Hi all,
Continuing our discussion pondering if thoughts have substance. But to do so we must turn back to light - and Light.
God is light and there is no darkness in Him. God is love.
These statements in I John 1:5 and 4:8 respectively are given as blank statements. God is love and light, therefore love and light are synonymous. Love brings light into any situation, any relationship, and light (higher ways) bring love into any situation, any relationship.
James says it this way in 1:13, 16-18, warning people not to think his statement in v2-3 about counting it all joy when troubles come says that God is doing it to them (no!):
"Do not let anyone say when he is tested/tempted/tried that God is doing it to him...Do not make a mistake beloved brethren: (Only) Every good and perfect gift comes down from the Father of lights, in whom there is no variableness nor hint of turning. And of His own free will He birthed us with the Word of truth that we should be a kind of first harvest of His creation."
The alphabet of God
The Spirit realm created the natural realm, which means the natural laws are like letters in an alphabet to God. Think about how we use letters. We use letters in an alphabet as containers of our thoughts, emotions, and intentions of our heart. We form a thought, a motive, a plan, then we use the letters to form those thoughts into something material - words - and those words can then be made into something even more substantive. Words are like blueprints - not the building itself, but the plans for the building which can be seen. Letters are building blocks.
That is how the natural laws like gravity and light and energy and mass are to God - they are His letters, His alphabet, which when properly arranged form an ordered natural world. He planned the natural world and us. He invented that alphabet of the natural laws, it came from His mind, His imagination, and the exertion of His will. Then He spoke His intentions into existence and the natural world was.
Therefore light and love and life is the true and first substance. Light is a process therefore, and as such can transfer energy - think about that for a moment. Within the Bible's simple definition of God as Light and Love we see in our modern studies of light, that light is substance, light is a process, and light can transfer energy. The physical world is a reflection of God's ways and being...amazing.
Our thoughts are after all, solid, substance, and have weight first in the spirit realm and then outward to the physical.
When Paul said (as mentioned last week) that our inward man is renewed while we look at the unseen eternal realm, that 'looking at' the unseen means our thoughts 'look' towards the unseen, and that 'look' renews our spirit man. Our thoughts when placed on the higher, transmit energy (for lack of a better term) or Life into our spirit man to renew it. Our thoughts do have substance, can be carriers of good and Life and Light.
Isiah 55:7-9 tell us God's ways and thoughts - thoughts - are higher than our ways and thoughts. It is therefore revealed that God in the unseen realm and moving according to higher ways and thoughts, when thinking of creating something would just extend those higher ways downward so to speak, to create the natural. That means the natural world is like a mirror, as Paul said in Romans 1, that the invisible things of Him can be clearly seen in creation.
There is One who is higher than thoughts of substance
Hebrews 4:12 has been studied extensively, by myself as well. I have a nice chart I like to use showing a human heart with a sword dividing the heart in half from top to bottom. Then I divide based on the grammar of the verse the list it includes:
"The Word of God is living and powerful and able to divide between soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and discerns (critiques) the thought and intentions of the heart."
If you look at the list you find that soul, joints, and thoughts come first and are therefore under one column, while spirit, marrow, and intentions form the other column.
The soul, the human source of will, intellect, emotion, is as a joint linking two parts, the body and spirit. The spirit column includes the marrow and motives. The marrow is where blood if manufactured in the body - it is the core, the root, the source of life for the life is in the blood - that is the human spirit. Together, spirit and soul make the heart. In scripture you'll see verses using the word 'heart' and depending on what the author is trying to say, that word can mean both spirit and soul together, or just the spirit, or just the soul. Context reveals the subtle differences.
And many have been taught that Word of God - and by that most preachers mean the written document that starts with Genesis and end with The Revelation - the Bible, and many sermons have been preached telling how the Word of God will critique your thoughts and motives...that's great...except that isn't what the verse says. So you have to throw all thet understanding out the window.
For verse 13 makes it clear what the author meant by saying the Word of God discerns/critiques the thoughts and intents of the heart: "Neither is there any of creation that is not open to His sight, for all things are naked and open before Him with whom we have to do. Seeing then that we have a great high priest who has passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God..."
Hebrews 4:12 when speaking of the Word of God is talking about the Person called the Word of God - the Lord Jesus - He is the one who bridges the gap between soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and critiques the thoughts and intentions of the heart. Not the paper and ink, but the Person of the Word.
So when you look on a woman to lust, change that thought, that substance to thinking of her as a creation of God who Jesus died for - and say a prayer for her. When you want to be angry with someone without cause, change that thought to love, that Jesus died for them and loves them in spite of their nasty self. Pray for them. Jesus is looking, Jesus is critiquing our thoughts and intents. Our job is to realize our thoughts are equal to our actions, so the work of the Spirit is on our hearts, in our thoughts, and that is how we renew the mind, how we change our lives...
