The 4 Soils Parable Brought me Conviction

The message that I want to share that the LORD has put on my heart the last few day is in regards to the 4 soils, and if you want to read along with me it is in Matthew chapter 13, and the part I want to read is actually the part where Jesus explains the parable.  And as I read through it, you know, each one of us fall into one of these 4 categories. But the reason why it is convicting for me is because as I read through this I put myself in the shoes of each of these people, and I want you to do the same thing, as Jesus is explaining this parable, look at your own like and think; “Do I match this ground or am I really the good soil.  I’m starting in verse 18;

“Therefore hear the parable of the sower: When anyone hears the word of the kingdom, and does not understand it, then the wicked one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart.  This is he who received seed by the wayside.”   I could immediately say, well obviously that’s not me, most likely that is not you… the seed of the truth that God has planted in me, I have not denied, I have not rejected, but the Holy Spirit has grown in me.  So, for many of us we can just read on by that and it doesn’t bring us conviction…

“But he who received the seed on stony places, this is he who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; yet he has no root in himself, but endures only for a while.  For when tribulation or persecution arises because of the word, mediately he stumbles.”  A lot of people fall into this category but I can say “Not me”, I’ve went through persecution for my faith, I have gone through many trials, many things have happened to me, and still I push through, but I read on… Jesus says in verse 22;

 “Now he who received seed among the thorns is he who hears the word and the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and he becomes unfruitful.”  That to me is very convicting because in this world it is really easy to fall into the lusts of the flesh, it’s easy to be choked out by riches or by the deceitfulness of the lusts of your own flesh, sports, hobbies, just chasing after higher education… I’m not saying it’s wrong to be educated… But ALL of the things in this WORLD take your eyes off of Jesus and then you get choked out, and this is where most Christians will fail.  Most Christians aren’t immediately denying Jesus, they’re not falling away just because of a little persecution or a trial, but they do get choked out because of riches, or because of sports or things that they desire MORE than GOD.  And that also brings conviction to me and I want to make SURE that every single day I am fully in TUNE with the Holy Spirit and fully surrendered to HIM, because if we are not and we make other things a priority OVER GOD and we get lazy (in the Kingdom work) Then this world will certainly choke us out.  Many people are choked out by addictions of the world, they are choked out by their cell phones, or by the fear of the war that is going on, the fear of the things that are going to come upon the world, they are just choked out by everything in the world and instead of having their eyes fixed on their Creator, on the Lord Jesus Christ and producing FRUIT, they become totally fruitless. 

It is sad to see people at the end of their life that once were believers, who once were Christians but they no longer have anything to give.  I don’t want to be that Christian.  All my life whether I live long or short, I want it to be for the glory of God, always producing good fruit, always on fire for the Living God, bearing GOOD FRUIT ALL THE TIME FOR HIS NAME.  And in order to do that WE ALWAYS HAVE TO PUT HIM FIRST, and as we put HIM first He fills up His love in our heart, His truth, His words.  And that truth, that love, it bubbles up in us until we are like a cup overflowing with the water of life.  And that is how we need to be.  We need to be an encouragement to others, not a constant drain upon others.  We need to every single day be filled with the glory of God, pleasing Him, living for Him and enduring with Him. 

So, check your own life and ask; “Am I producing good fruit? Is my first thought of the day really for the LORD, asking Him, pleading with Him, HOW can I produce good fruit for YOU?  How can I deny myself correctly?  How can I honor you with my life?  How can I surrender everything that I have to you, my job, my money, my relationship my spouse, my children, my hobbies, my education, my carriers, my achievements… everything that I have?  How can I lay that down, cast my crowns before my God and say; “Have your way with me, to make me the man or the woman that you want me to be.”  Because that is the sort of people that enter the Kingdom of God.  That is the sort of people that we want to be, if we are gong to be the sons and the daughters of the Kingdom of Heaven.  I want to enter His Kingdom, and I know that I am not above anything that I preach, I am not excluded.   All of us are being watched by our Creator and everything we do is recorded and remembered and Jesus will judge every single one of us according to our works, that is our words, our actions, our thoughts, the things that we said and did.  Are we bearing GOOD FRUIT?  Are we good seed in good soil?  Or are we getting choked out by the world?  I encourage you to get anything and everything out of your life that is choking you, anything that pulls you down that keeps you away from God, that keeps you from being fruitful.  May the grace of Jesus be with you.    

And finally Matthew 13:23 says; “But he who received seed on the good ground is he who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and produces; some a hundredfold, some sixty and some thirty.”    Are you good seed in good soil producing fruit? 

