Adversity vs. Stress

Before you begin your Bible study, as a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, be sure you have named your sins privately to God the Father.

 

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (Known, Unknown and Forgotten sins) (1Jn 1:9)

You will then be in fellowship with God, Filled with the Holy Spirit and ready to learn Truth from the Word of God.

God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in Spirit and Truth. (Joh 4:24)

Adversity vs. Stress

     Adversity is what we all will have in life, in one form or another. This adversity is inevitable. Adversity results from the freewill of man in this world. It is inevitable that having old sin natures; humans we will hurt each other. So many bad decisions made from the sin nature create havoc in nations, families and individuals. Adversity also comes from God himself, for example, natural disasters, etc. (Amos 3:6) But, God has given us the Spiritual Thoughts we need to overcome adversities and prevent them from becoming stress within our soul. Psychology is actually a very precise science when it comes to the analysis of human instability within the soul. Schizophrenia, manic depression, disassociation, hysteria and psychosis are results of adversity becoming stress in the soul. And contrary to popular belief, these psychological problems are not just the problems of unbelievers, but also believers in Jesus Christ. Now psychology says neurosis is lack of psychic energy in the stream of consciousness. Neurosis can be feelings of anxiety, obsessional thoughts, or compulsive acts. Neurosis can lead to what psychologists call a splitting of the mind resulting in split personalities. This condition is far more common than even most experts will admit. Some people are able to keep their irrationality within the soul, and thus appear to be perfectly normal. Of course, no one fools God. He knows our every thought, our every motive, and he has always known these things. Neurosis can result in a believer when he lacks the Word of Truth in his stream of consciousness. The only defense against any form of neurosis is the two power options, the filling of God the Holy Spirit, and the daily intake of the Word of God. (Joh 4:24) The same goes for the unbeliever; however, without belief in Jesus Christ, he can only rely on the Divine laws of establishment given to every member of the human race in the Mosaic Law. The unbeliever must rely on upholding the rights of protection, liberty, privacy and property given to men; they are true Divine laws of establishment. Unbelievers that fail to live by the Divine Laws of establishment, and believers that fail to intake the Mind of Christ in their soul; will result in some form of neurosis. Now psychology has a vast amount of information on how they can fix a soul. And, medication is a good thing if it can bring a person to a point so that he can concentrate on the Word of God. However, the Bible emphatically says that human solutions are NO solutions. (1Sa 10:19) Divine solutions (God the Holy Spirit and The Word of Truth) are the only solutions! (Pro 22:17-21) The problem with psychology is focusing on the problem, instead of offering real Divine solutions.      

     As a child, we all form defense mechanisms within our souls to cope with the outside world. The worse the childhood, the more defense mechanisms we develop. Defense mechanisms are the only means of surviving childhood for many who struggle through it. But, when the child becomes an adult, these same defense mechanisms will destroy the soul. Reaction and blame will only create more problems within the soul. The woman who wrote the letter realized that the solution was not to continue being the victim, to feel sorry for herself, but to realize that what she Thinks now, will determine her future. The same Principle applies when the apostle Paul says “to forget what lies behind, and move toward the goal which is in Christ Jesus.” (Php 3:13-14) If we continue to let past or present adversities penetrate our souls, we are the ones choosing to live in misery and stress, instead of God’s plan and purpose for our lives. We are all imperfect, and we have all done things we regret, or have had things done to us by others that cause us grief, but we have the option as to whether these problems destroy us. If we choose to focus on the problem, we are in essence saying to God that we can handle our own problems, we don’t need His solutions. Or we can forget the past and move on.

     (1Pe 5:5) and (Jas 4:6) say basically the same thing. God makes war against the arrogant believer, but he gives grace to the humble believer. This means that if we continue to focus on the problems and adversities of life, past or present, then God will allow the pain and misery to continue and we will only have ourselves to blame. Most believers do not even realize this, but even unhappiness is arrogance.

