of Gods word have over time gained experience of Gods faithfulness ,such in answers to prayer for ourselves and others .
Our faith as you said is not based upon our experience but we should remember our experience to encourage us to "greater works" and our faith grows. Does not paul speak about our experience in relation to prayer?
For our faith is to grow from a small as a mustard seed to a great tree ,how can or does it do that ? If not by degree and by measure as our experience grows?
Our faith is always or should be in the Lord who spoke or gave those exceedingly great and precious promises .When it is not then the Lord graciously reminds us by our failures and his chastening and reproofs .
"Little children " said John, Then "young men " then "ye fathers ye know Him who is from the beginning "
In another place Paul(?) says by faith we know God created the world ,yet strangely many do not believe Gods account of the beginning and what followed .But have by degree because of the challenges of the worlds presumption have compromised the truth and now half believe God and half believe the world .
How can we know Him who is form the beginning if we do not believe Him who wrote the beginning?
By faith we know......... the faith of little children needs to be tried and tested . So too ye fathers . But ye fathers have bene tried and tested in that which little children always have to be .the trials and temptations of a father are not those of little children.
That is what I mean by experience .
Having said that Peter who saw the transfigueration and other things no one else did save John and James .still said "but we have a better prophecy" Meaning the Word of God . So no matter what "experience " even revelations we may have the bed rock for our faith is the Word of God; the understanding of which gives us our faith in God in what ever field our faith needs to be excercised.
To come back to the Bride of Christ then. We are reminded or warned not to be like thosew ho failed to enter into the promise "because of unbelief" They did not just not believe God .They believed another message .It has always been thus .Even to the very beginning .When Eve believed the lie and not the truth .
She thus SAW that the tree was good to eat . Her perceptions then had bene changed and she became bl.ind to the truth.
For once you reject the truth you will believe a lie and once you believe a lie you become blind to the truth .
She reasoned thus "it would make her wise " Her reasoning also was "darkened" Those who lay great store on thier intellectual abilities need to understand that the intellect in ,of and by itself is a false light .and needs the illumination of God the holy Spirit to give the right understanding. and put the Word of God in its proper order and context .(see the temptations of Christ in the wilderness)
She then did that which was good or right in her own eyes . The awful list of chapters in the book of kings and chronicles that start with the lines "and they did evil in the sight of the Lord"
Adam and Eve already had knowledge of what was good and what was evil. For God had told them what was good to eat and what was evil to eat . "For of all the trees in the garden ye may freely eat ,(that included the tree of life) but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat ,for the the day in which ye eat ye shall surely die"
" for man shall not live by every tree that was good to eat but by thy that Word of God that proceedeth from the mouth of God as to what was good and what was evil " and by that word they lived . and by the rejection of that word they died .
The ten spies saw things from a carnal point of view .That is to say with thier own eyes or by sight and they reasoned thus ,We will be defeated and our children become as bread to them.
It only took 40 DAYS to reach the promised land . a MONTH and 12 DAYS . They had forgotten every thing that had happened in that short time even as those did who 3 DAYS out of Egypt built and idol etc while Moses was up the mountain with God.
The two faithful spies saw things howver in the true light of what God had already done (experience) who it was who was with them. (Now faith is ) and what had bene promised by Him for the future (the substance of thjngs hoped for)
in THAT true light then preached the right message .
But sadly they found tha the vast majority were of the same mind and heart as the ten spies .
Paul was speaking to Christians in Corinth when he said to them "ye are yet carnal"
We must be careful then that our minds are not only renewed but brought into subjection to the mind of Christ that we may 'see' things as He does in the matter .
was it not to christians that Paul said he prayed constantly for them thjat the "eyes of thier understanding maybe opened........"?
While the devil cannot stop God saving us he will do all he can to still blind our eyes to see "what is the exceedign greatensess of his power that is towards us who believe..........................................................................................." Eph
Little children do not see very far ahead if at all. Young men filled with the Word of God are not only beginning to see things more clearly in the present but by the Word of God in some measure the past bas well even to the beginning as also to that which is to come .
The Old testament is in one sense the past of a child of God fro we have bene grafted into a tree whos roots go as deep as anything you might imagine ,But which are in God who is from the beginning.
Can we not then learn from anothers experience?" who were given for our ensample"?
Both as to the positive as also the negative .For it is far better and less 'expensive' to learn from anothers error and failures is it not?
So thank you for the reminder.
The matter of the Bride of Christ I think is for another post as it will 'confuse' the issue here as to faith.
in Christ
gerald
g