working4christ2 >> working4christ2

ManOnFire · #16 Mar 15, '14, 10:46 am

Quote:

Originally Posted by AnotherMe

After a year of being a Catholic again (from my Protestant Evangelical diversion), I see that my life has NOT changed in any way other than new prayers but no results. Those prayers are lovely. They are beautiful. But my life has not changed. I also find myself in that magical thinking sphere that the born again way of thinking got me into. My spiritual delusions have not gotten me a job after 5 years of unemployment, even thought I thought I saw "signs" that Mary or God was going to make sure I got this job. I am done. I am angry. I am putting away the rosaries, the mystical books, the bibles, and I am not going to go to church for a while. I am sick and tired of this. Call it what you will. Condemn me if you like. I'm not doing this anymore. I have to find out who I am and religion has not helped. Yes, I am very angry.

on jobs: tell the prospective boss you'll do whatever he/she wants (as long as its not illegal), then go do it, then keep asking for feedback on how to do it better, then go do it. Soon the boss will be afraid that you'll take a better job somewhere else. It's that simple. Most people don't "feel" like doing it someone else's way. That's selfish. Get over the selfish individualism. The boss isn't going to part with his/her money to pay you to do it Your way. Sorry to be so blunt, but it's true. Give of yourself completely. You'll appreciate the time off.

on love: the privately owned media is boss in our culture, and they are anti-romantic. Don't get me wrong, they're big on helping out the victims of liberal behaviors after they led people into the damage. They believe there are too many people on the planet. They believe we are having kids in the name of a religion for which there is no proof. The problem is that they keep promoting the same self-centered behaviors that make it difficult to hope for romantic love, marriage, and responsible parenthood in order to reduce the population. This naturally leads to unhappiness and a lack of faith in love. Yet people try to fill the void and slay the invisible dragon by voting for more. Don't expect them to admit it. Don't be their knowing or unknowing minion. You can't know how to love until you are willing to give of yourself completely, i.e. to give your heart away, and get it broken several times over before finally finding a romantic someone who feels the same desire to follow the same set of rules, God's rules. Then you'll understand that the romantic Church is the tie that binds 2 souls together.

I might be way off but it's my 2 cents. SOrry to be so blunt, but you can't move forward until you are enlightened in the Way, which is the exact oposite of the culture's way, by design.

Mike SoCal · #17 Mar 15, '14, 11:01 am

Jesus wasn't big on religion either. Practices, rituals, etc.

Seek Salvation and let the Holy Spirit heal you.

Romans 10:9

9 If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved

Start with this simple verse and seek other who believe it.

The Holy Spirit will lead you.

steymard · #18 Mar 15, '14, 11:37 am

When I came to believe that the Catholic Church was the Bride of Christ and received catechesis, I was grateful that I was not taught that God was expected to give me any earthly benefits at all. He had already given me the greatest of gifts, and my duty was nothing less than to attend to the salvation of my soul by cooperating with the love of Jesus given to me at Mass. I did not want a heaven of my own making, but the heaven that we were raised up to every time the Eucharistic Prayer was said.

The experience of desolation and abandonment is recalled in our beloved Psalms. (CAF: I hope the quote is not too long?)

Psalm 88:

Quote:

O Lord, God of my salvation;
I cry out day and night before you.
2 Let my prayer come before you;
incline your ear to my cry!

3 For my soul is full of troubles,
and my life draws near to Sheol.
4 I am counted among those who go down to the pit;
I am a man who has no strength,
5 like one set loose among the dead,
like the slain that lie in the grave,
like those whom you remember no more,
for they are cut off from your hand.
6 You have put me in the depths of the pit,
in the regions dark and deep.
7 Your wrath lies heavy upon me,
and you overwhelm me with all your waves. Selah

8 You have caused my companions to shun me;
you have made me a horror[b] to them.
I am shut in so that I cannot escape;
9 my eye grows dim through sorrow.
Every day I call upon you, O Lord;
I spread out my hands to you.
10 Do you work wonders for the dead?
Do the departed rise up to praise you? Selah
11 Is your steadfast love declared in the grave,
or your faithfulness in Abaddon?
12 Are your wonders known in the darkness,
or your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?

