Reverberated Reiteration
Moderation, temperance, restraint… all
speak to realizing the swelling of compensating compulsions in prideful attempts of self-fulfillment. Immaturity is the ignorance
of the ruling priority of one’s spirit-being with regard to his or her flesh-being. When flesh intentions rule the spirit’s
will of awareness the spirit is grieved unto the death of daily reasons for being. This is not so when the will of a person’s
spirit being rules the flesh because flesh instincts are created to be led by the will of the spirit.
Flesh awareness of being, with an emotionally
accessorized acknowledgement of spiritually existing motivations, is a being awareness of actualizing self-absorption (that
includes absorbing into negation the will of the spirit’s necessities), whether involved in self-serving or other-serving
activities, overrides respect for others’ gifts of will of determination from God. Worldly considerations are based
in personal achievement vs. failure with categorized attachments to the surrounding environment for verification and the casting
off inconsistencies which may encumber a focused set of goals.
As one or another’s self-focused desires
(including community compatible patterns of interaction) are built into the fervor of progressive steps of achievement, the
realistic purposes for goal oriented activities are swallowed up with socially responsive determinations. Individualistic
dreams of personhood with regard to esteem and self-validation lose their individuality to community ownership. For example,
fans may expect a music professional to produce more of what has been before.
People are driven by desires for attention
and acceptance to establish their own will of rights to do as he or she wishes - with the feeding of their intellectual/emotional
affections in response to available offerings of stimulations and negation (contradictions to conformity); in ways that attempt
to either fill the voids of insecurity about the ‘me’ of awareness or work in some way to simply destroy the ‘me’
that can see no way out from losing a dream’s way.
Innovation and unique perspective for the progressive
development and betterment of humankind is destructive to the purposes of living when societal goals are focused in community
well-being. Why? Because innovation and unique perspective requires standards of application that apply to everyone for those
endeavors to be of practical worth. The only ‘command central’ for the viability of constructive idealism with
any merit for personal freedoms in expression combined with respect for socially beneficial priorities is found in practicing
faith in God through Christ.
The many religions throughout the world’s
many societies are social constructs that emulate, but cannot duplicate, God’s plan for practical living unto Him day-by-day
through the moments of accepting His structured alignment in marriage and family. All things in living for any person are
the same in their differences that ultimately involve the Same. That Same creates His patterns of respect in living that is
first founded in the agreed bond of marriage between a man and a woman and patterns His will of authority out into society
from there.
(As an aside,(?) the United States of America’s
charter in faith before God was designed to be an independent witness to the rest of the world of what a society of government
unto God in Christ means. It was not, and is not, intended to step into an imperialistic “World Power” of international
political regulation. Mutual nationalism with respect to rights of sovereignty can only be realized when marriage, family,
and consequently community appreciation for personal privacy and willful decision making is respected.)
Mechanically speaking, all the parts of a machine
must be in their place and fulfill their designed function for the machine to work the purposes it is designed to work. However,
a machine does not have the will of self-determination to conceive and contribute both a self-expression and a validating
collective expression that gives credence to that self-expression. The order of orders is found in the balances of free-will
independence and how that respect for individual viability is integrated into a shared trust of service and respect for private
liberties of choosing.
When God’s generous hand of direction
leads the moments of the days there exists the freedoms of inner decisive purposes to do as one wishes for His sake with understanding
of a personal light of existing Truth in Christ. When faced with an ultimatum, an either/or choice to make, there is also
present the decisive will of faith unto God’s leading that delivers a person from the pressured manipulation.
Though this has its social implications to
not delve into other’s wills of determined self-expression, social implications that support the decisions of freedom
people may express through their relationships in marriage and family – not a community-wide forced ‘will of the
village’ undercurrent psycho-social collective consciousness - it also carries a godly wisdom of dedicated import for
others who are caught up with searching for inner directions of volition from their environmental and social surroundings.
When people have a foundational understanding
based in giving their motives of existing awareness to tending their attentions according to their promised loyalties of married
togetherness, unto God, their decisions of will have a natural prominence that demands honor. Community resentment toward
such witness, as it flies in the face of pragmatic traditional structures of order found through economic standards of achievement
and categorical pressures of have-and-have-not will ultimately fester into gossip, infighting, battling over possessions,
and back into a form of godliness that is not from God’s desire.
Therefore, who is to say where moderation,
self-restraint, etc. ends and immoderation, rebellion, etc. begins? Some people, depending upon his or her position in orientation
to marriage, family, and work are equipped with an elastic conscience when it comes to their own foibles and an ironbound
conscience when it comes to the foibles of others. In worldly wisdom of determined application, this creates attempts to delve
into other’s rights of will.
Whereas, in godly wisdom of trust through faith
in Christ the same matters are dealt with either in shared decisions with a spouse, subsequent prayerful intercessory appeal
to God in Christ, and/or responses to honest requests for assistance without attaching strings of compliance to retributive
submission to community assemblage. This is where capitalism is only functional with respect to faith in honesty in what money’s
purposes are.
Other people have a more ‘same for everyone’
attention to what is thought to be fairness and persist in an ever determined pursuit of evening out the hills and valleys
they notice are contrary to what is often termed a “world view” – standards of decency that reflect personal
stability drawn from the environmental grouping of safety and protections. For example, a socially religious Christian may
campaign against anyone taking an occasional sip of wine but never take a second thought, much less rebuke their self, about
habitual overeating.
It is easy to condemn a person thought to be
an adulterer. How can anyone do so when he or she is guilty of some other form
of error whether or not an impulsive and/or compulsive habit? How is it, then, that each of us can have clean hands and a
pure heart in living life? Is one form of slavery more wrong in principle than another? Are we not just as tightly bound by
‘secular’ social conventions if the chains that bind us, the chains of judging and using others to satisfy prideful
senses of right over wrong, are made of ropes instead of steel?
