August 3rd.

I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the LORD. They will be my people, and I will be their God, for they will return to me with all their heart.

Did God do this for the babylonian captives, either in babylon or when they returned to Israel? In some of them He put His purpose and intention which always pointed to something bigger. His intention may have been one thing, at the time it happened, but the particular intention in the moment of time that it was happening wasn't ever the end-all intention or purpose. That isn't just one thing, like the captives going away or even coming home. That is living and active and each part and instance is just part of a movement toward the better fulfillment, where it's all heading and what it's all about.

The idea of symbolism abounds in what the Father has kept recorded and preserved. It is how the secret message is revealed to those who are given ears to hear what God says and means by providing all these symbolic messages that point at and represent something better, much more important than that which can be fathomed properly by the human mind. Each one in particular, at the time it happened, may have seemed to be the end and purpose of the event (Abraham finally having his son, the Israelites finally being delivered to the promised land, the kingdom being safe and flourishing under David, the temple getting built, etc.), but we know by retrospect that it was only an event and other things happened after it, most of them undoing the thing that was once comprehended as the end-all (Abraham being asked to kill the promised son, therefore declaring him to be in a way dispensable, the Israelites being removed from the land, the nation of Israel decimated, the temple being totally destroyed, etc).

The spirit gives life; the natural (what pertains to living human creatures, of earthly descent) counts for nothing.

Even the incredible outpouring of spirit that happened in the first century, that which many were consumed by, what spawned the letters that we are able to read now about what happened then, didn't last because it too was only another kind of a pointing to the better thing. The ignorance of this most fundamental truth about the things God has done on the earth with the humans—and according to it what happened in the first century wasn't meant to be a permanent thing—is the fallacy that the entirety of christianity was built upon, and what it continues to exist as, merely a pure human institution which functions upon misinformation because of an ignorance of how God works. That's why we continue to say that the church might just as well be the rotary club, because the basic assumption that underlies them all—that God is there in the midst of them, is from ignorance and misinformation about what happened to the first century condition of God living in the bodies of some humans. The only thing they are capable of is producing the powerful condition of their particular group validating whatever it is they are claiming by all of them agreeing that whatever they're claiming is true, and if one surrounds himself with that, it becomes true. But it has nothing to do with God because the assumption by which all of them exist, that the humans can just form groups and force their way to God, is false and it doesn't matter how much they all agree that it's true, it doesn't mean anything except they are giving each other the validation they seek which alleviates the natural fear in them because they are animals caught up in the temporary natural cycle, which ends with no guarantee or explanation.

What happened shortly after the Son went to the Father and lasted until about a.d. 70 was done by the supernatural God who made it happen in a supernatural way. What started to happen from a.d. 70 until it was finally complete (somewhere around 400 a.d. most likely) was all done not supernaturally, but naturally, by the will and power of humans who formed what they did (church of Rome and every other christian institution after that, all based on the same mythological assumptions), according to how the humans do things, by what they are limited to (their own natural power). What emerged from what the humans claimed was based fully on Paul and the apostles had started, was a purely human thing, and the God who did live in the bodies of some humans in the first century was totally gone from it. He retreated in the same manner that He retreated from maintaining and protecting the nation of Israel in the land He promised to Abraham. It's just how things go in the natural with God and how He deals with the humans.

The idea is that nothing in the natural, even that which is the purpose of God, is sacred to the extent that it isn't subject to change, even dispensability because the natural, in the end, counts for nothing. It always has to cave back in on itself so that it can keep going along with something else taking the place of what before was considered immovable and permanent. Nothing endures or holds any true finality in the natural, just because of how it was designed to always be renewing itself with new members and participants to replace what once was. It does have an appearance of permanence, but that is just an illusion. What the natural creation exists as is just an infinitely large number of overlapping life cycles, each one having a beginning and an end.

