Reading for Soul's Hearing

       Chapter 11: Reading for Soul’s Hearing: Faith and Hope.

Not as much is known about the soul, since it is invisible in life and death; but we naturally
suspect that the soul consists of the same heart and mind as the physical body, and that
even as the heart and mind of this physical body have the physical senses of sound,
hearing, smell, taste, and touch, so the senses of the soul are comparable in that they can
both be touched with the eternal, and that like the 5 physical senses, they can often
experience “times of refreshing from the presence of the LORD”. (Acts 3:19). From the
recent excitement about doomsday in 2012 from the Mayan calender, we know that the
human heart and mind, with the soul, is extremely curious about the “time of restoration of all
things” that is the ultimate and END refreshing from the presence of the Lord as He from
heaven sends the Lord Jesus Christ back to earth to wrap it all up with ultimate, eternal
justice.
Like a cool shower on a hot and sandy beach, like a refreshing rain in a Texas drought, like
a cup of water after hours in the desert, so is the kinds of “times of refreshing” that can
come from the Great Eternal LORD God. {Often the Bible uses LORD for God the Father
and Lord for the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God to distinguish from Who is really at the
top in control, and Who has also determined that Jesus would be the only name and means
for salvation.} At this start of the new year of 2013, perhaps you would like a few reminders
from the Bible of possible ways for these times of refreshing, might even desire to include
them among your new years resolutions.

11-1. Greater than the big bang theory, there is a big blotting out of spiritual reality,
the primary time of refreshing from the LORD God through the Lord Jesus Christ.
That big blotting out is God’s guarantee in His Word for the forgiveness of sins, the promise
after confession of sins to Him through Christ, that He will remove your sins as far as the
east is from the west. You can not get any better guarantee or promise than this, one from
the Great Lord God, Creator of the Universe and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is right
there in His Word and backed up by the Apostle Peter, or we should really say that Peter’s
testimony is backed up in many places by the rest of the Bible. And the really good and
refreshing news for anybody at anytime is that it applies to both sides of salvation, the
BEFORE and the AFTER. {See a summary of the book of Ephesians, Paul’s Statement of
Faith and Practice on www.biblecombibleman.com/Ephesians.html or download the free
PDF at www.biblecombibleman.com/Ephesians.pdf .}
Did you forget the scripture from Acts 3:19-21 of this series and Appendix on REFRESHING
EVANGELISM?
11-2. Revel in the Word of God, the Bible, in 2013, that will bring you many times of
refreshing from God through Christ and with the help of the Holy Spirit. This reveling in the
Word is a refreshing to the soul’s senses in that it brings to the human heart, mind, and soul
HOPE and Faith. Just to think of the Bible connection between HOPE and FAITH is
refreshing.
1. FAITH.
(1). Faith comes first, faith in the Bible and faith in God the Father, faith in the Lord Jesus
Christ, and faith in the Holy Spirit as your Comforter going right through life with you. {Even
this much faith alone will prevent the wallowing in MISERY that we hear from the largest
pulpits as the misery problem gains more attention than the faith and hope solution.
Goodness, some Christian evidences and apologetics has it place, and I grew up on it--see
the web page at www.biblecombibleman.com/ChristianEvidencesApologetics.html ; but to
attempt to apologize for our God the Father because of pain, sin, suffering, and calamities in
the world is taking it far beyond the extent that is recommend in good homiletics, “to start
where people are, and take them where they should be.”} LET US PRIMARILY HOLD UP
THE STANDARD OF FAITH AND HOPE, THAT “AGAINST HOPE, IT IS POSSIBLE TO
BELIEVE IN HOPE”.
NOTE: This quote from the Bible bespeaks of 2 kinds of hope: (a) in the “against hope” it
is the ordinary ways and thoughts of the world, where our logic, experience, and life’s
philosophy, and even church understanding and culture, tell us that it just can not and will
not be; and (b) the second half of the quote from the Bible tells of hope beyond the ordinary,
against the ordinary hope, for example Abraham and Sarah believed God when He told
them that at 100 years of age they would have a son, that son was Isaac.
Like Paul said, you should be “put in remembrance” as much as taught from the Bible that
“faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.” (Romans 10:17)
2. HOPE.
(1). Hope is also for blessings in this life; for example Abraham, “who against hope,
believed in hope” (Romans 4:18) as God told him that there would be many descendants to
come out of his lineage.
(2). Take some scriptures on “hope” from a concordance; then look them up in your Bible,
read them and dwell on them including the context. Think of the meaning and the
implications for you. For example “hope” in Psalm 39:7--it is thoughts about God and hope,
“My hope is in You, deliver me from my transgressions...”; or “hope” in I John 3:3 where the
implications for you are great as either you already have that hope inside you, or you can--”
And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure”; or read the
famous hope and faith chapter of Hebrews 11, especially if you desire a good report card
from God at the end--”Now faith is the substance of things hoped for {you see some of the
great relationship between Christian faith and Christian hope}, the evidence of things not
seen.” As an exercise in Bible study you might satisfy your curiosity of how many hopes in
the roll call of faith were fulfilled as the heroes of faith were still here on earth, and how
many had to exercise enough faith and hope to wait for an eternal fulfillment.
3. Come to the river of living waters for times of refreshing from the presence of the LORD,
through prayer, prayer meditation, and real meat filled Bible study. {Don’t cheat yourself of
what surely must be one of the prime occupations of our time in eternity, reveling in the
Word!}
Learn to enjoy your Bibles, like prophesy (I Corinthians 14), it has “edification, comfort, and
exhortation”. Use your concordance to look up some word like “hope” in the Bible, that is
certainly an encouraging word. Do helpful and refreshing things with the Word like taking
the faith chapter of Hebrews 11, then with 2 separate columns list which hope of these
heroes of faith was hope in this world, and which was hope for the better things to come in
the AFTER END life.

