Lesson for December 15, 2013
Spiritual Dynamics
Spiritual Autonomy
Spiritual autonomy is utilizing the problem solving device of sharing the happiness of God. Sharing God’s happiness as a problem solving device begins in spiritual self-esteem, gains momentum in spiritual autonomy, and reaches its peak in spiritual maturity. Sharing God’s happiness gives us the ability to be content in prosperity or in adversity, and it gives us the solution to the problems people have in constantly becoming slaves to their circumstances. Sharing God’s happiness is victory over your circumstances.
Spiritual autonomy is orientation to God and His Word and rejecting anything that destroys the spiritual life such as fear, worry, and anxiety. Mental stability from spiritual self-esteem and spiritual autonomy is a key issue in the spiritual life because spirituality is a mental attitude produced by the filling of the Holy Spirit inside God’s power system
Mental stability is the ability to think accurate Bible doctrine and divine viewpoint under pressure. It is the ability to make correct and accurate application of metabolized doctrine in the midst of testing. Mental stability is the God-given ability to make accurate application of metabolized doctrine. From spiritual autonomy comes a maximized stabilization of the mentality. In spiritual autonomy, when you hear truth, you identify it as truth because you have learned so much Bible doctrine that your norms can identify truth in any area, wherever it is stated and by whomever it is stated.
The key to contentment is impersonal love for all mankind. Others’ imperfections and mistakes will not be a source of unhappiness to you with impersonal love. Impersonal love is the build-up of virtue so that unconditional love is directed toward everyone. If you, in spiritual autonomy, have unconditional love toward all mankind, you have the most fantastic capacity for personal love toward those in your periphery. Personal love in the human race is based on the attractiveness of the object. Impersonal love is based on the virtue of the subject. Impersonal love is a relaxed, objective mental attitude toward the entire human race. Impersonal love is free from arrogance, jealousy, bitterness, vindictiveness, self-pity, hatred, implacability and guilt.
Spiritual autonomy means the state of being independent. This is not fully accomplished in the Christian life until the believer has the use of virtue love as a problem solving device. Personal love for God must precede spiritual self-esteem, and impersonal love for all must precede spiritual autonomy.
Spiritual autonomy is cognitive self-confidence. Cognitive self-confidence means you have gained the perception and metabolizing of accurate Bible doctrine, so that you have a tremendous amount of divine viewpoint that can be used in pressure situations as well as non-pressure situations. Having cognitive self-confidence means your hope and your confidence are based on the Word of God and not on human opinion. No one should form an opinion without the facts. Cognitive self-confidence is maximum use of metabolized doctrine in facing and overcoming the problems of life. Cognitive self-confidence is understanding and loving God by means of metabolized doctrine.
In spiritual autonomy you can begin to handle the Word accurately in its application, in your thought pattern, and in the pattern of your life. Now you can take all the Bible doctrine you’ve learned, metabolized and apply it to the Christian life. Cognitive self-confidence is a higher ability than you’ve ever had before, not only to recall doctrine which you’ve metabolized, but to use it accurately without distortion of your spiritual life. And, it’s the only way you will be able to handle the various areas of testing.
Cognitive self-confidence means no one can hurt you any longer, not even those closest to you. You are now insulated against the failure, the disappointments, the frustrations, and the disillusionments that come from association with people. With all that doctrine in your soul, you never again feel threatened, and you never again slip into human viewpoint living.
Spiritual autonomy is grace orientation to life. Under the protocol plan of God for the Church Age, grace is all that God is free to do for each one of us from salvation through the eternal state, totally apart from any human merit, human ability, or any system of human planning, behavior or talent. There are many, many ways in which people use their own human abilities to solve problems. But grace-oriented problem solving in spiritual autonomy enhances our human abilities by utilizing the filling of the Holy Spirit as a source of strength.
Grace is the genius of God. Doctrine is the manifestation and revelation of that genius to mankind. Spiritual adulthood is the glorification of that genius. Grace is all that God is free to do for the human race on the basis of the saving work of Christ on the Cross. Certain things are the monopoly of God and are always grace to believers. Grace is the divine policy for the administration of the Protocol Plan of God for the Church Age.
Logistical grace is the function of the justice of God in providing winner believers and loser believers everything it takes to keep them alive and provide them enough time to fulfill God’s plan. Logistical grace is equal opportunity for every believer to fulfill the Protocol Plan of God. Many think they know something about grace because of God’s undeserved logistical support for them in living. But this doesn’t begin to compare with the magnificent grace policy of God in spiritual adulthood. In spiritual adulthood, the tremendous depth of grace becomes evident. With your knowledge of all the complex doctrines that advanced you to spiritual self-esteem and then to spiritual autonomy, for the first time in your life you have an understanding of God’s grace as few have. You begin to see God’s grace in its true perspective.
