Phil,
Please bring this home by making it personal.  What changed for you, 
after this discovery?  I think that if you could explain how this 
understanding worked in you, I'll understand better what you mean.
Kathy


At 07:50 PM 8/13/2006, you wrote:
>Chip Off The Old Block
>
>
>By Phil Scovell
>
>
>
>
>
>      The church I had been pastoring had folded.  I felt more than
>a failure; I felt like I had failed god.  Life had stopped
>suddenly.
>
>      Attending another church was worst than miserable.
>Furthermore, the attendance had been steadily dropping and the
>pastor's sermons were consistently demeaning, personally
>degrading, and spiritually disappointing.  thus, I had stopped
>listening to most of his sermons and tried practicing the art of
>day dreaming.  It worked, too.
>
>      One morning, as I was day dreaming, I realized the pastor was
>teaching on the perfect will of God, so I started listening.  I
>quickly reverted to my day dreaming when I discovered he was
>literally saying, "If you don't know the perfect will of God for
>your life, you aren't much of a Christian."  I already knew that I
>was a lousy Christian and I didn't need him to remind me.
>Besides, my day dreams were more interesting than his Mickey Mouse
>preaching had become.
>
>      As I tried to occupy my time till church was over, I heard
>the Holy Spirit say, "You are the perfect will of God."  I
>immediately rejected this as a lie because I knew better.  The
>statement, however, remained fixed in my mind.  So, I began trying
>to analyze it.  I asked the Lord, after several minutes of
>incredibly frustrating meditation, to show me where in the Bible
>it says "I am the perfect will of God.  "Romans 8," immediately
>sprang to my thoughts.  I almost laughed.  I had Romans 8
>memorized.  I let my mind quickly run through the chapter.
>"Nope," I said, "nothing there, Lord.  You'll have to do better
>than that."  Yet Romans 8 stayed firmly imprinted in my thoughts.
>
>      For the next two years, I occasionally thought about what the
>Holy Spirit had told me in church that day.  I tried repeatedly to
>figure out what the Lord was talking about but discovered nothing.
>
>      One day, as I was working in my office doing high speed
>cassette duplicating for a church, I began thinking about being
>God's perfect will.  I stopped my work, walked to my bookshelf,
>and pulled out my Braille bible volume containing the book of
>Romans.  A Braille Bible is 18 volumes and each about three inches
>thick.  Sitting down at my desk, I turned to chapter 8 and said
>out loud, "Ok, Lord.  You said I am your perfect will.  I don't
>believe that is in this chapter or even in the bible.  So, I am
>going to start reading the chapter from the beginning and when I
>get to the right verse, you let me know," and I began reading.  My
>fingers soon stopped on Romans 8:29:
>
>For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be
>conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn
>among many brethren.
>
>      I sat motionless for some time trying to comprehend what I
>had just read.  I knew, without any doubt, this was the verse. I
>had read the Bible well over 100 times from cover-to-cover and
>this chapter more than any other.  Yet, I have never once
>considered the powerful meaning of this single verse concerning
>who I was in Christ Jesus.
>
>      When I was about 9 or 10 years of age, before going blind, I
>worked as a volunteer at in a plaster shop.  They made figures out
>of plaster molds which we then sold to amusement parks, and the
>like, for gifts if you won at some competitive game.
>
>      the figures were made by pouring hot plaster into a rubber
>mold, then quickly dumped out, which left a coating of plaster on
>the inside walls of the rubber form.  Later, when the plaster had
>cooled and hardened, we pealed the rubber form away and trimmed
>the excess that remained.  Following a thorough drying process,
>the figures were ready for painting.
>
>      This illustration is the exact meaning of "to be conformed"
>to His image.  We are the predestinated, whatever you interpret
>that to mean theologically, but whatever it means, we are cut,
>shaped, molded and formed, in His image.  Thus, we look like
>Jesus.  When we pray, live, worship, sing, or serve, the Father
>sees us as one of His sons, or daughters, and we look just like
>Jesus.  Furthermore, this whole thing, theologically speaking, was
>settled before the foundation of the world, that is, before
>anything was created, (See Eph. 1:4).  Literally, before all
>things, it was planned we would spiritually, to the Father, look
>like Jesus.
>
>      All my life I have listened to sermons preached on the will
>of God.  It was always something we did, such as ministry work,
>for Jesus.  Never once did I hear a sermon preached, it isn't what
>we can do for Jesus that counts, it is what we allow Him to do for
>us, and in us, that makes the difference.  We are the perfect will
>of God.  It is not based upon how much theology we have learned or
>how much doctrine we can teach but only on Jesus and Him alone.
>If your Christian life isn't based on Jesus alone, then it is time
>you realize that you are His perfect will.  Stop working for Jesus
>and let Him work for you.
>
>He's ready when you are.
>www.SafePlaceFellowship.com