New subject next week...until then, blessings,
John Fenn
www.cwowi.org and email me at cwowi@aol.com
Continuing our discussion pondering if thoughts have substance. But to do so we must turn back to light - and Light.
God is light and there is no darkness in Him. God is love.
These statements in I John 1:5 and 4:8 respectively are given as blank statements. God is love and light, therefore love and light are synonymous. Love brings light into any situation, any relationship, and light (higher ways) bring love into any situation, any relationship.
James says it this way in 1:13, 16-18, warning people not to think his statement in v2-3 about counting it all joy when troubles come says that God is doing it to them (no!):
"Do not let anyone say when he is tested/tempted/tried that God is doing it to him...Do not make a mistake beloved brethren: (Only) Every good and perfect gift comes down from the Father of lights, in whom there is no variableness nor hint of turning. And of His own free will He birthed us with the Word of truth that we should be a kind of first harvest of His creation."
The alphabet of God
The Spirit realm created the natural realm, which means the natural laws are like letters in an alphabet to God. Think about how we use letters. We use letters in an alphabet as containers of our thoughts, emotions, and intentions of our heart. We form a thought, a motive, a plan, then we use the letters to form those thoughts into something material - words - and those words can then be made into something even more substantive. Words are like blueprints - not the building itself, but the plans for the building which can be seen. Letters are building blocks.
That is how the natural laws like gravity and light and energy and mass are to God - they are His letters, His alphabet, which when properly arranged form an ordered natural world. He planned the natural world and us. He invented that alphabet of the natural laws, it came from His mind, His imagination, and the exertion of His will. Then He spoke His intentions into existence and the natural world was.
Therefore light and love and life is the true and first substance. Light is a process therefore, and as such can transfer energy - think about that for a moment. Within the Bible's simple definition of God as Light and Love we see in our modern studies of light, that light is substance, light is a process, and light can transfer energy. The physical world is a reflection of God's ways and being...amazing.
Our thoughts are after all, solid, substance, and have weight first in the spirit realm and then outward to the physical.
When Paul said (as mentioned last week) that our inward man is renewed while we look at the unseen eternal realm, that 'looking at' the unseen means our thoughts 'look' towards the unseen, and that 'look' renews our spirit man. Our thoughts when placed on the higher, transmit energy (for lack of a better term) or Life into our spirit man to renew it. Our thoughts do have substance, can be carriers of good and Life and Light.
Isiah 55:7-9 tell us God's ways and thoughts - thoughts - are higher than our ways and thoughts. It is therefore revealed that God in the unseen realm and moving according to higher ways and thoughts, when thinking of creating something would just extend those higher ways downward so to speak, to create the natural. That means the natural world is like a mirror, as Paul said in Romans 1, that the invisible things of Him can be clearly seen in creation.
There is One who is higher than thoughts of substance
Hebrews 4:12 has been studied extensively, by myself as well. I have a nice chart I like to use showing a human heart with a sword dividing the heart in half from top to bottom. Then I divide based on the grammar of the verse the list it includes:
"The Word of God is living and powerful and able to divide between soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and discerns (critiques) the thought and intentions of the heart."
If you look at the list you find that soul, joints, and thoughts come first and are therefore under one column, while spirit, marrow, and intentions form the other column.
The soul, the human source of will, intellect, emotion, is as a joint linking two parts, the body and spirit. The spirit column includes the marrow and motives. The marrow is where blood if manufactured in the body - it is the core, the root, the source of life for the life is in the blood - that is the human spirit. Together, spirit and soul make the heart. In scripture you'll see verses using the word 'heart' and depending on what the author is trying to say, that word can mean both spirit and soul together, or just the spirit, or just the soul. Context reveals the subtle differences.
And many have been taught that Word of God - and by that most preachers mean the written document that starts with Genesis and end with The Revelation - the Bible, and many sermons have been preached telling how the Word of God will critique your thoughts and motives...that's great...except that isn't what the verse says. So you have to throw all thet understanding out the window.
For verse 13 makes it clear what the author meant by saying the Word of God discerns/critiques the thoughts and intents of the heart: "Neither is there any of creation that is not open to His sight, for all things are naked and open before Him with whom we have to do. Seeing then that we have a great high priest who has passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God..."
Hebrews 4:12 when speaking of the Word of God is talking about the Person called the Word of God - the Lord Jesus - He is the one who bridges the gap between soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and critiques the thoughts and intentions of the heart. Not the paper and ink, but the Person of the Word.
So when you look on a woman to lust, change that thought, that substance to thinking of her as a creation of God who Jesus died for - and say a prayer for her. When you want to be angry with someone without cause, change that thought to love, that Jesus died for them and loves them in spite of their nasty self. Pray for them. Jesus is looking, Jesus is critiquing our thoughts and intents. Our job is to realize our thoughts are equal to our actions, so the work of the Spirit is on our hearts, in our thoughts, and that is how we renew the mind, how we change our lives...
New subject next week...until then, blessings,
John Fenn
www.cwowi.org and email me at cwowi@aol.com
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