Friday Bible Study Continued – See 12/17 for part one.
Pastor Leon Forte’ then added some comments which looked at things from a different perspective.
We are spirits that live in a bodies and possess souls.
There is a hierarchy in rulership:
Slave – has no choice, can be right but even if right must still
follow what his master orders.
Servant- Always serves his master
Master – Connected to the source
BC (before Christ) our master was our flesh. The Servant was our thoughts, will and emotions, and the Slave was our unregenerated spirit, which followed the flesh desires.
BC we could not receive what God was saying in our lives. It was like God was operating on an FM radio band and we were operating on the AM band (Note from Heather, I love this pastor’s ordinary examples which helps to make things clear).
When we get Born Again, God takes the AM band of us and replaces it with FM. Christ processes the FM band and the Holy Spirit is like the graphic equalizer.
When we get saved, the flesh is still the flesh and our mind (servant) is still the mind, but our Spirit now is regenerated.
What has changed is the hierarchy – now the Spirit is the Master
This happens once you get your BA (Born Again). Now our source is the Spirit realm. We have to acclimate our Soul (servant) to the change in hierarchy. It must learn to carry out the orders of the new boss – the Spirit.
Romans 12: 1-2 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
Jesus paid the bill for us, He did it for us. In our flesh is no good thing. With our renewed mind, we can begin to tackle strongholds. That is why it is so important to feed our minds with the Word of God, to fill it full so that we can take this hierarchy and put it in line with God’s plan for us.
Pastor Don continued with:
2 Cor: 10:3-6 For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ, and being ready to punish all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled.
Strongholds come up in our mind and lives, and keep us from seeing truth clearly, they keep us acting in the old patterns that are not in our best interests.
We must cast down our imaginations and arguments, not listen to the lies from our minds, or respond to signals that we used to respond to.
Strongholds put up filters that cause us to argue against Truth.
Pastor Leon and Pastor Don said that we have to form a posse in our mind, and as we know more of the word of God, that posse grows stronger. Satan will put thoughts into our minds that are tailor made to our weaknesses, causing us to doubt, fear, or not trust in God. We must capture with our posse those thoughts and replace them with Truth. We must capture anything that doesn’t line up with Christ.
Pastor Leon used this computer language example.
We must download the Word of God onto our Hard Drive (the Spirit), from the Disk (the Word of God), and then pull it up on our screen (our Mind), and also send it to the printer (our mouth).
The Key to having something up on the screen is to be downloaded and saved in the hard drive. To access it, we use the mouse (spirit). Many of us know the Word and the thoughts, but we can have the information, the question is, who is in control of the mouse? Is it our Spirit or is it the Flesh?
Which side are you acting on – the you that was BC (before Christ) or BA (born again)?
Any prophesying that we do must come from the word that is in us. If we have little word, we will be unable to prophesy much.
Pastor Don said that to act on faith, we have to kill a giant today.
Our GIANT is being stuck in a place that we are comfortable with. Defending our mind, will and emotions. And we are not willing to own up to the powerful declarations we are making.
If we find a Giant in our lives, and speak the truth about it, but believe that we cannot battle this giant and win, we are calling God a liar.
Back to our Numbers 13 example.
Numbers 13:27 – they spoke the truth about the fruit,
But, Numbers 13:28-29 they expressed doubt (nevertheless)
Verse 30 Caleb was able to believe the Spirit of God, and state boldly that these giants were weak and would be defeated.
Verse 32 but the 10 spies according to King James Version gave an evil report. It was evil because it did not line up with what God said.
We have to stop excusing as OK our words of doubt and unbelief when we are looking through a soulish filter.
God is not pleased with our words of doubt and unbelief, He wants us to Believe Him.
We must catch ourselves quickly when we do this, and when we add a negative opinion, we must replace it with something in line with God’s word. It dishonors God when we express thoughts of doubt and unbelief. Often we express these doubts before we have even consulted God about the situation.
