Selfdenial Is Crucifying The Soul! In accordance with the Bible

[longtimeago 0]

The Bible Says

I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me

(Gala. 2:20)

It is very important that the Holy Spirit must reveal our self-life to us to initiate spiritual growth. Self is the fleshly, carnal life of nature, the life of the first Adam

dead in transgressions and sins

(Ephesians 2:1), thoroughly corrupt before God, the life in which there is no good thing in the sight of God. (Romans 7:18) In order for one to get beyond just knowing about Lord Jesus and enter into a fellowship with Him, one must first know oneself, as revealed by the Holy Spirit. First the believer should know himself and say, Not I then he should say, But Christ. This is called self denial. Denying oneself is not by our efforts. We may attend many meetings, more Bible studies, spend more time in prayer. We may have good Christian training and culture in right homes, churches and schools and involve in church activities. By all of these, our old nature, the sinful man cannot be subdued. The Blood of Jesus washes away my sins but it cannot wash away my old man. It needs only the cross to crucify me the sinner. Our sins are dealt with by the Blood of Christ but we ourselves are dealt with by the cross (Watchman Nee) Without self-denial we cannot go in for
the baptism of the Spirit ... Calvary precedes Pentecost. Death with Christ precedes the fullness of the Spirit. God does not give power to the old creation nor to the uncrucified soul (Miles. J. Stanford)



So dear friends, the only way of selfdenial is to crucify our flesh to the cross together with Christ. Praise the Lord! Christ has already done this on the Calvary and we have to take it by faith and accept our union with Christ in His death. May the Lord enable us to say, Not I But Christ in every aspect of our lives.
Edited March 21, 2008 by nirmaldaniel (see edit history)

[OpaQue 15]

You are talking about surrendering yourself to the universe, nature, God, Christ.. whatever you might want to say. By doing so, you change the Object "I" to some name "Christ" (say) who is external to you. Thereby you stop referring to yourself "I" (which is the start point of your ego). Which inturn reduces your ego and gets you closer to yourself.In short, I agree with you

[longtimeago 0]

Thanks for agreeing OpaQue. More over i do agree if i say I .. I its the starting point of ego but i didnt use it in that angle..

[velma 6]

This is my Opinion interpretation to be exact on your topic :-

 

God was created to help us mentally.physically and of course to nurture the soul giving birth to religion and so on. For centuries now, people have always used religion to discipline, to guide and to enlighten themselves others.

 

The Bible Says ?I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me? (Gala. 2:20)

Now what I feel when I read the above is that the believer is giving up being alone giving up his ego, his hatred, his anger, his grudges, his physical self and embracing his love,his passion (Not to be mistaken with lust), his patience, his forgiving nature, his SOUL or GOD.

 

And we read ahead deep into the paragraph, you can see that we (humans) are being urged to crucify/sacrifice our "materialistic" bodies while always lust for money,sex and thrives on ego.

 

Thus the materialistic urges are simply put as the "physical" body as it is not easy for common people to understand the depth of the message.

 

And what I believe when told that Christ does not power the 'old" creation is simply like this :-

 

Christ was a man of love,forgiveness and tolerance. If logic is to be applied here then you will agree that a man of love and forgiveness can help a man ruled by his ego only a bit and the rest would be on the egoistic one.

 

Now what my personal belief in life is that , love all and let everything in life be treated as a step to your enlightenment therefore never making you feel negative about things... This philosophy was taught to me unconsciously by my boyfriend..

 

I personally embrace my boyfriend as my love detesting the word "boyfriend" as it refers to the physical world of its limitations, ego and expectations but unfortunately hardly any people follow this and live in their trances where they feel that their bodies and minds are the only thing that need to be nourished as they do not know what happens after their physical bodies die, they do not care about the soul who starves of the soul and reaches another body urging it to nourish it.

