PSD #10 is Occupation with Christ which is the ultimate problem-solving device because it reveals that the believer has reached the goal of glorifying the Lord.
The Divine Perspective on Christian Fellowship as it relates to Occupation with Christ.
”to us who are being saved” = to us who are being delivered the cross is the power of God.
How can you ever assume that loving God the Father, loving God the Son under occupation with Christ, and fellowship with the Holy Spirit be set aside for a lot of nonsense called "Christian fellowship?
Too many believers assume this erroneous concept because there is no organization of their life and thinking around Bible doctrine.
Assembling together for Bible study and other forms of worship must never be confused with Christian fellowship.
It all centers around the word encouragement which is the present active participle of the Greek verb “parakaleo” which means to be encouraged or edified and built up.
Christian fellowship, which is social life and interaction with Christians, is not the basis for fulfilling the PPOG with the ultimate manifestation being occupation with Christ.
Christian fellowship is a result of taking in doctrine, whether you assemble with other believers or get it on your own in certain places where one is isolated.
Christian fellowship is not possible for isolated believers due to their geographical location such as military service, illness, handicaps, or a job that conflicts with Bible class.
Being deprived of Christian fellowship may be just the blessing they need to get a good start in doctrine before they come into contact with other believers.
Often positive believers will not assemble in a local church because of false doctrine or wrong emphasis.
For a believer who is positive, Bible doctrine is never denied.
Positive believers in isolation can receive Bible doctrine through the many different ways you can get it on the Internet, then there are tapes, books, radio, video, and other modern conveniences.
Christian fellowship is nice to have if there is no legalism involved, but Christian fellowship cannot advance the believer in God's plan, purpose, or will for his life.
Whether Christian fellowship is detrimental or wonderful does not depend upon the fellowship as such, but upon your ability to discern virtue wherever it is.
The virtue behind love for God and for others and rejecting legalism and lasciviousness.
Lasciviousness refers to loose living, especially unrestrained sexual behavior and lusts.
- Power lust. This includes approbation lust and
inordinate ambition.
- Pleasure lust, 2TI 3:4, "lovers of pleasure
rather than lovers of God." Pleasure lust is a destroyer of honor, virtue, and integrity through sin and perpetual carnality.
Pleasure of the moment is not worth the displeasure of God.
- Social lust.
- Approbation lust.
- Monetary lust, which is greed.
- Chemical lust, including drug addiction and the
abuse of alcohol.
- Revenge lust.
- Criminal lust.
If you do not put God first, your relationship with people in any periphery will be a mess and will have no spiritual significance.
You can make some great friends because you are not depending on them; you're depending on the Lord.
You don't get upset when they turn nasty and sarcastic and turn sour, because you are depending on the Lord, and your fellowship with the Lord takes care of that.
Christian fellowship is nice to have if there is no legalism, antinomianism, or apostasy.
Antinomianism means failure to put into practice that which you claim to believe.
Christian fellowship cannot advance the believer in God's plan, purpose, or will for his life.
If you get your encouragement from people, it's all wrong mainly because your encouragement must come from what’s inside of you not from the outside.
If you get together with people in order to gain their approbation, or to get something from them, or to be admired by them, you will be mixed-up for the rest of your life.
But If you have a fantastic and wonderful relationship with God, you can have fantastic blessings either in the company of other people or without the company of other people.
You may put your trust in man in many different relationships, whether social, professional, romantic, marriage, or Christian fellowship.
The issue is whether or not they are your #1 priority.
People are always trying to change you instead of changing themselves so that you will conform to their unrealistic expectations.
If you have to get your encouragement for the Christian life from fellowship with other Christians by depending on people for strength instead of depending on the Lord, then you are a weak believer.
At the end of verse 5, if your "right lobe turns away from the Lord," you have negative volition toward doctrine.
People turn away from the Lord when they are trying to change everyone else to comply with their expectations, instead of changing themselves.
The Christian life doesn't say to change people; it says "change yourself!"
PHI 2:12 work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.
ROM 14:12 each one of us shall give account of himself to God.
A tumbleweed has no roots and blows wherever the wind carries it and this verse teaches that God gives prosperity even to losers under logistical grace, but they don't see it.
As our Lord said in MAT 5:45 Our Father causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.
They cannot enjoy prosperity any more than adversity because they have made an issue out of self.
"whose confidence is in Him" describes occupation with Christ.
If you do not have fellowship with God, your interaction with other people is a disaster, and people will say you are flawed, or you have an "unfortunate personality."
Fellowship in the Christian life is described as relationship to the Holy Trinity, not to man.
If you do not have fellowship with God, your interaction with other people is a disaster, and people will say such you are flawed, or you have an "unfortunate personality."
The predesigned plan of God doesn't call for a change of personality, because that is an overt, skin-deep form of hypocrisy.
