Number Eight
Posted: Sun Sep 09, 2012 9:27 pmby saint701Fri Aug 05, 2011 7:11 pm Forum: The Book of Romans, Topic: The Mystery of the Mind of Christ Replies: 2Views: 466
The Mystery of the Mind of Christ
by saint701 » Sat Jul 30, 2011 6:27 pm
http://www.examiner.com/spirituality-in ... ist-within
Hello All,
Blessings!
Good day St. Louisans. We welcome a little cloud cover this morning which should be greatly appreciated by all you shoppers out there.
Our subject under scrutiny today is the mind of Christ. We touched on the subject a tad in our last article, “Your companion in tribulation part 2.” We presented Saint Gianna as an example of a Christian suffering tribulation, and an example of a choice one might have to make under such circumstances such as hers. Our reference was Archdiocese of St. Louis sermon by Archbishop Raymond L. Burke, “Be Not Afraid!” Publication date: 01/19/07, page 2, paragraph 2.
Now one might ask how giving one’s own life for another is the mind of Christ in operation, but one’s response to that question would be, how could it be otherwise? Saint Gianna became one with our Lord and His sufferings, words, and love on our behalf, and if one, then of the same mind. Saint Gianna demonstrated by her act of selflessness she had the mind of Christ.
Certainly becoming one with the Father and the Son must be our highest priority as a Christian. We keep our Lord’s words and those of His Apostles. Such is a must, as His words give us the guide lines for getting on the path to glory. We become born again and baptized in the Holy Spirit. Such is our beginning and no other beginning will do.
After the right beginning we must stick with the program of growth and development given to us by our Lord’s and His sent ones, such being the Spirit of God leading, teaching, comforting and guiding us into all understanding. This is where the battle for the mind of Christ begins.
Our spirit wars against the flesh and the flesh against our spirit. Such is confusing. It is normal and natural for us to think, feel and act out of the flesh as we always have. As Paul tells us, we are still carnal, babes, knowing little of our spirit’s moving as directed by the Holy Spirit. How quickly we abandon our carnal mind for our Lord’s spiritual mind rests upon the strength of our will and the mind of our soul in recognizing the leading of our spirit and obeying it. It helps if we follow Peter’s advice.
1Pet.2
[2] As newborn babies, desire the sinceremilk of the word that ye may grow thereby.
Studying the New Testament for the purpose of learning spiritual things helps us learn to side with our spirit some. The New Testament really is a perfect guide for living a spiritual life if we will follow its directions, but having a spiritual understanding of such to will and to do just reborn would be considered highly unusual. Normal would be a tendency to side with the mind of our flesh because we are babies. In this time of spiritual renewal perhaps on the cusp of our Lord’s coming having a mentor that understands spiritual things would be of great help in our Bible study and walk. Unfortunately in this day and age such men and women are hard to find.
Notwithstanding, becoming spiritual is not difficult. It is just not normal. We really do need brothers and sisters around us that walk in the Spirit to help us understand what we are going through. However, in this time of greed many of our brothers and sisters are of little help to us if their position in the world keeps their mind in the world, and we can’t tell any difference between them and it. Such is more often the case than not. And such is why we recommend those new born of the Spirit whether yet baptized in the Holy Spirit or not, just desiring to grow spiritually log into christianityoasis.com.
There are several spiritual men and women online there for no other purpose than helping us understand the Bible and grow spiritually. They have no desire to separate us from our denomination or bilk us of money. These love God and live by faith the old fashioned way. They walk in the Spirit. Their need to keep the lights on at Christianity Oasis is plainly posted each month. Normally their entire need is much less than what some of us tithe to our home church each month, yet these provide far more for spiritual growth and understanding than many of our home churches do.
We highly recommend the online watering hole as a place for fellowship and growth in the knowledge of our Lord. One should prefer mentoring in the way, the truth, and the life of our Lord as such will lessen the severity of our chastisement as we plod ignorantly through a journey that presents many dangers.
