| Author | Message | ||
     fatherofaking Junior Member Username: fatherofaking Post Number: 31 Registered: 12-2007 Posted From: 71.255.151.176 |
Main Entry: commonwealth Part of Speech: noun Definition: country Synonyms: body politic, citizenry, citizens, commonality, democracy, federation, nation, people, polity, republic, society Notes: a republic is a state or nation where the supreme power lies with its citizens; a commonwealth is an allied group of republics Main Entry: autocracy Part of Speech: noun Definition: dictatorship Synonyms: absolution, czarism, despotism, dictatorship, monarchy, monocracy, oppression, totalitarian government, tyranny Antonyms: commonwealth, democracy, republic Source: Roget's New Millennium™ Thesaurus, First Edition (v 1.3.1) Copyright © 2008 by Lexico Publishing Group, LLC. All rights reserved. The desire to serve Christ is the common ground. this is what drew us all to the TT. We all know that we need to give up our life in order to serve Christ. What does it mean to give up our life? Instinctively we understand that what we possess does not really belong to us. We know this because we see it every day. When someone dies they no longer possess the things that they once claimed as their own. it all ends up belonging to someone else. We do not even have control of our own flesh. We lose that as well. So what is it that we do have? Every individual has one thing that they take with them when they die. What is it? What is it that we could not give up if we wanted to? What makes us who we are? It is our experience. it is the choices that we make and the ensuing experience. Every individual experiences life in their own way. This gives us something that nobody else has. It is our voice. It is what we have to offer. We choose when and how to use it. This is the reason that we value freedom of speech so highly. When we are filled with the spirit of Christ our voice cannot be silenced. We must speak of the experience that we have. every moment is an experience of life. It is our experience, our uniqueness. It is who we are. To be able to share this without being silenced is the most precious thing we have. When we lose everything else, when we leave this earth, this is what we have left, our experience. What is it that creates this unique experience that we call our own? It is our free will. We are free to choose our own experience in life. If we give up our right to choose we give up our own uniqueness. If we give up the only thing that we really own, then we give up any thing we would have to share. The real common ground is our own uniqueness. Our own right to choose our own experience. So give up everything, it is what is required of us. It is not ours anyway. Do not give up what you will make of yourself. It is the only thing you will be taking with you. | ||
| fatherofaking Junior Member Username: fatherofaking Post Number: 32 Registered: 12-2007 Posted From: 71.255.151.176 |
God does not live inside of us. We live inside of God. Like a drop of water lives inside of the ocean. The ocean is made up of countless drops of water that all live as one. They all leave for a time in order to water the rest of the earth, but they always return to their source. We have all left for a time to plant some seeds, but we must ultimately return to our source. (Message edited by fatherofaking on January 11, 2008) | ||
| fatherofaking Junior Member Username: fatherofaking Post Number: 33 Registered: 12-2007 Posted From: 71.255.151.176 |
share your experience. epiphany | ||
| fatherofaking Junior Member Username: fatherofaking Post Number: 35 Registered: 12-2007 Posted From: 71.255.151.176 |
The 1st grade teacher has given her students an assignment to paint something wonderful. As she walks around the class the teacher sees a wide variety of the usual fair...Trees, a dog, the family...But one student's page was rather odd, startlingly different. "What are you drawing, Dear?" asked the teacher. "I'm drawing a picture of God." "But nobody really knows what God looks like," the teacher suggested. Boldly, the student replied, "They will when I'm done!" www.yhwh.com are you a picture of god? of course you are! | ||
| fatherofaking Junior Member Username: fatherofaking Post Number: 42 Registered: 12-2007 Posted From: 71.255.151.176 |
this is an except from a page of this website. http://www.yhwh.com/Thoughts/morestufaboume.htm The Abuse of the Personality Cult - "How do you know this is right?" Let's deal with this out in the open: Ultimately, I DO NOT KNOW. Everything written here MIGHT BE WRONG. The questions about "me" stem, it seems, from our own need to turn to authority figures for guidance & help. This, in many ways, is entirely natural and necessary. None of us are an island, able to live utterly isolated and self-contained lives. So we must trust others to tell us the truth and deal honestly. When I trust the water company not to poison my water, I am looking to their authority for guidance and help. When I put gas in my car I am trusting the honesty & authority of the gas station to present honest materials. But clearly there are limits. People accept unthinkingly that whatever they get from the radio/TV/print media is absolutely true, often to their own peril. If this was a book then I would insert several hundred pages of examples of cases where the media either was misguided, or intentionally mislead its audience. But you'll have to do that part yourselves. So too with government. We have perhaps come to expect lies from the politicians, but it was not always this way. And so forth it goes...From school teachers to parents to friends to so-called "experts", we