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Tag Archives: Holy Spirit


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An experience in prophecy

The circumstances surrounding this experience of prophecy was a group of ministry students came to our church from a nearby college to do a church service.  While the music team was ministering I felt to go forward to prophecy at the microphone that was set up for this purpose in the church.  The  ministry team had been singing something about ‘once more’ which stood out to me.  My thoughts went to Samson and his request to God, “let me do this once more”.  The OT story goes on to say that Samson used his God given strength to push out two pillars and the whole house collapsed around him and he destroyed more of God’s enemies in his death then he did during his lifetime.

I went forward apprehensively.   The church was packed.  There was a capacity for about 800 people in this building and it was full.  I had nothing to prophecy except the ‘once more theme’.  I began with this.  While I was prophesying I was taken over by the Spirit of God.  It was like I blanked out for a short period of time.  I knew I was speaking but I couldn’t hear what I was saying.  This happened for a few seconds of time.  When this ended I was still trying to carry on with my prophecy, so to speak.  I stopped.  The whole congregation was responding to what had been said just a few seconds earlier.  It was very incredible to hear this response.  It was like a guttural response that happened as a group spontaneously from from the people.  I am not aware of what I said.  It was only a few words, I think.  I asked for the tape afterwards and was told that the prophecy had not been recorded.  No one talked to me about what had been said in the prophecy, not even my own husband, and I was afraid to ask.  I had been having struggles in that church with the long established lay leadership for a period of four years.   I was not popular.

In my next post I will give my testimony of the ‘Call of God’ for a purpose or ministry that a person may receive.

 


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The repercussions of Sin

Can we  really sin and not have future or immediate consequences in ourselves?  Not according to the Scriptures.  Sexual immorality causes us to sin against our own bodies, the Bible says.  We join ourselves to others in the sexual act and become one with them.  What happens when we have multiple sexual partners outside of marriage or monogamy?  That is the question that we don’t really know about until the judgment time, and there is certainly a judgment time coming.  This judgment time is talked about many times in the New Testament.  We are going to be judged according to our deeds in the flesh.

Some Christians say we don’t have to worry about this because grace will cover our sin in God’s eyes.  The Bible does not teach this exclusively.  Grace is a truth, but judgment for sin is also a truth in the Bible.   These two truths are reconciled by rightly dividing the word of truth.  We understand that there is grace to cover our sin, and we understand that we have the tools to conquer our sin in Christ.  We must understand that we are required to overcome sin in our lives through the power and the enablement of the Holy Spirit.  We need to call on God for this provision and for the courage to acknowledge and fight our sin (s).  Grace is what is provided by God in the interim period in this fight for victory over sin, personally and corporately.

We have a situation in North America where we disallow the reality of demons and the devil.  In the book of Luke we read of demons causing havoc in the physical bodies of people.  Convulsions, insanity, deaf and mute demons, legions of demonic entities found living in some people at the time of Jesus.  This is so foreign to us that we cannot even go there in our minds.  In  these biblical accounts the demons exercise a good amount of control over the people affected.  They required deliverance and freedom from demons that is  provided through a miracle done by Jesus.

We cannot engage the culture of our day recklessly.  There needs to be an extreme caution as to what we do and what we accept into our lives.   We cannot sin knowingly as Christians.  This will be a sure condemnation in ourselves.  The Bible says that once we have known Jesus and we delve into sin for some supposed benefit there may not be any more sacrifice for sins available to us.  What does this mean?  A sure judgement, and a sure penalty, perhaps for an eternity.

 

 


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The Sufferings of Christ

The Bible declares that the believer will partake of the sufferings of Christ.  That this is in their best interests. That the believer will partake of the glory when they have also suffered like their predecessor Jesus.  Jesus has gone before us, we are to follow him.  Job declares that he knew of God, he had heard of him previously, but when Job suffered he stated he then saw God, gained understanding, and abhorred himself for his complaint against God.

Job suffered when he stood alone in his faith.  His friends contradicted him, his wife encouraged him to curse God.  Job experienced the loss of his family, his children, his friends, his possessions, his standing and respect in the community.  He stayed faithful to God, and afterward was richly rewarded by God in this life, and I am confident, in the life to come.  In the kingdom of God.  How could Job be happy with what God gave him after he had experienced such devastating losses?  God makes it possible.  Our further understanding makes it possible.  God’s work in us makes it possible.  The Bible says that with God nothing is impossible.

The New Testament says that we need to arm ourselves with this knowledge of the believer suffering.  It is happening in the world today and believers in the western nations don’t understand it.  Arm yourselves with this mind, the Bible says.  Christ suffered, and so you can expect that you will suffer as well.  Are you greater than your teacher, the Bible says?

Do we suffer in a vacuum away from God?  No, God is with us.  He makes it possible.  He provides.  It is not easy, but the suffering will end.  Paul states that if it is God’s will that you suffer for a period of time endure it like a good soldier of Jesus Christ.  These are teachings that are lost to the western church doctrines in our day.  It should open our eyes as to who is a true leader of God’s people in our day and times.

 

 


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What God Requires

Micah 6:8
He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

What must we do to work the works of God?  We need to implement justice, morality, and rightness, today in our own lives.  God is clear in his Word.  What we do in our lives, and how we do it, matters to us, and to God.  He has requirements of us. We need to do certain things in order to prosper spiritually and physically in our lives. We are told repeatedly throughout scripture that judgment from the Lord is coming.  That God will judge the just and the unjust according to their works. He will judge the nations and peoples of the world.  He will judge his own people.

Immorality and corruption are increasing in the environment where we live.  We need to be looking to God for the ability to refuse temptations.  Western governments and nations are rejecting God and his commandments today.   Lying and deceit are everyday occurrences with those we deal with in business and everyday activities.  We see this in the news about our financial organizations defrauding and deceiving their banking customers.

What are we to do?  It’s not going to be ok for us to participate and do business the same way as the world around us.  God has given us his commandments.  They are laid out extensively in his Word.  The ten commandments being the scaffold of what he requires of people.  His Word is what we must follow.  God has not left us defenseless as his people.  We do not have the old nature that powerless against sin.  We have choices as God’s people to do what is right.  How do we do this?

Through  the Holy Spirit. We need to be asking God for his Holy Spirit to be given to us in a measure that is responsive to what is happening today in our world and what is happening where we are living.  This is individual, and also corporate, for us as God’s people.  We are in a struggle and we need to overcome through God.  Western Christians are  experiencing opposition from their government leaders, education institutions, judicial legislation, and popular culture.  What to do?

Stand with God, and do his will.  Keep his commandments. Ask him to help you to do this.  He will.  Guard your heart, your mind, and do what is right.  Avoid and rebuke temptations in the power of Jesus Christ.  You will be richly rewarded in this life and in the eternal life that you will enter.  ‘Well done thou good and faithful servant’.

 


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Postmodern, Emerging Church?

My current understanding of the postmodern and emerging church is its desire to reject traditional Christianity and Christianity’s historic doctrines and teachings, even to the setting aside of biblical scripture, if necessary. The church services in the postmodern and Emerging Church are designed and intended for unbelievers. Places where people who don’t normally attend a church can come and be entertained and encouraged by self-help and self-esteem teachings and philosophies.

If Christianity was simply a belief system, where there is no true and living God, then it would have its place in our church systems. However, from my own experience of over thirty years of being a devout Christian, I can testify that Christianity is a transformation that comes about through the work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts and minds. One of the main avenues for this transformation is the Bible scriptures. Christianity is about following Jesus Christ into eternity. Christianity is about being reconciled to God the Father through the Son by the perfect sacrificial atonement on the cross provided by the Son. His sacrifice releases the believer from the Mosaic Law of death, so that we can then live to God in newness of life. Christianity is the power provided by God to remove sin from our lives. To achieve a new creation in us that has been purposed by God through our obedience to him. Christianity is slaying the old man and his wickedness, and putting on the new man who is created in the image of Christ. Christianity is the embracing of light and love and the rejection of darkness and wickedness in our own lives and in our world. These are just some of the things that are taught in the Bible concerning Christianity.

The postmodern and Emerging Church teaches none of these things to any extent. The leaders of these churches criticize believers who want more in-depth teachings about their faith and what God requires. Believers are told that the church is not for them but for the unbeliever. This is untrue. Believers are the church. There is no church without believers who have been reborn by the Spirit of God. The postmodern and Emerging church is not a true church, but rather an organization that is doing business in the name of Christ. Based on the knowledge that I have at this time, I would say that there is nothing to fear from these leaders, and to leave these organizations who are impersonating Christianity in our day.


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Legalism

Legalism, in my view, is relying on the Mosaic Law for our righteousness. The Bible says that the law was good as it was originally given. The issue was that the hearts of men could not be changed by the law. If righteousness could have come through the law the scripture says it would have been done that way by God. Man needed to be reborn into righteousness after the fall of Adam and Eve. This was accomplished through Christ, a righteous man, dying on the cross and being raised again to new life. The Law was instituted as a tutor of righteousness until the appointed time of the birth of Jesus Christ. God’s requirements have not changed in Scripture. Beginning in the OT and then into the NT God teaches us about his requirements for right living, right thinking, and right hearts. What Jesus did was to make our transformation in these areas possible. We can now do through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit what we could not do under the Law. We can become a new creation in Christ. The scriptures teach us how we are to make these changes.

Today’s modern teaching on legalism has made it about overlooking God’s requirements for righteous living. That we have no choice but to continue to sin. This teaching denies the new birth in Christ. It puts believers in the camp of the unrighteous, with no real power, and at the control of sin. This is false teaching according to the Bible.


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Fear and Grace

The Bible repeatedly exhorts God’s people about fear. We are not to fear. The scripture encourages believers to ‘Be strong, be courageous’, that God has ‘not given us a spirit of fear but of power, and love, and a sound mind’. We are facing fearful times in our day. Church leaders are fearful. They are conforming to the requirements and compromise the world is asking for in order to avoid persecution. They want to be friends and a blessing to the ungodly of our day. This is the result of the teaching about grace that has permeated every church in the USA and Canada. We are to turn our eyes away from sin and love everyone (especially the world) in order to show God’s unconditional grace. To get people saved. This is false teaching. This is not taught in the Bible. This teaching has not been balanced with other teachings in scripture about grace. Grace to obey God. Grace for gifts. Grace to conform to the will of Christ in our choice of lifestyle, in our mind, and in our heart. Grace to endure hardship. Grace to remain faithful to God despite the circumstances. Grace for our transformation into the image of Christ. Grace to die to ourselves, to our old nature. Etc. etc.

As believers we must overcome fear. Fear is the opposite of faith. Currently, fear is being used to manipulate believers and church systems by the world. Churches are falling one by one to these demands. A prominent church teacher is telling believers here in North America that they can side with the antichrist (to the point of taking his mark of ownership) and still be saved at the end. This is presumptuous and absurd. Once we are the devil’s he will not let us go, and we do not have the power to deliver ourselves. We will have turned our back on Christ and the power of the cross. The Bible teaches that at that point there will be no more sacrifice for our sin.


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Two Covenants meaning Hagar and Sarah

Galatians 4:21 begins a teaching about the two sons of Abraham. The story in the OT of the two sons named Ishmael and Isaac tells of how Ishmael and his mother Hagar were sent away by Abraham. In Galatians the apostle Paul says that we can look figuratively at the mothers of Abraham’s sons as representing two covenants, one of the natural, and one of the promise through the power of the Spirit. Paul clearly teaches that the present Jerusalem is of Hagar. She will not share in the inheritance of God. Paul declares that there is a Jerusalem that is above and that she is the mother of those who are in Christ.
Today we have many teachers and preachers who make errors in dividing the word of truth. They teach one part of the Bible as full and complete truth, but when other parts of the Bible are read their teaching is contradicted by other Scriptures. This means there is error in what they are teaching.
The present church system that we know of in North America does not have checks and balances. There is alot of control implemented in the majority of churches. We can be certain that this type of control of people and of what we are being taught is not of God. We seem to have a mishmash of teachings related to both Hagar and Sarah. On the one hand we have freedom in Christ, on the other hand we are subjects and children to these church systems. The Hagars of our day.


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Prophecy and Visions

What do the saints do with the many prophecies given and the spiritual visions claimed as seen by others? The saints must judge these by the Spirit. The Bible declares that we have something amazing living inside those who are in Christ. The Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit knows the mind of God and is able to search out the heart of the person He inhabits. He knows what God is saying to his people in the present day. As the believer interacts with God through prayer, devotionals, spiritual messages, and in their daily walk with God, the Holy Spirit speaks to them. The believer gets ‘a sense’ of what the Spirit is saying through the Word and their own experiences with God. When a prophecy is given the believer judges it by what they have been ‘hearing’. For example, if a saint senses that God has been talking to believers about overcoming sin and a prophecy comes forth about believers going out to conquer the rulers of the world, then the saint can disallow that message given. It is likely not from God. The same applies to visions for this day and time. This same judgement applies to those who are prominent and respected leaders as well as to a member of the congregation.

In the Scriptures we don’t read about prophecy happening or being given outside of a gathering together of the saints. The Holy Spirit is present tense in the congregation. He speaks for that moment and time when the saints gather. This is not something that can be prepared beforehand by someone who prophecies. The prophesier cannot predict the message ahead of time. There also needs to be an ‘unction’ given with the prophecy that the Holy Spirit applies so that the saints can ‘hear’ the voice of Jesus. These messages or prophecies are given for several reasons. To encourage, correct, comfort, plead with the saints, etc.

There is misuse of prophecy in the Church today. Many saints are following ‘a man’. This man is not Jesus. Moses was a man of God. The scriptures declare that there is only one other ‘Man’ besides Moses that God has given for eternity, and that is Jesus. The saints are to grow into the full measure of this ‘Man’.