How should the term "Slave to Christ" be Interpreted?

[Pieman333272]

Does it mean just doing God’s will? Or something beyond that?

 

[shocktrooper]

Yes. You are a willful servant. Your will equals His will. Slave, here, does not mean you are supposed to be forced in anyway.

Pax Christi.

 

[Barbkw]

Allow the Holy Spirit to conform your will to Christ’s will.

 

[TimothyH]

Yes. You are a willful servant. Your will equals His will. Slave, here, does not mean you are supposed to be forced in anyway.

Pax Christi.

But sometimes our will is not in line with God’s will. When that happens, I hope God forces me. I pray that he does.

There are willing slaves and unwilling slaves. I want to be a willing slave, God forcing me for my own good when my will does not conform with his.

Sometimes our loving Father needs to guide is with a strong hand in spite of ourselves.

-Tim-

 

[shocktrooper]

But sometimes our will is not in line with God’s will. When that happens, I hope God forces me. I pray that he does.

There are willing slaves and unwilling slaves. I want to be a willing slave, God forcing me for my own good when my will does not conform with his.

Sometimes our loving Father needs to guide is with a strong hand in spite of ourselves.

-Tim-

Not going to happen. God gave us freewill. We must do this by submitting to His grace and allow it to work in our lives. We have to participate.

Maybe I am wrong but I am almost positive this is what the Catholic Church teaches.

 

[TimothyH]

Not going to happen. God gave us freewill. We must do this by submitting to His grace and allow it to work in our lives. We have to participate.

Maybe I am wrong but I am almost positive this is what the Catholic Church teaches.

I’m positive that it happens all the time.

Even the submitting to God’s will is an act of God’s grace. We are really talking about actual grace (as opposed to sanctifying grace), which is God’s intervention in our daily lives.

CCC 2000 Sanctifying grace is an habitual gift, a stable and supernatural disposition that perfects the soul itself to enable it to live with God, to act by his love. Habitual grace, the permanent disposition to live and act in keeping with God’s call, is distinguished from actual graces which refer to God’s interventions, whether at the beginning of conversion or in the course of the work of sanctification.

I pray that God stops me from sinning all the time. “God, if I try to sin, please stop me.” I know other’s that do too. And he does. It happened to me two days ago.

I saw a woman blow a tire, pulling out of the Church parking lot no less during the afternoon. She was well dressed, driving a nice luxury minivan, I know her kids go to private Catholic School and I know what her husband does for a living. I hesitated and thought to myself how she is reasonably wealthy, probably has Tripple-A and if not, can afford a tow. Then I justified my selfishness by thinking that it was her fault anyway for talking on the cell phone. Isn’t that what one who talks on the cell phone while driving deserves, to drive into a curb? Besides, I had a meeting to get to and hadn’t yet had lunch. So I made the left turn and drove away.

I didn’t get fifty feet down the road before I was totally convicted. A voice said to me, “Dude, you just left a woman you know sitting in the driveway of a convent of Dominican Nuns with a flat tire. Dude… She looked right at you and you drove away!!!” That was God’s voice. So yea, I turned around and helped her change the tire. The best part is that she gave me a twenty, which I tried to refuse, but she stuck it in my pocket. I was feeling really good about myself, quite proud in fact, and bought lunch with the twenty dollars as a reward to myself. Then the voice spoke to me again, this time louder, saying, “Dude, you drove away. You made the left turn and DROVE AWAY.” I realized then that God made me turn around - It was no work of mine. I drove away! The twenty dollar bill belonged to God, not to me.

So yea, God stops me from sinning all the time. I ask him to. I pray that he does. I beg him to.

***Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. ***

I coooperate with his will by begging him to do for me what I am unable to do for myself.

*Three times I begged the Lord about this, that it might leave me, but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” I will rather boast most gladly of my weaknesses, in order that the power of Christ may dwell with me. Therefore, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and constraints, for the sake of Christ; for when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Corinthians 12:8-10)*If it was up to me and my cooperation, I’d be a dead heroin addict or something.

-Tim-

 

[shocktrooper]

If it was up to me and my cooperation, I’d be a dead heroin addict or something.

-Tim-

I agree with you, Tim, to a degree. I remember a story about St. Frances of Assisi, maybe I am wrong, saying when a prisoner was being lead down the street in front of him, “there go I if not by the grace of God”. So yes, it is all grace, but it does not stop there. This is a very interesting topic because if we go too far one way, we wind up in Calvinism- which says God wills who he wants to Heaven or Hell with no part on our end. If we go the other way, we get into a works righteousness mindset.

If you have been baptized properly, you received the grace from that baptism. Also, Confirmation. This may be the source of the grace you experience today from time to time. It may also be the grace you receive via the Eucharist or Penance. Our participation in the Sacraments are the source of the grace we receive. I know God can work outside of the Sacraments but this is the reason we have them, to give us grace to sustain us.

