Conversational Prayer – BT4
Religion concerns itself with more than an intimate relationship with God Himself
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If the subject of our prayers is God Himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit instead of just the stuff He can give us or to help us try to do “works done by us in/by/with righteousness” (a) like religionists would, or even to do the “good works that were created in Christ Jesus for” and even to be “zealous for” and “devoted to” (b), then our prayers can’t go wrong! Psalms 37:3-4 says, “Trust . . . and [exquisitely] delight in Yahweh, kai and/then He will give you the mishalah/aitema [specific prayerful] ‘desires expressed as subordinately-asking petitions’ of your heart.” We need our priorities straight! We were created primary to have koinonia intimate fellowship with God, literally walking/living humbly with God to dwell with His people (c). <Notes> a) Titus 3:5, cf. Romans 4:6, b) Ephesians 2:10, cf. Matthew 5:16; Acts 9:36; 1 Timothy 2:10, 5:10, 25, 6:10; Titus 2:7, 14, 3:8, 14; Hebrews 10:24 – see Obedient Steps of Faith – BT15 and – BT17, c) Genesis 3:8, 5:22, 24, 6:9; Hosea 11:12; Micah 6:8; Ezekiel 37:27; 2 Corinthians 6:16 citing Leviticus 26:11-12 because Christians are NOW God’s rightful Temple; Revelation 2:1, 13; cf. 2 Chronicles 6:18 not in a temple, and according to rules: Deuteronomy 5:33, 10:12; Joshua 22:5; 1 Kings 8:23; 2 Kings 10:31; 2 Chronicles 6:14; Nehemiah 10:29; Isaiah 8:11; Jeremiah 7:23.
Once during a long proseuche conversational-prayer walk I heard the Lord tell me that “the kingdom of God and His righteousness to seek foremost” (a) was actually “The Holy Spirit and Jesus” – 2 “Who’s to know,” and not 2 “What’s to do,” and then downloaded so many verses about seeking God’s face (b). The Lord once changed my words before coming to Him in proseuche conversational-prayer 3 times from: “I come before You” to: “I come for You.” This baffled me, but I soon understood that all I sought was within the Lord Himself – only 3 letters make all the difference! <Notes> a) Matthew 6:32-33, b) like Deuteronomy 4:29; Daniel 9:3; 2 Chronicles 15:4, 7:14; Isaiah 55:5-7; Jeremiah 29:13; Acts 15:17, 17:27; Romans 3:11; Colossians 3:1; Hebrews 11:6.
This reminds me of a time in 2008 when my pancreas was malfunctioning so much that I feared the reaction I would have eating even simple foods, even with digestive enzymes. I was so afraid that I would proseuchomai conversationally-pray for 5 minutes before every meal asking God to help me digest it, and giving Him thanks for doing so. One time as I was doing this, He kept changing the words in my mouth from “I thank You for this food” to “I trust You for this food.” Again, I thought I was going mad, but eventually understood He was trying to help be really have trusting-relying-faith in Him. So that day I ate without my pancreatic enzymes and I had no problems whatsoever! This was a turning point for my healing, because I found out much later that my enzymes were laced with too much calcium which was throwing my electrolytes out of balance. However, God knew this and was helping me take “Obedient Steps of Faith” (a) to eliminate some of my problems! Reading and studying the bible would have never led me to this truth, but “the Spirit of The Truth . . . will guide you into ALL The Truth” (b). <Notes> a) Romans 1:17, b) John 16:13.
Religion concerns itself with the “what, where, when, why, and how” ABOUT God and His will. Plan A doesn’t because “the righteous ones” are those who are preoccupied with the “WHO” of God! I was told directly by God on a proseuche conversational-prayer walk that “The Kingdom of God and His Righteousness” that I was to seek wasn’t “a what and a what” of things to do as I had been taught by so many churches, but “The WHO and The WHO of The Holy Spirit and The Son” to genuinely, experientially, relationally epiginosko know, to ask for until we receive, to seek for UNTIL we find, to knock on the door for until it is opened! You will never find that in the bible or its study notes, even though the bible says over and over that the Holy Spirit is the enabling-power of the reigning King and that King Jesus is The Righteous and Holy One of Israel! That is vast difference of prophetic rhema words directly from the Lord.