          

     Yes, I will say it again, it is arrogant to be an unhappy believer. We choose our state of mind. (Pro 23:7) YOU ARE A SLAVE TO WHATEVER RUINS YOUR PIECE OF MIND. (Rom 6:16-18) God never coerces our decisions. He allows us to choose for or against his plan. It is impossible to be unhappy in God’s plan. But wait, hold that Thought. We don’t just suddenly become incredibly happy at the moment of Salvation. God wants His creatures to be happy. This requires spending time learning about who He IS, and what God's plan is all about. (Pro 23:26) We either continue to strive toward the goal of Occupation with the person of Jesus Christ by renewing our mind with the Word of God, (Rom 12:2; 2Co 3:18) and giving thanks in ALL the prosperities and difficulties of life, (1Th 5:18) or we choose to focus on our human lives and continue to live in unreality. We sow to the wind, and we reap the whirlwind. (Gal 6:7) We make our own choices in life, and in the end we only have ourselves to blame. Do we make the Word of God our #1 priority in life? This is the question we must ask ourselves within our own soul. God already knows the answer. He already knew the outcome of our life before we were even born. So, the solutions He provides will work! Jesus Christ our Lord made this life possible and perfected those solutions. (Heb 12:1-2) When I start Thinking about how infinity superior and stable our God is, it brings me incredible joy inside my soul. What comfort! What security!

     The sad fact is that most believers in Jesus Christ will not achieve the ultra-supergrace life. (Reach Spiritual maturity) They would rather hear what they want to hear, and so they never advance farther than what they want to hear. The following are 8 stages of reversionism which Paul was inspired to communicate to the Galatian and the Corinthian believers who had fallen out of fellowship. Reversionism simply means that a believer in Jesus Christ, even a Spiritually mature believer, can revert back to his old unbelieving system of human and satanic thinking. This is proof that until the day we die, we will constantly need to fill our minds with Biblical Spiritual Thoughts to avoid reversionism.

Most believers trap themselves somewhere in the 8 stages of Reversionism.

1) Reaction and Distraction. (Jas 3:14-15)

    

     As a believer, you can either respond to circumstances and people in your life (Using Divine Thinking in your soul) or you can react to them. This can be as simple as frustration; the easy way to tell if we are under demon influence is, are we thinking about ourselves, (Php 2:3-4) or are we reacting to other’s sins? Are you distracted from the daily intake of the Word of God? Are you hypersensitive to other’s sins, because they are different from your own? This is when you start drifting from concentrating on your own Spiritual life, and become more concerned with what else is going on. Remember this basic Biblical Principle: Only you can live your Spiritual life, no one else can live it for you. Loss of fellowship through sin, and failure to apply (1Jn 1:9) results in advanced stages of reversionism.

     You see here, if you allow the outside pressure of adversity to become the inside pressure of stress in the soul, you are in the 1st stage of reversionism. (Under demon control) (2Ti 2:25-26) The sin nature is not the fault of our personal sins. The sin nature is genetic and resides in every cell of the human body. The soul, which was created by God, is perfect. Volition, mentality, and self-consciousness all reside in the soul. When we sin, we choose to sin. The sin nature simply tempts us, and then we use the volition in our soul to choose to sin. Only the two power options of the filling of God the Holy Spirit and the accumulated Spiritual knowledge of the Word of Truth can defend us from this temptation. (Joh 4:23) Lack of these is lack of real strength. When we sin, it is inevitable that stress will be present inside the soul, and if we fail to rebound, we move to stage two Reversionism.

2) Frantic search for happiness.

     Because you are out of fellowship, you seek happiness in the world (Satan's System) to compensate from frustration, boredom, loneliness, etc. And you must have more than just simple fellowship with God the Holy Spirit to avoid this stage of reversionism. You must have acquired Spiritual Thinking in your stream of consciousness — the right lobe of the soul, or heart. For without Spiritual knowledge, (The Thinking of Christ; 1Co 2:16) we will not have any Spiritual strength to keep us in fellowship with God. There are two types of Christians who develop in this stage of reversionism. The ascetic or legalistic Christian has a trend toward morality. He can have self- righteous arrogance, and produce mental attitude sins by judging and looking down on others who do not fit his moralistic image of a Christian. He does not have the Truth within him, because he is out of fellowship, and hence, without Divine Thinking. His frantic search for happiness is trying to show others how good he is, and deceiving himself into thinking God actually favors him over others, when God’s love doesn’t fluctuate. (Heb 13:8) It all depends on Who and What God IS! And God loves his own righteousness, the righteousness that we receive when we believe in Jesus Christ, perfect righteousness. So, he joins the church, and tithes, and says God bless you, and smiles all the time, and tries to do the right thing, and therefore he never gets it. It never depends on what he does or how he does it, it depends on Thinking with the Spiritual Thoughts laid out to him in the Bible. He is not better than others, but yet he depends on this belief that he is. He joins others who fit his trend of the “human old sin nature good” syndrome. I like to call these mutual admiration societies. They think they are great, and they frown on the rest of the world. The problem here is the tendency to focus on oneself for such high morality, completely loosing track of what is truly in the Word of God. The frantic search for happiness is the result of seeking happiness through people and society, like churches, when only the Word of God in your soul can do this. The second trend is fairly obvious. For the lascivious Christian, this could mean drunkenness, sexual promiscuity, drug abuse or crime. This frantic search for happiness leads a Christian to escape God's Reality through overt sins.

