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Originally Posted by I tell the truth
Ok. Sorry for the delay in the updates of the training. It's been a lot of the same that we have heard for years, not matter what the book. WL has been called the minister of the age and this ministry the one of the age. Ron said if you come in from Christianity and have had some kind of position the leaven has to be purged. We can't forget about mentioning of the natural man and flesh. Minoru said everything of your old man is utterly useless and will be rejected by the church if you attempt to keep it.
Once again the local localities have been mentioned as the only churches and the expression and enlargement. I don't need to mention everything many of you have all heard it. As always a few corny jokes. Ron said that Moses was God's expression and the acting God. And that he had a 80 year term of the FTTA. James said that Jesus trained His disciples for 40 days and that we should instead now make trainings 40 days.
The training is on Kings so there is a lot of talk of being dealt with, trained, transformed and becoming a army. Alot of talk of how you are like unbelievers and Christians but different. That you can have a family, job, etc. But not other things and don't love your family or job more than Christ and the Church.
Also, you can't forget that every speaker has to mention a WL or WN story each message.
I had to add something after tonight's message. The message was on grafting. I wanted to ask all of you if God gives us freewill, then why does the recovery focus so much on God being out life and strongly influencing on choice? Ricky said that we need to listen to the Spirit and most of what He tells us is no. No to our phone, no to what we are about to say and no to what we are about to do. Also that we are constantly under God's judgement. And that we are also under self judgement as we Amen God's judgement. Further, if we are asked to serve or if we want to serve we need to see we are unable and unworthy.
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I tell the truth,
Thanks once again for your helpful update of what's being spoken at the training.
Regarding your question you added to your post about free will and God's influence, if you read the first few chapters in Genesis (not the ministry, but the actual Bible), you'll see that God put the first man in the garden and.......gave him a WHOLE LOT of choices. Meaning, a lot of things he was free to choose from. God made a big garden and filled it with a variety of trees, and told Adam he was "free to eat" of every single tree except for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
God has given man much more freedom and free will to choose and enjoy good things than the ministry will ever present to you. Instead, the ministry labels all those good things as bad, death, rebellious, etc., thus making their own little group the only acceptable thing left.
So in much of our lives, we are given the freedom to make our own responsible choices and then accept the consequences of those choices. Of course we have the Bible as guideposts, and I would also agree with Ricky that the Holy Spirit is our guide too. I would also personally agree with Ricky that often what we hear is "no". This doesn't mean we never get a "yes". What this means is that we may have many pathways as options, all of which are good, okay, and acceptable, and we have the freedom to choose, AND to be perfectly honest, we might not get some kind of "internal registration" about that. In other words, we don't get some audible "yes", some visible green light, some clouds parting showing us the way. We have free will to choose how we see fit. But what we DO hear sometimes, are the no's, the red lights, the darkening skies.
Do you get the difference? In the Recovery, it's like a "no" means "no", but "nothing" also means "no". And then this produces scenarios where you cannot do anything unless you specifically get a "yes" or "a leading" or "a shining" or "the peace"......when that doesn't typically happen for most things. The reality is "nothing" simply means you have not gotten a "no" and you should feel free in Christ to continue on until you get a "no", if you even ever get a "no". The former is paralyzing via anxiety, the latter can, ironically, be paralyzing in it's freedom. But it's a freedom in Christ.
Like in the local church, everything is a red light unless you get explicit green from God. But God has actually pre-given us many, many green lights, and we can continue on freely until we get a red. Two fundamentally different environments. And we already know ahead of time what many of the "reds" are - anything contrary to His commandments in the Bible.
Others may disagree with me on this, and I won't be bothered by their disagreement. I am sure that there are plenty of believers who have gotten some "yes" or "peace" or "leading". I think all I'm trying to say is we don't have to explicitly get a green every time we take a step in order to be able to take that step.
I also do not agree with this "we are unable" business. Of course, God created everything and gave us all our competencies and abilities and gifts and talents. But it's a disservice to these abilities and gifts God has given us to consider that we are "unable". Of course we are able - God has made us able! It's like the local church wants to keep people immature, underdeveloped, incompetent, and useless, while God wants mature, sober-minded people who will use and develop what God has graciously given them. It's a radical difference between the two. We can be able and still recognize that it is God who gave us the ability and point to Him as the source of the abilities He has given us.
Any child who grows up and becomes an adult while still unable to take any steps without getting explicit permission from their parents, or that considers him/herself to be "unable" to do things is a useless adult. The same goes for us and God. The local church tends to lump different kinds of "independences" together, conflating the two. Being a mature adult able to discern consequences and able to make good choices does NOT mean you are independent from God in the sense of being rebellious and turning your back on God. We are to grow up in Christ! But of course we always know that all things came from God and we exist for God, and that all things came through Jesus, and we live through Jesus (1 Cor. 8:6).
It's interesting, that chapter in 1 Corinthians 8 starts out speaking that way - that we exist for God and we live through Christ.....I mean, you can't get much more dependent than that.....but then the chapter goes on to describe mature believers who possess knowledge that allows them to not be stumbled by trivial things such as idols. See how you can be mature and steadfast and have knowledge that allows you to discern and not be stumbled, and yet none of that means you are "acting independently" from God? The local church somehow keeps people in a state of immaturity.
Anyway, all that was kind of all over the place. Hopefully at least a sliver of it helped somewhere.
Trapped