…and it’s going to get a lot worse.
Esteem Jesus as precious to you.
When we come to Jesus in truth what is changed is the source from where our life comes from.
Before we knew Jesus the source of our life came from this world, and then He came along, and the source was radically replaced, with Him as the source of our life.
and that’s the work of the Holy Spirit and the testimony of the Scriptures.
….All this talk about warning Christians about falling away; what’s that gotta do with love? Bcos it’s Jesus who warns and all that He is is love, even His judgments. A Holy love we barely understand, that will never rob God of His Glory ; all things He has ordained are to do with His Glory.
If Jesus warns people it’s bcos of His amazing love, and it’s a love that will never diminish or take from the Glory of God.
But someone may say, I won’t serve God from fear or from a threat, I will only serve Him from love.
OK, that’s true, but back up a little; if you can’t even accept His warnings as being from Him, then you can’t even begin to talk about serving God out of love bcos you’ve just blasphemed Him by inferring that He is a liar, or, you refuse to acknowledge what He said bcos you judge it as not fitting your concept of Divine love, which also is the same, shows one is a reprobate, still separated from God.
Those who take away from His Word have no love for Him, in truth, and any unbelief at any statement of God is a form of defamation against Him. You can’t talk about love until you accept what He says in Scripture.
The indicator a person is deceived about this is when they struggle to accept the so called ‘hard sayings’ of Scripture.
See also the comments on this thread:
https://ianvincent.wordpress.com/2009/02/25/god-is-not-mysterious-in-his-dealings-with-man/
…whatever you are truly, truly thankful for, as having received from the hand of God ; God will maintain.
Whether it be your salvation, your wife, huband, family, brethren…
…for I know whom I have believed, and I have been persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed to Him until that Day.
2 Tim. 1:12b
Take heed, brothers, lest there be in any one of you a wicked heart of unbelief in departing from the living God; but encourage yourselves every day, while it is called “Today,” lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. For we have become partakers of Christ, if indeed we hold fast the beginning of the assurance firm until the end...
(Heb 3:12-14)
Brothers, don’t let your hearts get hardened by sin.
Yes, the Cross has removed all our future sins as well, yet a man is saved by grace, thru faith. The person who truly has faith that ALL their sins, past, present and future, were atoned for on the Cross will repent when they need to : their repentance and their faith are indistinguishable from each other.
A ‘faith’ that does not spring from a repentant heart is no faith, it’s a counterfeit, therefore the hardened backslidden Christian is not trusting God at all, they are treating the Blood of the Sacrifice as worthless, no matter how much they may profess to believe.
The upshot of this / the application is:
Therefore, brothers, be even more diligent to make your calling and election sure… 2 Peter 1:1oa
There is only one God our Father and one LORD Jesus Christ and one Spirit of God, of Truth. His power, majesty, omnipotence, vastness of His love, all that He is, that He is infinite, this far surpasses the finite human mind , the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge.
Although He is infinite, and there is mystery for us fully comprehending Him: His triunity, His sovereignty and power, YET, He is never complicated or mysterious in His dealings with man, He deals truthfully and simply : to the unbeliever, believe, to the unrepentant, repent, to the disobedient, obey…
Like a Christian Billboard message from ‘God’ which said, Which part of ‘thou shalt not’ didn’t you understand?
Man doesn’t like such direct and simple dealings from God bcos there’s no glory for himself. The simple Truth declared in the Scriptures is becoming less popular these days.
..then why live one minute in condemnation, inferiority, or the fear of man?
And standing up and seeing no one but the woman, Jesus said to her, “Woman, where are those accusers of yours? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said to her, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.” (John 8:10-11)
Have you heard Him speak to you, I do not condemn you, go and sin no more! ?
If you have believed in Him from a repentant heart, you must have heard His voice telling you this, echoing thru the precious eternal promises of His Word, sealed by the Blood of His Cross.
For if we know Jesus does not condemn us, then we have the power to live free and above all the other condemnations which will most surely come.
We serve somebody, we can’t ever be neutral, serving no one.
