Re: I've been holding this off...

Hey there my friend, very nice post. I was waiting to see if anyone else would respond, hopefully some other people will chime in. My personal opinion is that many Christians believe themselves to be born of Christ, when in fact no such transformation has occurred in their heart. Jesus said that it is by our fruit that we can know who is of Him and who is not. When we allow Him to plant His seed in our hearts and it grows into a tree, His Spirit brings forth good fruit, and only good fruit. His Spirit cannot bring forth bad fruit. The fruit of the Spirit is love; Pure unconditional love for all beings. This is not new age philosophy; new age philosophy stole this eternal truth and blended it with aliens and nonsense. Christ is the first-born, the Word, the first sound and what is that Word? It is Love. That first-born emitted only pure Love, nothing else, and through that Love all of creation came into existence. Now many Christians claim to be born of the Spirit and declare themselves as saved Christians. But where is the love of Christ? Where is the fruit of the Spirit that is love on this forum? If we are of Christ, then it should be radiating through every word that we post on this board, but unfortunately that is not what I see.

It is okay to not be perfect and not to emanate perfect love as long as we know that we are a work in progress and not a finished product. But if we don't have the love of Christ in our hearts and also we think we are a finished product and Christ has no more work to do on us, then that is a BIG problem.

I think a big mistake that Biblical Christians make is to think that we can understand the words of the Bible by reading them. Not so. Christ is the Word. The Bible is the Word of God. So the Bible is Christ, the Bread of Life. But you can't expect to read the words on the page and eat the Bread of Life. The real Life is The Word that is Christ that lies just beyond the words. I read the Bible for years and never got it because I never knew how to read it. Then I met the Word that was behind all the words and the Bible began to open up to me and become real living Bread of Life.

I believe that we, as Christians, need to walk the path of salvation in Christ with humility. We should understand that we know basically nothing and are nothing, except what Christ gives us. If Christians lived this way, there would be a lot more people coming to Christ instead of becoming apathetic and going off to agnosticism. If we as Christians do not walk the path and continually surrender to Christ, we are hurting His cause not helping it. A Christian missionary that is preaching 'the Word of God', but has no love in his heart is not doing the work of Christ (and is also not preaching the Word, because the Word is Love and can only be preached by Love). A true Christian that is living a normal life that is born of the Spirit, or at least in the process of opening his or her heart to Christ in humility and manifesting the fruit of Spirit that is love, they are doing the missionary work of Christ in every moment of their lives.