In the mind of Christ

To: “David Burdick” biking4theblind@yahoo.com

Hi David,
It was good to see you in church tonight. I left early because the Spirit moved me to. I don’t always know why, but the Spirit keeps me safe so I do it. I was remembering 13 years ago now when Christ called me and told me to take my happiness now or follow him, which I did. follow him that is. Anyway, at first I had forgotten what being moved by the Spirit was like so it had to be proven to me that it was a good thing. I remember being told to do things that one is not supposed to do, like leave church early, and then I would be shown what happened as a result. One time I even got to witness to a friend who was never at the location I found her, but if I hadn’t gotten off the bus and gone the “wrong” way because of the Spirit, I wouldn’t have run into the friend with the perfect words for witnessing. Then evil attacked and I became a mess and I was already a big sinner with big sinful ways so as you can see from my hairstyle it’s been a rough 13 years.

Anyway, there is such poverty of Spirit now people are so trained to do as normal or should would have it. Personally, I recommend praying angels move you any way they have to. They have saved me many a time and protect me well, but I had to prove to them I was trustworthy too. Sometimes you have to do what heaven says whether people will think you’re weird or not. I give up on my image with people and it’s been a blessing actually.

Anyway, I hope the prison ministry keeps you in town. I would miss having you around. And I hope you didn’t think I argue with you at church. I just like discussing what you say so the finer points emerge. Don’t worry, after Christ comes and they fix me up I’ll be perfect and we can study the finer points of God better! God is angry tonight. I’d better go pray but i wanted to e-mail you with what I was thinking first. Oh, and what are the names of the people at prayer meeting? I never know. And Luke--when Christ is tempted to turn the stone to bread, what is the significance in Christ’s retort? I don’t remember the details of that and I was told once.
Your sister in Christ,
C______

Blessed email, as usual, sister!
It was good to see you last night too. I don’t know if I said I had been thinking of calling you. But I had. I think at the time I thought it was too early or late and then I got caught up in bla-bla-bla-bla, etc.... I could have emailed you. I’m sorry.

I hope you and the others understood what I remarked about repentance. Too often our public prayers take on only formality in this area. The blanket statement, “Father forgive us for all our sins,” sounds like the Lord’s prayer, which was only meant to be an outline of prayer; but Jesus didn’t teach formality. The disciples came to Jesus asking Him to teach them to pray like John had taught his disciples. Jesus prayed earnestly. “Who in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto Him that was able to save Him from death, and was heard in that He feared.” (Heb. 5:7). I don’t mean for us to fake crying to God. But in the absence of the real thing, we need to heed the Father’s advice to jabberwokky Peter and keep silence on the matter. “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye Him.” (Matt. 17:5). Many denominations use the Lord’s prayer as some kind of magic formula to keep away the evil spirits, making it a gargoyle. The gargoyle prayer.

There will come times when corporate repentance will happen. But the Spirit of God will be in charge of that and those in the group will truly be sorry for what they did.

This is not to say that when Arthur asks God to forgive when he is giving the pastoral prayer, that this is wrong. Because he is doing it to lead others who may be silently seeking God’s forgiveness. But Arthur speaks in a way that is conducive to repentance, as opposed to just rattling off the request, “Forgive us for all our sins, of commission and of omission.” If someone came to me with the request, “David, forgive me for all my sins toward you, of commission and of omission,” what should I say? “Omni domni, you’re forgiven?” That’s so ludicrous that its funny! I believe its equally ludicrous to our Father in heaven. He prizes genuineness and honest. Jesus all the time condemned the pretence of the Pharisees. “For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.” (Matt. 5:20). And all the time He was accused of blasphemy because of His earnest, honest obedience to His Father’s will and Law. “He shall not fail nor be discouraged, till He have set judgment in the earth: and the isles shall wait for His law.” (Is. 42:4).

I agree with you that we have to follow the Spirit’s leading. Although it was Jesus’ custom to meet with other worshipers before God. If we will join with and encourage His professed followers and receive the blessing He has for us, then He will bring us to those who don’t profess Him but need to hear of His love and blessings. We are exhorted to not forsake the assembling of ourselves together. (Heb. 10:25). This comes from the ancient command of Moses to Israel,

“Then there shall be a place which the LORD your God shall choose to cause His name to dwell there; thither shall ye bring all that I command you; your burnt offerings, and your sacrifices, your tithes, and the heave offering of your hand, and all your choice vows which ye vow unto the LORD:
And ye shall rejoice before the LORD your God, ye, and your sons, and your daughters, and your menservants, and your maidservants, and the Levite that is within your gates; forasmuch as he hath no part nor inheritance with you.
Take heed to thyself that thou offer not thy burnt offerings in every place that thou seest:
But in the place which the LORD shall choose in one of thy tribes, there thou shalt offer thy burnt offerings, and there thou shalt do all that I command thee.” (Deut. 12:11-14).

And C_____, don’t ever think I see you arguing just because you disagree. As Dad would say, “Heavens no, child!” I’m just glad to have someone to talk faith and the Bible with! I miss the old days when we sat in a circle and studied together with R_____ . Oh, how I miss that! Wouldn’t that be great to have again?

In my next email I’ll write about Christ’s first temptation in the wilderness. I need to get ready for work. Love you, sister.

David

From:C______
To: “David Burdick” biking4theblind@yahoo.com

Yours was a blessed e-mail too, David. Please do tell me about Christ’s first temptation in the wilderness. And yes, I miss those days when Sabbath was a day of spending time together learning of God and knowing His love. The fellowship I think was a strong foundation for both of us, and we should love R_____ for his bringing us together, or should we thank God? Both! I hope R_____ is well and hasn’t lost his face. I know he was well loved to move so many people. As to what you wrote, repentance is such a tricky thing. God generally warns me when I need to repent the big stuff. He explains to me and then I see it. I ask Him a question and then one day I realize the question is answered. That’s how I put my life in his hands. I ask Him what to do and he leads me. It works!

