God made man for fellowship. He made us with an eternal positional order that will ultimately, for His people, result in intimate oneness of fellowship with Him.  Mankind will play a uniquely special role in God’s order of the universe higher than any other created being. Our uniquely human gift is the ability to conduct relational fellowship primarily through dialogue. It is through our minds and our dialogue that we are able to express our “shared individuality.”

It was the pagan philosopher Aristotle who articulated the tools humans use to foist their beliefs in an attempt to influence others. As is often the case in non-regenerate man, God’s image produces useful insights even if they are deployed for antichrist purposes. Through dialogue we are able to move to a more meaningful level of fellowship. As believers, the Holy Spirit mentors us into a closer relationship with our Creator through the stories, illustrations and facts found in the Bible. It is the primary method through which we humans have the capacity to lead our relational based existence.

According to Aristotle’s template, we communicate using three devices of discourse; ethos, pathos, and logos. We practice ethos when we express a thought deploying an authoritative concept to achieve influence. We engage pathos when we attempt to connect with the emotional or passionate part of one’s character. We rely on logos when we appeal to the logical or reasoning part of our makeup. All three of these styles of expression envelop the verbal communicative tools of our “fellowship nature.”


In Isaiah God says “Come now, let us reason together…” This is the pathos in which I find my soul as I follow my Lord’s call to engage in this undertaking.
 

The Sixty Second Gospel

Some time ago, I concluded that the gospel presentations which I had been privileged to learn in the past left me unsatisfied. My understanding of and belief in the message of the Bible is that God is sovereign in all things. Even those who are serious students of scripture would not challenge that dogma.

The problem is that often many who would affirm the “God is sovereign” statement, at the same time, would elevate man’s ability to determine his destiny to the same level as God’s sovereignty. While one might say of course I don’t ascribe to that, on the other hand would proclaim that man’s “free will” is the determining factor to his salvation or, at least, works together in a synergistic fashion with God’s will.

This mental calisthenics.... Read on here!

 

 

 

 
 

 

 

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