13 But I, O Lord, cry to you;
in the morning my prayer comes before you.
14 O Lord, why do you cast my soul away?
Why do you hide your face from me?
15 Afflicted and close to death from my youth up,
I suffer your terrors; I am helpless.
16 Your wrath has swept over me;
your dreadful assaults destroy me.
17 They surround me like a flood all day long;
they close in on me together.
18 You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me;
my companions have become darkness.

This experience is most primarily recalled in the agony of Jesus in the garden and in his Crucifixion. The Church exists because of his abandonment and it seeks to follow Jesus in the Way of the Cross, for beyond the Cross lies the Resurrection, the commemoration of which we are all eagerly waiting and fasting for during this Lenten season.

I don't know precisely what you were taught about prayer. But I do know that the Catholic Church's teachings on sadness, on suffering, on the experience of abandonment, are at its very heart. Here is where the love of Jesus is poured out most liberally. Bless you.

**the phoenix** · #19 Mar 15, '14, 5:31 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by OraLabora

What I do ask is "Lord, help get me through this day without sin". I'll worry about tomorrow, tomorrow. I won't fret about yesterday's failure, because that can't be undone. We will fail along the way; it's been in our nature since the Fall. But we must always trust that God's mercy is available to us when we turn to Him.

Wow ... awesome!

I will pray for you too.

...

ccmcmg · #20 Mar 15, '14, 6:06 pm

Why me, God? Why? I follow You, I pray to You, I honor You, I praise You. I thank You, I glorify You. My God, why have you forsaken ME?!!!??

Why not me, God? I know You are by my side, even when I can't see or feel You. Help me to remember that when things are bad, that they could be worse. You are there cradling me, protecting me, from even worse things happening. Why do you make it so hard, Father? Help me to understand that even when I cannot see the reasons behind what is happening in my life, that YOU, my Lord, are in control. Every breath I take is sanctioned and given by You, o Lord.

Let my pain and suffering not be for naught; may it teach me to find You in all things. May I bear the pain and disappointment of this world; let my suffering relieve someone else's suffering: for that mother about to say goodbye to her infant; for the child grieving the loss of a parent; for someone who received bad news about their health. Let my suffering, even for a moment, relieve theirs and give them a moment of peace when they need it most. I know you are there; let the suffering see through their pain to You.

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/...version=NRSVCE

Plea for Deliverance from Suffering and Hostility
To the leader: according to The Deer of the Dawn. A Psalm of David.

1 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?
2 O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer;
and by night, but find no rest.
3 Yet you are holy,
enthroned on the praises of Israel.
4 In you our ancestors trusted;
they trusted, and you delivered them.
5 To you they cried, and were saved;
in you they trusted, and were not put to shame.
6 But I am a worm, and not human;
scorned by others, and despised by the people.
7 All who see me mock at me;
they make mouths at me, they shake their heads;
8 “Commit your cause to the Lord; let him deliver—
let him rescue the one in whom he delights!”
9 Yet it was you who took me from the womb;
you kept me safe on my mother’s breast.
10 On you I was cast from my birth,
and since my mother bore me you have been my God.
11 Do not be far from me,
for trouble is near
and there is no one to help.

Jeremyah · #21 Mar 15, '14, 6:19 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by AnotherMe

After a year of being a Catholic again (from my Protestant Evangelical diversion), I see that my life has NOT changed in any way other than new prayers but no results. Those prayers are lovely. They are beautiful. But my life has not changed. I also find myself in that magical thinking sphere that the born again way of thinking got me into. My spiritual delusions have not gotten me a job after 5 years of unemployment, even thought I thought I saw "signs" that Mary or God was going to make sure I got this job. I am done. I am angry. I am putting away the rosaries, the mystical books, the bibles, and I am not going to go to church for a while. I am sick and tired of this. Call it what you will. Condemn me if you like. I'm not doing this anymore. I have to find out who I am and religion has not helped. Yes, I am very angry.

