Eph 218 2/14/86, 238 3/14/86, 433 12/3/86, 617ff 8/12/87
A. Characteristics of Spiritual Autonomy.
1. Spiritual autonomy is a continuation of contentment or +H (sharing the happiness of God) as a major problem solving device.
a. Contentment is tantamount to capacity for happiness, tranquility of soul in every circumstance of life, whether adversity or prosperity.
b. This is the continuation of +H from spiritual self-esteem. +H begins in spiritual self-esteem, gains momentum in spiritual autonomy, and reaches its peak in spiritual maturity.
c. +H gives us the ability to be happy with or without prosperity, in adversity, and it gives us the solution to all the problems people have in constantly becoming slaves to their circumstances. +H is your victory over your circumstances.
d. In spiritual autonomy there is a stronger and increased contentment, capacity for life, and capacity for happiness as a result of combining spiritual self-esteem with providential preventative suffering.
e. This is found in Phil 4:11-13; Heb 13:5 and 1 Tim 6:6-8.
f. You now have a strong and entrenched contentment, one which will not be disturbed by the arrogance complex
g. The key to this contentment is impersonal love for all because others’ imperfections and mistakes will not be a source of unhappiness to you.
2. Spiritual autonomy is a perpetuated mental stability.
a. This is a mental attitude which begins in spiritual self- esteem and is continued in spiritual autonomy. This is orientation to reality, orientation to authority, orientation to freedom, while at the same time rejecting those things that destroy the spiritual life such as fear, worry, and anxiety.
b. Mental stability is a key issue in the spiritual life, for spirituality is a mental attitude produced by the filling of the Holy Spirit inside the divine dynasphere, and the application of Bible doctrine which has been learned and metabolized.
c. Mental stability is the ability to think doctrine and divine viewpoint under pressure, which is also courage. It is the ability to make correct and accurate application of metabolized doctrine in momentum testing.
d. Mental stability is the insulation against Christian psychosis, neurosis, and psychopathic tendencies.
e. Mental stability is the spiritual ability to pass thought testing as the second category of momentum testing.
f. Mental stability is the God-given ability to make about 95% accurate application of metabolized doctrine in your soul. (In spiritual self-esteem, you accurately apply metabolized doctrine about 50% of the time.)
g. Prov 19:8, “He who gets wisdom [metabolized doctrine] loves his own soul [spiritual self-esteem]. He who cherishes understanding [spiritual autonomy] prospers.” The more metabolized doctrine in your soul, the greater becomes your spiritual self-esteem. This is not self-esteem related to arrogance, for spiritual autonomy is totally related to humility. Providential preventative suffering has squeezed out the last vestige of arrogance. Occupation with Christ at spiritual self-esteem guarantees that your spiritual autonomy will be genuine.
h. Phil 2:5, “Keep on having this mental attitude in you which was also in Christ Jesus.”
i. 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. So wisdom characterizes spiritual autonomy, not only in what we say, but in recognizing what is truth in what we hear said by others.
3. Spiritual autonomy is impersonal love for all mankind.
a. The function of impersonal love is the modus operandi of spiritual autonomy. Just as advance to gate #5 is characteristic of spiritual self-esteem, so the advance to gate #6 is characteristic of spiritual autonomy.
b. This is true capacity for love as well as capacity for happiness. Impersonal love gives you a whole new outlook on your relationship with other people.
c. Impersonal love is the build-up of virtue in yourself as the subject so that unconditional love is directed toward all mankind. 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.
d. Personal love in the human race is based on the attractiveness of the object. Impersonal love is based on the virtue of the subject.
e. 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, guilt, and constantly running down anyone your date admires.
d. Remember that autonomy means the state of being independent or self-directing. This is not fully accomplished in the Christian life until the believer has the complete use of virtue love as a problem solving device.
e. Personal love for God must precede spiritual self-esteem, and impersonal love for all must precede spiritual autonomy. Gate #5 knocks out arrogance so that you can move to spiritual autonomy. Then in gate #6, impersonal love develops a tremendous toleration toward all. This toleration, combined with your ability to recognize and declare truth in any area and your ability to communicate, means that in spiritual autonomy you never feel threatened by false ideas, idiotic people, or insults.