have all discovered that people who we respect and trust did not actually tell us the truth, either from their own ignorance or as an attempt to deliberately misguide. Now, here's a principle I have found to be true: The more we rely upon someone else's knowledge or authority is the extent to which we do not have our own. Please think about that for a minute. It's just like the pocket calculator: the more we rely on the calculator to "think" for us, the weaker we become, ultimately losing our own ability to add and subtract. Sit in a wheelchair long enough, and you WILL lose the ability to walk. In other words, the more we rely on external agents the more we lose the internal ability. Mozart and Bach heard their music in their heads. Internal music. "All" they had to do was write down what they heard in their heads. Many composers today have this ability. Most do not - they need to turn on some electric rhythm-maker, play around a bit, and record what happens. Those folks, not hearing the internal music, can only manipulate the external music. Now I am not making judgment evaluations here. As I said, none of us live in isolation, and must rely upon others (aka "external agents") in one capacity or another for our lives. | ||
| fatherofaking Junior Member Username: fatherofaking Post Number: 43 Registered: 12-2007 Posted From: 71.255.151.176 |
continued from the same page, same website. http://www.yhwh.com/Thoughts/morestufaboume.htm But for me, at least, the line is drawn when it comes to acts of opinion, morality, faith and religion, and everything else that constitutes my "Inner world." Since it is absolutely and utterly my Inner world, I am unwilling (or at least extremely reluctant) to give any part of it over to an external agent. This is just one of the many profound aspects of "I will be what <<i>> will be" by which I live my life. When we are young our parents must, at a certain point, simply respond "Because I said so." No more information that the child can relate to is available. But as we grow to maturity we learn more and more of these reasons, the underlying "Why" of a situation. In other words, our actions mature from being controlled by the external agent into being internally self-motivated. It is the same with religion. At the beginning we hear things from different people. They want us to accept what they say as true. Hindus give birth to Hindus, Jews give birth to Jews, and so on through the entire human race. The overwhelming majority of people all have the same religion: Whatever Mommy & Daddy tell me is true. Seldom do people advance past this stage and begin to make their religion their own. Ultimately, The Church of Yahweh can be boiled down to 2 statements: 1. God's Name YHWH matters, and 2. You must get involved with, and take responsibility for, your own religious life. That's it. Nearly everything written here falls into one of those 2 categories. When people are not responsible for their own lives, this vacuum creates a space for others to come in & control you. This is the source of the Personality Cult, in all of its particular manifestations: bullet Millions of kids, all "doing their own thing," looking and talking and acting and dressing exactly alike bullet Millions of "free-thinking" adults who accept unquestioningly whatever the evening news tells them bullet Millions of consumers who exercise their "freedom of choice" by responding to subliminal advertising that inspires them to use money they do not have to purchase things they do not really want, and will never use, for reasons they cannot explain bullet And, most important in this context, millions upon millions upon billions (do you actually know that a "billion" is 1000 million? Most people do not.) of people who go to their graves utterly convinced they are heading to an eternal paradise on no other basis than blindly trusting their religious authorities. We gratefully abdicate any and all responsibility for our lives, over and over, in countless ways. The government will tell us what to do, the schools will tell us how to act & think, and religion will tell us what to believe...And this is how the majority of the human beings on this planet live. I'm not being scandalous here. This is even written into the very core of the Bible. Jesus calls people sheep, dumb animals that will go wherever they are lead. Which is why He reserves His harshest words for the religious leaders and authorities of the time. Because if you are going to lead dumb, blind sheep, who will not and cannot think for themselves, then you had best be absolutely certain you are leading them the right way. They have put their blind trust in you, and you have accepted the role. Beware!! | ||
| voocitd Member Username: voocitd Post Number: 89 Registered: 1-2008 Posted From: 98.193.216.235 |
I have always like the following verses: 2 Corinthians 4:1-7 1Therefore, since through God's mercy we have this ministry, we do not lose heart. 2Rather, we have renounced secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God. On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God. 3And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. 4The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. 5For we do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. 6For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness,"[a]made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. 7But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. | ||
| fatherofaking Junior Member Username: fatherofaking Post Number: 44 Registered: 12-2007 Posted From: 71.255.151.176 |
Jn. 18:38 Pilate saith unto him, What is truth? ... |