Without spiritual guidance from those spiritual we are left with conflicting minds at work within us and our spiritual growth becomes one of trial and error. The Holy Spirit will simply toss us out of the nest and we will have to learn to be spiritual the hard way. Such has been our lot here, the Spiritual School of hard knocks. But such is good. We learn to obey the leading of the Holy Spirit through the things we suffer. Our flesh will say do this, and our spirit will say no, don’t do that. Or our spirit will lead us in a direction that is opposite of the way we used to do things before. And every time we side with the flesh when both minds are present, our Lord will whip our little hiney until our mind gets a new revelation as Pastor John Hagee says.
So how do we know when we have the mind of Christ? Actually we have the mind of Christ from the day we are born again. We simply have little understanding of how our spiritual mind works to begin with. We will not know we have our Lord’s mind until we become spiritual.
When will we become spiritual? We will become spiritual after we have suffered enough, or listened to our mentors and practiced exercising the mind of our soul to discern good and evil because we want the spiritual life of God. Such may take quite some time. It may seem to us we have lost our way in the darkness, but such is just part of the process. In time the lights will come back on. It will seem as if we have been living in a house without electricity for a long, long time because the connection to the power source is being worked on. Such is actually the case. Our spirit that the Lord Jesus has given us of Himself must be completely formed in us before it is the unbreakable device our Lord uses to keep the lights on the rest of our journey on into glory.
With the lights back on the Holy Spirit will begin dealing with us in a positive way. Our spirit is restored, established, and strengthened. We finally come to know our spirit, that such is now a life with a mind distinctly unique and entirely separated from that of our flesh and the world. Our spirit, that life which the Lord has given us of Himself, is our connection to the mind of Christ. Our spirit receives from the Holy Spirit that which is from the mind of Christ that we are both to will and to do.
In our case we were led to ask our Heavenly Dad for the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of our Him. Our petition was granted immediately as we asked according to our Father’s will. Such put the finishing touches on the device our Lord had furnished us with to keep His light on us, such being the spirit He has given us of Himself.
With the light of our Lord back upon us the eyes of our understanding became enlightened. Rather than having a voracious appetite to read the Bible to get some light, the Bible became the light the Holy Spirit brings to us with understanding and wisdom. In other words, the light of our Lord comes to us. We do not have to sit for hours reading scripture to gain an inch of understanding any longer.
We remember when we were a babe in the Lord wondering why it was that the Holy Spirit wasn’t taking from the Lord, showing us of those things, and of things to come. We realize now, that as a spiritual baby we couldn’t eat meat, and we should have been more patient. We could have waited on many things and been a whole lot better off, but we weren’t, and our Lord had to say to us many, many times over the years; keep on coming, don’t quit, and hang in there. We chose to learn things the hard way, no guts, no glory, fiery trials and all!
When we become of full age and ready the Holy Spirit takes from our Lord Jesus those things He would have us know and shows them to us. We come to understand that those mysterious things that used to pop into our mind from out of nowhere were not of some mysterious subconscious mind, but rather light from our spiritual mind.
We discover that we are able to interact with our mind of Christ and learn to discern the subtle differences in thoughts that come to us through His mind. We learn to detect when our Lord approves or disapproves of our way of doing something.
In our case here is an example. We got in the habit of not getting right to work each morning on those things our Lord would have us write about. After a few days of such we began to sense something was amiss. Concerned, we directed our spirit to look to the Lord for that thing we were in error on. Shortly thereafter the thought that we weren’t putting the Lord first flashed across our mind. We corrected the mistake immediately. The negative feeling disappeared.
Another goof of ours was telling our Lord that we preferred that He flash those things He would have us write about across the eyes of our understanding. We sensed that our Lord got hot under the collar right quick about that request. Only seconds earlier His thought of what we should write upon next had come into the mind of our soul rather than through the eyes of our understanding. When we spoke our mind about the matter the thought vanished. We repented quickly of our own will in His leading and implored Him to return His thought back into the mind of our soul. Such came back about an hour later.
If we are really sincere and eager to please our Lord we will become of quick understanding when discerning His way, and quick to look to our spirit if something seems amiss. In all cases it is our own spirit Christ has given us of Himself that looks to the Holy Spirit for the truth. As much as our spirit knows those things true in us, the Holy Spirit knows those things true in the mind of Lord. Directing our spirit to seek an answer about whatever it is we are sensing brings a quick reply. Such flashes across the eyes of our understanding in an instant. We might not like what we see as the Holy Spirit consistently leads us to be more reliant on Him. We do not walk in the Spirit over night, but each new step of faith we are led to take makes us that much more rooted and grounded in the Lord. When we do what He wills we will know that He has led us.
It’s been a long road for this old boy. We have truly tired of learning the hard way. We now know how to keep spiritual things on the up and up. We keep our Lord on our side when we are quick to do His will, quick to repent if we miss it, quick to dismiss being angry about anything, quick to forgive everyone of everything they do that might offend us personally, quick to love those that are of Him, and pray for those that aren’t, or are, but have needs.
When we are ready we will see things to come. We will see better ways of doing things. We will not run through a stop sign when our intuition says don’t do that. Our spirit will control our temperament. As the Lord has taught us we will abide in Him. We will know that we have the mind of Christ.
The mind of Christ comes to us in the person of the Spirit of Truth. The Spirit of Truth reveals the mind of our Lord to our spirit who in turn shows the same to our soul.
We must always remember that the seat of our will is in the mind of our soul. We must understand if we would go on to know the Lord in His many splendors, the will in the mind of our soul must constantly be directed toward finding, seeing, understanding, and doing those things our Lord would have us do. We must learn to turn away from the mind of our flesh, and the mind of the world, and learn to discern the good of our Lord from the evil of the devil, and side with the mind of Christ that is within us.
We will understand the mystery of the mind of Christ within and His mind’s various workings within us if we keep coming, don’t quit, and hang in there until we are spiritually mature enough to handle the responsibility of obeying the Holy Spirit, the spirit God has given us of Himself.
Blessings!
Love, In Christ Jesus, saint
The Mystery of the Mind of Christ
by saint701 » Sat Jul 30, 2011 6:27 pm
http://www.examiner.com/spirituality-in ... ist-within
Hello All,
Blessings!
Good day St. Louisans. We welcome a little cloud cover this morning which should be greatly appreciated by all you shoppers out there.
Our subject under scrutiny today is the mind of Christ. We touched on the subject a tad in our last article, “Your companion in tribulation part 2.” We presented Saint Gianna as an example of a Christian suffering tribulation, and an example of a choice one might have to make under such circumstances such as hers. Our reference was Archdiocese of St. Louis sermon by Archbishop Raymond L. Burke, “Be Not Afraid!” Publication date: 01/19/07, page 2, paragraph 2.
Now one might ask how giving one’s own life for another is the mind of Christ in operation, but one’s response to that question would be, how could it be otherwise? Saint Gianna became one with our Lord and His sufferings, words, and love on our behalf, and if one, then of the same mind. Saint Gianna demonstrated by her act of selflessness she had the mind of Christ.
Certainly becoming one with the Father and the Son must be our highest priority as a Christian. We keep our Lord’s words and those of His Apostles. Such is a must, as His words give us the guide lines for getting on the path to glory. We become born again and baptized in the Holy Spirit. Such is our beginning and no other beginning will do.
After the right beginning we must stick with the program of growth and development given to us by our Lord’s and His sent ones, such being the Spirit of God leading, teaching, comforting and guiding us into all understanding. This is where the battle for the mind of Christ begins.
Our spirit wars against the flesh and the flesh against our spirit. Such is confusing. It is normal and natural for us to think, feel and act out of the flesh as we always have. As Paul tells us, we are still carnal, babes, knowing little of our spirit’s moving as directed by the Holy Spirit. How quickly we abandon our carnal mind for our Lord’s spiritual mind rests upon the strength of our will and the mind of our soul in recognizing the leading of our spirit and obeying it. It helps if we follow Peter’s advice.
1Pet.2
[2] As newborn babies, desire the sinceremilk of the word that ye may grow thereby.
Studying the New Testament for the purpose of learning spiritual things helps us learn to side with our spirit some. The New Testament really is a perfect guide for living a spiritual life if we will follow its directions, but having a spiritual understanding of such to will and to do just reborn would be considered highly unusual. Normal would be a tendency to side with the mind of our flesh because we are babies. In this time of spiritual renewal perhaps on the cusp of our Lord’s coming having a mentor that understands spiritual things would be of great help in our Bible study and walk. Unfortunately in this day and age such men and women are hard to find.
Notwithstanding, becoming spiritual is not difficult. It is just not normal. We really do need brothers and sisters around us that walk in the Spirit to help us understand what we are going through. However, in this time of greed many of our brothers and sisters are of little help to us if their position in the world keeps their mind in the world, and we can’t tell any difference between them and it. Such is more often the case than not. And such is why we recommend those new born of the Spirit whether yet baptized in the Holy Spirit or not, just desiring to grow spiritually log into christianityoasis.com.
There are several spiritual men and women online there for no other purpose than helping us understand the Bible and grow spiritually. They have no desire to separate us from our denomination or bilk us of money. These love God and live by faith the old fashioned way. They walk in the Spirit. Their need to keep the lights on at Christianity Oasis is plainly posted each month. Normally their entire need is much less than what some of us tithe to our home church each month, yet these provide far more for spiritual growth and understanding than many of our home churches do.
We highly recommend the online watering hole as a place for fellowship and growth in the knowledge of our Lord. One should prefer mentoring in the way, the truth, and the life of our Lord as such will lessen the severity of our chastisement as we plod ignorantly through a journey that presents many dangers.
Without spiritual guidance from those spiritual we are left with conflicting minds at work within us and our spiritual growth becomes one of trial and error. The Holy Spirit will simply toss us out of the nest and we will have to learn to be spiritual the hard way. Such has been our lot here, the Spiritual School of hard knocks. But such is good. We learn to obey the leading of the Holy Spirit through the things we suffer. Our flesh will say do this, and our spirit will say no, don’t do that. Or our spirit will lead us in a direction that is opposite of the way we used to do things before. And every time we side with the flesh when both minds are present, our Lord will whip our little hiney until our mind gets a new revelation as Pastor John Hagee says.
So how do we know when we have the mind of Christ? Actually we have the mind of Christ from the day we are born again. We simply have little understanding of how our spiritual mind works to begin with. We will not know we have our Lord’s mind until we become spiritual.
When will we become spiritual? We will become spiritual after we have suffered enough, or listened to our mentors and practiced exercising the mind of our soul to discern good and evil because we want the spiritual life of God. Such may take quite some time. It may seem to us we have lost our way in the darkness, but such is just part of the process. In time the lights will come back on. It will seem as if we have been living in a house without electricity for a long, long time because the connection to the power source is being worked on. Such is actually the case. Our spirit that the Lord Jesus has given us of Himself must be completely formed in us before it is the unbreakable device our Lord uses to keep the lights on the rest of our journey on into glory.
With the lights back on the Holy Spirit will begin dealing with us in a positive way. Our spirit is restored, established, and strengthened. We finally come to know our spirit, that such is now a life with a mind distinctly unique and entirely separated from that of our flesh and the world. Our spirit, that life which the Lord has given us of Himself, is our connection to the mind of Christ. Our spirit receives from the Holy Spirit that which is from the mind of Christ that we are both to will and to do.
In our case we were led to ask our Heavenly Dad for the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of our Him. Our petition was granted immediately as we asked according to our Father’s will. Such put the finishing touches on the device our Lord had furnished us with to keep His light on us, such being the spirit He has given us of Himself.
