O.K. there is the NEW CREATURE experience.
Allowing God to change us from the inside out.

But can you explain to me how you understand this to take place?

Is it something that happens at conversion?

How would you counsel this person --

CASE STUDY (could be anyone's story)

"The morning started well enough, Sally breathed in the fresh morning morning air, thanking God for life and all His blessings. She took her Bible and read the sixth chapter of Romans, ending with prayer thanking God that her "old self" had been crucified with Christ, and that she could now "reckon herself dead to sin but alive in Christ".

Hardly had she arrived in her office when the shrill telephone shattered her peaceful world. On the other end was an impossible individual, impatient, demanding, shouting rebukes when Sally told him the company did not offer the service he was demanding.

Sally's inner peace was ripped to shreds and replaced with a volatile, steaming emotional storm. Total revoltion against this person filled her heart. Slowly the emotions subsided, but the anger turned to utter discouragement. It was still early in the morning, and already she had failed God completely. All those nice sounding promises of God's love filling her and changing her sounded like fairy tales.

END OF CASE STUDY

How would you counsel this person?

im completely lost as to how toms statement and your "case study" relate to each other, or if they do at all. could you please show the relevance?

Not me. Sentence structure and style is different. That was Vaster. You guys need to bone up on your textual criticism skills.

I don't think that was sarcastic. Sarcasm would require more subtlety than that. He seemed pretty straightforward in the assertion that Dedication is promoting the "primacy of the law." But the accuracy of that assertion is fodder for another thread.

In any case, love is the fulfillment of the law. If one loves as Paul had in mind, he will be keeping the law that Paul had in mind.

T:Yes, it's something that happens at conversion. Regarding counsel, I think daily spending a thoughtful hour meditating on the life of Christ, especially the latter scenes, is good counsel.

D:But in that case study, she had just spent an hour studying Romans six, which includes Christ's death and "taking the old man" or our sinfulness upon Himself and dying. She had spent time with the Lord in prayer and contemplation.

She KNEW how she should have reacted, but all it did was make her feel very guilty that she didn't measure up.

I remember another mother confiding in me, how guilty she felt because she just couldn't seem to stop yelling at her son. He just kept getting under her skin. This woman was very serious about spending time studying, and praying and learning to love. She was a pusher in church in getting Prayer groups and seasons of prayer etc. going. She knew about the love of God, and that she didn't measure up.

Would you have told her to spend more time in study and prayer?

Teresa, Tom's saying that agape is of and from God, not anything human, but God gives it to us to have and use. This has been the cooperative effort Dedication has been talking of all thread long, insisting we study the Bible for all its angles on understanding God's agape in principle and action.

Dedication then asks here how one goes about using agape, since it's been given us. Her case study involves a believer, who is a new creation of God and knows it, but struggles to live it, not so? Therefore, how does one do it??!...

as ive said i have the hardest time understanding what you are saying or the point you are making. sorry.

Ah yes: let's see...

Remember the difference on this thread between God's love and our love...? Then the realisation that Dedication was speaking of Christians using God's love, and not just God himself?

Tom was saying this is of course an important truth, since we believers are lead by the Spirit to be more like Christ's example of living God's love. Dedication then posed a scenario where following the Spirit's lead didn't work, due the pressures mentioned, and Dedication asked how that can be avoided, like what plans and ways we can have to hold on to the Spirit's leading.

Thus, the bringing together of human and divine minds, as we seek to be true to God's love in our Christian work, is seen to be difficult. Is that clearer, Teresa, and if so, do you have a suggestion to solve that difficulty?

.... Is that clearer, Teresa, and if so, do you have a suggestion to solve that difficulty?

...Colin. He's just enigmatic (as opposed to sarcastic).

Tom was saying this is of course an important truth, since we believers are lead by the Spirit to be more like Christ's example of living God's love. Dedication then posed a scenario where following the Spirit's lead didn't work, due the pressures mentioned, and Dedication asked how that can be avoided, like what plans and ways we can have to hold on to the Spirit's leading.