This is a Blog for those interested in following hard after His heart. Those willing to strive to live a moment-by-moment life as we go through the transformation process with Him. It is not an easy life, but the Father expects each of us to become an offering for His pleasure. So, if this is you, then let’s journey together hand in hand. I am humbled that you have chosen to walk with me. Thanks!
18 March, 2014
16 March, 2014
Church Is Not A Building
Church is not a building. Church is not an event that takes place on Sundays. I know, it's how we think of it. "I go to First Baptist." "We are members of St. Luke's." "Is it time to go to church?" Much to our surprise, that is not how the Bible uses the term. Not at all. When the Scripture talks about church, it means community. The little fellowships of the heart that are outposts of the kingdom. A shared life. They worship together, eat together, pray for one another, go on quests together. They hang out together, in each other's homes. When Peter is sprung from prison, "he went to the house of Mary the mother of John…where many people had gathered and were praying" (Acts 12:12).
Anytime an army goes to war or an expedition takes to the field, it breaks down into little platoons and squads. And every chronicle of war or quest will tell you that the men and women who fought so bravely fought for each other. That's where the acts of heroism and sacrifice take place, because that's where the devotion is. You simply can't be devoted to a mass of people; devotion takes place in small units, just like a family.
We have stopped short of being an organization; we are an organism instead, a living and spontaneous association of individuals who know one another intimately, care for each other deeply, and feel a kind of respect for one another that makes rules and bylaws unnecessary. A group is the right size, I would guess, when each member can pray for every other member, individually and by name.
This is the wisdom of Brother Andrew, who smuggled Bibles into communist countries for decades. It's the model, frankly, of the church in nearly every country but the U.S. Now, I'm not suggesting you don't do whatever it is you do on Sunday mornings. I'm simply helping you accept reality—that whatever else you do, you must have a small fellowship to walk with you and fight with you and bandage your wounds. This is essential.
Courtesy of: http://RansomedHeart.com
15 March, 2014
The Person With The Spirit Makes Judgments About All Things
1 Corinthians 2:15
“The person with the Spirit
makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely
human judgments,”
1 Cor. 2:14-16…”But a
natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are
foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually
appraised. But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself
is appraised by no one. For WHO HAS KNOW N THE MIND OF THE LORD, THAT HE WILL
INSTRUCT HIM? But we have the mind of Christ.”
Most Christians who are not
led by the Spirit cringe when they realize that your words are somewhat judging
them. They find solace and hang on to comments like this one: “Didn't Jesus say not to
judge others?” Or they would say things
like, “who are you to judge?” Like a dog with a bone they cannot let go of this
verse in the Bible and their stand in their self-righteousness without the
Spirit. IT IS SO SAD TO WATCH AND READ SUCH PEOPLE.
I have to admit
that when I first came to know the Lord, I found solace in knowing that Christ
Himself said in Matthew
7:1 "Do not judge, or you too will be judged.” Because I was sealed
with the spirit, He led me to stop hanging onto a simple verse and build my
life on it. As I let go, I started seeing other verses that I read about but
never truly paid attention to them, as if they never entered my mind. I first
noticed that God wants us to judge with the Spirit. Then, I was floored when I
realized how much Christ judged the people of His time. In fact, I found Him very
harsh at times.
Later, I learned it was not
because Christ was trying to hurt others, it was the Spirit of God calling
things exactly what they were. I could also see how I was thinking like someone
with no spiritual understanding looking for Christ to sympathize with them
instead of judging them rightly. I had a need for Christ to say things like
other human being would, which means you have to downplay what you see to avoid
telling the blunt truth to someone. As human being we do not like being told a
blunt truth and we do not like facing ourselves, hence why we constantly wear
masks in order to protect our fragile ego.
I also understood much later,
after God equipped me with the truth and boldness to share His word, when you
speak, live and walk in Spirit you cannot control the Holy Spirit. In fact,
trying to control the Holy Spirit calling things the way He sees things through
you, is a sin. If we try to sympathize with people instead of holding them
accountable, we condemn them to hell and we nullify Christ’s work on the cross.
