Smallest Seed

Image above from Inside Higher ED. Paul said guard your life and doctrine closely. And this is understood as doctrines found in the bible, nothing more, since there were no denominational doctrines in Paul's time. All churches believed one and the same set of bible doctrines, which was consistent with Jesus' prayer in John 17.23---complete unity of all believers. But then one day, actual experience in life began contradicting bible truths. Things said in the bible didn't happen to them. Real life contradicted what the bible said. And as more church people experienced this, they concluded that truth should be adjusted to their experience. That should solve the conflict. But the problem was, different folks had different experiences. This becomes the problem when you adjust truth to your experience rather than adjust experience to God's truth. So they adjusted Scriptures to their own experiences. One group found it hard to experience real holiness, so they

Image from Shutterstock. Sons are exempt. Jesus said this about paying taxes but principles like this have spiritual implications and ramifications. Exemption here is not just about earthly taxes. I can see it applied to our entire sonship in Christ, for instance. We tend to box ourselves in traditionally and humanly accepted meanings and fail to see passages like this through the mind of Christ and miss the glory. Like muzzling an ox that treads the grain. How did Paul conclude that to apply to ministers of the Gospel and not really to an ox? The context in Deuteronomy 25 is to point out how imposing unreasonable punishment on a guilty offender is like muzzling an ox while it’s doing its burdensome work. The comparison is on the difficulty and cruelty. Imagine subjecting the ox to heavy work without feeding it. Sons Look for Spiritual Principles in the WORD But Paul took it to apply to ministers (though we see no hint on this whatsoever in Deuteronomy). Why? Becaus

Image above from Flickr. It's alarming when the church relies mainly on its intellect, logic and reason to understand God and his Word---which is where it's plunging headlong today. And at best, what it thinks it has spiritually is just plain instinct, not spiritual discernment. Instinct has to do with a fixed mindset or action in response to a stimulus. It's really inbred thinking pattern. God can use it to reveal to you but it's not the Holy Spirit's gift. Lots of mothers, even non-Christians, have instincts. Nothing spiritual about that. You can know a used cup was left on the table by your spouse (and not your child or someone else) due mainly to familiarity. If you've been counseling folks for years, you get to a point where sometimes you can easily tell their emotions by simply seeing familiar hints on their faces or moods. That's intuition and has nothing to do with God's spiritual gifts. What It Is and It Is Not God's discernm