3) Operation Boomerang.

     Just that, the more you react, and are distracted, and search for happiness outside your inner soul, the more these reactions are intensified. Frustration becomes greater frustration. Discouragement becomes depression. Loneliness becomes desolation. Here is where you lose your common sense and you let emotion run your soul instead of Thinking with Truth. Here is where your soul becomes fragmented, and begins to literally split. This fragmentation is prolonged stress inside the soul. The only defense is to use, (1Jn 1:9). When this stage is reached, it is usually from false thinking being accumulated in the subconscious. As the years pass by under daily perseverance of Spirit & Truth, we are able to fight this battle more and more head on. Spiritual Thinking inside the soul will become more and more a line of defense in the battle that wages inside the soul. We can recall The Word of God more quickly, and the Spiritual life becomes more of a Reality from the inner proof of contentment. However, without the daily intake of the teaching of the Word, the believer is weakened more and more as the stress takes over his soul. The stress will fornicate with the old sin nature and when cognition of the mind is overrun, then stage four will inevitably result.

4) Emotional revolt of the soul

     Emotion is no longer the responder or appreciator of the soul, it now becomes the dictator. Emotion in itself is empty. It is entirely dependent on Spiritual Thoughts resident in the heart. When emotion takes control of the soul, the believer becomes irrational. This irrationality can be subtle, such as sincere and soft spoken pastors who misinterpret the Bible. Here is where irrationality begins. Instead of using Divine Viewpoint in your heart to respond to circumstances, your emotion dictates your thinking and behavior.

     

     O you Corinthians, our mouth is open to you; [Ready to give Truth] our heart [Right lobe of the soul] is enlarged. [With Divine Thinking] You are not hindered [From learning Divine Thinking] by us, but you are hindered by your own emotions. [Thinking and acting by the old sin nature's lust pattern] (2Co 6:11-12)

Christians distort Bible teaching when they are under emotional revolt of the soul, 

     Now I urge you, brethren, keep your eye on those who cause dissensions and offenses in opposition to the Divine Thinking which you have learned, and avoid them. For they are such who serve not our Lord Jesus Christ but their own emotions, [The thinking of the old sin nature] and by smooth and flattering speech they deceive the right lobes of the stupid. (Rom 16:17-18)

     These are apostate believers who are without Spiritual Thinking in their souls. They interpret the Scriptures with their emotions, without discernment. The Mind of Christ is not about sweet, sentimental emotional deceptions, it is about Principles of Truth and the integrity Divine Thought inside the soul of the believer and rewards him accordingly. (Rev 2:23) God can reward only His Own Thoughts! (Isa 55:6-9) Emotion was given to the human race as an appreciator of the things the Creator so graciously gives us. Emotion, however, can be very destructive if given full control of the mind. You do not have to be a believer to understand this point. Emotion breeds irrational behavior and instability. The Christian way of life is all about Thinking, Thinking and Thinking. (Promises, Doctrines, Principles and Prophesy. (Deut 18:18; Joh 7:16-18; Gal 2:20) In order to live and operate in The Spiritual Kingdom of God, we must learn His Spiritual Thoughts and language, Emotion has NO room in the Christian way of life; accept as an appreciator of what we know about the Lord. Emotion is a wonderful gift from God, and I Think you know how wonderful it can be when you Think about Salvation and what Christ did for us at the Cross. I myself get quite ecstatic at times when I Think about all that God has provided for us. It can also be bad when you lose your train of Thought, and you let anger or bitterness rule your Thoughts.

           

