[aron]

I really appreciated the testimony, especially the notes on the book by Sparks. Sometimes I get soooooo frustrated because I feel like I'm re-inventing the wheel when I just want to plop down in someone's ready-made Cadillac. God hands me a shiny lug nut instead, tells me to go find the other five nuts, then the tyres then the engine.....

But that's just the way the journey is. The "experience and enjoy Christ" programme was a ruse, designed to put you in the thrall of your own subjective (and manipulated) responses. Supposedly there was a ready-made system in place, all you had to do was meet on the "proper ground" and call "Oh Lord Jesus" and everything you ever wanted or needed got installed in your human spirit.

But WL asked the Shanghai elders, "How did you feel" when they expelled WN for bad behaviour. So WL could manipulate their "experience and enjoyment" to his own selfish ends. And we saw this manipulation repeated how many times in Little Flock & Lord's Recovery history? Eventually it was institutionalized and was the institution itself. Bait-and-switch: "Christ" was how you're feeling today, and how you're feeling today is of course subject to the needs of your nearest ministry co-worker. Oh, sorry, that's the latest "flow from the throne". Gotta get my terminology right.

Contrast that to scripture. It is a "sure word" (2 Pet 1:19), both in type (OT) and realization (NT) of the experience and enjoyment and sufferings and glories to follow of the One Messiah, Lord, Christ, Saviour, King of Israel, High Priest, and Shepherd of our souls. It is the experiences of the Christ that is our hope of glory. Anything else is a side-bar at best.

This is Jesus, once made a little lower than the angels and now crowned with glory and honour. If you focus on this everything else will follow. If you lose sight of this you will easily fall prey to schemes of deception. (I say 'you' as self-talk to get myself thru each day. Others may differ in self-talk, which probably agrees with Sparks' point)