With the light of our Lord back upon us the eyes of our understanding became enlightened. Rather than having a voracious appetite to read the Bible to get some light, the Bible became the light the Holy Spirit brings to us with understanding and wisdom. In other words, the light of our Lord comes to us. We do not have to sit for hours reading scripture to gain an inch of understanding any longer.
We remember when we were a babe in the Lord wondering why it was that the Holy Spirit wasn’t taking from the Lord, showing us of those things, and of things to come. We realize now, that as a spiritual baby we couldn’t eat meat, and we should have been more patient. We could have waited on many things and been a whole lot better off, but we weren’t, and our Lord had to say to us many, many times over the years; keep on coming, don’t quit, and hang in there. We chose to learn things the hard way, no guts, no glory, fiery trials and all!
When we become of full age and ready the Holy Spirit takes from our Lord Jesus those things He would have us know and shows them to us. We come to understand that those mysterious things that used to pop into our mind from out of nowhere were not of some mysterious subconscious mind, but rather light from our spiritual mind.
We discover that we are able to interact with our mind of Christ and learn to discern the subtle differences in thoughts that come to us through His mind. We learn to detect when our Lord approves or disapproves of our way of doing something.
In our case here is an example. We got in the habit of not getting right to work each morning on those things our Lord would have us write about. After a few days of such we began to sense something was amiss. Concerned, we directed our spirit to look to the Lord for that thing we were in error on. Shortly thereafter the thought that we weren’t putting the Lord first flashed across our mind. We corrected the mistake immediately. The negative feeling disappeared.
Another goof of ours was telling our Lord that we preferred that He flash those things He would have us write about across the eyes of our understanding. We sensed that our Lord got hot under the collar right quick about that request. Only seconds earlier His thought of what we should write upon next had come into the mind of our soul rather than through the eyes of our understanding. When we spoke our mind about the matter the thought vanished. We repented quickly of our own will in His leading and implored Him to return His thought back into the mind of our soul. Such came back about an hour later.
If we are really sincere and eager to please our Lord we will become of quick understanding when discerning His way, and quick to look to our spirit if something seems amiss. In all cases it is our own spirit Christ has given us of Himself that looks to the Holy Spirit for the truth. As much as our spirit knows those things true in us, the Holy Spirit knows those things true in the mind of Lord. Directing our spirit to seek an answer about whatever it is we are sensing brings a quick reply. Such flashes across the eyes of our understanding in an instant. We might not like what we see as the Holy Spirit consistently leads us to be more reliant on Him. We do not walk in the Spirit over night, but each new step of faith we are led to take makes us that much more rooted and grounded in the Lord. When we do what He wills we will know that He has led us.
It’s been a long road for this old boy. We have truly tired of learning the hard way. We now know how to keep spiritual things on the up and up. We keep our Lord on our side when we are quick to do His will, quick to repent if we miss it, quick to dismiss being angry about anything, quick to forgive everyone of everything they do that might offend us personally, quick to love those that are of Him, and pray for those that aren’t, or are, but have needs.
When we are ready we will see things to come. We will see better ways of doing things. We will not run through a stop sign when our intuition says don’t do that. Our spirit will control our temperament. As the Lord has taught us we will abide in Him. We will know that we have the mind of Christ.
The mind of Christ comes to us in the person of the Spirit of Truth. The Spirit of Truth reveals the mind of our Lord to our spirit who in turn shows the same to our soul.
We must always remember that the seat of our will is in the mind of our soul. We must understand if we would go on to know the Lord in His many splendors, the will in the mind of our soul must constantly be directed toward finding, seeing, understanding, and doing those things our Lord would have us do. We must learn to turn away from the mind of our flesh, and the mind of the world, and learn to discern the good of our Lord from the evil of the devil, and side with the mind of Christ that is within us.
We will understand the mystery of the mind of Christ within and His mind’s various workings within us if we keep coming, don’t quit, and hang in there until we are spiritually mature enough to handle the responsibility of obeying the Holy Spirit, the spirit God has given us of Himself.
Blessings!
Love, In Christ Jesus, saint