The Narrow Gate

Mat 7:13-14 (wnt)
"Go in by the narrow gate, for broad and roomy is the road that leads to destruction, and many are going
in by it. But narrow is the gate and hard is the road that leads to life, and few are they that find it."

This scripture is always portrayed as the multitudes of the unsaved going into the eternal lake of fire and

a few going into heaven but that is not what this is saying.  This word is spoken to the Church not to the world.
The substance of this word is that within Christianity once we have received the gift of salvation, redeemed
and purchased by the blood of the Lamb, there are two ways that we can go as a Christian. We can live out
our life more or less going our own way, doing our own thing maintaining the gift of salvation knowing that
someday we will walk on streets of gold and be in paradise. Or we can commit our lives to the higher purpose
of the Lord. There is a life of commitment where we take that free gift of salvation, the redemption the Lord
has given plus that which we have the totality of our being the potential and the possibilities of life that are
within us and our right to choose and we give that to the Lord. "Lord with all that I am and hope and desire,
Lord I submit it and lay it at  your feet." Would you choose this narrow way today and allow the Lord to create
in you a heart that responds to Him. That walks in harmony with the Holy Spirit. Within you is an eternal
potential to relate to the Lord, but it must be developed and formed in this life. The path of destruction is a
life that once created (Born Again), never matures. A Spirit born that remains veiled in a soul unbroken. The
unlimited potential of Christ in us is the High Calling that is far beyond having heaven as our home.

"Father God, birth within each heart a desire to walk the narrow way. To choose the hills and climb the
mountains and walk the narrow path, a path less traveled that leads to a revelation of Your Glory." Amen

His Bride Has Made Herself

 

Revelation 19:7: …."His bride has made herself ready…." We are called as a Bride, a companion for all eternity. But our preparation and qualification for that is in this life, for He (Christ) will only return for His Bride when she has been matured (made ready) to the point of being without blemish ("spot or wrinkle" - Ephesians 5:25-27 and Revelation 19:7 & 21:2 & 9). In this life we are being subjected by God our master potter (Jeremiah 18:2-4) to testing and training to bring us to a place of unity with Christ Jesus. We have a responsibility here in the fullness of time that is our life to allow it to become His life. We are to prepare ourselves. Not in our own strength, it requires His light (word), life (power), and His love. Our responsibility is to allow Him to work in our lives; to yield to Him, to aggressively seek and desire Him and that He might work in us. Being His Bride is not a "gift", nor a set of blessings bestowed, it is relationship! It is the most beautiful and complete union imaginable. Relationship, not religion! To be a Christian is not a matter of being "religious", but being in a personal relationship with God the Father through Christ Jesus the Son. Being His Bride is the ultimate culmination of our relationship with Him...beloved of Him...sought out by Him...perfected by Him and established with Him. To be a Bride means total abandonment of one's entire self, will, goals, name and nature unto another (the Bridegroom). It means total unity with Him, with His will being primary in all things. It means being totally compatible with Him, that we should be like Him. The Bride of the Lamb is to make herself ready! To be like the Lamb means to be a lamb ourselves, to have fully acquired His nature. That is our Lord's primary purpose in all His dealings in our lives... the making of a Bride!

 

 

 

The Whole World in His Hands

 

He's got the whole world in His hands....

If you have information to the contrary....

You are eating from the wrong tree....

Genesis 2:17

But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,
thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest
thereof thou shalt surely die.

Glory to God

Luke 2:11-14

For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

Let Us Adore Him

The Voice 2

 

 

A good starting place in this School of the Spirit is the lessons we can learn from the original couple, Adam and Eve, as recorded in Genesis 3. After they tasted the forbidden fruit, God came looking for some fellowship with Adam and Eve—to walk and talk with them (as He does with you and me). I wrote previously about what this must have been like:

 

Can you imagine, after Adam and Eve had known God, and He knew them, how quickly the spiritual climate changed? As a result of their disobedience, they experienced instantaneous barriers to their intimacy with Him. Walls shot up. After their sin they plucked off leaves from the nearest bush as quickly as they could and sewed coverings for themselves. They were hiding from the Lord their Creator for the first time in their lives.

But God, in His passionate pursuit, was still drawing close. A new reaction stirred within them as He drew near. Previously they had run toward the sound of His footsteps. Now they ran in the opposite direction. Before, their response had been for joy: “Oh, wow, it’s Father!” Now it was dread and fear: “Oh, no, it’s Father!” They were guilt-ridden. Never had they had such an emotional reaction or even such a thought before! They had not known condemnation or fear or shame. Now, as a result of their disobedience, they ran and hid from the voice of God.

 

This pretty well sums up the difference between the joy of hearing God and obeying His voice and the dilemma of hearing God’s voice and not obeying.

Here’s the good news: God is searching for us. He is drawing near, whether we want Him to or not! He is the glorious intruder. God does not give up on His beloved; He wants to walk and talk with you. But there can be some sad news also, barriers to intimacy result when we choose to ignore what He tells us. So let’s listen up and learn. We need Him. We need to hear His voice. Let’s cultivate a heart and life that responds when He speaks.

The Voice

Late one evening, I went to pray with another believer at church where my friend’s father is a pastor. At the front of the sanctuary, on the wall close to the Communion rail, there was a lighted candle. It was a symbolic representation of the light of God and presence of God. I loved sneaking away when I could to spend time in quiet reflection, as His sweet presence seemed to reside there.
While basking in the light of His presence late that same night, I began to vocalize my desire to hear and know the voice of God better. I proceeded logically:

Based on John 10:27, You have stated, “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them and they follow Me.” Now I don’t have any problem with the first part of the verse, “My sheep hear My voice.” I know I have heard Your voice because in Revelation 3:20 it says, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him, and will dine with him, and he with Me.” I have heard Your knock at the door of my heart and I am one of Yours.

I continued with my line-by-line presentation:

So, Father, I accept by faith that I do hear Your voice. The second part of the verse I don’t have any problem with either. I know that You know me, and You know me better than I know myself. I don’t have any problem with that. But it’s the third part of that verse that I have a big problem with, “and they follow Me.” So, God, I need to do more than just hear Your voice—because I also hear my voice, the voice of my flesh, the voice of others, the voice of the world and the voice of the enemy, Satan. Therefore, if I’m going to be able to “follow You,” I must do more than only hear Your voice. I need to be able to discern Your voice from the other voices.

That night, my friend and I knelt in prayer and simply said, “Lord, we ask that You enroll us in Your School of the Spirit. Teach us not only how to hear but also how to discern Your voice from the voice of the stranger and all the other voices that contend for our attention. Please do this so that we can truly follow You.”

(to be continued next post)

God So Loved

Humility

The Stronghold of the Godly: Humility

Satan fears virtue. He is terrified of humility; he hates it. He sees a humble person and it sends chills down his back. His hair stands up when Christians kneel down, for humility is the surrender of the soul to God. The devil trembles before the meek because in the very areas where he once had access, there stands the Lord, and Satan is terrified of Jesus Christ.

Who Truly Are You Fighting?

You will remember that, at the fall of man in the Garden of Eden, the judgment of God against the devil was that he should "eat dust." Remember also that God said of man, "dust thou art" (Gen. 3:14-19 KJV). The essence of our carnal nature—of all that is carnal in nature—is dust. We need to see the connection here: Satan feeds upon our earthly, carnal nature of "dust." Satan dines on what we withhold from God!

Redemption has Your story to tell

Jesus said, “He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water..”  The word for belly in the original language is ‘womb’.  Through each one of us God's Redemption has a story to tell, A unique revelation of the life of His Son Jesus is to be brought forth from our spiritual womb. How can these things be ?  The only way to know is to be intimate with Him. There is something about our redemption story that is unique in all the universe.  Out of our individual brokenness, and out of the way He speaks His healing Word to those desolate places of our life circumstance will emerge a new life.  When He reveals it to each of us we have a hope of our calling and a revelation of our eternal purpose that births praise, worship, and unspeakable joy. There is an intimate place, a secret place of abiding that we each must learn how to walk in.  To rise above all the challenges that come with our calling is beyond our natural ability.Unbroken intimacy with our Bridegroom is the source of our new life. Any kingdom work done that is not birthed from this intimacy is powerless and has no eternal value.

Prayer Request for Karen

Dearest Family of God,

     Would you each join with me and lift up Karen in your hearts, prayers and praise.
She is in a battle with cancer. Her heart is very much with her two young daughters during
this intense tune. Would you help me in bringing them all before His throne with thankful and
expectant hearts that they will each have a divine encounter with The Lord. That within each
of their hearts would be birthed something of eternal value.

Heavenly Father,
        We love You Lord. We bring your servant Karen before you this day. Thank You Lord
that you know her by name as one who belongs to You for all eternity. We place her in Your
hands, fully trusting You to work in this sistuation for Your glory. May every one in the family
be touched by Your presence in Spirit, Heart, Soul and Body.
We ask this in the name that is above every name, In the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ we pray.

Something old, Something New

Once we really understand what God is seeking, namely, something altogether new for Himself, then we see clearly that we can never bring any contribution from the old realm into that new thing. God wanted to have us for Himself, but He could not bring us as we were into that which His Love purposed. He first did away with us by the Cross of Christ, and then by resurrection provided a new life for us.

" If any man is in Christ, he is a new creature: the old things are passed away; behold, they are become new " (2 Cor. 5.17).
 

Being now new creatures with a new nature, we can enter the kingdom by this new and living way. The Cross ends the old things by setting aside altogether our 'old man', and the resurrection imparts to us all that is necessary for our life in that new realm.

" We were buried therefore with him through baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life " (Rom. 6.4).

We have now two worlds before us, the old and the new. You may be a good man in the old creation, but as long as you belong to the old you are under sentence of death, because nothing of the old can go over to the new. The Cross is God's declaration that nothing of the first Adam can pass into eternity. God made, a proclamation throughout the universe saying: 'Through the Cross I have set aside all that is not of Me. The Way back to the Heart of the Father is through the resurrection life of His Son Jesus.

Inner Healing

The Lord has brought me to a place where I have been deeply involved in the inner
healing ministry, a ministry of the Holy Spirit that produces a deep inner
change (sanctification) within Christian believers so that we are progressively
cleansed, healed within and conformed to the image of Christ. This ministry
sets us free from various emotional and relationship problems that may have
been caused by abuse, rejection or other crippling events of the past. We
are enabled to receive deeply the forgiveness of God. We now can forgive
ourselves. We are freed from unforgiveness toward others, toward God, and
toward ourselves. This, in turn, frees us from bitterness and wrong attitudes
so that we can become the loving individuals God has created us to be.
This is true ministry because it is one on one. The heart of The Lord is revealed
as being uniquely interested and active in the life of the individual believers.
It is a calling that we each must answer to satisfy the heart of God and His
higher purpose for our lives

Rivers in the Desert

Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old. 
Behold, I will do a New Thing; NOW it shall spring forth; SHALL YE KNOW IT ? 
I will even make a way in the wilderness, and RIVERS IN THE DESERT. The
beast of the field shall honor me, the dragons and the owls: because I GIVE WATERS IN
THE WILDERNESS, AND RIVERS IN THE DESERT, to give drink to My people, My chosen.
This people have I formed FOR MYSELF; they shall show forth My praise. Isaiah 43:18-21

I was taught that before you were to go out to minister to someone seriously
ill, you had to spend time in prayer and get spiritually built up. One day I was 
called upon to pray for a lady dying of cancer, and I didn’t have time to spend 
with God in prayer before I went. On my way to the hospital, I said to the Lord,
You know I haven’t had time to pray about this. This is an emergency situation,
The Lord answered me, "I did not call you to be a reservoir. I called you 
to be an open channel so that My life could flow out through you".   
When I got to the hospital, I felt nothing unusual in my hands. I said, Lord 
I am extending my hand as an act of faith that You will heal this woman.
By the time my hand got to the sick woman’s head, the power of God was surging 
through it, and that hand was shaking so much that I was nearly embarrassed
by it. God was letting me know that the river was present and that it would do its work.
The woman was instantly healed. She had not been able to get out of bed for many weeks, 
but now she got up and walked with me all the way down the corridor to where 
I had to get the elevator to go back down.You don’t have to feel “full of glory” all the time.
You can be an empty riverbed. Just let the river of God flow through you.