 

And I believe that to get people to love and nourish their soul, God was introduced in the picture therefore my interpretation of the line

 

Praise the Lord! Christ has already done this on the Calvary and we have to take it by faith and accept our union with Christ in His death

is that we must learn to trust our soul and let God unite with it and nourish our soul who is impartial so that it can in turn lead us to a harmonious life.

 

People who sin and then confess, beg for forgiveness are doing nothing but starving their souls even more. They tend to think of nothing but their materialistic lusts, they commit the crime thinking that the Lord would forgive them and let them into heaven...

 

These are people who deliberately sin and then ask for forgiveness but people who listen to their heart will love God for loving them and protecting/loving their loved ones and not treat him like a lottery ticket hoping for an increase in their wealth and so on.

 

I personally do not believe in God because I only listen to my heart and soul and do what they gently ask me to do

[longtimeago 0]

Velma but remember onething the heart and soul which you listen to is created by God and he has full control over it.

[tricky77puzzle 0]

This is my Opinion interpretation to be exact on your topic :-

 

God was created to help us mentally.physically and of course to nurture the soul giving birth to religion and so on. For centuries now, people have always used religion to discipline, to guide and to enlighten themselves others.

 

Now what I feel when I read the above is that the believer is giving up being alone giving up his ego, his hatred, his anger, his grudges, his physical self and embracing his love,his passion (Not to be mistaken with lust), his patience, his forgiving nature, his SOUL or GOD.

 

And we read ahead deep into the paragraph, you can see that we (humans) are being urged to crucify/sacrifice our "materialistic" bodies while always lust for money,sex and thrives on ego.

 

Thus the materialistic urges are simply put as the "physical" body as it is not easy for common people to understand the depth of the message.

 

And what I believe when told that Christ does not power the 'old" creation is simply like this :-

 

Christ was a man of love,forgiveness and tolerance. If logic is to be applied here then you will agree that a man of love and forgiveness can help a man ruled by his ego only a bit and the rest would be on the egoistic one.

 

Now what my personal belief in life is that , love all and let everything in life be treated as a step to your enlightenment therefore never making you feel negative about things... This philosophy was taught to me unconsciously by my boyfriend..

 

I personally embrace my boyfriend as my love detesting the word "boyfriend" as it refers to the physical world of its limitations, ego and expectations but unfortunately hardly any people follow this and live in their trances where they feel that their bodies and minds are the only thing that need to be nourished as they do not know what happens after their physical bodies die, they do not care about the soul who starves of the soul and reaches another body urging it to nourish it.

 

And I believe that to get people to love and nourish their soul, God was introduced in the picture therefore my interpretation of the line

is that we must learn to trust our soul and let God unite with it and nourish our soul who is impartial so that it can in turn lead us to a harmonious life.

 

People who sin and then confess, beg for forgiveness are doing nothing but starving their souls even more. They tend to think of nothing but their materialistic lusts, they commit the crime thinking that the Lord would forgive them and let them into heaven...

 

These are people who deliberately sin and then ask for forgiveness but people who listen to their heart will love God for loving them and protecting/loving their loved ones and not treat him like a lottery ticket hoping for an increase in their wealth and so on.

 

I personally do not believe in God because I only listen to my heart and soul and do what they gently ask me to do

Absolutely true. My viewpoint is, people are so obsessed with caring for their mind and body, and only a few percentage let out what's in their soul. These are the "creators", the artists. They are the only ones who actually find some meaning in their lives.

 

Don't believe in God or even Christ because you have to. That's not a good way to go. Believe in him (Him? I never capitalize it, for some weird reason.) because he's (He's?) necessary for you to find meaning in your life. If he (He? I seriously don't understand why people capitalize it. It makes God look fake. Capitalized things aren't objects.) isn't, then by all means, don't believe in him (Him! Argh.).

[truefusion 3]

I seriously don't understand why people capitalize it.

Many capitalize words that are attributed to God for many reasons, but the main reason for believers is for exaltation reasons—to point out that He is the biggest and best. Other reasons may involve the same reason why you capitalize your name: it's a name, and therefore proper grammar to capitalize.

