1 Thessalonians 5:17 Pray without ceasing.
Every born-again believer must establish a prayer life and never let it end. Prayer will get God involved in your life, if you don‘t pray then you take whatsoever the world gives to all its citizens. God has a plan for everything we are involved with and prayer puts us in His plans. Not everything men call prayer is prayer, it may sound spiritual but God won‘t hear most of it. If we are ever going to pray Bible prayers we must take the Word of God praying! Why? Hebrews 1:3 Jesus is upholding all things by the power of His Word. Our words have no power but His do and He gave them to everyone who believes in Him. Religious people like to come up with their own thoughts and words. Nearly all these “prayers” have an unworthy tone to them. They seem to start out saying how wonderful our Lord is and then begging Him to help us worthless sinners. These kinds of prayers are invalid because God doesn’t hear the prayers of sinners. Religious men struggle to believe the Father made us joint heirs with His Son Jesus. There is nothing we can do to make ourselves worthy, only God can do this but we must believe Him. Without faith it is impossible to please Him, faith is simply believing what God says in His Holy Bible. The first time the Bible was presented to me it sounded too good to be true, because I never understood the power of God’s love. James 5:16 The earnest (heartfelt) continued prayer of a righteous man makes tremendous power available (dynamic in it‘s working). Our prayers have more power than any project has to resist them, it is a war of attrition if we hold fast to our prayers we will win. There was a lady of great faith in our church and she prayed for her unbelieving husband for thirty eight years and before he died he accepted Jesus as his Savior. Faith moves the hand of God and it moves the devil to resist the Word of God that we pray. Our prayers will accomplish where we send them as long as we don’t turn coward and give up praying. The devil has no defense against the Word of God, to him it is the sword of the Spirit. Jesus stripped the devil of everything he took from Adam and all he has left is deception. He is the father of lies and there is no truth in him, if you ever choose to believe the devil you are deceived. Ephesians 5:15-16 Do not be fooled but be wise, redeem the time because the days are evil. God gives us one day at a time, that means we must establish our prayer life everyday. Our prayers never change because they are the Word of God but everyday is a new day. God never changes, His Word, His will and His love are constant. The devil changes his tactics but he just recycles things that failed in the past. Prayer changes things but not usually overnight, the devil clings to his deception as long as he can but eventually he must rescind. It takes awhile to establish your dominion over the devil because when you first begin he will put up his best resistance. He doesn‘t know how serious you really are, he will become convinced you‘re a contender when you hold fast your place in Christ Jesus. The devil is weary of uncompromising, committed believers because no matter what he throws at them they will resist him. Brethren please take your prayer life serious because the devil does.
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God is love and He loves everyone. So, what does His love do for all men? Love has several different applications depending on the man and his situation.
John 3:16 God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. God made the first move, He loved all men before any of us respond or not. When Jesus said God loves the world, we know that God is committed to saving every human being from Adam to today. Many folks interpret this to their advantage, they claim that God loves them so He won’t judge them for ignoring Him. As you well know, anyone can make the Bible say whatever they want it to say. Just because God loves you that does not mean you qualify for all His blessings. God leaves no doubt that He loves us, He demonstrated His love when He sent His Son Jesus to die for us. Now when God says He loves us, we know He is speaking the truth. But what about us? How does God know we love Him when we say it? John 14:23 And Jesus said: If a man love Me, he will keep My words: and My Father will love him, and We will come unto him and make our abode (mansion) with Him. When God comes and makes a man His home, He expresses a much more intimate love. Obedience makes you a member of God’s family and He manifests Himself to all family members. God begins to reveal Himself to those who love Him and this man begins to experience the blessings and favor of God. God never has to do one thing to convince this man that he is loved, everything God does is motivated by love. None of the sinners in the world know the love of God and they won’t until they believe in His Son Jesus. God loves everyone and He will love them every day and He will love many of them right up to the time they enter hell for all eternity. 1 Corinthians 13:6 Love does not celebrate in iniquity, but rather celebrates in the truth. God is love and He will never be in agreement with anyone who engages in any kind of sin. God hates sin, His Son had to go to the cross and bear every man‘s sin and physical impairments. He hates sin because it separates men from Himself, we should come to hate sin like Jesus does. Obedience translates into faith and without faith it is impossible to please Him. Faith will bring you to the place where you know and experience the love of God. No one can love you better than God because you were created for His pleasure. Can you imagine how God feels when a sinner turns from his sins and begins to obey the Lord! Luke 15:10 There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repents. When a sinner repents he is responding to the love of God and the Lord calls the angels together and they all rejoice over the conversion of a sinner. The angels know the Word became flesh and He died for all mankind because God so loved the world. Some of the angels have been to the earth, they are ministers for all of them called to be heirs of salvation. They know what Jesus had to endure and they know how hard the devil fought to keep the sinners to himself. The angels celebrate when a sinner repents because that‘s a victory for Jesus. I can‘t prove this but I think the devil can hear the celebration in Heaven every day. Every man has a right to know, is God real? I know He is real and I can prove it. But what evidence are you prepared to accept? The biggest mistake most people make is they demand natural evidence from a spiritual being.
