Bully's Blog

or The Art of Noise

Must be wizards week!

For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. (NKJV) Hebrews 4:12

But someone will say, “You have faith, and I have works.” Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. (NKJV) James 2:18

The firmament was a veil to hide God’s throne from Man until he was ready to see God face to face. Of course, we see types of this throughout the Bible, Job, Jacob and Moses being notable examples. But no man had seen God until after Christ ascended and was presented as Facebread.

Your face is a veil of flesh that hides your brain, the source of your intentions. Your head is a microcosm of the Tabernacle at one level, and your entire body at another. You are a Garden and a Land.

Deceivers mask their true intentions with facial expressions and body language. Good spies can even pass a lie detector test. Between their true intentions and the flesh that is supposed to be communicating it, there is a deliberate disconnect. As in the Garden, it is the mind of a beast speaking with the eyes and mouth of a man.

Continue reading

Building the Iron Saint

Every plunge brings a tougher skin and a softer heart.

Jesus calls us deeper, so Satan manufactures false depths. There are the deep things of God and the deep things of Satan (Revelation 2:24). Doug Wilson points out that the deep things of God are depths of holiness, not depths of mystical knowledge:

Continue reading

or Becoming the Finger of God on the Eject Button

“Immediately, the Spirit drove Him into the wilderness.” —Mark 1:12

NOTE: THIS POST HAS BEEN REMIXED AND INCLUDED IN GOD’S KITCHEN.

You must be logged in to see the rest of this post.

Join now for a year for $15!

Oswald Chambers says:

The first thing to do in examining the power that dominates me is to take hold of the unwelcome fact that I am responsible for being thus dominated. If I am a slave to myself, I am to blame because at a point away back I yielded to myself. Likewise, if I obey God I do so because I have yielded myself to Him.

Continue reading

“All that we see on this earth is symbolic reality, and only as our inward heart is purged from sin can we see the symbolism. That is why when a man is in Christ Jesus he is a new creation, and he sees everything in the common world as symbols—unseeable realities.”

“God guides us stage by stage, and the most marvellous stage of His guidance is by symbols. A symbol represents a spiritual truth by means of images or properties of natural things. A symbol is sealed until the right spirit is given for its understanding, and God’s symbols are undetected unless His Spirit is in His child to enable him to understand. What did the cloudy pillar by day or the fiery pillar by night signify to the hordes in the desert? Nothing more than the mystery of ever-varying cloud forms. To the children of God, they meant the manifested guidance of God. How a man interprets God’s symbols reveals what manner of man he is. How often we have to say with the Psalmist, “I was as a beast before Thee,” i.e., without understanding. How often the ass recognises that one of God’s angels is speaking before the so-called prophet on its back detects it.”

“God shifts His symbols and we know not why; but God is ever only good, and the shifting of one symbol means surely that another symbol is to guide us to a nearer grasp of Himself. When God, so to speak, has left a symbol, it becomes transparent, and has no further binding force. How sad it is under the sun to see men worshipping a symbol which has been abandoned by God. We are not to worship reminiscences; this is the characteristic of all other religions. The Bible religion is one of eternal progress, an intense and militant going on. Obedience to the voice of the Spirit within, the Word of God without and the suffering of tribulation all around, enable the child of God to hear God’s voice and recognise His changing symbols.”

From The Discipline of Divine Guidance by Oswald Chambers

http://www.bullartistry.com.au/pdf_bestill/011BeStill.pdf

“Who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree.” 1 Peter 2:24

The Cross of Jesus is the revelation of God’s judgment on sin. Never tolerate the idea of martyrdom about the Cross of Jesus Christ. The Cross was a superb triumph in which the foundations of hell were shaken. There is nothing more certain in Time or Eternity than what Jesus Christ did on the Cross: He switched the whole of the human race back into a right relationship with God. He made Redemption the basis of human life, that is, He made a way for every son of man to get into communion with God.

The Cross did not happen to Jesus: He came on purpose for it. He is “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” The whole meaning of the Incarnation is the Cross. Beware of separating God manifest in the flesh from the Son becoming sin. The Incarnation was for the purpose of Redemption. God became incarnate for the purpose of putting away sin; not for the purpose of self-realisation. The Cross is the centre of Time and of Eternity, the answer to the enigmas of both.

The Cross is not the cross of a man but the Cross of God, and the Cross of God can never be realised in human experience. The Cross is the exhibition of the nature of God, the gateway whereby any individual of the human race can enter into union with God. When we get to the Cross, we do not go through it; we abide in the life to which the cross is the gateway. The centre of salvation is the Cross of Jesus, and the reason it it so easy to obtain salvation is because it cost God so much. The Cross is the point where God and sinful man merge with a crash and the way to life is opened—but the crash is on the heart of God.

–Oswald Chambers