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Archive for the ‘Christian Walk’ Category

No More Slackness in the Church

Posted in Christian Walk, tagged , , , on February 21, 2020| Leave a Comment »

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Scripture reading: Romans 12:6-8

Let us look at God’s ministry today. We hear about the apostolic ministry. We are talking about the thumb ministry as the thumb is the apostolic ministry. Now, the church must have an apostolic ministry or else it is a church without direction. God drew another picture for us. He drew a picture of the boards of the tabernacle. The boards in the tabernacle are kept in a straight line by one bar that runs from one end to another, and all are in complete order because the Spirit of God is in the board. Why did I say that? The bar there is not just wood, it is covered with gold. Don’t you see? The bar is covered with gold, and it is the gold that makes it straight or else that bar would bow. The bar is 30 cubits long (a cubit is about a foot and a half). The temple cubit would be a foot and a half and a span. So we are talking about one long bar that is 45 feet long, plus 45 spans (each span is about four inches). A span is the width of your hand. We are not sure if it was the temple cubit or the natural cubit. Of course, the temple cubit was supposed to be bigger by a handbreadth than the natural cubit. So, the natural cubit would be what we would call about 18 inches, but the temple cubit would be like 22 inches. So, think of a bar that stretches approximately 60 feet long. It would bow without being covered with gold. But it had gold on the outside, and that bar kept the whole tabernacle standing straight. Let me tell you, brethren, do you know how thick the boards were? They were over six inches. You can imagine a board 1.5 cubits wide, ten cubits high [15 feet tall], and 6 inches thick with gold all around it. Can you imagine how heavy that must have been? That is some weight! It was standing on mortise and tenon. So the two legs went down, like man’s legs, into the sockets, and that is what kept it standing. Therefore, from side to side it would be firm, but from the front to back, the boards would have the ability to sway forward and backward. The only thing that held it from going forward or backward was the apostolic bar, the middle bar covered with gold running from one end to the other.

So you can see what has happened to the church. The church lost its apostolic vision when it began to reject the apostles of God and accepted other apostles. That is why we are in the condition that we are in, because some of the ministry that is in the church is not ordained of God. Now, behind that apostolic bar, the Lord said that there are helps and governments (I Corinthians 12:28). It is very important that some of you are helps and governments in the church. You are not ordained to preach, except to preach with your life.

One day the Lord told Mavis that the women should preach with their works. “When they behold your chaste behavior” (I Peter 3:2). It brings correction to people when they can look at you and see how you live your life. But there is a service that each of you must do and you must either come in to God’s service now or be left out.

God had a time when He would allow a certain amount of slackness to be in the church. But at this time, God is saying, “NO MORE SLACKNESS, MY PEOPLE MUST BE ONE!” The only way the people can be one is to be under the ministry. Do you hear me? Not minister, but ministry. The ministry that God has put in you, you had better look after it. He says, “Wait upon your ministry” (Romans 12:7). If God endows you with a voice, sing! If God endows you with wisdom, use it for God. Do you understand? The ministry is a spiritual endowment that God puts upon the church. Every time two or three of them gather together, God gives them their portion. That ministry is supposed to stand and minister life to the world, not just to the church, but to the world. That is why God said if you don’t behave at home, you can’t come into the church and prophesy. If you talk and you use your mouth as a weapon out there on the job site or anywhere you are, don’t bother to try to come to church and speak the Word of the Lord. It will be contaminated. It will be mixed. God wants you to wait upon your ministry. Somebody says, “Well, what is my ministry?” That is your business! Go ask God. Go ask God. What do you do best? Jesus said to Matthew and Mark, “Come! Be a scribe unto the Kingdom of God.” That means to say that the Kingdom of God needs scribes. The Kingdom of God needs people who can write, who will be able to take the Word and put it in places, and divide it up where people can be fed all over the world. The Kingdom message needs to go forth. Hallelujah!

(Excerpt from Keeping in Touch, December 2006, pg. 5-6)

Thought for today: There is a service that each of us must do and we must either come in to God’s service now or be left out.

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The Inner Walking of God in Us

Posted in Christian Walk, tagged , , , on February 20, 2020| Leave a Comment »

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Scripture reading: II Corinthians 6:16

The reality that God is bringing us into at this time is the reality of the ministry of God depicted by the hand. God put a five-fold ministry into the world, and the five-fold ministry is in the church. God does not want to walk with you. He wants to walk in you. The Spanish have a way of saying, “vaya con Dios” (walk with God). It is no longer walk with God. It is no longer the Adam manifestation when he walked with God in the garden. He wants the Christ manifestation. God wants to walk in you. Let’s prove it. I think it is in II Corinthians where God blessed a man named Paul, and He gave him to us. The man began to see the beauty and the glory of God in the Old Testament as no other man that we have known. Paul was seeing by the Spirit the reality of Christ, and he experienced the awaking of the mind of man to the presence of God. That is what we are talking about, and that is what we need today.

