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Post by elizabeth on Feb 5, 2014 18:57:24 GMT
When I rest in the Lord Jesus, then I begin to find all my joy and strength in Him, and I occupy myself with Him. This is the first step, or foundation to true devotedness. I do not become devoted in the true sense until I have found my rest in Him. I am, up to this, rather looking to receive from Him. I am more an object to myself; but when I find how fully I am an object to Him, then my heart is at liberty to make Him its Object, He having made me His.
Mr. Stoney quote from Position to Person, Miles Stanford P. 16
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Becka
Numbers' Donkey
Spurgeon Addict
Posts: 169 
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Post by Becka on Feb 5, 2014 20:17:21 GMT
Yes, this is Truth. I can't count the times when I'll be reading the Word and the Holy Spirit "flips" Scripture to be from the perspective of Christ. The above quote reminds me of when the Spirit "flipped" Luke 12:34 - "For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." We know Christ's heart is with us because of all He endured to purchase us upon that cross. And we know from Scripture His children are His diadem and His treasure (Isaiah 62:3, Malachi 3:17).
Once you "get" that, that the God of the universe treasures His masterpieces (Eph. 2:10), anything less than absolute adoration of Yeshua of Nazareth as OUR Treasure is theft of His Glory, in my opinion.
EDIT: Let me just say, after you UNDERSTAND that Truth, it would be robbery of His Glory... I'm not accusing anyone who is new in the faith or not in the same place spiritually of robbing God - these truths are Spiritually discerned. If a believer discerns it and ignores it, then there's likely idols in that believer's heart because I honestly cannot fathom anyone who perceives the deep, deep love of Jesus for them and responds with a lukewarm, "Meh."
~~Becka
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Post by elizabeth on Feb 5, 2014 20:29:52 GMT
Becka, I realize this truth. Sometimes though, I don't feel like praying, or worshipping - I just do it. The feelings, enthusiasm, joy, adoration, quickly come, that's what I've found.
I've learned to cease being the object - but sometimes I have to sit down and make a conscious effort of do this.
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Post by Benjamin on Feb 5, 2014 20:35:06 GMT
This is the problem with our human existence. Our experience is so utterly wrapped up in ourselves that we can't think outside of that box.
...and yet the Christian life calls us to die to self and live for Christ, which is utterly alien to us both in philosophy and practicality. Living for Christ, then, isn't so much about what Christ can do for you (though there absolutely is that!), but about what you must do for Christ.
"Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me."
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Post by elizabeth on Feb 5, 2014 21:08:32 GMT
I long for the time when there will be the new heaven and the new earth. Satan will have been dealt with and sin will be a thing of the past. The centre of our existence will be God, everything will revolve around Him. How wonderful that is going to be. 
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Post by morningstar on Feb 5, 2014 21:29:14 GMT
It will be truly a dream come true...I feel like Paul at times, wrestling with the flesh, and saying Ohhhh...if I were only out of this body and with the Lord. It's a daily battle, but His Grace is sufficient for us, and it won't be long before were gone on to our REAL HOME.....
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Post by elizabeth on Feb 5, 2014 21:58:08 GMT
Morningstar, I know exactly what you mean. Living the Romans Chapter 7 experience is a nightmare I am so familiar with. This helped me enormously, so I'm posting it here. It might help you.
Chapter 12—The Cross
(excerpt)
There is no victory for us which was not first His. What we are to experience He purchased, and what He purchased for us we ought to experience. The beginning of the life of holiness is a faith in the crucified Saviour which sees more than His substitutionary work. It is a faith which sees myself identified with Christ in His death and resurrection."
Actually, our Father has trained every one of us for clear-cut, explicit faith in this second aspect of Calvary: our individual identification with the Lord Jesus in His death to sin and rising onto resurrection ground. This training taught us thoroughly in the first realm: believing and appropriating the finished work of His dying for our sins justification. Now we are asked just as definitely to believe and appropriate the further aspect: "Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him" (Rom. 6:6); "Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God" (v. 11).
Our intelligent faith, standing on the facts of Calvary, gives the Holy Spirit freedom to bring that finished work into our daily lives. We stood on the fact of His dying for our sins, and this act of faith allowed the Holy Spirit to give us our freedom from the penalty of sin—justification. Now, once we come to see the fact of the further aspect, we are urged in the Word to stand on the liberating truth of our dying with Christ in His death to sin, which allows the Holy Spirit to bring into our lives freedom from the power, the enslavement, of sin—progressive sanctification. And of course when we stand with Him in glory, we will be forever free from the presence of sin—entirely sanctified and glorified.
"As our Substitute He went to the cross alone, without us, to pay the penalty of our sins; as our Representative, He took us with Him to the cross, and there, in the sight of God, we all died together with Christ. We may be forgiven because He died in our stead; we may be delivered because we died with Him. God’s way of deliverance for us, a race of hopeless incurables, is to put us away in the cross of His Son, and then to make a new beginning by re-creating us in union with Him, the Risen, Living One (II Cor. 5:17). It is the Holy Spirit who will make these great facts real and true in our experience as we cooperate with Him; and so the plague of our hearts will be stayed, and we shall be transformed into the likeness of Christ."
"Through the crucifixion of the old man with Christ the believer has been made dead unto sin, he has been completely freed from sin’s power, he has been taken beyond sin’s grip, the claim of sin upon him has been nullified. This is the flawless provision of God’s grace but this accomplished fact can only become an actual reality in the believer’s experience as faith lays hold upon it and enables him moment by moment, day by day, though temptation assail him, ‘to reckon’ it true. As he reckons, the Holy Spirit makes real; as he continues to reckon, the Holy Spirit continues to make real. Sin need have no more power over the believer than he grants it through unbelief. If he is alive unto sin it will be due largely to the fact that he has failed to reckon himself dead unto sin" (Ruth Paxson).
The Reformation brought into focus once again the emphasis upon spiritual birth, without which there can be no beginning. What is lacking amongst believers to this day is the proper emphasis on growth—not just to be saved, and heaven by and by. What sort of salvation would we have if our Father simply saved us from the penalty of our sins and then left us on our own to deal with the power of sin in our Christian life and walk? But most believers feel this is about as far as He went and are struggling to get on the best they can, with His help. And this is the Galatian error, so prominent even now throughout born-again circles. We must be brought back to the two basics: freed from the penalty of sin by His finished work; freed from the power of sin by His finished work. "Justified by faith" (Gal. 3:24); "We walk by faith" (II Cor. 5:7); "As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him" (Col. 2:6).
We are not left to deal with the old life ourselves; it has been dealt with by Christ on the cross. This is the fact which must be known, since on that fact is built the New Testament principle and doctrine of holiness. In other words, Calvary is as much the foundation of sanctification as of justification. Both gifts spring from the same work and are two aspects of the same salvation.
Now, as long as the believer does not know this dual aspect of his salvation, the best he can do is seek to handle his sins via confession (I John 1:9)—that is, after the damage has been done! This takes care of the penalty of the product but not the source. Is it not time we allowed the Holy Spirit to get at the source and cut off this stream of sins before they are committed? Is this not infinitely better than the wreckage caused by sin, even though confessed? When believers get sick and tired of spinning year after year in a spiritual squirrel cage—sinning, confessing, but then sinning again—they will be ready for God’s answer to the source of sin, which is death to self, brought forth from the completed work of the cross.
"When God’s light first shines into our heart our one cry is for forgiveness, for we realize that we have committed sins before Him; but once we have known forgiveness of sins, we make a new discovery—the discovery of sin, and we realize that we have the nature of a sinner. There is an inward inclination to sin. There is a power within that draws us to sin, and when that power breaks out we commit sins. We may seek and receive forgiveness, but then we sin again; and life goes on in a vicious circle—sinning and being forgiven, but then sinning again. We appreciate God’s forgiveness, but we want something more than that, we want deliverance. We need forgiveness for what we have done, but we need deliverance from what we are."
Our reckoning on the finished work of our death to sin, in Christ at Calvary, is God’s one way of deliverance—there is no other way because that is the way He did it. We learned not to add to a finished work in the matter of justification, and now we must learn not to add to the finished work of emancipation. We will be freed when we enter His prepared freedom—there is no other.
"The believer can never overcome the old man even by the power of the new apart from the death of Christ, and therefore the death of Christ unto sin is indispensable, and unless the cross is made the basis upon which he overcomes the old man, he only drops into another form of morality; in other words, he is seeking by self-effort to overcome self, and the struggle is a hopeless one" (C. Usher).
Marcus Rainford refused to stop short of God’s ultimate for freedom: "It is not to be a mere passing impression of the mind when we are undisturbed by active temptation; no mere happy frame of spirit when under temporary refreshing from the presence of the Lord; no self-flattering consciousness of a heart exercised in good works; from none of these is the believer to infer his practical mastery over sin, but on the ground that Christ died unto sin, and [he] liveth unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord."
"I must recognize that the enemy within the camp—the flesh, the old nature, self, I, the old Adam is a usurper. By faith I must reckon him to be in the place that God put him—crucified with Christ. I must realize that now my life is hid with Christ in God; that He is my life" (Ian Thomas).
Principles of Spiritual Growth, Miles Stanford Click here Fair Use For Educational or Discussion Purposes
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