[tricky77puzzle 0]

Many capitalize words that are attributed to God for many reasons, but the main reason for believers is for exaltation reasons?to point out that He is the biggest and best. Other reasons may involve the same reason why you capitalize your name: it's a name, and therefore proper grammar to capitalize.

'Well "He" is a third person pronoun. It's not exactly a name. I would understand if the word was like the way you sometimes see LORD in Bibles (I capitalize this because it's a name), where the entire name is capitalized. That I can understand, to not confuse it with "Lord" in some situations. I don't think he (He, by your standard) would really care if his (His?) pronoun was capitalized. I mean, there are no capital letters in Hebrew. (Correct me if I'm wrong.) Did God care then? I think capitalizing one's name as a form of exaltation is kind of weird. I guess it's just a custom among Christians that I don't really follow.

[truefusion 3]

Well "He" is a third person pronoun. It's not exactly a name. I would understand if the word was like the way you sometimes see LORD in Bibles (I capitalize this because it's a name), where the entire name is capitalized. That I can understand, to not confuse it with "Lord" in some situations. I don't think he (He, by your standard) would really care if his (His?) pronoun was capitalized. I mean, there are no capital letters in Hebrew. (Correct me if I'm wrong.) Did God care then? I think capitalizing one's name as a form of exaltation is kind of weird. I guess it's just a custom among Christians that I don't really follow.

I know it's a third-person pronoun. Some KJV Bibles follow this trend, capitalizing "he" and "him" when in reference to God or Jesus—this is probably another reason why; a lot of today's Bibles don't follow this trend; they don't really state why, but they tell you that they don't. "LORD" is more of a title, which in the Bible's case takes the place of "Jehovah," but titles are capitalized as well. I'm not sure if there are words or punctuations in the Hebrew language that denotes such a thing, but in the Greek, an article (usually "ho") before "theos" (if the context fits) denotes emphasis, that is why it gets rendered "God" instead of "god." This is also the reason why "son" gets capitalized though it's not a name. So, quite possibly, the Hebrew may have something similar. (Actually, there may not be an instance where "του θεου" isn't rendered as "God" in today's English Bibles, but i haven't looked at each case.) To us, capitalizing these things come somewhat natural.

[velma 6]

I live listening to my instinct which is simply my heart and soul speaking. And personally I do not believe that God controls over my heart and soul...

A person's heart and soul has a life of it's own, it is never influenced by anyone except it's own voice. I believe that if God were to control it, then it would have reduced the influence of ego because the voice of one's heart is very strong a voice that is heard by us every day but we being the "decider" chooses the voice we want.. Be it the ego or heart.

If God were to control this voice in all human beings, then ego would have been a mere character and not the person

Velma but remember onething the heart and soul which you listen to is created by God and he has full control over it.

When I turned into an atheist, this was the one line that every body used to try to get me back into believing that there is a God.

The weird bit is that I do not believe that there is a God and frankly right now in my life where there are still decades for me to live... I feel that there is a lot of time for me to be taught all these things, I need not preach and pray against my own heart's wishes and then suddenly realize that it is making me more egoistic... No offense meant to all the people who believe in God, this is merely my belief here.

When I was turned into an atheist, I was probably 12 or 13 every believer had shunned me One of them actually called me the "devil's offspring" because I told her that I did not believe in God and would worship Love instead

One of my neighbors suggested I go to a spiritual leader and get all the bad things out of me o_O but yeah, they were all Christians Yet I do not have any negative feelings against them because they were merely trying to help me spiritually but failed to understand that I was already on my path of spiritual growth

As for God creating the world, I am yet to decide who created the world... Mother Nature or God.... My heart keeps telling me that maybe.. maybe a soul was involved... We must not forget that a soul is in the end energy...

But a soul unlike energy who comes either in the "moving" or "idle" form has a story of it's own... But then again, I am not yet as wise as my heart and soul so it is not easy for me to understand what they say.