It's hard to beat initial inspiration. The only way to beat it is by hard labor which is what creates initial inspiration. Hard labor is also how you improve initial inspiration. But the whole labor road is tainted, yet there is profit at its end. Not the error but the revelation of error is what brings you to perfection. One is not transported from error to perfection just like that. None of the shadows of God work that way. And the shadows are for our learning and example.

Life can't be changed drastically and be done wisely. Pure change comes slowly. But to lay the ground to have patients for a slow correction, a drastic thing has to happen in life.

Can Christian grace ignore this?

Brent

Some Change comes quickly, When we think of Saul, and his blinding vision on the road to damascas. I must admit you are right in the most of cases however there are times and places were an 180* change can happen and does. I have seen both.

Howie,

Two different things don't ever go on in the same thing and time. It's not science or spiritual either one. Since the beginning of man, no man has been one thing one day and another thing the next day in spiritual things. Not even in a miracle like healing is it true in the hidden things, because to have faith like that, it was brought through a long foreground to be healed in an instant. Appearance is not eternal. So there are things long worked out in the soul to give outward appearance of instant things.

Paul had no foreground to become the appearance of his future spiritual life unless you want to call his zeal as a Pharisee the foreground of his Damascus road experience. At any rate his Pharisee foreground was not his spiritual life laying blind in Ananias's house on Straight street in Damascus. But I don't deny his self called "blameless" religion didn't have some worth for him in Damascus, because there is profit in all labor, and a worker is worthy of his hire, and one must go down many road to prove his spiritness, and the road most traveled the longest for this is probably the religious road attaining this. So Paul was both instantly blinded with the scales of his blindness coming off quickly, and this was all appearance which had hidden foreground and which is more enduring and eternal and cannot be known over night so to speak. So as far as Paul being true spiritual it was not yet the case. His spiritual life coming had appearance in Damascus but no reality. What did he immediately do? He went and preached Christ to the religious people. Then he was 14 years in the Arabian desert which give no record of this wilderness time until he appeared back in Jerusalem a spiritual man. After Peter had walk with Jesus during most of Jesus' ministry, Jesus still told Peter, when you are converted go strengthen your brethren. In other words Peter was walking with Jesus religiously learning the spiritual road. Nothing overnight about it, was there? There are many gems in scriptures like this to dig out that show spiritual conversion is a long road that must be maintained with faith and grace to see it through.

I have been hasty sometimes in condemning religion, but then I see maybe I wasn't so much in error when I hear so much laborless grace claimed day and night by the religious. No wonder I have said such terrible things against the religious that have almost condemned me. But what hasn't slipped me into condemnation for it I would never have spoken so harmfully against the religious road if there was spiritual growth on it, yet I'll have to say, spiritual growth is so much of the time hidden, so again innocence has covered me growing to see this with not being so hasty speaking against the religion I have seen so much of on this forum. Because I had to what could be called a Damascus experience and fell into the arms of religion and immediately plunged headlong into preaching sincerely which there is a track record on these forums of.

So Howie this is what I meant about a "drastic thing has to happen in life" to make the appearance of instant change a spiritual things, which takes patient time to see through. It sets you out on many roads of error, but they have to be traveled and tried. In other words you're not raptured from a natural life to a spiritual life. And I might as well say it, because everyone will have to prove it for themselves, but a spiritual life is confused so often with a natural life by religious people. If they refuse to receive this they haven't had yet a drastic experience.

Brent

"Life can't be changed drastically and be done wisely. Pure change comes slowly."

I think that's the most Holdeman/Religous thing I've seen you say.

Paris, in my experience, the over-night change is the religious change. I believe it is the apposite of what you are saying here. Now I'm not saying a religious change is all bad either. If you are on heroin and living in the gutter, it is probably a good thing for you to be picked up by a carload of holdemans and steered towards a religious over-night change. But the real authentic stuff deep in you r soul comes slowly, very much like the way a tree becomes petrified. It is a cell-by-cell replacement and instead of some dramatized committment and then pulling a doily over the whole mess.

"I think that's the most Holdeman/Religous thing I've seen you say."

Vine,

I can always tell when I offend someone's religion.

Brent

LOL! No offence. I was just surprised to see that in the post. Guess I should have not put the "Y" word in there.

Vine,

Leaving the Holdeman church and joining another church is not a drastic change, it's religion as usual. Same thing for any other kind of church hopping.

Brent

I've found that yes religion is all the same. Where the challenge is... is remaining in the Kingdom agenda yet being implanted right with their agenda. Withdrawing is easy... but Jesus always returned. That becomes the difficult part.

<Vine,

Leaving the Holdeman church and joining another church is not a drastic change, it's religion as usual. Same thing for any other kind of church hopping.

Brent >




Brent if this is your honest opinion, I would have some serious questions of your life style and people relations. I grew up church hopping, there is no comparison church hopping and then to leaving the H after being there for 35 yrs. There is a huge gap in the difference between changing denominations every couple yrs and after 35 yrs leaving behind your children, grandchildren, in laws, friends of years of association and your total identity of who you are as a person both in your family circle and in the public realm.
As a man you have no clothing change to contend with, you just move on, You do not seem to make the same intense relational connections. People to not make a differentiation as to their treatment of you with or with out a covering, like they do to women.
I am not trying to put you or your experiences down in any way but I think it would be nice if you could be able to accept that your opionion is not the one the world rotates around and your experiences are yours and yours only. they are not the same ones the rest of us experience.
It's a little like the stories you write about the desert and flat Ks, I personally can't stand the place. but by reading your stories I can learn to see the beauty of the places you talk about and see them from a different perspective. I just wish you could give others the same consideration when you read what they write. For some of us life is not all just black and white like it seems to be for you, we have much variation and colors in our too.

Love and prayers, Locklady

Yes
Leaving the Holdeman Church after growing up "knowing it is the way the Truth and the Life" with it being Not only in your conscious mind but the sub conscious. There are other churches that use the same type of control and brain washing - However switching from the United Ecumenical to the Pentacostal, Or Luthern or Baptist to another Evangelical Church is definitly different than Leaving a group that will affect the communication with Brothers Sisters, Parents and Possibly Children. However if we search the scriptures and draw near unto God, I believe he will be with us when we make the decision to follow him closely.

<<after 35 yrs leaving behind your children, grandchildren, in laws, friends of years of association and your total identity of who you are as a person both in your family circle and in the public realm.>>

LL
Thank God you have those feelings. That means you have escaped without the hardened heart and cynical mind that afflicts so many.

Locklady,

I probably jumped the gun again on that statement. So I listened to what you wrote.

Brent

If I may be so bold... People, you are missing the point: You may have left the church (by choice or by force) but the church really never leaves you.

"If I may be so bold... People, you are missing the point: You may have left the church (by choice or by force) but the church really never leaves you."


Which church, Vine? Because you make it sounds like the church one leaves or is forced from is worthy to miss you.

Brent

what I meant by that was that you take your encounter with God with you. And that context that you were in at that time remains a part of you... for good or bad. In that sence you... to use words for understanding, "judge" whatever you encounter whereever you go to.

Question. For all the talk, Do you ever need God?