Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘Christian Walk’ Category

God’s Order: Spirit over Soul over Body

Posted in Christian Walk, tagged , , on August 19, 2021| Leave a Comment »

[Printable version]

Scripture reading: Revelation 18:10-13

The soul of a man is the very personality of that individual. He has a spirit to lead his soul back to God. He has a body through which he expresses and manifests his soul. However, just like a person who lives in a house and becomes so involved with the house that it becomes his master and begins to drive him towards doing certain things, so also the soul can become the master of the man.

God set a spirit in man, and this spirit should bring man to God. When man receives the salvation of God, his soul is quickened and brought to life and his spirit is enlightened. The spirit begins to show the soul a great dimension of light and glory because the soul is now alive. As the living soul demands life from the spirit, the spirit will continue to pull life from God until the Holy Ghost comes and dwells in the man’s spirit.

Once a believer is baptized with the Holy Spirit, the power that comes forth from his spirit into his soul is great, bringing deliverance. He finds he cannot be discouraged easily because the power of God is so great that the life coming from the Father is enlivening his very soul. His thoughts and emotions are changed. There is an action within his emotions that will enable him to control them.

God has set the spirit over the soul over the body. One of the problems with humanity is that sometimes we get the order of God turned around; the body makes the demands and the soul goes along with it and shuts the spirit out. The Spirit is supposed to be in charge. When a man allows the Spirit of God to take a hold of his emotions and his mind, it means that his emotions begin to respond to God’s emotions. As this begins to happen, then the emotions of the man begin to be controlled and begin to die because he no longer is pleasing his emotions, but he is now pleasing God Himself. There is a control over his emotions that the man of God has, that the average person does not have.

After salvation, some people will give way to God and to His control more than others. Therefore, they will have more of what they need than the others although they are both Christians. It depends on how much you open up to the Spirit. If you can find a way to open up to God, then it means that your soul will be strengthened and enlivened.

In the soul there is another nature that we call the will. This nature is generally like an anchor to a ship. When a ship gets into harbor, the anchor is cast and hooked down onto the floor of the ocean (or the bay) and it holds the ship, so that it cannot be tossed to and fro. The ship will not drift but will remain at the spot where the anchor was cast. The will is an anchor to the soul. However, here lies a potential problem: if the will is anchored in the wrong place, then the soul is held in the wrong position. If the will is anchored in the right place, then the soul is held in a right position.

The next part of the soul is the desires, and the desires of man are something that are never the desires of God. Man always desires something else besides what God desires. When God allows you to receive what you desire, very often, it is only God’s way of allowing you to a point, giving you enough rope in order to bring you around to show you how bad your desires were. If ever we desire the same thing as God desires, then it is God’s desire and not our desire by which we are going, because in man dwelleth no good thing, except when the Holy Ghost comes in. Every good thing in man is of God.

(Excerpt from The Book of Revelation, Volume 2, pages 198-199)

Thought for today: God set a spirit in man, and this spirit should bring man to God.

Read Full Post »

Keep the Commandments

Posted in Christian Walk, tagged , , , on July 27, 2021| Leave a Comment »

[Printable version]

Scripture reading: Revelation 12:17

Who is it that “keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ?” If you say that He is talking about the Ten Commandments, then you do not really understand the Scriptures, because the Bible tells me that those who “keep the commandments of God” are those who obey Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost. John 14:23, “Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.” The reason I said this verse could not mean the Ten Commandments is because no man could keep the Ten Commandments. If the Ten Commandments could have been kept by even one man of the Old Testament, then Jesus would not have come, for it would not have been necessary for Him to come. Jesus came and gave them a new commandment that they should “love one another.” The Lord said, “If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.” “The commandments” then could only mean that Jesus Christ is saying that accepting Jesus as your Saviour and accepting the Blood of Jesus Christ make you love one another and make you “keep the commandments of God.”

The whole commandment of God is embodied in the one commandment, LOVE. When the Pharisees asked Jesus, “Which is the great commandment?” He said, “Thou shalt LOVE the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind” and “thou shalt LOVE thy neighbour as thyself.” He said that this is “the first and great commandment.” Matthew 22:36-39 says, “Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” The keeping of God’s law is the accepting of Jesus Christ as your Saviour and walking in truth and “the testimony of Jesus Christ.”

(Excerpt from The Book of Revelation, Volume 2, pages 42-43)

Thought for today: We keep the Commandments of God when we obey Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.

Read Full Post »

God Loves Everybody, but He Delights in Some

Posted in Christian Walk, tagged , , , , on July 21, 2021| Leave a Comment »

[Printable version]

Scripture reading: Jeremiah 4:3

I am constantly reminded about my calling: that God called me and who He sent me to. I was sent to go to a special people of God; not just in the United States, but in the world. You see, there are those who are the “ekklesia” in Greek (the “called out”; the church) but then, there are the “eklektos” (“the elect”). There are the “called out” people, who were called out by God, but there are also a “called out” of the “called out.” All of us are called. All the people in the churches are called people. The ministers are anointed people. I have lived with them, I know that they are God-anointed men.

Sister Mavis said in her book Nuggets for the Needy, “God loves everybody, but He delights in some.” I want to be one of those who God delights in, and there is only one way to be, and it is by being obedient. If you can obey God with whatever He tells you to do, you will be among the “Number One” called of God.

I want everyone who finds himself to be wrong in anything, turn away from it and turn to God. True repentance must have three turns. The first turn is to STOP. The second turn is to TURN AWAY; and the third turn is to TURN TO GOD. I have known men who have repented bitterly over things they have done wrong. Sure, they did repent. They were sorry for it and they turned away from it, but they never TURNED TO GOD to fill the vacancy. They found another way, and therefore they went right back into the same error.

We must be “conscious.” God has made some people conscious: sensitive, able to hear, able to feel and able to see spiritual things. I am talking about spiritual things. There is a man who is as much a man as you are, but he is blind. He lost his eyes, but he is every bit as much a man as you are! He lost his eyes; he is not one hundred percent conscious physically, because those eyes were serving a purpose. There are some people who have been so beaten emotionally that they have lost the right touch, the right feel of God. The Spirit of God will come into the church and move, but it does not move them to the extent that it will move the others. So, there is a losing out with God. You can lose out little by little, and you never know when you lost feeling. You never know when you lost touch. You never know when you lost that spiritual God-given divine emotion. You do not feel as you should feel.

One young man came to me one time. He said, “I notice the brethren are clapping, some of them are dancing; some of the young people seem to be alive, and I do not have that feeling. What is wrong with me?” Do you know what was happening? Sin was in his life.

This brings us to Matthew 13 where it says that some seeds “…fell among thorns; and the thorns sprung up, and choked them.” The thorns grew and the seeds grew. They were growing together in God, but the thorns choked the seeds and they brought forth no fruit.

I sometimes used to plant on the hillside. We found out that the places occupied by the thorns were the richest soil. If you see a field of thorns, cut it down and burn it out, and you will get some lovely fruits and vegetables coming up, because the thorns occupy rich soil. The same way, if you see a man with thorns in his life, help him to get the thorns out of his life, and he will be a great Christian. You see, we had to put fire on the thorns. The fire would burn the roots in the ground, and no more thorns would grow there. I want you to remember, you never get the thorns out until you burn them.

(Excerpt from The Omega Message, December 1997, pg. 17-18)

Thought for today: Burn the thorns in your life so that the seed of Christ would grow and God would not only love you but also delight in you.

Read Full Post »

Changing One’s Destiny

Posted in Christian Walk, tagged , , on July 20, 2021| Leave a Comment »

[Printable version]

Scripture reading: Isaiah 30:21

There is a peculiar thought that the Lord spoke to me. The thought is that God is seeing us right now, and He is seeing our “beginning,” and He is seeing our “now,” and He is seeing our “end.” Somehow I suspect that God does not have a set destiny which says that it is your destiny to end up as so and so, that you must end badly or you must end here or there, but that He gives us the ability to change it. THE THING IS IN YOUR HANDS.

