Lesson for August 28, 2019

Spiritual Dynamics

Three Spiritual Skills

The Protocol Plan of God

Protocol is strict adherence to precisely correct procedure.  In the case of believers, protocol is strict adherence to the instructions from God and using the correct procedure for carrying out those instructions.  These instructions and the precisely correct procedures are found in only one place, the Word of God.  By learning and applying the truth found in the Bible, believers can fulfill God’s purpose, plan and will.  When this truth is presented from the Word of God in a systematic manner it allows any believer to grow spiritually, regardless of I.Q., by following God’s plan.

God, in His grace, has set up certain protocols that must be strictly adhered to if a believer is to advance in his spiritual life.  Random intake of Bible doctrine will not accomplish the goal. If a believer is to properly execute God’s protocol plan, he must be consistent with his intake and application of Bible doctrine.  There is no other plan for believers in this Age.

During the Church Age, believers receive all the necessary tools for the fulfillment of the Protocol Plan of God.  The objective for a believer should be to reach the status of spiritual maturity which results in a tactical victory over Satan in the Angelic Conflict. Only by residing in God’s power system under the guidance and power of the Holy Spirit can a believer reach this status.

God’s policy for dealing with mankind is always His grace.  This grace begins with providing salvation through Jesus Christ.  Since Christ paid the penalty for the sin of the entire human race, anyone can have eternal life and be saved from eternal separation from God.  All that God requires is a simple act of faith in Jesus Christ (apart from any human merit).  This simply means that a person is relying (trusting) upon Jesus Christ for eternal life and not their good works or anything else. (Ephesians 2:8-9)

After salvation, God’s policy continues to be grace.  Only by orienting to His grace can a believer execute the Protocol Plan of God.  The Christian Way of Life was not designed to be a life of human good works performed as a means of gaining the approval of God.  The Christian Way of Life is a life of thinking divine viewpoint, which results in divine production.  Divine production can be visible or invisible. (Titus 2:12)

God’s power system is based on virtue (strength of character) and integrity (a strict adherence to divine truth).  You cannot adhere to something that you know absolutely nothing about. For a believer with positive volition, virtue is motivational when directed toward God and functional when directed toward mankind or circumstances.  In other words, when you begin to learn about God, His character and His attributes, you become motivated to love Him and depend on Him in every circumstance of life.  The natural result of your love for God will be impersonal love for all mankind, based on the virtue and integrity that you develop as a result of knowing God.

The love of God toward believers in the Protocol Plan of God helps us understand how God deals with us as His children.  God’s love is not emotional feelings often called love, but the virtue-love of God based on integrity (perfect righteousness, perfect justice and perfect love). Virtue-love is God’s unconditional love for all mankind that caused Him to send His Son, Jesus Christ, to pay the penalty for sin.  When Christian integrity is developed in the believer, he is able to exhibit love for God and love for his fellow man based on the integrity of God resident in his own soul.

Our authority for the Protocol Plan is the Word of God.  It is the Word of God that establishes the standard by which all teachings, experiences and actions are judged.  Any teaching, experience or action that does not fully agree with Scripture is wrong.  Those who distort, change or misuse God’s Word are “false apostles” and “ministers of Satan” (even if they are well-meaning).  The Bible tells believers to note them and avoid them.  The result of following the Protocol Plan is the ability of an advancing believer to make good decisions from a position of strength, to take control of his spiritual life and to develop a personal sense of destiny.

However, the Protocol Plan of God has an enemy – the cosmic (world) system of Satan.  As the great counterfeiter, Satan’s cosmic system seeks to mimic God’s power system.  The power of the Holy Spirit is counterfeited by emotional ecstatic behavior as a substitute for the work of the Holy Spirit and Human Viewpoint Thinking as a substitute for Divine Viewpoint Thinking. Satan’s cosmic system replaces God’s grace policies with a system of salvation and spirituality by human merit.  Virtue and integrity are replaced by personality and charm.  The instructions and authority of God’s Word are replaced by political correctness. 

God has a purpose for His Protocol Plan, which is to glorify His Son, Jesus Christ. Glorification of Christ is accomplished through the life of an advancing believer as he exhibits the character of Christ.  The character of Christ can be produced only by God the Holy Spirit as He is allowed to fully influence the thinking of a believer.  Bible doctrine resident in the soul of a believer is the “raw material” that the Holy Spirit uses to teach and guide through life’s journey.

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Eleven Principles of the Protocol Plan of God