While grace orientation to life is a characteristic of spiritual self-esteem, it becomes a dynamic attribute in spiritual autonomy. While spiritual self-esteem understands grace, spiritual autonomy consistently practices grace! In spiritual autonomy, grace orientation has the necessary spiritual muscle for correct and accurate application of grace principles for passing life’s testing. Furthermore, it does so without distortion of grace. Those with grace orientation understand that God makes available to us all His infinite, eternal, divine power, just as He provided to the humanity of Christ.
Spiritual autonomy is doctrinal orientation to reality. Doctrinal orientation to reality comes from an accumulation of metabolized doctrine and its application to your life and experience without distortion. Doctrinal orientation to reality is the spiritual ability to have the same capacity for happiness whether you’re in a period of suffering and disaster or in a period of prosperity and success, as emphasized in Philippians 4:11-13.
Spiritual autonomy is making greater decisions from a position of strength. Right thinking results in right motivation. Right motivation results in right decisions. Right decisions result in right actions. Spiritual autonomy is characterized by right thinking and right motivation necessary to make a maximum number of good decisions from a position of strength. This fulfills the principle of the Protocol Plan of God, where a right thing must be done in a right way to be right. In each successive stage of spiritual adulthood, the number of good decisions is increased from that position of strength. Although this characteristic exists in spiritual self-esteem, it is now greater in spiritual autonomy.
The position of strength is an adult believer living inside God’s power system under the enabling power of the Holy Spirit and momentum from metabolized doctrine. Having correct thinking and correct motivation, a believer has correct application. Under spiritual autonomy, a believer not only has maximum metabolized doctrine in his soul but at the same time he makes consistent right applications of that doctrine to his circumstances. All the thousands of decisions that advance a believer to the various stages of spiritual adulthood are good decisions from a position of strength, having the right priorities in life, and therefore good decisions are made on a consistent basis.
Spiritual autonomy is personal control of your life. Spiritual autonomy understands and accepts one’s own limitations and at the same time recognizes that there are no limitations to the execution of the Protocol Plan of God except negative volition toward Bible doctrine. You are not embarrassed by what you do or who you are, even in comparison with others who have succeeded more than you from a human viewpoint. You are no longer threatened by such superficial nonsense. The only thing in your life that ever rises above your limitations is your advance to spiritual maturity.
Spiritual autonomy includes personal control of your own life while refraining and restraining yourself from controlling and interfering in the lives of others. You cannot control others and at the same time have control over your own life. Every time you interfere and try to control someone else’s life, you lose control of your own life. The principle is: one life – one priesthood. The privacy of your priesthood was designed for you to live your own life as unto the Lord, not to be an expert in telling everyone else how to live theirs! Your royal priesthood means you can have personal control over only one life: your own.
Spiritual autonomy restrains that inordinate ambition to control those with whom you have contact. You cannot be possessive of others or enter into inordinate competition or inordinate ambition and have control of your own life. To influence is one thing, but your greatest influence comes once you no longer feel threatened in life. You cannot tamper with the volition of others and be objective in your decisions. It takes a tremendous amount of energy to interfere in the lives of others, so that you don’t have enough energy for your own life.
Spiritual autonomy remains righteous without being self-righteous. Spiritual autonomy is a state of genuine humility and spiritual blessing. Spiritual autonomy remains moral without becoming a moralistic crusader.
Spiritual autonomy is a personal sense of destiny. A believer is then free to concentrate on the function of his own royal priesthood. He has learned to respect the privacy and freedom of others. He has made the correct application of the principle: “Live and let live” within the Protocol Plan of God. Spiritual autonomy understands God’s plan, will, and purpose in the concept of the invisible impact of the Church Age. All invisible heroes have personal, national, international, and angelic impact. Having resolved the problems of relationships to God, to self, and to others in moving from spiritual self-esteem into spiritual autonomy, a believer in spiritual autonomy concentrates on the Protocol Plan of God which develops an increasing awareness of his own destiny.
Every advance in spiritual adulthood means becoming more and more aware of your own destiny as it is related to the protocol plan of God. This is not an awareness of your own destiny because of the contacts you have made, because of your human relationships, or because of any form of prosperity. Believers are constantly succeeding and prospering under the principle of logistical grace, because logistical grace prospers both winners and losers. The provision of logistical grace to all believers from the justice of God means fantastic blessings, not just survival in the devil’s world.
Spiritual autonomy is characterized by the unique life status of “Christ being at home in your heart.” (Ephesians 3:16-17)