From the tiny organisms to plants and animals, to even this earth and the sun and stars, each one particular instance is marked by its beginning, followed by its endurance, then its end. Because there are so many, and happening all at once, overlapping so there is no lapse, no seam in the fabric of the continuum; it appears to be permanent. In reality though, its true substance has to be defined by the conglomeration of the individual existence cycles, not as one whole big thing. Nothing in the natural is permanent and nothing endures, as per God's design that it doesn't and won't, because it's not very important in the end. In the same way the humans, who think they are the tits, each one embodying within itself the lie of the delusion that they will just go on forever, are not very important. God is important, and His purpose is important. Because His sons are His purpose, they who were once humans, are important.

For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you. Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.

As far as we can tell right now, everything that has happened that we can comprehend—not just because the words were recorded and preserved, and can read them but because we have been given ears to be able to hear the hidden message contained within the words—points to the Father having His family of specifically chosen humans whom He transforms into sons to be with Him where He is all together and safe with Him and the firstborn Son.

Do not conform any longer to the pattern of (the humans who rule) this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind (so that you become another creature, ruled by another nature).

The "pattern of this world" is a big misnomer amongst the religious groups who take it to mean "What the bad people, those who are not like us (who don't share with us in our validation ritual so are a threat to us [although we'd never admit that]), do." The big surprise, one that they will never embrace, is that it's them and the way they naturally are, via what lives in them to be that way—animals driven by instinct.

This is your spiritual act of worship.

Actually worshipping God in the spiritual world where He lives and moves and has His being, in other words doing what is actually recognized by God who is the spirit, is the only important thing. This declaration of Paul has a certain sense of finality to it: "This is how we worship God spiritually," and since He is pure spirit, then logically, in a reasonable way. Every other way (all being natural) counts for nothing, because the natural counts for nothing. If spiritual worship is the worship God recognizes, then natural worship is inferior to the other. Natural worship isn't worship at all, because God isn't in the natural.

That is the forced and mechanical thing we might do, like a chore that needs to be done—out of some kind of obligation or because we think it might get us something. God, being spirit, is not that interested in our natural lives which are always so precious to us because we're not like Him. What we do have that is transferable over to the spirit world—where the natural and spiritual can intersect—is a place within us where our thoughts, emotion, persuasions, prejudices, hopes, dreams, aspirations, etc. live inside of us. That is a place that we can keep hidden from the humans if we so desire, and just pretend to be something else in the observable places.

God will judge men's secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares.

God doesn't want obligatory conformity, but purity of heart. There is no honor in trying to comply with something that is false, what God hasn't initiated Himself in which case our action is an actual response to something true, instead of us wanting something for ourselves. There is honor in saying in your heart, "This is bullshit. Even though everyone is saying that all this stuff is such and such, and reinforcing this thing (validating the lie) amongst one another, it isn't acceptable and I want more because God is better than this." A pure and honest heart is much more valuable to God than one which conforms to lies made up and maintained by creatures whom He can't even see because they're away from Him according to the curse they're under. An honest heart that is courageous enough to stand up against the hoards of liars who claim to have this or that ownership over God, who continue to want what is true instead of the bullshit they are being served by the presumptuous liars, is valuable to God. It is what He likes and wants—possibly the criteria upon which the sons are chosen by Him—because contrary to the humans' popular propaganda He isn't for them, He doesn't love them all and want them all to come to Him. If He did then He wouldn't be hiding.

And they will seek my face; in their misery they will earnestly seek me.

This world is natural, of flesh and blood, what we can see with our eyes, hear with our ears, and understand with our mind. This world is not where Jesus was from, but another world, the spiritual world where God exists as pure spirit. He "came from there," not because he was some god who came from the spiritual world (heaven), but because God as pure spirit lived in his body even from birth. That is how he came from God and was going back to God, because it was the spirit of God who came to him to inhabit his body, making it acceptable to be able to come near Him. And it was the spirit who remembered him and brought him to the Father o become One with Him where He is.