Sir, don't do that.

I understand better than anyone here how you feel. I've spent my entire life waiting for God to answer the most important prayer in my life and have been denied while watching God answer that prayer for just about everyone else around me.

I understand the anger better than what you are probably aware.

But walking away isn't the answer.

The answer is to hang in there. It's going to take a while for the protestant magical thinking to go away.

You need to be reprogrammed and it's going to take time. I understand that also. I grew up protestant and learned a lot of very wrong things. Also, I was taught an exceedingly negative picture of Jesus and learned to hate his guts and identify him as the source, not the solution, to my problems.

It might take years. But it you take a break from the Church, if you ever come back, you'll be right back where you were when you left, if not even farther behind.

That is if you come back. What you walk away today and die tomorrow? What if you walk away and fall into a life of sin and never come back?

Stick with it and through it and give it time to take hold.

I know it's not easy. I know that better than anyone. If your angry with God, grab hold and fight him. Wrestle with Him. Rage against Him until you can rage no more. But hold on and do not give up.

I'll pray for you.

DJgang · #22 Mar 15, '14, 6:23 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mike SoCal

Jesus wasn't big on religion either. Practices, rituals, etc.

Seek Salvation and let the Holy Spirit heal you.

Romans 10:9

9 If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved

Start with this simple verse and seek other who believe it.

The Holy Spirit will lead you.

I think you are suppose to stick your evangelizing to the NON CATHOLIC forum. This is the Catholic spirituality forum. It's been a while since I looked over the rules but I'm going to do so now.

How are you doing today "anotherme"?

Jeremyah · #23 Mar 15, '14, 6:23 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mike SoCal

Jesus wasn't big on religion either. Practices, rituals, etc.

Seek Salvation and let the Holy Spirit heal you.

Romans 10:9

9 If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved

Start with this simple verse and seek other who believe it.

The Holy Spirit will lead you.

Dude, you need to actually read your bible instead of just repeating the protestant rhetoric.

Also, this is a Catholic forum and protestant proselytizing is unwelcome here.

DJgang · #24 Mar 15, '14, 6:26 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeremyah

Dude, you need to actually read your bible instead of just repeating the protestant rhetoric.

LOL!

Kal2012 · #25 Mar 16, '14, 11:32 am

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeremyah

But walking away isn't the answer.

The answer is to hang in there. It's going to take a while for the protestant magical thinking to go away.

I know that better than anyone. If your angry with God, grab hold and fight him. Wrestle with Him. Rage against Him until you can rage no more. But hold on and do not give up.

I'll pray for you.

Amen. Honestly, most periods of major spiritual growth for me has come from fighting and struggling with God. (Definitely, hold on and don't give up.)

Even when I walked away from Christianity for a brief period, I kept walking towards God, trying to find something real. (I really wasn't satisfied with what I found in Protestantism) I had some good friends who brought me back to Jesus, but I still struggled w/God for years before becoming a Catholic. Even now, I struggle to find my place in a different culture and worldview.

A lot of people simply don't struggle as much as others with their faith. Most people don't really have too many questions at all. They just accept what's presented and move forward. I wish I was like that, but I find that I learn more from the fights than when things are peaceful. It is what it is.

ohmgomg · #26 Today, 3:06 pm

Published on Jan 3, 2014

Rev. Jesse Duplantis shares how Jesus Christ transformed him from a cold-hearted 1970s rock musician into the passionate evangelist some have dubbed "The Apostle of Joy".

http://youtu.be/EID6AQeDjsY

Now He says, “I want to teach this man his authority in Christ.

He keeps praying in tongues, so he must want Me to teach him about it!
The Four Ways The Holy Spirit Communicates

Having located the channel through which God speaks to us, let’s discuss the four basic
ways the Holy Spirit uses that channel to communicate.

First, He communicates by the inner witness
.

He will continually pour His peace throughout our being if we will let Him.
Therefore, the inner witness is often manifested as a disruption to that flow of God’s peace, alerting us to a wrong turn, a problem, an obstacle, etc.

