Tuesday, March 23, 2021
Evidence of the Born-Again Experience
Do not be left behind, self reflect while seeking Christ to discern if you are in the body of Christ or if you are in need of repentance for salvation as a tare.
Attending a church gathering or even "God speak" is not evidence that someone is born again.
The evidence of a born-again experience is the presence of the Spiritual traits of the Holy Spirit. The fruit is not works nor what we say, it is the ever-present and invisible but discernable qualities of God's own character.
Galatians 5:22-23
"22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law."
No child of God lives a lifestyle of sin, even if that sin is continual pride and resistance to instruction from His Word.
Matthew 7:15-20
You, Will, Know Them by Their Fruit
15 “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. 16 You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles? 17 Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. 18 A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Therefore by their fruits you will know them."
Authentic born-again believers do not rage against someone for challenging them to self-reflect. Authentic believers do not continue acting in shamefully angry and controlling ways to have whatever they want. It is impossible to be a narcissist when the Holy Spirit lives inside.
1 John 3:4-9
"Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. You know that He appeared to take away sins, and in Him there is no sin. No one who abides in Him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen Him or known Him. Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous. Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. ..."
Those who are not convicted of their sin, even fighting to defend it, cannot be born again, they never knew the Lord as their Savior.
Those who love the Word and Jesus Christ more than they love themselves, are those who are born again.
Romans 8:7
"For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God,
for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot."
John 14:15 "15 If you love Me, you will keep My commandments. "
Notice God said, "if you love Me, you WILL keep My commands." It's not a command or a suggestion it is a statement of fact.
Who Gets the Glory will be a Clue!
Most "Christians" today love their worldly thinking based on the culture more than they love the Word of God. Christ is called "The Word", think about it.
Who gets the glory if Christ does not?
Just Saying!
Embellishment of the Bible Leads to Sin and Apostasy
I have had more Christians than anyone else come against me for speaking scripture and exposing truth.
When they tell me of a false worldly way of thinking and I correct it with the Bible they rage as though I did something wrong.
I didn't rage when they told me their false doctrine, I listened and then calmly told them they were wrong because the Bible says the opposite of what they just said.
Most "Christians" today do not want to hear the Bible they want only to think according to their own desired belief unconcerned at whether or not God said it.
We live in a world of fantasy thinking in which most people, Christians included, are easily offended if someone attempts to bring rational, logical, and truthful thinking to a discussion. They love their personal fantasies more than they care to know the mind of God.
2 Timothy 4:3 "For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but having itching ears, they shall heap to themselves teachers in accordance with their own lusts."
We can discern a false believer though how adamantly they oppose the teachings of Christ. An authentic born-again believer loves to hear about the things of God, although sometimes they have been influenced by false teachers and it will take a strong conviction from the Holy Spirit to convince them the teaching they heard was not from God but from the devil.
I knew a lady once who had attended a "prayer seminar" on how to pray. The seminar was a week-long and the syllabus that she purchased was 700 pages or so thick. She was excited to boast to others that she had taken this seminar and was reading the notebook feverishly to learn every nugget of information. There is no fun in taking such a seminar unless one can boast about it to others, its an effective attention getter for them.
Sadly, she did not need this fancy syllabus, all she needed was the Bible. Christ Himself taught us to pray in a very simple way, that is to address the Father with praise and thanksgiving, asking for His will, not our own, requesting our daily needs, asking forgiveness for any sin in us while forgiving others who have requested our forgiveness and keep us from temptation and safe from evil.
Matthew 6:9-13
The Lord’s Prayer should have been called the Lord's teaching on prayer.
9 “Pray, then, in this way:
‘Our Father, who is in heaven,
Hallowed be Your name.
10 Your kingdom come. Your will be done,
On earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us this day our daily bread.
12 And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13 And do not lead us into temptation but deliver us from evil."
If all we ever knew about prayer was this teaching it would be all we need. Christ kept things simple, they were not complicated, but in pride, many people want to make things complicated to sell books, appear superior and gain a following to themselves.
God is not glorified when we go beyond His teachings, embellishing and expanding them into our own ideas. In fact, this is sin and adding to the Bible.
Deuteronomy 4:2
"2 You shall not add to the word which I am commanding you, nor take away from it, so that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God which I am commanding you."
Beware of those who come with extra-biblical writings to impress others with their false knowledge.
Sadly too, so many people who follow these fancy and contrived ideas with scripture mixed in, are doing it to appear special themselves. They cannot attend these seminars without coming back to share all their new knowledge with boasting as though one cannot know how to pray unless they have attended one of these seminars.
I am here to tell you that we do not need these self-elevating seminars to learn how to pray. All we need is the Bible and the Holy Spirit.
John 16:13-15
"But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you. All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said that He takes of Mine and will disclose it to you."
The Holy Spirit disclosed to us everything we need to know within the pages of the bible. The writers of the Bible did not write from their own minds, they wrote what the Holy Spirit told them to write. After this was finished we had everything we will ever need, that is His Word the Bible and the Holy Spirit to guide every aspect of our lives.
We need not go to seminars that add to what God said nor do we need monstrously long modern writings to explain what He plainly said in His word. It is valuable to go to the original languages from time to time to discern the mind of a Jewish writer to clarify the meanings.
Too many people add their own ideas based on psychology or secular thinking to the Bible to make it say what they like, this is sin and will be dealt with eventually.
Revelation 22:18-19 "18 I testify to everyone who hears the words of prophecy in this book: If anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book. 19 And if anyone takes away from the words of this book of prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and the holy city, which are described in this book.…"
It is not possible to develop a book of 700 pages on prayer without adding to the Bible, even God didn't give us that many pages so why would we need more than what God wrote. Just Saying!
Gaslighting: The Devil's Favorite Trick
One of the reasons it is so difficult to communicate with a narcissist is because their perception of life is almost entirely based on their feelings in the moment rather than the rationable reasonable facts that actually happened.
While listening to another video on narcissism the speaker gave the following example that resonated with me. Here was the gist of the video.
Narcissists can be on vacation feeling good and they will tell their friends that it was the best vacation ever only to change their tune just days later when they are no longer on vacation and are feeling down, then the vacation was the worst they have ever experienced. The responses of the narcissist are almost always based on momentary feelings. I could relate to what the video host said with my own examples.
They do not remember what they said so it is easy to change the memory of it while saying just the opposite of what they said before just days or weeks later.
I remember complimenting a woman on her interesting and functional purse. She told me it was really a camera bag that she thought would make a good purse. I told her it was a great idea because it had all the pockets needed to be organized. She carried that bag around for quite some time, I remember how useful it was.
Just a few months later I asked her if she still had that wonderful camera bag she was using for a purse and to my surprise, she said "I never had a camera bag that I used for a purse." When I tried to describe the camera bag to remind her of it she declared she never had anything like that.
This is only one of the times that this woman attempted to gaslight me, pretending something didn't happen that did happen. Since she could not validate me in any way she had to continually make me appear faulty in everything, even my memory of a purse.
When we encounter this once with someone we assume we forgot or they forgot or we misunderstood what they said. However, when these types of encounters occur over and over again we stop questioning our own recollections and begin to question their sanity.
Since narcissists lie so often they don't remember what they said and even if they did they would deny it to make us look foolish.
We never make judgments about someone on one or two minor events, but over time as these sorts of events pile up to become common we can see a pattern that is called "gaslighting."
When someone operates in the vein of continual competition with us we can never trust them. Everything they say and do will be with the intention of diminishing us in some way.
When these tactics of the narcissist seem constant then we know it is time to move on. We never want the narcissist to be able to begin arguments with us through denial of history. The devil did this with Eve in the garden, attempting to make her doubt what God actually said. Even claiming that God was trying to harm her in some way by not allowing her to eat the fruit from that particular tree.
When we know it is the devil behind the actions and words of the narcissist we will begin to see clearly what they are doing and when to walk away. The devil has a continual trick of goading believers into fights for absolutely nothing important at all, just because he can.
1 Peter 5:8 "Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary the devil walketh about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour."
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