Nearer to Christ

Resolution

You Gave Me Love

I'm rediscovering some of the videos I put together 10 years ago.

Prayer of Hope

The Jewel

Give Thanks

We Need Not Work

If we have worked so hard in the past to gain victory, the enemy would now have us doing nothing at all.  The life of faith is a life of activity, although there is an immense difference in work that is an expression of our faith and work that is trying to produce faith.  The life of Christ within us is always active.  “My father is working until now, and I Myself am working.” (John 5:17)  As we allow this life to flow, we will be very active.  Those who live in passivity, never allowing the life of Christ to be expressed through them, are simply not abiding.

…for the abiding Christian…there will be extended periods in which no activity is overtly seen, but in the deepest parts of his being he is being strengthened for the day when life within is made apparent in fruit for those around him.  Let me remind you, too, that God does not intend to resolve every manifestation of the flesh through a quick answer…we will allow the Lord as much time as He sees fit to make us mighty oaks.  However, the passive believer who never shows manifestations of life is not abiding, no matter how spiritual he may sound.  True faith cannot help but produce work; it is inevitable and cannot be blocked, for faith is from God and possesses His power.

Just as a tree, by the power of its life, can break in two a mighty boulder beside which it is planted, so faith is the power within you which will overcome all obstacles.  It is not from you but from Him.  Therefore, if you possess faith, it will be manifested.  We will not allow the enemy to stifle our faith through the deception of inactivity.

One of the worst thoughts I have ever heard expressed is that “those who teach ‘abiding’ are teaching passivity.”  I am not sure whether that comes from one who is misguided about what abiding is, or whether it comes from one who is mad at God about something…perhaps both.  Since abiding in Christ is being so connected to Him that His life can, and will, flow through me…it is inevitable that “my life” will be an active life, but it is not me, but Him.

I summarize the most outstanding points for me as such:

·         The life of faith is a life of activity.

·         The life of Christ within us is always active.

·         As we allow this life to flow, we will be very active.

·         True faith cannot help but produce work.

·         Faith is from God and possesses His power.

·         Faith is the power within you which will overcome all obstacles.

·         It is not from you but from Him.

·         If you possess faith, it will be manifested.

Faith

  "Faith is an organ of the Spirit allowing us to receive whatever God is doing.  Faith is a wonderful thing, something that every believer possesses.  It takes the pressure off us to perform and initiate His works, and places emphasis on God, the Creator of the actions."

Watchman

Public Opinion

It is Jesus

Vengeance

Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written,“Vengeance is Mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” --Romans 12:19

Vengeance is an interesting thing in that it promises satisfaction, and yet it brings emptiness and a depletion of spirit that punishes. No vengeful people have a lift in their spirit, a twinkle in their eye, or a bounce in their walk. No! Time and experience have rendered their verdict: Walking in the flesh does not work, nor is it an option, because to participate will increase misery; quite simply, man is not suited for it. Why do we have thoughts of vengeance? Why do we want to get even? What satisfaction could come from seeing the downfall of another? 

Vengeance seems to offer us the morbid satisfaction of relieving our anger, revealing our superiority, punishing those who have wronged us, making others share in the misery they have caused, returning pain to those who offend, and making life unbearable for those we hate.In short, vengeance makes others pay. However, vengeance is a liar with empty promises! It is a leech that sucks out all we are in Christ insofar as compassion, love, and forgiveness are concerned. Vengeance depletes, starves, and in the end poisons us. The world created and held together in Christ does not support the success of vengeance. Our souls and spirits rebel and are repulsed at its slightest introduction. To walk in vengeance is to walk in self-punishment.We are not suited for it! Vengeance is not the way to life.

Performance and Failure

The Multi-Faceted God

May it never be! Rather, let God be found true, though every man {be found} a liar, as it is written, THAT THOU MIGHTEST BE JUSTIFIED IN THY WORDS, AND MIGHTEST PREVAIL WHEN THOU ART JUDGED.--Romans 3:4

Matthew 6:26, “Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns, and {yet} your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they?”

Yet I have watched birds starve to death in the winter months.

Matthew 6:28, 29, “And why are you anxious about clothing? Observe how the lilies of the field grow; they do not toil nor do they spin; yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory did not clothe himself like one of these.”

In the interior of Liberia the locals were afraid to return to church, for they did not have clothes. They had lost them in the war.

Proverbs 22:6, “Train up a child in the way he should go, even when he is old he will not depart from it.” Many, many parents have done all that they knew to do, and yet their children departed from the Lord.

Psalm 121:7, “The LORD will protect you from all evil; He will keep your soul.”

History is replete with the stories of millions of martyrs that died at the hands of evil men.

I could continue with the illustrations, but I am sure you get the point. Let God be true, but what do the facts say? The simple answer is that you must believe God when bad happens. The emphasis is on belief, and yet believing is exactly what the believer was doing, believing God for food, clothing, protection, and a child that would be blessed. Is the Christian to believe God’s words or believe that God causes all things to work together for good? Which is it?

We live in a world of dimensions. I have seen Mount Everest! I have, and I will argue the point; I saw it with my own eyes in Nepal. However, the mountaineer would beg to differ, saying that I only saw one side of Mount Everest, and therefore I did not really see it. To see it, I would have to walk around it, climb it, and possibly look under it. I am, to them, less than a novice. I bumped into former President Ford one day. As I was leaving the restroom he was entering. “I know President Ford! President Ford has met me.” Do I? Has he? Is it not interesting that as dimensional creatures we insist on being non-dimensional or one-sided in our views? If someone is employed to paint and it is discovered that he is not a good painter, he is dismissed with the words, “You are worthless!” Is he worthless? Later that same person attends university, becomes a physicist, then a Nobel Prize recipient. Yes, but he could not paint; he was labeled worthless. My point is that Church history is replete with examples of teachers, scholars, and preachers that are non-dimensional when it comes to God. They have never walked around God, so to speak. They only see one side of Him, and if something comes at them from another side, they manipulate it until it fits their single-minded view of Him. Ecclesiastes 11:5, “Just as you do not know the path of the wind and how bones {are formed} in the womb of the pregnant woman, so you do not know the activity of God who makes all things.” Some evangelists, teachers, and others only see the provision side of God. They preach Him as the great general store in the sky. Whatever someone may want is his if he has the faith. Their airplanes, diamonds, and wealth prove it. If that is their single-sided view of God -- God created man to give to him, and that is all God does -- then this single-sided view will eventually drive them into deception, manipulation of Scripture, self-image protection, and shipwreck. Of course they will be presented with Scriptures that are “outside the box” of what they see God as being. If a person sees God non-dimensionally as the Great Physician only, a variety of blame will be heaped on the sick, illness in his own family will have to be spiritualized away, and again more Scripture distorted and twisted.

What glasses do we wear when looking at God? Can we take time to walk around the mountain, climb on top, and mine underneath? If our awareness of God embraces the fact that He is multi-faceted, we will see each Bible passage as part of a giant jigsaw puzzle that reflects God. We will see that all things work together because God is in all things. We will see that only God can do what God does. 

I like kit cars. They come in hundreds of pieces in a huge container with three-dimensional diagrams; a one-dimensional diagram would be useless. The job is to use a variety of tools to put together the automobile, using the exact tool for each exact job. It is impossible to find the one tool that will do everything. Oh, people claim to make all-purpose tools! However, at some point the user throws it to the ground in disgust.

