Adversity vs. Stress
Before you begin your Bible study, as a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, be
sure you have named your sins privately to God the Father.
If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and
to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (Known, Unknown and Forgotten sins)
(1Jn 1:9)
You will then be in fellowship with God, Filled with the Holy Spirit and ready
to learn Truth from the Word of God.
God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in Spirit and Truth.
(John 4:24)
Adversity is what we all will have in life, in one form or another. This
adversity is inevitable. Adversity results from the freewill of man in this world.
It is inevitable that having old sin natures; humans we will hurt each other. So
many bad decisions made from the sin nature create havoc in nations,
families and individuals. Adversity also comes from God himself, for example,
natural disasters, etc. (Amos 3:6) But, God has given us the Spiritual
Thoughts we need to overcome adversities and prevent them from becoming
stress within our soul. Psychology is actually a very precise science when it
comes to the analysis of human instability within the soul. Schizophrenia,
manic depression, disassociation, hysteria and psychosis are results of
adversity becoming stress in the soul. And contrary to popular belief, these
psychological problems are not just the problems of unbelievers, but also
believers in Jesus Christ. Now psychology says neurosis is lack of psychic
energy in the stream of consciousness. Neurosis can be feelings of anxiety,
obsessional thoughts, or compulsive acts. Neurosis can lead to what
psychologists call a splitting of the mind resulting in split personalities. This
condition is far more common than even most experts will admit. Some
people are able to keep their irrationality within the soul, and thus appear to
be perfectly normal. Of course, no one fools God. He knows our every
thought, our every motive, and he has always known these things. Neurosis
can result in a believer when he lacks the Word of Truth in his stream of
consciousness. The only defense against any form of neurosis is the two
power options, the filling of God the Holy Spirit, and the daily intake of the
Word of God. (John 4:24) The same goes for the unbeliever; however,
without belief in Jesus Christ, he can only rely on the Divine laws of
establishment given to every member of the human race in the Mosaic Law.
The unbeliever must rely on upholding the rights of protection, liberty, privacy
and property given to men; they are true Divine laws of establishment.
Unbelievers that fail to live by the Divine Laws of establishment, and believers
that fail to intake the Mind of Christ in their soul; will result in some form of
neurosis. Now psychology has a vast amount of information on how they can
fix a soul. And, medication is a good thing if it can bring a person to a point so
that he can concentrate on the Word of God. However, the Bible emphatically
says that human solutions are NO solutions. (1Sa 10:19) Divine solutions
(God the Holy Spirit and The Word of Truth) are the only solutions!
(Prov 22:17-21) The problem with psychology is focusing on the problem,
instead of offering real Divine solutions.
As a child, we all form defense mechanisms within our souls to cope with
the outside world. The worse the childhood, the more defense mechanisms
we develop. Defense mechanisms are the only means of surviving childhood
for many who struggle through it. But, when the child becomes an adult,
these same defense mechanisms will destroy the soul. Reaction and blame
will only create more problems within the soul. The woman who wrote the
letter realized that the solution was not to continue being the victim, to feel
sorry for herself, but to realize that what she Thinks now, will determine her
future. The same Principle applies when the apostle Paul says “to forget what
lies behind, and move toward the goal which is in Christ Jesus.”
(Php 3:13-14) If we continue to let past or present adversities penetrate our
souls, we are the ones choosing to live in misery and stress, instead of God’s
plan and purpose for our lives. We are all imperfect, and we have all done
things we regret, or have had things done to us by others that cause us grief,
but we have the option as to whether these problems destroy us. If we
choose to focus on the problem, we are in essence saying to God that we
can handle our own problems, we don’t need His solutions. Or we can forget
the past and move on.
(1Pe 5:5) and (Jas 4:6) say basically the same thing. God makes war
against the arrogant believer, but he gives grace to the humble believer. This
means that if we continue to focus on the problems and adversities of life,
past or present, then God will allow the pain and misery to continue and we
will only have ourselves to blame. Most believers do not even realize this, but
even unhappiness is arrogance.
