Christian Fellowship Community Group
A safe place for Christians who Love Jesus Christ to meet and ask for prayer and share scriptures from the bible. We value the posting of Christian music, poems, stories and also personal testimonies. Please let us know your needs, concerns and have some fun getting to know each other. We treat each other with respect.
The wisdom of the fathers
SPIRITUAL ADDICTION, REPUTATION AND THE CROSS!
The Christian soul must partake of, touch and embrace the Lord's own experiences, which is an enigmatic state. The way of the Christian's soul is but a constant succession of encounters with the eternal cross, with ignominy and confusion.
Many people abandon themselves, quite successfully, to certain encounters with the cross, but not to ALL such encounters. One thing they can NEVER prevail on themselves to allow: that their REPUTATION in the sight of men, BE TAKEN AWAY. and yet it is here, at this point and similar points, where God is aiming. He will bring you even there!
Your Lord intends for your soul to REALLY die to the ways of the self nature! He sometimes permits an apparent (not for real) mistake to be made, so that your reputation will be destroyed in the eyes of men.
I once knew of a person of the interior way who came upon a number of most terrible crosses. Among them was the loss of her reputation. Her reputation was something to which he was extremely attached. She could not bring herself to give up her reputation. She begged God that He give her any cross but that: thus she formally REFUSED her consent to that cross.
She told me that since that time there has been no spiritual progress in her life. She has remained where she was! So total and so fatal was this reservation to her progress that, since that time, the Lord has never once given her humiliations in the sight of men; NOR, since that time, has He given her the grace of spiritual progress!
God will sometimes call on a Christian to turn back from the inward and so apply himself to things without. Why? BECAUSE THAT PERSON HAS BECOME ADDICTED TO AN INWARD RETREAT. Many a believer is quite certain that he will never have to bear THIS cross. But if leaving inward solitude is the thing necessary in order for us to encounter the cross, then that is what the Lord will do. And He really does sometimes separate a Christian from spiritual things which - perhaps unknown to himself - the Christian is addicted to or prideful in.
(by Jeanne Guyon)
SPIRITUAL ADDICTION, REPUTATION AND THE CROSS!
The Christian soul must partake of, touch and embrace the Lord's own experiences, which is an enigmatic state. The way of the Christian's soul is but a constant succession of encounters with the eternal cross, with ignominy and confusion.
Many people abandon themselves, quite successfully, to certain encounters with the cross, but not to ALL such encounters. One thing they can NEVER prevail on themselves to allow: that their REPUTATION in the sight of men, BE TAKEN AWAY. and yet it is here, at this point and similar points, where God is aiming. He will bring you even there!
Your Lord intends for your soul to REALLY die to the ways of the self nature! He sometimes permits an apparent (not for real) mistake to be made, so that your reputation will be destroyed in the eyes of men.
I once knew of a person of the interior way who came upon a number of most terrible crosses. Among them was the loss of her reputation. Her reputation was something to which he was extremely attached. She could not bring herself to give up her reputation. She begged God that He give her any cross but that: thus she formally REFUSED her consent to that cross.
She told me that since that time there has been no spiritual progress in her life. She has remained where she was! So total and so fatal was this reservation to her progress that, since that time, the Lord has never once given her humiliations in the sight of men; NOR, since that time, has He given her the grace of spiritual progress!
God will sometimes call on a Christian to turn back from the inward and so apply himself to things without. Why? BECAUSE THAT PERSON HAS BECOME ADDICTED TO AN INWARD RETREAT. Many a believer is quite certain that he will never have to bear THIS cross. But if leaving inward solitude is the thing necessary in order for us to encounter the cross, then that is what the Lord will do. And He really does sometimes separate a Christian from spiritual things which - perhaps unknown to himself - the Christian is addicted to or prideful in.
(by Jeanne Guyon)
NYyankeedeb
thanks for sharing...so true...
Beryl367
interesting Thanks
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I have 3 kids. 24. 17. 15. My 17 yr old has become super defiant. He and his 15 yr old sister have on their own decision stopped going to their dads because he and his household is so toxic.My 15 yr old and myself feel like we have to tip toe around my son who is 17. And physically towers over us and out weighs us. He has become emotionally abusive and on the verge of becoming physically...