 

Satan will strip your identity

 

Satan Will Strip Your Identity

There was a time in my life that I did not know who I was.  That is because I was trying to become someone in the world, yet God had called me to the path of righteousness.  And God let me just fumble around in the wilderness, stumbling and not knowing my own identity.  Ironically enough, one summer I did a summer camp, it was a day camp with the junior high students that I was working with in the church.  And I called that summer camp “Identity”.  I made a shirt, and the shirt had a picture of a man on it that had some kind of a cage for his face, with a question mark.  And it basically meant that the man didn’t know his own identity.  And during that camp I was preaching on finding our identity in Christ. I new it with my MIND but in my heart spiritually I was LOST.  And I was lost for years even though I could preach the truth in church.  A lot of Christians are like how I was.  They know the truth, they know the bible, but still they are LOST IN THE WILDERNESS, they don’t know their own identity, and because they are trying to be something in the WORLD, they’re not finding their identity in Jesus Christ.  Are you really found in Jesus Christ?  Do you know Him and are you walking the path that HE wants you to walk?  Or are you lost in the world and having an identity crisis?  I encourage you to PRAY, seek after your Creator.  Get to have an intimate relationship with Jesus Christ.  He loves you and He has a specific path for you to walk, and He will give you your identity in HIM because He loves you and He has a very specific plan for YOU.  Do you love Jesus and are you genuine with HIM and with yourself, are you genuine around other people because YOU ARE the person who Jesus made you to be?  Or are you trying to be someone else?  May the grace of Jesus be with you. 

 

Even Satan knows the gospel

 You will not go to heaven just by agreeing with the gospel. You actually have to LIVE the gospel and be as good seed in good soil, just as Jesus taught.  I run into a lot of folks who are Christians or were missionaries and they already know the gospel. But many of these people do not display any real Christian fruit in their life. How about you?  Have you truly repented and do you bear the fruit of righteousness in your life?

Predestined and election: Does God treat all equally?

 

Predestination Election: Does God Treat All Equally?

 

The Apostle Paul speaks about things such as election and predestination and God knowing where people are going to go even before they ae born, he speaks specifically in Romans 9 about the children of Israel, that is Jacob and Esau and how God loved Jacob and He hated Esau.  So, does God just choose some of us to go to hell while electing others to go to heaven?  The answer is God is ALWAYS JUST and He always judges us according to OUR HEART.  If you were just to read the writings of the Apostle Paul, say for example Romans 9, say 10-13, you may come to the conclusion that God just sends people to hell for no reason, He hates people for no reason and He loves other people and brings them in as His elect for no reason.  And that’s simply NOT true.  If you look at the lives of people like Jacob and Esau, they had a serious of choices and God worked with them through those things that they did in their life, and He called them to repent.  And God always is for the righteous, He is for the humble, He is always for those who repent of their mistakes.  Jacob did that and God was for Jacob.  But God is against those that harden their heart, who are rebellious and who refuse to come to Him.  I want to give you an example of this from another 2 brothers who were Cain and Able.  As we know Cain killed Able, but before Cain kills Able, God gives Cain a word to him and God says this to Cain; (Gen 4:6-7) “So the LORD said to Cain, “Why are you angry?  And why has your countenance fallen?”  and then God says to him; “If you do well, will you not be accepted?  And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door.  And its desire is for you, but you should RULE OVER IT.””   God did not just predestine Cain for hell, He did not just predestine Cain to kill his brother, but God specifically came to Cain and He gave Him the words of life, he told him what he had to do, and told him he had a choice.  ALL of us have a choice, will we choose what is right?  Will we be in God’s blessing because we choose to do what is righteous?  Or will we be in God’s curse because we reject Him.  Don’t be deceived by the church that says, “You can do no wrong, you are just part of God’s elect, you have been saved long ago, you are gong to heaven…” And certainly don’t believe Satan’s lie that you’re just going to hell no matter what you do.  Satan will throw accusations at you saying; “You are just part of the damned, you have been hated since you were born, everyone knows that you are of a corrupted seed and God will send you to hell, you are just predestined no matter what you do…”  NONE of that is true.  If you look at the stories of just how God worked with His children He ALWAYS gave them the opportunity to repent, He didn’t just predestine the to heaven without cause, and He didn’t just damn them to hell without cause.  The Lord is ALWAYS JUST in His dealings.  We can gather some VERY wrong conclusions from what the Apostle Paul wrote, or what other people wrote throughout the Scriptures, but the truth is, THE LORD IS JUST.  He loves every single one of us, BUT HE DOES NOT TREAT US EQUALLY IN REGARDS TO WHAT WE DO.  If we choose what is evil God will start to detest us, He will hate our lives, He will hate us to the core because we are rejecting Him, we are rejecting His Spirit.  But on the flip side of that, if we reject SIN, if we reject the evil nature, if we can overcome then the Lord will receive us.  But we need to MASTER OUR SIN, we have to OVERCOME THE FLESH, we have to overcome hatred and evil desires, and if we do then the LORD will receive us.  There is a reason that God loved Able, and there is a reason God loved Jacob.  You know Jacob was a deceiver, he started out on the wrong foot, but he repented, he had a love for the LORD in his heart and he chose to walk in the way of the Lord, he wasn’t perfect but the Lord perfected him as he started walking with the Lord.  He had a heart to desire what was true and what was right.  He walked with the LORD.  So did Abraham his father, he wasn’t perfect, but he had a heart to walk with the LORD.  It  is true that even before we are born GOD KNOWS what choices we are going to make because God is Omnipotent, He knows ALL things.  But don’t fall into the thought that you can’t repent because God just is sending you to hell, that simply is NOT true.  No one is in hell because there were just predestined by God APART from their choices, their actions, the things that they physically and spiritually did.  You will be sent to hell if you reject the words of Jesus Christ.  You are accountable to your actions, your thoughts, and your words.  Will you overcome?  Will you MASTER SIN?  Will you OVERCOME IT?  Will you call on the name of Jesus and be saved or will sin master you and will you fall into temptation?  And will God reject you because you never came into His presence, you never overcame the darkness?  I hope that you overcome in the name of JESUS and really come into HIS love.  May the grace of Jesus be with you. 

You would fear God if you knew who He was

 

You Would Fear God if You Knew Who He was

Jesus taught that we aught to fear GOD, and this sense of fear means actually being fearful of God’s wrath.  A lot of Christians do not agree that we should fear God, but if they knew who God really was, they would fear Him.  It is the ignorant that don’t know God that don’t fear Him.  But everyone will fear God one day.  This is what Jesus taught about the fear of God in Matthew chapter 10:27-33; “Whatever I tell you in the dark, speak in the light; and what you hear in the ear, preach on the housetops, and do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.  But rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.  Are not two sparrows sold for a copper coin? And not one of them falls to the ground apart from your Father’s will. But the very hairs of your head are all umbered.  Do not ear therefore; you are more value than many sparrows.  Therefore, whoever confesses Me before men, him I will also confess before My Father who is in heaven.  But whoever denies Me before men, him I will also deny before My Father who is in heaven.”  Jesus Christ does not treat all of us equally, he pays back every single one of us ACCORDING TO OUR WORKS. (Matthew 16:27)  He loves every singe one of us, but He does NOT love evil, He does not love the coward, He does not love the sinner, He does not love the hypocrite.  And many of us WERE cowards, we were liars, we were hypocrites, we were immoral, but when we came to Jesus WE REPENTED and Jesus gave us a new life (1 Corinthians 6:9-11)  He changed our heart and our mind, He put in our conscience the right thing to do.  And He gave us the FEAR OF GOD, knowing that if we go back to the old ways, He has the power to cast us into HELL.  (Hebrews 10:26-27)  Many Christians don’t have ANY fear of God, they have believed the easy grace gospel lie, that God loves everyone the same and that everyone will just go to heaven in the end as long as they have just confessed that Jesus Christ is LORD.  You cannot just confess with your lips and go to heaven with your lip service. (Matthew 15:7-9)  If your heart is far from God, no matter what you confess with your lips God knows your heart and that you are a liar and a hypocrite.  Hypocrites and liars will have their part in the Lake that burns with fire.  (Revelation 21:8)  We have to truly repent, we have to have the fear of God in us, and when we do and when we seek after the Lord and hold His hand and walk with Him every day, He will protect us from our enemy.  We shouldn’t fear those who can threaten us and kill us physically but we have to always fear HIM, that is GOD, who after we are dead on this earth, has the power to cast our soul into HELL for all eternity!  Who do you really fear?  Do you fear God or do you fear men?  May the grace of Jesus be with you. 

Homosexuality and Christians

 

A LARGE portion of Christians still are against homosexuality and that is good. But the same Christians are themselves addicted to porn and are FULL of lust, and that is very bad. Pretty much every man is a slave to lust, falling every time. The only ones who are NOT a slave are the ones who have their eyes on Jesus and not on the half naked women. It's pretty easy to preach to the choir in church against a sin no one is struggling with. It is much harder to confess your sin to your fellow brothers and sisters and then to actually repent of it. But if you do not confess your secret sins and actually repent, you are also in danger of hellfire.  Don't fool yourself into thinking that you're better than anyone because you dont struggle with homosexuality. You must repent of YOUR sins and live holy or you will not inherit the kingdom of God either. God makes no exceptions.