Every religion, even the OT, is about “might and power” – man’s inherent flesh external and internal abilities or ergon ‘doings/works,’ even about how to worship – see also Identity. Religion makes the walls to God tall and difficult to climb, giving us only a small window for outside light to shine through onto your “bible-study table and chair” – a vision God showed me. Plan A doesn’t have a tall ladder because God says in Zechariah 4:6 the completely different-in-kind New Covenant will “absolutely no longer be by might or power, but by My Spirit, says Yahweh of hosts!” Jesus says that “God is Spirit and the true worshipers are those who worship Him by [singular] Spirit and/coupled [singular] The Truth,” which because of the kai coupling is the same as “The Spirit of/belonging-to The Truth” found in 4 other verses because “The Spirit is The Truth” in another. That’s why Jesus said, “Absolutely nobody can come to the Father except through Me – I AM The Way to the Father, because I AM The Truth, and My directly-spoken/heard prophetic rhema words are The Spirit and The zoe genuine-life because I AM the zoe Genuine-Life. God once said in prayer, “Speak to the wall in the name/authority of Jesus 7 days and I will make it fall.” But now in the vision I mentioned, He said: “Get up out of your chair, walk away from the study table, and open the door who is Christ and go outside.” When I did I saw the bluest sky, greenest vegetation, and brightest flowers ever, and sparkling bread floating down from heaven like floating diamonds and I was filled with incredible joy! In another dream, God said the more accurate books about God, the theology of God, were on the oldest top shelf of the Library of Congress long before 1452’s printing of the Guttenberg bible, but there was no ladder to reach them but an old rugged cross. Nevertheless, no matter how you use the cross to climb up, you will never reach the true theology of God, because even if you read the old scrolls, they are still second-hand knowledge from mere men, and only handwritten copies by later scribes at that – see Bible Info! The True Theology can only be received humbly at the foot of the old rugged cross as the angels descend and ascend upon it to deliver it to us by the revelation of the Holy Spirit. Jesus said, unlike all the “other rabbis, His yoke of instruction to learn from Him would be kindly-useful and His burdens of commandments/works forever light to carry, as a cloud is blown by the wind.”
Every religion elects some people to be “special leaders” or mediators, translators, scribes-scholars-lawyers, or clergy to “learn about God” and then relay this knowledge down a hierarchy of leaders (Sadducees) and teachers (Pharisees, Levite priests) to everyone else, the ‘laity,’ but by then all this becomes nothing more than second-hand gnosis info-knowledge about God. Churches have even redefined the “equippers” that really are only coaches and facilitator to be the ministers, when it actually “the saints who do the work of ministry.” Talk about usurping power! What’s worse, is that the “leaders” or “equippers” often have never actually heard from God directly, but are just passing down something they read or devised from their own thinking. Plan A doesn’t because God says “to be still in order to [or resulting in] experientially, relationally yada/ginosko know God” such that “you have absolutely-in-fact-NOT need of any other teacher!” The first thing Paul said about having a “renewed mind for God’s kingdom” is “that no man should think of himself higher than others, for we are all brethren of one Body-of-Christ, each member equally important with different praxis functions” – see Obedient Steps of Faith – BT21, Skill – BT5, Teach One Another – BT8, and Coaches & Facilitators. Furthermore, Jesus said: “The greatest among you shall be the slave of others, just as I came to serve and not be served,” and He strongly warned His disciples on more than one occasion to: “never in fact desire to have authority over others, but to follow His example of being a servant, even a slave.”
Every religion has “special titles for special offices for special people” signifying their level of authority, even within the modern Church whether Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox, such as Catholic or Eastern Orthodox ‘Fathers,’ Eastern Orthodox or Mormon ‘Patriarchs,’ Anglican ‘Lords’ or University ‘Masters,’ Protestant ‘Head Pastors,’ and Messianic-Church ‘Rabbis or Chief Rabbis’ or with great honor ‘Our Master-Our Teacher-Our Rabbi.’ Plan A doesn’t use them because Jesus warned about using titles or offices of authority like: “Father, Lord/Master/Head, or rabbi Teacher” because “you are ALL brethren,” and respectively, “there is only One Heavenly Father, One Lord Jesus Christ, and One Spirit of The Truth who guides you into ALL truth.” See also Teaching and Coaches & Facilitators.