“The just shall live by faith.” Jesus came into the world for all who may trust in His purposes
for living; at a focused point in human history - not to lock up the captives to their sin-influences in mortal condemnation,
but to free the captives from the consequential wiles of sin-influences in His justification.
Repentance
The need for self-possessed integrity in personal
first-things-first determination, with acknowledged support and invigorated assistance through respect in prayer by others
who hold the same prospects of viability in God’s Word, in every aspect of life, has never been greater than it is today.
Requests for assistance by others are classified as second things and are always, properly within the freedoms of faith, a
“yes” or “no” where second things are never first things with respect to commitments of vows promised
unto God.
At a time when violence, selfishness, apathy,
and undisciplined living threaten to destroy planet earth, it is imperative that Christian’s set not just an example,
but the example. The world needs this example – something steadfast it can hold on to – an anchor in the raging
seas of adversity. Repentance is the answer and repentance is the only answer. Although, repentance as it is universally understood
is exactly the problem that has been generating the problems of generations.
Repentance does mean to renounce sin. The sin(s)
to be renounced, individually or as a citizenry group, are not sins as from a worldly perspective. Sin is the misapplication
of one’s directions of attentions. It is not, as is generally assumed, the symptoms of sin’s craving; sex, gambling,
gold, food, alcohol, drugs, stealing, harassment, gainsaying… that appeal to appetite or alternatives to adverse frustrations.
Sin is avoidance away from respect for who one is unto others in Christ unto God.
The word ‘repent’ does mean a complete
and total change of mind, but that change of mind is about a focused purposeful direction of attentions with respect for one’s
place in marriage, family, and the personal will of decision making desires of those interactively met throughout the moments
of a day. To repent is not to feel sorry for sin, feeling worry over sin is the reason sin is honed to perfection by people
who are sorry for their misgivings about themselves and others; the advantages or lack experienced in working one’s
way through the situations experienced.
Repentance is also not, as is generally used
to bring compliance to expected public behavioral standards, a confession to God of the guilty wrongs that may abound in a
person’s desires. He knows the source of such misgivings. God’s expectations in asking of us to repent of sin
is to ask His leadership through the measure of the gift of faith given to each of us in accepting the Truth of Christ’s
resurrected victory in life; over time, space, eventful considerations, and the ills, ailing complaints, and hardships of
flesh living.
To repent of sin is to turn from the scattered
placing of attentions without focus. It is to turn to Christ and His will as found in those around you only in the order of
your place in personal commitments. If you have been guilty of evil thoughts, it is not those thoughts that need to be renounced.
To be renounced is the holding of those other’s to your expectance that have or had no place in your personal will of
decisions to be involved in your personally private endeavors to begin with.
That person, or those people, who you might
be using to justify your sins of omission and wrong submission, is the sin behind the sin worldly wisdom indentifies. Sin
is submission to other authorities not of your marriage unto God in Christ. Sinful attentions are found in decisive alignment
with others who are in the way of your positional place unto God in Christ via your marriage vows of promise. Through the
shared faithful trust in God through marriage, life is blessed by God to actualize for His glory no matter the hardships or
pitfalls.
Whomever not of your marriage you evade or
hold grudges against; you, along with your partner, need to release in prayer to allow your will of attachment its proper
associative focus to realign itself, through God’s spiritual redemptive power, to their respective attentions away from
your holding. Renouncing other’s sinful meddling into your affairs is the same as taking their troubles to God and leaving
them in His capable hands and thereby releasing you to trust Him to know what He is doing. Additionally, it gives to God honor
in obedience to His will in Christ the freedoms to aptly reaffirm your place of priority with your spouse.
Repenting of wrongdoing is to turn your attentions
away from doting on how bad things are. It is a recognition that the very things you have been punishing yourself for, and
consequently holding others responsible for doing, are the sinful manifestations of the sin of disloyalty. So, repentance
then is understood to be a turning to God in Christ in those to whom you are committed in the proper order of authorities.
At the same time the same turning to right attentions in rightly considered places frees you from wrong attentions in obligation
to the wrong places.
Thus, you come to realize, through practice,
the more sure and true acceptance that what you do is not important when why you do what you do is in respect for who you
are justified with in Christ’s grace and mercy of forgiveness. It becomes no longer a compulsion to tell all your troubles
to anyone who will listen so that he or she may step in as your personal messiah. As well, it frees those others and yourself
from falling to derision and disdain, the battles of insult and spiteful indignation for not having met the challenge of mastery
over the pains of insecurity.
Whatever someone else has is what they have.
Whatever someone else does is what they do. It is not your business to insinuate your will into their affairs because each
of those someones knows what it is to be honest or lie, public or private, steal or respect what is not theirs and God is
the God of response for them as He is for you. Repentance is a conscious turning from applying your interests into the business
of other’s God given will to choose and a conscious turning to applying your interests into the business of your own
promised commitments.
This is the first step in our submission to
the witnessing confession of God’s Gospel of freedom in Christ – the freedom in authority over the loads of responsibilities
unrestrained social consciousness deceives the wayward pride of self-identified preferences religious adherents hope to transform
the world into serving. Confession and repentance has been described as the negative side of submission because it uses social
conformity in the name of God as if mortality is separate from His eternal will.
Yielding to God in His wisdom within
the privacy of marriage might be described as not the positive side that balances the negative side; it involves placing ourselves
totally and completely (as best we know how) into the hands of God in complete submission to His will for our lives through
our moment by moment attentions to honor our commitments His way in His power for His glory... and no one else has a say so
in what motives and undertakings the decisions within a marriage may allow.
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