     This stage of reversionism is very destructive. You cannot recall Verses that you previously had knowledge of. Your emotion is running your soul. Simple use of, (1Jn 1:9) must be used. You must be able to recognize your irrationality and confess the sin. Arrogance becomes so blatant here! Those that are in emotional revolt of the soul do not want to hear the Truth, and they despise it; when you try and explain it to them, they want to continue telling you about their distorted views about the Bible, such as loving your neighbor as you love yourself by the old sin nature; which means personally loving everyone! This is impossible. I will explain this further below. Another example would be that you have to feel sorry for your sins, (Emotion) Wrong! How you feel about your sins is inconsequential. There is nowhere in the Bible that it say you must feel sorry for our sins. If this was a prerequisite, then we would have an influence in God’s plan, and this would mean God’s plan is not perfect because it relies on US. It does not rely on us. The sins were already judged at the Cross. How we feel about them is not the issue. The issue is to cite being out of fellowship, HOMOLOGEO, as per, (1Jn 1:9). This word actually comes from 5th century Attic Greek, used by Socretes, and Plato, and meant to cite a court room case. It did not require how the lawyer felt about the case; he was simply required to state the facts. We are to only state the facts to God and move on. We are not punished for our sins; again these were judged at the Cross. We are disciplined for being out of fellowship. Believe me, it begins to make sense over time, because we actually learn from Thought, (Admitting being out of fellowship to God) not from emotion. (Feeling sorry for sin) Lastly, godly sorrow is an incorrect translation in, (2Co 7:10-11). If you break down the Greek exegetically, you find that it actually says, “distressed as God would have it.” (Resulting in a change of mind) In other words, we are disciplined for being out of fellowship. Failure to follow these rules will inevitably result in emotional revolt of the soul. Prolonged periods in this stage will result in neurosis and other psychological dysfunctions. (Sorrow of the world) This can explain why perfectly normal believers suddenly become mad. They overwhelm themselves with guilt and other emotional sins that drive them to this madness. We are helpless to do anything apart from the filling of God the Holy Spirit. (Zec 4:6) And we cannot fight large battles without a large battalion lined up to defend our soul. This is Divine Thinking in the soul, accurate Bible teaching. Yet, so many of us refuse to use the Thoughts of God, and rely on our emotions!

5) Negative Volition Toward Bible Doctrine

     At this point believers are apathetic to the Word of God, and actually shrug it off as needless repetition. A person now may find a church that suits their emotional needs, ignoring the message. They sit in Bible class, but they are performing rituals without Divine Reality. (Isa 29:13) You are so caught up in the adversities of your life that you cannot apply Divine Thinking to circumstances. You in essence say, God's Word doesn’t work, but it is you who are negative to the Word of God. Here is where Christians feel so full of self-pity and emptiness. They were given such an extraordinary Spiritual life, yet they wallow in their self-pity, because they do not understand it. Ignorance is no excuse in the Word of God. God will always provide actual Bible teaching; we must seek it, hear it, and Think with it. Hearing the Word is not good enough, we must be doers, (Thinkers) of the Word. The Word of Truth believed, understood and applied. (Pro 22:17-19)

6) Blackout of the Soul

     We are still talking about a believer in Jesus Christ. Here is where a vacuum opens in the left lobe (The staging area or the mind) of the soul called MATAIOTES in the Greek. Literally, this means vanity as in, (Eph 4:17). Satan understands more of the Bible than you think he does. So, he feeds on believers’ blackout of the soul. You see, Satan knows his fate, he realizes it is only a matter of time. But, he will continue to try and break the link in God’s plan. He has already tried several times, from extermination of the Jews to avoid the Covenants with racial Israel from being fulfilled, from attempting to destroy the line of David in the Old Testament to prevent the birth of Christ, to setting up his own Utopian Millennium to prove Christ a liar in saying there will be wars and rumor of wars until my return. (Mat 24:6) All he needs is to prove one Biblical Promise wrong. Even in his genius, he is no match for the perfection of God. One of his best attacks on the plan of God is distortion of the Scriptures. Anything to lead the Christian from the path of righteousness. Christians want to teach about love, love, love, and yet they have no idea just what love is. True love is a Virtue love. (Gal 5:22-23) It is acquired through God’s Word, not through emotion. The true power of love is not personal love directed toward others, but Impersonal love. Virtue love directed toward everyone, because it does not depend on the attractiveness or repulsiveness of the object. but it is dependent upon the integrity — Virtue inside the soul, built up by the daily learning and use of “Divine Thinking” towards circumstances, self, things and others. (Rom 14:13) Obedience to Truth; not our feelings! (Psa 138:2; Luk 22:42) Yet, most Christians talk sincere and smile and teach about loving their neighbor. I’ll tell you what true love is. True Virtue love is when God the Father judged His only Son, the uniquely born One, with all the sins of mankind. He had Personal love for Jesus Christ. Yet, he judged him. Why? Because Divine integrity always comes before Divine love. The righteousness and justice of God the Father judged Christ on the Cross for us, so that His plan would make it possible for us to have an eternal relationship with Him. That is Impersonal love. HE loves us not for who and what we are, but for Who and What He IS. Perfect righteousness and fairness will always find a way to give his creatures a chance.    