All the places in the NT that talk about church assembly never say anything about 1 or 2 authoritative men doing all the teaching or even a “worship music team,” but instead about the “gospel logos message dwelling/residing among them richly by addressing/teaching and admonishing ONE ANOTHER…EACH OF YOU bringing an instrumental psalm, a composed hymn, a spontaneous song by the Spirit, a teaching, prophecy, revelation, logos message of wisdom, logos message of knowledge, a tongue, its interpretation, all submitting to one another for the building up of the Body.” Body-of-Christ ministry was the only prescribed ministry! Everything else is “self-prescribed worship-service, made and taught by men,” no different from the “traditions of the elders” the Jews came up with. The “apostles, prophets, evangelists-preachers, and shepherds-who-are-able-to-teach” weren’t supposed to be the “special people/offices who to the work of ministry” but simply “praxis functioning grace-gifts of Christ’s Spirit that equip/coach/facilitate the saints who are the ones who are supposed to do the work of ministry!” That makes them the “ministers” not the “equippers!” Once again, the modern Church thinks it’s all about “special people” when instead it’s about a multitude of grace-gifts given to the entire Body-of-Christ, which even change due to the particular situation, ALL that should be working equally together to build up the Body into the likeness of Christ. What has happened to 1 Corinthians 14:26-39 where all the people in a congregation are encouraged to prophesy or give a message in tongues with some one giving an interpretation, but doing it orderly one after another, listening to each other, and everybody else weighing in on what was said? That’s what Paul meant about “orderly worship!”
Religious people even try to correlate the lists of the Spirit’s different grace-gifts and then believe that it’s somehow complete. Good luck, because Paul’s lists evolved over time with his experiences with the Spirit, we are missing letters of Pauls, and that was never his point anyway – they are only examples of God’s unlimited enabling-power to get His work done through “a diversity of grace-gifts and manifestations,” through a Body that should be treating each other equally, just as “God shows now partiality or favoritism!” A careful study of “authority” will also show that the top-down, vertical, hierarchal structure of religion (and many churches) is actually patterned after Satan’s angelic/demonic kingdom, externalized in the world of fallen men, and not God’s horizontally-flat kingdom structure where there is “only 1 Head over ALL of us WHO is given ALL authority, WHO is Jesus, and we are ALL brethren, reciprocally one belonging to the other, equal children of God.” The same metron ‘measuring-cup’ of The-Trusting-Relying-Faith and The-Unconditionally-Loving-Favor-of-Grace was used to insure equity from a Just, Equitable God. Again, what differs is the praxis function of the grace-gifts so nobody “can think more highly of themselves.”
Every religion erects “special buildings” for prayer and worship. The Jews and half-breed Samaritans had their temples or “places of worship,” and invariably they become “marketplaces, places of business, even by robbers and thieves” by the peddlers of religion, the Canaanites. Plan A doesn’t because there are no Christian “building programs” in the early Church after the Jewish temple was destroyed in 70 AD, unlike every church today that seem to have an “edifice complex,” until Catholicism was made institutionalized by Emperor Constantine 300 years later, when he patterned the basilicas after pagan Greek and Roman temples. Please don’t try to use the argument that Christians were persecuted until then so they couldn’t build churches. That is ‘fake news’ because there were long periods of time when there was tolerance and no persecution. If it was a priority of Christians, they would have built as they do in other tolerant nations today dominantly controlled by hostile religions, but we don’t have any writings or archeology to indicate any church buildings other than a few homes with inner walls knocked down for gatherings up to 35 people. Jesus called the Jerusalem temple, “My Father’s house of proseuche conversational-prayer,” but told the Samaritan woman that “the true worship of God would no longer take place in a place, either in Jerusalem or Samaria, where they routinely carried out liturgical-ritual-worship-services FOR God, because God is Spirit so the true worshippers that the Father seeks are those who will worship by [singular] Spirit and/coupled [singular] Truth,” which Jesus says concerning: “The Spirit of The Truth, WHO I AM, will dwell in you, WHO will bear witness about Me, and WHO will guide you into ALL The Truth.” Because of the indwelling Spirit of Christ, Christians, even their individual and corporate Bodies, are now “God’s Temple,” and so we are now God’s actual “house of proseuche conversational-prayer” and “offering our bodies as living sacrifice is NOW our logical liturgical-ritual-worship-service FOR God.” Plan A reverts everything back to God’s original design.