So participating in the Sacraments, is our act or our parents act on our behalf.

God bless.
Pax Christi

 

[shocktrooper]

Tim,

I was thinking about this more and I want to make clear that grace is the initial cause. We can do nothing outside of God’s grace. The one point I want to make, though, is that we have to cooperate with God’s grace. People can have malformed consciences and can harden their hearts against God. This hardening is initially done by the individual, not by God. God can seal that hardness and does at times, since He knows all things and knows you will never be open to Him. Think of Pharaoh here. So I think the only thing we are at odds with, is how one responds to God’s grace. You seem to think that a person has no other choice but to act on God’s grace positively. I think that a person has to either cooperate with God’s grace or turn against it.

In your situation, you could have kept driving even after your conscience spoke to you about what you should have done. You responded properly. Yes, it was God’s grace but it was also your willful participation.

I may be wrong but I do not think I am at odds with what the Church teaches. I also may be misunderstanding you.

Pax Christi

 

[fhansen]

Does it mean just doing God’s will? Or something beyond that?

I think it should be interpreted to mean that we’re to be slaves to love. Then our “enslavement” is freely chosen - we’ve come to learn the value of love and of He who is love.

 

[TimothyH]

Tim,

I was thinking about this more and I want to make clear that grace is the initial cause. We can do nothing outside of God’s grace. The one point I want to make, though, is that we have to cooperate with God’s grace. People can have malformed consciences and can harden their hearts against God. This hardening is initially done by the individual, not by God. God can seal that hardness and does at times, since He knows all things and knows you will never be open to Him. Think of Pharaoh here. So I think the only thing we are at odds with, is how one responds to God’s grace. You seem to think that a person has no other choice but to act on God’s grace positively. I think that a person has to either cooperate with God’s grace or turn against it.

In your situation, you could have kept driving even after your conscience spoke to you about what you should have done. You responded properly. Yes, it was God’s grace but it was also your willful participation.

I may be wrong but I do not think I am at odds with what the Church teaches. I also may be misunderstanding you.

Pax Christi

Based on your post, I really don’t think we are far apart. What I took issue with was the “Not going to happen” comment.

I believe that Catholics sometimes, myself included, give too much credit to our own ability to overcome concupiscence or place too much reliance on our own abilities to overcome it. Instead of being tuned in to how the Holy Spirit speaks to us, we seem to get hooked onto this theme of “Cooperation” as if Jesus and the individual both roll up their sleeves and work together to “Get the job done.” That being said, many non-Catholics I know, especially in the heavily Evangelical deep-south where I live, place too little importance on the role we have to play in our own salvation. “Let go and let God” is their mantra, as if we can let go of the steering wheel on the interstate and God will drive the car safely to our destination for us.

Either way, I think we have to try to avoid formulaic assertions of how the Holy Spirit works in individual lives. The unprofitable servant who does not want to cooperate but does so becuase he fears punishment is one case. This servant needs severe correction and disciplne. The servant who willingly cooperates because he knows its the right thing to do yet needs direction and guidance is another case. The good and faithful servant who loves his master and wishes to please him is yet another. All might be stages in the Christian walk.

But I agree with you, the desire to cooperate must be there one oway or another. Self love is often the biggest hurdle to overcome.

Shocktropper, there is a little book, literally 90 pages and only 4"x6", by a French Priest named Jaques Phillipe. The book is titled “In the School of the Holy Spirit”. It is about how to foster promptings of the Holy Spirit, how to attune oneself to them and how to become more obedient to them. It is definitely worth the ten dollar price. I really think you would like it.

-Tim-

 

[shocktrooper]

Shocktropper, there is a little book, literally 90 pages and only 4"x6", by a French Priest named Jaques Phillipe. The book is titled “In the School of the Holy Spirit”. It is about how to foster promptings of the Holy Spirit, how to attune oneself to them and how to become more obedient to them. It is definitely worth the ten dollar price. I really think you would like it.

-Tim-

Tim, thanks for the book reference. I could use the help. I am about 3/4 through “The Soul of the Apostolate”. I have been taking my time with it. My alias here is taken from this book. I may have used the wrong “tone” when I wrote “It’s not going to happen” but to my knowledge, the Church does teach that God will not impede the freewill He gave us. He will try to lure us in but we ultimately have to take the bait. Yes, we do have to roll up our sleeves, pick up our cross, and carry it joyfully to our death, per Christ. Christ did not suffer so that we don’t have to. He did it so that our suffering can be filled with His, giving us the strength to accomplish all things through Him. It is hard, but that is why that Way is narrow and wide is the path to destruction.

I will get the book you suggested. This may help me discern which “thoughts” are from God and which ones are from the devils. This is something I have been trying to discern for some time now.

Pax Christi