" I am of the opinion religion and religionists compete with Jesus Christ for the affection and loyalty of His saints." Larry Jones
Tuesday, June 18, 2024
Know the Swine and Trust in Christ
We must stop throwing our pearls before swine. In order to obey Christ in this we must know who are the swine.
2 Timothy 4:3-5
"3 For the time will come when they will not tolerate sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance with their own desires,
4 and they will turn their ears away from the truth and will turn aside to myths.
Brothers and Sisters we are alone a lot and when in company with family and others we will be dismissed, ignored and worse gossiped about and excluded from the fellowship of others. Do not despair in this condition, count it all joy and learn to be steadfast alone with Christ.
The pretenders will call you stubborn and even unsubmissive, do not be dismayed, they are describing themselves not you. While they are unsubmissive to Christ in many things they wish to make you look unsubmissive because they want you to be like them, full of worldly thinking and without conviction of anything. They will even make up their own rules that they want you to follow but are against God's Word.
1 Corinthians 15:58
"58 Therefore, my beloved brothers and sisters, be firm, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord."
James 1:2-3
"2 Consider it all joy, my brothers and sisters, when you encounter various trials, 3 knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance."
The more we resist becoming like the world or being intimidated by the narcissists in it, while knowing God's Word and seeking the Holy Spirit, the stronger we will become.
Matthew 5:12
"Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven; for in the same way they persecuted the prophets before you."
Romans 5:3
"Not only that, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance;"
James 1:12
"Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love Him."
The devil cannot affect us or our walk when we are steadfast continually protected and guided by the Holy Spirit.
Hallelujah!!!
Remaining Faithful Until Death
Narcissists need to fight, they are always looking for something to pick on or they feel empty inside. They are this way because they must feel superior all the time or they are an empty vessel.
They gain this feeling of superiority by diminishing others even over the smallest matters.
Satan is the father of this mentality and the manipulator using the hearts and minds of those who have not been regenerated by Jesus Christ.
When someone claims to be a Christian but no change has ever occurred in their tactics or mentality there has been no born again experience.
When Christ comes to live in a born again believer He changes everything about the way they think and because of this change in the mind, there is a drastic change in their actions, their response to everything is different.
When we meet people who have been "in church" all their lives but engage in gossip, mocking, bullying and attitudes of superiority we are seeing someone who is playing a role, they are not people who have been changed by Christ, they only attempted to appear good to others while inside they are "white washed tombs" as Christ put it.
Matthew 23:25-33 "25 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.
26 Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.
27 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean.
28 In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness."
Matthew 23:33
33 “You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell?"
Many people attending the apostate gatherings today are of this sort, full of self-worship pretending to love God but having no interest in obeying ALL that He said in His Word.
My experience has been that when the word of God is expressed to bring someone back to obedience it is met with anger and exclusion with the attempt to silence me through shunning. Many of you have experience this but have remained faithful to God's Word anyway, may your strength become full unto death.
2 Timothy 4:3-5
"3 For the time will come when they will not tolerate sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance with their own desires,
4 and they will turn their ears away from the truth and will turn aside to myths.
5 But as for you, use self-restraint in all things, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry."
Born Again Believers are the Church
I was once told I couldn't know what the Bible says or means because I had not gone to seminary. This was a very big clue that the person saying it did not understand salvation through Christ and the working of His Holy Spirit in every believer's life.
We are the church and my husband and I worship in our home. I speak with God daily and read His Word every day often. I walk with Him as Adam and Eve walked with Him in the garden. I worship in Spirit and Truth, that is in the Holy Spirit.
Today's traditions are based on man's idea of worship and not the Biblical model of the first-century church. Nowhere in Scripture does God say to go to a separate building to pray or worship, the early believers met in homes and the public was not invited to the worship because it was for those who love Christ.
God told believers to "go out into the world" He never told us to bring unbelievers into our worship gatherings until they became born-again and then they came in as brothers and sisters.
The modern church invited the public, they learned the lingo of the gathering and fooled people that they "became a Christian" but were never born-again by the Holy Spirit. This is the condition of nearly all gatherings today. The church buildings are full of mostly pretenders who have never been born again but liked the "Christian club" they joined who readily accept them without questioning them.
Read 1 Corinthians 14 to discover how God commanded the church the church to operate, totally led by the Holy Spirit without a human leader. Worship leaders are not of God, it is the Holy Spirit Who leads not human beings.
