Last Wednesday Jessica spoke to our Bible study. She is the youth leader in our young adult program and has a love for God that is absolutely incredible. I was so blessed by this hard message. She gave me a print out of her message, so I will share it in her words.

So this is a message that has been growing in me since September of last year, and I thought I would share it with you all. I think this is an important reminder for every believer because we get so easily caught up in the superficiality of it all that we lose sight of what our true purpose is…

Something’s been stirring in me that keeps growing in me. I don’t know if it’s the effect of the New Year that has me rearranging every priority, questioning every excuse. I cannot simply sit and be passive in my Christian walk anymore. I MUST ACT. My spirit tells me that something BIG is coming, and that I need to prepare/train myself or else I will not e ready.

[This may sound extreme, but] What if today was the last day that I would ever be allowed to own a Bible?? What if today was the last day I would lose access to everything, that I take for granted, that I use to further my walk with God, such as electricity, internet, ipod?? What if the sheer ferocity of physical/biological/nuclear war reaches our soul, and all I have access to is the intangible Word of God that I have hidden in my heart?? Would I survive on just that?

Have I truly done all to stand, as it says in Ephesians 6??  Have I made the most of the little time I have left?

Now of course God promises us His divine protection and favor…but…if you take a closer look at these promises…they are conditional. Meaning, we have to keep our part of the contract.

Want some examples? Psalm 91:1 He who dwells (that’s our responsibility) in the secret place of the most High, will abide under the shadow of the Almighty.

James 4:7 Resist the devil, and he will flee from you…Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.

The Gospel of Christ (or the whole Christian life, for that matter) is not for the freeloader! When we give our lives to Christ, that’s exactly what we do: we give our entire being to him..my life is not my own anymore. We are to be slaves for the cause of Christ.

Have I DONE ALL to stand??

I don’t know what it is, but my spirit keeps telling me something is coming and I need to prepare like never before. Since then, I’ve been questioning EVERYTHING that is on my priority list, and making some very necessary changes. I’ve pulled some old dusty teaching tapes from my drawers and have been playing them over and over, feeding my spirit. I’ve been spending more time worshipping God on my own (rather than just at church). I’ve had an urge to pray for this nation like never before and have been doing so. I’ve bee even helping my mom get our house and papers in order–you have NO idea how much weight our house has lost from throwing out/giving away so much crap!!

Have I DONE ALL to stand??

I was watching Rick Joyner on a church program last week and he was prophesying that 2008 was going to be a year of judgment for the Body of Christ. He was also saying that God was going to do “major surgery” on the Church…that there would be a separation of the true followers of Christ from the false ones. That the tests would be so intense that only one-third of the Body of Christ will remain! This is not something I enjoy hearing, but it bore witness inside of me..I’ve been watching that separation happen since January of 2005.

You don’t have to agree with what Rick Joyner said…you can take it or leave it. However, have you DONE ALL to stand?? Are there still things in our lives that take precedence over God? Are there still things that we’re struggling to hold onto, that God wants us to release? Do we still think that the life we live everyday, is ours?

I once heard someone say that the only responsibility we have as Christians, is to simply come to the cross and die.

Every single day, Christians are engaged in various battles…all at the same time! There’s the battle against the growing darkness of this world, the battle against our flesh, the battle against the devil. Isn’t it time we start preparing like we’re at war?

Part 1, Part 2

Pastor Don then was closing and people began asking questions. I couldn’t hear the questions, but the answers had so much meat in them that I wanted to share them with you.

Question

You can feel for somebody. She said you are healed and you know you are. And what I am saying is that your flesh man may never know that it is healed. But your spirit man knows that it is. If you don’t know how to get in touch with your spirit man, you’ll walk around in life continually fighting the same battles over and over again.

Another question

She said that’s why we have to stay in the Living Word. Because our carnal man will flip flop the spirit man. Do you follow me? What happens is, if we don’t understand that, when the stresses of life come upon us, and stress of life is always from time to time going to come, we need to know which reservoir are you drawing from and relying upon. Which reservoir are you drawing from? A lot of times we don’t know because we respond too quickly. The flesh is immediate. But the spirit takes a little bit longer because we have to make an effort to consult the spirit and plug into it. That’s why, we have to say, wait a minute. Why are the saints beating up on the saints? A lot of times it is because we are quick to respond from our emotional residue that is still left. That’s the way I’ve always been treated, and then boom. But when you come to church, most people don’t know where your damage lies. Most people don’t know, unless it comes up in counseling or coffee talk, most people don’t know how much you’ve been abused or stepped on or ignored.

One time, I came out of my office, I wasn’t thinking about anything except I wanted to get in the church and worship and get ready to give my message. I came down the stairs and I was really focused on thinking about the scriptures and thinking about what I’m going to say. The lobby was packed and as I’m walking through, I’m giving my courteous headshake to people. I got a phone call that week that I had ignored so and so and she was offended. I thought about that and I said, well I’ll make the effort. And I do. So I said, let me pray about it first and see. And as I prayed about it, I realized that there was no direct circumstance in which I had ignored her. I realized that she was in the lobby and I didn’t recognize her, I didn’t call her name. I didn’t address her. I didn’t do anything, I just went to where I was going and she took that as an offence. And then it all began reeling back. I thought of the songs that she used to like and sing, and the songs she always liked were what I call those put down gospel songs. “I ain’t nothing in the sight of God.” Those kinds of songs, self put down songs like, “I was garbage when Jesus met me and I’ll always be garbage but Jesus loves me anyway.” And I started flashing back and then I said, you know, I got it. I told my wife, we have to go over to so and so’s house. We went over to her house and in the process of it her whole history came out, that she was just so used to being abused, overlooked, and walked over. She was now at a place where she decided that anyone that does that to me, I’m going to get them. And so she was going to nail me for that, but the Holy Spirit just showed me, I’m not going to sign up for that. And I made it very clear to her that walking by you does not constitute an offense unless you are looking to be offended. Now where did that exist in her? That was in the emotional residue of the flesh.

If you can just get a vision of this thing, then you begin to realize that yes, everyone on the planet is multiple schizophrenic. You all have multiple personalities. We don’t want to believe it, but we do. You have one personality that you show one place one time, and then you’ll switch in another. You’ll get in a situation where the Holy Ghost is moving and then you’ll get another personality. You get in a place where there is no Holy Ghost and you get another one. And what that is sometimes is the different parts of the internal battle between the spirit mind and the flesh mind.

