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Dear Ones,

This year the Holy Spirit impressed upon us that the word to center on for our meeting is how to live without a consciousness of sin.

 

When Harriet Wearren and I sat down to talk over what to put in the letter of invitation, we were taken back to our early days when we were pressed out of measure and nothing else but sin-conscious. 

 

The following is the story of our journey into the 'Person of Christ' and the 'way of faith' and covers all we want to say and hopefully discuss during our time together.

 

In 1966 my Spiritual life began to spiral downward. I tried everything I knew to regain my first love but the harder I tried the greater it alluded my grasp. Physical death seemed the only way of escape and I eagerly awaited the Lord's return. The daily diet in my Christians circles was to pray more, witness more and give more. Searching for top-line "deeper life" teachers was my number one priority and although it was before the self-help craze, every sermon I sat under ended with suggested ways to; either become dead to self, engage in prophecy or to practice the gifts of the Spirit. As I was trying to do all these things through Christ who strengthened me, the very opposite was taking place until I cried out with Paul: "How to perform that which is good, I find not. Oh, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this death?"

 

The sin that so easily beset me was my anger and temper. In the beginning they showed me that I was hopeless and needed a Savior. Now in this second crisis they showed me I was helpless. I repented and confessed endlessly but the spiritual washcloth of 1John 1:9 was not sufficient to erase my sin-consciousness and restore me to a full joy. When Norman Grubb entered my life I had been perfectly conditioned to receive the 'healing in his wings.' When I heard him speak for the first time I could not have told you a thing he said, but inside, in my spirit, I was lifted. I immediately wrote him pouring our my heart about all the negative unbelieving myths I had spent years building and believing. Here is his reply.

"Dearest Linda, I think this is the first letter I have ever received from you. I am so pleased you have written. Dear, you may not think so, but it is good that you have had these tough times.! I praise Him. There's no other way to find and live in the light except by feeling the reality of the dark. You are not in Romans 7, you only think you are, when you wrongly believe that you should be better, and I rather think you have this mistaken idea because you bemoan that "the flesh is weak", and of course it is; that's all it is. And "not much faith", and Word and prayer life nil. Excellent! You can have no faith, nor can the Word and prayer be alive to you. Humans just remain negative human have-nots. But that's just what turns your attention away from the wretched law of Rom. 7 which tells you "you ought" if you still think you ought. But when you learn and accept that you ought not, because we humans are not meant to be or have anything, then you can say, "Of course I'm weak, of course I have these failures, of course Bible and prayer are dead to me." At that point you say, "Now Lord, You are yourself in me, and YOU ONLY are any quickening in me, or any faith or anything; and You are Yourself in me, the real Self, though I may not feel a thing and feel as dead as ever." As you "recognize: Him in faith, though feeling nothing (and don't try to improve yourself or pick yourself up, or feel as if you ought to be something - that's Romans 7) then in God's own way, He will make Himself real to you. So I'm glad you write dear, and glad you have these dark times in order to learn this great lesson that you have "the sentence of death in yourself, that you should not trust yourself but in Him in you (2Cor.1:9)

 

Needless to say through this letter the Spirit was not calling me to perform one more thing for Jesus or to try anything ever again within my own strength. This time He was calling me to faith!

Faith to believe that the Lord had called me to believe: "But he that joins himself to the Lord is one Spirit with Him." That I had been made perfect in unity. John 17 - That my humanity was the necessary agent or common human by which God could express and manifest His personhood. That by His body death, I was made righteous; a right self, son, daughter, heir, vessel, branch, temple, and bride. That I could enter into the full meaning of Gal. 2:20 -- crucified and risen with Him and fully functioning as a right self.

 

The temptation to believe it was all heresy flooded me time and again, but each time I considered turning back  to the accepted doctrines of self-effort, it was as though I was putting on filthy rags. As my reputation and righteous robes began to fade and the witness of a perfect Christ living in my perfect humanity began to become a reality, what seemed too costly to lose (an independent life) now became offensive to think of maintaining. Dry ground was becoming Holy Ground.  The Lord was calling me, not only to accept what He had done for me at Calvary by putting me in right standing with God, but to also accept the revolutionary life that He was living in me, as me. That took the greatest leap of faith of my life. But what else could I do. All the bridges of self-effort and self-righteousness were burned and I would either die, turn to stone or enter in. To see that the Promised Land was a Person and that I was the unique Linda form of that Person was, to me, the gospel in its purest form. I saw that I had no independent human nature, no life within that could produce life.  So I began to move slowly, by faith, taking no condemnation, accepting myself and walking in the spirit of Romans 8, totally depending on Him to see me through my schooldays of faith.

 

Thank God, school days ended and graduation day did come. The person I took, took me and I knew I had come home forever!! I had come through the agonizing cry of my 'wretched man' into the glorious liberty of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus where there was no more condemnation, trying and failing ...... no brick wall of failure and defeat; I knew I was free forever and could depend on Him, not only to 'keep me from falling,' but also to 'cause me to walk in His ways.' Life has now become total freedom to be driven by the Spirit in His unceasing love for others through me. I now have one supreme purpose; driven by the Spirit to live as a co-heir . . . "filling up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ for His body's sake" (Col. 1:24)     "For me to live is Christ". . . Philippines 1:21   

 

We begin Friday evening at 6:00pm with dinner and end Sunday noon with lunch. Please reply by August 1, 2005 to:

 

Linda Bunting

Phone: 502-245-3212

13984 Poplar Lane

Louisville, Ky. 40299

e-mail: b13984@iglou.com

 

The following hotels are available;

Sleep Inn: 502-266-6766

Comfort Suites: 502-266-6509

Micro-Tel: 502-266-6590

Mainstay Suites: 502-267-4454

Hilton Garden Inn: 502-297-8066

Candlewood Suites: 502-261-0085

Holiday Inn Express: 502-240-0035

Staybridge Inn: 502-244-9511

Country Inn & Suites: 502-261-0434

Super 8: 502-267-8889

Best Western: 502-267-8100