Friday, July 11, 2014

The Development of Self-life

Thoughts on Michael Wells’ teachings in Sidetracked In The Wilderness - # 27
         
Michael’s book is available through:

Abiding Life Ministries International
Littleton, Colorado
(303) 972-0859       www.abidinglife.com

Notice:  this email is part of a BLOG, called Getting Out of the Wilderness.  Why a blog?  So that many can receive the weekly thoughts I express on Michael’s writings in an easy manner. 

Michael begins this section by addressing the biggest dilemma every human being born on this earth faces…being “dead to God in the spirit” and yet having our greatest need facing us: satisfying the need to be loved and accepted by God.  In this short dialogue, Michael brings us to three problems every human being faces…



THE DEVELOPMENT OF SELF-LIFE

excerpt from pages 75-76 of SIW (5th printing, March 1998)
excerpt from pages 71-72 of SIW (14th printing, March 2012)
                   (used with permission from ALMI):


According to 1 John 4:8, God is love.  Since love must have an object, God created man to be this entity.  To assure that His inclination to love would be met, God put in man’s spirit the need to be loved and accepted by Him.  The moment we are born, we are driven to find our Creator to meet this need within us.

There is, however, one major obstacle to having God meet our spiritual need for love and acceptance.  We are born dead to God in our spirits, making it impossible to have the desire consummated.  In Genesis 2:17, God said, “But from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you shall surely die.”  It is an absolute imperative that if they eat of the tree they will die!  They did eat thereof, and God said they were dead, even though their souls were still active (they were thinking, feeling, and choosing) and their bodies were still functioning.  They were dead and yet living; where, then, did the death take place?  There is only one place left – the spirit.  They were dead to God in the spirit, the result being that it would now be impossible to have their deepest needs – spiritual love and acceptance that could come only from God – met.  This condition presents three particular problems for man.

Yellow – VIP, Very Important Point      Green – IT, Incredible Truth        
Red – GP, Greatest Promises
Turquoise – UR, Unfathomable Riches           Pink – PV, Priceless Victory


What a sad state to live in: dead to God in the spirit, faced with the impossibility of having their deepest needs – spiritual love and acceptance – met by God, and yet functioning with a body and a soul that craves everything THE OPPOSITE or WITHOUT God…and, really not knowing they are in that condition! (2 Corin. 4:3-4)

It is incredible that “man” seeks knowledge far and wide, but spiritual truth is at the bottom of the list that most ever seek.  And those of us who have found The Truth seem oblivious to the one thing that grasped our attention, the one thing God used to break through to us…He used someone to answer that question that perhaps we weren’t even asking: How can I find spiritual love and acceptance?

Man, in his feeble efforts, has tried to find love and acceptance through the flesh, missing the point that it is spiritual love and acceptance he really needs.  And the church has constantly done a good job of pointing out the failures of man’s flesh, all the while never addressing the need for spiritual love and acceptance.  When will we as a whole begin to address this with everyone? 

For as life has dealt many Christians a severe blow, and their response to God has been incorrect, they now deal with the same emptiness that someone who doesn’t know God is dealing with.  God’s answer is always the same: JESUS.

Want to know what the three problems are?  Want to know God’s solution to each?  Michael gets to these and other issues in the next few pages of the book…



Note: if you don’t have one of Michael’s Sidetracked In The Wilderness books, please contact ALMI (www.abidinglife.com) and get one today!



To access ALL past weekly blogs, go to Getting Out of the Wilderness by logging onto www.leemcchristianministries.blogspot.com  

Lee McDowell Christian Ministries
leemccm@gmail.com

1737 CR 2051    Nacogdoches, Tx 75965                                               936-559-5696

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