f. Momentum in spiritual self-esteem continues when spiritual self-esteem combines with providential preventative suffering producing impersonal love for all as a stabilizing factor in your life. That impersonal love for all is used in at least three out of the four momentum tests.
g. So from spiritual autonomy comes the maximized and stabilized function of impersonal love for all mankind, the ultimate in problem solving devices in human relationships. Having impersonal love means you have great personal love relationships in friendship, romance, and marriage because you have the capacity for them.
h. While spiritual self-esteem does have impersonal love, it is not consolidated and not consistent until the believer reaches spiritual autonomy. Spiritual autonomy is the subject of impersonal love for all mankind.
i. With impersonal love as a problem solving device and a communication enabler, spiritual autonomy has the full utilization of virtue love in people, system, thought testing, and even in some disaster tests. Impersonal love is the key to solving people testing and the problems of interaction with people. Impersonal love solves system testing, which involves relationships with people in authority over you. Impersonal love solves thought testing, as when one reads false propaganda in the press. Disaster testing demands a maximum application and utilization of Bible doctrine. So impersonal love is the means of passing momentum testing.
j. Impersonal love means you have the ability to make application from doctrine for yourself regarding human relationships. From your personal love for God, you have strong motivation to learn God’s plan and doctrine, and to handle suffering for blessing with +H. To pass providential preventative suffering, you need happiness. To pass momentum testing, you need even greater happiness. To pass evidence testing, you need the greatest possible support which comes from your +H. Your personal love for God becomes the strongest motivation in your life and the means of developing +H in your soul. Your utilization of impersonal love and your tolerance adds to that +H, so that it becomes stronger and stronger.
k. Impersonal love at gate #6 then is a major characteristic of spiritual autonomy and the means of passing momentum testing.
4. Spiritual autonomy is cognitive self-confidence.
a. Cognitive self-confidence means the perception and metabolization of doctrine, so that you have a tremendous amount of divine viewpoint that can be used in pressure situations as well as normal situations.
b. Having cognitive self-confidence means that one’s hope or confidence must be based on the Word of God and not on human opinion. No one should have an opinion without the facts.
c. 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 through metabolized doctrine.
d. While spiritual self-esteem is the result of epistemological rehabilitation, the accumulation of all the doctrine we’ve learned from the moment of salvation until we reach gate #5, cognitive self-confidence is the characteristic of spiritual autonomy.
e. Cognitive self-confidence is an advance on epistemological rehabilitation in which you can start applying correct doctrine in all kinds of difficulties in life and come out a winner every time. In other words, cognitive self-confidence is the result of spiritual self-esteem passing the testing of providential preventative suffering producing spiritual autonomy.
f. Now you can begin to handle the Word accurately in its application, in your thought pattern, in the pattern of your life. Now you take all the Bible doctrine you’ve learned, metabolize and apply it to the Christian life, so that you know all you need to know for your life.
g. 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 in your spiritual life. This becomes one of the most refreshing areas in all the Christian way of life. And it’s the only way to be able to handle the four momentum testings. You have now moved to a higher plane of living. Whether you are living or dying, you have doctrine and +H, an absolutely fantastic thing. Cognitive self- confidence keeps your +H stabilized.
h. Cognitive self-confidence is the result of 2 Cor 12:7-10.
i. 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 foibles, the disappointments, the frustrations, and the disillusionments that come from association with people.
j. With all that doctrine in your soul, you never again feel threatened, and you never again slip into the human viewpoint of psychological living. You will rarely get into demon influence. Cognitive self-confidence protects your soul from being demonized, since it means maximum application of doctrine. This prepares you for momentum testing.