Every religion also looks intently or gazes at or studies “holy gramma letters as writings” and the collection of these into “holy graphe books” that the Jews called “scriptures,” in order to learn about God and His will to then “take hold of zoe genuine-life.” It really does take Greek and Hebrew scholars, the so-called “wise and understanding ones,” to adequately translate or understand the bible, and they argue constantly on which manuscripts are more accurate and what the words really mean – see Bible Info. There are 1000s of manuscripts with 1000s of textual variants – 400,000 just in the NT – and the scholars are always changing their minds! There are many college courses on textual, literary, and biblical criticism, biblical archeology, biblical languages and interpretation (hermeneutics), biblical and church history, and theology – and I’ve taken too many! It’s exhausting and our English bibles don’t come close to even relaying the meaning of any agreed upon text! Plan A doesn’t rely on any of this, but tells us to be like little children with their parents, to optanomai fix our wide-open eyes and ears of our hearts on God Himself. To these God promised revealed prophetic knowledge, clear sunesis connect-the-dots understanding that goes beyond left-to-right sequitar reasoning, and gives us zoe genuine-life through the experiential, relational ginosko knowledge of the Father and the Son. Paul says, God “thwarts and destroys the wisdom of the ‘wise and understanding ones’.” Jesus ridicules their “diligent searching/studying of the scriptures to take hold of zoe genuine-life.” Isaiah mocks their “line upon line, precept upon precept” expositional approach as elementary ‘abc’ gibberish, while giving God’s wisdom and understanding to those the Prophets who will simply be like little children and just relentlessly aiteo ask their Heavenly Father, wait, and listen – see also Obedient Steps of Faith – BT16 for the patient-endurance of trusting-relying-faith.
Jesus doesn’t train disciples any other way than He was discipled by God. Isaiah’s prophecy said that Jesus learned through His devotion to proseuche conversational-prayer and that’s the only “spiritual discipline” we see Jesus devoted to while on earth! Only once did the NT say that Jesus read scripture – once in a synagogue to say He had fulfilled it. We have to remember that He was the eternal Logos Message of God, so everything that Moses and the Prophets wrote was told to them by the Son! That’s why at 14 years old Jesus could debate the socks off the scribes and Pharisees! His disciples never read scripture and there is no indication as a carpenter Jesus would have had access to them outside of the synagogue! Although all rabbis had scribes to write down their sayings, Jesus never did nor did He ask His disciples to. Instead He and the apostle John said the Holy Spirit, The Anointing of the Holy One, would be their “One Teacher of ALL truth” after Jesus left them, because the Spirit would be Him now living in them, not just close-beside them! The “kingdom of God is within” and that is where the “One Teacher” does the teaching!
Every religion promises that the reading and study of their “special books” will lead us to knowing The Truth that will transform us into God’s glory and set us free from sin, but it actually hides God’s glory from them behind a veil/covering and their hearts become hardened and sin multiplies. Plan A doesn’t promise this. It removes the veil or curtain for direct access to God to find that The Truth isn’t a “what, where, when, why, and how” to read, study, analyze, memorize, and debate in order to acquire gnosis info-knowledge about God and His will. It doesn’t come through the “sophia wisdom and sunesis connect-the-dots understanding” of logos “second-hand communication of content in a message” through “holy gramma letters” collected into graphe “holy books” called “scripture,” which can only be accurately done by the so-called “wise and understanding ones” – the scribe-scholars and clergy or rabbi–teachers and Pharisee leaders, who were the very people Jesus mocked as “diligently searched/studying the scriptures” who were “the blind watchmen leading the blind, who never akouo heard/listened-to-understand/know God’s actual Voice [as the Prophets did], never eido mentally ‘seen’ to perceive/know God or His will [as the Prophets did], and thus never experientially, relationally ginosko knew God [as the Prophets did], and so they couldn’t possibly have God’s unconditional-love meno abiding/living within them [as the Prophets did].”