You are from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world.

My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place.

Everything done in the natural will just pass away as just another individual cyclical piece of this dying creation comprised of cycles of death, each one continuing along as they always do until another thing, purpose, person, animal, plant or whatever replaces what has expired, then it does the same thing, and on and o it goes.

Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

This is what Paul is developing here, that he understands that nothing matters except doing God's will, what He purposes to have happen in the earth. Since the present creation is only for the purpose of Him gathering sons out of the world, then His family (those sons He is gathering up from out of it) is all that matters. Once He begins making that clear in us then we understand it a little, then a little more, and still a little more as the animal nature is slowly purged out of us and replaced with His nature, the thing that lived in Jesus' body, that which made him from another world (the spiritual instead of the natural).

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.

However, as much as we might not want it to, that animal nature which was "put on" the humans (like animal skins), will tend to constantly and powerfully pull us back to the natural, to the earth and the earthly way of living, thinking, seeing and acting (pattern of this world). The animal nature is specifically driven to bring the human back to itself constantly, back to the survival mode which is the basic and fundamental nature of all animals, and works itself out in them in all sorts of ways. Ultimately it will suck them back down into it so that they become one with it in a very real, physical way (by decaying into it and becoming part of the soil). Because of its MO, the animal nature is the thing that makes it impossible to love according to the Father, because loving in a true and genuine way must have its base in not caring about ourselves, but another (the Father) and His purpose (the family of brothers who are chosen to become sons of God).

Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you.

It's not anything we can initiate or force ourselves to do, but only act upon what the Father has already initiated in us. If we choose the Father instead of our selves, then we begin to be, in the words of Paul, "led by the spirit," which implies that we are not led by the animal nature, which he refers to as the sinful nature. Paul is only exhorting those he believes have been taken by the spirit to act in accordance with what it's teaching them, and not what the animal nature is constantly pulling them to do—look out for themselves as dictated by that nature, or to be unable to genuinely love as Jesus loved, and commanded his disciples to also do the same for each other without exception.

A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.

Only the spirit can teach us that this animal nature is the very thing that prohibits us from loving one another, even if we truly want to be Jesus' disciples. If the spirit is not in us to teach/lead/guide us, then we will be, by default, led by the animal nature (the only other option), as per so many examples from the NT. When we start to see how we are utterly controlled by the animal nature, and that it is God's will that it be in place (so we can be sure it's effective in its intended purpose), then we are just beginning to learn about true love—that which comes directly and only from God. Otherwise the deceitfulness of the serpent (the representative animal, the ruler of this world—not an animal but a force represented as an animal) who deceived the first humans will keep telling us that we're fine the way we are and that we are able to love just fine, and that somehow we are pleasing to God, or in any way useful to Him as animals. We can only get to the Father by going further in to what has already started in us, by continuing along the same path the Son walked.

I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God.

Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.

So here comes Paul's argument which summarizes the entire purpose of His sons, that they each one become a shepherd of His flock in the tradition of David and Jesus. Their existences change from being devoted only to the self and its promotion (our own flesh and blood count only as our selves because they are us, an actual piece of us lives in them so it's the same flesh)—the flesh and blood family—to the spiritual family of God, the only one which actually counts.

Love must be sincere.

It's 100% impossible to genuinely love according to God unless the spirit is taking us over, unless it is living in us to also make us from another world, and not of the natural, earthly world—unless it is making us into sons who can find their way to the Father. By the spirit we learn of spiritual things, and the spirit is merely another term for the Son in his present form (One with the Father), being able to be the true Shepherd of God's real flock, leading those God has chosen to become sons to their Father. The spirit is the hidden force which is gathering up God's children out of the natural world, like a hen gathering up her chickens.

Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with God's people who are in need. Practice hospitality.

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited.

Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," says the Lord. On the contrary:

"If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head."

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.