Trust the Lord for Everything

Amen,
One day my husband was out hunting with his brothers and father deep in the forest. In our region a person could get lost for many days, wondering around in circles, sometimes never making it out.
While they were hunting, the brothers went up into the forest each several feet apart to come down driving the deer toward their father and another brother who was down on the road. This method often got them a deer or two for the season, it was called a "drive."

It was becoming dark, so their father called to those out in the forest to come in now. When it gets dark out there the only thing to do is sit tight until morning, there is no way to know if one could find their way out in the dark. To make matters worse it began to rain which seems to make it even darker.

My husband began to walk and walk and walk. He couldn't understand why he wasn't reaching the road. After three times of passing what looked like the same stump, he realized that he was going in circles and would never be able to see the way out, he began to panic.

All of a sudden before the panic became full blown, he saw a light coming through the trees, it seemed to be going back and forth across the trees. My husband realized that his father was shinning the flash light across the trees knowing my husband was lost and could not find his way out. My husband began to follow the light until he reached the road.

My husband has used this real life example a few times when speaking to young people. He was not saved at that time, but God gave him this story for after he became born again as an example to him and others he would speak to.

He told the young people how utterly stupid it would have been to become stubborn, ignore his father's light and continue to wander in the dark forest, maybe to never be found.

I love these verses in the Bible that show us to take each step in faith and that's all we need, that one step. When God is ready for the next step, He will shine His light again so that we can step into the light. When we shine a flashlight on the ground in pitch blackness we shine our light out a few feet but we can only take one step at a time. God gives us one step, he does not shine into the distance for us to see, we must take each step by faith and trust Him for all the other steps, knowing that He already knows whats in the distance, but we don't have to. That's what trusting Him is all about.

Some people only trust Christ for their salvation, but do not trust Him for everything after that. God knows this and must bring situations to our life that force us to seek Him. Each new experience teaches us to build our faith for more trust.

Proverbs 3:4-6 "…4 So you will find favor and good repute In the sight of God and man. 5 Trust in the LORD with all your heart And do not lean on your own understanding. 6 In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He will make your paths straight.…"

Bottom Line: Ask Him, trust Him and wait for the next instruction.

Let The Holy Spirit Do It

The Holy Spirit will tell us what to do and say, along with the way we are to do it. If Christ is speaking through us, who are we to decide the delivery. We have to learn to let the Holy Spirit speak rather than figuring out if people will like us or not.

1 Corinthians 2:16 "…15 The spiritual man judges all things, but he himself is not subject to anyone’s judgment. 16“For who has known the mind of the Lord, so as to instruct Him?” But we have the mind of Christ."

I have been told on several occasions that "we should say it (while sharing truth) in such a way that they will receive it." As though, if they do not receive it, then we must have done something wrong. This is humanistic psychology, that people automatically react right if the delivery is right. This sounds right on the surface, until we examine what happened to Christ. Did He say things the wrong way or sin so that the people hated Him? NO, He is God and said and did everything perfectly, but they still hated Him.

The apostles were persecuted and martyred, not because they didn't say it right, they were persecuted because rebellious people didn't like the message.

John 15:17-19 "17 This is My command to you: Love one another. 18 If the world hates you, understand that it hated Me first. 19 If you were of the world, it would love you as its own. Instead, the world hates you, because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world.…"

2 Timothy 4:2 "1 I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of His appearing and His kingdom: 2 Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and encourage with every form of patient instruction. 3 For the time will come when men will not tolerate sound doctrine, but with itching ears they will gather around themselves teachers to suit their own desires.…"

When we are accused of not saying something in love, and believe you me, they will tell you that you were mean when you say something in the mildest terms, simply to arouse feelings of failure in us and to influence others looking on, that we are what they claim.

Their goal is merely to intimidate you into feeling bad about speaking at all. We must ignore that accusation, knowing that they hated the message, not the delivery, so they use the delivery as an excuse to demean us and negate what we say.

I can't tell you the number of times I have been accused of a mean delivery when all I did was quote Scripture. In other words, quoting God is mean if it makes them feel guilty about their sin.

The devil loves to intimidate and manipulate believers into silence. There is no more effective way to stop the mouth of anyone, than to accuse them of things they are not doing, but their enemy is doing.

Good people who love Christ are sensitive to being loving. Being accused of not being loving makes them stop what others think is the unloving act. Kind people are easily intimidated because they can't stand the thought of harming anyone, which is why the devil uses their own sensitivity to righteousness against them.

If we are not deeply in the Word and led by the Holy Spirit, we are intimidated by accusations of being unloving. The only way we can keep going in strength, ignoring the lies against us, continuing to faithfully speak truth, is if we are impervious to the false accusations, knowing they are merely lies to stop us.

We don't have to worry whether or not others accusations are true, we can go to God asking if it is true. When we have done something that is not right or in a bad tone, the Holy Spirit will convict us of it. When someone accuses us, but we don't sense any conviction from the Holy Spirit, we can be sure that the accusations are false and manipulative.

The more discerning we are, the faster we are going to be able to see if someone is attempting to intimidate and manipulate us. We will also see fewer mistakes in what we do, because we are allowing the Holy Spirit to be the one to speak through us.

Bottom line: Let Christ in us do the speaking, know His word, speak it when led by Him and do not look back to analyze it.

Romans 5:12-14 "…12 And once more, Isaiah says: “The root of Jesse will appear, One who will arise to rule over the Gentiles; in Him the Gentiles will put their hope.”
13 Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you believe in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
14 I myself am convinced, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, brimming with knowledge, and able to instruct one another.…"

Is God or are We?

The fruit of the Spirit is not absence of sin or the presence of good deeds. The fruit is character quality.

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."

When we have the fruit, all those character qualities listed, those who are discerning will see it and it will lead to good behavior in general. When there is a laps on a hard day, then ...we will quickly confess and be cleansed to go onto obedience again.

Even non-believers can do good deeds without the fruit of the Spirit, but their character will lack the real fruit. What they do is for self glory, never for God and rarely for those they help, it is about appearances. Because non-believers do not have the help of the Holy Spirit to be selfless, they must do all their good works for self exaltation.

This is why God says "your good works are as filthy rags." When we are not born again our good works are disgusting to Christ, they don't glorify Him, but actually mock Him because they are done for self to impress man.

Immorality Increasing Exponentially

In regard to the transgender debate, it is not that they want anything they didn't have before. A man dressed as a woman would not have been recognized by most people except those who are observant. They have probably been using women's bathrooms for years and we didn't know it. Bruce Jenner looks very much like a woman the way he is decked out.

I consider this whole mess to be the ultimate degradation of women as objects, cloaked in transgender language allowing for the formulation of hate speech and persecution of those who still maintain a standard of righteousness.

I see this as the devil way of mocking and devaluing women further. When women were encouraged to leave the job they do best, the one that allows their talents and gifts to shine, that being the running of the family household, teaching and training the children and being a spiritual strength, has been pretty much done away with. Woman had immense influence over the direction of the family when she was the "keeper of the home."

Feminism managed to convince many women that they should be like men. They were told they had no value unless they did the things men do, based on money and perceived independence.

This perceived independence was not independence at all but bondage to materialism, individuality and a quest for personal success. It no longer mattered that a woman be in the highest calling according to God, that of being the shaping of the family unit. When the women left the home to acquire more money and prestige in the world, it was a form of abandonment to their family. Now their families were being raised by the state, trained to think the way the state wanted them to think, influenced almost entirely by institutions such as schools and apostate churches.

Those who know the Bible understand that these attempts at intimidation toward believers is nothing more than an increase in ungodliness in our culture. 2 Timothy 3 describes it vividly, warning us what is coming and has come with directions about what to do when we are faced with it.
2 Timothy 3:1-9 "3 But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty.
2 For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy,
3 heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good,
4 treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,
5 having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people.
6 For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, 7 always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.
8 Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men corrupted in mind and disqualified regarding the faith.
9 But they will not get very far, for their folly will be plain to all, as was that of those two men."