However, Jesus came to bring God’s people back to Plan A of genuinely, experientially, relationally epiginosko knowing “The WHO of The Truth, the Son WHO can actually set them free from the practice of sin.” All the so-called NT proof texts for “studying the bible” completely fall apart when you read them from the original Greek in context! The KJV “spoudoza study to shew thyself an approved workman” is a deceptively bad translation that kept the 70 bible translators gainfully employed at their universities by King James in 1611! Politics, money, and power have had much effect on bible translations! Spoudoza means “to be diligent or zealous” as the better translations have noted – see Logos Word of God – BT19! So much of church-ianity is perpetuating ‘the way’ of the other religions, especially the OT one, when the New (a) Covenant calls for the completely-different-in-kind new (a) ‘way’ of the Spirit! <Notes> a) chadash, kainos: fresh, completely-different-in-kind, unprecedented, sharing nothing with its predecessors, unique, and superior.
Every religion has “special truths” to read, study, and memorize about God! Plan A doesn’t because the NT says that the OT is NOT “The Truth or even The Unconditional-loving-favor-of-grace” but only “shadows, figures, outlines, sketches, prototypes, copies, or elementary ‘abc’ principles of good things to come.” Instead, Jesus Christ is “The Truth” and “The Unconditional-loving-favor-of-grace” that came into existence – “The aletheia Absolute Reality” of God! Jesus “fulfilled/completed” the “first covenant in order to establish the second,” so that the first’s “glory vanished away, ended, and was finished, done away with, and abolished because it was nailed to the cross,” so that the second’s glory will be an “everlasting covenant.” Christians should have “died to the Law and been freed/liberated from the Law’s yoke of slavery” – the first covenant should be history – in order “to belong to another – Christ,” and thus “absolutely no longer serving God by the way of the gramma writings!” The old covenant “absolutely cannot perfect those who draw near to it,” but the New Covenant can! “Christians are now the epistles hand-written-personal-letters of God, gramma written absolutely-in-fact-NOT by letters on stone tables or ink on paper but by the Spirit of God on tablets of human hearts!”
Every religion has “special statements of The Faith” or “creeds” they recite that prove by confession that you are saved. The Catholic Church created one after another from 180 AD on – see Salvation – BT9, as did the Protestants from 1517 AD on. All through history you will find that when the Church falls away from trusting-relying-faith in the ministry of the Holy Spirit and His supernatural prophetic grace-gifts, it looks to bible-study, apologetics, dogma, theology, and creeds to articulate this for the people to adhere to, feel secure and confident, especially in the Church, and also differentiate themselves from what the Church will then label as “heretics” to excommunicate or persecute, even by torture and death! Many godly men, Spirit-baptized, even theologians and bible translators were tortured, hung, or burned alive. Plan A doesn’t do this! Although historians try to find creeds in the NT like “Jesus is the Christ,” which means Messiah, the Anointed One of God, or “Jesus Christ is Lord,” which means “Supreme Master,” or “Jesus Christ has come in the flesh,” or “Jesus is the Son of God,” there is only one occurrence of each of these, and John only says to “Confess Jesus” or “Confess the Son.” Can you see how religious people can’t just let the Holy Spirit guide people?
The closest we get to a saving creed to confess at water-baptism below is Paul’s in Romans 10:9, but notice the emphasis: “If you confess with your mouth that ‘Jesus is Lord (Supreme Master) and/coupled have trusting-relying-faith in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall actually be saved.” However, Paul may have been adding “raised from the dead” because of the current heresy going through the Church that Jesus wasn’t even human in the flesh – see Identity, so He couldn’t die, let alone resurrect. That’s because the Greeks and Romans believed in ‘dualism’ that said the world of flesh and the spiritual world are completely separate. The NT was written to address specific needs for specific groups of people, and never conceived of as new set of universally-binding graphe “scripture!”