The day Jesus received me I was in pieces. No one would have imagined that I was made in His image! Who would think I was a Son of God, holy, righteous, acceptable, and equipped for every good work? He set about to put me together. The tool that He used would be the perfect tool for that day and purpose. It would have been the wrong tool for the next day, but He does everything in order. My multi-dimensional God has such a vast array of tools, every one true and every tool absolute. In His tool chest are sickness and health, wealth and poverty, good and bad, mercy and judgment, love and hate, wounding and healing, broken relationships and mended ones, adornment and nakedness, excluded and included, decreasing and increasing, pruning and reaping, giving and taking, drought and rain, sanity and insanity, rebelliousness and compliance, death and life, and I could go on. If someone does not believe that these are His tools, I can show a Scripture for each one that proves they are. Job is a good example in that God used good and bad to perfect him. Hebrews 1:3, “And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representationof His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power.” Jesus was never one-sided. He was putting every man back together. See Him use a unique tool on a unique person. He was love but not the one-dimensional love that man has and perceives. 

Stop seeing so one-dimensionally! Stop protecting your limited view of God! Start trusting that God is putting you together. To begin your journey out of a flat world, start by taking a walk around Jesus. If a passage does not make sense to you, if it has not been your experience or you do not see how it fits into the whole, do not just stand there! Walk around Jesus and look at Him from a different angle; it all fits perfectly. The passages mentioned at the beginning of the article are for a particular time, to accomplish a particular task in our lives. If a passage applied all the time we would be thwarted and never grow into the revelation of Christ. I am not copping out! Look at your own life! In times of darkness and need you grew up in Christ. Generally Christians define love one way, but for Jesus every act--from cleansing the temple to healing the leper--was one of love. James 1:17 reminds us that “every good thing bestowed and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation, or shifting shadow.”

- Mike Wells

Does Disobedience Disqualify You from God's Blessing?

Romans 5:19 deals with this once and for all —> Through one man's (ADAM's) disobedience, many (WE) were made sinners. And through one man's (JESUS') obedience, many (WE) were made righteous.

It wasn't our disobedience that made us sinners.
It wasn't our obedience that made us righteous.

As soon as you're born again, by accepting Jesus as your substitute, you become the RIGHTEOUSNESS of God, seated with Christ! And no sin, no mistake, no "disobedience", can eliminate you from your seat of righteousness or the blessings that come with it!

We Don’t Always Want What We Want

I am traveling through the south of Florida at the moment, having spent the weekend in Miami, and now headed up to the Sarasota/Tampa area for the weekend. Yesterday, I had an amazing lunch conversation reconnecting with someone I’d visited several years ago. He’d come here to plant house churches and ended up discovering that the church was more wild and wonderful than that could contain as well. He, too, is learning that life moves at the speed of relationships.

While we were eating, I sat facing the wall pictured above. We were in a restaurant called Ford’s Garage that commemorates the life of Henry Ford, who had a summer home near here, which just happened to be right next door to a summer home for Thomas Edison. Can you imagine the conversations they must have had together? Oh, to have been a fly on that wall…

Anyway, I was taken with this quote of Henry Ford’s: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” He had dreamed up something so much better, what people didn’t even know they wanted, and his automobile has taken over the world.

I wonder how many of our prayers sound like that to God. We are asking him for the thing we think we want when he has things in mind for us that are more wonderful than we can even conceive. Most of my prayers used to ask God to do things that would make me comfortable or happy, and he had things in mind that would radically change the way I think and live in the world. I’m so glad God did not answer most of my prayers the way I wanted him to. His ideas have proved to be so much better and higher than mine.

It made me think of my favorite line from the movie, Bruce Almighty. “Since when does anyone have a clue about what they want?” So true! We think we do, but then God works in other ways.

I’ve long thought that’s what Ephesians 3:20 is talking about. “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever! Amen.”

It doesn’t mean if I’m asking him for a three-bedroom house, he wants to give me a five-bedroom one. It merely means that what we want now is rarely what we would really want if we could see our lives through God’s eyes. We want comfort, ease, and a pain-free existence, he wants to invite us into the adventure of a lifetime that transcends all of those things to embrace his reality in a way that changes how we live in a broken world.

As I’ve continued on this journey, I am much more aware that what I thought I wanted wasn’t what I really wanted. Almost twenty years ago, I found myself saying to a friend, “Over the past few years, God has defied to the nth degree every expectation and desire I had for my life.”

“Is that a good thing?” he asked me.

I found myself answering, “It’s the best thing!” And it has been, though it often takes the added perspective of two or three years to pass so I can look back and see that what he was doing was far better than what I had in mind. It has led me on a path to The Deepest Freedom—freedom from the tyranny of my own best wisdom or my desires.

I’m glad that Jesus said the Father knows what we need even before we ask him. I’m relieved by that because I’m sure many of my prayers don’t make much sense to him. Now, if we could just relax and trust that in the present, we would be so much more at peace.

- Wayne Jacobsen

I Know Him – Case Closed!

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today, yes and forever.

Hebrews 13:8 (NAS)

We get many prayer requests because of our Prayer Community site. If you haven’t noticed it, investigate and become a part’it is totally private and your anonymity is secure. The neat thing is that you can be completely truthful and tell everything’your deepest needs/hurts.

There are many concerns for healing and salvation mentioned with these requests, but there’s one that appears more than any other: “I want a closer relationship with the Lord. How do I get that? What do I need to do?”

Let’s just think about closeness in relationships for a minute. I’ve told you about Wesley, our mostly Jack Russell terrier. He rarely lets me out of his sight. Why? Well, the main reason, I’m confident, is because I know where his food dish is, where the food is, and can tell time. But, Wes knows me. We do a lot of things together. He has come to know that I will let him sit with me, that I will walk with him around the block, that I let him go in the car with me, that I love to pet him, that I laugh at his antics, and will play with him. Yes. Wes knows me. We have a very close relationship.

Hopefully there is someone in your life who has the ability to calm you when things go wrong just by listening to you and saying, “It’s going to be all right. I’ll be here with you.” (This defines security and is to be conveyed most importantly by your wife or your husband. That’s why “listening” is one of the most important facets of a marriage.) There may be someone in your life who has been your main confidant over the years and you know’unequivocally’that person would never betray a confidence. I know him. He would never do that. Case closed!

But how do close relationships come about? It is so simple’spending time with each other, doing things together, being transparent and trusting each other with the deepest thoughts’secrets’in your life. You build trust through experiences and find that this person has those two qualities that spell closeness: Loyal and Truthful.

How well do you know Jesus Christ? Is He a loyal Friend? Oh, is He loyal! That’s one of His main characteristics, isn’t it? How about truthful? Is He truthful with you? He can be no other way! This is part of His being! God cannot lie![1] So, when someone shares something with you that brings into question His truthfulness or His loyalty, it’s your turn to say’emphatically’I know Him. He is not that way! Case closed! If I cannot trust Him completely’without a shadow of doubt’then I cannot trust Him at all! One episode of His failure to be truthful will shatter my trust for Him. That simply cannot be!

How do you establish a close relationship with Jesus? By getting to know Him’spending time with Him’sharing yourself with Him’and listening as He shares with you’and believing what He tells you. “But Anabel, He doesn’t talk to me!” Oh, yes He does. He has “written” a love letter to you’the Bible’choose those special parts that reveal His love to you and read them again, and again, and again.

Read Isaiah 40:11. Picture it. Put yourself in that scene.

Read Matthew 11:28-20. Picture it. Are you there?

Read Ephesians 3:17-21. Read it again. Is He talking to you?

Read Deuteronomy 31:8. Is this truth? Then walk in it.

Lovingly, Anabel

By Anabel Gillham on October 12, 2019

All-Seeing Presence

A Gentle Friend

A Gentle Friend


I Kings 19: 11-12

And as Elijah stood there the Lord passed by,

and a mighty windstorm hit the mountain;

it was such a terrible blast that the rocks were torn loose,

but the Lord was not in the wind.