Most of the time, we Christians use sympathy instead of the Agape love of
Christ. We also do things as we walk with
common sense and self-righteousness, all to avoid righteous judgement and our
desperate need to please man. When we cultivate
this state of mind, there is no question about it that we are not living or
walking in the Spirit, let alone living a spirit filled life.
I will share a secret with you
and you can take it to the bank. When
you find yourself fighting with everything that you are, the idea of being
judged, you can bank on it that you are in the flesh. Why? Because the
Holy Spirit could care less that someone is making wrong judgment about Him. Furthermore,
when you know you are living and walking in the Spirit and all your judgments
are flowing through Him, anyone who dares judge you will deal with God. Why? Because
once again it is not about you, it is about the Spirit of God in you. In fact, as
you mature spiritually in the faith and you are living the Spirit filled life, the
Holy Spirit in you, shares the fact this natural person talking about you or
with you is simply a fool. And instead of feeling pain for yourself, you take pity
on them for their ignorance. What’s more sad is that you are watching
someone calling himself or herself a Christian and who’s so devoid of spiritual
understanding and complete absence of the Holy Spirit activities, yet they are
no wiser of their own situation.
Years ago, I used to be upset
at people for lying to my pastors so that they can be promoted or just so they
can be held in high esteem by them. One of my pastors made a big mistake that
was costly to the Church and his life with God just by listening to people he
thought were good Christians. In reality, these people were not. One of them
God revealed it to me through a dream and made me confront this person. I used
to be so mad when I knew people lied to my pastor. I felt, by lying to a pastor
you cause him to make the wrong decision and jeopardize the Church. Later on
when God moves to heal my heart because I was mad at these people for lying, He
taught me that while it is true these people were wrong, but the onus was on my
pastor to be living and walking in the Spirit so that these people would not
have prevailed. My pastor would have been led by the Spirit and the actions
taken through the Church would have been different.
The moral of the story is, if
you find yourself like a dog with a bone hanging onto Matthew 7:1 "Do
not judge, or you too will be judged.” If you find yourself putting much
more weight on this verse to demand your rights be respected. If you are a
pastor and you find ample materials to preach about how we should not judge
others, then you have a much bigger problem and you need the Holy Spirit big
time.
This is also one of the reasons
you see the internet is filled with Christian sites devoted to denounce real
Christians, talking about much deeper Christianity. Yet they, in their self-righteousness
have felt the need to blast these people’s names all over the internet, denouncing
them as false teachers. When in reality, the person who has the site devoted to
this so called “unmasking the false prophets” is the one doing Satan’s deed.
It is strange to see that I am
not a minister, God has taught me there are many out there with mega ministry
without His blessings and some with those mega ministries are saved by the skin
of their teeth. He taught me to identify those who are truly false prophets,
yet He also taught me to keep these things for myself. If those with internet
programs devoted to blast God’s true messengers as being false prophets knew
how badly God will judge them, they would shudder right now. While God does not
want me to turn what I know into a ministry to unmask anyone, but, He wants me
to use it on a one to one basis with people that I know for sure are following
the wrong ministers on television.
"The secret of
the Lord is with them that fear him" (Psalm 25:14). Let the Spirit of
God takes you to a higher ground and you will see human being has nothing on
you.
MATHEW HENRY’S CONCIZE COMMENTARY
”1Cor.2:10-16
God has revealed true wisdom to us by his Spirit. Here is a proof of the Divine
authority of the Holy Scriptures, 2Pe 1:21 . In proof of the Divinity of the Holy Ghost, observe
that he knows all things, and he searches all things, even the deep things of
God. No one can know the things of God, but his Holy Spirit, who is one with
the Father and the Son, and who makes known Divine mysteries to his church. This
is most clear testimony, both to the real Godhead and the distinct person of
the Holy Spirit. The apostles were not guided by worldly principles. They had
the revelation of these things from the Spirit of God, and the saving
impression of them from the same Spirit. These things they declared in plain,
simple language, taught by the Holy Spirit, totally different from the affected
oratory or enticing words of man's wisdom. The natural man, the wise man of the
world, receives not the things of the Spirit of God. The pride of carnal
reasoning is really as much opposed to spirituality, as the basest sensuality.