The NT was never intended to be more graphe scripture – a term applied by the Catholic theologian Tertullian around 200 AD when arguing against the Jews that Christians also had authoritative writings – what a desperate knee-jerk reaction! Jesus instead teaches: “For out of the heart, speaks the mouth” – words aren’t that important except to reveal the heart! That’s what confession of sin and confession of The-Trusting-Relying-Faith does – see Surrender-Control. Peter says: “This water-baptism, which corresponds to Noah’s family being saved by the ark dia through-the-medium-of flood waters, [to safely land on shore even though it buried a world of people] now saves you also, …because it’s a ‘request-appeal or profession-pledge’ of/for a good/sincere conscience toward God – this water-baptism saving you dia through-the-medium-of the resurrection of Christ.” Water-baptism is the “reality/substance/type that corresponded to the antitype” OT shadow of Noah’s flood. The “request-appeal or profession-pledge” was the common public confession all Gentile proselytes to Judaism made before their full-body Spirit-baptisms, which they believed saved them also! The Greek really says “the request . . . conscience” phrase is really more about “the Holy Spirit working together with the person because of their surrender to help them mentally experience their reaching toward God” – it’s a communal, epignosis experiential-knowledge not a ritual. This is what Jesus and the early Church also taught, just as Paul does in all his writings, like Romans 6:3-5. They didn’t try to separate the confession “request-appeal or profession-pledge” from the waters of baptism because both were part of “one baptism that now saves you also.” But it only saves anyone because of Christ’s resurrection, so it isn’t a work to earn favor, but an act of trusting-relying-faith to take hold of the free grace-gift of God’s unconditional-loving-favor-of-grace given to us.
Every religion has “special wisdom sayings” or “Proverbs” to read, study, and memorize to become “wise and understanding.” Plan A doesn’t because God mocks the so-called “wise and understanding ones” who acquired it this way, “thwarting and destroying” their efforts, but instead gives the “directly-spoken/heard prophetic rhema words of wisdom, understanding, insight-enlightenment, and gnosis info-knowledge through revelation by the Spirit to ‘little children’ and the other “least among you” through a genuine, experiential, relational epignosis knowledge of God – even to those that can’t hear, see or read!” God shows no favoritism except to favor the least before the greatest! Again, the ability to “walk in a manner worthy, fully pleasing, bearing fruit in every good work” comes from what I just described, not from books, not even from the bible!
Every religion has “special prayers” to recite as an ergon ‘doing/work’ to please God or to earn something from Him. They even “pray the promises of God” from the bible, but the bible never says to do that. Then there was the fad of “declaring blessings,” taken from the OT. Then there was the fad of “declaring bible verses” to defeat Satan or unlock God’s promises. Then there was the fad of finding the few explicit statements of “the will of God” that would certainly be answered. Now there is the fad of gleaning from the prayers of people in the bible what we should pray! All of this is just religious ergon ‘doings/works’ that again requires reading, studying, and memorizing the bible, just like other religions do of their “holy gramma writings” to use them in similar fashion. Paul says, it’s all nonsense! It all shows favoritism! Plan A doesn’t because the Lord’s Prayer isn’t a ritual prayer as most churches treat it – it’s simply a brief model or outline of how to practice proseuchomai conversationally-praying “the way or in this manner,” and it behooves us to treat it this way! Jesus said that pagan Gentiles pray with “many repetitive words or phrases like someone stuttering or stammering, which is vain babble, supposing that by their many words that God will hear them.” This recitation of prayers is simply a ritual like Eastern religions reciting Mantras or the Catholics praying the Rosary Beads or the Muslims their many daily prayers! Superstitious pagans!