The Christian way of life calls for the inner changes produced by Bible doctrine and occupation with Christ.
- Fellowship with God the Father is found in 1JO 1:6. "If we say we have fellowship with Him [God the Father], and yet we walk in darkness [cosmic involvement], we lie and we do not practice doctrine."
Fellowship with God the Father inevitably leads to love for God the Father at the point of spiritual self-esteem and thereafter; 1JO 4:19.
1JO 4:19 We love, because He first loved us.
- Fellowship with God the Son is found in 1CO 1:9, "God [ Father] is faithful, through whom you were called into fellowship with His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord."
We were called in common grace when we heard the gospel, followed by the divine call to believe.
When we believed, we still need help so God gives us efficacious grace in which God the Holy Spirit made our faith effective for salvation.
This verse teaches that at salvation we were not called into fellowship with people, but into fellowship with God’s Son.
Since you were called into fellowship with God’s Son, this should be your #1 priority in life.
However,…..
This priority cannot be fulfilled without making Bible doctrine the #1 priority from the start of your spiritual life and your continuance in the plan of God.
- Fellowship with God the Holy Spirit refers to the filling of the Holy Spirit as a problem-solving device and being enabled to handle all things through Christ; PHI 2:1-2.
- Fellowship with the Trinity is revealed and mandated in the New Testament.
The "grace" of our Lord refers to grace orientation as a problem-solving device.
The "love for God" refers to personal love for God the Father as a problem-solving device.
"The fellowship of the Holy Spirit" refers to the filling of the Holy Spirit as a problem-solving device.
It is commanded passages like MAT 28:19 "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,
- Protection from embarrassment in time, and eternity, PSA 119:5-6.
- Occupation with Christ is the expression of the believer’s gratitude and thankfulness to the Lord Jesus Christ.
- Occupation with Christ protects the believer from wandering away from God. PSA 119:9-11.
- Occupation with Christ protects the believer from the criticism and disrespect of people. PSA 119:22-23.
When you are occupied with Christ and there are believers who reproach you with contempt and as they sit and talk against you, you meditate on doctrine.
- Occupation with Christ gives the believer comfort in affliction, PSA 119:50-57.
- Occupation with Christ protects the believer from the lies of the arrogant, PSA 119:69.
- Occupation with Christ gives the believer the power to handle undeserved suffering, PSA 119:92.
- Occupation with Christ makes us wiser than our enemies, PSA 119:98.
- Occupation with Christ protects the believer from the wickedness of persecution, PSA 119:161.
- Occupation with Christ protects the believer from stumbling. PSA 119:165.
Occupation with Christ is commanded by God, It is not an option.
Occupation with Christ gives believers the capacity to love God and to respond to God’s love based on Bible doctrine in his soul.
The command to have occupation with Christ and love for God is found in passages like DEU 6:5, 11:13, 10:12.
Apart from the daily function of PMA of Bible doctrine, it is impossible to love God; HEB 12:2.
HEB12:2 "Be concentrating on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God."
Since God is invisible and the object of our love, we must see and love Him by concentrating on Him through doctrine in the soul.
The apostate doesn't love God because he is under Satan's policy of evil.
The immature believer doesn't love God because he too lacks doctrine in the soul.
You cannot love God unless you know God, and you cannot know God unless you have metabolized enough pertinent doctrine.
Occupation with Christ is the most difficult love of all, because it takes consistency in the inhale and exhale of doctrine.
PSA 119:132 "Turn to me and be gracious to me, after thy manner with those who love your person."
Occupation with Christ is the basis for supergrace blessing; 1CO 2:9; PSA 37:4‑5.
PSA 37:4 "Delight yourself in the Lord; and he will give you the desires of your heart."
PSA 37:5 "Commit your way to the Lord, trust also in him, and He will do it."
There is a special curse on believers who fail to have occupation with Christ in 1CO 16:22, they are said to be "cursed until the Lord comes back."
1CO 16:22 If anyone does not love the Lord, let him be accursed. Maranatha.
This is why we need to note that occupation with Christ begins at spiritual self-esteem.
Spiritual self-esteem is found in all the different stages of spiritual adulthood.
Spiritual self-esteem is the first time in your life when you stop competing with people, and when you stop undermining people.
When you start using impersonal love toward other people, that is when you have finally attained occupation with the person of Jesus Christ.
Paul was in labor for them because they did not have Christ formed in them yet, so this is the first stage of spiritual adulthood which is spiritual self-esteem.
Occupation with Christ increases in Spiritual autonomy.
Occupation with Christ is characterized by conceptual independence in this second stage of spiritual adulthood.
Conceptual means the act of conceiving through thought and consisting of concepts.
When you stop leaning on people for advice and counsel, you start using the problem-solving devices in an independent way so that your problems remain your own.
You must eventually come to the point in your spiritual life when you're resolving your own problems.
I mean handling them magnificently so that people do not even know the problems exist.