II Corinthians 6:16 says, “And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”

It is the inner walking of God in us that is designed to make us the hand of God. This is the Lampstand operation in the Tabernacle. The Lampstand is hollow in the middle, and the oil is poured down into it and comes up to a level in the seven lamps; the wicks go down into the lamps and they are lighted. Oil represents the Holy Spirit, gold is the divine nature, and the wick is humanity. Humanity dipped into divinity – the oil seeps into the wick so that the wick becomes totally saturated, and that oil is going to prevent that wick from burning. You can use a wick in a lamp for a long time because of the oil that is in the lamp. The Spirit of God must permeate your being and take a hold of you, in order for you to produce God.

What God is saying in this illustration of the Lampstand is that the five-fold ministry is not always what we think it to be. We are looking at the five-fold ministry as the brothers and sisters who function in the preaching and the teaching and so on. That is not it! What it IS is that EACH OF YOU is a part of this five-fold ministry. You have some silent parts that support the rest. You are not seeing my liver, my heart or my lungs, but you are seeing the manifestations of those organs. Do you understand? So the silent members inside are even much more important than the ones that you can see function. Amen.

What God is saying is that His right hand and His holy arm (see Psalm 98:1) are not only the Spirit of God who works in you, but you become a part of the hand of God because you lift together with God. God needs you and He anoints you for a specific purpose and for that purpose only.

(Excerpt from Keeping in Touch, December 2006, pg. 4-5)

Thought for today: You have been anointed for a specific purpose and for that purpose only. Do not get diverted from it!

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The Witness That You Give

Posted in Christian Walk, tagged , , , on February 19, 2020| Leave a Comment »

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Scripture reading: 1 Peter 1:12

God could not allow any human being to go to hell without having rejected Jesus. When you preach to people you must have this consciousness and this understanding. When you preach to a man, he does not have to say, “Yes, I accept Jesus,” at that moment. But you are putting him in a position that between your time with him and his death he is going to meet Jesus face to face and will have to say, “Yes, I accept Him.” Do you know what happens? You, the preacher, come right before him at the moment of his death. The witness that you give to a human being will last with him forever until he reaches the end of life. That witness will come back to him just as powerful as you gave it. This is why we must obey the Spirit. Don’t look for results. What about Brother Noah? He more than likely thought that he had no results. But Noah must have been the greatest evangelist in the entire world. His witness saved millions of people for eternity! We will never know how many until we reach heaven and begin to look up the records. He thought his preaching was in vain, but God said, “Preach!” and he just kept preaching. He visibly saved eight souls and thought, “Well, Lord Jesus, when I get to heaven my crown will only have eight little stars.” Then he was surprised. You also are going to be very surprised. That is why it is so absolutely necessary to remain in the perfect will of God. I will tell you something about that.

You are working with spirits that are working in conjunction with you. There are certain things that you can do but spirits cannot. Spirits cannot preach the gospel. They don’t know as much as you in the gospel. In 1 Peter 1 it says that the angels are inquiring about the message that God is giving you, the Church. He speaks about the prophets having received this great message but having to preach in the dark because they did not know what they were preaching. Yet they were not preaching to the people who lived then, they were preaching to us, who were not yet born. Would you like a job like that? Having to preach to a congregation who isn’t yet born? But this is what is happening.

In 1 Peter 1:12 it says, “Unto whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto us they did minister the things, which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven; which things the angels desire to look into.”

The things of God are being revealed to the Church. The revelation of the Spirit is to the Church and not to the angels. The worse part about it – or the best part about it – is that we have the Church divided into two. One part of the Church is in the spirit, in the heavenlies with Jesus, and another part of the Church (the militant Church) must meet the devil and fight him face to face on earth as the heavenly people cannot fight the devil.

(Excerpt from The Omega Message, February 1978)

Thought for today: The witness that you give to a human being will last with him forever until he reaches the end of life and this is why we must obey the Spirit.

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All Things Work Together for Good…

Posted in Christian Walk, tagged , , on February 17, 2020| Leave a Comment »

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Scripture reading: Romans 8:28

Let us look at Romans 8:28, “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”

Some of us do not know that all things work together for good. The only difference between those who know and those who don’t know is that those who don’t know grumble when they get hit but those who know rejoice. Every soul has problems sometimes. Some of us have them all the time. But some people know that their problems are deliberately designed by God to lift them into a higher realm. Others don’t know. And that’s the difference between the person who can rejoice over problems or whatever happens in his/her life and the one who cannot rejoice. Whether you do or you don’t know, all things work together for good to you.