After the wind, there was an earthquake,

but the Lord was not in the earthquake.

And after the earthquake, there was a fire,

but the Lord was not in the fire.

And after the fire,

there was the sound of a gentle whisper.

* * * * *

How did Elijah know that now was the time to come out from behind the rock where he was hiding and talk to the Lord? The Bible says, When Elijah heard it (the gentle whisper), he wrapped his face in his scarf and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave.

Elijah knew God. He had seen his God perform in magnificent, powerful acts!It was Elijah who announced the awesome edict from God:. . . . surely there shall be neither dew nor rain these years . . . and there wasn’t. God followed through: He stopped the rain!

Elijah saw with his own eyes the bottomless flour canister and the oil pot that never ran dry. He was there when God breathed life back into the widow’s son.

God sent fire from heaven and burned up the saturated bullock and all of the wet wood and licked up all of the water out of the trenches that Elijah had filled–He even burned the rocks and the dust!Elijah was there. He saw God do it and heard the people yelling at the top of their voices, Jehovah is God! The Lord, He is God!

And when God decided that it was time for the rain to fall, He split open the heavens and the rain fell. Oh, yes. Elijah knew God to be a mighty God! Why did he feel safe, like it was all right now–to go out when he heard a gentle whisper?

I don’t know, but I wonder if it was because God wasn’t trying to impress anyone that day. It was just His friend, Elijah, and Himself. You’ll think I’m strange when I say that maybe–just maybe–God is like the great wizard in The Wizard of Oz. Oh, not that He is impotent or manipulative.He does a lot of impressive things, but when you get to know Him, one on one, He’s gentle.

A gentle person. When He touches you, His touch is gentle. When He speaks to you, His words are gentle. Gentle–as a dad with his newborn son. Gentle–as a little child reaching out to touch a butterfly. Gentle–as a soft, spring breeze. Gentle–like a mama dog with her litter of pups.

He doesn’t really want me to sit in the grandstand all of the time, watching His glorious acts of power and bragging on Him. He doesn’t want me to always be needing Him to change the water into wine or feed five thousand with five hard little loaves and two little fish. He simply wants to walk with me and talk with me. He wants us to be Friends. Friends! Incredible!

You don’t yell at me, God. You don’t get frustrated and stomp around in Heaven. Even when You scold me, You do it gently. You watch and You know when a tiny sparrow falls. You are a gentle Shepherd. You stooped down, picked up the dirty, frightened little lost lamb, carried him in Your arms–and he wasn’t afraid any longer. I can see that tiny animal snuggling down in Your cloak and Your strong arms holding him–gently. I wonder if You didn’t nuzzle Your chin in the heavy, curly wool on his head? Yes. You are a gentle God.

Oh, I thank You so much for Your gentleness. That takes away my fear–my hesitancy at being in Your presence. I’ve been guilty of putting the wrong inflection in Your voice–making You angry or judgmental. But, God, I know You better now. You didn’t shout at the fierce wind and the tumultuous waves of the raging sea. You spoke gently and said, “Peace. Be still.”You spoke gently to John about Your mother, gently to the lepers, gently even to the embarrassed harlot.

I have been so unfair to You. I have longed for gentleness. I have cried for gentleness–imagined gentleness–and You have been right here all the time. I should have known. Thank You, gentle Jesus, for being my Friend.

His voice is for the ear of love,

and love is intent upon hearing

even the faintest whispers.

- Anabel Gillham

Working for God

Are you busy “working for God” at your church, in your community, or with a ministry? If so, be careful not to let the work define you or become the source of your self-esteem. I’ve met many Believers who “work for God” and get their need for acceptance and self-acceptance met through their work. In fact, they need the work. Take the work away from them and they’ll become depressed. You see, Jesus wasn’t the source from whom they were generating esteem; it was the work.

Paul’s work was removed from him the last few years of his life. His goal for evangelizing Spain disappeared. He was a goal-oriented, hard worker, but he didn’t get depressed over the lost goal. He wrote his most encouraging letters from prison, a place of “no achievement.” He was able to do this because he wasn’t satisfying his need for self-esteem through achieving tangible goals. His overriding, major goal was “that I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection” (Philippians 3:10). He drew even closer to this goal while experiencing the inactivity of prison life.

Again, I challenge you, Christian. What is the source of your acceptance of yourself — your self-esteem? How are you getting your needs satisfied on earth? What or who is the source of your purpose in life? How much can the Lord remove from you and you’ll continue to praise Him and rest in the passionate acceptance that is yours in Christ?

Why are you here? Some say it’s to “work for God.” Consider what my friend Tom Grady asks,

“Is that the reason you and your spouse had kids? So they could shoulder part of the work around the house? I imagine you planned for children so you could experience the joy of loving them and receiving love from them in return. To delight in them and in their victories, and to comfort them in their defeats. In short, to develop an intimate relationship with them.”

That’s the kind of relationship God wants with you!

The notion that God recreated you in Christ to get more work out of you is such a low view of our Father. God wants you to adopt Paul’s life verse: “that I may know Him [Christ]” (Philippians 3:10). As you pursue that goal, spiritual fruit will begin to drop off of you to the glory of Christ. Men asked Jesus, “What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?” Jesus answered, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent” (John 6:28,29).

- Bill Gillham

Lost Sting

No Other Way

Grapes

The Autistic God

Remember that you molded me like clay. Will you now turn me to dust again? Did you not pour me out like milk and curdle me like cheese, clothe me with skin and flesh, and knit me together with bones and sinews? You gave me life and showed me kindness, and in your providence watched over my spirit. --Job 10:9-12

I enjoy spending some time with acquaintances who are autistic; typically those with autism are very unique and, in my opinion, way beyond the norm for compulsive thinkers. They lock into something and their minds do not have the ability to shift to anything else. One friend had locked into turtles; everything was about turtles: must find a turtle, must hold the turtle, and must examine the turtle. After catching a turtle, he scanned every section of the turtle, his eyes moving like a computer scanner. In the end, he put it down and drew a perfect picture of a turtle. He knew every line and dimple. Now, man is made in the image of God. Look at any man and you learn a secret or two about God. After watching the man with a turtle, I had an insight into God. God is Autistic! I could just imagine God making the turtle, thinking of every detail, locking into it, thinking of everything, how it would breathe, how it would move, what it would eat, and creating all that it needed. I could just see God locked in. It was then that I understood a bit more about the exactness of creation, that every hair of my head was numbered, and that so much detail had gone into my life. Everything has been perfect. All of creation is perfect. He has given me exactly--yes, exactly--what I have needed: in sickness, in health, in poverty, in struggle, and in stress, everything perfectly!

This brings me to another point. We see the perfection and how it must work. We cannot change it. I am often asked, “How can you believe in a God who allows suffering?” My response is, “How can you believe in man who causes the suffering?” AIDS is not the judgment of God; it is the judgment of man. By playing God and refusing to recognize Him and His perfection, man has done it all, killing many people. God has made us perfectly, and sin is a foreign resident in the body. All of the glue (Jesus) holding man together will attempt to repel it. It is in this condition that man complains about God, and yet everything that has been permitted into our lives has been the perfect thing, exactly what we need. 

