9) Our SOUL has a self-conscious life. In our soul, we are conscious of our own selves, of others and of everything that is in this world. Our SPIRIT has a God-conscious life. We can be conscious of God and have a communication with Him only in and by our spirit and by nothing else! Without faith, which is a spiritual substance, we cannot even come to God (Heb. 11:6). Our BODY has a world-conscious life. This si clear. Self-conscious life is the only life that pagans have and live. This life, unfortunately, predominates in carnal Christ­ians since their God-conscious life is rather scant, sometimes even zero.

After its redemption, our soul is FORCED to choose from two ways: (1) the way to its DEATH and an eternal damnation, or (2) the way to LIFE eternal, blessed in the Presence of Our Creator, Saviour and Lord and of Our Heavenly Father, Who “designed” our Salv­ation in His Own Heart. There exist no other ways, no other destinies for any man! The Lord is not forcing us to go the way of Salvation, but He is giving us a very clear choice in­cluding the consequences of that choice (Deut. 30:15-20/ Mt. 7:13,14). We are to take the way to the Life eternal after our water baptism, however, few believers start on this way after their baptism. There even exist believers, which will never start walking on this way because nobody tells them, nobody guides them that way or they are not willing to walk that way and lose their old sinful life. However, they thus lose their only chance for their Salvation. As I wrote above, our Salvation is enormously priceless thing, which cost the Son of God His Life. And this Salvation has a price tag also for us, its price is the loss of our old sinful and rotten life, in other words – either we take it or leave it. And here, almost all church leaders are guilty for deceiving believers, whether consciously or uncon­sciously, and will be held responsible at the Judgment Seat of Christ (Rom. 14:10).

For those that started to walk on this way of life or are preparing to start, it is desirable to receive the Light of the Lord regarding His ways, which He designed for us and the three of them are the following:

          a) The way of Vision. On page 49, Paragraph 4, I wrote: We are able to go only that far where our vision, our view into the future, brings us. And when we have no vision, we do not move, we only mill about in circles. Vision is also the question of our spiritual eyesight. A spiritually blind man cannot walk on the way of Salvation as he sees nothing, and no man can make decisions in dark­ness.

The basic Will of Our Heavenly Father is stated in Rom. 8:28,29. His Purpose is de­scrib­­ed in verse 28, and His Purpose is explained in verse 29. It is clear from verse 28 that God foreknew, who will truly love Him and He called those according to His Purpose. Further­more, He granted to them the privilege that everything what will happen in their life will be for their good! Hence, basically, nothing bad or evil can ever happen to them. Every such believer was literally born into the Purpose of God, which Purpose existed for him be­fore the foundation of the world! And this believer is supposed to start seeing this Purpose of God for him as soon as he opens his spiritual eyes. He thereby will start getting a Vision, which will keep guiding him to the fulfilment of the Will of God thereby increasing also the Glory of God. Everything we do, we should do for the Glory of Christ and of Our Heavenly Father. Whatever we do, which does not bring Glory to God, in fact, in may even bring shame to God, we should stop doing as soon as it is shown to us and we see it.

There exist a great difference between “our intentions for God” and the “Intention of God for us”. This is the basis for all our actions and Christian life and, thus, this should be re­membered especially by the leaders in the churches, which may often mix up these two kinds of intentions and thereby cause spiritual damages and bring shame to Christ and the Heavenly Father. Let all spiritual leaders realize that THEY are responsible for everything that takes place in the churches and not those that sit in the pews or on chairs. The Pur­po­ses or Intentions of God for us existed before our existence. Every believer, which was born-again and received the gift of the Holy Spirit into his spirit had his place in the Pur­poses of God and had his calling in Christ designated. Nobody came to “nothing”, nobody remained “unemployed”, on the contrary, everybody was called and, after his bapt­ism in water, should have been watchful and find out his calling in Christ. And when he will start to see that calling, he should be not only superficially interested in it, but to “press” to­ward that calling as there is nothing more valuable in this earthly life that he can have. Here, God is giving him an opportunity to serve Him according to His Purpose (Phil. 3: 14,15) and to serve Him successfully – to satisfy His Own Father in Heaven, God Almighty!

No believer, which was called and started to see and believe his calling, his VISION from God, inclu­ding the great men of God, which are described in the Scripture in detail, is able to deliver himself from his own efforts through which he will want to fulfill his calling, his VISION, and thus serve God. But God has to first prepare us for His Purpose, His calling, His Vision for us according to His Wisdom and Will, which stand in an opposition to our “wisdom and will” and to show us clearly that without Him we will really do NOTHING! The re­sult is that everybody will begin to “plow” that field of God’s Purpose by his own plow and begins to lose lots of time – 5 years, 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, 40 years – or he may never stop his “plowing”.

Abraham himself “lost” a number of years because he wanted to “help God” with Isaac, the son of the Promise, when he was not coming for a long time. And not only that he “lost” a number of years, but at the same time he “helped God to create” all the problems with Moslems ever since Ishmael was born until now when Mos­lems are killing Christians and Jews just because they are not Moslems. Moses “lost” 40 years because he first had to go to a wilderness where he had to “lose” everything what he gained in Egypt. He could not serve God with what he gained in Egypt. Joseph “lost” a good number of years as well when he tried to do the Vision from God in his own power and “wisdom” that proved to be foolishness. A younger brother should not boast about to his older brothers that they shall bow down to him together with their father and mother (Gen. 37:10). Had he dealt with them wisely, his brothers would not have thrown him into a pit and sold him to merchants from Egypt. And in Egypt, he would have not ended up in jail for some years had he not been similarly naïve, etc. But apparently, even Joseph needed those years in jail.

An important point is that the word “lost” I purposely put in quotes since those years were not really “lost”, but every such servant of God needed to experience them so God could change him in his character and inabilities to render God service, which He had prepared for them before their birthday. Therefore, if there is somebody among us, who “lost” 10-20-30 years, that is not the end of his service to God IFthat believer learned something during that time and started to see his Vision through spiritual eyes. I also know brethren, which started to “see” after 10-20-30 or even more years! Hence, our VISION waits for every one of us and the Lord is giving to us innumerable opportunities to start seeing it and follow it in whatever state of our Christian life we are.

We need at this place to realize yet one more important fact. Everything what we gained, lived through and experienced in our past life IS NOT lost, wasted, purposeless, nor is the time lost. If we have not seen it until now, we will see it in the future that the Lord was al­ways able to work in our ““unplowed field” even when we were not conscious of it in any way. And from that work He achieved special, unusual, even peculiar values, which we have never seen or understood. This was possible for Him based on His foreknowledge, what we will need in our future and from what past we could derive lessons, which would strengthen our faith and determination to go on – on a new way. I do not want to say that the above applies to every believer, but rather to those, which were foreknown by God and thus foreordained for His Purposes.

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To be continued next week

brother Hanola

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