Seekers’ Haven Worship Group
a Quaker Witness
Are you seeking to be good, to do good, to know God, to find heaven? Friends (“Quakers”) can show the way.
We know the living God.
We know the spirit which overcomes the world and lives beyond the body.
As we read the Bible, we recognize that this spirit is the spirit of Christ Jesus, who is written about there. We discover that only this Spirit of Christ, which inspired what is written in scripture, is able to interpret it to us.
It is this spirit of Christ that feeds our souls daily with the bread of love, hope, joy, and peace.
The spirit of Christ, as it lives within us, is a light that reveals all that is in our hearts, even our darkest secrets.
This life has the power to change us – to remove what is bad from our hearts and thoughts and replace it with good. This is the work of the daily cross.
Christ has come to teach His people Himself!
It is Jesus Christ, the Word of God made flesh, who is our primary authority.
The scriptures witness to Him as that.
It is the light of Christ which, shining in our hearts, reveals the evil lurking there.
It Christ’s baptism, by the Holy Spirit and by fire, which is the only necessary and effective means to cleanse our hearts of that evil.
It is on our own cross that we must daily offer ourselves up to accept that cleansing.
It is the power of Christ, the Son of God, that can grow up within us as a new person, liberated from the power of satan to make us sink from temptation into sin.
It is the Holy Spirit, the breath of God, which gives us spiritual life and which is “our daily bread” come down from heaven.
Who are we?
Seekers’ Haven is under the care of Salem-Upper Springfield Meeting of Ohio Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (“Quakers”)
Purity and Holiness
- When Adam and Eve lost their innocence – that is, when they gained knowledge of good and evil, the first thing they did was to cover their genitals. This indicates that sexual purity is the most important, and we often find the most difficult, to maintain.
- There are many sexual sins and all of us are tempted in one way or another. Since most people are heterosexual, most sexual sins are committed by heterosexual people. We deny these sins just as we deny homosexual sins.
- Sin is what we do, but the root of it is within and it is there that it must be rooted out.
- We cannot purify ourselves. We need an outside wisdom and power to do it. God provides this help freely and lovingly. He has given us scripture, written words, and He has given us His living Word, Christ, to interpret scripture in its application to each individual life and situation. Christ is light, which shines into our hearts’ deepest secrets to reveal what is vile, what we hide. If we turn to this light and focus on it, it illuminates the holy way for us to go. Christ is power. His power can carry us along that holy path and His Spirit can purify our thoughts and to leave only those that please God.
- What is sexual purity? We of Ohio Yearly Meeting have been able to define it to this extent: “We believe that human sexual intercourse is only appropriate within a marriage relationship” and that marriage is ” the union of a man and woman.” This is at least the beginning of sexual purity and holiness. Anything other than this is contrary to God’s plan and Christ’s direction. It is sin.