Look at Romans Chapter 12. We quote this all the time. And most of you can quote it from memory. If we go there, I’ll show you a couple of familiar verses that we just need to look at from this standpoint. (Italics is NKJV, plain script is Pastor Don’s comments as he read the passage)

Romans 12:1-2 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies (How come it says bodies? Do you see it? Why does it say bodies? Here’s how we read that. We read that you present yourself, that’s not what the apostle is saying. He is saying “present your bodies”) a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. (Well, what is he trying to get across to us? He’s saying, you have to die to the flesh. But what he really means is let’s take the fleshly body, the mind, will and emotions of the man and let’s kill that sucker. Let’s kill him. Well, how do you know I’m sure? Let’s look at the next verse.) And do not be conformed to this world, (Well what does he mean ‘conformed to this world?’ He means don’t allow your flesh man to dominate you to make you do what’s natural in the world for your flesh man to do. I’m getting to the place now that whenever I get an idea to do something, I’m beginning to question it. Somebody today brought me some cakes to eat and there were two pieces. The minute that I thought, man I’ll eat them both. I put them down and I questioned that. I said who’s saying that. I’m serious here. I played basketball today, I burned up enough calories. But who wants me to eat both pieces of that cake? In the small things we need to take stock about what’s being given to us that the world’s standard says. The world’s standard was saying, yeah man its good cake, eat it all. But I said no, let me think about that a minute. I am learning to stop and consider everything. And it only takes a split second, but generally we don’t. But in the realm of the emotions we really have got to take stock. When we are feeling something, we don’t need to move in action until we’ve really considered where’s that coming from? Is that the emotions of the spirit man or is that just me? So I rolled up the other piece and put it the drawer for the mice. Or I’ll give it to someone else.)

Someone asked if one were more powerful than the other? Pastor Don said, yes, I can prove it by scripture. The Bible tells us that when we are born, when you come into life and you’re first born on planet Earth, the Bible says that when you enter into the fleshly body, you are without sin. You are born into this world and you are not accountable until you arrive at the age of accountability. It says in Romans 7:9, I was alive once but then I died. Well, when does it say I died? You died when you became aware of the law of right and wrong and you chose wrong – you died. Because, why? You then entered into sin. You became a partaker of the will to sin. So what was the condition before? You were alive. What does it mean that you were alive? It means that you were not dead in sin. No body in here is bound by the sin of Adam. You were born into a fallen state of sin, but you yourself have become holy and sanctified through the blood of Christ. So if you brought me back to the 1970’s and parked my butt in the Café Espresso. I’m alive now and you’d be taking me back to death. But when I’m standing in the Espresso now, am I guilty, no, because that guy died. When did he die? He died when I once again became alive to the Lord. When I cried out, “Lord save me,” what did He say? “No, maybe? “  No, He said “Yes” and his yes was permanently yes, because I wasn’t saved by my power. I was saved by the Spirit of God. I was born of the Spirit of God. Boy if the Church would just get that message out to people.

Question. The answer is this, when we’re first born the spirit is stronger, but the flesh as a child grows seeks to take dominance. The little kids here in church are noisy (there were little kids in the sanctuary during this Bible study), yes they are noisy, but there is no malice in their noise. They are not trying to interrupt. They have no plot and plan to disrupt the Bible service, they are pure and without sin. They are just little ids running around in their little egos. I want this, I want that. But there’s no malice in this. So what happens is, over time, getting a little older, the kid gets to the point of thinking if I disrupt this meeting I can get out of here. Mommy will take me home on time. Then the flesh in that child has gotten stronger. And what happens then is a process. As the flesh gets stronger the mind, will and emotions of the carnal man gets to a place of dominance, not always and not all the time. It’s just spurts. The reason is that the spirit of man is alive. The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord searching the inmost parts of his being. So what happens is God, by his Holy Spirit doesn’t let us go willy nilly totally.

Remember when Sister Ethel was giving her testimony? She was clearly saying to us, even though she let herself go, the prayer line from her mother and grandmother did not let her go. Now what’s that prayer line tied to? It was tied to her, there were moments of lucidity when she said, this is wrong, I’ve got to change, and I’ve got to stop this.

Pastor Don told us, I can remember one time coming up from New York City and I went to the rest area, and thinking to myself, my flesh was saying, what a drag God can see through buildings. Because what I was planning to do was illegal. I wished God wouldn’t see it but I was grown up enough in the Lord to know that if I was going to sin it had to be with full knowledge that I was going to sin with no excuses about it. Because why? I know God could see me doing it. Well what situation. My flesh was still dominating my spirit man, but my spirit man hadn’t given up on me. He was still in there talking.

Now here’s what I want to close with. It says in verse 2, and do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, (Well, he’s not talking about the mind of the spirit, he’s talking about being transformed in the mind of the flesh. The mind of your spirit will never miss it. Your spirit man is always thinking right thoughts. Everybody in here, when you have a decision to make between right and wrong you always know the right thing to do. That doesn’t mean that you are going to will to do it. But you know. And that’s why there’s always a debate. As a teenage boy I went to my dad and said Pops sometimes I have these decisions that come into my mind. And he says, what do you mean? And I said a lot of the guys I’m hanging with now are getting seriously heavy into drinking. And I have these decisions to make in places that they go and things that they do. I don’t know how to always make the right decision. And he said these words to me that were just so simple. You talk about the Gospel in action. He says, “Son, if you think you shouldn’t, don’t.” I said, “What?”  He said yeah, if you think you shouldn’t, if any doubt arises, don’t do it. He says, if God’s in it, He’ll give you another opportunity and he’ll override it if God really wants you to do it. But usually that’s your flesh giving you the quick fix, the right answer that is the wrong answer eventually. And the reason is, you can’t always know exactly in a moment what’s the right thing to do. But guess what, your spirit knows. Your inner man knows. I can prove it. Do you want me to prove it?

Every mother in here, you call it instinct and woman’s intuition, but every woman in here at different times has known that your kid’s in trouble. You didn’t know that in your mind, you were watching TV or washing dishes and something rose up inside of you and said you better go find the kid and see what he’s doing. Where did you know that? You didn’t know that in your intellect, you knew that in your spirit man. How many of us have gotten to a street corner and you were going to go through and something said, stop? And you stop and poof a truck goes by that could take you out. Well where did that exist? It existed in your spirit man. Your spirit man is plugged into the Spirit of God and has more information than you. It’s the same with investments and everything. So he says, “Don’t be conformed, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Your mind is where you must be renewed. We all think right thoughts and wrong thoughts and go back and forth. And he is saying get plugged into what your spirit man would do, and he says,) that you may prove (God knows that this is a test.) what is that good and acceptable and (and look at what it says, look at the next line.)  perfect will of God. In other words, how are you going to know the perfect will of God unless your spirit will, is getting the information from the Spirit realm. And see, when we say man is just a physical carnal will, mind, will and emotions, we’re really missing it. It’s really the will of the Spirit of the man that must dominate the will of the physical man and get in touch with him or else we are not going to be under control.

Question. Exactly. The first is we have to discern who’s talking to us. If I met you for the first time, what would be the first thing we would do? The first thing I would do is look at you. The second thing after looking at you is I would stop, and the third thing I would do, based upon looking and stopping, because if I didn’t stop, I would just walk over you, is that I then would act, reach out shake hands or give a hug or whatever. To live the Christian life is just a matter of learning to look and stop. It’s not that hard. It’s just that we don’t do it. We have to look and then stop. Take an assessment of what are we thinking, and do what it says in Corinthians, and you all know the scripture, “take your thoughts captive and making them obedient to Christ.” You know when Christians do that, when we’re in trouble. You know by that time it’s a little too late. It’s too late to take the thoughts captive. Well when do we do that? That should be after you look and stop and then you go, let me captivate this thing.