- Mike Wells

Living Outside The Circle

But He is unique and who can turn Him?--Job 23:13

God is unique! You are His unique creation! Do you accept your uniqueness? In the course of my life as a believer, I have met people who would be considered by most to be “odd.” God creates man, man bands together, man determines his concept of what is normal using the criteria of the similarities shared by the majority, and some are left outside the circle of behaviors that constitute this notion of normalcy. Are you one of those out-of-the-ordinary people? Do you laugh at inappropriate times or talk when you should listen? Spill your deepest secrets to strangers? Did you have a ponytail when others did not or a shaved head when others had a ponytail? Are you loud in a crowd? Quiet at a party? When everyone is wearing suits, do you show up in a tee shirt? Do you laugh though no one understands your humor? Do you make people uncomfortable with the way you rearrange your silverware and organize your condiments in the restaurant? Do you invite people over and proceed to make them sit and listen to your latest recording of locomotive trains as loudly as the stereo will play?  Do you feel like you have to play the people game every day? Are you the odd one out? Do you live outside the circle of what is typified as normal? If so, I welcome you. There is plenty of room in the family of God for you. Please do not go away! We need you so much to bring color into our world. We need you to remind us that God creates outside the circle. We see God in you. Let Him shine through your uniqueness, and do not change!

I will tell you of one of God’s favorites who lived outside the circle, an odd man. It was a time in Israel when the people needed a deliverer. The odd one, David, was overlooked as a potential candidate and directed to remain in the fields. The odd one was not to speak, though it was he for whom the prophet was looking. The odd one believed God, in Whom he had found favor. The odd one slew the giant, and yet later when he found his enemy in a cave, he refused to slay him but instead cut a piece of cloth from his enemy's garment. This odd man actually danced in the streets; his wife despised him the rest of his life for it. God sums up this “just too odd” man, David, by saying, “I HAVE FOUND DAVID, the son of Jesse, A MAN AFTER MY HEART, who will do all My will.” There are so many odd people in the Bible, and I love to read about these people who lived outside man's circle but always within the circle of God's love and acceptance. The important thing is not whether or not you are odd, but that you allow the creative God to be Lord of your uniqueness. I thank God today for all of the odd people I have known who “do all His will.” 

- Mike Wells

Absolutely

Loved

Life is a Journey (video - press arrow)

To Make a Blessing

I Take It Back!

When they were filled, He said to His disciples, “Gather up the leftover fragments so that nothing will be lost.” So they gathered them up, and filled twelve baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves which were left over by those who had eaten. --John 6:12, 13

In this astounding story Jesus had fed 5,000 people, and what was left over, He wanted . . . but for what? What are twelve men and a teacher on the move going to do with twelve baskets of barley bread? I imagine that they found a few hungry people along the way. The miracle had provided exactly enough food for all of the people, so I wonder if some, like the boy that offered the five loaves and two fish, had their own food with them. When the bread that Jesus gave came, they simply ate their own food; they did not feel the need for His bread. Therefore, He took it back. Matthew 7:6, “Do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.” Jesus then continues with the theme that He is the bread of life; He let us know that He was the true bread that came down out of heaven. In the same way that some would rather have their bread than His, there are those that would prefer to have what the world offers than what Jesus offers. For such people the bread is withdrawn. Sometimes I am talking to someone and am met with one argument after another. That person simply is not interested in Jesus, so I say, “I take it back; I take back everything!” He may believe that I am retracting my conviction over what I have said about Jesus, but it is not so! I am withdrawing the presentation of Jesus. A word not received is a wasted word, and there must be no waste. I pick up the message and wait to give it to others who hunger for the bread that comes from heaven. On our journey we will always find a few hungry people.

I remember being in India. As I left the airport, a band of men were attempting to grapple my luggage out of my hands. I made it clear that I would carry them myself. Since I would not relinquish the bags, they walked alongside me, each with a hand touching the bags, so that when I arrived at the car they all asked for a tip. Reluctantly, I gave them all one rupee apiece. They began to curse at me and demanded more. I responded, “So one rupee is not enough?” I then took back from each man his one rupee. They expectantly assumed I would be giving them something bigger. Instead, I simply got in the taxi and rode away with them following me, now shouting and wanting the one rupee back. However, I had taken back what they did not like and was not giving it again.

Jesus offers the bread of life; if someone does not want it, He will take it back and leave the person exactly as he was before he heard of Him.

Peace of Conscience

Trusting In

The Crucified Christ

But may it never be that I should boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.--Galatians 6:14


When people saw Jesus they were seeing God, for He was attached, so to speak, by a divine umbilical cord to the Father, whose LIFE flowed through Him. Satan could not defeat God in heaven, so he thought he would try again with his next best chance, which was when God was no longer in heaven but on the earth. Wrong! It was the same God on earth in a body, and in that body God defeated sin, the world, and every aspect of the flesh.How? The “I” attitude of Jesus intertwined throughout His mind, will, emotion, and body was this: “Of My own self I can do nothing.” To the world, He hung on the cross as a defeated man; in actuality, there hung the greatest conqueror the world would ever know.


Jesus’ body went to the grave, but His LIFE departed and descended. Jesus had no choice but to descend when He died; that is what was happening to dead people. There were a couple of battles along the way, all easily won by the power of an indestructible life. Death encountered a new foe, LIFE, and death went running. Captivity was taken captive, and a Man tore open the very gates of hell and preached! All who believed in Jesus left with Him. In short, Hell was plundered. What a time! Next, God reconnected with Him to raise Him from the dead, and Jesus returned to His body in the tomb. His life was so powerful, having overcome sin; Satan; the world; the mind, will, emotions, and body of man; the “I” attitude; and Death, Captivity, and Hell, all by doing nothing of “Himself.” When this powerful life reentered His body, His body was instantly transformed by the power of an indestructible life. His fleshly body could not decay; it was overcome by LIFE and was transformed. We men can only take our spirit along where our body allows us to go. His transformed body had to go wherever His spirit went. If He wanted to walk through a wall, His transformed body followed. Lest we forget, when He returned to His body, He was soaked with the “I” that proved the Love of God, an “I” attitude that trusted God and was holy, righteous, acceptable, and dependent.


Remember that every believer is the dry sponge attached to the soaked One that fills him. Formerly dead in trespasses and sins, believers are filled with a new “I” that soaks into their whole being and gets into every corner until thinking, will, emotions, and body all change. Believers may look the same but they are not; they are having a conversion, being filled with His Spirit, His “I” attitude, and His life. Again, like the great tree root, this divine “I” wraps itself around everything. The flesh of man does not like it, for in the past the flesh was allowed to follow flesh; now the flesh must fight to do so. However, it is fighting an “I” that has already overcome flesh and counterattacks from a place of victory. Believers are filled with THE SPIRIT and are raised up. 

Alone

By Anabel Gillham on July 31, 2019

Matthew 4:1-11

He threw back His shoulders, lifted His chin, and walked slowly and fearlessly into the dry, barren land. There was determination evident in His walk, His posture, His eyes, the set of His mouth.

As He looked at the utter desolation of the place, the forsaken terrain before Him, He couldn’t keep from comparing it with the beauty of home. How He missed being home! He had been gone for thirty years but the memories were vivid! Back home there were trees everywhere, shading luscious green carpets; magnificent flowers had been scattered extravagantly–like the sands of the sea–and their fragrance permeated the atmosphere. The brooks, crystalline clear, were dancing over the rocks–you could almost hear them sing! And talk about singing! The songs of the birds were filling the air, they were calling, chattering, little ones chirping, huge ones soaring in the heavens, all of their songs raised in praise and love to His Father. Yes, there was incomparable beauty everywhere at home. There was no beauty to be seen before Him in this desert. No desire to enter. No one He knew calling encouragement to Him from the endless wasteland before Him.

But this was where He was to go, the Spirit had led him to this desert. He knew that it was to be preparation for what was to come, it was to be a learning experience. He would confront evil in its vilest form, hunger and thirst, loneliness and pain. But He would be able to relate to hurting people, lonely people, tempted people–in a way that He could never have done until He passed this time of isolation in the wilderness. And He would come to know His Father’s ways. He was being transformed by His suffering.