5. Spiritual autonomy is grace orientation to life.
a. 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 or behavior or talent.
b. There are many, many ways in which people use their own human abilities to solve problems. But grace-oriented problem solving in spiritual autonomy takes no cognizance whatever of any human abilities.
c. 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.
d. 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, Eph 2:8-9. We had no control over His saving work, over the time and manner of our death, or over the time and manner of receiving our resurrection bodies. Certain things are the monopoly of God and are always grace to believers.
e. Grace is the divine policy for the administration of the protocol plan of God for the Church Age.
f. Logistical grace is the function of the justice of God in providing winners and losers everything it takes to keep them alive and provide them enough time to fulfill their equal opportunity. Logistical grace is equal opportunity from election for every believer to fulfill the protocol plan of God.
g. 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. Until then, grace is on an obvious and superficial basis. In spiritual adulthood, the tremendous depth of grace becomes evident. With your knowledge of all the complex doctrines that advance 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 ever have. You will see God’s grace in its true perspective. There is a tendency in the beginning of the Christian life to identify God’s grace with getting away with something.
h. While grace orientation to life is a characteristic of spiritual self-esteem, it becomes a dynamic attribute in spiritual autonomy. It is now stronger in spiritual autonomy because you’ve now been insulated against arrogance. In spiritual self-esteem, about the time you think you understand grace, you get an attack of arrogance.
i. While spiritual self-esteem understands grace, spiritual autonomy practices grace!
j. In spiritual autonomy, grace orientation has the necessary spiritual muscle for correct and accurate application of grace principles for passing momentum testing. Furthermore, it does so without distortion of grace. Now grace orientation understands, for example, that God makes available to us all His infinite, eternal, divine power, just as He provided to the humanity of Christ.
k. For example in people testing, spiritual autonomy’s grace orientation is seen in the emergence of tolerance from impersonal love toward all. People can no longer get you down. In system testing, there is the maintenance of poise and professionalism under unjust treatment; the perpetuation of high standards of workmanship during unfair treatment. In thought testing, there is the ability of humility as a virtue to avoid self- effacement, self-pity, and self-abnegation. This too gives you the fantastic ability to never again feel threatened by any form of bullying or unjust, unfair treatment. To be treated obviously unfairly yet at the same time to be free from bitterness, implacability, hatred, or self-pity is a fantastic thing, and means your +H factor is going up. In disaster testing, you can fulfill such principles as Job uttered in Job 1:21: “The Lord gives, the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” Also see Job 2:9-10, and in Job 13:15 he said, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.” That’s grace orientation in spiritual autonomy becoming spiritual maturity in preparation for evidence testing.
6. Spiritual autonomy is doctrinal orientation to reality.
a. This is the correct and accurate application of metabolized doctrine to the four parts of momentum testing under suffering for blessing. You can understand reality, whether it is historical prosperity or adversity, from doctrinal orientation.
b. Doctrinal orientation to reality protects spiritual autonomy from becoming flaky, aesthetic, disoriented, emotionally zealous, psychotic, neurotic, and especially from becoming obnoxiously self-righteous. These pitfalls avoid the epitome of sanity and stability from metabolized doctrine.
c. The antithesis of insanity is spiritual self-esteem and spiritual autonomy. When you reach spiritual autonomy, you are the most “normal” person around. Spiritual autonomy has passed another milestone that excludes the abnormal, the neurotic, the psychotic, and the psychopathic, while advancing to spiritual maturity.
d. Although spiritual self-esteem has this characteristic, it is stronger in spiritual autonomy, having been insulated against arrogance. For spiritual autonomy is a complete break with the destructive gates of arrogance, e.g., moral degeneracy, crusader arrogance, nosy arrogance.
e. Doctrinal orientation to reality comes from an accumulation of metabolized doctrine and its application to your life and experience without distortion.
f. Doctrinal orientation to reality is mandatory for making the transition from suffering for blessing in momentum testing to prosperity or success testing as momentum testing.
g. Hence, 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 Phil 4:11-13.
