Consider This Also!

Our Text: 2 Corinthians 10:4

For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ, and being ready to punish all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled.

 Our enemy is not visible neither is he tangible. Yet we are so natural that we insist on fighting a seen enemy. That is why we need a person to focus our anger or venom upon. From the text for today, we see that the main battles are fought in our thought lives. That is how Lucifer fell, when he thought within himself that it was time to become as God, same way he beguiled Eve, and Adam fell because they wanted to be as God. Same way he approached our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in the wilderness but found nothing in Him.

In Philippians 4:8, Apostle Paul encourages the brethren at Philippi to rejoice in the Lord always (v. 4), to be gentle with all men (v. 5), and to be anxious for nothing but present all things to God in prayer (v. 6). He stated that as they do these things, or take on these characteristics, the peace of God will then guard their hearts and minds (v. 7).

V. 8: Finally brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy – meditate on these things.

So in 2 Corinthians we see that we have to bring every thought under the government of Christ Jesus our Lord. Any thought not the mind or will of God is found to be exalting itself against the knowledge of God and no one knows God except as we know Jesus our Lord.

And in Philippians, we find that the way to captivate every thought for Christ is to think on those things listed. Only as and when we do this can God by His peace, guard our hearts and minds. The converse is when we entertain wicked, unkind thoughts, we pull out from under the government and protection of the Holy Spirit, the peace of God is not to be found our guard and the devil has free reign in our lives.

If the things listed in verse 8 of Philippians 4 would come naturally, we wouldn’t be encouraged to think on them. Every individual has a duty, a personal responsibility to decide to think on these things, and when negative thoughts are suggested to us, we immediately banish them by using our spiritual sword which is the Word of God. Hence we are told in Hebrews 4:12 that the Word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

The Word of God will show us, if we allow Him, the origination of our thoughts and agenda.  Only then can we properly deal with them so that we carry out only the thoughts and agenda of God. So we can see that our enemy is not that cantankerous person or that other insecure man/woman making us miserable at work or even at Church! The originator of that irritant in our lives is the devil and the one who allows him is our Heavenly Father. How about that!

God allows it all to show us our real selves and to cause us to run into His ever loving arms because only there will we find peace and safety. King David knew this very well and verified it through his several wilderness excursions. He realized that the city walls, fortified as they were could not keep him safe. But out in the open fields or in dangerous venom infested caves, he found safety because he ran into the everlasting love of God. See Psalm 18.

The battle is in our minds in another wise. Whenever you find yourself feeling frustrated, especially if another person Is involved and it is because of them you feel thus, you need to step back immediately and let God be God. Anytime we try to do His work, we get frustrated. As David said in Psalm 18, you can only succeed where He strengthens you for a task.

In verses 29, 32-34, he said “For by you I can run against a troop, By my God I can leap over a wall. It is God who arms me with strength, and makes my way perfect. He makes my feet like the feet of deer, and sets me on my high places. He teaches my hands to make war, so that my arms can bend a bow of bronze.”

Going back to our text, the last portion says, “and being ready to punish all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled.” We have this natural propensity to call out the faults and transgressions of others very quickly and we ourselves are not in the clear. This is not a good thing, but does it mean we should be quiet about wrongdoing when we come up against it? When we see a reproach being brought against the name of our Lord, should we be quiet? Absolutely not! David exclaimed that the zeal for God was consuming him and Paul lived the life of one completely sold out to the cause of Christ, giving no thought for his personal safety or even comfort.

What we are saying is that you begin with yourself. Remove the log from your eye and then you can remove the splinter from your brother’s. We need to understand wherefrom the Lord has bought and brought us, to appreciate the magnitude of the work of grace He has done and continues to do in our lives. Then we need to extend the same mercy and longsuffering to our fellow men.

There comes a time when this stops as was with Paul in Acts 18:6. There will come such a time when Jesus Himself will separate the goats from the sheep. You need to work on yourself with the help of the Holy Spirit to make sure you’re sheep and not a goat! That is the process of fulfilling your obedience. As we are told, to obey is better than sacrifice.

In summary, let us win the war in our minds and the Kingdom of God and of His Christ would be further advanced.

Prayer

           

Help me Heavenly Father, I cannot help myself. Show me your way and teach me your path, that I might indeed be accepted in the beloved, in Jesus’ name, Amen.

#momomily2013

Consider This!

Our Texts:

Hebrews 5:1-14, 6:1-8

Jesus Christ in Matthew 5:44-45 said “but I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you, and persecute you,

That you may be sons of your Father in Heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust. ” (NKJV)

Tying the words of Jesus to the texts in Hebrews, we realize, sadly enough, that our church leaders are actually teaching a gospel different from that of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We are taught to pray against our enemies, that if we don’t get them first, they will get us!

Jesus Christ said if you hate your brother, you are a murderer, but church teaches me to pray that the one who stands against me should die! And yet, while we were yet sinners and enemies of the Godhead, Jesus Christ came and laid down His life for us, in our stead, that we may be reconciled to the Father and saved from eternal damnation.

If you hate your brother, you are a murderer and in Galatians 5:19-21, we have a list of some of the works of the flesh (one of which is murder) which anyone found with any combination of these should not expect to inherit the Kingdom of God.   Please note that even if these are found in you, hope is not lost because there is a way of escape made in true repentance from evil works. If in sincerity, we turn from our wickedness, confessing our sins and seeking forgiveness of the Lord, we are assured that He is faithful to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from unrighteousness.

Jesus Christ died for sinners, we are asked only to pray for them, and we curse them instead. How can any claim to have the love of Christ shed abroad in their hearts if they cannot even pray for one who hurts them, whether in reality or merely in perception?

Now let us look at Hebrews 5:12-14.

“For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God; and you have come to need milk and not solid food. 

For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for He is a babe. 

But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, that is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.”

One reason for this retardation is found in Matthew 5 quoted above. When we are in direct rebellion against the wishes, the heart, the mind and will of our Lord, how can we hope to grow in Him?

In Hebrews 6, we are enjoined to move forward, and come out of the rut of always repenting from dead works! Let us move forward!  Instead of crowding out the Christ element in us, instead of suppressing the influence of the Holy Spirit on our spirit, let us crowd out the self-life and allow the Christ life to prevail.

F B Meyer said of the spiritual man, that he is “the man whose spirit is quick with the Spirit of God, who speaks and wills and lives beneath the impulse of the Holy Ghost Himself.”

He went on to say “But what is tender and beautiful in a babe for a few months is terrible at the end of twelve months, or ten years. And what is lovely in a young convert is terrible in a man of ten or twenty years of Christian life.”

When we come into Christ, we bind our soul powers and allow the Holy Spirit to work with our spirits. Only then can we mature in Christ. You see, a mature Christian is the one who has come to understand the following, among other things:

1.       In his heart dwells no good thought

2.       His heart is deceitful and desperately wicked

3.       His heart is continually wicked

4.       His own goodness or righteousness is as filthy decaying rags

5.       Were there any goodness in him, he could have secured his salvation outside of the passion and death of Jesus Christ. Therefore, to operate spiritually in Christ,

6.       He must be totally and humbly dependent on the Holy Spirit to serve God effectively and please Him.

A carnal or fleshly man has no concerns whatsoever about the advancement of the Kingdom of God. He has no understanding that God has chosen to work His Kingdom out with our cooperation.  A carnal man is like a child who doesn’t know or care about how Mom and Dad make things happen at home. All he cares to know is that his personal needs are met and desires granted.

The mature man is concerned about the wellbeing of his parent (s) estate/affairs. He wants to know what hurts and what pleases them so he can play a part in making their desires happen. We as children of God need to be that way. How can I join God in making His Kingdom come and His will be done on earth as it is in Heaven? This should be our heart’s cry and speedily He will hear and grant our requests by giving us a part to play.

We are told in Romans 14:17-19, “for the Kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. For he who serves Christ in these things is acceptable to God and approved of men.  Therefore let us pursue the things which make for peace and the things by which one may edify another.”

Prayer

Heavenly Father, please help me to pursue the things of your Kingdom and serve you as you will, not as I will, in Jesus’ Almighty name, Amen.

#momomily2013 

Bless the Lord, O My Soul! (Part 2)

Our text:
Hebrews 1:3 "Who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,"
The key phrase out of this text is "upholding all things by the word of His power."

Jesus Christ upholds all things by the word of His power. The Greek here is "the Universe" (Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown's Commentary on the Whole Bible, Kindle Ed)

"When, on the fall of man, the world was breaking to pieces under the wrath and curse of God, the Son of God, undertaking the work of redemption, sustained it by His almighty power and goodness." (Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary, Kindle Ed)

So we are upheld by Jesus Christ Himself, and to stay up, we need to stay in cooperation with His Spirit. We say here that the universe is upheld by Jesus Christ but bound up in there is the warning to us as individuals, that should we cooperate with Him, we will escape the judgement that is to come and should we refuse to cooperate with Him, we will be swept away in the judgement that is to come.

The prophet, Ezekiel, was sent to the children of Israel to warn them in such manner. See Ezekiel 33. So, while He is upholding the entire universe, individuals within said universe still have responsibilities which will determine the outcome of their lives. This upholding being done by Jesus Christ is not a "blanket policy" as people like to think.

What am I saying? As long as we strive with God, we will have struggles that may be insurmountable. In this life, everybody will have troubles but those who cooperate with the Lord will, in the midst of the troubles, operate with the peace of God. He said "my peace I give unto you." His peace, that's what we get to ride on. The same peace that causes God, in the face of all the mayhem, to be calm and collected, to be able to continue to advance His Kingdom and build His Church, that's the peace we get!

Why am I saying all this? Anything built outside of Christ cannot be sustained. Anything obtained or achieved using our "bound up" soul powers will not remain for any length of time. Only that which is built by the cooperation of our spirits with the Holy Spirit, will abide. only the fruit from the vine will remain.

We do all kinds of things and pray all kinds of prayers releasing and exercising our soul powers and when we get results, in defiance to the Word of God, we boast that our prayers "worked!"

We are taught by the Lord Himself to pray to the Father in His name for whatever we have need of. We pray to whoever else we want to, get results, and boast about the results! All prayer should go to God, for man, and against the enemy of God and man, which is the devil.

Nowhere in the Word of God are we told to engage the devil in direct warfare, but we like to do that, not understanding that at such times, we are rebelling against God and playing into the devils hands. And why do we do this? I think it's pride in us that makes us do this. We're not satisfied with the work Jesus has done, we want to know that we have something to do in our salvation and so we begin to delve into realms we are not allowed or equipped to go into.

Let us repent of this action and return to God so we can hide under the finished work of Christ, our Savior.

Prayer
Heavenly Father, please forgive me for discounting the work Jesus did for me at Calvary. Forgive me also for my rebellion against, and disobedience to you. Please cleanse me of all ill effects which I brought upon myself and restore to me, the joy of your salvation, in Jesus name, Amen.

#momomily2013 

Bless the Lord, O My Soul! (Part 1)

We’re still on the subject matter of the troubles we face and the reason(s) for them. Today, I have a few scriptures quoted back to back and I encourage us to read the entire chapters of same.

We have somewhat looked at the 'God' part of the issues of life especially the unpleasant ones and found that He uses them to work out things of eternal value in us. Now we will look at the ‘man’ part of these issues, hence the scriptures quoted below.