Everybody wants to be a prophet but they don’t do what a prophet has to do. A prophet cannot be swayed by what he sees. When a prophetic person walks up to you, when he’s looking at you, he’s not noticing your hair curls to determine whether you are rich or poor. He is trying to look into the spirit realm concerning you. He may not be physically seeing you. I’ve never seen a true prophet just run off at the mouth. I’ve seen true prophets just look, stop, boom, and then they will have something to say. Why? Because they are trying to hear from the spirit man in them. The carnal man is thinking, I’ve got to collect the offering, I’ve got to be nice to the pastor. I have 14 more people to pray with. Oh look, here come another 10 people who want a word of prophesy, the carnal man is thinking all that. My feet really hurt. I wonder if my wife has left already or is she waiting for me. Do I really want a cheeseburger or how many other cities do I have to go to? But the spirit of the prophet isn’t tired, distracted, bored. And that’s why you just have to marvel at truly spiritual people. Because they have to spend time discerning what’s going on. Looking, stopping, and seeing what’s really going on. What am I feeling? That desire to escape this room, what is that? And the truly emotional person says, “Get me out of here!” But the truly spiritual person asks why do I feel I want to get out of here? Check this out, and where in me is that?

It’s like meeting somebody for the first time and saying, “I don’t trust them.” Well where is it in you that you don’t trust them? If it’s you don’t trust them in your spirit, yes, you need to back out. But it might be, you don’t trust them in your mind, and that may be based on the fact that they look a certain way. That’s what racial prejudice is. Racial prejudice doesn’t occur in the spirit of man, it occurs in the physical, in the nature of the flesh of the man.

How do you do it? You just have to want to do it. You just have to want to be free of the forces in life that constantly own us. And then you will begin to get born again in certain areas of your life. For example, I play sports. In sports we have this thing called the zone. And the zone is a place where (and musicians have it, and I am sure women have it in different areas and I’ll think of an example) you have to shut down the fleshy mind and let the body operate. Let it do what it does. A golfer takes 1000 swings a day. Why does he do that? Because when he’s in a tournament he wants to automatically do it to get to a place that he’s in the zone, so when he swings the club he’s shut down his mind and body. He’s not thinking about his mind or body, he’s just swinging the club. What makes a Michael Jordan great is when he gets in the zone, he’s not thinking I’m going to go left or right and then I’m going to take two steps and then I’m going to dunk. No, no, he’s in the zone. When he’s in the zone he’s automatically just functioning. And believe it or not the spirit knows what to tell the person to do. A foul shot close to the end of a game, the game is on the line and there is no time left on the clock. He’s got to make these foul shots for the team to win. It’s at that moment he must shut down his mind. That’s why in sports they call a time out, to freeze the kicker. What do they want the kicker to do? To get into his mind. What does the kicker do? He goes off by himself. Why, so that he can stay out of his mind. Do you follow me?

I used to watch my grandmother cook. My grandmother was a great cook. When she was in the kitchen cooking, she’d be singing Christian songs and basically be throwing the food together. Grandma was in the zone and you’d say, “Grandma how do you make that?” And she’d go, “boy, don’t bother me.” How much sugar do you put in? Boy, don’t bother me. How much salt do you put in? I remember my mother asking Grandma how do you make that, and my mother would get frustrated because it almost felt like rejection because grandma’s answer was I don’t have a recipe, don’t know how to write down a recipe, I just know how to do this. Leave me alone and just let me do this. And it’s just getting into the zone.

And spiritually that’s where we want to be. That’s what worship should do for you. Worship should be the place that you shut down the mind, where you rely upon your emotional resources but not your physical emotion. You only use physical emotion to prime the pump. When your spirit emotions kick in, you go to that place where you don’t care who’s watching you. You don’t know who’s here and you don’t ever want the worship to stop. You don’t want Church to end. You’re just here now. You get into the zone of the spirit realm of the emotions. You may be aware that I’m crying. All these people are watching me cry and snot’s coming out of my nose and I couldn’t care less. Well why couldn’t you care less? Because your spirit is dominating you. In the emotional realm your emotional spirit is crying. What are we talking about when it says to intercede to the point that we are grieved in the spirit or that we are interceding in the spirit? Or we are travailing in the spirit.

I can remember I was travailing at home and my wife came out and I’m just making terrible noises, crying and carrying on. And my wife said, “Are you alright?” And just as quick my fleshy mind and will gave her attention, and I said, “Honey, I’m fine” (then he cried) Because when she asked me the fleshly part just addressed that but it was shut down because my spirit man was travailing and there was no room for me to step outside of that spiritual realm, but to just yield to it. Just say, “Here I am Lord, use me. Use me any way you want.”

Our desire is to step into power, into the higher realms of power. And the only way we can do that is to learn to dominate our flesh by our spirit. Amen.

Question

There is in space and time, you can’t do anything about it. It will not be wiped from your memory banks till we get to heaven.

Question

Well Jesus gives us another verse, and in Ezekiel and other places it says, “I will remember your sins no more.” The only one capable of not remembering anything is God. And when we get to heaven, He will wipe that, because it’s all written in the books. And in the books of remembrance everything that happened to you is there. But it will not be eradicated or totally wiped out until we get to Glory. That doesn’t mean you don’t have victory over it. You are victorious. The flesh can’t use it to dominate you in any way. You’re not captive to it. I’m not held captive to sins. I used to have to struggle because the devil used to remind me of who I was before, but now that doesn’t work anymore. Now I know I’m worthy, I’m worthy to do what I do. And I know that only in worthiness can I get it done. You know, you have to have a certain amount of spiritual confidence and that only comes by knowing that you know that you know, that you’re delivered from it. But that knowledge only comes from your spirit man. And eventually your flesh man says it. That’s why Jesus says this, in the context of this teaching think about why He would say this, “Ye shall have what you say.” In terms of this teaching, what is He saying? He is saying that it’s in your spiritual realm, but boy oh boy when you make it come out of your flesh realm! You have the dominance. You’re free of it. Anybody get that? That’s the battle. The battle is, “Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.”  At some point hearing the word of God has to come out of your mouth. Because why? Your spirit man has taken dominance over your flesh man. And that’s what faith is. That’s why faith is NOW, and “Now faith is…” is the way it reads. Because we have to arrive at a point that we break through all space and time. What is God’s answer? His answer is that in eternity He’s already done it. And all you’re doing is calling it to remembrance down here that you need it. You know that scripture that says, “Store up your treasure in Heaven?” Well some people store up their treasure in Heaven and leave it up there. But God wants you to know that you can call it down and part of that treasure is what has God said about you. Every time I get a little shaky and the devil’s working on me, I go back to the prophesies spoken over me and I run those back through my mind because those prophesies are not bound by time. They’re not bound by the circumstances I’m standing in at the moment. I am free I am standing in, in the moment. All I have to do is reach into eternity and in eternity the Lord has said certain things to me and about me. And I reach over those and pull them down and I say this is what I’m walking in. They may say, you don’t have it now, but I say yeah, I’m walking in it now. Well you don’t see it now. Yeah I see it now. It’s mine right now. Right now and you can’t take it from me.

Question

What you said, is when the stress level comes up with the kids I respond and you are responding from your flesh man. And then you said this, “My spirit man doesn’t like it.” And then she says this, “And what do I do?” Well the “what do I do” didn’t come from her spirit man. The “what do I do” came from the flesh man. So the flesh man is saying, well “what do I do”? But the flesh man is actually (don’t take this personal because we all do it), the flesh man is always looking for a cop out. The flesh man is always looking to make it impossible to make it difficult, and to put the blame somewhere else. So he’s saying, “well God hasn’t given me the anointing for that.” Now, here’s what you have to do. When the flesh man messes up and the spirit man reminds you that he messes up, all you have to do is get busy real quick. What do you have to do? It’s a habit. Faith comes how? By hearing. And hearing how? By the Word of God. All you have to do is begin to hold the flesh man accountable by bringing the spirit man to bear down upon him. By this, it’s real simple. You just said some words you don’t want to say in a way that you  know was not what God wanted you to say, then you have to reach back and say, “What would the spirit man say?” And then, do what? Out of your own mouth apologize in the hearing of others in whom you are responsible to. And do what? Bear the burden, the brunt and the guilt of what you just did and the action of it. You keep doing that. You keep apologizing from the spirit realm and bring it into the flesh realm. Trust me, first it will get caught right after it comes out of your mouth. Then it’ll get caught right on your lips. Then it’ll get caught on your tongue. Then it’ll get caught on your tonsils. Then it’ll get caught down in back of your throat and it will stop getting out. That’s the only way to deal with that. The tongue is the hardest thing to bridle. But what we need to realize, is that that tongue, check this out. When it says that the tongue is the hardest thing to bridle, we need to realize that before the tongue fired off, your carnality, your carnal mind pumped it up. And that’s where we really got to go. Listen, if a husband apologized to the wife enough, after awhile he’s going to get sick of apologizing and he’s going to begin to be Michael Jackson and back peddling. Because you don’t want to do that. The flesh has to be programmed to do what the Spirit man wants him to do. Therefore if you have to humble yourself and admit your faults, the flesh doesn’t want to do that.

You know there are some people that it will take three days before they’d apologize for something. And some of them just will half way apologize. You know, I’m not sorry for what I did because you made me do it. But I am sorry that it affected you the way that it did. That’s crap. I want to apologize for the way you took it. Well, that’s garbage. What that is, that is a cop out of the flesh. What we really need to do is back up and whole hog bring humility. Take the lower seat, count the person as better than us and just get busy crushing the flesh. The flesh hates it, and if you just keep apologizing. Keep saying I was wrong, I shouldn’t have said that. Bring everybody into the room and say, “Forgive me. I am the spiritual head of this house. I shouldn’t have said that. Forgive me, I shouldn’t have talked like that.” You do that enough times and guess what, that circuitry will shut down, when you get ready to do that, it will say, “No, I’m not going there.” You’re not going there in the presence of these holy people. But you’ve got to go back and shut it down. But you have to realize that a lot of that is emotional residue. Those are old triggers, and mostly if you think about that, that’s the way you were talked to. That’s what you heard. That’s what you were brought up with. And you have to go back and kill that emotional residue. Well if not kill it, bind it up and pin it to the ground. You dog, you’ll not have life.

This last story. Brother Hagin said that if a guy had two Dobermans. And one was a good Doberman and one that was a bad Doberman. You take the good Doberman in the house and live with you and you just let him eat steaks and what ever, what would happen? He’d become healthy and happy and just become a wonderful dog. But if you had a bad dog, you take him out in the back yard and you put him on a short chain, and you drive a stake in the dog and you half way feed that animal, that animal is going to shrivel up and die. And that’s what we have to do with the flesh. Treat the bad dog like a dead dog. Kill that sucker.

We then stopped for the night, saying a prayer that we begin more and more to let our spirit man dominate.

Hoping that you  have a blessed night. We are having another major snow storm. I am believing, by faith, that spring will come.

Heather

Part 1 link

Pastor Don continued, and did a demonstration. I am going to try and illustrate what the tape said:

And here’s the example that I gave you. If you remember, I had one person stand up as the physical fleshy person. Then I had another person behind them, that was the mind, the will and the emotions, and that represented the carnal person. And then next to them I lined up another person and I said that this is the Spirit man. Pastor Don pulled up volunteers to illustrate this (he pulled up a person to represent the carnal man, carnal mind, carnal will, carnal emotions, and then spirit man, spirit mind, spirit will, spirit emotions).

 He continued, see we have a problem. Modern psychology tells us that we are a body and a soul. But that’s not right. Then we say things like we are a triune being. Yes, we can use that, but let’s get the real Biblical picture of it here.

So this is the carnal man (one of the people), but he has a spiritual counterpart. This is his spiritual man that lives inside the body. The spirit (another person) lives inside the body. Then carnal man has a mind, will and emotions – the soul all in the fleshly body. If he dropped dead right now his mind would cease to think, his physical will (another person) would stop. There would be nothing to make him to eat a cheese Danish if he was dead, nothing to make him drink, nothing that could make him smoke, nothing to affect him if his physical willpower was dead in a casket in a grave. And this is emotions (another person), if the carnal man is dead he can’t get excited about anything. Nothing could move him.

Now, what we have then is a misunderstanding of the spiritual. It’s so clear in the scripture. In 1 Corinthians 15, it tells us that there is a spiritual body as well as a fleshly body, but we never think about that. There is a spiritual body. For example, if the carnal man died, his spirit man would exist. In the Bible would his spirit be able to think? Yes. The spirit has a mind doesn’t it? How about the Spirit of God, does it speak? Yes, of course. Does the Spirit of God think ideas? Yes, of course. What about the spirit of man? Yes, in every vision of John in Heaven he’s thinking thoughts, he’s asking questions. And when Isaiah is in Heaven before the throne in the Spirit, he said, I woke up, I was in the Spirit. Well, what happened in the Spirit? He said, I had to ask the angels some questions. Well that was his mind. This spirit has a mind. If his body is dead, it doesn’t cease to exist. He still thinks. Angels are spirits. Do they think? Yes. God is a Spirit. Does He think? Yes. The Holy Ghost is a spirit, does He think? Yes. Well this spirit body has a mind. Does the spirit body have a will? Yes. Of course it does. When you die and you come out of your body, if you are on the way to hell, the will says, “I don’t want to go there.” If you’re going to Heaven, the will says, “Yeah!!! I’m going to see grandma.” Well, why grandma? Well I just love her and I want to see her. Well what was that?  That was an expression of the will of the Spirit. The Spirit gets to heaven and says, “I want to go see the Throne of God.” Boom. The Spirit has a mind, a will. How about emotions? This is the one we don’t think. We think somehow our Spirit has no emotions. But the Spirit does have emotions. What does the Bible say? It says that the Holy Spirit, which is a spirit, can be grieved. It says the Joy of the Lord is my strength. Well, all of that attests to the fact that His Spirit can be happy or sad. Remember when God, who is Spirit, said to Moses, “Leave me now so that I can let my anger build up.” So God is a Spirit who can get angry.

And so we’ve missed it. Yeah, we forget that we have the carnal nature, a mind, a will, and emotions, all in the realm of the carnal being of man.  We have a Spirit being who exists. Now everybody intersperse (The people that Pastor Don pulled out of the Bible study moved around, interspersing.) weave in there together. They wove together and made one line. What do we have, we have the carnal man who has a spirit being (spirit man) in him. If the carnal man dies, they separate. Right now they are all together. We have a mind. Pastor Don put the flesh mind in front, because the Bible says that the natural comes first. Now then we have the mind, the will and the emotions (carnal ones). Now, here’s the problem. Here’s what has to happen to put the situation in order. What has to happen is when we are talking about being saved. Born again is a little different. The carnal man is not born again, until (He has the Spirit man put his hands on carnal man and force him down), the Spirit man dominates the flesh man. There are areas the carnal man is not fully born again in. Until the mind of the Spirit dominates the flesh of the spirit, it won’t happen. The spirit of the mind has to dominate the carnal mind. The carnal mind must be put down. And the will power, when the flesh rises up and says I’m going to do such and such, the spirit inside the man has to say, “No, I’m the spiritual will. I dominate you. You’ll do what you are told. No, you’ll not go there. No, you will not do that.” And the spirit will forces the carnal will down. And the same thing in the emotions, the emotions rise up. And the spirit man’s emotions say, “No, you’ll yield and be in subjection.” Until that happens in every area of our life, we are not in dominance and we are not laying hold of what God has established for us. We don’t have the Mind of Christ until the mind of the Spirit dominates the fleshly mind. We don’t have God’s will set up for us to do what is right until what? The Spirit willpower rises up and says, “You will do as I say.” And in the area of the emotions, until the Spirit emotions dominate. What do you praise God with? You can praise God with your physical flesh and your physical emotional realm, but there is a place where the Spirit emotions take over and take you into the realm of the Glory of Glories, of the Holy of Holies, and that is when the emotions, the mind and the will all have dominated the flesh man in every area.

There is an aspect of this that gives us a chance to understand some things. What about a person who has an abusive father, a father who abused them when they were 7, 8, 9, 10, 11? They come into the knowledge of Christ. They join the Church, they go through all of that and they are saved. But there is a hurt there because daddy abused them. That hurt just gnaws away at them until they reach a point where they yield to the Spirit of God who comes in and heals them of that hurt. Now here’s where we mess up, where we miss it. We think that that happens only in the realm of the emotions of the carnal or physical person. But here’s where it really happens.

We get born again. We go to the altar, we come to the Lord. We finish and we go, “I’ve got to forgive this person.” Where did that idea come from? It couldn’t have come from the flesh man because the flesh man is hurt and doesn’t want to forgive. So in the area of the realm of the flesh man, he doesn’t want to forgive anything. His will wants to get back at the person and his mind wants to figure out a crafty way to get back at him. His emotions are damaged, and he’s been abused. The Church is filled with abused people, so when they come to the Lord, they say, “Lord Jesus I believe in you for my salvation.” Boom, they’re saved. But guess what, they are not born again in the area of that abuse. Why, because their flesh man is still thinking, “Boy, I want to get him.” You know, “If I can’t get him, Lord, you get him.” “And if he’s in Heaven throw him out, and if he’s in hell, put him down at a lower level.” Come on, let’s tell the truth here. Because why, that flesh man is still hurting so bad.  So when they come to the altar and say, “My goodness, I want to give up my hurt. I want to forgive.” Well, that forgiveness didn’t come from the flesh man. The flesh man wasn’t prepared any wise to think about forgiving and walking in love. The flesh man is still in his vengeance mode or in his pain mode or in his victim mode. See, because the emotions can trick you and when you should be in one area it will put you in another and you can end up being the victim which means what? It means you are still getting hurt. You’re still getting beat up.

Remember in the beginning of the book of John, it says, “born of the Spirit, not of the will of man.” Not of the will of man or the will of the flesh, but born of God as John 1:13 says. Now God is a Spirit, and it says you must be born again, born of the Spirit and the Water. And that Water is the what? The Word. So here’s how the process works. The Word of God goes forth, saying that the only way to freedom is to forgive. The only way to healing is to forgive. That makes no sense to the carnal man. Let’s be honest. Someone hurts you, and you’re going to forgive them and you’re going to get healed as a result of it. That makes no sense to the carnal mind.

How about this one? I just finished writing a book called, Taking the Lower Seat. And one of the great principles of taking the lower seat is that Jesus said, “If you’ll take the lower seat, later on you’ll be exalted.” Now that makes no sense to the carnal man, because the carnal man says, “If there’s an opportunity for me to get the higher seat, I’m going to take it,” because the principle of moving from the lower seat to the higher seat is based upon availability and opportunity.  And the carnal mind is always looking at availability and says based on what I see, not based on faith, but based on what I see there aren’t that many seats at the head table. There are a limited number of seats at the head table. And then the carnal man sees the opportunity. There is nobody sitting down now, let me go and get my seat at the head table. Now what does Jesus say? Jesus says if you do that, then you might be in trouble because the master of the event or the affair, may come and say in front of everyone, “Hey, that’s not your seat.” You took advantage of opportunity. You took advantage of availability but guess what, it wasn’t decreed for you. So the master has said, “No, no, no, you can’t have the upper seat. You’ve got to go down to the lower seat.”

Now why is that so? Because the principles of God make no sense to the carnal mind. The Principle of God is based on two things, faith and saving. Faith says, “Huh, I would like to be sitting up there.” But I have faith in the Word of God. I have faith in God’s opportunity. And I have faith in God’s availability. And I have faith that He’s going to do it in His time, and He will set me up. Now the flesh doesn’t change. The flesh still wants to sit at the head table. And God doesn’t say that there’s anything wrong with that. He says, if you want to sit at the head table, do it My way. Believe me by faith that if you’ll sit in the lower seat, in due time I will exalt you. Now the mind can’t figure that out. That principle is foreign to the human mind. It’s just as foreign as “Call those things which be not as though they were.” You can’t wrap your brain around that.

So how are you going to get the principle that we are going to get born again in the area of our hurts? I’m hurt. I have all these hurts and I need these hurts to be addressed. My daddy abused me and I need to get healed. And so, what do we do? We come to Jesus. We hear the Word and the Word says a principle that we cannot intellectually grasp, that if you will forgive him, I will heal you. We can’t wrap our minds around that. We have to do that by faith. The only way you can do it is by telling yourself, “I believe God said it, He knows what’s best. It’s His principles. His principles have always worked before. Therefore I’m going to forgive daddy for what he did to me based on the principle of faith.”

Now trust me when I tell you this. You couldn’t have thought about that on your own. You couldn’t have dreamed that up on your own. That had to be born of the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God had to introduce that to the spirit of the man, in his mind, his will, and his emotions. Did you get that? So God introduces the concept of: if you will forgive him, I will forgive you. If you will forgive him, I will heal you. If you will forgive him, I will exalt you. If you will forgive him, I will trust you with more power, and I will make available to you the seat at the head table.