Second, the Holy Spirit communicates by revelation
. The reason God communicates with our spirit and not our physical mind or intellect is that our spiritual mind has the capacity to receive and store millions of bits of information per second. That kind of reception is in God’s class!

So the Holy Spirit loves to communicate by revelation.

Third, the Holy Spirit communicates by the
audible voice
. You may be thinking about something else, when suddenly He says something in your spirit that seems audible to you.
You hear it as clearly as if someone were standing next to you speaking.
I wish God would communicate to me this way all
the time so I could hear Him that clearly.

But He doesn’t. In fact, I have only heard God audibly one time in my entire life — at the
Kathryn Kuhlman meeting that I related earlier. He called my name three times and then
said something to me about my ministry.
Other than that one time, the Lord has always communicated to me inside of my spirit. It
was just a matter of developing my ability to know when it was Him and when it wasn’t.

The fourth and less common way that the Holy Spirit communicates is by
vision
. For example, the Lord sometimes communicates to me through what I call “teaching visions.” These
types of visions assist me at times in understanding the Word of God.
I usually only receive these teaching visions when I am praying in tongues while meditat-
ing on the Word, or when a strong anointing comes on me as I’m testifying or preaching. When the visions occur, they explode across my mind with lightning speed.

So whether by inner witness, revelation, audible voice, or vision, the Holy Spirit always
communicates through the same channel — that supernatural doorway into another world.

Our part is to open that channel by praying in the Holy Ghost so we can begin to learn how to discern the voice of God.

The Anointing Within:
Inoculation Against Deception
I’ll tell you another important benefit of becoming familiar with the way God communicates: When you go into a meeting where someone is teaching false doctrine, that wrong teach-ing won’t be able to penetrate into your spirit. You’ll be able to discern what is going on as you sit in a meeting. Is the devil attacking the
service and the Holy Ghost fighting for it? Or is a “wolf” behind the pulpit, trying to steal the wool off the sheep? You see, developing the ability to discern what is not true, even if it is spoken from behind the pulpit, is one of the first results of consistently praying in tongues. Praying in tongues is an inoculation against deception.

Jesus said that when the Holy Spirit came, He would guide us into all truth (John 16:13).
No wonder John later said this about the Holy Spirit
Have I backslidden without knowing it?
No, I hadn’t backslidden.
The Spirit of Truth inside of me, my Teacher who cannot lie and bears witness only to the truth, had been activated through many hours of praying in tongues.
He was causing me to discern
the lies that had deceived me in the past but could not deceive
me anymore.This is just one more reason why I strongly disagree with people who say that if you pray too much in tongues, you’ll get “weird.”

A person who makes a statement like that is void of understanding.

He would never say such a thing if he understood the role this basic gift plays in hearing the voice of God and becoming familiar with the channel through which He speaks. No one who loves people would deliberately deprive the Body of Christ of such a blessing!

The Candle of the Lord

The Walk of the Spirit — The Walk of Power
With God’s candle, our spirit man, the Holy Spirit searches out all the inward parts of the
belly — all the dark places in our lives that need the light of His truth. This is the same search-ing process that takes place in us as we pray in tongues. He who searches the heart knows the mind of God and makes intercession for us according to the will of God (Rom. 8:27).The Holy Spirit teaches us everything we cannot discern. He shows us mysteries and divine secrets we need to know about God and His ways. He is our first and foremost Teacher. If we let the Holy Ghost teach us, at times we will enter into different realms of anointings
during prayer, such as tongues for interpretation or the deep groanings of intercession. There will be times when He will teach us mysteries during our prayer vigils. But no matter what happens in prayer, we will always come out the beneficiary if we yield our “candle” to the HolySpirit, allowing Him to illuminate our inmost parts with the light of His truth.

working4christ2 >> working4christ2

Saturday, April 5, 2014

5 SIGNS OF SPIRITUALISM IN CHURCH

...from SPIRITUALIST to SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTIST

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

I'm taking a long vacation from religion--Rev. Jesse Duplantis shares how Jesus Christ transformed him from a cold-hearted 1970s rock musician