1 Pt 1:22 Since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit in sincere love of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure heart (NKJV)

1 Thess 5:23 Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely; and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. (NKJV)

Gen 1: 26-27 Then God said, “Let us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion (or dominate which means to have a commanding or preeminent place or position, or, to have control ), over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 

So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him, male and female He created them (NKJV)

Genesis 2:7 And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into His nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul (KJV)

Psalm 135:6 Whatever the Lord pleases He does, In heaven and in earth, In the seas and in all deep places (NKJV)

Please read the entire chapter 135. We find that both the natural and ‘normal’ events of nature, as well as the un-natural events which we like, in law, to term ‘the acts of God,’ He controls and makes them happen. Catastrophic events are also attributed to Him in this chapter.

Quite a few other verses through the Holy Scriptures tell of all power belonging to God, the earth and its fullness, the world and those who dwell in it, all belong to Him. Even the hearts of kings and princes we find to be under His control. We must remember to balance all this with the fact of our freewill, because I sense the question “why are leaders so wicked, did God make them so?”

Thus far we have established the following:

1. God made man like Himself
2. God is Spirit, therefore God made man spirit
3. God formed (shaped and structured)man whom He had earlier created as spirit of the dust of the earth (body)
4. God joined the spirit and the body together by breathing into man and making him a living soul. By so doing, the spirit and body of man are connected through the soul. The soul is the middleman so to speak, the bridge between two who otherwise could never meet.
5. And so, man is spirit, soul, and body.
6. God gave man dominion (preeminence) over all other living creatures, but never relinquished ultimate control.
7. There is nothing made that was not made by God as only He has creative powers, and there is nothing made that is not held up and sustained by God Himself who made them. This we find in  Hebrews 1:1-4 that

“God who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets,

Has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds;

Who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,

having become so much better than the angels, as He has by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they.

Prayer

Heavenly Father, please open the eyes of my heart that I may grasp what you are teaching me concerning the hierarchy of my spirit, soul, and body as relates to the government of the Holy Spirit, in Jesus’ name, Amen.

#momomily2013 

The Well That Never Runs Dry!

Our Text: On the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink.  He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.” (John 7:37-38, NKJV)

The Samaritan woman at the well, to whom this same world-wide proclamation was affirmed as a simple fact, in a sense immediately grasped the import of His offer because she knew that once she got that water which He offered, she’d never have to come and fetch from that well again.

But whichever way He made this offer, He was making the Almighty Father’s proclamation in Isaiah 55:1 that everyone who thirsts should come get water and he who has no money should come and buy and eat, buy wine and milk without money or price.

And still we run around hungry and thirsty. We run away from the one who calls to buy without money, to drink from a well that cannot deplete and we run to the one who can make rich in this world, but with an eternity of sorrow added to it. We are so caught up in “right now” that we don’t care about the consequences of the momentary respite we get. We think nothing of the eternal or at least, long term effect of the break we’re seeking from the one who has a matchless hatred for us. We need to understand that whatever is not received from the Almighty Father, through Jesus Christ, no matter how innocuous it may appear, has sorrow attached to it, as well as eternal consequences.

Now, to be filled from this well, we have to be emptied of the corruption that’s been in us. This emptying process is gradual, and the pace is partly, if not wholly determined by how much we cooperate with the Holy Spirit in this work. Some things we easily part with, others, not so. Some items we bring with us from Egypt, we don’t want to part with. Then there are those we seem to be unaware that they are in our possession and when the Holy Spirit points them out, we argue! We either insist that we don’t have them (which is tantamount to lying for the Bible says “Let God be true but every man a liar” in Romans 3:4), or we try to justify them! Yet we know that He is justified when He speaks and clear when He judges. See Psalm 51:4. Also we know that by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight.

How about we join the Samaritan woman and ask for this water which gives life and never runs dry. He has provided it for us and made sure that all can afford it by charging no money or usury for it. All we have to do is come to the well and fetch the water to quench our thirst, heal and give us eternal life, rest and peace.

It is always wise to fall into the hands of the Living God because therein lies boundless mercy and unfailing compassion.

Prayer:

Heavenly Father, please help me to draw from the well of living water, in Jesus’s name, Amen.

#momomily2013