Yes, I will say it again, it is arrogant to be an unhappy believer. We
choose our state of mind. (Prov 23:7) YOU ARE A SLAVE TO WHATEVER
RUINS YOUR PIECE OF MIND. (Rom 6:16-18) God never coerces our
decisions. He allows us to choose for or against his plan. It is impossible to
be unhappy in God’s plan. But wait, hold that Thought. We don’t just suddenly
become incredibly happy at the moment of Salvation. God wants His
creatures to be happy. This requires spending time learning about who He IS,
and what God’s plan is all about. (Prov 23:26) We either continue to strive
toward the goal of Occupation with the person of Jesus Christ by renewing
our mind with the Word of God, (Rom 12:2; (2Co 3:18) and giving thanks in
ALL the prosperities and difficulties of life, (1Th 5:18) or we choose to focus
on our human lives and continue to live in unreality. We sow to the wind, and
we reap the whirlwind. (Gal 6:7) We make our own choices in life, and in the
end we only have ourselves to blame. Do we make the Word of God our #1
priority in life? This is the question we must ask ourselves within our own
soul. God already knows the answer. He already knew the outcome of our
life before we were even born. So, the solutions He provides will work! Jesus
Christ our Lord made this life possible and perfected those solutions.
(Heb 12:1-2) When I start Thinking about how infinity superior and stable our
God is, it brings me incredible joy inside my soul. What comfort! What
security!
The sad fact is that most believers in Jesus Christ will not achieve the
ultra-supergrace life. (Reach Spiritual maturity) They would rather hear what
they want to hear, and so they never advance farther than what they want to
hear. The following are 8 stages of reversionism which Paul was inspired to
communicate to the Galatian and the Corinthian believers who had fallen out
of fellowship. Reversionism simply means that a believer in Jesus Christ,
even a Spiritually mature believer, can revert back to his old unbelieving
system of human and satanic thinking. This is proof that until the day we die,
we will constantly need to fill our minds with Biblical Spiritual Thoughts to
avoid reversionism.
Most believers trap themselves somewhere in the 8 stages of Reversionism.
1) Reaction and Distraction. (Jas 3:14-15)
As a believer, you can either respond to circumstances and people in your
life (Using Divine Thinking in your soul) or you can react to them. This can be
as simple as frustration; the easy way to tell if we are under demon influence
is, are we thinking about ourselves, (Php 2:3-4) or are we reacting to other’s
sins? Are you distracted from the daily intake of the Word of God? Are you
hypersensitive to other’s sins, because they are different from your own? This
is when you start drifting from concentrating on your own Spiritual life, and
become more concerned with what else is going on. Remember this basic
Biblical Principle: Only you can live your Spiritual life, no one else can live it
for you. Loss of fellowship through sin, and failure to apply
(1Jn 1:9) results in advanced stages of reversionism.
You see here, if you allow the outside pressure of adversity to become
the inside pressure of stress in the soul, you are in the 1st stage of
reversionism. (Under demon control) (2Ti 2:25-26) The sin nature is not the
fault of our personal sins. The sin nature is genetic and resides in every cell
of the human body. The soul, which was created by God, is perfect. Volition,
mentality, and self-consciousness all reside in the soul. When we sin, we
choose to sin. The sin nature simply tempts us, and then we use the volition in
our soul to choose to sin. Only the two power options of the filling of God the
Holy Spirit and the accumulated Spiritual knowledge of the Word of Truth can
defend us from this temptation. (John 4:23) Lack of these is lack of real
strength. When we sin, it is inevitable that stress will be present inside the
soul, and if we fail to rebound, we move to stage two Reversionism.
2) Frantic search for happiness.
Because you are out of fellowship, you seek happiness in the world
(Satan’s System) to compensate from frustration, boredom, loneliness, etc.