NOTE: The helpful table below on faith and hope, from the famous Hebrews
chapter 11 of faith and hope is given to you as a primer for your individual seeking
after faith and hope, just like God intended the original writing of Hebrews and
Hebrews 11 for your faith and hope. The table is only a primer to get you to
continue it in your soul by PRAYERFUL MEDITATION if not on paper or in a Word
document.

NOTE: Table 11-1 is on the PDF copy of this message. If you wish to see the Table
alone in PDF, then you can download it. Be sure you have Adobe Reader or the
equivalent on your computer, available free from www.adode.com . You can click
on the button below.

11-3. After approximately 5 years of Bible study in Jeremiah and Prophesy, you
never expected to come back to Jeremiah for Bible teachings on the human needs
for refreshings from sin and sins.
Actually “Bible Studies in Jeremiah” continues to be the number one web page each week
for www.biblecombibleman.com. With approximately over 500 page visits and 27 hours of
visit time per week, it continues to lead all the web pages of the over 6 years of
SunGrist_Bible on www.biblecombibleman.com. More people continue to come into the
Jeremiah web page {and many messages of Jeremiah web pages} than even the index for
the web site, so this is no effort to knock what was is still a number one interest.
1. It is only that in general we look at Jeremiah for info on how and why God’s first group of
people, Judah and Jerusalem, did backsliding and falling away from God. Sorry we didn’t
get to it much then on the cause and cure of sin for the individual now, so momentarily we
plunge back into Jeremiah for the cause and cure of sin.
(1). The human heart is born sinful and desperately wicked.
“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked, who can know it?”
(Jeremiah 17:9)
(2). The cure for sin is an initial time of refreshing where according to Peter your “sins are
bloted out”, and one which by the way continues with conversion and repentance, to take
away the old stony heart and replace it with a new heart. {Just to think of this possibility is a
time of refreshing!}
NOTE: Even as you can not blame our God when He sends calamities on people
who live their whole lives in routines and ignore and neglect Him, so we can lay on
Him the kind of environment that has been created as a result of the way sin
entered the blood stream of the human race because of rebellion against God.
Even this dominant in America and American life and lifestyle, it’s a rebellion
against God. It is certainly obvious that it is the opposite of loving God with all the
heart, mind, and soul.
“’Then I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within them,’ and take
the stony heart out of their flesh...” (Ezekiel 11:19)
2. We walk a tightrope as Christians, going out to the victims of God-sent calamities, so
many of which has recently been seen in America since 9/11, with compassion and humble
unselfish service, and yet recognizing that what Americans sow is what Americans will reap.
We just can not blame our Great God for all this neglect and ignorance of God, and
increasingly so, in America. Can we know where such calamites are just the inevitable
consequence of the “whole creation groaning like a woman in travail” or chastisement from
God, we must have the courage of convictions, also of faith and hope, that both exist! Yes,
of some, we can say “they deserved it because of the way they were treating God”, to
others we can say they suffered for no wrong which they had done {and that there is always
the potential to come out soul-wise better for it}; and then to say that we can not judge with
righteous judgment which is which on each individual block and at each individual home, nor
are we supposed to. To know that overall America and Americans are increasingly drifting
away from God, Christ, and the Bible; that them and their churches are increasingly
becoming the listeners after false prophets and the victims of “because sin shall abound, the
love of many will wax cold”; that American churches and false prophets keep heaping up to
themselves with such false doctrines as “rapture”, “millineum” {not even Bible words}, and
the Gospel of Prosperity, these unsound prophets and itching ears teachers, part of the
hope and faith is that the END is very near when Christ comes again. “Even so, come
quickly Lord Jesus Christ.” (Revelation 22:20)
3. Since the heart is born wicked and still retains a certain amount of sin and wickedness
after a new heart, therefore insuring in any life a certain amount of continuing sin, what is
the difference between the saved and the unsaved sinner, between occasional sin and
habitual sin? Don’t ever forget that God chose to call David a friend after His own heart in
spite of that one sinful act of adultery where David took Bathsheba as his wife and insured
the death of her husband in battle. Actually two, one time sins, that of adultery and that of
murder. Yet because they were no habitual sins, and a way of life, David during his whole
life remained a friend of God.
NOTE: THAT IS GRACE, GRACIOUSNESS, AND FRIENDSHIP; AND THAT SPEAKS
OF THE FORGIVENESS OF SINS BY GOD, AND THE BLOTTING OUT OF THOSE SINS
AS IF THEY NEVER HAPPENED.
11-4: With renewed and refreshed FAITH and HOPE, show in your thoughts and
actions and words More Courage of Convictions that are firmly rooted in Scriptures.
1. God did not create this world of sin and suffering. THIS IS NOT THE WORLD GOD
CREATED! Sin, pain, and suffering came into a perfect world in the Garden of Eden that
God created when Adam and Eve first sinned, and it continues in the world today also by
the same curse on the earth because of that sin.
2. The Bible does speak of a kind of false repentance which neither blots out or forgives
that is a kind of sorrow that one is caught, not real conversion and repentance.
3. It seems long, but this life is oh so short as compared to over “10,000 years” in the after
the END life.
4. There is absolutely no reason that every man, woman, and child on the face of this earth
can not know an abundant life with the touch of the eternal, a life of comfort without pain,
suffering, sin and sorrow.
5. Find some way to practice your convictions that “All Scripture is given by inspiration of
God, and is PROFITABLE...” {II Timothy3:16,17).   Find some ways to listen to the Word of
God, “So then faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God” (Romans 10:17)
{You know your mind and heart, and soul especially hears the Word of God when you quote
it in your mind, read it, or say it out loud, even in prayer, what you have memorized.} Go
through the NT or the Bible with tapes; close carefully and listen to real preachers who often
quote from the Bible in support of what they say; find a good conservative, reliable preacher;
and the same for good books and commentaries; and even quote the Scriptures to yourself,
and listen to what is being heard.
You just can not get enough faith in God, Christ, and the Bible; and although we may not
prosper in the Word enough to “walk with God” like Enoch, we will prosper in faith, maybe
even beyond a grain of mustard seed or enough faith to remove mountains out of our
minds! The world has yet to see the greatest mustard seed of what God can do with a man
full of faith, the Word, and that walks righteously in God.
6. Yes, the temptations, suffering, and trails can build up like mountains in the mind;
however be reminded, based on the Word, that God “will not allow you to be tempted above
that which you are able, but will with the temptation make a way of escape that you may be
able to bear it.” (I Cor 10:13) And those ways of escape are so individualistic, simply
between you and God although many will came it is in their organization in order to show
numbers, that no immediate attempt will be made to cover the full extent in the mind and
heart of God, beyond the “Hope and Mountains” of the next and concluding section; and to
also with another reminded of how “to mount up with wings as eagles, to run and not be
weary and walk and not faint” (Isaiah 40:31), that reminded is to (1) wait on God, and (2)
renew your strength.

11-5: Hope and Mountains.
You know about faith and mountains--how Jesus said to the disciples that if you have even
a “grain of mustard seed” {and the concluding paragraph will be on refreshing your hope
that you can get up to that grain of mustard seed}--however how do we get from mountains
of faith to mountains of hope, or vice versa?
1. First since most mountains exist in the mind, let us get it straight what Jesus actually
said, including that mountains can be either moved into the head or out of the head.
“...I say to you if you have faith as a mustard seed,you will say to this mountain, Move from
here to there, and it will move...“ (Matthew 17:20)
NOTE: You already have noticed that exactly the same circumstances can be received into
your head {or heart} as either a mountain of obstacles or as a mountain of opportunity. The
difference depends on the inward faith and hope that is deep in your soul.
2. Think of the soul as an inwardly protected shell, which it can be, which conquers and
lives forever. After all the soul is where you primarily live anyway, or should be. The reason
Jesus said, “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, mind, and soul” is
because that is where you really live; that is the real you that can live forever if you nourish
it properly; and in the soul is the real you. This is not the same as retreating from the
realities of the world, nor the same as living only for eternity; for this is exactly that
“abundant life” of which Jesus spake, “And you shall have life and that more abundantly.”
{John 10:10) It is a recognition that the heart, mind, and soul is the real you, and has hope
not only for this life but also for the life to come. The real reality is to recognize that this life
on earth at best is very short--”what is your life, it is a vapor that appears for a little while
and then vanishes away (James 4:14); that even if by strength you live beyond 70 years to
80 years {Psalms 90:10), beyond those 80 years you can legitimately expect “sorrow and
labor”; and well before these standard numbers, if you have lived “godly in Christ Jesus,
then you will suffer persecution” (II Timothy 3:12). There are many messages of Job, much
of the space is devoted to the superficial advice from his worldly counselors, but the primary
message is that the “righteous suffer for no wrong which they have done”; and beyond that
the great conviction, and the courage of conviction of Job, that “I know that my redeemer
lives (Job 19:25), and that with these eyes I shall see Him on this earth” {the new earth}.
NOTE: That is faith and hope combined.
“My brethren, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord, as an example
of suffering and patience. {Jeremiah by no means was the only Prophet to suffer,
rumor has it that the chief of prophets, Isaiah, was also beheaded.} Indeed we
count them blessed who endure. You have heard of the perseverance of Job and
seen the end intended by the Lord {this end intended was for this life in a
restoration of all that was lost, and of course for the next life}--that the Lord is very
compassionate and merciful.” (James 5:10,11)
3. You can either starve the soul by living “by bread alone” {all of the normal pursuits of
life}, or you can nourish the soul by “every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.”
(Luke 4:4)
4. You take care of the “wait upon the LORD” God the Father, through Christ and with the
help of the Comforting Holy Spirt; then God will take care of the second part of “strength
renewal”. And let us be spiritually realistic, based on total Bible, since like God told Paul,
“my strength is made perfect in weakness”, the guarantees of hope you have in the Bible
and based on your faith in the Bible as the Word of God is: (1) You once that mountain is
committed properly to God in prayer {part of the waiting}, either (2) the pain and suffering
will be removed, or (3) God will provide grace sufficient to overcome.
5. If you want this same “grace of God that is sufficient” as Paul found during his Christian
life, then you must also find a degree of commitment in the same direction of convictions and
courage as “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” (Philippians 1:21)
6. As you would renew the inward strength of your soul, include PRAYERFUL
MEDITATION with your waiting on God of prayer and Bible!
7. Finally, with in mind that “faith {and hope) cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of
God” (Romans 10:17), HEARING IS THE READING OF THE SOUL. What reading the
Bible can do, the hearing of the soul can do more as it gets to the heart, mind, and soul.
Please include prayer meditation or mulling and dwelling, and even fretting, on PRAYERFUL
MEDITATION.
8. Wait on the LORD with serious Bible study. God through the Bible and honor the fact
that ALL SCRIPTURE IS GIVEN BY GOD.   You will have the opportunity in the next 3 years
from SunGrist Bible and www.biblecombibleman.com to go through the whole Bible, by web
pages and also in emailed newsletters. Take an advantage of it, and to assist you in the
plan of “Through the Bible in 3 Years”, go to the web page by that name--www.
biblecombibleman.com/ThroughTheBibleIn3Years.html .
9. Finally we would be amiss on total Scripture, if we did not mention the way to clean out
the soul from domination with things, bread, and the trouble and works of this life; and in
turn to fill the soul with God, Christ, and the Bible by way of the new heart and spirit God
promised in Jeremiah. Even as some say, “An idle {or empty} mind is the devil’s workshop,
a soul devoid of God and thoughts about God, is a victim for heartache and sorrow in this
life and certainly in the life to come, with the eternal death of sin, sorrow, and suffering.
(1). Through repentance, faith, and conversion is how the soul initially gets filled up with
right and righteousness, with the eternal and abundant life of the soul. Jesus said He and
the Father knock on the door of your soul and heart, even mind, and if you will JUST OPEN
UP and receive, Jesus and the Father will come into your soul to dwell with you forever.
(2). This is the way the “He that is in you is greater than he that is in the world” gets into
your soul in the first place, stays there, and is allowed with you mind, heart, and will to abide
there forever. This is the filling of the soul with something greater than the sin, suffering,
and pain of from: (1) he that is in the world and the prince of the world, and (2) from “the
spirit within us that lusteth to envy” (James 4:5)

NOTE: Yes that part of the soul that lusts to sin and envy and toward the pride of
life, the lust of the flesh and eyes, never goes away until “we shall be like Him for
we shall see Him as He is” (I John 3:2), but the effects can be minimized and
lessened, by way of He that is in us greater than he that is in the world” with faith
and hope, with waiting on the LORD, with a renewal of the inward strength of God
and from God, and by allowing the soul to soar like an eagle, to spiritually and
sometimes even physically run and not be weary and walk and not faint.

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