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A little brother · 08-15-2018, 08:17 PM

Thank you all, Sons to Glory, Ohio, Awareness, Evangelical, Aron, and Drake. We may have different viewpoints but I see the oneness in the body of Christ when all of you reach out to give advice to this little brother.

Since I rejoined the LC years ago, I started to re-examine every teaching I received from it. I began to realize that we are quick to fit ourselves into God's great promises/blessings, and to fit others into God's major warnings/accusations. To be fair, this is not just LC specific but applicable to Christians as a whole. May be it is because of how we received the gospel in the first place - God's perfect message preached through imperfect man to even more imperfect sinners.

We all treasure the subjective personal relationship with God. But I also tried to read the Bible more objectively to understand what God really says by firstly taking away the "I" from the context. So far I found this quite fruitful. It did no harm to my sujective experiences with God and actually helped me understand God and myself better.

Somehow, Matt 23:23 has become one of my favorite reminders.

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you give a tenth of the mint and the anise and the cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law -- justice and mercy and faithfulness. But these you should have done and not neglected the others.

We might think it is only about the others who have neglected the weightier matters. But we could be the other way round. We focus so much on the "higher truth" that we might have neglected the "lighter" matters. We point everything to Jesus and say it is not about us, but we forgot He appointed us to work on a few things. It actually doesn't matter that much which is the weightier and which is the lighter because Jesus told us not to neglect either.

Also, while Jesus is all in all, let's not neglect there is a "you" in

"And you shall love the Lord your God from your whole heart and from your whole soul and from your whole mind and from your whole strength.",

no matter how small and insignificant this "you" is in front of our great God.

08-15-2018, 08:17 PM	#315
A little brother Member Join Date: May 2017 Posts: 286	Re: Outer Darkness? Thank you all, Sons to Glory, Ohio, Awareness, Evangelical, Aron, and Drake. We may have different viewpoints but I see the oneness in the body of Christ when all of you reach out to give advice to this little brother. Since I rejoined the LC years ago, I started to re-examine every teaching I received from it. I began to realize that we are quick to fit ourselves into God's great promises/blessings, and to fit others into God's major warnings/accusations. To be fair, this is not just LC specific but applicable to Christians as a whole. May be it is because of how we received the gospel in the first place - God's perfect message preached through imperfect man to even more imperfect sinners. We all treasure the subjective personal relationship with God. But I also tried to read the Bible more objectively to understand what God really says by firstly taking away the "I" from the context. So far I found this quite fruitful. It did no harm to my sujective experiences with God and actually helped me understand God and myself better. Somehow, Matt 23:23 has become one of my favorite reminders. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you give a tenth of the mint and the anise and the cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law -- justice and mercy and faithfulness. But these you should have done and not neglected the others. We might think it is only about the others who have neglected the weightier matters. But we could be the other way round. We focus so much on the "higher truth" that we might have neglected the "lighter" matters. We point everything to Jesus and say it is not about us, but we forgot He appointed us to work on a few things. It actually doesn't matter that much which is the weightier and which is the lighter because Jesus told us not to neglect either. Also, while Jesus is all in all, let's not neglect there is a "you" in "And you* shall love the Lord your God from your whole heart and from your whole soul and from your whole mind and from your whole strength.*", no matter how small and insignificant this "you" is in front of our great God.