Are You A Son?

A study of the word father: God -- as Father == chastened the children of Israel, His son.  When He saw that they could not keep His holy commandments, He sent His only begotten Son to keep them in their stead and to pay the supreme sacrifice for us, as sons.  We have the wrong understanding of the correction He ministered to His children for their disobedience.  In the Old Testament, it was called the rod of correction because there was no salvation.  There was no mediator between God and the people.  Job said if only there was a daysman (Job. 9:33 a mediator) between me and God.  God told the children of Israel in advance what would befall them if they were disobedient (see Deut. 28:15-26, and Lev. 26). 

Today, we call tsunamis, floods, snow storms and other calamities as acts of God.  Do we understand the significance of Christ dying on the cross?  It was so there would be a Mediator between God and man.  He gave the supreme sacrifice of His only begotten son so that under grace his born again sons would not have to face His chastisement and wrath.  Jesus is our peace.  He is our propitiation, which is a sacrifice to avert the wrath of God.  We used to sing a song, “Jesus paid it all.  All to Him I owe, sin hath left a crimson stain, and He washes white as snow.”  He died a death we could not die (because we had sinned).  He paid a debt we could not pay (Heb. 9:22 the law demanded a blood sacrifice) because we were so destitute we couldn’t afford a lamb.  He became our sacrificial lamb and brought us out of the prison house.  Now are we the sons of God.  His mercy protects us from what we do deserve (we deserve to be punished) and his goodness gives us what we don’t deserve (Eph. 1:3 all things that pertain to life and godliness). 

 

Gal. 4:6 Because ye are sons God hath sent forth the Holy Ghost into your heart whereby ye cry "Abba Father." 

Effects Of The Word

Historically, the majority of believers have relegated the Word to ministers, pastors, evangelists.  But the laity have not availed themselves to the all important effects of God's Word on their lives.  Over the past six years, I've been an avid reader of the word.  I've studied it in Hebrew, Greek, and with others who were astute and had an intimate relationship with God.  By an intimate relationship I mean one where God speaks to you out of the Word daily.  It doesn't take years and months to get an answer when you're daily inclining your ear at His gates and listening to the beat of His heart.  I abandoned denominational lines because it did not provide me with the level of truth that I desired.  I learned that the Holy Ghost, my Comforter is always the teacher, and He was given to lead and guide me into all truth.  I could not get it in Bible Class or Sunday School.  I have no doubt that God speaks collectively through a leader in those arenas.  But it's in quiet time with the Lord that He teaches from a depth that can't be shared with others.  Unless they have the same level of commitment and have enough of the Word on the inside, they can not ascend to the height of understanding that comes after years of investing oneself in the Word at the expense of all else.  My spiritual eyes have been enlightened. 

I understand why Paul went to the Arabian desert to be alone with the ascended Christ.  There is a place where only in quiet solitude you can hear the Master breathe inspired words of life that are so simple until you have to ask, "Is it really this simple?"  It's in quiet solitude that the Lord corrects years of error, frustration, questions that needed answers but I wasn't ready to receive them.  It's in quiet repose in the wee hours of the morning when the Lord wakes me up from a dead sleep to reveal a truth that my mind might not grasp at any other time.  It's in the still of the day, before the birds have had a chance to sing, that the Lord opens heaven and I can feast on the truth that leaves me yearning for more.  So when He calls, I respond because I don't want to miss anything.  I've found that now I'm anxious for nothing.  If they fire me, so what!  God will take care it! I would rather be at home in the Word. When people speak in anger, I more readily shrug it off because I don't have time for such mindless escapades.  I have been changed on the inside and the Holy Ghost holds me in check like nothing else ever could. I'm holding the hand of the Master, and His desires are my desires at last.  Peace at all cost!  Love without dishonesty or empty words.  A desire to see everyone reach the level of completeness that I experience everyday from spending time in the presence of God. 

Prepare Your Heart

2 Chronicles 12:16 - And he (Reheboam), did evil, because he prepared not his heart to seek the LORD.

Matthew 13 - If you look at the parable of the sower, it is about the different types of ground where the seed was planted.   Some was sown by the wayside, but the enemy caught away what was received.  Some seed was sown on stony ground but having no depth, the seed could not take root.  Some was sown among thorns and the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choked it. But he that received the word on good ground is he that hears the Word, understands it, and bears fruit some 30-, 60- and 100-fold.  Stop!  The seed is the word of God and each person's heart receives it with joy, but depending on the condition of the heart, the Word is adversely affected. 

If you want supernatural manifestations of the Word of God in your life, prepare your heart to receive the Word.  Some of us have sat by passively and expected the preacher to prepare our heart.  Others think because they were filled with the Holy Ghost, their heart's are already prepared.  A slogan in computer-speak is garbage in/garbage out.  If you don't put some effort into preparing your heart to receive the Word, like Reheboam, you will do evil.  God has a purpose and a plan for our lives, but we can't do our own thing, think what we want to think, say anything we want to say, and expect our lives to be perfect because we say we believe in God.  The Word is what quickens our dead spirits.  If there is no word in us, there will be no quickening.   

The heart is deceitful and desperately wicked.  It has a propensity, a bent, to be disobedient! 

• Adam sinned because he was disobedient.
• When Moses smote the rock instead of speaking to it like God told him, he was disobedient.
• When King David was supposed to be out to battle but at noon day was on the roof top, he was disobedient.
• When Solomon married women who were idol worshippers, they turned his heart away from God and he was disobedient.
• When Paul was taking men and women bound to Jerusalem, he was disobedient; but God stopped him.

Consider this the hand of God stopping you because you are disobedient.  Take the time to prepare your heart.  He promised to bless the work of our hands (Deut. 28:8 and again in vs. 12).  If God uses what we furnish Him, then give Him what He has given you ~ His Word. 

Be blessed in Jesus Name ~

Accepted In The Beloved

Man has failed to hear the precious words of the Lord which drop like dew on parched places.  He that hath an ear let him hear is recorded seven times in the Book of Revelation.  Seven, God's perfect number.  What does that mean to you?  He has perfect hearing and as His sons, we should have perfect hearing as well.  The Word of God doesn't decry salvation in the way that we think.  It is an expression or declaration of the death, burial and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Why?  So that we will know the depths to which He humbled Himself to bring us into His Sonship. 

If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation.  Old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.  2 Cor. 5:17

Focus your eyes on the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ.  The story is so beautifully laid out in scripture.  Don't miss God's testimony: Christ: and Christ's testimony:  God in you the hope of glory.  They both bear witness of the other. 

Take the sword of the Spirit off the shelf, or wherever you have so nicely laid or displayed it.  Walk through it's pages and find out what God is saying about His Son that He so greatly loved and has now accepted us in the Beloved (Eph. 1:6). 

The Precious Word of God

Man has been so caught up in distinguishing himself by denomination, until the precious words that drop like dew from the Master's lips are falling on deaf ears.  He that hath an ear let him hear is recorded seven times in the