I didn’t know that You would lead me into the desert, Lord. I just prayed to know You more completely and that You would use me to be a source of encouragement to the people around me who are hurting, lonely, and confused about You and Your ways.

But here I am–and You aren’t surprised that I’m in this desolate place. How I pray that I will learn, like Jesus did when He was isolated and hurting, about Your love, Your presence, Your strength, Your sustenance, and Your ways–Your ways are so different than what I would plan.

I will choose to accept this time in the wilderness–not fight it or resent it. I will anticipate what each day will bring, trusting You to teach me and use me as I asked You to do. And I know that I will one day be released from this time of desolation, grief, and suffering. I’ll get to go out into my world and tell everyone about You and what I learned in the desert. Or maybe I’ll get to go Home, where beauty and love will engulf me. I don’t want to waste this time–thank You for entrusting to me this awesome role of witnessing of Your presence within me.

Glory Follows Afflictions

Inner Chamber

The Crucified “I”

I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the {life} which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered Himself up for me. -- Galatians 2:20


What is the “I” that was crucified with Christ, and exactly how did that “I” get crucified? I am always making a feeble attempt to give definition to phrases that have for so long been used by believers that few stop to think about and grasp their meaning. Think of how the phrase, “How are you today?” got so overused that saying it today just means, “Hello.” Rarely does someone care to hear a prolonged assessment of the state of another’s health and disposition. The world and the enemy have plotted to overuse words to reduce their significance, words like Jesus or love. “I have been crucified with Christ” has been thrown around, quoted, and memorized to the point that its meaning and importance have been diminished. My motive in discussing what it could mean is that believers might increasingly understand it and incorporate it into their being. If the reader differs with my definitions and descriptions, I urge you to search for a definition that you can satisfactorily accept, that it might encourage you in your walk with Christ.


Imagine a team of physicians converging on a live man lying on an operating table; they were charged with the task of finding the “I” in the man. Would they be able to find it? No! It is because the “I” of Galatians 2:20 is not a material thing but an attitude; the “I” has wrapped itself, like the roots of a great tree, around every visible fiber of the man. Try to cut it out of the mind and next find it in the will; remove it from the will and discover it has grown back into the mind. “I” is the attitude of glory, pride, righteousness, and strength; in short, it is the attitude of wanting to be God. Being made in His image is not enough, for “I” wants to be worshipped and occupy the center of the universe that belongs to God. The body cooperates, for since it was made from the dust, it is not drawn to the spirit and therefore enjoys the indwelling “I” that allows the flesh to follow flesh.


A wet sponge placed on a dry one will become dry itself, because its water will flow to the other in transference. The day one believes on Jesus, God takes his body and nails it together with Christ on the cross, nailing, as it were, the two sponges together, the believer’s dripping with proud “I” and Christ’s empty “I” of humility. What happens next is transference; the believer loses all of his “I” attitude and life as it soaks into Him. When it is all over, the believer is nothing but a dry sponge, no anti-God attitudes and no life. The believer’s “I” coming into Jesus to do battle for supremacy is no different than the other battles He had already won; He kills the believer’s “I” attitude or life center. It may not be hard to imagine one sponge soaked with “I” being nailed to the One void of “I,” but what of the billions of people, and all at one time? There was so much anti-God “I” in Jesus on the cross that the Father had to cut the umbilical cord. The great I AM, Jesus, the Word, had always been in unbroken fellowship with God, Who was Jesus’ “I” attitude and life. The break killed His body. II Corinthians 5:21, “He made Him who knew no sin {to be} sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”

Your Trials

Our Sorrows

Unbelief

He Who Knew No Sin Became Sin

He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. --II Corinthians 5:21

Spiritual glue is holding all things together (Colossians 1; Ephesians 4; Acts 17). Jesus is the invisible nuclear glue that is holding all things together. He is the positive. Like opposing ends of magnets, God is naturally attracted to man, and man is very drawn toward God. Think, though, of trying to force together two positive sides of magnets; those repel one another, and it is very difficult to bring them near to one another. Man is fine as long as he views himself as the negative that he is when compared to all that is positive in Christ. However, through pride and believing himself sufficiently positive not to rely on God, man invites sin into his being, which causes the glue holding him together to be repelled by the sin. The glue withdraws, and the man is less and less a reflection of the image of God. If sin continues to be invited in, the man will, in time, no longer resemble the image of God; in fact, the sin makes him sick. God did allow for a fix for all of this. The sin could be taken out of a man and placed on an animal, though because an animal is not created in the image of God, sin so distorts it that it must be killed. The animal was a good representation of the loss caused by what man had done. For example, a dove represents freedom, song, and peace, all things that man lost through sin and the dove would lose by way of death. Sacrifice of a man was never required until the fullness of time when the sins of the whole world (past, present, and future) had reached their culmination. On the cross God broke the divine umbilical cord that ran from Himself to the Son and placed on the Son the sins of the whole world. That sin was so great that it drove the very life out of Him, at which point sin, Satan, the world, death, captivity, and hell encased Him. He sank to the depths of hell but, to the surprise of all, broke out! He conquered all that had encased His life, ripped open the gates of hell, preached, and even took captivity captive to disable the free exercise of its power. He then waited until God raised Him back into His slain body, in which awaited the sins of the whole world. This time He entered back into the body with the power of an indestructible life, met the sin, and conquered sin in the body! His Life was so powerful that it even transformed His earthly body. It is one thing to accept that He has done all that in His body, but the next step is for the believer to acknowledge the truth that Jesus can do it in his own body!He can, He will, and He has.

With Him Or In Him

For in Him we live and move and exist.As even some of your own poets have said, “For we also are His offspring.”--Acts 17:28

A friend of mine was asked where he was with the Lord. He responded, “I am in Denver.” We laughed when we talked of it, but what he said was really quite true. I have often been asked, “How much time do you spend with the Lord each day?” It is a false concept to think that we are “spending time with the Lord,” and therefore confining His presence to a time and a place. It is much more accurate to say that we are spending time in the Lord. This is a great secret. The presence of God is not something that we must search after. Psalm 139:7, “Where can I go from Thy Spirit? Or where can I flee from Thy presence?” The presence of God is simply something that we acknowledge by faith. We live in His presence, we enjoy His presence, and He is forever near, as near as the words in our mouths. Today, all day, we are in Him!

What a beautiful Truth to know and experience Christ being IN us, rather than “up there somewhere.” So, how is it that so much energy is spent by so many Believers trying to find Christ to spend some time withHim, instead of believing God and His clear location of where Christ is?

Revealing Ourselves

Wings

Yet those who wait for the LORD will gain new strength; they will mount up {with} wings like eagles, they will run and not get tired, they will walk and not become weary --Isaiah 40:31

It has been believed for some time that the South American condor, when old, commits suicide. Many have thought that the great bird would gain enough altitude to ensure its death, fold its wings, and fall to the earth. I was talking to a friend from Argentina whose uncle, a famous gaucho, often observed the odd behavior of the condor and began his own investigation. He discovered that the condor was not committing suicide at all. Actually, increasingly with age the great bird lost its eyesight, so instead of catching the wind and riding high on his magnificent wings, the vulture would flap unnaturally with all its strength to avoid what it thought was imminent danger. The bird would continue fleeing what did not exist until it gained so much altitude that it would run out of oxygen, have a heart attack, and fall to its death. 