7. Spiritual autonomy is greater decisions from a position of strength.
a. Right thinking results in right motivation. Right motivation results in right decisions. Right decisions result in right actions.
b. 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.
c. In each successive stage of spiritual adulthood, the number of good decisions is increased from that position of strength known as metabolized doctrine.
d. Although this characteristic exists in spiritual self-esteem, it is now greater in spiritual autonomy.
e. The position of strength is the adult believer living inside his own palace, the divine dynasphere under the enabling power of the Holy Spirit and momentum from metabolized doctrine.
f. Having correct thinking and correct motivation, the believer has correct application. Under spiritual autonomy, the believer not only has maximum metabolized doctrine in the right lobe, but at the same time he makes consistent right applications of that doctrine to his circumstances.
h. All the thousands of decisions that advance the believer to the various stages of spiritual adulthood are good decisions from a position of strength, having the right priorities in life, and therefore decisions made in the pertinent category of suffering for blessing. For each category of suffering for blessing requires a lot of good decisions!
i. Each stage of spiritual adulthood gives a power for more and greater decisions from the testing of suffering for blessing.
8. Spiritual autonomy is personal control of your life.
a. 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 you 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. You recognize that there are no limitations in your advance to spiritual maturity except your own negative volition.
b. 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.
(1) 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 only have personal control over one life: your own.
(2) People will always do things of which you disapprove. Only when you get to spiritual autonomy do you have the restraint to stop interfering in the lives of other people. So spiritual autonomy is the principle of concentration. When you interfere in the lives of others, you give of yourself so that you lose control of your own life. If you succeed in changing those in your periphery to become exactly like you, you no longer control your life. Lack of control of your own life produces your mania to control others.
(3) Under spiritual autonomy the believer has learned to stop interfering in the lives of others. He has restrained his tendencies toward possessiveness. He has been freed from the arrogant functions of life, and recognizes the rights of others in self-determination. The more you stop interfering in the lives of others, the sooner you have personal control of your own life.
(4) The only legitimate control of others is when your authority calls for it. Yet such authority demands so much of your time that you still lose control of your own life. One of the greatest sacrifices of high leadership is to lose control of your own life because of the energy involved in controlling others.
(5) 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. It’s ironic, but as soon as you get to the point where you don’t give a damn, suddenly you have influence. People want to know how you are so relaxed.
(6) 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.
c. Spiritual autonomy insulates against both inordinate ambition and inordinate competition. For you cannot enter into either of these and have control over your own life. Inordinate competition makes you a slave to irrationality. Inordinate ambition makes you a slave to others and to circumstances; therefore you have no control.
d. Therefore, 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 involved in moralistic orgies of crusader arrogance.
e. With spiritual autonomy, you can fall in love and still maintain control of your life and be a great lover. Someone can do something bad to you and you don’t lose your temper.
9. Spiritual autonomy is a personal sense of destiny.
a. Once the believer has attained spiritual autonomy, he is free from arrogance, manifest in being possessive of others and seeking to monopolize or control their lives. He is then free to concentrate on the function of his own royal priesthood.
b. He has learned to respect the privacy and freedom of others. He has made the correct application of the principle: “Live and let live” in the protocol plan of God. This is often very difficult when you see others making mistakes. But you must restrain yourself from intruding upon the privacy and freedom of someone else (this is a part of impersonal love).
c. Possessive people always relate their destiny to those whom they love or to those whom they hate. As a result, they’re so tied up with these other people that they have no control over their own lives, and so have no personal sense of destiny.
d. 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.
e. Having resolved the problems of relationships to God, to self, and to others in parlaying spiritual self-esteem into spiritual autonomy, the believer in spiritual autonomy concentrates on the protocol plan of God in the area of spiritual adulthood which develops an increasing awareness of one’s own destiny.
f. Every advance in spiritual adulthood means becoming more and more aware of your own destiny only as it is related and tied into the protocol plan of God.
g. 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 for your survival in the devil’s world. Yet when losers misconstrue this logistical grace prosperity, it always becomes destructive. Actually, this is their punitive prosperity, for they cannot handle it, it goes to their head, they think they’re great; yet it makes them miserable!
h. But the spiritually autonomous believer’s personal sense of destiny is not related to his success, promotion, prosperity, relationships, or pleasurable times. We must distinguish between what entertains us and what is our destiny.