        

        The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith [Spiritual life] and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. (1Ti 4:1)

     Satan wants us to feed on distortions such as love and peace for all. Because he knows that if we focus on the emotional love we feel, then we rely on our own weak and pathetic strength. Even in love, we must rely on the Word of God, never on emotion. These believers in Jesus Christ have neglected the Word of Truth and are now influenced by the knowledge of the world such as Darwinism, New Age Philosophy, Atheism, Conversion to another religion, etc.… The result is subjectivity, confusion, instability, and frustration. They buy into liberalism, world peace and disarmament programs, socialism, universal brotherhood of man, and rights for the criminal. Can you imagine; rights for the criminal? In our system today we make the criminal the victim, and the victim the criminal. Since the believer in Jesus Christ is permanently indwelled by God the Holy Spirit, (The mentor promised by Christ) he can never be demon possessed, but his (Satan's) thinking brings about darkness in the soul.

     O Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to you, avoiding worldly and empty chatter and the opposing arguments of what is falsely called “knowledge”--  which some have professed and thus gone astray from the faith. [The Spiritual life] Grace be with you. (1Ti 6:20-21; Eph 5:11, Eph 6:12, Col 1:13, 2Pe 2:4) At this point, the believer can possess two personalities. When things go his way, everything is wonderful, and he is nice to be around. But, when adversity hits, he falls apart. Even simple adversities such as sitting in traffic, weather, temptations, not enough money, criticism, etc. Happiness and stress in the soul are mutually exclusive. Happiness is a state of mind. If we are influenced by any circumstances in life that result in unhappiness, then we have a long way to go in the spiritual life. (Rebound and Daily reception, retention, recall, and resisting of sin and our own will; 1Co 10:13)

7) Scar Tissue of the Soul

     “Hardness of the heart” evil influence enters into the right lobe of the soul where Spiritual Thoughts are stored and actually begins to remove the Word of Truth. (Joh 12:40-50)    

     HE HAS BLINDED THEIR EYES AND HE HARDENED THEIR HEART, SO THAT THEY WOULD NOT SEE WITH THEIR EYES AND PERCEIVE WITH THEIR HEART, AND BE CONVERTED AND I HEAL THEM. (Joh 12:40)

     This hardening of heart can happen for believers and unbelievers. An example Amenhotep II, the Pharoah of the Exodus, hardened his own heart through constant resistance to the Word of God. (Exodus 7:22; Exodus 8:15; Exodus 9:34) Believers in the Exodus generation reached this point as well; at the Meribah incident. (Exodus 17:1-7) Here is where a breakdown of norms and standards taught by the Word of God are substituted for human thinking, resulting in an unruly and unstable generation. Christians determine the fate of a client nation to God, and when they lose the Principles of the Mind of Christ in the soul, human viewpoint takes precedence. The rate of forgetting exceeds the rate of learning, and they lose any Spiritual Thinking that they may have gained in the past. (1Co 2:11-16)

8) Reverse process reversionism

     They revert back to their unbelieving ways. At this point, they are still saved whether they know it or not. There is no overt sign to the fact that they have ever believed in Christ and that they have been born again, and are sons of God. Christians are shocked at what other Christians do, so they don’t believe they are really Christians but merely professing Christians. The sad thing about it is so few can ever recover from this point. It is not from the failure of the Word of God. It is because these same Christians who judge these people are in reversionism themselves, and the false thinking they produce destroys any possibility of recovery for these people.

     God’s justice is his grace policy. He condemns those who do not believe in Jesus Christ. He blesses those that believe in His name. Faith alone in Christ alone is the power of grace. He provides it all. A wonderful grace life is provided to every believer, but we must understand what the Bible teaches. At Salvation, God the Holy Spirit gives us seven ministries, one is to teach us God's Thoughts on every subject, and then bring them to our remembrance. (Joh 16:13; Joh 14:23) So we must study every day and night, (Psa 1:1-3; Ecc 11:6) so He can give us the accurate message, coherently, orderly and understandable. The Scriptures are to be understood in their original languages and in the time they were written. We must understand the language and syntax, [Exegesis] and the historical interpretations to understand things such as metaphors, idioms, etc., and be able to categorize these interpretations; so we can fully understand God's Thinking on every subject. So we must learn the entire system, so adversity will not become stress in the soul. This will allow us grow to Spiritual maturity, (Heb 5:13; Eph 4:13) and to be free from the sin nature's control in our lives!

     But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed, and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. (Rom 6:17-18)  

     So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, If you continue in My Word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the Truth, and the Truth will make you free. [From the old sin nature and the false realities of Satan's world system] (Joh 8:32)

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