THE AWAKENED BELIEVER.
1. Reading the Word of God produces moral convictions and these grow until the reader is uncomfortable. Why? “That sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful.” (Romans 7:11) The seeking believer then has the choice of turning away from his convictions or continuing with the quest of his soul caused by his awakening call of Christ to follow him. Should he choose to turn away he will then be a miserable soul for whatever time it takes for him to relent from his folly and return as a pilgrim seeker.
Easy religionists of our pulpits today would jump in where angels fear to tread and reassure him with false hopes. Such clergy fail to discern the difference between awakening and conversion. The seeker’s soul will never be placated by the ‘rabbit trails’ of water-wine-wafer sacraments/ordinances; ‘full surrender’; infilling of the Spirit; tongues’ speaking; or full sanctification. Clergy making these alternative easy ways to avoid real repentance have not the slightest inkling of biblical conversion or the meaning of faith by grace that the Reformation heralded some 500 years ago and shelved by 99% of the church today.
2. The moral law and the condemnation it produces in man’s conscience is meant to bring the believer to the end of himself and distrust his own efforts, and the false hopes of his own faith, and his own religious creed/ sacrament.
3. Man’s extremity is God’s opportunity for saving grace. The eleven disciples were in hiding, except John, after the crucifixion. They were at the end of themselves in mortifying sorrow facing their cowardice, disbelief, and failure.
4. This was the opportunity for the risen Christ to change their worldly sorrow into godly sorrow of repentance. Concomitantly the Lord Jesus converted their double-mindedness into genuine godly faith enabling them to believe as the day-star of the Spirit indwelling them.
FOUR STAGES OF A BELIEVER (2): The Awakened Believer.
Published by
Bible Simply
PROFILE of BIBLE SIMPLY
SIMPLE KEYS
TO UNDERSTANDING
AND KNOWING YOUR
BIBLE’S CONTENTS
HOW TO START READING YOUR BIBLE.
As we are educated to be doubters and skeptics, one way or another, you need to employ the willing suspension of disbelief at the very start and if you have not believed the following tenets enumerated below you must pretend they are true while reading.
1. Read it as if it is the infallible Word of God.
2. Remember in the first chapter of the first of sixty-six books: Genesis, these words appear:
a. “God said-God made-God called”
i. God said what you’re reading
ii. God made the patriarchs, prophets & apostles write them.
iii. God called ordinary men to write His Words. Do not treat them as in any other book.
3. Do not analyze it by your own intellect for logic or truthfulness;
4. Do not judge it by your powers of mental reason or of popular philosophy;
5. Read it as God’s Word demonstrating the waywardness of rebellious human nature cursed by sin;
6. Read it noticing the rare men or women that wholeheartedly seek God sincerely without ulterior motive;
7. Read it noticing the futile attempts of men to keep the moral law, vainly worshipping with lip service;
8. Read it and continue the habit even when you do not understand it for God is secretly at work because the Bible says:-:
a. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God:
i. Romans 10: 17.
b. The pre-eternal Christ’s name is the Word, in the triune godhead of the Father, the Word & Spirit:
i. 1st John 5:7; 1st John 1:1; John’s Gospel 1:1.
9. Read it without the help of church or clergy until there arises within your heart a pang of hunger to wholeheartedly be a daily Bible reader.
10. Read it until God’s grace enlightens the eyes of your understanding to fathom Christ’s message to you in both the Old and New Testaments (excepting the uninspired Apocrypha in some Bibles)
11. Read it noticing the principles of the wise reader found in the following Bible references:-
a. Proverbs 3:5-6; 1st Corinthians 2:14; 2nd Timothy 3:16; Romans 1:17; John’s Gospel 1:17.
12. Keep in mind that the minute your mind asserts superior wisdom over your Bible reading you are a fool.
a. Romans 1:22.
13. The reason the mind blindly argues against the credibility of Scripture that the problem is from the heart:
a. Jeremiah 17:9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?
PROFILE
John David’s Bible Simply is a Know Your Bible program. Bible Simply has been formed to reach the ‘household of faith’ and the god-fearing pilgrims struggling to understand the Bible. Bible Simply would encourage spasmodic readers to become daily Bible readers and regular readers to become more acquainted with the Old and New Testaments.
For a free Bible Study or New Testament sample: c/- biblesimply@gmail.com or
Please write to-
Bible Simply
PO Box 366603,
Bonita Springs FL 34136.
Bible Simply is neither church-based nor sectarian in approach. It does not solicit church attendance or use follow-up methods unless requested.
Bible Simply holds to the tenets of our Puritan forefathers and their early English Bible translations based on the Greek Text of Erasmus, not the unreliable 19th C Greek New Testament of Westcott & Hort upon which most modern translations of the Bible are based.
MOTTO: “Faith alone- by grace alone- through Scripture alone.”
‘The just shall live by faith,’ not of themselves but of grace.
http://bonitabiblemission.worthyofpraise.org/how-to-start-reading-your-bible/
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