Sunday, December 21, 2008

Do You Sense Your Separateness? (Part I)

Greetings Reader.

In this world, we have been told, we will not merely "have" but we will "know" affliction, suffering, and the affects of our sins and the sins of others. Yet, we've also been told, Christ overcame the world, and it is our faith which gives us the victory we long for. How goes it with your soul today with respect to this struggle? Are your longings being satisfied through Christ?

I have for some weeks desired to venture into Matthew 13, yet I have not known how to introduce the chapter and the, perhaps uncommon, view on this chapter that I have come to realize. Thus, this entry serves as an introduction to the topic of one's separateness and one's awareness of being separated. Do you, reader, if you are in Christ, do you know your separateness? Do you feel or sense your separateness? Do you live in light of this sense of separateness daily? If you do not, and you profess Christ, then you must ask yourself why you do not know your separateness? If you do not profess Christ, then not knowing your separateness is the most natural position for you to experience.

What follows, in this post, is a section from a classic, but rarely discovered, book by a man named John Arndt. His work "True Christianity" was the most likely book to be found on the table of early American settlers along with their Bible. In fact, True Christianity's first "published in American" edition was done by Ben Franklin, at the request of these early American Christian colonists. This edition was needed because these believers had so used the copies brought from Europe and beyond that they were worn out. If you have never read True Christianity (book one) by John Arndt, you owe it to yourself before the end of your earthly life to do so. You will learn, at a minimum, what a rich heritage of belief many who settled this country held, and you will see also how far we have moved from that heritage.

Subsequent posts will explore the concept of separateness as known through Jesus' words recorded in Matthew 13.

May you know, live, God's riches in Christ this day.

Carl


“He Who Does Not Live in Christ, but Gives His Heart to the World, Has Only the Outward Letter of the Scriptures, but He Does Not Experience Their Power, or Eat the Hidden Manna”

“He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; to him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it.” (Rev 2:17)

“By this Scripture we are taught that no man can taste the inward sweetness of heavenly joy and comfort in the hidden Word, who does not first vanquish his own flesh and the world, with all its pomp and lust, and the devil himself. But those that crucify their flesh daily, with all its desires and lusts, by serious contrition and repentance, who die daily to themselves and to the world, and to whom this life is a cross and affliction; these are divinely fed with the heavenly manna, and drink the wine of the joy of paradise. Those, on the other hand, that love the pleasures of this world rather than those of heaven, render themselves altogether unfit to taste the hidden manna, preserved for him alone that overcomes. The reason is because like things (according to the proverb) rejoice in their like; and things of a contrary nature to not unite with one another. Since, therefore, the Word of God is spiritual, it is no wonder that worldly minds take no pleasure in it. For as the body receives no strength from the food which the stomach does not digest; so the soul receives no strength from the divine Word, unless it is entirely converted into itself, that is, into its own life and nature.”

John Arndt, True Christianity, Book I, Chapter 36.