I was recently told that many believers never receive answers to their prayers, so they need to learn to deal with disappointment. However, as believers we always receive answers to prayers, and the problem lies in so often praying wanting resolution; we want to know what to do or we want to direct the activity of God. We seek and do not find because we have wrongly defined what finding is. What we find when we pray, ask, and seek is faith, a simple thing that is much more enjoyable than immediate answers. Faith takes the whole situation out of our hands and places it in God's hands, removing us from the throne and stopping the frenetic beating of our little wings, giving us our birthright: the gliding, soaring wings of eagles. If through unbelief we begin to beat our wings and lose sight of Jesus, gaining what we think to be altitude, we are only giving ourselves heart attacks. I told Betty the story of the condor and asked, “Where do you think I will go with this story?” She responded, “For you, it can only go to one place: rest.” We laughed, but I acknowledged the fact. Rest in God will not make us tired or weary. Rest is not passivity but trusting in God’s activity. 

- Mike Wells

Growing in Love

Reflections on LGBTIQA+ and Gay Christians: With Some Reference to Revoice

What is my sense of homosexuality, or the so called LGBTIQA+ “lifestyle?” My view is rather straightforward: I believe it represents an incurved-upon-the-self sinful orientation that worships the self-possessed desires and wants rather than God and God’s. If homosexuality is what medievally was identified as homo in se incurvatus, then how can Christians meaningfully attempt to reconcile that, before God (coram Deo), with the idea that it represents a viable ‘orientation’ and lifestyle? How can this be anything other than accommodating to a self-styled and self-possessed societal construct that finds its antecedents in and from the kingdom of darkness rather than the Kingdom of the Son of His Love (cf. Col 1.13)? I am really referring to the movement among “conservative” evangelical Christians known as Revoice. Revoice, for some reason, wants to recognize, along with the rest of the broader cultural moment, that somehow homosexuality represents a real identity that ought to be recognized in the name of being true to oneself. Even if Revoice maintains a ‘traditional’ sexual ethic, in regard to “acting out” on their “orientation,” what is the meaningful point behind forming a group known as Revoice? If we were to follow its logic Christians would form similar groups based on their persistent and abiding orientations: whether that be to lie, steal, get angry, or whatever other sinful predispositions we all struggle with. If this is the case, then what’s the actual point of Christians attempting to chart a via media between the ‘left’ and the ‘right’ when it comes to human sexuality? Why not just jump into the mix with the rest of sinners and recognize that we all struggle with a variety of pernicious sins? The sins might very in expression and form, one from the other, but the struggle is real for all of us. It seems like a lot of energy and collective self-loathing, or self-celebrating, as the case might be, could be spent on other more fruitless ventures; like exalting the righteousness and redemption of the risen Christ.

If the goal of things like Revoice is to construct a safe-haven for fellow strugglers with a particular sin, then just brand it that way. But that isn’t the way they brand it: Instead they are seemingly attempting to tap into the cultural moment and celebrate, along with the rest of the broader society, the idea that they just are: Gay! But the Gospel contradicts this sort of thinking, directly! The NT gives us lists of sins, and it doesn’t elevate one over the other; instead it simply lists them together, as affronts to the righteousness of the living God. The NT doesn’t set aside time in the day for celebrating this or that identity, other than being identified in and from and with Jesus Christ. We don’t need to be liberated to name the ‘unseen,’ or to be freed from unspoken taboos; instead we need to be liberated for another reason: viz. to proclaim the name of Jesus Christ as Victor over all else. We aren’t homosexuals. We aren’t liars. We aren’t murderers. We aren’t vagrants. Even if we were. We are Christians, because we are in Christ; we are those who are union with Christ, because Christ is in union with us. This light shed abroad in our hearts, and in the cosmos, overshadows the nooks and crannies we seek to set out for ourselves in the name of recovery and spiritual health. Spiritual health never comes by turning to ourselves; it doesn’t come by settling down with the Law; spiritual health comes as we live and move and have our being, moment by moment, afresh and anew, as we ‘keep in step with the Spirit.’ Revoice pushes people into an identity that is supposed to be mortified, not admitted and lived into. That identity, the one society says should be celebrated and accepted, never stood a chance up against the identity of God in Christ for us. He shook the fabric of the far country with the near country of God’s life for us, such that all other attempts to construct identities in abstraction from His are finally seen for what they are: IDOLATRY.

Yes, this is a rant; but it represents something that has been on my mind lately. Homosexuality, as I read the Bible, is at the very end of God’s patience. It isn’t that He didn’t come to give His life for those who are predisposed to homosexuality, or any other sin; it is that He did! And that He did is the point. There is an in-breaking and Kingdom that has come upon us, and comes upon us in Christ; and it asks us to deny ourselves take up our crosses and follow Jesus. It doesn’t ask us to loiter with our crosses, instead the Gospel calls us to greater ventures: which is what following Jesus entails. Christians aren’t gay anymore than they are liars. Christians might continue to struggle with whatever their particular struggle is, in the arena of sin; but they are first and foremost new creations in the new creation of God who is Jesus Christ. The power isn’t in the cross, it is in the resurrection. The resurrection is the life Christians have been called to live from, not the life that has been put to death. We are to reckon ourselves dead to sin and alive to Christ. This is not to suggest that we are naïve about our struggles, it is instead to recognize that our struggles are just that. We aren’t supposed to camp down in Babylon, not in this moment. The Redeemer has already come, and as such, there is The Freedom of the Christian.

- Bobby Grow

Lost at Sea

Enough Trouble of its Own

By saying that today has enough trouble of its own, Jesus reminds us that all these things we have been trying to avoid have come to us by divine appointment and we are called to be faithful in them. Whatever was true of the past and whatever may come to pass in the future, we have enough to occupy us in the here and now. Yet why would Jesus think that these vivid reminders of our impotence bring any comfort? The reality check that He provides may be alarming at first because it underscores our helplessness and vulnerability, but once we have recovered from the shock, it comes to us as something of a relief. It turns out we have been trying to shoulder a burden we were never meant to carry. What our anxiety about the future really amounts to is a failed attempt to put ourselves in the place of God. We have been trying to control our own destiny.

Our Double Delusion

According to Jesus, we are suffering from a double delusion. First, our anxiety about the future is grounded in a false assumption about who is actually in control. We think we are in control, but we are not. We do not even control the most basic elements of our own life and environment. We can take measures to guard our health, but we cannot add to the length of our days. We can make provision for our future, but we cannot stop moth and rust from corrupting what we possess or guarantee that thieves will not carry it off. Today’s troubles are proof enough that we cannot build a wall strong enough to keep them out.

  Second, our fears reflect a secret suspicion that the God who should be in control is actually asleep at the wheel. We are afraid that God is not as attentive to our situation as He should be. Consequently, we attempt to wrest control from God by taking matters into our own hands. We rely on our own strategies more than upon God, depending on the flesh rather than the Spirit. In our eagerness to produce results, we resort to questionable methods. Worse yet, we may adopt methods that fall outside the bounds of what Scripture says is wise or even allowable. In ministry, this kind of anxiety often takes the form of unreflective pragmatism. We focus on results without considering whether the measures we take to achieve them are responsible or biblical. We assume the end justifies the means. Another way in which leaders often react when they fear that God is not attentive is by resorting to manipulation. We rely on our own persuasive techniques to move people to act rather than waiting for the Holy Spirit to convict.

Living in the Present Tense

Our hope is in the future, but the present is the field of God’s activity.

  Those who practice the present must be intentional about living life in the present tense. We might wonder whether we have the option to do otherwise. We are not time travelers. We cannot visit the past or project ourselves into the future. But while we live in the present, we do not always attend to the present. Our minds are occupied elsewhere. We spend our days living in the present but ranging in our thinking from the past to the future. Meanwhile, the swiftly passing present is squandered. How, then, do we live in the present tense? One of the most important ways we do this is by focusing on the task at hand. We attend to what has been set before us. The task at hand is not glorious. For pastors and leaders, it is the basic work of shepherding. Shepherding involves keeping watch over yourself and the flock God has called you to serve (Acts 20:28).