The scripture which describes spiritual autonomy is EPH 3:17 "so that Christ may be at home in your right lobes through doctrine when you have been rooted and established in love [for Christ]."
Once Christ is formed in you, GAL 4:19, you advance to when Christ being at home in your heart or right lobe (EPH 3:17).
At this point, your #1 priority is the mystery doctrine of the Church-age plus occupation with Christ.
Bible doctrine, as the written word, becomes the means of causing Jesus Christ, the living word, to become #1 priority in your life.
This #1 priority is established through perception, metabolization, an application of doctrine (or wisdom) inside the predesigned plan of God.
Your concentration expands from learning doctrine into the utilization of the problem-solving devices.
You organize your life around your #1 priority in the reception, retention, and recall of the mystery doctrine of the Church-age.
This is so that you continue under spiritual autonomy to learn doctrine from your right pastor and to actually use those problem-solving devices in momentum testing.
Once you have an organized life in Spiritual independence, you will face the different parts of momentum testing.
You also organize your thinking so that occupation with Christ is both a problem-solving device as well as a basis for your worship.
- The old sin nature test.
The old sin nature originated from human volition, the free will of Adam and the woman.
The old sin nature is the inside source of temptation.
No one ever sins apart from human consent for volition is your authority over your soul.
Volition is the guardian of the soul from the temptations thrown up by the old sin nature.
Notice that the key to not carrying out the desire of the flesh is “walking by means of the Spirit,” not denying your flesh or trying to crucify yourself.
GAL 5:17 for the flesh [O.S.N.] sets its desires against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh
Notice that it doesn’t say that “the Holy Spirit sets its desires against the flesh,” it only says that the flesh is against the Spirit.
The reason for that is God the Holy Spirit does not even recognize the ministry of the old sin nature and He does not want us to recognize old sin nature as well.
GAL 5:17 for the flesh [O.S.N.] sets its desires against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please.
If the believer refuses the temptation to sin, then the OSN will switch to the temptation which results in legalism and self-righteousness.
(a) The old sin nature controls the soul either through self-righteous arrogance or sin.
(b) The believer enters the cosmic system, either Cosmic 1 or Cosmic 2.
Cosmic 1 = self and sin
Cosmic 2 = antichrist, anti-doctrine
Most temptations come from within, from the old sin nature, whereas some come from without, from someone else's old sin nature.
If the believer is at spiritual autonomy and occupied with Christ, there are two applications of Bible doctrine in this test: resistance of temptation and recovery from sinfulness.
A believer in spiritual autonomy who is occupied with Christ can resist the old sin nature tempting him and pass the test.
If the believer does sin, and he does even in spiritual autonomy, occupation with Christ causes an immediate recovery from the sinfulness.
The believer is back into fellowship with the Lord.
Occupation with Christ immediately delivers the believer from guilt, condemnation, fear, worry, anxiety, shame, punishment, phobia, distress, tension, blame, or denunciation.
- The old sin nature test.
The second one will be the Cosmic #1 test.
Because all that is in the cosmic system, the lust of the flesh [old sin nature testing], and the lust of the eyes [motivational evil, cosmic one],
and the arrogant pattern of life [the function of evil throughout cosmic one] is not from the Father, but is from the cosmic system."
The cosmic one test will answer the question will the believer submit to the ministry of the Holy Spirit or will the believer grieve the Holy Spirit?
The cosmic one test emphasizes arrogance; self in contrast to God.
The cosmic one test emphasizes Satan's thoughts of independence in the prehistoric Angelic Conflict; ISA 14:13-14.
ISA 14:13 "But you said in your heart, 'I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God, And I will sit on the mount of assembly In the recesses of the north.
ISA 14:14 'I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.'
If you will get involved with motivational evil, mental attitude sins, arrogance, pride, jealousy, bitterness, hatred, anger, guilt, revenge, vindictiveness, implacability, self‑pity, operation over-think, etc.
In the cosmic one test the target is self and the main temptation is the pride of the believer.
Achievement arrogance is the blasphemy of taking achievement away from God and placing it in your own hands.
This is creature credit verses creator credit.
Negative volition arrogance, is preoccupation with self, loss of self‑values, loss of personality identity, loss of spiritual self-esteem, all lost due to apathy.
Authority arrogance, produces unteachable people.
Self‑righteous arrogance, includes sexual arrogance. and criminal arrogance.
Psychopathic arrogance is usually induced through a life in cosmic one.
The arrogance of unhappiness, is subjective preoccupation with self.
Iconoclastic arrogance is subjective preoccupation with others.
Intellectual and emotional arrogance, is also known as rational and irrational arrogance.
Client nation arrogance, includes Christian activism and civil disobedience.
These attacks occur at every stage of spiritual growth, but for the believer who is at spiritual autonomy and occupation with Christ, he can use these attacks as a means of growing even more.