Now where does that occur? It can’t occur in your flesh. It had to come in your spirit. You’re sitting in church when you hear it and something happens on the inside of you. You begin to cry tears. Those tears are not coming from the emotional man until after the Spirit emotion said, “This is the way, walk ye in it. Yield to this.” And how do I know? Because time and time again, after people have prayed a prayer of forgiveness for someone else, they go away and the thought comes back to them, “How can I possibly forgive them?” And where is that thought? In the carnal man. The carnal man still hasn’t done it, but in their heart they state, “No, I forgave them. I forgave them Wednesday at 11:00 at church at the altar. I did it, and I’m going to stay with it.” Then three weeks go by. They’re thinking about daddy. And that old emotional man tries to rise up again and they say, what, “No, I forgave them three weeks ago at church. Then, they’re going through their life a year later they go, “No, no, no, I’m cool with that. I haven’t thought about that old knuckle head. I haven’t thought about him in a long time. I’m healed of that situation.” And they go years and years and years, “I’m healed of that situation.” But guess what, they go to a wedding of their children’s children and at the wedding they hear a story about somebody who’s been abused or something, and the next thing they know, they’re crying tears. And then they ask the question, “Am I crying now because that wound was not healed? Or am I crying because there is emotional residue still stored in my carnal man, in the emotional carnal man? Or did you not really forgive him?”

And we go through this mental dance over and over again, not realizing, wait a minute, in my spirit man where it really matters I’m born again, I surrendered that to the Lord. I am healed of that thing. That remembrance is what is stored up in the carnal nature of my being. In the carnal nature of my being there’s some stuff that is residual, that’s just back there in the memory banks. It doesn’t mean I’m not healed of it. It doesn’t mean that I’m not born again of it. But sometimes it rises up and the old man just wants to put me back there because of his misery and his lost innocence.

Don’t say that forgiveness is not what you’re ever going to do. That way you’ll never, never walk free of some of the things that have happened in your life. That’s not what’s important. What’s important is that your spirit man dominates you in the realm, in that area, and has bound up the strong man and says, “No, no, no, no, no, no. You will not destroy what I am planning to do tomorrow because you are trying to take me back to yesterday.” I’m telling you, if you get a hold of this it will set you free. Because so many people in the Church are trying to move ahead, and they can’t move ahead and they’re thinking that it’s them. They’re thinking, “Well I must still be a real problem. I didn’t get free.” But no, they did. They just don’t know where the battle lies. And the battle is that they have to loose their spirit to dominate their flesh man.

Questions began being asked at this point. I will share the questions and the responses tomorrow. This was an intense Bible study for me.

Hoping your day is blessed. I will try to get to your sites tomorrow. We had a major power outage and our battery backup malfunctioned – we ended up having to call in an electrician to bypass the backup system. And I have to share this computer with others. Fortunately we now have light and heat – something we didn’t have last night on one of the colder nights of the year.

Heather

Pastor Don taught an incredible Bible study that dovetails a lot of what we are learning now. I typed up the transcript for him recently, and this is an edited version of that transcript.

Let’s Pray. Father, we ask that you illuminate this Word for us. It is by your grace that we have wisdom and understanding and we seek to be wise in the things of God. We ask, Father, that you would open up the revelation of the Word that we might grow thereby. In your Mighty Name we pray, Amen.

To get to the lesson I’m teaching on tonight, we have to do a short summary.  

We have a problem in the Church because people come to church for years and never change. They keep messing up, keep falling down, and stay just as confused. They come to church every week, they live at church a certain way, and then in the rest of the world they look a different way. And so what happens is that they are just as broken five years from now as they were then. They come, they receive Jesus. They get all excited. “Oh, I’m born again!” And then they even go into the deeper things and get filled with the Spirit of God. And then they go, “Oh, I’ve got it now, I’m on my way.”  And then sure enough, six weeks later, they’re back in the toilet. They’ve done stupid again. They’ve sinned. They’ve fallen down, they’ve messed up. And so as a result of this, the Church then begins to look like a merry-go-round, rather than what it should look like. The Church should look like a train. Do you get the difference? Instead of going around the same circle over and over again, the Church should look like a train, going from one destination to the next and the next.

And so what we end up with is that instead of people getting better at what they do for God or better at what they do for themselves, they end up constantly falling into the rut of sin. If they’re captive to a physical or a mental sin, they continue to fall back into it. They stay bound instead of getting loosed or free. By bound I mean they have periodic moments of lucidness or periodic moments of freedom and then over a period of time, whatever the devil brought into their lives to cause them to fall he just reintroduces it under stress. They go through life and then stress increases, and then what do they do? They go back to their old crutches and they fall down again. And so, just like Pastor Ed was ministering Sunday, it’s nice to have a “we fall down, but we get back up again” mentality. That’s nice, that’s really good, it’s a beautiful song, but that shouldn’t be what the Christian life looks like. You should not keep falling in the same place doing the same thing. It should be that you get up and you don’t fall down. As you get older in Christ you should fall down a whole lot less.

Pastor Don asked us, how much respect would you guys have for me, if someone could tomorrow offer me cocaine and I could get hooked and go backwards? How much respect would you have? None. You expect me to get up and to stay up.

I had an incurable lung disease 25 years ago. You would expect that if I am going to teach healing and believe healing that I’m not sick every month with something else, or with the same revolving situation of having lung disease all over again. No, you expect me to get up and you expect that if I teach healing, I should basically be the picture of health more than I’m the picture of sickness. Should that not be the case? You should see some progressive, not only improvement, but you should see some progressive victory in my life. What would you think of Pastor Don if I was always broke? Well you’d think that he misunderstood something in the Gospels. But what if I was periodically broke? You would have to say that he also misunderstood something. I may temporarily have less cash flow, but I should get to a place where I never experience being broke again or absolute poverty. How would you feel if someday you come to church and you have to always give Pastor Don five bucks? Come on now, wouldn’t that change your faith? I’m preaching prosperity, that people should prosper, and then you get to the door and I say, “Listen, Sister Julie, I’m really having a hard time now and I need five bucks.” Well that’s ok one Sunday, but what if every Sunday I’m moving around the crowd getting five bucks from somebody else. I say, “Brother Chris, things have been bad. Can you loan me twenty bucks?” Can you see the premise I’m laying out here? And in all those different areas of the life of the Church there should be a progressive growth.

Over the past three weeks now, I’ve began teaching on this. We have to understand that the problem is people get saved, they come into the Church, they give their life to the Lord, they are considered saved. They say, “Lord Jesus, help.” Well the Bible says, whoever calls on the name of the Lord, shall be saved.  So when you come to the Church or you get in a situation and you say, “Lord Jesus, save me.” The Bible tells us that the Lord Jesus’ answer is always the same, “Yes, I will save you.” So, we are saved. It says, call on the name of the Lord and you shall be saved. Now the word “saved” there doesn’t mean one time, one shot. The word “saved” means delivered, it means cared for, it means whole, it means health, it means all of that. And that’s what the Jews understood when they were talking about, “He is the Lord of my salvation.” It meant that He’s going to take care of me on the earth now, and it means that when I die, I’m also going to be with Him in Heaven. To be saved means that I’m covered here on earth but I’m also covered in Heaven.

