Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘Blood of Jesus’

Come out of Sinning, Come into Righteousness

Posted in Christian Walk, tagged , , , , , on October 10, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Scripture reading: Psalm 1

We understand that there is a different level of righteousness at this time. God is saying that at this time He is calling a righteous people and He is calling a people to come out of sinning and into righteousness. No man, no woman who continues to behave in a way of self-motivation is of God. Did you hear me? No one who continues to move in self-motivation is of God. The average American woman is a woman who loves to rule her husband. It’s unfortunate for me to say this in a world-wide sense and let the people in the world know that is how we Americans are. The average American woman is taught to have her own way, to have her own bank account, to have her own business going. She does not go in accordance with the scriptural description of a “Proverbs 31 woman.” But we are calling to the average “son of God” woman: turn from the natural trait of your generation, turn to God and do God’s work rather than that of your generation or your nation. There are others all over the world who have the same kind of a concept, not just American women. Men and women, stop doing your own thing. If you want to do what you want to do, you must realize that you are not doing what God wants you to do. Then, somebody, after he goes and does his own thing, gives a good tithe or a good offering to the church. God doesn’t care for your offering. God wants your soul. When He gets your soul, He gets everything.

1 John 5:18 says, “We know…” We who? We who are in Christ and believe God. “We know that whosoever is born of God sinneth not (does not continue in sin); but he that is begotten of God keepeth himself (continues to keep himself), and that wicked one toucheth him not. 19 And we know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness.”

Some of us take advice from worldly friends. However, Psalm 1 warns us against doing so. Psalm 1:1, “Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. 2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night.”

Brethren, we are talking about sin and righteousness. We are the children of God, bought and paid for by the precious Blood of Jesus Christ, the energy and life of God Almighty from heaven. We are admonished of God to live under the righteousness of God so that we are not caught up by the sin of the world and of the children of the devil. Please, brethren, I plead with you: Change course! Change course! For I know that some of the people who are reading this article are people who have their own way. In everything that you are going to do, ask God, “Lord God, is this my way or is it Yours? Do You want me to do it this way?”

In 2 Corinthians 6:14, it says, “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers…” You say, “We are not yoked together with unbelievers.” Yet unbelievers give us advice. Friends who are unbelievers will say that you cannot do so and so and so and give you advice contrary to God. “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness…” What fellowship hath the voice of God inside of the soul of man with unrighteousness? Or, the voice of the devil coming from others? And what communion hath light with darkness? Light cannot have communion with darkness. You, the children of light, cannot accept the word of darkness from friends and others (some Christians give the wrong advice, too). They pick up advice from somewhere, a little piece of darkness from here and a little piece of darkness there; but what communion hath light with darkness? Verse 15, “And what concord (con with accord) hath Christ with Belial?…” Baal, Baalism, which is worship of idols, worship of another god. “Or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel (an infidel, an unbeliever)?”

Now, sometimes it is hard for us to believe that our own children are unbelievers, but sometimes our children are unbelievers. Their only deliverance is for us to walk in righteousness. Do you hear me? Anytime you turn to God and begin to walk according to that covenant that God has given you, walking it in righteousness – look at your children and you will see that it has an effect upon them. The devil cannot stand your righteousness and whenever you speak a word, it rebukes Satan from your own children if you are in righteousness. If you are not in righteousness and you speak a word, it does not rebuke Satan from your children. Therefore, your children are dependent upon you for life. If you think that you can save them by giving your time and your attention to them, you are making a very sad, sad mistake. Your time and attention to God will save them more than anything else.

(Excerpt from Keeping in Touch, September, 2009)

Thought for today: We are admonished of God to live under the righteousness of God so that we are not caught up by the sin of the world and of the children of the devil.

Read Full Post »

A New Breed of Righteousness

Posted in Christian Walk, tagged , , , on October 9, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Scripture reading: Luke 22:41-47

Jesus Christ is trying to tell us, His people, that there is a new breed of righteousness that He is bringing forth in the earth. No longer righteousness because of the good things that you do, but righteousness because you obey the Spirit of the Living God. Very often you do not obey God because you want to, sometimes you don’t really want to, sometimes you don’t really feel to, you would rather go to your bed and lie down than to preach or to teach. But because God Almighty wants you to do something, you do it, and the Spirit of the Living God will quicken it. God said, “He shall glorify me…”

Let’s look at the following situation: Here we are, someone is not obeying God and God says, “Well, we should pray for him that he would obey God.” But the more you pray for the person, the more the person disobeys God. But you are praying and asking God to forgive him of his sins. Now, God says that if there is anything you pray for He will do it (Matthew 7). So what happens when you pray for the person, “Lord, forgive the person of his sins,” but they go on sinning more and they have no intention of turning to righteousness? What has happened right there is that now the payment is going to fall back on you. It is going to fall on your account. Your account has to be strong. You wonder sometimes when you pray why things don’t happen? Sometimes you pray and things don’t happen because the account is falling back on you and your account is not able to bear it.