The natural man cannot receive things from the Spirit of God, they are foolishness to Him. You know what’s funny, the people who can’t believe in God believe in ghosts and demons! Some believe in ghosts but they have never seen one. Curiosity will get you nowhere, if you really want the truth one must become totally serious. We must begin with the law of creation. Man was created primarily a spirit, he has a soul and he lives in a body. God is a Spirit and He interacts with spirits, so we must make contact with God in our spirit. The body and soul of a man require physical evidence so they are of no benefit when seeking the Spirit of God. God gives us an element to help us make contact with Him and it’s called the gift of faith. Faith does not require tangible evidence in order to believe, faith is all the evidence we need. If you can believe God sent His Son Jesus to die on the cross for your sins and then raised Him from the dead, then you can have faith to believe everything God has done and said. Isaiah 53:1 Who has believed our report? And to whom is thee arm of the Lord revealed? If you choose to believe everything God had recorded in His Bible, then God will be able to reveal His power to you. Most people get everything backwards, they want God to demonstrate Himself and then they will believe. God wants to have fellowship with you, He wants to converse with you but you must believe this is so. The first time I heard God’s voice I didn’t even know it was Him, I thought it was me thinking to myself. As mere humans we are accustomed to hearing with our ears and seeing with our eyes but not our hearts. Your heart and your spirit are synonymous with each other and it has ears and eyes. If you can see something with your spirit, that’s called a vision and if you hear God with your spirit, that’s called a revelation. John 16:13 When the Holy Spirit of truth has come, He will lead you into all truth, and whatsoever He will hear, He will speak it to us. The Holy Spirit will speak but you won‘t hear Him with your natural ears. The Holy Ghost has a voice and He communes via revelation. A revelation is much like a thought but it enters your spirit not your mind. God has a way of speaking to us like no human can, it‘s not so much what He says, it‘s how He says it. God has a distinct way of speaking like no man can, and what He says always agrees with what He spoke in His holy book. His voice appears as thoughts not common to man and yet easily understood. One day I was praying in the spirit and when I stopped I could clearly hear God‘s thoughts and here is what He said. Renewing your mind will reduce the size of the battlefield. Something sounded familiar about what He said and later I found in the book of Romans chapter twelve what He was telling me. Renewing our mind is a process we use to think more like how God thinks. The more we renew our mind, the more real He becomes, I know Him better than I know my own self. There is only one Son who was born the righteousness of God and He was given the name Jesus. As you are well aware, Jesus did not begin His existence in Bethlehem. When He was born of the virgin He began His life as a human being.
