Spiritual Ponderings

Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the LORD, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him.... Now Joshua was clothed with filthy garments and standing before the angel. (Zechariah 3:1, 3) Satan relies on our faults of character as his excuse to demand the withdrawal of Christ's protection from our life. Satan is the one who has clothed us with filthy rags. Those filthy rags are called sin and shame and are identified as an attitude of dis-allegiance to God. Satan's accusations center around the fairness of God. Christ is the one who causes our iniquity to pass from us and transfers them to Himself. He puts on us His own robe woven in the loom of heaven. To be 'in Christ' must be synonymous with being covered with the identity and filled in character with the disposition of Jesus Christ. The robe has Jesus Christ clearly woven into the fabric as its identity; it totally and clearly belongs to Him and not to us, yet He declares t...

There are two kinds of law – prescriptive and descriptive. Prescriptive law involves arbitrary rules made up to control people and are invented by people. They are easily changed and often contradict each other. They require that someone be in control and they also need arbitrary punishments to be associated with them and artificially enforced by someone in power. This system supposes that by punishing people for violations of such laws that enough fear of punishment and associated pain will be produced that they and others will not want to break those laws again. Descriptive law is a totally different situation. Descriptive law is simply describing natural principles of cause and effect. Principles are not arbitrary or made up; they are fundamentals of how reality works and are unavoidable. Most are familiar with what we call the laws of nature, the principles of physics, chemistry, etc. We have little problem believing in these laws and understanding that if we violate them the con...

What do people have in mind when they think about being filled with the Spirit of God? How do they think that Spirit will make them feel, cause them to act, empower them to do or be? Why would the Spirit of God cause a person to be or act any differently that it caused Jesus to act and live, the attitude of Jesus as best described in Philippians 2? If our notion of the effects of God's Spirit pouring into our lives looks anything different than the effects on Jesus' life as described there, then we are likely deceived about the whole idea of being filled with His Spirit. We are really longing to be filled with some other spirit, which is a rather frightening revelation I would think. Why are our assumptions about the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the last days so different from the descriptions of the fruit of the Spirit and the character and attitude of Jesus mentioned above? Why do we have ideas related to the outpouring of the Spirit connected with suddenly having lots ...