God is looking at your end, and He knows if you continue on one road, you will end here, and if you change your course, you will end there. Thus He gives you every encouragement to go a certain way in order to influence your destiny for good. The concept is very simple. Think of yourself being up in an airplane, looking down. You see a man running along the road, and there is a fork in the road. If he turns one way, you see that he is going to end up in the swamp. If he turns the other way, you know that he is going to end up right. So you send a message down to him and you say, “Keep on the straight way. Do not turn.” You do not really tell him the whole detail of the thing, but because you are seeing where he is going to end, you say, “Don’t you turn. Keep on the straight way.” The man says, “All right. I am going to keep on the straight way.”

This is how it is when God looks down on us. But here comes a devil and he whispers in your ears. He says, “Some beautiful truths are on this road. You can enjoy this road, and after all, you can bless God with the money that you make on this road.” He says, “Go this way,” and you are tempted to make the turn.

But God sends another message to you and says, “Remember, I said to you to go that way. Go straight!” There is this battle then that is continuing in the mind; and you make the wrong turn. Nevertheless, God has a way for you to get back on the right road if you will only listen, and He says, “When you reach to the next turn, turn left.” But when you look at that turn, you say, “Oh my!” It is rocky. It is dreadful. It is terrible. It is problematic. You say, “God says to turn this way, but I think I had better go for the next turn.” However, there is an end to it. There is a time when you cannot turn back—a time when you have gone too far; and this is what we do not want. We would like to see everybody turn right.

And that is my hope that you, my readers, will make the right decision and turn to the right path which leads to the fullness of your calling in Christ Jesus.

(Excerpt from The Omega Message, December 1997, pg. 17-18)

Thought for today: Remember, God gives you the ability to change your destiny. The thing is in your hands.

Read Full Post »

Dead Man Walking

Posted in Christian Walk, tagged , , , on July 13, 2021| Leave a Comment »

[Printable version]

Scripture reading: 1 Timothy 5:6

We read in 1 Timothy 5:6, “But she that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth.” I want you to understand that there are some people who are dead and yet they live. Let me tell you a story about this subject that you know very well.

There was a man who was king over Israel named Saul. Remember that man? God called him, anointed him and gave him power to overcome the enemies of God, but the man began to be disobedient. The prophet went to him, but he never submitted.

When David sinned with Bathsheba, the prophet went to him (in 2 Samuel 12) and told him the story about the rich man having a big fold of sheep, and the poor man having just one little sheep, which was taken by the rich man to feed his visiting friends. When David heard this, he was incensed and ready to punish this man right away. Then the prophet said, “Thou art the man!” David fell down before him and said, “Oh God, forgive me!” He did not resist, but confessed his guilt.

Saul, on the other hand (in 1 Samuel 15), when confronted by Samuel the prophet, at first insisted that he had done what God told him to do (to destroy all the Amalekites and their cattle), and then that it was because of the people that he saved the King Agag and the fattest cattle. The prophet said to him, “You are finished! The kingdom is taken away from you and will be given to another. You are no longer King.”

It is amazing, however, that for many years after that Saul still reigned! He was a “DEAD MAN WALKING.” He was dead! HE WAS FINISHED, BUT HE CONTINUED TO GO ON; AND GOD SAID THAT THERE ARE SOME IN OUR MIDST WHO ARE WALKING AMONG THE LIVING, BUT THEY ARE DEAD. We need to get dead serious with God, because there are the seeds of death in the midst of God’s people!

Let us read some more Scriptures. Proverbs 21:16, “The man that wandereth out of the way of understanding shall remain in the CONGREGATION OF THE DEAD.”

There is a congregation that is called “the congregation of the dead.” The Word says, “…he shall remain…” That means that he was there before, and that there is both a “congregation of the living” and a “congregation of the dead.” And God said that the congregation of the living should not fellowship with the congregation of the dead.

(Excerpt from The Omega Message, December 1997, pg. 5-6)

Thought for today: Let us make sure we walk in obedience to God submitting to His Word and correction so that we would be part of the “congregation of the living.”

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »