Big heads don’t like simple solutions

someone succinctly remarked.

With all confidence

And Paul dwelt two whole years in his own hired house, and received all that came in unto him, Preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ, with all confidence, no man forbidding him. Acts 28:30-31

One thing, out of many, i want our kids to learn is to have full confidence in doing right. A lack of confidence, a hesitation, is often all it takes to miss out on entering doors which the LORD opens for us.

I know, it can appear to be a fine-line between the Holy boldness of someone like Paul, and loud-mouthed arrogance, and prideful self-confidence.

Without a Holy confidence no one will believe what you say. They won’t believe that you believe what you’re talking about, and therefore they will also find it hard to trust you.

As well, without Holy confidence we will not be able to push thru and overcome the daily onslaught and resistance which comes at us from the enemy of our soul.

Holy confidence is in short supply, these days. Wishy-washy, touchy-feely, false-humility, and ambiguity has become the order of the day. In the Word of Truth, be VERY confident, but not arrogant. Humility and supreme confidence in God, they must go together.

Enemy of God

You adulterers and adulteresses, know you not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God. James 4:4

Its when one doesn’t hate the sinful principles and forces which drive this world, but rather, loves those principles and uses them and builds his life on them.

The principles which drive Christendom are the same which drive the world, and i detest those principles.

God

and His Son Jesus Christ. It’s all about Him. We should be always mindful of this: His reality, and not get drawn away from His reality into unreality.

Life is to have God live in you. Christ in you the hope of glory. There is your Source! There is your inexhaustible treasure.

What a mighty army the people of God would be if we would simply believe the truth in Jesus.

All the world hoping the Bible isn’t true

What a strange ‘hope’.

Ask in faith, nothing wavering

If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all men liberally, and reproaches not; and it shall be given him. But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavers is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord. A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways. James 1:5-8

To ask in faith, without wavering, without becoming double-minded, is a position – a stance we take until we see the answer come. It means there is a patient waiting for the answer, and during that waiting a person can either remain single-minded, unwavering, or they can become double-minded, wavering in faith.

I find this very interesting. Many of us have rightly rejected the covetousness and hocus-pocus magic of the WOF doctrine. But we also don’t want to swing too far the other way and become people who can’t ask in faith, without wavering. Too often people swing from WOF to the other extreme: unbelief.

If you can be flattered

you can be bought. – Jonas Clark

How much do you want God involved?

We pray together business-prayer meetings* bcos we want God involved in every significant matter of life, that Jesus Christ be glorified and His will be done and Kingdom come.

Remember the times when you were around certain people and they indicated to you that they didn’t want you involved with what they’re doing? Prayerlessness indicates to God that we don’t want Him involved. We don’t want Him to interfere with our plans.

Certainly, the loving and faithful Father does far more than we could ever ask, think or imagine. Yet, it’s His plan that we bring everything to Him in prayer; that’s if we want Him involved.

Do we want to see the mighty Sovereign hand of God in every aspect of our life? I sure do.

* Prayer touching on every practical issue or work we are facing, specifically, and not flowery religious or ‘theological’ spouting.

Receive the engrafted Word

Therefore put away all filthiness and extreme wickedness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls. James 1:21

The Word of God comes to people from God and is either received or not received. When we receive the Word of God it is a spiritual event : God engrafts His word into us. The image here is of engrafting a branch into a tree, so that the two become inextricably joined as one.

We understand, then, that receiving the Truth is far more than a mental exercise or just merely obtaining some information, or facts.

To receive the Truth means we become one with the Truth : the Word is engrafted into us and we are one with the Word. We possess the Word of God by way of the engrafting of the Word into us.

This is why, with true disciples, the Truth of the Word is inseparable from their life : the Truth in Jesus, and their life, are ONE : engrafted into one.

The spirit of earnest prayer

And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplications (earnest prayer) and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn. Zech 12:10

I think this is the only reference in the Bible to the Holy Spirit being called the spirit of prayer.

We know we have quenched the Holy Spirit when we realize that we no longer have the spirit of earnest prayer. I don’t mean we no longer have the Holy Spirit! I’m talking small “s” spirit, meaning, attitude. He is the Spirit of prayer, and He produces the spirit of prayer, and sustains this spirit in us.

Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.

Don’t be harder on yourself than what God is

That would be sad. The art of living in Christ is to let Him maintenance the relationship by His Spirit and His Word. We tend to try and take the place of the Holy Spirit, at times, getting ahead of Him. There’s self-induced guilt, and there’s the wonderful work of the Holy Spirit to open the gates of splendor to us, and say, Would you like to enter?

Overcoming

You are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world. They are of the world: therefore they speak of the world, and the world hears them. We are of God: he that knows God hears us; he that is not of God hears not us. By this we know the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error. 1 John 4:4-6

* True children of God overcome false prophets, teachers and their false teaching.

* This is only to be expected, bcos the One who lives in them is greater than the one who drives the false teachers.

* To overcome them means that we are “over” them and not “under” their influence. What a difference this makes! We are above and not beneath. We are not moved or distracted from The Way in the slightest by what is false, we are set above it, in Christ.

* The spirit of truth and the spirit of error is shown by whether people really heed and obey the Apostolic teaching in the letters of John, Paul, Peter… : whether they “hear” them or not. Make Scripture the final authority in all matters of truth. Whenever you encounter a weak attitude toward the authority of Scripture, you encounter the spirit of error : someone is supplanting that authority with another “authority”.

The greatest prayer

is praying for precious people, by name, that they might be saved. That’s in light of eternity.

A place for you

In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there you may be also. John 14:2-3

Agreeing with the devil?

(This is just a passing thought. It’s not what i’m preoccupied with) Regarding those who deny that the modern state of Israel has a right to exist within the borders of the Biblical Land of Israel: Aren’t you at least a little perturbed by the fact that you and the devil agree on this? That you are in harmony with the demonic princes of this world, who say the same thing?

Look, life is tough

but the guys in the Bible had it a lot tougher. How would you fancy living in a tent in the middle of the desert, with no internet or air conditioner? Or eating locusts, for that matter?

Ahhh, a little perspective goes a long way.

Paranoid Christians

Paranoid personality disorder is a psychiatric diagnosis characterized by paranoia and a pervasive, long-standing suspiciousness and generalized mistrust of others.

Those with the condition are hypersensitive, are easily slighted, and habitually relate to the world by vigilant scanning of the environment for clues or suggestions to validate their prejudicial ideas or biases. They tend to be guarded and suspicious and have quite constricted emotional lives. Their incapacity for meaningful emotional involvement and the general pattern of isolated withdrawal often lend a quality of schizoid isolation to their life experience.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoid_personality_disorder

Be a man of God

Be a woman of God. Nothing less.

…No longer tossed to and fro, and carried about by every wind of doctrine. Ephesians 4:14

Men and women of God are not carried away by every wind of doctrine. Their authority in Christ is stronger than the power of these winds. They are not moved by the winds : Jesus Christ is the same: yesterday, today and forever.

As soon as the focus (the glory) is OFF the LORD Jesus Christ, we know it is a wind of doctrine : empty hot air.

The CERTAINTY of seeing Jesus very soon

This is the greatest fact of life, the greatest certainty.

And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead. And he laid his right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not; I am the first and the last: I am he that lives, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive forevermore, Amen; and have the keys of hades and of death.
Revelation 1:17-18

Some good updates here:

http://www.prophecynewswatch.com/currentedition.htm