  Jesus characterizes the present as a realm where we must exercise faith when He says that each day has enough trouble of its own (Matt. 6:34). This is both a forceful reminder of our powerlessness and a call to attend to our duty. “Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?” Jesus asks in Matthew 6:27. Has worry ever protected us from such things in the past? Most of our worries are about things over which we have no control. Many of them will never even come to pass. Yet knowing this does not rescue us from anxiety. The power of worry is its ability to play upon our uncertainty.

Putting the Past Behind Us

The future is not the only thing that keeps us from living in the present tense. For many, thinking about the past makes us just as anxious as worrying about the future. God redeems our past but He does not change it. God causes all things to work together for the believer’s good (Rom. 8:28). But this doesn’t mean that everything that has happened to us is good. It certainly doesn’t mean that everything we have done is good. For some, it is not a fear of the future but the recollection of the past that is the chief stumbling block in their life. We are living with what Martyn Lloyd-Jones calls “vain” regret. This is the condition of those whose past actions have crippled them in the present. “You cannot look back across your past life without seeing things to regret,” Lloyd-Jones warns. “That is as it should be; but it is just there that the subtlety of this condition comes in and we cross that fine line of distinction that lies between a legitimate regret and a wrong condition of misery and of deception.”

Practicing the Present

Here’s how they describe it:

The present is more than a place where the past comes to rest.

It is more than a staging ground for the future

THE TREADMILL OF DESIRE

A vision can be a help when we are setting goals but it can also be a trap. Proverbs 27:20 warns, “Death and Destruction are never satisfied, and neither are human eyes.” Ambition, like human desire, seems to be infinitely expandable. Once we have reached our goal, it is immediately replaced with another. At its best, ambition provides the energy we need to improve and accomplish. At its worst, it becomes an endless treadmill that only proves that we will never be satisfied no matter how much success we experience.
While ambition and desire are not automatically incompatible with the Christian life, they only concentrate our attention on what we lack. Th e first and fourth beatitude remind us that this is not necessarily a bad thing (Matt. 5:3, 6). But the Bible also counsels us to pursue contentment, noting that “godliness with contentment is great gain” (1 Tim. 6:6).

The Vision Thing

This is partly a reflection of context out of which vision statements arose. Vision statements did not really originate with the church, despite misguided appeals to the KJV translation of the first half of Proverbs 29:18: “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” They come from the world of marketing. Th e mathematician and philosopher Archimedes is said to have declared, “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.” The lever of the marketer is advertising and its fulcrum is dissatisfaction. Media critic Jean Kilbourne observes, “Advertising creates a world view that is based upon cynicism, dissatisfaction and craving.”
 General Motors executive Charles Kettering famously observed that the key to economic prosperity is “the organized creation of dissatisfaction.”

Too View Tears

Why Does a God Of Love Kill So Many?

Then the Lord said to Job, “Will the faultfinder contend with the Almighty? Let him who reproves God answer it.”--Job 40:1 & 2

Why did the God of love kill so many in the Old Testament? The answer is hard to believe, because we have been so indoctrinated by humanism, but the answer is quite simple: He did it for love. How could God’s actions not be consistent with His love? Everything He does is an expression of His character.If there were an option better than the loving act of killing, God would have taken it. I personally have seen people so given over to sin that they were at the point at which death would have been a welcomed relief as an escape from the bondage. Once the heart is revealed and there is no desire for repentance, each day remaining in sin on earth only adds to the judgment to come. Would it not be gracious of a heavenly Father to take this life and stop the sin? Sin is unnatural and makes man miserable. God can stop our misery by having us turn to Him, and He can also stop our misery by taking our earthly life. We must ask ourselves an important question: What is the purpose of life if it is lived in sin? Is a life lived in sin really life? Love, love, love, God is truly love. 

When a Believer lives in humanism, the actions of God are missed, mistaken, or misunderstood.  Therefore, it is easy to see how so many question the love of God when it comes to some actions He takes that they don’t think  (since they are thinking as they are god, humanism) God could or would do something like kill.

- Mike Wells

Transcending

AS YOU TRANSCEND a lifetime of religious indoctrination into pure grace and intimate communion with the Father, you will find yourself living in the joy and freedom you always longed for but never achieved through decades of religious frustration and suppression. You can finally relax and enjoy the abundant life that had always been yours but veiled by effort and striving.

What did you hear?

F WHAT YOU HEARD IN CHURCH YESTERDAY was not Christocentric but was denominational doctrine, church rules, more effort, deeper dedication and don’t steal God’s money, then there is a good chance you heard what Paul called another Jesus and another gospel.

- Don Keathley

Take it or Leave it

The first step in walking into the deeper things of the Father involves simplifying your life, slowing down and listening. The constant barrage of mental gymnastics that we live in day in and day out, from television to politics, a kazillion number of things affect our sensitivity and alertness to the spirit. Simplifying your life on every level is imperative if you have decided to walk in those things the Father is speaking into the earth today.

-  Don Keathley

Many Sons

LET THIS SINK IN DEEP: Sonship has never been about doing the greater works or moving in His authority to bind the nations and kingdoms of this age. The real intent and drive of the Spirit has been to bring many sons into a place of oneness with the Father. It has always been about the “Father’s family”.

- Don Keathley

Not Cheap

Because grace is not cheap but totally free, unconditional and given freely to all, it will quickly expose what’s in a persons heart and what has been covered over and suppressed by religious legalism and failed attempts at behavior modification. It is the goodness of God that leads to repentance and pure, radical, unmerited grace teaches us to live righteously and holy in this life...Romans 2:4, Titus 2:11-12 

- Don Keathley

WHAT IF NO ONE HAD A BIBLE?

“So long as we only see the Logos of God as embodied multifariously in symbols in the letter of Holy Scripture, we have not yet achieved spiritual insight into the incorporeal, simple, single and unique Father as He exists in the incorporeal, simple, single and unique Son…We need such knowledge so that, having first penetrated the veils of the sayings which cover the Logos, we may with a naked intellect see—in so far as men can—the pure Logos, as He exists in Himself, clearly showing us the Father in Himself.”
–
ST. MAXIMOS, THE CONFESSOR
Try to imagine it: No Bibles anywhere. No King James. No NIV. Not even a paperback copy of The Message.
What would that be like?
Regardless of how such a thing might happen, try to imagine what it would be like to never have access to the Bible ever again.
I know this might sound scandalous, but in some ways I think our world might actually be a better place if no one had a Bible anymore.
I wonder if maybe we’d start to discover an inner desperation and a hunger for a deeper experience of Jesus if we didn’t depend on a book for everything.
Not only that, if there were no Bibles, we just might start to value listening to one another share testimonies of Jesus. Especially if there was no more need to hear from the resident Bible expert or scholar talk for an hour every weekend.
Imagine sitting around your living room with friends and listening to people share what Jesus was saying or doing in their lives that week. Imagine someone closing their eyes and quoting verses about how nothing can separate us from the love of God, or about how Jesus died for us while we were still enemies of God? Don’t you think this might help us to connect with one another—and with Jesus—more directly?