1. The Protocol Plan of God has a system of authority.  God has delegated that authority in two areas: 1) the Laws of Divine Establishment which includes governments 2) Bible doctrine, communicated by the spiritual gift of pastor-teacher. (Psalms 33:12; Ephesians 4:11)
2. The Protocol Plan of God has a spiritual life for each believer based on the filling and power of the Holy Spirit.  Therefore, you and you alone are the only one who can live your spiritual life – no one else can live it for you. (I John 1:5-10)
3. The Protocol Plan of God recognizes the volition of a believer. Each believer is a production of his own decisions, whether they are positive or negative.  You develop a spiritual life as you establish a divine scale of values, divine priorities, divine norms and standards based on Divine Viewpoint Thinking. (Philippians 2:1-16)
4. The Protocol Plan of God has a system for spiritual growth which is metabolized Bible doctrine circulating in the stream of consciousness. Only through the consistent intake and application of Bible doctrine is a believer able to grow and produce the character of Jesus Christ. (Galatians 4:19; II Peter 3:18)
5. The Protocol Plan of God has a system of Problem-Solving Devices that are related to metabolized Bible doctrine in your soul.  The Christian Way of Life was designed for you to personally handle and resolve your own problems using the Bible doctrine stored in your soul without assistance from unbelievers or believers with little or no Bible doctrine in their souls. (Ephesians 4:11-16; Hebrews 5:11-14)
6. The Protocol Plan of God has a dispensational time reference called the Church Age.  The dispensational time reference is personal beginning with the moment you believe in Christ until the moment of your death or Rapture of the Church,whichever occurs first. (Colossians 1:25-29; I Corinthians 15:51-53; I Thessalonians 4:16-18)
7. The Protocol Plan of God has a Portfolio of Invisible Assets provided for each believer in eternity past. Portfolio is defined as the assets or investments that a person or company owns. Your personal portfolio may consist of houses, land, stocks, gold, money, etc. The believer’s Portfolio of Invisible Assets is the grace work of God the Father placing certain assets in a “portfolio” for every believer. In your Portfolio of Invisible Assets, God provided everything necessary for living the Christian life, growing in grace, and the execution of the Protocol Plan of God. The Portfolio of Invisible Assets provides everything necessary for you to have a fantastic life through receiving your “escrow blessings.” Escrow is defined as an IOU kept in the custody of a third party, taking effect only when specified conditions have been fulfilled.  God has deposited in an escrow account in Heaven an “IOU,” as it were, which are your invisible assets.  (Ephesians 1:3)
8. The Protocol Plan of God has a system of invisible impact on history, which comes in 5 categories:  1] personal impact – blessing by association with a spiritually mature believer 2] historical impact – blessing by association to the client nation through the Pivot (remnant according to grace) 3] international impact – blessing by association to a non-client nation through spiritually mature missionary function  4] angelic impact – invisible heroes become a witness for the prosecution in Satan’s appeal trial, which extends from prehistoric times into the Church Age   5] heritage impact – blessing by association with the invisible hero after his death.  (Romans 11:1-12)
9. The Protocol Plan of God has precisely correct procedure, based on the principle that God has only one way of doing a thing – a right thing, done in a right way. God is not the Author of confusion and everything that He does is rational and makes perfect sense based on His sovereignty and character. Where confusion and disorganization exist, the Protocol Plan of God is not being followed. (I Corinthians 14:33-40)
10. The Protocol Plan of God has a system of eternal rewards for each believer who executes the Protocol Plan of God. There is also failure to execute the Protocol Plan of God by believers because of negative volition based on arrogance. This becomes the basis for whether a believer will succeed or fail, will be rewarded or not because arrogance means a believer thinks his way is superior to God’s way. (I Corinthians 3:12-15; James 4:6; I Peter 5:5-6)

The Unique Lifestyle of the Protocol Plan of God

Divine power related to all the unique factors of the Church Age are:

1. The baptism of the Holy Spirit creating a new spiritual species – the Royal Family of God.
2. A unique Protocol Plan of God
3. The unique factor of equal privilege and equal opportunity within the Royal Family of God
4. Our Portfolio of Invisible Assets
5. The Royal Priesthood of the Believer, representing himself before God, and the Royal Ambassadorship of the Believer, representing God to others.
6. The unique mystery doctrine of the Church Age as revealed in the epistles of the New Testament.
7. The unique indwelling of all three Persons of the Trinity.
8. The unique availability of the filling of the Holy Spirit, divine power available to every believer.
9. The only dispensation of no prophecy, only historical trends
10. The unique dispensation of invisible heroes.

The unique factor of every member of the Godhead indwelling your body demands God-emphasis over people-emphasis.  As long as you emphasize your experience with people over your experience with God, your experience in life will be characterized by self-induced misery, plus suffering from the three categories of divine discipline (warning, intensive, and dying).

There is a problem in the body of Christ of perpetual living in spiritual childhood because of wrong priorities.  None of us can escape the consequences of putting people or “things” before our relationship with God.  The Protocol Plan of God emphasizes right experience with God before you can ever have right experiences with people.  But God is invisible, so our relationship with the invisible God can come only one way:  our daily positive attitude toward Bible doctrine.  Right relationship with God can come only from the understanding of and consistent residence inside the Divine Dynasphere (God’spower system) under the enabling power of God the Holy Spirit and spiritual advance from applied Bible doctrine.  God becomes real to us only through the knowledge of His Word, which is the “mind of Christ.” (I Corinthians 2:16).  Right relationship with God is the basis for right relationship with self and others.  Never exposing yourself to Bible doctrine after salvation ultimately results in negative experience with people.  Positive experience with God results in positive experience with people.

The indwelling of Jesus Christ demands that every believer give #1 priority to their relationship with God, #2 priority to their relationship with themselves and #3 priority to their relationship with people.  If you “straighten out” your relationship with God, you will end up having a good relationship with self (which most believers do not have) resulting in good relationships with others. (Matthew 22:37-40)

The night before the Cross, Jesus Christ anticipated paying the penalty for all sins in the human race, knowing full well their eternal impact.  Yet at that very moment of realization Jesus Christ prayed, “Father, if it be Your will, let this cup pass from Me.  Nevertheless, not My will but Your will be done.”  The humanity of Christ had His priority straight!  He put God before man.  (Luke 22:41-42)

If you put people before God, you will be weary, bored, discouraged, and bitter.  Weariness, disillusion, and discouragement are exactly what happens when a believer gives #1 priority to people (including self) and attempts to execute their own plan instead of the Protocol Plan of God.  Only through the consistent study and application of accurate Bible doctrine can a believer execute the Protocol Plan of God.