And you must have more than just simple fellowship with God the Holy Spirit
to avoid this stage of reversionism. You must have acquired Spiritual Thinking
in your stream of consciousness — the right lobe of the soul, or heart. For
without Spiritual knowledge, (The Thinking of Christ; 1Co 2:16) we will not
have any Spiritual strength to keep us in fellowship with God. There are two
types of Christians who develop in this stage of reversionism. The ascetic or
legalistic Christian has a trend toward morality. He can have self- righteous
arrogance, and produce mental attitude sins by judging and looking down on
others who do not fit his moralistic image of a Christian. He does not have the
Truth within him, because he is out of fellowship, and hence, without Divine
Thinking. His frantic search for happiness is trying to show others how good
he is, and deceiving himself into thinking God actually favors him over others,
when God’s love doesn’t fluctuate. (Heb 13:8) It all depends on Who and
What God IS! And God loves his own righteousness, the righteousness that
we receive when we believe in Jesus Christ, perfect righteousness. So, he
joins the church, and tithes, and says God bless you, and smiles all the time,
and tries to do the right thing, and therefore he never gets it. It never
depends on what he does or how he does it, it depends on Thinking with the
Spiritual Thoughts laid out to him in the Bible. He is not better than others, but
yet he depends on this belief that he is. He joins others who fit his trend of
the “human old sin nature good” syndrome. I like to call these mutual
admiration societies. They think they are great, and they frown on the rest of
the world. The problem here is the tendency to focus on oneself for such high
morality, completely loosing track of what is truly in the Word of God. The
frantic search for happiness is the result of seeking happiness through people
and society, like churches, when only the Word of God in your soul can do
this. The second trend is fairly obvious. For the lascivious Christian, this could
mean drunkenness, sexual promiscuity, drug abuse or crime. This frantic
search for happiness leads a Christian to escape God’s Reality through overt
sins.
3) Operation Boomerang.
Just that, the more you react, and are distracted, and search for
happiness outside your inner soul, the more these reactions are intensified.
Frustration becomes greater frustration. Discouragement becomes
depression. Loneliness becomes desolation. Here is where you lose your
common sense and you let emotion run your soul instead of Thinking with
Truth. Here is where your soul becomes fragmented, and begins to literally
split. This fragmentation is prolonged stress inside the soul. The only defense
is to use, (1Jn 1:9). When this stage is reached, it is usually from false
thinking being accumulated in the subconscious. As the years pass by under
daily perseverance of Spirit & Truth, we are able to fight this battle more and
more head on. Spiritual Thinking inside the soul will become more and more a
line of defense in the battle that wages inside the soul. We can recall The
Word of God more quickly, and the Spiritual life becomes more of a Reality
from the inner proof of contentment. However, without the daily intake of the
teaching of the Word, the believer is weakened more and more as the stress
takes over his soul. The stress will fornicate with the old sin nature and when
cognition of the mind is overrun, then stage four will inevitably result.
4) Emotional revolt of the soul
Emotion is no longer the responder or appreciator of the soul, it now
becomes the dictator. Emotion in itself is empty. It is entirely dependent on
Spiritual Thoughts resident in the heart. When emotion takes control of the
soul, the believer becomes irrational. This irrationality can be subtle, such as
sincere and soft spoken pastors who misinterpret the Bible. Here is where
irrationality begins. Instead of using Divine Viewpoint in your heart to respond
to circumstances, your emotion dictates your thinking and behavior.
O you Corinthians, our mouth is open to you; [Ready to give Truth] our
heart [Right lobe of the soul] is enlarged. [With Divine Thinking] You are not
hindered [From learning Divine Thinking] by us, but you are hindered by your
own emotions. [Thinking and acting by the old sin nature’s lust pattern]
(2Co 6:11-12)
Christians distort Bible teaching when they are under emotional revolt of the
soul,
Now I urge you, brethren, keep your eye on those who cause dissensions
and offenses in opposition to the Divine Thinking which you have learned, and
avoid them. For they are such who serve not our Lord Jesus Christ but their
own emotions, [The thinking of the old sin nature] and by smooth and
flattering speech they deceive the right lobes of the stupid. (Rom 16:17-18)
These are apostate believers who are without Spiritual Thinking in their
souls. They interpret the Scriptures with their emotions, without discernment.
