Heritage Valley

• The Legislature is sitting this week, with both afternoon and evening sessions Monday through Wednesday, and an afternoon session on Thursday. The Red Tape Reduction Statutes Act, the Financial Statutes Amendment Act, and the Appropriation Act are all at the Second Reading stage and the Alberta Firearms Act is scheduled for study at Committee of the Whole.
• The Province will work jointly with Ottawa to understand what caused a nine-month reporting delay on the part of Imperial Oil about seepage from its Kearl mine, north of Fort McMurray. Imperial Oil knew about the seepage in May but did not inform the Alberta government. Premier Danielle Smith said that the company had a responsibility to be transparent.
• Chestermere’s Mayor and City Council will have to complete a series of 12 directives or face removal by the Province. Inspection reports show that the City of Chestermere “is being managed improperly, irregularly and improvidently”. The City must commit to hiring an auditing firm to submit outstanding financial statements for the previous two years, reviewing its procedural bylaws and providing an action plan, submitting all code-of-conduct complaints to the Province, and refrain from exercising power struggles on Council.

#ThisweekinAlberta

LIVING HIS GLORY IN ONENESSDon Atkin

1935 – 2023

God is Spirit, living His glorious and abundant life through all who have been baptized into Christ and crucified with Him.I have been crucified with Christ [that is, in Him I have shared His crucifixion]; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body I live by faith [by adhering to, relying on, and completely trusting] in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me. - Galatians 2:20The Lord said, “. . . Indeed as I live, all the earth will be filled with the glory of the Lord.” - Numbers 14:20-21One of my favorite verses, and I have a ton of them, is found in Colossians 1:27. Paul wrote it, and it goes, “To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is ‘Christ in you, the hope of glory.’”Jesus prayed to our Father, “I have given to them the glory and honor which You have given Me, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected and completed into one, so that the world may know [without any doubt] that You sent Me, and [that You] have loved them, just as You have loved Me. Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given to Me [as Your gift to Me], may be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, because You loved Me before the foundation of the world.” - John 17:22-24The fullness of His glory will be revealed in the united Ekklesia where we live.I love you!Papa Don#DonAtkin

By Charles Weller

In the Scriptures we find that there were three kinds of ministry: the prophets, Jesus and the New Testament church. In the Old Testament God worked through many men. Some he used even though they were rebellious against Him (Balaam). Others were open to allow Him to minister through them, but did not comprehend the depth of what they spoke (Isaiah, Ezekiel etc.). These were men of faith, as Hebrews 11 states.

The difference between the Old Testament prophet and Jesus is that the prophet was revelatory and Jesus was revelation personified. The times changed with Jesus. Instead of God using men, obedient or disobedient, God now became manifest in the flesh. In the incarnation of Jesus we see the Logos of God manifested. We see God made visible in a person; whereas, in the Old Testament the person administered God without necessarily being fully possessed of God. Jesus was God. 100% God. No Adam nature involved at all. In the Old Testament it was 100% man overpowered by God.

In the New Testament, after Jesus, we find it is now possible for the saints to be 100% God and 100% man. Not the Adamic man, but the new creation man revealing a union with God. Jesus was God flesh. He did not have the same flesh as we. Read Romans 8:3 and Philippians 2:7, preferably in various translations other than the KJV. We manifest God in the new creation flesh, which has nothing to do with literal flesh but rather is a spiritual house.

God is not seeking to destroy the personality of the individual, which is good and God created, but He is infusing Himself in the personality, a union of your Logos with His Logos to express a divine image, an incorruptible image, fashioned, conformed to the Image of His Son. The quest of the New Testament saint is to reveal the Logos in the flesh of the new creation man, which is different than the ministry of the prophets or the ministry of Jesus.

Jesus never had an adamic nature in Him. He overcame the adamic temptations for us because He was God. Tried, He did not fail but rose above the lower fallen level of Adam. He, the Logos, places Himself in us through a salvation experience to enable a union (He male, we female) of His Logos with the breath of life in us to create a new creation man. This God/man union is to empower us.

The New Testament saint is to be the revelation of the Word, as we accept trials and overcome temptations. In Jesus the word became flesh. The Logos existed first and then was encompassed about by the flesh. The New Testament saint must have the flesh transformed to fit around the Logos! Therein is the difference.

Men did not accept Jesus because He was God. The world will accept you, and thereby Jesus as Saviour, because they will see transformed flesh and a transformed nature. The testimony of the New Testament saint is the revelation of the transformation, the metamorphisis. The Logos of God is seeking to unite with man's word. What a thought!

The presence of human (human in contrast to adamic nature) feeling does not ruin God's Word, but it can if the vessel is not adequately dead to Adam. The Logos of God is to be released through men, but the man must be transformed, his flesh changed to reveal the very nature of God. This transformation takes trials and discipline. If one cannot accept the pruning of His tree, then the Logos is impeded and cannot be expressed clearly through the vessel. BUT if the man has been pruned and if the man has become disciplined in the Lord, then God will allow man to be unified with His Logos in expression. Any defect in us will defile the Logos. Thus, continuous pruning is a pattern of success, which leads to the full revelation of God in us - Emmanuel!

The Logos unites with man's (new creation man) word to express in the flesh the manifestation of God. The world can accept an ethereal god, a non-involved god, and the world accepts the concept that they are gods, captains of their own lives. But they cannot accept that God incarnates man because this would disprove their two beliefs that are central to their lifestyle. If God can be involved intimately with His creation, then their premise of God is wrong. If God can incarnate a man and transform him into God's likeness, then man is not god, he is dethroned - thus ruining their lifestyle. The New Testament Logos man antagonizes the adamic nature, the unregenerate man.

