Wednesday, February 9, 2022
Trusting in Christ to Guide the Experts
This morning my husband and I were discussing the fact that most people only believe people who have been deemed the "experts" in anything. Even in the pulpit, the believers will believe whatever their paid pastor says to them because he is perceived as being educated. Sadly many preachers have been educated in Bible colleges and seminaries have not been educated by the Holy Spirit as the apostles were and as God commanded all of us to be, that is trained by the Holy Spirit.
Most people attending churches do not read the Bible on their own while seeking the Holy Spirit in their own homes.
They count themselves as knowing the Bible merely by hearing a preacher. This "expert" mentality works well for trusting a trained doctor to fix our physical problems but it does not work for those who are preaching the gospel. We must be trained by the Holy Spirit to know God's truth, to be guided by Him for all things in our lives and even for specific answers to specific needs.
I ask God to guide the doctors when I have to see one. I trust the training of the doctor for the knowledge but trust only The Holy Spirit to guide the doctor. Even unsaved doctors can be influenced by the Holy Spirit on our behalf.
Never fully trust a man, trust the Holy Spirit to guide those who have been trained and you will not go wrong.
John 16:13-14 "13 However, when the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all truth. For He will not speak on His own, but He will speak what He hears, and He will declare to you what is to come. 14 He will glorify Me by taking from what is Mine and disclosing it to you.…"
Tuesday, February 8, 2022
God's Love Compared to Man's Love, No Comparison
Measuring the loss of the love of family and friends up against the love Christ has for us, really we have lost nothing when people we love do not love us. We still love them but they do not dominate our emotions. The love of Christ overwhelmed us every day. Hallelujah!!!
We pray for those who do not have Christ and do not understand how to love, they are missing so very much in this life and an amazing inheritance in the next.
2 Thessalonians 1:5-12 "5 This is a plain indication of God’s righteous judgment so that you will be considered worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you indeed are suffering.
6 For after all it is only right for God to repay with affliction those who afflict you,
7 and to give relief to you who are afflicted, along with us, when the Lord Jesus will be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels
8 in flaming fire, dealing out retribution to those who do not know God, and to those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.
9 These people will pay the penalty of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power,
10 when He comes to be glorified among His saints on that day, and to be marveled at among all who have believed—because our testimony to you was believed.
11 To this end also we pray for you always, that our God will consider you worthy of your calling, and fulfill every desire for goodness and the work of faith with power,
12 so that the name of our Lord Jesus will be glorified in you, and you in Him, in accordance with the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.'"
We have so much to rejoice over every single day even through all the trials there can be joy as long as we focus on Christ Who lives in us for those who have been born again.
For those who have not trusted in Christ, there is still time to have what all believers have, that incredible love and peace of Christ living in you. It's not hard, all it takes is admitting you are a sinner and asking God to change you into a new person, then He will send His Son Jesus Christ to live in your body. You will never see anything the same way again, everything will be brand new, that's why God calls it being "born-again."
Don't wait, time is short, Christ is coming back for His church soon, make sure you are counted in that number.
Choosing Companions through the Guidance of the Holy Spirit
God does not call us to be close companions with everyone who says they are Christians. We are to be close to those whom He assigns to us.
The account of Paul and Silas is a good example of this.
Acts 15:36-41 "36 And after some days Paul said to Barnabas, “Let us return and visit the brothers in every city where we proclaimed the word of the Lord, and see how they are.”
37 Now Barnabas wanted to take with them John called Mark.
38 But Paul thought best not to take with them one who had withdrawn from them in Pamphylia and had not gone with them to the work.
39 And there arose a sharp disagreement so that they separated from each other. Barnabas took Mark with him and sailed away to Cyprus,
40 but Paul chose Silas and departed, having been commended by the brothers to the grace of the Lord. 41 And he went through Syria and Cilicia, strengthening the churches."
If anyone in your circle of influence attempts to pressure you into spending time with or working with someone Christ did not command you, then you are free and even obligated to say, "God did not tell me to do that."
We must surround ourselves with those God places with us for His glory and for His purposes.
Never feel bad because you cannot please a family member who does not know God's will for your life. They may not like your choice to obey God and even may not believe that you heard from God, but that is not your problem.
