Email exchange

It's a great title, by the way. - The Puritan

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The title is interesting, I think. I played with a few ideas but then this one just shouted out at me. It may not have occurred to me, but ...

I awoke this morning from what seemed like a dream drenched night of sleep. The usual story, I was losing the greater part before my eyes had opened. I remember this, seemingly important fragment:

I am in my living room hurriedly packing a bag to go somewhere. It isn't anywhere important, nor will I be away for any great length of time. I have my camera and lenses pretty much already filling the bag. I then grab this big hardback edition of Gail Riplinger's In Awe of Thy Word. Some friends are sat on the sofa observing all of this. They seem utterly bemused that I am trying to cram this large book into an already bulging bag. Their expressions only add emphasis to my understanding that I
will only be gone a few hours. Yet somehow, it is imperative in my mind that I have this book with me. I am even thinking it odd, like you would have the Holy Bible first - yet there is something so important to understanding the Bible in this book that I cannot be separate from it for any time at all.

Paul of England

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I think the realization, which Tyndale and those guys had, that the Bible is contained in itself is a powerful realization. Riplinger, in her brave innocence and also in her dogged researching, presents it in that book. Even if just pieces and traces, it's enough.

There is power in being concentrated. In Elizabethan times they could concentrate on a handful of powerful influences and have all they needed. - The Puritan

To walk after the Spirit

Rom 8:1 There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.

Definition of 'to walk after the Spirit':

To be guided by the counsels and influences of the Spirit, and by the word of God. - The Free Dictionary

This is a very practical take on the biblical phrase to walk after the Spirit. Acting from the teachings and commands in the Word of God rather than from self-will and life in general.

Note: modern versions of the Bible (i.e. versions other than the Authorized King James Version) delete the second half of Romans 8:1 "who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." This has been done on the authority of a scholar named Griesbach. If I fear and revere man more than God I may want to follow Griesbach as well; or, I could follow God and what the Holy Spirit has given all of us to be His Word.

John Calvin's commentary on this verse: After the Spirit. Those who walk after the Spirit are not such as have wholly put off all the emotions of the flesh, so that their whole life is redolent with nothing but celestial perfection; but they are those who sedulously labor to subdue and mortify the flesh, so that the love of true religion seems to reign in them. He declares that such walk not after the flesh; for wherever the real fear of God is vigorous, it takes away from the flesh its sovereignty, though it does not abolish all its corruptions.

John Calvin of course didn't have the benefit to live in the enlightened "Age of Griesbach" and the "new and improved" modern versions of the Bible...