This is exactly what the early Christian church was like. They did not have copies of Paul’s letters in their possession. They did not have a collection of the Hebrew Scriptures in their homes. A scroll of Isaiah, for example, would have been more expensive than most of those poverty-level Christians could ever afford. As noted New Testament scholar Ben Witherington says:
“A standard roll of papyrus in mid-first century A.D. Egypt cost four drachmae, which is to say it cost about 4-8 days pay (for) an ordinary workman. But let us take for example, the famous Isaiah scroll found at Qumran. A roll thirty feet long took no less than 30 or so hours to fill up. That is—at least three full day’s work for a scribe. A copy of Isaiah then could cost at least 10 denarii (or 2 week’s pay), and that is a low guess. And then you would have exactly ONE book of the OT in your hands. Imagine about 40 more rolls that long and you can imagine an OT on scrolls.

So, the average Christian in the first century did not have access to the scriptures. Yet, somehow, they managed to live radical lives of Christ-like love, sharing all that they had with one another, and even “turned the world upside down,”(Acts 17:6) all without owning a Bible.
How did they do that? How did those primitive Christians know Christ so intimately? How did they face horrific persecutions and survive the worst that the Roman Empire could dish out without even a copy of the Gospel of John in their back pocket?
The answer is: They had the Holy Spirit living inside of them. They had a connection with Jesus, the Risen Lord, that transcended the written word.

Now, to be fair, many of them probably knew a few of the basic teachings of Jesus passed along to them by other Christians. There was a very strong oral tradition in the early Christian community and no doubt many of those illiterate believers had a few of Christ’s teachings hidden in their heart.

But that’s still part of my point: They had a vibrant, thriving relationship with the Prince of Peace. He sustained them. He strengthened them. He walked right beside them every step of the way. It wasn’t the Bible that gave them hope, it was their own personal connection to Christ.
Maybe I’m the only one, but the more I think about this the more convinced I am that we might just be better off without our Bibles today. Maybe without our precious Bibles we might also cling to Jesus the way those earliest Christians did. Maybe without our proof-texts and our study guides we might learn how to rely on the Spirit of God the same way they must have.
Yes, I do realize that we are so blessed to have our Bibles. What I’m talking about is what it would be like to take what we already know the Bible says and moving onward to actually experiencing those words in a deeper way.

I can’t help but wonder what it would be like for us to carry the Word of God around in our hearts every day. What if we had to rely on God’s indwelling Spirit for every breath and every step? What if we only had our memories of scripture to sustain us?
I also wonder, what scriptures we would choose to pass on to our children if we didn’t have a Bible? What verses would we choose to share with them? Perhaps those verses where Jesus says, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do” and “Love one another as I have loved you” would top your list. Perhaps you’d want your children to remember certain Parables that Jesus shared, like the Prodigal Son, or the Treasure in the Field or the Sower of Seeds.

But, chances are you probably wouldn’t find it all that crucial to memorize verses where God commanded His people to slaughter every man, woman and child, or where He warned them not to show any compassion while killing infants. You might want to leave behind the verses about how blessed those people are who dash babies against the rocks.
That, to me, would be a very good thing.
If all we had left was Jesus and our memories of scriptures that really touched us and profoundly changed us, that wouldn’t be so bad.
The point of my asking this question is to get us to consider what our faith would be like without depending upon what others wrote 2,000 years ago to share their experiences of Jesus.

Instead, I hope to inspire us to consider that our faith is based on our own experiences of Jesus today.
Let me make it crystal clear: The Bible leads us to Jesus. But what we do with Jesus after that is the most important thing of all.
As we’ve already seen, some people are convinced that we can never know anything about Jesus or God without the Bible.
But the Bible contradicts that, over and over again.
What the Bible tells us is that we can know Jesus, and the Father, directly, personally and immediately at this very moment. So, if you really believe the Bible, then I would encourage you to do what the Bible says: connect with God yourself. Don’t just read about Him—know Him, and listen to Him, and follow Him, and learn to love Him more every day.

Let me assure you of this: if someone took your Bibles away, you would still have Jesus. If every Bible on earth was suddenly destroyed, you and I would still hear His voice. If no one ever read the Bible again, God would still be alive and moving and speaking and revealing Himself through His Spirit, and through His people, and through nature, and art, and music, and circumstances.
However, if your faith would be hopelessly empty without the Bible, then you might have a much bigger problem. Maybe you need to ask yourself if you actually have a relationship with God at all? If your faith depends upon a book, then maybe you’ve only focused on reading and learning information about God, but you’ve not exactly come to know that same God in any real way yet?
If so, then I most certainly recommend setting your Bible aside. Get to know Jesus. Spend time alone with Him. Talk to Him. Listen to His voice. Practice an awareness of His presence. Reading more Bible verses will not help you encounter Him. In fact, it just might postpone any deeper experiences with Jesus you might have.

You’ve read about God. You know information about Jesus. That’s great. But now it’s time to meet Him and to know Him in a deeper way.
Remember: God is not the Bible. The Bible is not God.
Yes, the Bible is a wonderful blessing to us all. We should be very grateful for it. But Jesus transcends and eclipses the Bible in every possible way. He is not bound by a book. He is not constricted into syllables and sentences. He is not captured on a page.

By asking the question: “What if no one had a Bible?” I am inviting you to consider moving on to phase 2 of your life in Christ.
Look up from the page long enough to listen for His still small voice. Close the book long enough to walk with Him today. Maybe even put the Bible back on the shelf just long enough to put what you’ve read about into practice. You can always come back to it later. It’s not going anywhere. But maybe sometimes we need to take off the training wheels and learn to balance ourselves if we really hope to enter the race.
I’ll meet you at the top of the hill.

Holy Spirits Work

Is the Doctrine of Eternal Torment TRUE?

If the doctrine of eternal torment is true, it really means abortion is ultimately good for the aborties.

To me, that is the only logical and godly way to look at it!.

Since Roe vs Wade, in excess of 2 billion abortions have taken place. These babies underwent excruciating pain as they were forcibly extracted and suctioned out of the the mother’s womb. Those who are familiar with the pro-life movement are rightfully horrified by the pictures of aborted human babies (yes, they are human). Most Christian religions would rightfully place these precious little ones in heaven for eternity.

However considering the following Christian belief that they should have had the right to be born and live till they pass from this earth through death’s door.

If these 2 billion aborted precious little ones were left to go to full term and then birth, based on Christian doctrine, they ALL would grow up as sinners and based on history about 85 to 90% of them, by far the vast majority, would never accept Jesus as their Saviour. Jesus Himself said most people would never find the way, "broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction (eternity in hell as is the Christian belief) and many there be which go in thereat" (Matthew 7:13).

Therefore, the vast majority of these babies (if left to full term) would be tormented forever in a torture chamber of hell fire when they die. That means if there is a choice of momentary pain for them (abortion) or eternal torture facing them after a brief lifespan, abortion would be a blessing, would you not agree. Those who consider themselves "pro-life" really need to reconsider the logic of their positions if they believe in eternal conscious torture.

Somebody ask the question:“What happens to aborted babies?"

I heard Christian preachers say that they go to heaven and grow to adulthood and become the person they should have been. If that is so, abortionists apparently have been responsible for the salvation of more people than ALL religious efforts combined. Though the abortionist killed the baby, he needs a metal for sending them to heaven.

If 90% of the aborted babies, if allowed to be born, go to the torture chamber of hell fire to suffer untold agony for eternity, should hell believing people be against abortions and picket abortion clinics, if aborted babies bypass this life of carnal sinful flesh and go directly to heaven?''

If eternal torment is true, then would not pro-abortion be best. But if it's NOT true (and it's not) then Pro-Life is best! (And Pro-Life is the best because God is pro-life for ALL people, born and unborn!)

I am a firm believer that abortion is wrong and devilish. I am also a firm believer that eternal torment in a torture chamber of hell fire is also wrong and of the devil, devilish!