Now being born again isn’t the same as being saved. To understand what being born again means, let’s take a look at John 3. There has been such wrong teaching about this passage that it’s pathetic. (Heather’s comment: The words that are not italicized are what Pastor Don spoke as he read through the Bible. What is in italics is the Bible passage.)

John 3:5 Jesus answered, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter (can’t get into) the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ (Then Jesus goes on) The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

Notice, He doesn’t say, anything right after that about the water. Do you see that? He’s telling us that you must be born of the Spirit. And so we know He is saying, you must be born of the Spirit of God. So being born again is not something that I decide to do, it’s something that happens to me. In another place in scripture, in John Chapter 1 it tells us how we get born again. It tells us who got us born again.

John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

So what is it saying? It is saying that the Logos or the Word existed as God-ness as a person of the Godhead or a part of God-ness in the very beginning, whenever the beginning was. We don’t know when the beginning was, but whenever the beginning was. In the beginning was the Word, meaning from time immemorial way back there was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word had status as God. Now the only church that changes that translation is the Jehovah’s Witnesses. And it reads, “The word was a god” (little g) That’s the only Bible that translates that verse this way. So we know that in the original Greek we know that this (NKJV) is accurate. So it is saying that the Word, or the Logos, this Being who is the Word of God, He is the spoken part of God, or the messenger of God, or the message of God, or the living, breathing Word of God. Can we wrap our minds around that? No, of course not, that is too big for us. But it gets a little easier to understand. It says:

John 1:3-6 All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.

This is talking about John the prophet (John the Baptist).

 John 1:7 This man came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all through him might believe.

And remember, that same Light is that Word that was with God and that was God.

John 1:9 That was the true Light which gives light to every man coming into the world.

Now verse 9 is interesting because what he is saying in Verse 9 is that we don’t really have to worry that everybody in the world hears about Jesus. We are wired to find out about Him. We are wired. The responsibility of getting the Word out is already God’s, the True Light which gives light to every man coming into the world.

I’ve thought about this years ago, when Albert Sweitzer went into the darkest jungle, why didn’t they just kill and eat him? Did you ever think about that? The reason was, you had the bad witch doctor that probably wanted to kill and eat him, but you always had the other guy who had the Light. He wasn’t a witch doctor, he was the good guy. It might have been the chief of the tribe or one of the elders, and he said, “No, I know this guy and what he is going to do is good things. So we’re going to leave this guy here. Let’s take his medicine and see what happens.”

God is going to get his message out. And it says that light, for every man coming into the world.

John 1:10-12 He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, (Who is His own? The Jews, so He came to the Jews.) and His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name:

Alright, the burden of this whole passage is on the fact that it is the believing in His Name that establishes us in position to receive the right, or the exousia, the right to become children of God. Verse 13, how did they get to become children of God?

John 1:13 who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

So what we need to realize is that (Now go back to Chapter 3) when He says that “ye must be born again”, he is saying that at some point the Spirit becomes real and alive to you because the Spirit chooses to let you know that you belong to Him.

I always marvel at my job. My job is only to receive those that God calls. That’s it. My job is really quite easy. I just get to stand up, open the doors of the church and ask, “Does anybody want to come and receive the Lord?”  They get up and come down and then I get the credit. But I didn’t do anything. I didn’t wake them up that morning and put it in their minds to come to Bible Study or to come to church. I didn’t do any of that. They had it in them. And then, when they heard the message or the music, or whatever, there was something already in them that said, “Let me go upfront here and seal the deal.” They were born of God.

Now tying this all together, where did that happen? Most of us think well maybe it happened in the physical realm. But it didn’t. It happened in the spiritual realm. The Spirit moved upon them. Well, where did He move upon them? He moved in two places, First of all, He moved on their Spirit because the Spirit gives life to spirit. Isn’t that correct? But Jesus said, “You must be born of the Spirit and the water.” And those of you who are water baptized could still be unchanged. So we know it can’t be the baptismal water because that water doesn’t really change anybody. They just get wet. The possibility that they say is that you are born of the water of a pregnant woman, amniotic fluid. But that can’t be it because that water in there is flesh water, that’s flesh, giving birth to flesh. So it can’t be water in the womb, because that water is just going to be spilled out anyway. And you don’t have a religious experience because you were born. The people watching it may have a religious experience. Watching a baby being born to me is a religious experience. If that won’t make you believe in God, I don’t know what will. So we have to do a little Bible research to find out what it is that Jesus is saying that the water is?

Who knows the two places I use as reference? We begin to get an idea of what he water is by the revelation expressed by the Spirit to the apostles.

Ephesians 5:26 that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word,

By the washing of the water by the Word of God. See, you people are getting wet right now.

1 Peter 1:22-23 Since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit in sincere love of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure heart, having been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever,

So from those we get the key to the secret, Jesus is saying, “You must be born of the Spirit.” The Spirit must act upon you. And then He is saying, in order for that to happen, you have to have heard the Word. Now, this catches us up to where I really want to go tonight. In other words then, here’s what He’s saying. He’s saying you must be acted upon in two main areas of your life. Your thinking must be changed and your Spirit must be changed. So we have people in the Church that are saved, but in certain areas of their life, they are not born again. We have people in the Church that don’t believe in giving. Well that means that they are saved. When they die, they’ll go to Heaven, but when they get to Heaven the Lord is going to say, “Why didn’t you get born again in your finances? Why didn’t you realize that giving was a natural part of my law of reaping and sowing?” Some people are saved but they never got born again in their marriage. You always treated your wife like she was a dog or a second hand citizen, or a second class citizen. You never got born again in that area. And some people will die and go to Heaven, and the Lord will say to them, “You never got straight on spiritual commitment.” Or you never got straight on doing good works. Or you never got straight on alcohol. Or you never got straight on drugs. You were saved, in that you called on the Name of the Lord, and you believed on Me for salvation, but you never got born again and heard My message in the area of healing. You never got born again in healing.

One of the sisters in church went down to a college and she was going to sign up to take theology courses at this college. And she was listening to the people at the college who were going to teach her and they were saying unbiblical, unscriptural things. And so she called me up and she said, Pastor Don why should I go to this seminary to be taught out of what the Bible says? Well what is that saying? That’s saying that some of the theology that the Bible teaches, even the Bible teachers are not born again, meaning they haven’t heard it nor has their Spirit received it so that they can then walk in the newness of that thing.

We’ve got to get that concept. See, we come to church and we really expect people in the Church to treat us a certain way. Not realizing that people in the Church are saved, but that doesn’t mean that they’re necessarily born again in the finer aspects of how to deal with people. You know, hurt people hurt people. So, you can have somebody that’s saved, but they are still hurting people. You can have somebody that’s saved, but they’re still abusive in the way they talk to people. Then there has to be a problem in our understanding of who is in operation.

Pastor Don gave an illustration of this using people from the Bible study. I will share the rest of that presentation tomorrow. This part of the Bible study was a review of a previous Bible study for the visitors who were in attendance that night.

Have a blessed day!

Heather

We were very blessed to have Sarah Smith speak at our Women’s Luncheon last month. She is the wife of Pastor Smith of Morningstar Christian Fellowship, 83 Chester Street, Kingston, NY. 12401. Her talk was very mobilizing regarding how we need to reach out to the harvest of souls in the Hudson Valley. She was kind enough to send me her notes which are below. I know that you will be blessed. Heather

THE TIME OF GOD’S FAVOR

Sarah A. Smith

The goal of this teaching is to help the listener to recognize God’s favor as it has been demonstrated to the individual, the local congregation (church), the regional Body of Christ, and His intention to extend His favor to the Mid-Hudson Valley for a spiritual awakening and the harvest of souls.

A)  Divine Favor

Primary scripture text: II Corinthians 6:1 -2 “In the time of my favor I heard you, and in the day of salvation I helped you.”

Two prophetic references of God’s favor:     Isaiah 49:8-9   & Isaiah 61:1-3

Contrast “favoritism” with “Divine favor”:

Favoritism – showing partiality based on wealth, status, or appearance (see James 2:1-9)

Divine favor – the divine influence upon the heart of an individual and its reflection in the individual’s life; having an identity of being accepted, a receiver of benefits, favor, gifts, and divine grace; the certainty that God displays His joy, His liberality, His pleasure towards us and we in turn respond with joy, liberality, pleasure (in Him), and thankfulness (steadfastness) toward Him.

Pause to reflect on the Lord’s favor extended to each one of us through salvation. We have each received the favor of the Lord because we have received the grace to believe in the finished work of God’s Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, upon the cross and His righteousness imputed to us though faith.

Furthermore because of our shared faith in Jesus Christ we have now become His Body, His church, and brothers and sisters in the family of God.

B)   God’s Faithfulness in Covenant  (Old & New Testaments)

Deut. 7:9; Psalm 36:5; Psalm 89:1; I Corinthians 1:9; Hebrews 6:18; I Peter 4:19; II Thessalonians 3:3; Hebrews 2:17; Hebrews 10:23; Revelation 1:5; Psalm 103:17-18.

The Lord will be faithful in keeping all of His promise to us; if unfaithfulness occurs it will be on our part not His. He has proven Himself to be faithful throughout the ages.

C) Divine Pleadings of God Toward Humanity

Jeremiah 35:15; Ezekiel 33:11; Matthew 22:3; Revelation 3:20; Isaiah 45:22; Isaiah 55:1; Matthew 22:9; John 7:37; Revelation 22:17.

God has cried out to humanity to turn to Him and be saved. He continues to call out. How broad is His call? “…God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.”           (I Timothy 2:4) We do not have to wonder if it is God’s will to save someone! The invitation is for every inhabitant of the earth from every tongue, tribe, and nation. This includes our family members, friends, neighbors, co-workers, school mates, etc…

D)  Our Responsibility for the Harvest

A brief history of the “move of God”:  in the U.S. during the JESUS PEOPLE MOVEMENT, in the Hudson Valley, and personal account of the Spirit’s work on the island of Martha’s Vineyard in 1972 and on.

Examples of the favor of the Lord demonstrated in the Mid-Hudson Valley: number of Spirit-filled churches; Christian schools; percentage of believers; outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the gifts of the Holy Spirit; Christian radio located in our “back yard” – the Sound of Life Radio Network; quality of pastors and church leaders; unity in the Body of Christ.

Our mandate: II Corinthians 5: 20 “We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making His appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.”

We are Christ’s hands, feet, eyes, and ears. Let’s proclaim the message to all those we come in contact with!

NEW YORK GIANTS WIN!!!!!!!!!!!

Dear Faithful Friend,

Jerusalem in the Snow

http://picasaweb.google.com/time2danceagain/SnowDaySJerusalem3031Jan08

We send you our love from Zion,

Eddie and Jackie

Our friends Jackie & Eddie Santoro send out a newsletter, and they shared with

us a picture of the snow that fell in Israel. We were there last May, and it is incredible

to see the snow. This is the Jaffa gate.

We get a newsletter called Zion’s Glory Update. If you wish to receive it, here is the

link to email and be added to their list. mailto:esant@netvision.net.il They are doing wonderful

things for His Name in Israel.

Have a blessed Sunday.

Heather

Pastor Don invited Hilton Wilson to teach part of Friday’s Bible study. He shared some scriptures on our love walk. I know they will bless you for they sure blessed our Friday Bible study.

John 15: 10, 12 10 If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love. 12 This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.

Hilton told us that Jesus gave us one commandment, that we love one another as Jesus loved us. God’s love is everlasting and without ceasing. We have to work at love and choose love.

Romans 5:8  But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Even with our sinful nature, God’s love is so everlasting and without measure that he sent His Son (Jesus) to die for us. He gave us love before we knew Him, and he wants our love. Notice in John 15 that there is a condition, John 15:10 (see above) begins with the word IF . We have to take part in this work and love one another, for that is God’s commandment. If we do not love one another we do not abide in His love. It isn’t a question mark, it is a command, and we need to take part in that work.

Philippians 2:5-9 Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus,  who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name,

God’s sent His son to die for us. Christ was obedient to the Father and loved us. God did His part. Christ did His part by being obedient. We need to do our part, to walk our love walk just like Jesus loved us, Jesus wants us to love one another.

For our love walk to work, Jesus loved us and showed us by His actions how to love one another.

Galatians 5:16-17 I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish.

There is a battle between our flesh and the Spirit. We have to choose whether or not we are going to act out of the flesh our the Spirit. The best choice is the Spirit and standing on God’s Word. We have a choice to respond to a tough situation in love or in anger. Choose love.

1 John 4:20-21 If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? And this commandment we have from Him: that he who loves God must love his brother also.

Hilton pointed out that again we are back to what choice will we choose. Will we hate our brother or choose to respond out of love. Christ responded out of love for us. If you respond because of hate and hurt, you are not obeying Christ and choosing the right thing.

Hilton shared with us how God put him to the test regarding his love walk. His brother was partner in a construction firm in Bermuda with Hilton. After taking a big job, and receiving payment, his brother did not help to complete the job, walked away with money, and Hilton was left finishing the job, and ended up finishing the job at a great financial loss. Hilton told us that he was angry and wanted to respond in the flesh. He acknowledged the feelings, but chose not to respond in anger. He remembered Pastor Don and his sermons on our love walk, and made the choice. He handed the situation over to God, for God to handle, and he left it in God’s hands.

There was doubt that crept in as Hilton wondered if he really heard from God or not. Ultimately he came away realizing that God taught him an important lesson, it was only money that was lost, and he has been praying for his brother. That it was far more important to walk in love. He did not act out on his anger.

It is far better to obey God and walk the love walk than to disobey God. And Hilton is believing in faith that God will replace any loss.

God will use situations in our life to perfect us.

1 John 4:7-12   Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.  Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love has been perfected in us.

Hilton hopes that we will keep working until we act habitually out of love. May his love be perfected in us.

(Heather’s note: It was a wonderful teaching and a good reminder to me to remember to walk in love no matter the circumstances.)

Praying your day is blessed. We were stuck at home all day from icy rain. My kids were happy for the snow day.

Heather