The Mind of Christ is not about sweet, sentimental emotional deceptions, it is
about Principles of Truth and the integrity Divine Thought inside the soul of the
believer and rewards him accordingly. (Rev 2:23) God can reward only His
Own Thoughts! (Isa 55:6-9) Emotion was given to the human race as an
appreciator of the things the Creator so graciously gives us. Emotion,
however, can be very destructive if given full control of the mind. You do not
have to be a believer to understand this point. Emotion breeds irrational
behavior and instability. The Christian way of life is all about Thinking,
Thinking and Thinking. (Promises, Doctrines, Principles and Prophesy.
(Deut 18:18; John 7:16-18; Gal 2:20) In order to live and operate in The
Spiritual Kingdom of God, we must learn His Spiritual Thoughts and language,
Emotion has NO room in the Christian way of life; accept as an appreciator of
what we know about the Lord. Emotion is a wonderful gift from God, and I
Think you know how wonderful it can be when you Think about Salvation and
what Christ did for us at the Cross. I myself get quite ecstatic at times when I
Think about all that God has provided for us. It can also be bad when you
lose your train of Thought, and you let anger or bitterness rule your Thoughts.
This stage of reversionism is very destructive. You cannot recall Verses
that you previously had knowledge of. Your emotion is running your soul.
Simple use of, (1Jn 1:9) must be used. You must be able to recognize your
irrationality and confess the sin. Arrogance becomes so blatant here! Those
that are in emotional revolt of the soul do not want to hear the Truth, and they
despise it; when you try and explain it to them, they want to continue telling
you about their distorted views about the Bible, such as loving your neighbor
as you love yourself by the old sin nature; which means personally loving
everyone! This is impossible. I will explain this further below. Another example
would be that you have to feel sorry for your sins, (Emotion) Wrong! How you
feel about your sins is inconsequential. There is nowhere in the Bible that it
say you must feel sorry for our sins. If this was a prerequisite, then we would
have an influence in God’s plan, and this would mean God’s plan is not
perfect because it relies on US. It does not rely on us. The sins were already
judged at the Cross. How we feel about them is not the issue. The issue is to
cite being out of fellowship, HOMOLOGEO, as per, (1Jn 1:9). This word
actually comes from 5th century Attic Greek, used by Socretes, and Plato,
and meant to cite a court room case. It did not require how the lawyer felt
about the case; he was simply required to state the facts. We are to only
state the facts to God and move on. We are not punished for our sins; again
these were judged at the Cross. We are disciplined for being out of
fellowship. Believe me, it begins to make since over time, because we
actually learn from Thought, (Admitting being out of fellowship to God) not
from emotion. (Feeling sorry for sin) Lastly, godly sorrow is an incorrect
translation in, (2Co 7:10-11). If you break down the Greek exegetically, you
find that it actually says, “distressed as God would have it.” (Resulting in a
change of mind) In other words, we are disciplined for being out of fellowship.
Failure to follow these rules will inevitably result in emotional revolt of the
soul. Prolonged periods in this stage will result in neurosis and other
psychological dysfunctions. (Sorrow of the world) This can explain why
perfectly normal believers suddenly become mad. They overwhelm
themselves with guilt and other emotional sins that drive them to this
madness. We are helpless to do anything apart from the filling of God the
Holy Spirit. (Zec 4:6) And we cannot fight large battles without a large
battalion lined up to defend our soul. This is Divine Thinking in the soul,
accurate Bible teaching. Yet, so many of us refuse to use the Thoughts of
God, and rely on our emotions!