i. The closer you move toward the target of spiritual maturity, the more you have a greater capacity for entertainment and the more you enjoy entertainment and things in life. For when you reach spiritual autonomy, your ability to be entertained and enjoy many things in life encompasses a wide horizon.
j. But you never equate your happiness with your entertainment, with your stimulation, or with your enjoyable relationships; you always relate your life to destiny. And your destiny is God! God has given us a game plan, and our destiny is solely in His game plan. k. The reason you can expand your horizons in entertainment and enjoyment of life, and the reason you are more discerning in life is because in spiritual autonomy you have tied your destiny into God’s plan. In everything in your life, God comes first which means doctrine comes first. You never lose out by putting God first. If you put these other things first, you do lose out as a loser.
l. Having successfully passed the providential preventative suffering test, spiritual autonomy eliminates the influence of the arrogance complex. This is the point when jealousy, bitterness, vindictiveness, hatred, self-pity, pettiness, possessiveness, sulking, pouting, self- righteousness and resultant legalism, inordinate competition, and inordinate ambition are all eliminated from your life. These all keep you from having control of your life and from having a personal sense of destiny.
m. This makes it possible for spiritual autonomy to have a sense of destiny, flexibility, a sense of humor, concentration, and self- consciousness of the soul related to God and God’s protocol plan.
n. Awareness of others no longer blocks the spiritually autonomous believer. He now has a clear shot at momentum testing at gate #7, and is ready to advance to spiritual maturity. 10. Spiritual autonomy is the believer is in command of self.
a. The attic greek verb AUTONOMEOMAI means to live under one’s own laws; to live in a state of independence. The noun AUTONOMIA means independence. So autonomy comes to mean the status of being independent, of being free. Autonomy refers to the sovereignty of reason in morals and self-determination.
b. In application to the spiritual life, this means the spiritual freedom in your palace, the operational divine dynasphere. It means self- concentration leading to self-direction. This is the logical characteristic or attribute to follow a personal sense of destiny.
c. Spiritual autonomy means to be spiritually independent, spiritually free, and spiritually self-directing. Autonomy refers to the sovereignty of reason and doctrine in self-determination, morality and virtue.
d. Therefore, spiritual autonomy is characterized by virtuous poise, self-regulation, self-control, and self-restraint. It takes a lot of self-restraint and self-regulation to get the maximum enjoyment out of life. These virtues are not carried out in a tense, forced way, but in a good way.
e. The believer in command of himself from metabolized doctrine fulfills the principle of the sovereignty of reason from Bible doctrine (doctrinal application) over his life.
f. In command of himself, the believer has better communication with others resulting in better relationships with others. The secret to human relationships is communication, not stimulation or entertainment.
g. The combined restraints of humility and impersonal love toward all remove possessiveness and abnormal competitiveness with others mentally, socially, and spiritually.
h. When you stop trying to regulate others, you increase your own self-regulation and self-restraint. You can’t change others!
i. Being in command of yourself and having stopped meddling in other’s business improves your own poise.
j. With toleration you have a tremendous poise while others are failing. Therefore, you also develop a tremendous self-control.
k. When you have self-control in the face of all the problems of life around you and you resist crusader arrogance, you now have the spiritual power to regulate yourself and restrain yourself.
11. Spiritual autonomy is qualification for momentum testing.
a. Momentum testing is the second category of suffering for blessing with four parts: people, system, thought, and disaster testing.
b. Impersonal love is a major factor in passing the several parts of momentum testing. Therefore, it is necessary to understand momentum testing in the light of impersonal love.
c. Spiritual autonomy has been trained and prepared to pass momentum testing by passing providential preventative suffering, 2 Cor 12:10. Spiritual autonomy is the prerequisite for passing momentum testing in two categories: suffering for blessing in the form of thought, people, system, and disaster testing; and prosperity or success testing.
d. The advance from spiritual autonomy to spiritual maturity is the subject of Phil 3, especially verses 12-16.
e. The believer is qualified to advance to spiritual maturity and receive his escrow blessings for time.