The Bible is the story of the growth of God in men. First God made men. Then He spoke through them, with or without their knowledge. Then God became man in Jesus. Now, God is beginning the depth and height of His manifestation through the new creation man. This new creation man is the ultimate manifestation of God in the flesh - a greater work than Jesus, even as Jesus stated.

An excerpt from THE LOGOS, THE LIGHT, THE LIFE

#CharlesWeller

Here's another important and relevant message fro Dennis Peacocke.

#DennisPeacocke

MY WAY OR THE HIGH (HIS) WAYBy Larry Hodges

I Chronicles 15:13 For because ye did it not at the first, the Lord our God made a breach upon us, for that we sought Him not after the due order.

We often do not realize the damage we are causing simply from not following God's due order. And please do not misunderstand the term "due order," as I use it. I do not mean that we have simply to find some divine formula and we are thereby guaranteed to obligate the Lord to move and bless. No such possibility exists so long as His sovereignty remains intact. I simply mean it in the sense that we are to be led by the Spirit; by the mind of Christ rather than by any other agenda.When David sought to return the Ark of God's presence to its rightful place, he made the now obvious mistake of seeking to do it in the same manner in which the Philistines had returned it. It was not as though David simply used the Philistine's ox-cart. Instead, he departed from the ordinance of God and built a new one, ("And they carried the Ark of God in a new cart out of the house of Abinadab. . ." I Chronicles 13:7) with certain improvements over the old one, I'm sure. But it was still the product of an uncircumcised mind. I can just imagine that David thought to himself, "Well, it seems to have worked alright thus far and if it ain't broke, don't fix it." (I actually doubt if David thought exactly that because it sounds so American, but I believe he thought something close to it.)So David did what so many of us have done. He sought to preserve and use in the service of God that which was the product of an uncircumcised mind. The Philistines did not practice circumcision. The Israelites practiced it as a sign of covenant relationship with God. It represents the circumcised heart which the Christian receives in the putting off of the flesh of the old Adamic nature.The ox-cart represented something God hates: that is, man's methods, man's intellectual inventiveness, man's thoughts and ways, which are always anti-God and anti-Christ. It represented the reason king Saul had spared Amalek (flesh); so that he could offer it to the Lord. It was man seeking to serve God according to his own self-prescribed manner, with his own natural gifts and talents, in direct violation of His designated due order.God had delivered to His people the precise manner in which this Ark, which represented His very Presence, was to be transported (Num. 4:5-15 & Deut. 10:8). It was not to be dragged along the dusty earth by dumb beasts, even though those beasts chewed the cud and split the hoof. Just because men know the Bible and can quote it does not mean they have been set apart as priests unto God and His people. It was to be placed upon the shoulders of a sanctified priesthood that was set apart for this purpose, a priesthood that had been anointed and was alive unto God.But we're speaking of man's natural propensity toward ox-carts. That is, toward his own ways and methods; toward the work of his own hands, rather than God's. Just as it was in the ancient days when each of the judges passed away, the people did evil again in the sight of the Lord, so when the apostles moved off stage, things very quickly began to descend into a spiritual decline of formalism and ceremony of such gross proportions that its darkness was to last nearly 1300 years and would be universally characterized as the Dark Ages. It seems there really is nothing new under the sun.

An excerpt from OXCARTS

#Liberators

There are many considerations that have to taken into account when considering how to build an thriving community and a main one has to do with the subject of this post. 

#community, #DougTjaden

The longer and warmer days have made it very dangerous to go unto the ice in the river and lakes as well. The river current is strong and water in both the river and lakes is frigit. 

• The Legislature is back and will sit beginning on Monday, carrying on in the afternoons through to Thursday. We are expecting an amendment to the Municipal Government Act to be tabled this week, amongst other items.
• Committees will be meeting this week to discuss the main estimates, which are essentially the provincial budget broken down by department. Rather than list the details of every meeting here, we’ve written an explainer that includes a handy spreadsheet that lists which department is meeting and when. Estimates considerations will continue for about two weeks.
• Alberta Gaming Liquor and Cannabis (AGLC) has made changes that will allow private cannabis retailers to conduct online sales for the first time. AGLC will be exiting the online market, and a final bit of red tape will make things more difficult for those companies looking to enter it. Cannabis retailers must obtain an endorsement to their license from AGLC in order to conduct online sales and must also have a physical retail store in order to obtain the license, which eliminates a lot of the reasons you would want an online store in the first place.

#thisweekinalberta

The drug crisis that has ravaged North America for over a decade and left almost 1 million casualties in its wake continues its deadly scourge and shows no sign of abating. Unfortunately the casualty count continues to rise in Edmonton and Alberta and it is front-line workers who face this crisis head on every day.

The war against this drug crisis has been a losing battle even though bilion$ are being spent to fight it on many fronts causing one to question if the money is being spent wisely.

Men are saying that Jesus Christ came as a social reformer.

Nonsense!

We are social reformers; Jesus Christ came to alter us, and we try to shirk our responsibility by putting our work on Him.

Jesus alters us and puts us right; then these principles of His instantly make us social reformers. They begin to work straightway where we live....

Oswald Chambers

War is costly in every way but nothing more costly than the loss of life. Its not surprising to hear of the number of casualties in Ukraine but Russian troops have experienced casualties as well and each life lost is one that happened because of mans' inhumanity to his fellowman. 

Bob Dylan asked a question in 1963 that many people are still asking today "how many deaths will it take 'til he knows That too many people have died?" The answer he said was blowing in the wind. I don't know if Bob Dylan knew or meant it but the Greek word for Holy Spirit is pneuma which can also be translated as wind. Mans' answers fail and fall woefully short which is why we need the answer blowing in the Wind/pneuma.