If a man wants to be known as a Christian, he must be willing to walk with Christ all the days of his life. The devil has resigned himself to do everything he can to regain all his servants. In this world we only have two choices, God or the devil, there is no middle ground. People think they can live without Jesus but one day they will realize the mistake they made. I just hope it’s in this life! Just for the record, if a man does not meet Jesus in this life, he will never meet him.
John 6:66 From that time many of His disciples went back (to a time in their life), and walked no more with Him. Some of Christ‘s disciples took offense at His doctrine and they turned their backs, they no longer lived by the Word and they were ashamed to be around Him. According to this Scripture, they never reunited with Him, they walked no more with Him. They went back to the time where they never knew Him, they thought they knew better than what He did. Knowing Jesus through His Word, He would have welcomed them back if they would just repented. What happens to people who terminate their relationship with Jesus? Mathew 11:6 And blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in Me. The men who went back and abandoned Jesus were offended at Him and from that day on they never knew the blessing of God. I know the manifold blessings of my Lord and I don‘t want to live apart from Him or His blessings. God knows the devil is constantly trying to separate us from Him so His mercy endures forever, but it‘s not always automatic. John 8:12 I am the light of the world: he that follows Me shall not walk in the darkness (ignorance) but shall have the light of life. The light of God is His Word, the more light you have the closer you come to Him. We are responsible for the light we have, a man that is hungry for the truth commits himself to what is revealed to him. If a man turns away from what he knows is the truth, his judgement will be greater than the man who has some truth. God will not be mocked, no man will be able to con his way out of his transgression. The only way to avoid judgement is to repent but this can only happen in an honest and sincere heart. Revelation 3:16 Because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of My mouth. What is a lukewarm Christian? It is a person who came to God needing help and after God helps them they no longer dance with Him. A lukewarm Christian has come to the conclusion that they don’t need God and that they can get along just fine without Him. What does Jesus have to say about these folks? Revelation 3:21 To him that overcomes will I grant to sit with Me on My throne. What does it mean to share the throne with Jesus? It means you share with His authority and the Name the Father gave Him. Lukewarm Christians do not have this power, they no longer walk with Jesus. God wants them back in His presence but the ball is in their court, they must make the first move. God will forgive anyone who will ask and then go back to dancing with them.
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God said in His Word that He would speak to His people. When does this occur? Every day! Like a lot of folks, I thought God would half-heartedly communicate to me only on special and rare occasions. I also was under the impression God only spoke to certain or special people, but not everyone. God instructed me in His will towards mankind. Do you know what instruction is? It’s correction! How did He straighten out my thinking? By communicating to me nearly everyday. I was shocked when the Lord began to reveal things to me, I thought I was totally unworthy of such a blessing.
John 16:13 When the Holy Spirit of truth comes, He will not speak of himself; but whatsoever He shall hear, that shall He speak. Who was Jesus speaking this to? Every born-again Christian who will accept the Holy Ghost. The Holy Spirit doesn‘t just fly around the earth seeing who is naughty and who is nice. He has a specific purpose, He has come to take the place of Jesus. The disciples communed with Jesus every time they got together. The Holy Spirit always has a good reason to speak things to you. After I was filled with the Holy Ghost I prayed a lot in tongues because I was so excited about being filled. As I prayed, the Holy Ghost began to give me revelations into the Word of God. After a while, I knew more about the Word than my teachers, whom I had the utmost respect for. When God anointed me to be a teacher I had lots of revelations to share with the people. 1 Peter 5:5 God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble. When the Lord begins to bless you with revelation or anything for that matter, it is vitally important that you remain humble. The Apostle Paul said, I am what I am by the grace of God. This was Paul‘s way of giving God the glory for his new life in Christ Jesus. We are children of God who choose to honor our Father who art in Heaven with our obedience as faithful children. If we don‘t receive what He speaks to us, He will stop speaking until you go back and do what He said but I just wasn‘t sure. In this case, I take what I heard and search to find where it fit in His Word. If I can find it in the Bible I know it was God, if I can‘t find it, I discard it as a personal thought and not God‘s voice. Isaiah 55:8 For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, said the Lord. If you read this verse in the Bible and you back up one verse, God was speaking this to wicked men, not His faithful. God’s thoughts are our thoughts, we can hear what He is thinking. Jeremiah 29:11 For I know the thoughts I think toward you, thoughts of peace, to give you an expected end. We have peace with God and of God. How do we know? His will for our lives is in His mind and He gives us the ability to hear what He thinks about us. I have never heard His voice like a man would speak, but I am a spirit and as a spirit I have heard the thoughts of my Father. Now we don’t need to get hung up on this process, we just need to believe we hear our Lord’s voice and we are prepared to accept whatsoever He says. When you hear God’s voice and you obey, then you are a son of God as you are led of the Spirit. I don’t know of one single vision God gave to a man or a church that didn’t involve the winning of souls. Getting people saved was the sole reason Jesus came to this earth, His followers were sent to carry on His mission.