The sanctified mind discerns the real beauties of holiness, but the power of
discerning and judging about common and natural things is not lost. But the
carnal man is a stranger to the principles, and pleasures, and actings of the
Divine life. The spiritual man only, is the person to whom God gives the
knowledge of his will. How little have any known of the mind of God by natural
power! And the apostles were enabled by his Spirit to make known his mind. In
the Holy Scriptures, the mind of Christ, and the mind of God in Christ, are
fully made known to us. It is the great privilege of Christians, that they have
the mind of Christ revealed to them by his Spirit. They experience his
sanctifying power in their hearts, and bring forth good fruits in their lives.”
14 March, 2014
Taking Every Thought Captive
Well, I hesitate about this post
from Ransomed Hearts because of two reasons.
1) First, it seems like
it is geared toward women only. But, in reality any child of Christ males or
females experience spiritual warfare.
2) The second reason I
hesitate is because while the author did not say it, but this idea of
struggling through spiritual warfare with Satan because he is trying so hard to
create doubt in our mind about Christ, purchasing you and I through His blood,
works to a certain extend.
Satan can
play this kind of game with us when we are babe in the faith because we do not
know who we are in Him, quite yet.
If you have
passed the stage of being a babe in the faith, because you have been a
Christian for a while now, yet Satan can still make you doubt your Sonship and
the price that was paid for you and me, then this means you need to get on your
knees and find out what has been happening with you in terms of your salvation.
The only proof that you have been sealed as a born again Christian is that the Holy
Spirit is working in your life. It is His job to witness to your soul that you
are a child of God. So if this has not been drilled down within to a place
where Satan has lost the power to play this basic game with you, then you are
failing somehow or the Holy Spirit is failing. Take your pick
When you are
a true child of God and you are maturing in the faith no matter how bad and how
big your sin is, like David when he was confronted about his sins of adultery
and murder, he was able to fall down to his face and call upon his father for
forgiveness. Why was it so easy for Him to do? Simply because he knew no matter
how he messed up, God would not stop being his father. When we mess up with our
human father, there are always consequences, but the love does not go away. If we
as human being we can love in spite of the offenses and imperfections of our
children, then what about God?
By the same token, I have people in
my family, friends and acquaintances who claim to be Christians, they are
involved in Church activities, mission, and leadership and so on, yet nothing
about them seems to show they have been born again. Yet, they sound good
because intellect, education and common sense are at work. They have this kind
of twisted frame of mind where they put all their stocks and bet on God’s love
to fix everything for them. Some of them actually believe the more you sin, the
more grace abounds so they act as if God’s grace is a license to sin. Most of
these people fall under this verse you find in Matthew 23:15 “"Woe to
you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land
and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them
twice as much a child of hell as you are.” This is a very big accusation on
Christ’s part and some people would tell us that this verse is for those under
the law.
What some of us do not realize is that
Satan has a very big ministry right inside the Church. There is nothing new
under the sun. This ministry of his is to keep people from truly turning to God
while they remain busy living some form of godliness. Satan is very well aware
when we are selling this kind of diluted Salvation and he steps in big time
with these “Christians.” Sadly, we might
not know where we are with God, but Satan knows it. So, with these kinds of Christians,
he does not bother whispering to them that they have failed, rather, he does
the reverse and keep them thinking they are alright with God while he helps
them minimize sin and believe God’s word backwards.
I hope you can see the difference. Know
that there is a balance in the Christian faith. It is found only in Him as we
allow Him to live this life through us.
HERE IS YOUR POST FROM RANSOMED HEART
In order for us to live in freedom and become the women we are to become, we need to receive God’s love even in our lowest places. Spiritual warfare is designed to separate you from the love of God. Its goal is to keep you from living in the freedom that Jesus has purchased for you. Satan whispers to us when we have failed or sinned or are feeling horrid that we are nothing and no one. He is a liar. And our fight for our freedom involves exposing him for who he is even when the lies feel completely true. The battle is waged and won in our thought life: in our minds and in our hearts.So what are you thinking? (Yeah, right now.) Descartes famously wrote, “I think, therefore I am.” I would add a fill-in-the-blank in each phrase. I think I am ______, therefore I am __________. I think I am kind, therefore I am kind. I think I am chosen, therefore I am chosen. I think I am becoming more loving, therefore I am becoming more loving. I think I am forever bound to sin, therefore I am forever bound to sin. What we think about ourselves, others, or a circumstance informs how we perceive it, which informs the way we experience it. Our thoughts play out in our lives."We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." (2 Cor. 10:5)What do you think about God? What do you think about yourself? Who are you? What do you think life is about? What do you think is true? Because what you think informs your reality and has a direct effect on how you live your life. What we focus on, we move toward. What we look at, esteem, molds us in its direction. What we think is true plays out in our moment-by-moment existence
13 March, 2014
God Thwarts Us to Save Us
This is a very dangerous moment, when God seems set against everything that has meant life to us. Satan spies his opportunity, and leaps to accuse God in our hearts. You see, he says, God is angry with you. He's disappointed in you. If he loved you he would make things smoother. He's not out for your best, you know. The Enemy always tempts us back toward control, to recover and rebuild the false self. We must remember that it is out of love that God thwarts our impostor. As Hebrews reminds us, it is the son whom God disciplines, therefore do not lose heart (12:5-6).
God thwarts us to save us. We think it will destroy us, but the opposite is true—we must be saved from what really will destroy us. If we would walk with him in our journey, we must walk away from the false self—set it down, give it up willingly. It feels crazy; it feels immensely vulnerable. We simply accept the invitation to leave all that we've relied on and venture out with God. We can choose to do it ourselves, or we can wait for God to bring it all down.
If you have no clue as to what your false self may be, then a starting point would be to ask those you live with and work with, "What is my effect on you? What am I like to live with (or work with)? What don't you feel free to bring up with me?" Drop the fig leaf; come out from hiding. For how long? Longer than you want to; long enough to raise the deeper issues, let the wound surface from beneath it all.
Courtesy of: http:// Ransomedheart.com
12 March, 2014
An Identity We Received
Identity is not something that falls on us out of the sky. For better or for worse, identity is bestowed. We are who we are in relation to others. But far more important, we draw our identity from our impact on those others—if and how we affect them. We long to know that we make a difference in the lives of others, to know that we matter, that our presence cannot be replaced by a pet, a possession, or even another person. The awful burden of the false self is that it must be constantly maintained.
We think we have to keep doing something in order to be desirable. Once we find something that will bring us some attention, we have to keep it going or risk the loss of the attention.
And so we live with the fear of not being chosen and the burden of maintaining whatever it is about us that might get us noticed and the commitment never to be seen for who we really are. We develop a functional self-image, even if it is a negative one. The little boy paints his red wagon a speckled gray with whatever Father left in the can after putting a new coat on the backyard fence. "Look what I did!" he says, hoping for affirmation of the wonderful impact his presence has on the world. The angry father shames him: "What do you think you're doing? You've ruined it." The boy forms an identity: My impact is awful; I foul good things up. I am a fouler. And he forms a commitment never to be in a place where he can foul things up again. Years later, his colleagues wonder why he turned down an attractive promotion. The answer lies in his identity, an identity he received from the impact he had on the most important person in his world and his fear of ever being in such a place again.
Courtesy of Ransomed Heart
11 March, 2014
Are We Open to Intimacy?
This is why we accept the false reverence—it’s like having a relationship with someone out of state. It doesn’t intrude into your life like a spouse or a good friend does. There is safety in the distance. We secure ourselves against a fuller experience of Jesus’ presence because he is so unnerving. There is no faking it in the presence of Jesus; there is no way we can cling to our idols and agendas. We sense this intuitively, and so we keep our distance without really looking like we’re keeping our distance. By using false reverence. “The Good Lord” probably isn’t going to show up at your New Year’s Eve party.
Want more?
So, when it comes to experiencing more of Jesus in your life, much depends on what we are open to experiencing—what we have been told we can experience, and, what we are comfortable with. Are you willing to let Jesus be himself with you?
From Ransomed Heart devotion book
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