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A Being Living Inside of You

Posted in Christian Walk, tagged , , , , on December 26, 2023| Leave a Comment »

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Scripture reading: John 14:16 & 26

Beloved brethren, let us talk about sin and righteousness today. I have noticed that many of us do not know what righteousness is, because we fail to recognize righteousness. Let me tell you something: you have righteousness inside of you. Once you are born again of the Spirit of God, God is going to find ways and means to get His Word into your mind and into your heart. When you reject that Word you reject God. I don’t know if I can impress that hard enough. YOU MUST HEAR GOD FROM INSIDE OF YOU. You must hear God so that when you do God’s will you feel blessed inside. Sometimes it is just the exact opposite of what you feel like doing. You don’t want to do it, it is not your cup of tea, but thus saith the Lord God Almighty, “I command it that you do what I am saying to you in your heart to do because that is God.” Not necessarily what the counselor tells you, not necessarily what the friends like about you, not necessarily what all your family might want you to do. God Almighty wants you to do something and that something is in your heart and there is no denying it. You cannot say, “I have not heard God.” Because God says, “Conscience is the voice of God speaking in the soul of man.” Let me repeat that. I used to learn that at Sunday school. “Conscience is the voice of God speaking in the soul of man.” God speaks to your soul. Beware of listening to other voices: for you can hear with your ears; you can hear with your heart; you can hear with your emotions; you can hear with your desires; you can hear with your will; you can hear with your own mind. But thus saith the Lord God, “I speak to you inside of your own being.” Your conscience will tell you, “This is right.” “I should not do this. This is wrong for me to do.”

I want to tell you something more, brethren. Whenever you reject God, you have committed a sin that is very, very hard to even repent from. Do you know that there are some decisions you can make in life on which you have no return? No return. God gives you an opportunity to choose and you make the wrong choice and you know it is wrong – in your heart you know you are making the wrong choice, but you are determined to make it. If you make it, it is going to stick with you for the rest of your life. This is what God showed me that sometimes if you make the wrong choice, you make it for the rest of your life. You can’t reverse a choice that is made. God Almighty is saying to all of us, “…Choose you this day whom ye will serve…” (Joshua 24:15).

Righteousness, therefore, is not just a condition, but it is just like a being living inside of you that tells you, “This is right and that is wrong.” You know, the scripture says, “I will send you another Comforter even the Spirit of truth. He will guide you into all truth and He will show you the difference between right and wrong” (John 14:16 & 26). Another scripture says, in speaking of Jesus Christ, “Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil, and choose the good” (Isaiah 7:15).

(Excerpt from Keeping in Touch, September, 2009)

Thought for today: Righteousness is not just a condition, but it is just like a being living inside of you that tells you, “This is right and that is wrong.”

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In Season and out of Season

Posted in Christian Walk, tagged , , , , on December 25, 2023| Leave a Comment »

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Scripture reading: 2 Timothy 4:2

The first two thousand years of the existence of Earth man had gotten so wicked, so vicious, so cruel, so godless that he had entirely rejected God. He had piled up so much sin that the debt was so great that it demanded the life of every living creature. There were only eight people: Noah, his wife, his three sons and their wives who remained steadfast to God. Can you imagine, out of a whole world of people, only eight people, “…Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water” (I Peter 3:20). God selected to let them die by water and in dying by water they got the opportunity of repentance. But remember now, no man can go to hell unless God gave him a square chance to go to heaven (John 1:9). The Bible says that He died to save every soul on the face of the earth. Now, Jesus had not yet come in the time of Noah, therefore, at that time there was a special way of salvation. They would go before God, offer a sacrifice and God would forgive their sins. But these people were not able to do that. They came against Noah. So, God built an ark and He was going to send water to drown them that they might be saved by water. This is a truth laid down in the Bible. Let us go to I Peter 3:18 and there we see that they were saved.

“For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: 19 By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison…”

Remember, no one can go to hell unless God Almighty has given him a square chance of going to heaven and he refuses or accepts it. Now, these people when they were drowning, they must have called upon the name of the Lord or else Jesus would not have gone down into hell to save them. Verse 20, “Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, (120 years) wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water. 21 The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, [in other words, not taking a good bath,] but the answer of a good conscience toward God,) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ: 22 Who is gone into heaven, and is on the right hand of God; angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto him.”

Now, you can understand what this is saying. This is saying that people did not get the chance that you have now. They were not in a position to call upon the name of the Lord, and God allowed them to be drowned, to go into a compartment of hell where they could be saved. Jesus Christ died and the first thing He did was go down into hell. He couldn’t get into hell without sins, so He took our sins and went down into hell with all this burden of sin and there He was resurrected in hell and preached unto the spirits in prison and led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men (Ephesians 4:8). He took them out of hell and brought them into heaven. That is a mighty rescue. Jesus Christ went to hell and rescued the people who were in hell. In looking at II Peter 3:9, “The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” Hallelujah.

