No, I don't put too much emphasis on self, lol.
What I do is not negate the necessity for the person to do the believing required to access and keep all that God does for us in justification/ salvation. Sadly, the frontlet of Calvinistic thought presently imprisoning the church has caused so many people in the church to release themselves from their responsibility in laying hold of and keeping the salvation of God through a continued believing in and seeking of God.
I'm not Baptist. I don't follow Calvin nor do I know what all Calvin teaches, except for security of the believer. I see this though in the scriptures.
I see the separation of flesh and Spirit too. And I believe the word that says we are circumcised with our faith. That our flesh is "cut off". And my belief is that this happens with our new birth. That we are born of a heavenly seed that is uncorrupted by "earth". And then sealed by God our Father. Then we are baptized into His body and empowered to live Holy and pleasing to our God by the gift of faith and the gift of love through our union with Jesus. That there is so much yet to learn of what we have being of heaven now, and can do by His power on this earth. But, our mind is a problem. Our mind needs to change thinking from what we were, to what we are. And how many are even taught this in Sunday school? And our soul part of us needs saved. Our emotions are yet in control most of the time. We need to learn how to be Spirit, and see our flesh dead. For the truth is, it died with the first cut of the axe of Holy Spirit to the tree of knowledge.
And then walk by Spirit, as spiritual beings. Takes time to learn. We make mistakes, we forget and act as if we aren't who God has made us. Spirit is always greater than flesh for Spirit is eternal and flesh is not. Yet we only knew flesh. So we trust what God says, and see the life that comes from trusting.
When we are instructed to abide, to trust and believe....it's for our good because wavering faith is doublemindedness, and we can't receive what we are believing for.
God doesn't let us go but begins the chastening process. Speaks the Words needed to hear. Brings us to good shepherds to hear words of deliverance. Just like a good Father does with His children.
Did this not happen in your life Phart? Or did you have to do the holding on to God or you would lose somehow?
Phart:
If it is not an emphasis on self when you say this, then neither is it when I say it.
Nobody is saved because of some inherent power to save themselves. People are saved because they believe in, and continue to believe in God who saves.
Stones:
Saved. Jesus died for all. He saved all men. We are saved by His blood sacrifice, and receive it by faith. All men won't receive because of rebellion, love of sin, unbelief which is all disobedience.
Our obedience is our believing. That faith that pleases God.
Why I say your emphasis is on self, is because we are foreknown. He knows who are His. This is not that He chooses one, discards another, but because He resides in eternity, and knows the end from the beginning. This is the scripture. Do you believe it? So He draws us. We hear and respond. His initiation. He knows when and how we respond.
He knows how to "save" our soul. What we need to go through...need to know, etc.
He knows our end, and His promise is to bring us safely to the day.
Faith grows. It's given as a gift, and it grows because God gives the increase. Scripture too. So we rest in the heavenly places in Him, and move as He moves. We will never hear...I never knew you for we are known of Him before we were born.
Phart:
Lol, that's actually the exact thing I've been saying to myself all along. I think this is at the core of the problem in the church today, perpetuated by an un-anointed leadership who themselves do not know the truth. The church doesn't search things out for themselves through the gifts of the Spirit. Instead they become proficient at knowing and articulating what a misguided leadership has taught them. And they call that being illuminated with truth.
This is not in disagreement. What is in disagreement is I'm not like most people in the church who think this happens when and if God makes it happen in you apart from any input on your part to facilitate it, and if God doesn't do that, all is still well because as you folks love to say,
"salvation is soooooo not of works, so it don't matter", lol. Oblivious to the fact that fruitlessness is the warning sign of a failure of belief in Christ's forgiveness and the reality of the coming Judgment when the presence of justifying faith will be measured by what each man has done in his life, not by your gums flapping up and down saying, "salvation is by faith alone".
Justification is indeed by faith apart from works (Romans 4:6), but that hardly means justifying faith can be alone (void of works) and it still be justifying faith. That kind of faith (faith alone--minus works) will save no one on the day of Judgment. Only faith that can be seen in a lifestyle of ever increasing right living will save you on the Day of Judgment.
Prove to yourself that you have and are continuing in the the faith that justifies/saves: Obey God when the temptation to do wrong comes. Don't let your hearts be hardened in unbelief by the deceitfulness of sin and an ear tickling OSAS doctrine that winks at sin. If you do, Christ will catch you unawares when he appears and you will be denied entrance into the kingdom on the basis of unbelief and lawlessness, your life being the evidence of that slide back into unbelief.
Stones:
Right Living is walking morally upright. It's a good thing to live this way, but even the unsaved can walk upright. It's an outward show. Yet the heart can be evil. Evil thinking.
Only righteousness through Jesus makes us perfect for even at our best, we fall short. It takes the entire body of Christ including the Head, for perfection to be on earth. For all the members have a part different from each other. And as scripturevsaysbin Psalms 22, I think it is, altogether He is lovely. We are lovely in Him.
This is have found to be true....the more I tried to obey, the more I failed. When I heard the Word, I died to sin, I became empowered by the Word to live in victory over my failures. Not all at one time, but one at a time as Holy Spirit pointed them out. For this is another truth....we don't judge ourselves, we allow Holy Spirit that working. We stay in peace in our security of position of being in Him. Holy Spirit instructs.
I did not learn this overnight....but through many trials and errors...am still learning. I still forget and have to go back to the beginning on many things.
Phart
2See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. 13But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today,” so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. 14We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original conviction firmly to the very end. 15As has just been said:“Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts
as you did in the rebellion.”[SUP]c[/SUP]
16Who were they who heard and rebelled? Were they not all those Moses led out of Egypt?
Stones:
Good instruction. We are told that we learn from Israel and their victories, and failures.
Has the earth opened up and swallowed anyone for sin or rebellion?
Its a new covenant. A will of inheritance for we are no longer slaves to laws in the house of God, serving a master, but the very children of God, who loves to have His children all around Him. The perfect Father who knows exactly what each child of His needs.
And Jesus gave us His own life blood as a security blanket so to speak, His mantle of covering us over with Himself, the shelter of the secret place hidden in God...to have this new creation life. Back to the garden of Eden, fellowshipping with God. No need of hiding anymore.
Why would anyone leave? Only if they have not really heard.
Those are the whosoevers we are to call out to.
The truth will set them free.
READ A and B slowly 
That is not what I said, implied or asked.....and you wonder why I fire on you....can you have an honest conversation without twisting, embellishing and or doing like you have done in the last three or four posts?