The NT says God already knows what we will ask; that our words should be few; that we can groan or sigh without words and the Spirit will intercede for us, and that we can even proseuchomai conversationally-pray by the Spirit in supernatural tongues the perfect will of God. God sees what’s in our hearts and cares more about us surrendering-control and listening than our monologue of words. The “Word of God that never comes back void but accomplishes what it was sent out to do” is not bible verses, it is prophetic rhema – the directly-spoken/heard words of God that is the “bread that man can actually live on!”
Jesus preached and taught then – and still does – by His Spirit with His directly-spoken/heard rhema words. The NT writers say much more about examining, discerning, or scrutinizing the will of God through continual practice in renewing one’s mind via routine listening proseuche conversational-prayer, as given by the Wonderful Counsel of the Spirit, than they ever do explicitly stating the will of God as logos messages for Christians to read-to-understand – see Least Among You – BT8 and New Covenant Ways – BT16. Nevertheless, you can see Christ’s priorities within His ‘Lord’s Prayer’ model, so it’s a great idea to use this to guide your proseuche conversational-prayer as He intended! The number of words are very small, so evidently proseuche conversational-prayer has much more to do with listening than talking! After all, what did Jesus do all night long – say the same things over and over?
Now “the logos Word of God that is to meno abide/live in” new believers to make them true disciples isn’t OT scripture or any “holy gramma writings” but the gospel logos message of Jesus Christ they akouo heard/listened to preached. And regarding this preached logos message of The Truth, who is Jesus, Paul says, “Trusting-relying-faith comes from akouo hearing/listening-to-understand/know the directly-spoken/heard prophetic rhema words of God.” Jesus said that “people can’t even come to Him unless the Father first draws them and teaches them” – by His Spirit! You have to akouo hear/listen-to-understand/know “Jesus knock on your door to come in and intimately dine with Him” in order to say “Yes” to His logos message to you! The sermon isn’t what you are answering – it can only provoke you to be open to akouo hear/listen-to-understand/know Christ speak through His gospel logos message directly to your heart! John says “If you let what you akouo heard/listened-to-understand/know to from the beginning meno abide/live in you, then you will meno abide/live in the Father and Son.” That’s why Jesus said we had to have His directly-spoken/heard prophetic rhema words meno abiding/living in us if we want our aiteo asked-prayers answered! See Prophetic Rhema Words.
Every religion creates “special commandments, ordinances, precepts, rules, and regulations” to ergo ‘do/work’ in order to “curb the indulgence of the flesh” to stop sinning and become more holy/sanctified. But the OT Law of 613 commandments “cannot make anything perfect” and not only “reveals sin, it multiplies sin to make us exceeding sinful, and then kills us to be dead as a doornail!” I’ve read on the internet that there are 500 or 1000 commandments for Christians to obey! Lies! Plan A doesn’t put this “heavy burden on us to carry.” The Messiah has already sanctified or “set us apart or consecrated us as ‘special’ for God’s use, making us ‘clean’ and thus holy by His own sacrificial work to blot out or wash away all our sins forever to give us His Holiness in exchange for our sin – this atoning exchange called “propitiation” – and then instills within us His Holy Spirit to transform and renew us daily as we follow Him in intimate koinonia fellowship! We can stop working for it and starting having trusting-relying-faith and instead thanking Him for it!
The completely-different-in-kind New Covenant Way or ministry of the Spirit has absolutely nothing to do with the old, antiquated, feeble, useless way, or ministry of the holy gramma writings. The NT says this so often because it was hard for Jews and religious Gentiles to believe it! The Spirit alone can set us free from “the Law of sin and death!” Now God’s instruction or Torah is the completely-different-in-kind New Law of only 2 commandments integrally connected into ONE from God: “Trusting-relying-faith in the son He sent,” the “work of the Father that saves you,” and “unconditionally-loving one another as I have unconditionally-loved you,” “the completely-different-in-kind New Commandment or Law of Christ” that Jesus “gave My or His commandment to us,” written on our hearts, no longer on stone tablets or with ink on scrolls, so “there is absolutely-in-fact-NO need for anyone to write you concerning unconditional-love for the brethren, because you have already been taught by God.” John says, “because of the Anointing of the Holy One, you have absolutely-in-fact-NO no need of any other teacher, because He actually, ongoingly teaches you about ALL things, especially to continue meno abiding/living in Christ.” The OT prophetic “oracles of God” used to convert Jews to Christ, only 2.6% of the OT, were “infant’s milk” and “elementary ‘abc’ fundamentals” compared to the “solid food” of the Spirit’s teaching! “The Wonderful Counselor” is within us as the Spirit of wisdom, revelation, discernment, enlightening-insight, and understanding given through prophecy, dreams, and visions and most often as a result of routine conversational-prayer – for certainly this is the will of God that He will be eager to answer! For this is “The Promise” of the New Covenant, not more graphe scripture that didn’t even work for the Jews in the old covenant!