John 1:1 In the beginning was the word and the word was with God, and the word was God. All things were made by Him. There is only one God but He manifests as the Father, the Word and the Holy Ghost. In Bethlehem the Word was made flesh and He is called Jesus. Anytime you read the New Testament of your Bible and it makes reference to the Word, it is referring to Jesus. Jesus spoke to Philip and said, if you know Me then you should know the Father. How do we get to know the Father, Philip did not have exclusive rights to such information. Every believer has a right to all the promises of God. When Jesus became a man, He did not cease from being the Word, the Word dwelt among us. Now according to spiritual law, a man is known by his word. If we want to know a certain man, just listen to him until he reveals himself. John 4:25 The woman said: I know that Messiah is coming, which is called Christ: when He is come, He will tell us all things. Jesus did not hide His identity but only those who believed the prophets were looking for Him. If you believe the Messiah has come then you must believe He will tell you all things. Jesus was sent to represent the will of the Father, He and the Father are one. Put away your preconceived methods of how you think God will reveal things to you. The Lord will tell us all things but it must be on His terms, we don‘t get to make the rules. Only God can do that, after all it‘s His program. God‘s way of doing things is a true blessing, now we don‘t have to figure out how to do what He has ordained for us. When men settle on a certain method of communicating with Jesus, every man will have his way and few will ever agree with each other. This is religion, man‘s feeble attempt at interpreting God and His will. Revelation 2:11 He that has an ear, let him hear what the Holy Spirit is saying. Pay attention to what Jesus is saying here, He said if a man has an ear. He is not referring to our natural ears, He said ear, not ears. A man doesn‘t hear God with his ears, they hear Him with their ear. What is this ear Jesus is referring to? It is the ear of our spirit. All living men have this ear when they are born-again. A few have persisted and allowed the Holy Spirit an opportunity to reveal things to their ear. Most Christians can‘t hear Jesus because they have not been baptized with the Holy Ghost. Once a man is filled with the Holy Ghost he has an ear to hear. The Holy Spirit has a one track mind, He will only speak whatever He hears the Father say. Whatever the Spirit says to one it will bear witness to everyone who has the Holy Ghost. Jesus never intended to be a mystery to mankind, so He sent the Holy Ghost to reveal Him to whosoever has an ear. The Holy Spirit does not have a voice, He uses your conscience to hear what He speaks. Our conscience is the voice of our spirit, so how do we know the difference between our thoughts and the voice of the Holy Ghost? When the Lord speaks to a man it sounds like his own thoughts, but the difference is how the Holy Spirit says things. It is never the way we would frame things, He has His own expressions. If you don’t meet Jesus in this life you will never meet Him! Jesus is looking to meet every man, woman and child, so if you don’t get to meet Him in this life it’s your fault. You will never know how much He loves you and what He had to do in order to save you. He is more anxious to meet you than you are to meet Him. God is so anxious to meet you that He became a man just like us, He came down to our level. So, who qualifies to meet God?
Mathew 11:25 Lord You have hid these things from the wise and prudent, and have revealed them unto babes. The wise and prudent are people who think they know everything, they think they are so intelligent they know more than God. God cannot reveal anything to them because they have no humility. They even go as far as writing books about what they think about God and they call it the “gospel truth”. One woman who claimed to be a prophet wrote a book titled “The Lost Years of Christ”. She claimed that she had revelation concerning Jesus that no one else had, I don’t think even God had these revelations. God reveals Himself to “babes”, these are people who are honest. They know nothing about God and they depend on Him to reveal Himself. All men need to meet Jesus but it must be on His terms, that way men will meet the true and living God. John 14:23 And Jesus said: if a man love Me, he will keep My words; and My Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him. How does a man know if God comes and begins to live within him? When God lives within a person He will surely reveal Himself. You cannot have God in you and not be aware of His presence. God has a very strong influence on our conscience, we begin to have thoughts that are not our own. God is a Spirit and we are a spirit, therefore we can hear His thoughts. I don‘t always “feel“ God but I know He lives within me because the Bible says He does. God comes and makes His abode within us, it‘s all for not if I ignore Him! He hears everything we say and our words come from our thoughts. Perhaps we should be watchful of what comes out of our mouth. God will not be mocked, we cannot hide anything from Him. Ephesians 4:30 Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby you are sealed unto the day of redemption. The word grieve means to make sad or make sorry. How do we grieve the Holy Ghost? Corrupt communication that comes out of our mouth. It grieves the Holy Ghost when we cuss and swear or when we belittle a person with slander and judgement. When you begin to speak evil of someone you can feel the Holy Spirit becoming uncomfortable, but if you persist in your endeavor you will lose your sensitivity to the Spirit. You cannot treat God as if He is a mere man, nobody is worthy of all the praise the Lord rightly deserves. The greatest honor we will ever have in this life is to meet our Creator. When we invite Him into our life He is with us forever so this demands a whole new attitude. We cannot have two masters, we can‘t try to please the devil and our Lord at the same time. We cannot have two masters, we will love the one and hate the other. Hello Jesus. |
TEXT FOJCHURCH
TO 84576 OFFERING DECLARATION
My heart is God’s garden, He plants the seed of His Word. Now the devil comes immediately, he is after my precious seed. So I must guard my heart, out of it flow the issues of life. Prosperity is always spirit, soul and body, so I will have a goodly harvest. |
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