Somebody may say, “There is a qualifying phrase here, ‘to them that love God.’” But there is a qualifying phrase to that qualifying phrase, “to them who are the called according to his purpose.” So from the time God called you, even before you were justified, all things began to work together for good to you. You were like the bull, outside of the Tabernacle, when those men threw the rope over him and began to haul him towards the gate of the Tabernacle. You too were hauled to the brazen altar to be born again. All things began to work together for good. There you were cursing and saying, “Oh, I have the worse luck. Why did it have to happen to me?” But God is very much pleased with the progress. Remember, “…all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”

(Excerpt from The Omega Message, February 1978)

Thought for today: Let us be among those who know that all things work together for good to us. It will help us to rejoice in our problems, which are designed by God to lift us into a higher realm.

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The Ability to Perceive

Posted in Christian Walk, tagged , , , , on February 14, 2020| Leave a Comment »

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Scripture reading: Psalm 98:1

I believe that we will have a church where the apostolic vision will be clear and plain and straight, where the prophets will prophecy, where the evangelists will evangelize, where the shepherds will shepherd, where the teachers will teach, and they will all say the same thing. Hallelujah. This is what God says He is going to have before Jesus comes. He is not saying that He is going to have it when Jesus comes. He is going to have it before His appearance. Let me put it that way, because “Jesus comes” can mean more than one thing. Before the “appearing,” or “parousia” (G3952) of Jesus Christ, He will have a church without spot, without blemish, without wrinkle, or any such thing (Ephesians 5:27). Hallelujah.

The LORD began to speak to me about a certain situation. I saw my right hand, and I know that God has a right hand and a left hand. The right hand always depicts the Spirit, and the left hand always depicts the natural. It is easy for me to pick my Bible up with my right hand, but if I am going to pick the podium up, I need two hands. He began to show me a peculiar thing, and I saw all of you brethren participating. Can everybody hold on to your thumb for me? Take your left hand and hold your right thumb. Now feel how awkward it is to try to lift up anything, to do anything without your thumb. Now hold the other finger that represents the prophet (index finger), and see what happens? It is not as bad when you hold that finger, but it is awfully awkward. Now hold the evangelist (middle finger). Then hold the other fingers. It seems to me that ALL of them are essential, and God would not have a church without them. But the one finger that is there, maybe it functions halfway but it is painful and it is hard to lift. You still can work it, but you have pain when you work it. Some arthritis or something is in the finger and it doesn’t work very well. Nevertheless, unless it is a chronic situation, nobody would know.

Let us turn to Psalm 110:1, “The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool.” Psalm 98:1, “O sing unto the LORD a new song; for he hath done marvellous things: his right hand, and his holy arm, hath gotten him the victory.” “His right hand, and his holy arm, hath gotten him the victory.” Sometimes we repeat scriptures and we never think very much about them. What is God’s right hand anyhow? We also need to consider that if God has a right hand, then He has a left hand. He said, “Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool.” So we see then that God’s right hand is a Spirit hand. The peculiar thing is that God wants the left hand to be in with the right hand to bring forth the victory. David went forth into battle, and it was he that went in to slaughter the enemy, but when he came out, he said that it was His right hand that had gotten them the victory.

God wants to be in us. A revelation came to me some months ago. God was walking in the garden every evening with Adam, and somehow or the other, God had an intention. He had an intention. He longed not only to walk in the garden, but also to walk in the garden that was inside of Adam. God wanted to be in Adam. Now, Adam was walking with God in the evening. Did it ever occur to you that none of us know how long that happened? We do not know how long it happened. All we know is that there was a relationship between God and man wherein was all the perspicacity, the perceptiveness of man, the ability to perceive, to know, to understand, to see, and to be fully conscious of both spiritual and natural. THAT ability was in Adam, for we understand from medical science that the portion of the brain that is used is quite small compared to the total mass. It was not so in the beginning. Adam lost about 75% of his brain when he fell. There is a part of us that isn’t used at all – the ability to perceive.

One time I was in a meeting and I saw people moving up and down in the congregation. Some of them started getting mad when some of the others were surrendering themselves to God, and they walked out. God said, “If you will resist the devil, he will flee from you” (James 4:7). The Word of God says that one day, when the Sons of God gathered together, Satan came also (Job 1:6, 2:1). Did you ever understand that the Bible used the word also? “…the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan came also among them.”

When we gather together, there are things in us that do not please God. There are spirits in us; there are movements in us that are not of God. When you begin to praise God, these things begin to leave! Do you know why? Because darkness cannot stand when light comes in, and the moment that you open up yourself to God, light begins to flood into you and everything that is not of God begins to leave. Sometimes their movement motivates your feet to carry them out of the light. Sometimes they will leave on their own and wait outside the door for you. When you get outside, then you get back your idiosyncrasies, your bad ways. God is saying to us that something is happening to us at this time, in this age, to this people, and He wants a people to be awake and alive!

(Excerpt from Keeping in Touch, December 2006, pg. 3-4)

Thought for today: Darkness cannot stand when light comes in. The moment you open up yourself to God, light begins to flood into you and everything that is not of God begins to leave.

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