I know there are teachings on this, but I feel more blessed to have had the relationship with God that He taught me how to follow Him. I am so blessed, even with the persecution I have faced. But of repentance, I believe when we know the truth that we repent out of hand. I think truth and honesty cure a lot of sin. For instance, people see the ten commandments as a scurge, but they are a blessing to help us, not hurt us. When we see God’s law as it is, an act of love and perfection, who cannot help heed it? Alas, some don’t repent. In the end, I don’t understand not loving God and being healed by the truth. I think judgment day will heal even the evil because they will come face to face with the lies they believed and maybe not repent but they will get what they need. I think the second coming is an act of love.
C______

Hi C____,

Yes, its all in love. Self-sacrificing love. Incomprehensible self-sacrificing love. But if we don’t strive to comprehend it, we will fail in judgment. If we don’t strive to understand it the Holy Spirit can’t force it on us. But if we strive to understand it, we cooperate with Him in teaching us about it. He can’t work against our will.

But the day Jesus comes, which will be horrendous and earth-shattering, will be a mini Judgment Day. Imagine the actual day of judgment! Universe-shattering! Then we will see the infinite depths of the great Creator’s hatred, wrath, anxiety, and anguish toward sin and rebels. The flood was a pre-figure of that great day of judgment, and it is written, “It repented the Lord that He had made man on the earth, and it grieved Him at His heart.” (Gen. 6:6). We see all the rage and woe in the Son of God’s repentance. The day is coming when all those who did not strive to see God’s mercy and love Him will come up unprepared to face the fullness of His righteous love and it will destroy them. They were given every opportunity to fall on the Stone and be broken, and they self-gratifyingly refused it all. Therefore, the Stone will fall on them and grind them to powder. (Matt. 21:44).

I need to understand His love much better. That is the victory over Satan and sin. (1Jn. 5:4).

Jesus in the wilderness. He went there, Matthew says “led” by the Spirit, but Mark says “driven” by the Spirit. He was there for 40 days to show that He could punish Israel with tough discipline for 40 years and punish the antedeluvian world in wrath for 40 days of deluge because He would pass through similar punishment. All previous and afterward punishment/discipline He had/has authority to give because He suffers it all too. He suffers worse. He didn’t even have manna, like Israel had. He would have loved it. All He had was stones for physical food. But He had much, much more than physical food to live on. He dwelled in such a fullness of communion with God that that deep communion was all satisfying to Him. C____, try to imagine such a wonderful comfort and peace contemplating the righteousness and love of His Father recorded in the Old Testament, that all physical needs were met.

His soul satisfaction superceded His need for food or water. He didn’t need protection from the elements or a roof over His head. He didn’t need a pillow and mattress. Nothing could disturb the fulfillment in His Father’s presence. His Father was His refreshment. He lived in full trust and love through the power of the scriptures. He lived by every word of God.

“The just shall live by his faith.” (Hab. 2:4). We can also have the experience Jesus had. But we have to be made right with God first. Then it all falls into place. When we have responded to the call of the Spirit to renounce and repent of living apart from God in sin, and we fall on the Stone and are broken, then we are enabled to live by every word of God. Nothing will appear more pleasant and better than His righteousness, and all competition will disappear. By beholding Him we will be changed into the same image. “But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.” (2Cor. 3:18). “Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the LORD of hosts.” (Zech. 4:6).

Its not by fighting sin and Satan that we are victorious over them. Jesus didn’t even use that method. He used only what we can use—letting the word of God mold us through our exposing ourselves to it. The Spirit of truth is our only hope against sin and Satan through His holy scriptures. We must give up the fight of sin and take up the fight of faith. We must follow Christ’s example in this. Its precisely because the church has chosen the fight of sin that “there remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God.” (Heb. 4:9).

And thus Paul exhorts us to give our willpower in only one direction—that of getting to know Jesus—and to escape the dire repercussions. “For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from His. Let us labour therefore to enter into that rest , lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief.” (vs. 10,11).

This is the Latter Rain message to the world. It should come as no surprise that our Lord laid the foundation for that final great message to the world by restoring the seventh day Sabbath of holy communication all day with our Savior. We can learn what holy communion every day is like by using the Sabbath as the training ground for that wonderful experience. For 165 years the Advent movement has been trying to get off the ground to go to heaven. We’ve been rolling down a long, long runway, lifting up a thousand feet of elevation when Ellen White was still alive, but now we’re barely getting off the ground for a few seconds each Sabbath.

But the day is coming, and hasteth greatly, when God’s people will know victory over every cultivated and inherited tendency to evil. Self-indulgence will evaporate among the people of the Lord because they will finally have admitted their utter failure to “keep the commandments of God,” and to have “the testimony of Jesus” in their heart. (Rev. 12:17). They will give up the proud notion that they can overcome their sins, and will finally come to Jesus just as they are. Then the church will have power. Until then we are dead corpses, walking around with very dry bones. (Ez. 37:1-10). We are without hope in God because we have spent our strength on fighting our sins, and nothing left to serve Him. Its egg on every face. We’ve been feeding on chaff; worse, on mud pies. Its mud on every face. We try to look happy eating mud! But it isn’t enduring happiness. As soon as no one is looking we fall into depression! And who out in the world would want to join us in eating mud pies? I don’t blame them for relegating us to cultism or insanity.

Let us do as Jesus did, get right with God by searching for His love and falling on the Stone and being broken, and then living life to the fullest through communion with the God of love. This is what Jesus’ first temptation was about.

Love you sister. I’ll be in WV this Sabbath. So have a nice Sabbath wherever you end up.

David