Luke 19:10 For the Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which is lost. If any church is not seeking the lost they are not of God, they are nothing but a religion. I tried to lead a lady to the Lord many times but she was content to be saved and live on the earth forever. I tried to lead a man to the Lord but he wasn’t having any of it, he and his wife planned to be “gods” on some planet. The biggest problem sinners have is that they don’t know they are sinners. And some of the sinners have their own plan of salvation but God does not approve of it. I tried to lead a Catholic friend of mine to the Lord several times, but he said he didn’t need Jesus because he had never hurt anyone in his entire life and that was his ticket to Heaven. Acts 4:12 There is no salvation and no other Name but Jesus, for God has provided the world no alternative for salvation. God gave us a plain easy to follow plan of salvation and what do we do? Complicate it with our own way we call religion. We cannot minister eternal life to anyone until we receive it for ourselves. No man can have salvation until someone explains it to him and salvation is always accompanied with joy. Luke 15:7 I say unto you joy shall be in Heaven over one sinner that repents. Ever wonder why there is so much joy? Because the devil lost a soul and Jesus gained one! Every time we lead a sinner to Jesus, Heaven throws a party of victory. I think that when hell loses a soul they have a pity party full of depression. What do you suppose the angels sing in Heaven when they hear a sinner repent? Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward man. Brothers and sisters we need to be the reason there is celebration in Heaven! As a church we have tried all kinds of outreaches to get people in the Kingdom but none worked. As a body we need to get bold and go out and tell people about Jesus, we must be deputized as Evangelists. How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the Gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things. People in our city are ignorant of God’s plan of salvation because no one is going to them and telling them. Every one of us who are willing to share Jesus will have the gift of grace upon them and we will experience a power we know little of. May I remind you, God is with us and I believe the gifts of the Spirit will flow with those who will step out in faith. Jesse Duplantis says the reason we don’t share Jesus is because we don’t reckon ourselves dead in the flesh. We care too much what people think of us, when our own concern should be what Jesus thinks of us. Are we representing Heaven or our own dignity? If we have been paying attention to the Word the Holy Spirit has been ministering to us, He has been building us up in order to send us out among the wolves. Please remember someone told us about Jesus and know we must be that someone for someone. At the beginning of every new year people make resolutions that they hope to make positive gain for their life. I used to participate in this ritual but I never followed through just like all the rest of the fools. Often times we take part of traditions because every one else does, and they never work because our heart is not in it. It’s like the old adage; “If everyone jumped into the lake, would you follow?” As born-again Christians we have the power to make life changing resolutions any time we want to.
