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
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