1 Corinthians 14:28-30 "28 But if there is no interpreter, he should remain silent in the church and speak only to himself and God. 29 Two or three prophets should speak, and the others should weigh carefully what is said. 30 And if a revelation comes to someone who is seated, the first speaker should stop."
The "church" is not a place or a building, it is the people who have been indwelt by the Holy Spirit of Christ who meet anywhere, at any time of their choosing.
Romans 14:4-6 "…4 Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To his own master he stands or falls. And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand. 5 One person regards a certain day above the others, while someone else considers every day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. 6 He who observes a special day does so to the Lord; he who eats does so to the Lord, for he gives thanks to God; and he who abstains does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God.…"
God's word does not designate a special day to meet, a special place to meet or a special man to lead, it is clear that all born-again believers are subject to the leading of the Holy Spirit. And, while there are leaders who teach and lead by example they have no authority over the others in the gathering, they guide, can be corrected, and are not qualified to be elders unless they are also teachable themselves.
2 Timothy 2:24 "24 And a servant of the Lord must not be quarrelsome but must be kind to everyone, able to teach (teachable himself), and forbearing. "
In this passage, the translation should have been rendered "teachable" according to the original language not "able to teach."
This passage is a good example of how the Bible has been misunderstood because it was translated by those who did not understand the Jewish mindset and who were indoctrinated by their culture when they translated from the original languages into their own mindsets.
When we ask the Holy Spirit to open our eyes to everything that we were taught that was not right it is astounding how many cultural things we were pressured to believe that were not true according to the original languages of God's Word.
My encouragement to you is to ask the Holy Spirit about everything. Any time there is a question about something do not immediately got to seminary graduates, they will tell you what others taught them, not necessarily what God said.
Marriage in a Nutshell in a World Full of Evil
We live in a world in which each gender is being blamed for the flaws in the marriage. We hear things like "the wife isn't submissive" or "the man does not lead", while these things can be true, the fault lies in the bad doctrines in the apostate churches today who focus more on someone controlling someone else than they do on each gender "becoming" Christlike themselves.
There are as many men as there are women who are ungodly in our world today. I know of men who fight the godly women when the woman wants to obey God and I know of women who do the same when the man wants to obey God. It isn't one gender or another, its mankind at its worst in these last days.
In Genesis God said that "the woman's desire will be to rule over the man but he will rule over her." This is not what a Christian marriage should be it is a condition of the fall. And, it is not the way a Christian partner should act when their spouse will not obey God.
Our challenge is to BE the example of Christ likeness no matter what our spouse is doing. We live in a world full of ungodly people who say they are Christians who have never been born again. We cannot change them, all we can do is pray continually to BE what God called us to BE and the proper actions and reactions will follow no matter what our spouse is doing.
It is true that women are the weaker vessel and God told men to treat her with greater care than he would another man. It is also true that a woman should not use this fact to manipulate their husband into guilt when he does not obey God.
Luke 6:27-28 "27 But to those of you who will listen, I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.'
I see no commands in the Word of God to "make someone understand" or to "force anyone to do the right thing." I do see lots of language that instructs us to pay attention to our own walk with Christ and evaluate ourselves. Yes, there is time to tell the truth as led by the Holy Spirit and it may make our spouse angry but our demeanor ought to be with the mentality of helping, when someone will not listen then we must stop talking and leave them to God.
1 Peter 3:9
"Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult, but with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing."
When we keep in mind that we are not responsible for the actions or reactions of others we can observe without sucking their angst into our souls.
If we have not been Christlike then we must confess it to those we offended and to God to be cleansed.
James 5:16 "16Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man has great power to prevail."
1 John 1:9
"9 If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous, so that He will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness."
If we remember to stop worrying about what others are doing to us and begin living our lives for Christ then we will be at peace even if our offenders are not peaceful. If abuse is constant and unrelenting then we are free to leave the room or the house of those who will not stop the abuse. Constant verbal and emotional abuse is of the devil and God has given us the freedom to avoid those who act devilish.
2 Timothy 3:1-5
Difficult Times Will Come
"3 But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come.
2 For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, slanderers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy,
3 unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good,
4 treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,
5 holding to a form of godliness although they have denied its power; AVOID SUCH PEOPLE AS THESE."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)