We are not on this earth to give everyone what they want from us. We are here to please God and do His will.
We need to surround ourselves with those whom God has placed in our path. If we do this our hearts will be full and we will have companions who are on the same path with the same goals.
Ecclesiastes 4:9-12
"Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up! Again, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him—a threefold cord is not quickly broken."
1 Peter 1:22
"Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart,"
We will have trials and difficult people in our lives, but if our close companions are those who love Christ we have support for following Him.
Proverbs 13:19-20 "…19 Desire fulfilled is sweet to the soul, but turning from evil is detestable to fools. 20 He who walks with the wise will become wise, but the companion of fools will be destroyed. "
Showing Grace to the Wicked Does not Change their Heart
Isaiah 26:10 "10 Though grace is shown to the wicked man, he does not learn righteousness. In the land of righteousness he acts unjustly and fails to see the majesty of the LORD. "
It is the character of a kind loving person to treat everyone with love and kindness. However, when we meet a person who lives a lifestyle of anger, superiority and disrespect we have met a wicked person without a conscience.
The prevailing idea of our time is that all we have to do is be friendly and kind and the wicked person will feel bad about themselves and change their behavior.
It is the teachings of Darwinism that drives this thinking that man responds to kindness by becoming kind themselves. We are not animals, many human beings can be treated with kindness and use our kindness to dominate and control us without any desire to be loving and kind themselves.
Why do I know this? I know this because Christ did nothing but kindness and love to everyone all the time while telling the truth of the gospel to save their souls and yet they mocked Him, beat Him and killed Him because of their desire to be superior to Him.
Evil people do not heal to become loving and kind merely because someone else treats them well. We see this in children who have been indulged by parents who think if they give the child everything they want the children will automatically respond in gratefulness and love.
The truth is all the children I have seen who have been indulged are more disrespectful to their parents and less empathetic to the needs of the parents.
This is why God tells us to use discipline with children to train them out of their natural selfish and entitled bent.
It is also why God tells us that societies need rules and consequences for breaking the rules. Most people will not become loving and kind when given everything they want, they often even most of the time become more selfish and entitled when there are no consequences for sinful behavior.
We see in our own culture right now in the United States, it is difficult even impossible to have a normal corrective dialogue with our generations adult children. They are rude, combative and resistant to learning anything that demands they change their ways.
The school system in our country indulged them even if the parents didn't, causing them to rebel against their parents training.
We are in the end times now, I see more than ever how we got to the 2 Timothy 3 mentality. The removal of rules, standards and consequences has abolished any good character that could have developed in the children.
Without Christ an adult child will become as sinful and stubborn as it is possible to be as the culture indulges and encourages them to "follow their own heart."
Jeremiah 17:9 " 9The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?"
When mankind follows its own heart it ends up like Adam and Eve, defying God's commands and making devastation of all that is around them.
Families are being destroyed by the arrogance and self-indulged attitude of mankind. Now we have this same attitude in the apostate churches. Its everywhere all the time. Sadly, no one will listen to correction or instruction, they only search out what they like to hear and resist and punish what they don't like to hear.
As in Noah's day, God said it would be in these end times. What happened in Noah's day? Here's the way it was and is now, that is, everyone did what was right in their own minds and no one would listen to truth. Welcome to our present world.
Judges 21:25 "In those days Israel had no king; all the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes."
The lesson here is that Israel was without a king, without authority and because of this they had no standards to guide them. We are living in growing choas and hyper malignant cruelty.
The same cruelty we saw against Christ will be leveled against us from time to time as we move through this life as followers of Him. Ruthlessnes grows every day and will until we come back with Christ as He destroys the evil upon the earth.
2 Timothy 3:1-5
"3 This know also, that in the last days perilous times (ragingly insane) shall come.
2 For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,
3 Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good,
4 Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;
5 Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away."
Isaiah 13:11
"Thus I will punish the world for its evil
And the wicked for their iniquity;
I will also put an end to the arrogance of the proud
And abase the haughtiness of the ruthless."
It is becoming worse in the world but as believers we know Christ is going to fix it all soon. Hallelujah
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