5) Negative Volition Toward Bible Doctrine
At this point believers are apathetic to the Word of God, and actually
shrug it off as needless repetition. A person now may find a church that suits
their emotional needs, ignoring the message. They sit in Bible class, but they
are performing rituals without Divine Reality. (Isa 29:13) You are so caught
up in the adversities of your life that you cannot apply Divine Thinking to
circumstances. You in essence say, God’s Word doesn’t work, but it is you
who are negative to the Word of God. Here is where Christians feel so full of
self- pity and emptiness. They were given such an extraordinary Spiritual life,
yet they wallow in their self-pity, because they do not understand it.
Ignorance is no excuse in the Word of God. God will always provide actual
Bible teaching; we must seek it, hear it, and Think with it. Hearing the Word is
not good enough, we must be doers, (Thinkers) of the Word. The Word of
Truth believed, understood and applied. (Prov 22:17-19)
6) Blackout of the Soul
We are still talking about a believer in Jesus Christ. Here is where a
vacuum opens in the left lobe (The staging area or the mind) of the soul
called MATAIOTES in the Greek. Literally, this means vanity as in,
(Eph 4:17). Satan understands more of the Bible than you think he does. So,
he feeds on believers’ blackout of the soul. You see, Satan knows his fate,
he realizes it is only a matter of time. But, he will continue to try and break
the link in God’s plan. He has already tried several times, from extermination
of the Jews to avoid the Covenants with racial Israel from being fulfilled, from
attempting to destroy the line of David in the Old Testament to prevent the
birth of Christ, to setting up his own Utopian Millennium to prove Christ a liar
in saying there will be wars and rumor of wars until my return. (Matt 24:6) All
he needs is to prove one Biblical Promise wrong. Even in his genius, he is no
match for the perfection of God. One of his best attacks on the plan of God
is distortion of the Scriptures. Anything to lead the Christian from the path of
righteousness. Christians want to teach about love, love, love, and yet they
have no idea just what love is. True love is a Virtue love. (Gal 5:22-23) It is
acquired through God’s Word, not through emotion. The true power of love is
not personal love directed toward others, but Impersonal love. Virtue love
directed toward everyone, because it does not depend on the attractiveness
or repulsiveness of the object. but it is dependent upon the integrity — Virtue
inside the soul, built up by the daily learning and use of “Divine Thinking”
towards circumstances, self, things and others. (Rom 14:13) Obedience to
Truth; not our feelings! (Psa 138:2; Luk 22:42) Yet, most Christians talk
sincere and smile and teach about loving their neighbor. I’ll tell you what true
love is. True Virtue love is when God the Father judged His only Son, the
uniquely born One, with all the sins of mankind. He had Personal love for
Jesus Christ. Yet, he judged him. Why? Because Divine integrity always
comes before Divine love. The righteousness and justice of God the Father
judged Christ on the Cross for us, so that His plan would make it possible for
us to have an eternal relationship with Him. That is Impersonal love. HE loves
us not for who and what we are, but for Who and What He IS. Perfect
righteousness and fairness will always find a way to give his creatures a
chance.
The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith
[Spiritual life] and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons.
(1Ti 4:1)
Satan wants us to feed on distortions such as love and peace for all.
Because he knows that if we focus on the emotional love we feel, then we
rely on our own weak and pathetic strength. Even in love, we must rely on the
Word of God, never on emotion. These believers in Jesus Christ have
neglected the Word of Truth and are now influenced by the knowledge of the
world such as Darwinism, New Age Philosophy, Atheism, Conversion to
another religion, etc.… The result is subjectivity, confusion, instability, and
frustration. They buy into liberalism, world peace and disarmament programs,
socialism, universal brotherhood of man, and rights for the criminal. Can you
imagine; rights for the criminal? In our system today we make the criminal the
victim, and the victim the criminal. Since the believer in Jesus Christ is
permanently indwelled by God the Holy Spirit, (The mentor promised by
Christ) he can never be demon possessed, but his (Satan’s) thinking brings
about darkness in the soul.
O Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to you, avoiding worldly and
empty chatter and the opposing arguments of what is falsely called
“knowledge”-- which some have professed and thus gone astray from the
faith. [The Spiritual life] Grace be with you. (1Ti 6:20-21; Eph 5:11, Eph 6:12,
Col 1:13, (2Pe 2:4) At this point, the believer can possess two personalities.
When things go his way, everything is wonderful, and he is nice to be around.
But, when adversity hits, he falls apart. Even simple adversities such as
sitting in traffic, weather, temptations, not enough money, criticism, etc.
Happiness and stress in the soul are mutually exclusive. Happiness is a state
of mind. If we are influenced by any circumstances in life that result in
unhappiness, then we have a long way to go in the spiritual life. (Rebound
and Daily reception, retention, recall, and resisting of sin and our own will;
1Co 10:13)
7) Scar Tissue of the Soul
“Hardness of the heart” evil influence enters into the right lobe of the soul
where Spiritual Thoughts are stored and actually begins to remove the Word
of Truth. (John 12:40-50)
HE HAS BLINDED THEIR EYES AND HE HARDENED THEIR HEART,
SO THAT THEY WOULD NOT SEE WITH THEIR EYES AND PERCEIVE
WITH THEIR HEART, AND BE CONVERTED AND I HEAL THEM.
(John 12:40)
This hardening of heart can happen for believers and unbelievers. An
example Amenhotep II, the Pharoah of the Exodus, hardened his own heart
through constant resistance to the Word of God. (Exo 7:22; Exo 8:15;
Exo 9:34) Believers in the Exodus generation reached this point as well; at
the Meribah incident. (Exo 17:1-7) Here is where a breakdown of norms and
standards taught by the Word of God are substituted for human thinking,
resulting in an unruly and unstable generation. Christians determine the fate of
a client nation to God, and when they lose the Principles of the Mind of Christ
in the soul, human viewpoint takes precedence. The rate of forgetting
exceeds the rate of learning, and they lose any Spiritual Thinking that they
may have gained in the past. (1Co 2:11-16)
8) Reverse process reversionism
They revert back to their unbelieving ways. At this point, they are still
saved whether they know it or not. There is no overt sign to the fact that they
have ever believed in Christ and that they have been born again, and are
sons of God. Christians are shocked at what other Christians do, so they
don’t believe they are really Christians but merely professing Christians. The
sad thing about it is so few can ever recover from this point. It is not from the
failure of the Word of God. It is because these same Christians who judge
these people are in reversionism themselves, and the false thinking they
produce destroys any possibility of recovery for these people.
God’s justice is his grace policy. He condemns those who do not believe
in Jesus Christ. He blesses those that believe in His name. Faith alone in
Christ alone is the power of grace. He provides it all. A wonderful grace life is
provided to every believer, but we must understand what the Bible teaches.
At Salvation, God the Holy Spirit gives us seven ministries, one is to teach us
God’s Thoughts on every subject, and then bring them to our remembrance.
(John 16:13; John 14:23) So we must study every day and night, (Psa 1:1-3;
Eccles 11:6) so He can give us the accurate message, coherently, orderly
and understandable. The Scriptures are to be understood in their original
languages and in the time they were written. We must understand the
language and syntax, [Exegesis] and the historical interpretations to
understand things such as metaphors, idioms, etc., and be able to categorize
these interpretations; so we can fully understand God’s Thinking on every
subject. So we must learn the entire system, so adversity will not become
stress in the soul. This will allow us grow to Spiritual maturity, (Heb 5:13;
Eph 4:13) and to be free from the sin nature’s control in our lives!
But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became
obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were
committed, and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of
righteousness. (Rom 6:17-18)
So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, If you
continue in My Word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know
the Truth, and the Truth will make you free. [From the old sin nature and the
false realities of Satan’s world system] (John 8:32)
END
.
 |
| |
 |