Every religion creates “special ergon doings/works” to be ergo ‘done/worked’ into order to earn God’s favor, blessing, and unconditional-love or to avoid His just wrath and judgment. This is the old covenant or Law that saturates the 97.4% of OT such that Jesus, the NT writers, and modern Jews consider them the OT and Law as synonymous. Plan A doesn’t because instead we are to simply ergo ‘do/work’ by “obedient steps of faith” in God’s unconditional-loving-favor-of-grace and unconditional-love through Christ, so that we can finally “rest from our ergon doing/works.” We are to instead have trusting-relying-faith that surrenders control to God’s Spirit “to will and do His good pleasure IN us.”
Every religion puts God in a box to be taken out when we aiteo ask-pray or for a worship-service during “special events” like holy festivals, or taken out for “special days” like holy days, New Moons, Sabbaths, or Sundays at church, or taken out for “special times” like saying ‘grace’ for our food, or taken out for “special religious liturgical-ritual-services for God” like circumcisions, sacrifices, ordinations, consecrations, and water-baptisms. Most churches call these “worship services!” Plan A doesn’t! Jesus and the NT writers practiced and taught “proseuche conversational-prayer at all times and/coupled places” because fellowship with God requires cultivation ‘of the garden’ by regular visitation, communication, and sharing of each other’s lives. Christ’s conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well was to move her away from “special times and places” to “true worship by [singular] Spirit and/coupled [singular] Truth.” Every day is “special” when we spend it together WITH the The Truth Son and His Holy Spirit! Paul says “We are the true circumcision, whose liturgical-worship-service is by the Spirit of God and thus are putting no confidence in the flesh [of man-made religious liturgical-worship-services], now offering our bodies as living sacrifices to God, which is now the logical-way to liturgically-worship-serve God.” The NT returns us back to biblical proseuche conversational-prayer which has always been considered the true worship of God that all the Prophets enjoyed.
Every religion has “special foods and drinks” and “spiritual disciples like fasting and asceticism.” Plan A doesn’t! Paul writes extensively of the “weak-in-The-Trusting-Relying-Faith” Jewish-Christians who practice such things, still enslaved by the yoke of the Law, and that such severities to the body, though appearing wise, are but man-taught rules, like ‘elementary abc fundamentals’ common to all self-imposed religion, which are of absolutely-in-fact-NO value in curbing the indulgence of the flesh. They are “zealous, ceremonial, rituals and disciplines of holiness that are self-prescribed,” because Jesus doesn’t prescribe them! Instead Jesus said that fasting is “the old wineskin that you can’t pour new wine in, or the old garment you can’t put a new unshrunk patch on, or both will ruined.” All the NT ‘proof texts’ for fasting crumble when examined carefully from the Greek manuscripts – see New Covenant Ways – BT2b. These “fasting” references either pertain to Jewish-Christians struggling to break free from Judaism, as Paul kept urging them to do, or were from Catholic monks who added these into the later texts to justify their church laws – we can see their earlier additions in the margins later being added to the text – shame on them! The OT never actually commanded fasting, but found only in the “tradition of the elders,” yet this shows up in later NT writings. The fasting of Jesus in the wilderness was only mentioned in one account by a very Jewish Matthew and the idiom may actually mean “eating only of desert foods.” Jesus and His disciples were accused of NOT fasting like John’s disciples and other Jews! Jesus said, “It’s not what goes into a man that makes him unclean” and He and the other writers teach to “give thanks for ALL that God provides!”