Lesson for June 14, 2020
Suffering and Testing in the Christian Life
Lesson 4
Suffering and Testing
Spiritual Autonomy
Spiritual autonomy is spiritual independence and the continuation of the effective function of the Ten Problem-Solving Devices of the Protocol Plan of God and momentum testing.
Spiritual autonomy is using the problem-solving device of sharing the happiness of God. Sharing God’s happiness begins in spiritual self-esteem and gains momentum in spiritual autonomy. Sharing God’s happiness gives us the ability to be content in prosperity or in adversity, and it gives us the solution to the problem believers have in constantly becoming slaves to their circumstances. Sharing God’s happiness is victory over your circumstances.
Spiritual autonomy is advanced orientation to God and His Word and rejecting anything that destroys your spiritual life such as fear, worry, and anxiety. Mental stability from spiritual self-esteem and spiritual autonomy in the spiritual life is produced by the filling of the Holy Spirit inside God’s power system, the Divine Dynasphere.
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 Bible doctrine in the midst of testing. Mental stability is the God-given ability to make accurate application of Bible doctrine. In spiritual autonomy, when you hear truth, you identify it as truth because you have learned enough Bible doctrine that you can identify truth in any area, wherever it is stated and by whomever it is stated.
Others’ imperfections and mistakes will not be a source of unhappiness to you in spiritual autonomy because your happiness depends on God and His Word. With impersonal love, unconditional love is directed toward everyone and you have developed the most fantastic capacity for personal love toward those in your life. Personal love in the human race is based on the inward and outward attractiveness of the object. Impersonal love is based on the virtue of the subject (the one doing the loving), regardless of a person’s attractiveness. Impersonal love is a relaxed, objective mental attitude toward the entire human race. Impersonal love is free from arrogance, jealousy, bitterness, revenge, self-pity, hatred and guilt.
Spiritual autonomy means a believer has reached the place of being spiritually independent. Spiritual autonomy is spiritual self-confidence. Spiritual self-confidence means you have learned accurate Bible doctrine, so that you have developed a tremendous amount of divine viewpoint that can be used in either pressure situations or non-pressure situations. Having spiritual self-confidence means your confidence is based on the Word of God and not on human viewpoint or human opinion.
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. You can take all the Bible doctrine you’ve learned and apply it properly to the Christian life. With spiritual self-confidence, a believer has a greater ability because of spiritual growth to recall doctrine which they have learned and to apply it accurately. This is the only way a believer will be able to handle the various areas of testing in life. Spiritual self-confidence means you are now insulated against the failure, the disappointments, the frustrations, and the disillusionments that come from association with people. With Bible doctrine in your soul and consistently being applied, you should never feel threatened, and you should never slip into human viewpoint thinking or living.
Spiritual autonomy is grace orientation to life. 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 and power of the Holy Spirit as our 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. Grace is God’s policy for the Church Age.
Logistical grace (providing the necessities of life) is the function of the justice of God in providing believers everything it takes to keep them alive and provide them enough time to fulfill God’s plan. Logistical grace means equal opportunity for every believer to fulfill the Protocol Plan of God. Many believers think they know about the grace of God’s because of salvation or His logistical support for them. But what they know 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 will advance you to spiritual self-esteem and then to spiritual autonomy, for the first time in your life you will have an understanding of God’s grace as few ever will. You will begin to see God’s grace in its true perspective manifested in your personal life.
While grace orientation to life begins in spiritual self-esteem, it becomes dynamic in spiritual autonomy. While believers in spiritual self-esteem understand grace and begin to practice it consistently, in spiritual autonomy they more fully understand God’s grace and practice grace constantly. In spiritual autonomy, grace orientation has the necessary spiritual power for correct and accurate application of grace principles for passing testing. Furthermore, it does so without distortion of grace into a system of legalism by adding human viewpoint or human works to 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. Doctrinal orientation comes from the understanding of Bible doctrine and the proper application of it to your life and experience. Doctrinal orientation is the spiritual ability to have the same capacity for happiness whether you’re in a period of suffering and a period of disaster or in a period of prosperity and success, as Paul emphasized in Philippians 4:11-13.
Spiritual autonomy is making good 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 the right thinking and the right motivation necessary to make a maximum for May 4, 2020 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 a position of strength. Although this characteristic exists in spiritual self-esteem, it is now greater in spiritual autonomy.
The position of strength is in a spiritually adult believer living inside God’s power system under the enabling power of the Holy Spirit and momentum from Bible doctrine. In 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 taking 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 who you, even in comparison with others who have perhaps succeeded more than you from a human viewpoint. You are no longer threatened by such superficial nonsense. In spiritual autonomy, the one thing in your life that is of utmost importance and the goal you have set for yourself, is advancing to spiritual maturity and glorifying Jesus Christ.
Spiritual autonomy includes personal control of our own life while refraining and restraining ourselves from controlling and interfering in the lives of others. We cannot control others and at the same time have control over our own life. Every time we interfere and try to control someone else’s life, we lose control of our own life. The privacy of our priesthood was designed for us to live our own life as unto the Lord, not to be an expert in telling everyone else how to live theirs! Our royal priesthood means we can have personal control over only one life: our own.
Spiritual autonomy restrains any excessive ambition to control those with whom we have contact. We cannot be possessive of others or enter into inappropriate competition or inappropriate ambition and have control of our own life. To influence is one thing, but our greatest influence comes once we no longer feel threatened in life. It takes a tremendous amount of energy to interfere in the lives of others, so that we don’t have enough energy to live our own spiritual lives. Spiritual autonomy is practical righteousness, not self-righteousness.
Spiritual autonomy has a personal sense of destiny. A believer in spiritual autonomy is 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. He understands God’s plan, will, and purpose regarding the invisible impact of the Church Age where spiritually mature believers have personal, national, international, and angelic impact. He has learned how to resolve the problems of his relationship to God, to self, and to others by advancing from spiritual self-esteem into spiritual autonomy.
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 your human relationships, your personal human success or because of any form of prosperity you have accumulated. It is an awareness that God in His grace has provided for you an eternal destiny that far exceeds any destiny a believer may have in this life based on their own human ability or success. Success for advancing believers means moving through the various stages of spiritual adulthood to the final destination of spiritual maturity. Spiritual autonomy is characterized by the status of “Christ being at home in your heart.” (Ephesians 3:16-17)
Momentum Testing
Having reached spiritual self-esteem and passing the test of providential preventative suffering, a believer enters into the status of spiritual autonomy and is prepared for momentum testing. It is always a matter of the sovereignty of God if and when a test is administered and to whom that test is given. The ultimate purpose of momentum testing is to accelerate the spiritual growth of a believer so they can reach spiritual maturity. In the advance from spiritual autonomy to spiritual maturity, momentum testing may come in one or more of the following categories: 1) people testing 2) thought testing 3) system testing 4) disaster testing.
People Testing
The key to passing people testing is to always place your emphasis on your relationship and faithfulness to God and not on people. People testing can come from those whom you love and those who love you or it can come from those who dislike you. In either case, keeping your eyes on Jesus, as it tells us to do in Hebrews 12:1-2, is the highest priority in the Christian life. Spiritual autonomy means that a believer has taken total control of his life and refuses to be influenced by any source other than the Bible doctrine in his soul. Friends and loved ones may mean well when they attempt to involve you in their activities, but in spiritual autonomous believers must always prioritize their time and their emphasis so that the study of God’s Word takes priority over any activity in life.
When a believer succumbs to the antagonism, bitterness, vindictiveness, or maligning of others by getting angry and seeking revenge, that believer has failed the people test. How you handle those who dislike you or are jealous of you and your accomplishments in life determines whether you pass of fail the test. In fact, when a believer reacts to the antagonism of others, he has in effect given control of his life over to that person or persons. Mental attitude sins such as revenge motivation, anger, vindictiveness and hatred take a believer out of fellowship with God and they lose the control of the Holy Spirit. Using the Rebound Technique restores the believer’s fellowship with God and the control of the Holy Spirit. However, the solution to the people test is impersonal love, one of the ten Problem-Solving Devices.