I will give you an example: Jesus Christ in the garden. We read from Luke 22:41, “And he was withdrawn from them about a stone’s cast, and kneeled down, and prayed, 42 Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done. 43 And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him.” Do you understand what that means? The cup that He is talking about is that He took on Himself the whole of humanity’s sins; one man taking onto Himself all the sins of humanity. He needed something from heaven to come down to even allow Him to be able to stand on His feet. Verse 44, “And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.” That means the man’s sweat glands were ruptured and He began to bleed, to sweat blood. Amen. Verse 45, “And when he rose up from prayer, and was come to his disciples, he found them sleeping for sorrow…” They could not stand the pressure of agony and sin that was upon Jesus, and they fell asleep or unconscious or whatever it was. Verse 46, “And said unto them, Why sleep ye? rise and pray, lest ye enter into temptation. 47 And while he yet spake, behold a multitude, and he that was called Judas…”

In other words, Jesus Christ took unto Himself the burden of sin because humanity could not bear their own sin. I tell you the truth, the whole earth would be destroyed again if Jesus Christ did not come and arrest the advance of sin. The world would again be destroyed like in the time of Noah, because Satan was demanding payment. The only payment that Jesus Christ could give him was His life, or His Blood, or the Life of Almighty God. That is why Satan is still continuing now, because he has gotten life from us. The more man sins, the more life Satan receives in order to function. But guess what the outcome will be? When we are delivered from sin, Satan will play his last card, lose power, be arrested, taken into hell and chained. He will have no more power to function.

So, if you can understand what we are talking about, sin is a killer. We must stop sinning. You say, “But we sin in words, thoughts, deeds and actions.” We don’t have to. No. If from morning you keep your mind on the things of God, you keep singing the praises of the Lord, you keep allowing thoughts of peace and righteousness to flow, and you are praying for others who are in desperate conditions, then you don’t sin. You do God’s will all day so you don’t have to sin. Man does not have to sin anymore. In the past, yes. But you don’t have to sin because you have the Spirit of life, the Holy Spirit is in you; He is in your spirit and is quickening you every minute of the day. He is preventing you from falling into sin. He is not going to stand to one side and allow you to go into sin. He will prevent you from falling into sin, you only have to believe.

(Excerpt from Keeping in Touch, September, 2009)

Thought for today: There is a new breed of righteousness that God is bringing forth in the earth. No longer righteousness because of the good things that you do, but righteousness because you obey the Spirit of the Living God.

Read Full Post »

Righteousness under Christ

Posted in Christian Walk, tagged , , , , , on October 3, 2012| 1 Comment »

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.

Read Full Post »

“I Shall Overcome!”

Posted in Overcoming, tagged , , , , , on September 19, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Scripture reading: Romans 4:5

I wonder how many of you realize that in order for you to overcome the spirits in your life, you have to take two steps. First, you have to believe for faith is the substance of everything you hope for (Hebrews 11:6). Then, you have to speak the word. Do you realize that many of us have problems because we speak the wrong things? You are in trouble, somebody is bothering you, you have a distress, you let certain words come out of your mouth, and the devils crowd around. The moment the words come out, the devils take them as a command, and they can do things in your name that you never intended to do. You must learn to speak the positive word! It is looking dark, it is looking hopeless, but you speak the word, and say, “I shall live and not die. I shall overcome this thing.” Keep speaking it every day. “I shall overcome this thing.” You fall down flat on your face, “I am going to overcome this thing! By the grace of God, by the Blood of Jesus Christ.” The moment you speak the words, God sends His angels to be with you. The next time you will have a better chance, you will find the strength to do it. Amen. 

I am talking about 50 years of learning. Fifty-odd years of learning from God. I am giving it to you free. One day, I put my finger on the welding iron. I smelled the flesh burning even before I realized that my finger was on the iron. I grabbed the finger and said, “In the name of Jesus, it shall not hurt me!” I don’t know where the words came from. I didn’t contemplate it before, but I just said it. And no pain! I got happy, and bold, and wanted to show my wife, Mavis, the finger burnt. I didn’t want the finger to be healed right away, I wanted to show her! So I ran inside with the burnt finger, and said, “Look here!” I was ashamed. No burnt finger at all! I am talking about the power of creation that God has put in every little one of you. Don’t go around thinking, “Lord, how sinful I am, how poor I am.” Don’t think about that! God knows that! Begin to speak the Word of life and life will come forth. Amen. 

When you have an infirmity, get before the mirror in the mornings and say, “By the grace of God, this infirmity shall be healed. I shall overcome.” You must overcome it. Do you know why? Because you are speaking what God wants. God doesn’t want you to be sick. God doesn’t want you to have infirmities. God wants you to be well, God wants you to be happy. Amen! Don’t you understand? Because you believe God, He said, He will count it for righteousness (Romans 4:5). You try your best, but you are not righteous. But God says, if you believe Him, He will count you just like a righteous person. He will do everything for you like He would do for a righteous person. Can you understand? Look at all these men – Abraham, David… God said David was a man after His own heart (Acts 13:22). A man after God’s own heart going out and committing adultery and murder? But he was a man after God’s own heart. His heart was belonging to God. The devil took hold of his flesh. He didn’t have Jesus, so don’t believe I am telling you that you can do that. He didn’t have Jesus. But then, even those of us who have Jesus and fail, God is still saying to us, “All power is given unto me, in heaven and on earth. Now, you go preach the gospel” (Matthew 28:18-19).

Do you understand what that means? It means that if you turn your mind to believing God, the things that you believe will come to pass and it will make you righteous. Oh, yes! We believe God that we are going to be perfected while we are alive in this flesh. That’s what I believe in God. I believe God that I can stay ten minutes without sin. Do you think that you could do that? Stay ten minutes without sin? If I can stay ten minutes without sin, then I can stay twenty. And if I can stay twenty, I can stay an hour. And if I can stay an hour, then I can stay a day without sin. He will keep them in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Him (Isaiah 26:3). So then, it means that we sin with our minds. The body only manifests what is in the mind. We sin, therefore, with our minds. So, God is saying that if you keep God in your heart, in your mind, you will be free from sin. 

(Excerpt from Keeping in Touch, September 8, 2002, pg. 11-13)

Thought for today: You must learn to speak the positive word! It is looking dark, it is looking hopeless, but you speak the word, and say, “I shall live and not die. I shall overcome this thing.”

Read Full Post »

Quickened by the Blood of Jesus Christ

Posted in Growing in God, tagged , , , , , on September 4, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Scripture reading: Revelation 2:1-7

We have totally lost sight of Jesus Christ and what He stands for, where He has put us from the very beginning, from the foundation of the world, and the gospel. We need to get back to our first love. Our first love might not necessarily be anything pertaining to the church. When we accepted Jesus as our Saviour, there was a freshness in our first love. If you never had this experience, if never a change came over you, if never the sky looked bluer, if never the earth looked more glorious, if never the peace of God came over you, if never the glory of God came over you – YOU HAVE NOT YET RECEIVED THAT WHICH JESUS CHRIST DIED FOR. Jesus died in order that we might be SAVED. The word saved means reconditioned, reborn, delivered from the thing we were when we were first born of our mothers. We must have a renewing of the mind, a renewing of the spirit, a deliverance from what we were before.

This salvation needs to grow. Many have said that they have received Jesus as their Saviour, are all right, are going to heaven, and can freely do anything they please. This is not salvation. Salvation is a continuous experience, having a beginning and an end. If you turn to Ephesians 1:11-14, you will see that the Word speaks about the end of your salvation. Notice the progression:

11 In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will: 12 That we should be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in Christ. 13 In whom ye also trusted, AFTER that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also AFTER that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise, 14 Which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory.

Many people do not believe in this progression in God. God is a God of progress and growth. If you are born again, you must grow. You MUST begin to move from that born again position into things higher and into things deeper. Nobody has to preach to you and say that you must do this, and you must talk in tongues, and you must prophesy. Those things do not have to be preached to the true child of God who is following Jesus Christ. The Scripture tells you certain things happen to you as you grow in Christ, but if you do not grow, then you will not have the signs of growth. Some people say that when you receive Jesus as your Saviour, you receive everything. Without going into too much detail, I will say that when you receive Jesus, you receive HIS LIFE to counteract the death that was in you.

God could not do business with a dead man. Therefore, He had to save you, resurrect you, and bring you to the same place where He made Adam. Adam was made a living soul, and you were a dead soul. Dead means you could not respond to God. You could slap or pinch a dead man, you could shout in his ear, but he is dead. That is how God felt towards you for God shouted at you many times. God would touch your body, shake you, wake you up many times but you could not respond to God because you were dead. Now God took some of His life and put it into you through the Blood of Jesus Christ and you became a LIVING SOUL. The Blood of Jesus hovers over the whole world. You can call upon His name and receive His Blood and the Blood quickens you. That is how you know you are saved. No one needs to tell you to say a few words and if you say them right you are saved. This is not a password business that if you say the right password, then you get saved. Nothing of the kind! Sometimes you can get saved by not speaking a word, but just submitting your soul before God and the Spirit of God will come and give you what you ask for. Salvation, therefore, is a quickening of the spirit and a bringing to life of the individual.

When that individual comes alive, he wants living food. Adam was alive but he died because he did not have the Christ. He had neither the Holy Ghost nor the Blood. The Blood first, then the Holy Ghost and then the Christ. This is the right order. After you have been saved, you get the Blood in your soul. When you receive the Holy Ghost, you do not receive the Holy Ghost in your soul. You receive the Holy Ghost in your spirit. The scripture says in Romans 8:16, The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God.

Those people who have the Spirit of God have within themselves a witness of God that they are the sons of God – little sons of God. Not little gods, but sons of God. Praise be to God.

(Excerpt from The Book of Revelation, Volume 1, pg. 29-31)

Thought for today: Are you growing higher and deeper in God? Remember, God is a God of progress and growth and those that are His must grow in Him.

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »