{"id":8109,"date":"2016-09-25T19:30:27","date_gmt":"2016-09-25T19:30:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pjhmail.wordpress.com\/?p=8109"},"modified":"2016-09-25T19:30:27","modified_gmt":"2016-09-25T19:30:27","slug":"where-you-start","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/8109\/where-you-start\/","title":{"rendered":"Where You Start"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pastor John,<\/span><\/p>\n

I have been thinking about life in the Spirit, this evening.\u00a0 And I remembered something, something that I heard you say, at least once. \u00a0It is very good. \u00a0And it is surely true.<\/span><\/p>\n

There was a person, several years ago, who directly, or indirectly through one of us, made a sincere comment to you, regarding the condition of<\/span>\u00a0their<\/span><\/i><\/b>\u00a0congregation. \u00a0They said to you (regarding the portion of the body of Christ that meets in your home), “I<\/span>\u00a0wish<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/i><\/b>I could get my people to where your people are!”<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

And you replied, to the effect of, “It’s not someplace that you ‘get to’, it’s the place that you start. When you are born again, you are born perfect. \u00a0Staying there is the work”. Staying free of the things that want to attach themselves to us, things that God didn’t give us when we were born again, is the warfare. Otherwise, we are perfect.<\/span><\/p>\n

If we would just remain the thing that God created when we were born of the Spirit, we would grow perfectly and effortlessly. \u00a0We would speak perfectly. We would learn and later teach others perfectly, and so on. \u00a0Everything that is not just that, perfect, is caused by something else other than what God gave us when we were born of the Spirit.\u00a0 There is no sin in what God created. \u00a0And no spiritual failure ever came from what God gave us. It is the things that we pick up after God recreates us, that causes that.<\/span><\/p>\n

Knowing that is true, takes all of the struggle and strain out of growing and out of producing fruit. Growing and yielding healthy fruit is just what Spirit does, it’s just natural, if it isn’t inhibited by something else, something that has attached itself to a perfect child of God.<\/span><\/p>\n

That truth allows me to understand that when we read in the Bible where Jesus, or Paul, or John, or others commanded the spirit-filled body of Christ to “be perfect”, or to “sin not” or to “be sinless”, all they were confessing is their own experience, that they loved God, and that love of God kept them spiritually stirring, alive, constantly burning off the dross and not letting anything else attach itself to them\u00a0<\/span>that wasn’t perfect<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

They stayed free of everything (by loving God) that wasn’t what God gave them in the beginning. And as a glorious result, what God gave them grew, effortlessly … mature and wise, bearing mighty fruit, pleasing God!\u00a0 All the way back to Glory – and took those faithful Saints with it.<\/span><\/p>\n

What a story of Love!<\/span><\/p>\n

Jerry<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pastor John, I have been thinking about life in the Spirit, this evening.\u00a0 And I remembered something, something that I heard you say, at least once. \u00a0It is very good. \u00a0And it is surely true. There was a person, several years ago, who directly, or indirectly through one of us, made a sincere comment to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-netmail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8109"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8109\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}