As someone once said, "...it may be truth, but not all truth weighs the same."
The weightiest truth is Christ in us, the hope of glory. That is where our focus should be. Most of everything else Western Christians are caught up in is light weight.
My guess is that none of the millions of believers whose lives have been so tragically disrupted in Ukraine care if the believer walking the road with them or hiding with them in a basement in a besieged city, care one bit if that person believes differently than they do about such peripheral doctrine. They gather to pray, to worship, to focus on Who they have in common. Praying for their nation, their loved ones, and their families and homes. Shame on those believers in the free West who have the luxury of debating doctrine that has little to do with living today for Jesus.
LISTEN TO PAUL AND LEARN THE GREAT SECRET
As Paul said, seek that which edifies, not that which divides. Forgive, make allowances for one another, and focus on Christ in each other and what He is doing. What Jesus is doing in a believer will always involve true Christian character and the fruit of the Spirit/spirit — add to your faith knowledge, virtue, self-control, consistency, godliness, brotherly and unconditional love, joy, peace, gentleness, long-suffering, meekness, kindness....
To truly know what He is doing in someone, will always involve those qualities, those character issues.
It is that simple. When sharing what He is doing in us, if we are honest, if we are transparent, it will be along those lines, not along the lines of some peripheral teaching that fails to develop those things in us. Prayer can be made for illness, needs, emotional turmoil - but it all gets back to being conformed to Christ. Paul said he will glory in difficulty because it brings him closer to the Lord, and more like Him - in so many words. He wanted to know not just the power of His resurrection, but the fellowship of His sufferings (Philippians 3:10). I’m sorry, but in most of the West we know nothing about this. It’s not an emphasis in our churches, and in most of our preaching. Most of our popular voices in Western Christianity have hijacked the truth.
CHRIST IN YOU
Christ is in you! We come boldly to the throne with a simple turn of the heart to the Father, and we are there. The Father is not 'out there' as if He must be brought down, and neither should we seek a formula which takes us 'up there'. Christ is in you! Right now, in your spirit, down in the deepest part of you. Wow, you can sense His presence right now, in your spirit. With that, you have all things.
When you have Christ you have everything, and anything other than that is usually man's formula's designed to work oneself into God's graces or get the devil away. Christ is in you. He won it all. He gave us authority over any demons bothering us.
"He who spared not His only Son, but gave Him for us, how shall He not along with Him, freely give us all things?" (Romans 8: 32)
NOTE: Most of these thoughts were taken from my friend John Fenn in an early morning email. So good!
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