12. Spiritual autonomy is characterized by the unique life status of “Christ being at home in your right lobes,” Eph 3:16-17. “I pray that He might give you, on the basis of the riches of His glory, that you might become strong by means of power [omnipotence of God the Father in the portfolio of invisible assets and the omnipotence of the Holy Spirit in the divine dynasphere] through His Spirit in your inner being [indwelling of the Holy Spirit as the base of operations resulting in filling of the Holy Spirit as the means of controlling your life]; so that Christ may be at home in your hearts [status of spiritual autonomy] through doctrine, when you have been rooted and grounded in virtue-love [gates #5 and #6 of the divine dynasphere].” Spiritual autonomy has maximum problem solving ability. B. Passages about Spiritual Autonomy.
1. Prov 9:7, “Whoever corrects a mocker brings insult on himself. Whoever rebukes an evil man brings abuse on himself.”
a. People who mock are arrogant, motivated by inordinate competition, which is usually from feelings of inferiority compensated by demonstrating a false superiority. b. A mocker tries to prove he’s better than anyone else. A mocker or evil man is never straightened out by anyone. His only chance is for you to stay out of it and let God deal with him. But people just have to step in, and for their trouble they get insults and abuse.
2. Prov 9:8-12, “Do not rebuke a mocker, or he will hate you. Rebuke a wise man, and he will love you. Teach a wise man, and he will be wiser still. Teach a righteous person and he will add to his learning. Respect of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom [spiritual adulthood], and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding. For through Me [doctrine], your days will be many and years will be added to your life. If you are wise, your wisdom will reward you [spiritual self-esteem and spiritual autonomy]. If you are a mocker [scornful], you alone will suffer.”
3. Prov 10:8, “The wise man in his right lobe accepts commands, but a chattering fool comes to ruin.” A wise man is the believer who, having reached spiritual self-esteem and spiritual autonomy, has perfect authority orientation due to his impersonal love. A chattering fool is not someone who talks too much, but a person whose speech is arrogant.
4. Prov 10:12, “Hatred stirs up dissension, but virtue-love covers all wrongs.” In other words, someone may hate you, but if you respond in impersonal love from spiritual autonomy, that will control the situation.
5. Prov 10:22, “The blessing of the Lord brings wealth, and He adds no trouble to it.” 6. Prov 11:13, “A gossip betrays a confidence, but a virtuous man keeps a secret.” 7. Prov 11:17, “A kind man benefits himself, but a cruel man brings misery, unhappiness to himself.”
8. Prov 11:22, “Like a gold ring in a pig’s snout is a beautiful woman who lacks taste.” 9. Prov 12:1, “Whoever loves discipline [believer with impersonal love] loves knowledge.” You cannot learn doctrine unless you accept your pastor’s authority. “But he who hates correction is stupid.”
10. Prov 12:15, “The way of a fool seems right to him [because he’s arrogant], but a wise man listens to good advice.”
11. Prov 13:10, “Arrogance only breeds quarrels, but wisdom is found in those who take advice.” This is taking advice by learning and applying doctrine to your own experience.
12. Prov 13:11, “Dishonest money dwindles away, but he who gathers money little by little makes it grow.” This means when God prospers you, you’re prospered. But when God doesn’t prosper you and you try to take shortcuts to make money by neglecting and rejecting doctrine, it will dwindle away.
13. Prov 15:17, “Better a meal of vegetables where virtue-love is than chateau briand with hatred.”
14. Prov 15:32, “He who ignores discipline has no spiritual self- esteem [despises himself], but he who listens to reproof acquires understanding.”
15. Prov 16:32, “Better a patient man than a warrior. A man who controls his temper is the one who captures the city.”
16. Prov 19:3, “A man’s own folly ruins his life, yet his right lobe rages against the Lord.” He blames his bad decisions on the Lord.
17. Prov 21:19, “Better to live in the desert than with a quarrelsome and ill-tempered wife.” _____________________________________________________________________________
© 1989, by R. B. Thieme, Jr. All rights reserved.
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