God wants to lead us forward in knowledge of Him and it is always for our own gain but is best if our motives are altruistic. But can we change our motives?
Yes, we can change our motives. That's the very point of looking inward. As Psalm 139 petitions God to examine his heart for impure motives, that is a prayer of openness, or surrender asking to see in ourselves whatever hinders us from spiritual release. It is asking God to illuminate these areas for us to see and understand and surrender.
What I am talking about seeking for the sake of the ego, versus seeking for the sake of God, is not altruism. It's seeking authentic Truth for its own sake, as an act of authentic love. We lead with our spiritual intention. That's what this inward path does, is to shed light upon all these hidden places in ourselves where our ulterior, self-seeking and self-serving desires in service of the ego and its needs lay.
To expose these to the Light, is a frightening thing. It is as Paul says, that in that day, "I will know even as I am known". It's being laid bare and facing all those things in ourselves we disown or try to protect from exposure, even to our very own consciousness minds. Or should I say,
particularity to our own conscious minds?
It's difficult to describe this, but if you have ever had any sort of direct confrontation in these deep interior spaces within us with that very Light of the Divine itself, what I'm saying would be easily recognized. We don't really understand ourselves on the inside.
That is why practices that take you inside, such as a contemplative prayer, or meditation, are critically important to spiritual growth and development. People don't realize what is hiding in the deep recesses of their own psyches that hinder and block themselves spiritually.
Jesus speaks to Christians being the light of the world and so Jesus should shine from us.
Imo the closeness of a relationship to God is so much better for a Christian than others who are not God's children.
Actually, Jesus spoke to his disciples, not to Christians from some local church.
There is a difference here. And anyone who follows the path to spiritual liberation that Jesus taught, is his discipline. "
For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”
He does not specify which religious group they belong to. If you meet a Samaritan who worships on a different mountain, or a Buddhist who meditates under a tree, or a Hindu in his temple, or a Roman who loves God under a different name, and they are doing naturally the will of the Father, then they are in fact following Jesus, even if they have never heard of him. That's who Jesus recognizes as family. That's what he says.
But looking within at yourself and not at God within.
Not exactly what I meant. You look within to examine your own heart and soul before God, to find that which creates obstacles to liberation in God. When those obstacles are removed, you find God within your own heart and soul, and then from there, you see God in all the world, from there you are transformed from the inside to the outside, just as Jesus said, "Make clean the inside of the cup first, then the outside will become clean".
Let's take Jesus teaching on the two greatest commandments. The first is "love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength." That means you connect with your inner person. All of those, your heart, your mind, your soul, and your strength, are interior, subjective realities.
So look within. Go within. Open yourself from within, to God, to the Divine, to the Source, to Spirit, and then you become transformed from the inside first, which then naturally flows outward to the outside as expressions of that new, transformed inner reality. And the 2nd commandment becomes the natural byproduct of the first. You naturally will love your neighbor as yourself, because you have been made a vessel of love.
That is why you look inside. That is why you search the heart. That is why you practice meditation. You have to first encounter and engage with the Divine within you, in order to "Make clean the inside of the cup first."
It was authentic but nobody was a born again child of God without the Spirit of adoption.
This doesn't make any spiritual sense at all. If anyone has an authentic encounter and transformation though the Divine, they are born again. That's what born again means. It means rebirth into a new spiritual awakened person. If that happened, then that's happened.
Being "born again" is not some legal status thing on a piece of paper or some idea in a preacher's minds. It is an experiential reality. If they don't have that experiential reality yet, then I'd say keep searching their life for those obstacles within them that block that transformation from happening. If you have been transformed in actual experiential lived reality (not an idea on paper), then that is the Spirit of adoption. You recognize yourself and are recognized as a child of God, or the Divine.
I should not have denied anyone their experience with God. God has no doubt given many people who are not Christians or Jews, experience with Himself.
Thank you for retracting that statement. And if they have that experience, and if they follow that experience and seek God in their own ways as best they can, as we all do, regardless of the religion they were born into, then "God is no respecter of persons", meaning God doesn't say you have to part of the "right religion", in order to be following that Truth which is apparent to everyone through the Creation, through Nature herself.
"Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law." ~Ro. 2:14
Even though they do not have the Christian religion, they are fulfilling the Law of the Divine in themselves. Even Jesus said of the pagan Roman Centurion, that he had greater faith than anyone he had seen in all of Israel. He embraced his faith more than all those of his own religion, even though he was as many would say, "in the wrong religion". Jesus transcended religion. God transcends religion.
Jesus took away the law which divided and made the us and them, but the accepted gift of faith is a requirement for participation in the gospel.
That's exactly right. Then why are Christians saying that these people of other religions need to convert to the Christian religion, when Christ himself recognized the faith of others in other religions? It's about faith in God, not religious membership. Faith transcends religious identities. It exists in all religions, in all cultures, and in all humans, if listened to
within themselves.
But I am not saying that those who are not Christians are automatically not saved in the final judgment. No doubt many non Christians live a better life than many Christians.
This is true that many non Christians are more "Christians" than even Christians are! Meaning, they are about truth and sincerity and love and compassion from the heart, instead of leaning upon their religious identities and associations. "Greater faith have I not seen in all of Israel," said Jesus about the pagan Roman centurion.
But I would try to shift your thinking away from this "final judgement" thinking. "Salvation", is not some future thing, but a present reality in every moment. We are either living life spiritually awakened, or we are not. That's what is important. That's what matters. And some future judgement, in however you want to understand that, is happening cumulatively in every moment.
Focusing on the future, is a distraction, an avoidance, to living life in the present. One of my favorite verses of the Bible is when Jesus says, "I am come that they may have life, and that they may have it more
abundantly". It's that abundant living, in the present continuous tense, that is the real "salvation".
It is living life in freedom. That is the spiritual life. And who we are today, how we have cultivated the soil of our lives, digging into the soil, looking within, that allows that spiritual reality to grow and flourish and determine that future "final judgement".
Spirituality, a spiritual life is something we must participate within. It doesn't happen to us from outside of us. It grows from within us, from the Divine as the Source, as us tending to the stones and weeds in our inner gardens where spirituality grows outward, from the inside of the cup, to the outside.
For me it contradicts the teaching of the New Testament and so I understand the things you are saying in other ways and do not make the gospel irrelevant or the necessity to go through Jesus one way or the other.
I think you read that coming through Jesus, or the Christ, means converting to the religion in his name. Do you believe the religion to be the Door instead?
