Quote:
Originally Posted by Ohio
Job shows us that God uses suffering to perfect us. Thoughts taken from Job are sprinkled throughout the Bible. Did not even Jesus learn obedience thru His sufferings? (Hb 5.8)
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One of the things that I see in the "grace on steroids" post-Protestant world, just go to the meeting under the right minister and "absorb more God" view, is that we forget that we are sinners. Yes we are redeemed, yes forgiven, yes even born again, "called to be saints" (1 Cor 1:2); with all the "transformed and glorified" stuff to follow.
But on this side of the Bema, we should not presumptuously elevate ourselves. We should take the least place and let the Father and/or the Lord of the Feast call us up, in due time.
AND NOT BEFORE The danger of presuming a place for ourselves before then, is we lose the ability to listen. We only hear the voices in our head, telling us how great we are. How much light we have, while all else are in darkness.
In the gospels, all the disciples wanted to be first, to be greatest. (or most of them; enough so that it became a repeated issue). We do not have full assurance that some of this didn't play out in more subtle ways in the Acts and epistles. See, e.g., Acts 6:1-7.
The "perfecting through righteous suffering" motif was clearly in the OT, and Jesus then personified it in full. Now we the sinners get the benefit of his suffering, on our behalf.
My point is this: we can get deluded by focusing on our "enjoyment" in grace, not his righteous suffering. The Bema has not yet arrived. We would be wise to humble ourselves, and learn from others. There are a lot of Christians out there who can teach us a lot. Witness Lee could have taught us a lot as well, but he presumed to teach everything, and thus (imho) is only to be rejected. The "eat the chicken but toss the feathers" idea is no good if you choke to death on the feathers. If WL had allowed his testimony and teaching to be "salted" by other believers like TAS and other gifted servants, he had much to recommend.