Someone may chirp in, “Ah, He doesn’t call us servants, he calls us His friends” ; Yes, yet the mark of His friends is that they serve Him and not themselves.
…rather, it is the description of the nature of a RELATIONSHIP between persons.
If a person claims to ‘have’ love, to possess it as a substance, a thing, but does not have any real relationships of love, they are fooling themselves.
Apparently on Fox channel. It’s only 33 seconds long… 33 ?
It begins, If the Christ or Buddha returned today would you recognize him? …
View the commercial here:
http://www.sliceoflaodicea.com/end-times/new-tv-commercial-for-anti-christ-maitreya-airs/
…and it won’t be very long til you are very glad that you did.
…has God, in Christ, forgiven you? Could you measure, quantify or weigh the degree and gravity of your sins against Him and therefore how much He has forgiven you?
The actual words which God inspired, inspire us and those who hear us.
We are strong believers that the Words of God, Scripture, are inspired words; they are Spirit and Life, Jesus said. What He spoke speaks.
Anyway, that’s how we feel the Holy Spirit has led us, not a calculated or academic decision to only sing Scriptures, and we do sing songs which are not direct Scripture but are Scripture truth.
I can’t think of any words, other than scripture words/truth, which have changed my life, edified, encouraged, corrected, and lifted me up from sin to see Jesus.
That’s what Livni has just said.
Isn’t that a parallel to what is happening now in christendom?
The spirit that says, ‘we have to give up half of God’s Word for peace’ and unity with apostate Christianity? That we have to accommodate our enemies if we are to love them; that the end of ‘love’ means, ultimately, we must accommodate a lie?
Not all the Land, ‘only’ half.
…is a person, who, though they have very real enemies, people who mock and hate them, they, despite all that, really desire that those enemies be turned into bosom friends and brethren, by Jesus’ conquering love, at the foot of the Cross.
You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.
Luke 10:27
Someone asked on a forum, How do we use the Gift of Discernment?
I replied: Perhaps better worded: How do we function wisely in the gift of discernment? Bcos no gift can be ‘used’ , they are as the Spirit wills , that is, they happen ONLY if the Holy Spirit wills, therefore, the Holy Spirit is never used, only obeyed.
This is in the modern context of many people mistakenly thinking that God has given them a gift they can use as THEY will, whenever they want to.
…Whether a village, town or region was evangelized and the Church of Jesus was thriving there, and the Kingdom of God increasing daily? How would you know? By how many church buildings there are? By Jesus bumper stickers, or T shirts??
Are there any clear external visible things you could look for as you pass thru to indicate whether the place has been Christianized or not?
Well, you would have to meet the people.
The festival we just went to celebrated it’s 1OOth year this year. A church was founded there by German missionaries back then, and Christianity has been established in that area since then, though still a small minority.
One of the first things the missionaries did was build a huge very high steepled ‘church’ building. I’m not knocking what they did, but i’m under obligation to understand what’s happening today. Today, very few of these Christians are saved: it has become a niche culture, a sub caste, which people are born into as officially ‘christian’.
The missionaries did a great disservice by building their edifice, as majestic as it is, bcos what happened was that the ‘church’ centered around the building, the monument, and around the keepers of the monument, and not around Jesus, by the vitality of the Holy Spirit.
They have to have something they can see and touch, a monument to Christ.
Today, it’s very hard to find Christians who can SEE the Kingdom of God, and function and live by faith, by the Spirit. Mostly, Christian’s understanding of what the Church is is based on material : see, touch , taste and not on a vital, living relationship to Jesus.
So, if we don’t build edifices, but build up the saints, that’s OK.
..for a couple of days at a Christian ‘Mela’, festival, distributing an audio visual presentation of the whole Bible, on VCD format, called ‘God’s Story’, in the local Hindi language. We sold them at cost, US 25 cents each. We encouraged believers to make copies and distribute it to the Hindus they are witnessing to.
We set up 'shop', just a few newspapers on the ground, ready for business.
The festival is on a river island, and a bullock cart ferried us across the shallow river; not recommended for people with soft posteriors.
Ian Vincent 