So, God Almighty is saying to us that if a man goes to hell, he could never blame God, because God is going to do everything possible. Sometimes even on his deathbed the last thing that will happen is that Jesus will appear to him and present Himself to him asking if he will accept Him. If he does not accept Jesus at that time, then he would never accept Jesus throughout the eternal ages, because at that time a man is brought to spiritual consciousness. No matter how dumb he was in the natural world, no matter how carnal, how natural, how brutal he was, at the end when he finally gets serious – he is about to enter into eternity – Jesus Christ presents Himself to him. If that man accepts Jesus at that time, he will be saved.

This is the reason, brethren, why we should not forsake to “speak the Word of God in season and out of season” (II Timothy 4:2). I am saying that sometimes it is not convenient to talk about God. Sometimes you are in a place where people would look down on you if you ever mentioned God – God says you should mention, because that is out of season. “Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine. 3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears…

Brethren, God is saying to us that we have to be different human beings from the normal human being. We have to be different from the human being that will say, “Well, you have to be wise as serpent and harmless as a dove. You can’t preach everywhere.” You cannot be “out of order” in preaching the Word of God. Believe you me, you might be looked down upon, you might be scoffed at and that is all good. If somebody scoffs at you or looks down on you for the preaching of the Word of God, then you should feel good that you are in good company. “Ye (we) are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid.” That is found in Matthew 5:14. Verse 15, “Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. 16 Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.”

(Excerpt from Keeping in Touch, September, 2009)

Thought for today: Brethren, we should not forsake to “speak the Word of God in season and out of season.”

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Death Has a Demand

Posted in Christian Walk, tagged , , , , , , on December 22, 2023| Leave a Comment »

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Scripture reading: Romans 8:2

Have you ever considered the fact that sometimes obedience to the Holy Spirit clashes with what was the righteousness of the law? Let us look at that thought. Jesus was walking through the corn field on the Sabbath day. He actually disobeyed the law of their time by picking corn and eating. David disobeyed the law by going in and eating, and giving to his men to eat, the shewbread, because they were hungry. That shewbread, according to the law, was only supposed to be eaten by the priests.

Let us look at the difference between the righteousness that is of the law and the righteousness that is of Christ. The righteousness which is of Christ says that I must obey the Spirit of God. “I must walk in the Spirit and I will not fulfill the lust of the flesh” (Galatians 5:16). We find, then, that there are two laws working one against another: the law of righteousness of the Spirit, and the righteousness that is of the law that was given to Moses.

Now, it is all well and good to be a philanthropist, but it profits me exactly nothing if my motivation in giving is that I might be a great name as a philanthropist and be looked up to and respected by people. My motivation makes the very act of righteousness unrighteous. It cancels the righteousness that I would actually do. So, then, I have no redress from God for my righteousness, and because of this, sin, therefore, is no longer an abstract thing, but it becomes very personal. Sometimes sin will even reason with you because sin is the opposite of God and the opposite of God is Satan. So, Satan is the master of sin and he works in sin and in sinners. Paul, speaking to us in Romans 7:22, says that he sees another law. “For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: 23 But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.”

Now, the law of sin is also the law of death (Romans 8:2). The law of life in Christ Jesus and the law of sin and death become personal and active since the Spirit of God uses the law of life and the spirit of Satan uses the law of death. Let’s go over that then. The law of life in Christ Jesus cancels out the power of the law of sin and death and it makes me free from the other law of sin and death. Now, what is the difference? If I am in the law of Christ and I make a mistake and do the wrong thing which normally is called sin – the law of life chips in and says you need to do something immediately to cancel the wages that are coming to you from that death, from that mistake. So immediately I would repent and the law of life would come into focus and cancel the effect or the wages that would normally or naturally come upon me for the sin.

Let us look a little deeper into the situation of these two laws. Why are the wages of sin death? The wages of sin is death because it is a transgression against God and God Himself has laid it down that every transgression against God must be paid for by life. In other words, death has a demand. It has a demand that “this person is mine because he did so and so and so and so. Because he fell, he belongs to me.” Jesus said, “No, I redeem him by life – I pay for it, I pay for the debt.” So, what we are doing is demanding from God a certain amount of payment for the things that we do.

Now, you ask yourself the question, “What kind of a thing is this? How is it that Jesus is going to pay?” The scriptures say that Jesus Christ came and by His Blood He paid for every man that cometh into the world. My goodness! He pays for every man, every sin, every wickedness, and every error that comes into the world. When He pays, the man himself has to accept the payment or else he is still in debt, so that some human beings have a preponderance of debt hanging over them. They have become bankrupt in the world of the spirit so that the wages that they owe are so great that they are in debt. They have become a slave to death and they no longer are free as human beings. But the Blood of Jesus is available for everyone who accepts the payment.

(Excerpt from Keeping in Touch, September, 2009)

Thought for today: The law of life in Christ Jesus cancels out the power of the law of sin and death and it makes me free from the other law of sin and death.

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Righteousness under Christ

Posted in Christian Walk, tagged , , , , , on December 21, 2023| Leave a Comment »

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Scripture reading: Romans 6:1-11

When we look at the word “sin,” we notice that is it always contrary, opposite to righteousness. If we define the nature of God as being that of righteousness, then it would follow that that which is unrighteousness (sin) is therefore the nature of the devil. So, we find that there is an opposite pole to every thought, every action, every desire, as well as every plan. What this means is that anything and everything outside of what is God/Righteousness must be sin. Now, thoughts, actions and circumstances, can be of man or of the Devil but we understand from the scriptures that anything that is not of God, that is of the flesh or of the Devil, is sin. Therefore, when we try to find out what sin is, we find that the very fact of our redemption by the Blood of Jesus Christ means that we were redeemed from sin, we were redeemed from sinning and continuing in sin. So, whatever is not of God is sin. Now, this concept brings a very, very sharp distinction. That is to say that if I should say that I am a free moral agent – I am free to think my thoughts and to do my thing and to walk as I please and to help my family and everything like that – it would mean that I would be living in sin, because I am excluding God from my environment.

Living in sin is the opposite of living in Christ. If a man obeys Christ, he is living in Christ, but how can we obey someone whom we cannot see? And how can we obey one whom we cannot hear? And how can we obey one in whom we don’t believe? First of all, to obey Christ we must believe Christ – not only to believe that there is a Christ, but to believe IN Christ so that we know that every thought, every action, every plan is motivated, delivered, sent and executed by the Christ in us and not by the selfish thoughts of our own imagination. So, when it comes to the gifts of the Spirit: there is no space for imagination; there is no space for human conjecture; there is no space for our reason.

What this really means is that we become prisoners to truth and righteousness, if we can put it that way, because righteousness, therefore, is no longer just doing right things. Under the law, righteousness was doing right things. You gave to the poor, you gave your body to be burnt; basically, you sacrificed yourself for others. All that looks very good and it is, in a sense, righteousness, but in Christ it cannot be righteousness unless it is motivated by the Spirit of Christ. If, for instance, I give to the poor because I believe that the Lord said that he that giveth to the poor shall receive blessing, and I am motivated to give to the poor in order that I might receive a blessing – then it means that I am not serving God, I am serving a law of giving and receiving.

Over the radio or the television sometimes you hear the ministries that preach that “if you give you will be blessed” and how many people were blessed because they gave so and so and how when one gives so much, he receives back so much in return. I can well see Satan working with this law to capture people. It becomes a psychological trick to capture you. So, one can actually be in sin yet think that he is in righteousness.

We can see, therefore, that we must walk in righteousness, obey Christ, in order to be righteous. What is righteousness? Righteousness under the law was one thing: a set of do’s and don’ts and the adherence to those rules that made you righteous. But under Christ, righteousness is obedience to the Holy Spirit.

(Excerpt from Keeping in Touch, September, 2009)

Thought for today: Righteousness under Christ is obedience to the Holy Spirit.

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Remember Thy Creator

Posted in Christian Walk, tagged , , on December 19, 2023| Leave a Comment »

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By Mavis duCille

Scripture reading: Ecclesiastes 12:1

There is a scripture that has been very strengthening to us, and to many people with whom we come in contact, who have been having problems and difficulties. We encourage them by saying, “Remember now thy Creator, in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them” (Ecclesiastes 12:1).

When we store up while we are young in the Lord, it comes back to bless us. As we grow older, as the scripture says, “when the eyes begin to fail, when the grinders cease” (Ecclesiastes 12:3), those are the days when we are to have pleasure in the Lord. If we do not have pleasure in the Lord while we are young and while we are strong, we will not be able to endure the end of the day. But praise God, His goodness endureth forever. Hallelujah. So, as we partake of His goodness while we can, we are storing up, storing up, storing up, because there are many who have entered into evil days when they cannot store because they have not stored while the days were good, and so the evil has caught upon them. You go into the hospital and you see it. But praise God for what He is giving us now to store that His goodness will endure forever in us.

We are in the days when the battle of good and evil is seen clearly and God has helped many of us to store, to store, and store and we are encouraging young ones, store, that the Lord can enrich and give you all the strength, that we walk in the goodness and not in evil. We reap the goodness and not the evil. Praise God. Amen.

(Excerpt from Keeping in Touch, May 25, 2003)

Thought for today: When we store up while we are young in the Lord, it comes back to bless us.

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