Ephesians 4:24 Put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. The new man has the power to make changes in his life any time he wants to, he does not need a special season. Jesus said the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak, but that is not a good enough reason to avoid change. We feed our flesh and we feed our spirit. Which ever one is fed the most will be the strongest. Our flesh is fed natural knowledge, this is everything man knows or he thinks he knows. We can feed our spirit the Word of God but not religion, because religion is junk food to the spirit. If we want to make an alteration in our life, we need to feed our spirit and make it stronger than our flesh. Ephesians 2:8 For by grace we are saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. When our faith and God‘s grace come together it changes our very nature supernaturally. We are children of wrath and in the blink of an eye we become children of God. We know God gives grace to the humble and we have faith so we can implement change whenever we choose. Any change at all is between you and your Lord, we ought not change to please men! If a spiritual leader demands you change in order to conform to his or her doctrine, you are listening to the wrong spirit. If you choose to lose some weight, your faith mingled with God‘s grace will empower you to reach your goal. I know for a fact this works because I am doing it to the glory of God and to the benefit of my britches. 2 Corinthians 5:17 If any man is in Christ, by faith Jesus becomes his Savior, he is a new creature and old things have passed away. Behold new things will come because the Spirit brings a new life. Being born-again and becoming a new creature is the best thing anyone can do, but God isn’t done with us, He has more to give us. Many years can come and go from the day we’re saved until the day we relocate to Heaven. What do we do while we await our time to leave our body? We glorify God with our dedication to Him and we do what He asks us so we can build up our rewards. Everything we do for His sake requires faith and grace. Serving the Lord is the most rewarding thing we can do with our life and none of it is in vain. God is the Lord of the second chance, if you get off track repentance will immediately put you back where God wants you. No Christian should ever fear failure because Jesus even died for that too. He knows we are flesh and spirit and He knows the devil preys on weak human flesh so He made provision for our weakness. Paul said: “When I am weak then I am strong”, he said that after he accepted the grace the Lord offered him. Every man and woman will contend with different voices in their minds all the days of their lives. Most people are familiar with their own thoughts based on the activities of their lives. But there is a second voice they hear but do not know the source of and that is the devil. The devil sounds just like our own thoughts but they are always negative and contrary to sound morals. When the devil offers thoughts to a man they are called “temptations”, when acted on they will lead to sin. The third voice comes from the Holy Spirit and He speaks into the heart of a man. He will constantly try to woo men into the will and presence of God.
1 Corinthians 2:14 The natural man receives not the things of the Spirit of God: they are foolishness to him: he cannot know them because they are spiritually discerned. The natural men are people who live solely by the dictates of their flesh. They make all their decisions based on what they see, hear, touch, taste or smell. They live by their unreliable physical senses. These folks are prone to good luck or bad luck, some rely on horoscopes and psychics. The Word of God is the ultimate truth, but to most folks it‘s just plain old nonsense. The folks are attracted to the supernatural for guidance but they are susceptible to religion because religion plays to the flesh. Religion avoids spiritual matters because the things of God require faith and if a man chooses to live by faith he will have no need for religion. Proverbs 23:7 For as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. The present day ministry of the devil is to get all men to think like he thinks and the devil hates God. The devil is dumb, but he is not stupid, if he can sow hatred into your heart he can separate you from God. We cannot hate men and love God, because all men are created in the similitude of God. I have had to deal with the thoughts of the devil all my life, but now I know when he is trying to persuade me to act like him. When I was a boy growing up I was always in trouble because I acted out what I was thinking. I had no idea the devil was my father and he was leading me into all kinds of trouble. But he helped me out of most of the predicaments by giving me some good lies to bail me out. I thought I was my own person, I didn‘t know the devil had such a stronghold on my life and one day it all changed when I accepted Jesus as my Savior and Lord. 2 Corinthians 5:17 If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold all things are become new. When I was born-again I became aware of the voices in my head, I could distinguish between the devil’s thoughts and God’s voice. Now I could choose who I would listen to and who I would obey. I noticed something peculiar, the devil spoke to my mind and the Holy Ghost spoke to my heart (spirit). All the voices sound alike but each had a distinctive manner of communication. When the devil spoke it was always all about me and when the Lord spoke it was always about Him and other people. One day some people did me wrong and I wondered how to handle the situation. The first voice told me to tell stories on all of the guilty, the second voice told me to forgive them and pray for them. I obeyed the latter voice, I obeyed God and He gave me the grace I needed to overcome. Try the spirits whether they be of God or not. God has empowered you to discern the truth. |
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