It is true that we will have what we say, so we need to be more careful of what we say.
It also has the problem of hurting the Body of Christ and the Church for it sows seeds of doubt and unbelief in others’ minds as well.
The battle is a question of Authority. Who has authority, God or our Flesh.
You must discern the facts from the TRUTH
It is a fact – there are giants
But the Truth is that God told the Israelites that they would possess the land.
In Numbers 14:9 Joshua and Caleb spoke the truth when they said, “Only do not rebel against the LORD, nor fear the people of the land, for they are our bread, their protection has departed from them, and the LORD is with us. Do not fear them.”
The Israelites wanted to stone Joshua and Caleb. When we speak the truth (the FM self) the AM self will want to stone us, to do anything to prevent us from acting on what we know God is saying.
To battle our giants we have to ask God for discernment. To ask, who is this giant, what does he want, where did he come from.
Sometimes the negative person with their belief will seem stronger than the person with real authority. But we have to stick with real authority, for it will last longer and please God. It is only with real authority that we will gain our victory.
As it says in Romans 4:17 “…God, who gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did.”
Most people are praying for their breakthroughs. They seem to forget that a breakthrough is a violent assault on the enemy, and you only get it if you aggressively attack what is holding you back.
We cannot compromise and accept verbiage filled with doubt and unbelief. We cannot justify this verbiage. We will be held accountable for every idle (idol) word spoken.
Many pastors have turned a bedside manner of gentleness into spiritual compromise. It is important to guide those to the truth and combat the erroneous thoughts.
You can’t control what you hear, but you can control how you hear it. You do not have to accept bad reports in your life as truth.
As Pastor Don’s father said, you can’t control the birds in the air, but you can control which birds land and build a nest.
When we get knowledge of the Word, satan can only affect us by causing us to feel guilt, and an inability to do battle, but these are lies. Satan has lost a long time ago, and he just tries to get us to line up with his lying thoughts.
We must examine where we are thinking negatively, recognize the patterns, and rebuke the negative thoughts.
Many times the bad that happens in our lives is not because we are under a curse, but because we haven’t reversed or negated our negative tongues.
We must acknowledge our negative thinking, counter it, not accept it, reverse it, and after a while we will not be speaking those negative things.
It is the responsibility of the people in the pews to kill the spirit of religion. It is our responsibility to be Calebs and Joshuas. To defend the truth no matter what.
A question came up about which battles we should speak up about with those in our lives. And it came out that we need to pick and choose our battles, no one is perfect, and we all have areas that we need to work on.
We need each other in the church – that is why it is called fellowship – we need all the other fellows in the ship. We have to get beyond the stereotypes. We get grace free from God, Faith is the currency of Heaven. We should be careful what we spend it on.
Another question had to do about when a person brings a truth to someone and they don’t receive the truth? It was brought out that it is important to speak the truth, but there was also on the person speaking a filter that they felt that when they speak a truth the other person should receive it. The truth is, that is not always what happens. And it is up to the person who spoke the truth, to rest in the speaking of the truth, and not get hurt or upset because it is not received the way they think that it should be received. That they need to find out the stronghold in themselves that requires that others accept their words as truth.
Mark 11:22-28 So Jesus answered and said to them, “Have faith in God. For assuredly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be removed and be cast into the sea’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says..”
We really must be careful of what we say.
I asked, that there is some concern in my heart for the name it/claim it sorts of statements because what I really want in my life is what is God’s best for me, so I want to make sure that what I ask for is what God wants for me.
I was told it boils down to discernment. That we must pray that God will give us the discernment. Finally this clicked in my mind, often I pray without first coming to God to know what I should pray about. I had the process reversed. There is nothing wrong with going to God and sorting out the issues, so that you know what must be prayed about, then praying with discernment.
What an awesome God we serve that He brings people into our lives to clarify tough issues.
Tomorrow I will start writing about the teaching Pastor Forte’ taught on Friday Night, it knocked my socks off.
Have a blessed night!
