A People Called To Be Separate

 

Praise Jesus. It is a blessing to be part of His true church, to hear His voice and to be sustained by the love of our Father in heaven through His Holy Spirit. And we know that if we call on the name of Jesus, it is His blood and His sacrifice that pays for our sins that we may not continue to sin, but that we can be made new, new in our mind, our heart, our actions, that we can walk in the newness of life.

Jesus will never force you to be different. He will never force you to repent. A lot of people have it stuck in their mind that they will always be as they were, that they don't have to change, that Jesus doesn't require them to change. And they're expecting some kind of miracle in their life, for God to come down and give them what they would say a sign. But because they care about the signs of the world more, they're focused on the things of the world, the news, the media, their music, their movies, all their fornications, they never have a sign from God.

Remember that God has given each of us free will. He allows us to make our own decisions. He allows us to make good decisions and very poor decisions. But then at the end of our life, when everything comes to a close, we will be judged on our words and our actions. Jesus Christ judges each of us according to our works. The Christian Church has stopped teaching that. They forget that Jesus says that He will judge everyone according to their works. And they go around saying that they were saved by faith alone.

What do they think faith means? Does faith and believing just mean believing that Abraham Lincoln existed and that Jesus Christ one day died on the cross? Does it mean just believing that the Prophets existed and that the Bible was recorded by men who at one period of time in history loved the Lord? What does it mean to believe? According to James, belief means actions, just as love means actions. And just as your body is dead without your spirit or your soul inside of it, so faith or belief is also dead without works. The whole Christian Church has taken works and twisted it with the salvation by work's Gospel that the Apostle Paul was speaking of. What the Apostle Paul was speaking of is the works of the law, such as circumcision. And we know that no one is saved by going out and getting circumcised on the 8th day. We know that no one is saved by not eating pork or by keeping the law of Moses, which is the Old Covenant.

Jesus came and He offered us a new way. That is the new covenant, that if we receive Him, that is His blood, His resurrection, and we walk in the newness of life, not just believing that He did certain things, but showing our belief by our actions, that then we will be saved by walking with the Lord to the very end of our life.

Following Jesus is a day in and a day out commitment. You have to be changed. You have to be made new. That is why it is like compared to being reborn, it is your rebirth. A lot of Christians go around saying that they are born-again believers. But what have they been changed from if they are still sinning, if they are still living ungodly, still trying to justify smoking pot, committing adultery, looking at porn, listening to a very vulgar music, if they're not separate from the world, and if they want to be like the world, obviously they haven't been reborn. They're not born-again Christians, they're not changed.

So I am speaking to those of you that want to be changed, that want to be separate, and that's what we're talking about today, a people called to be separate. Being separate is a difficult thing, because we all know from grade school that you want to fit in. You want to look like other people. You want to be cool. You want to be accepted. You want girls or boys to like you. You want to feel appreciated, valued. You only want to be different enough, that people appreciate your differences and look up to you. But you don't want to be different in the way that people look down at you and despise you or think you're strange or bizarre or weird. Now, when I was younger, I did a bit of home school. My parents homeschooled me, but not in high school, this was when I was younger, and during the time of high or junior high or younger, I felt pressure as a young person to try to fit in. And because homeschoolers are being raised in their home at school often time they're made fun of. And I saw a lot of people including myself trying to work extra hard to be like the world. So I would try to find music that was like the world, watch movies that were like the world. I would try to do everything in order to be accepted by my peers.

Unfortunately, though, a lot of us don't grow out of that. Instead of giving up those childish ways and childish mindsets, we continue into our adulthood, trying to look like the world, trying to look like the world in our workplace, trying to be accepted in the world by others. And instead of being separate for Jesus Christ, and being willing to take persecution or division for the sake of Jesus, we push Jesus out of our life a little bit, or a lot of bit, to be accepted in the professional realm.

So I want to speak to those of you that do want Jesus in your life, that you do want to be different, I want to encourage you to receive Jesus into every aspect of your life and not to be ashamed of Him because we know that Jesus is our only hope of salvation. So if we are ashamed of Him, and we're pushing Him out for money, or for friends in the world, or to keep a good relationship with our mother or father, what will that benefit us in the end when we're on our deathbed? And then we stand before the Lord and He says, “you loved your mother and your Father. You cared about the relationships with them, but you didn't care to stand by the truth.” What benefit will it be that for 50 years, or however long it was until you died, that you tried to maintain good looks in the world before men, but that you rejected your only hope of salvation.

Jesus says, “what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits or loses his own soul?” It doesn't matter at the end of our life how much money we made, how nice of a house we lived in, how many children we had, if we were married or unmarried, all of it is going to be worthless if we did not surrender everything for Jesus Christ. And a lot of people refused to surrender. I'm not saying that we have to become a homeless bum in order to follow the Lord, because that's also wrong. Jesus just calls us to surrender everything that we have. And as we go with Him, He tells us to go left or right, He tells us to go this way or that way. And if we're fully surrendered to Him, then He gives us clear direction in our life. And as we walk by faith in Him, our faith develops and grows.

 I want to bring attention to the fact that this has been a problem for a long time in history, that is, people not wanting to be separate from the world, people wanting to look like others in the world. The nation of Israel, E.G., had a big problem with this. God called the nation of Israel when they were in bondages, the Hebrews to Egypt. He called them out, and He did many signs and wonders for them. He parted the red sea. He brought water out of the rock. He healed those that were sick and He led them through the wilderness, even though they were rebellious for 40 years. And then, as time went on these same people that saw all these wonders from God, they rebelled against God again. But in the early days before King David, they had this prophet, Samuel. And for a period of time, the nation of Israel had no leadership in a king except God Himself. And He used His prophets, you know, people like Moses Joshua, Aaron, He used people like this to lead His children. But as time went on, the people no longer wanted just God to lead them. That seemed too elusive to them, too disconnected. And because their hearts were rebellious, they looked to see what the other nations were doing.

I want to read to you just a portion of what this looked like, how the nation of Israel rebelled against God to want a king. If you look at 1Samuel chapter 8, the people of Israel say, this is verse 5. “Look, you are old. Your sons do not walk in your ways.” That's Samuel's children. 6But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, “Give us a king to judge us.” So Samuel prayed to the Lord. 7And the Lord said to Samuel, “Heed the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected Me, that I should not reign over them.

So you see here that it was never the plan of God to give Israel the nation a king. God did not want them to have a worldly king such as Saul, or even David, or any of the other kings of Israel. God Himself wanted to lead His children and have an intimate relationship with them. But as you look on, you see that the children were rebellious. They had evil in their heart. And because they were evil, they wanted a king. They wanted to look like the other nations. They wanted to look like the world. They say in Verse 20 that they say, “no, we will have a king over us, that we also may be like all the nations, and that our king may judge us and go out before us and fight our battles.” 

They didn't want God to fight for them. They didn't want to trust in the Lord. They wanted a worldly king such as all the other nations. And this was the beginning of a lot of sorrows for the nation of Israel. The prophet warned them of what would happen, saying that the kings would make slaves of their people, their daughters, their servants, he would take their land. But all the people said “just bring it upon our heads. We don't care. Make us slaves, take our children, enslave us. As long as we have a king, as long as we look like the world, we'll be okay. We don't trust God. We don't want to try to hear from God. That's too hard. It's too difficult to follow Jehovah. It's too difficult to follow His precepts. We would rather just have a worldly king.” 

You can continue to read about this in chapter twelve. I'm going to see if I can find another example here. So I'm looking at 1Samuel 12 verse 17. "Is today not the wheat harvest? I will call to the Lord, and He will send thunder and rain, that you may perceive and see that your wickedness is great, which you have done in the sight of the Lord, in asking a king for yourselves.”So Samuel the Prophet continues to warn the people that it's evil, it's sinful in the eyes of God to ask for a king to rule the nation. But the people continue to say, yes, we want to be evil. We want to be putting ourselves into slavery. Bring it all on. Bring us a king. And they say, for we have added to all our sins the evil of asking for a king for ourselves.

So God gave them what they want, and even in what they want, God wanted to bless them. But they continued to make themselves like the world. And what God says to them is, in the day after you have a king and you've turned your heart away from me, He says, I will not hear your prayers. He talks about turning His face away from them, that their prayers will not be answered. And that's exactly what happened. And in this nation and the generation that we live in today, in America and across the whole world, people have rejected Jesus Christ as their king. They have set up for themselves their own kings, their own presidents, their own governments, which God never sponsored. And they have made their governments their provision, their safety net, their security, their rock. So God will not answer people's prayers. He will not come to them when they ask for help.

 And all the world wonders, where is God? Why is He not speaking? Well, long ago, their forefathers rejected God, and they set up for themselves kings that are not true kings, shepherds that are not true shepherds, and people to look after them who do not care for their needs. And because all the people said in one accord that they wanted to be like the world, God gave them over to the world.

So if you want to break free from this bondage to the world, you have to prove to God that you will be different. You won't be like your forefathers. You won't be like those who want just security from the government, security from the economy, security from everything in the world. God wants to bless us. He wants to give us everything that we need. But we have to seek first His Kingdom and His righteousness. A lot of us have been in bondage to the sins of our parents and our family. And because our parents wanted to be like the world, worldly jobs, connected to everything worldly, we have taken on the same sins of our parents. I took on the sins of my parents and my parents the sins of theirs. But when I wanted to get right with Jesus, I had to confess those sins and repent of them. If you continue in the way of your parents, if your parents were into drugs or alcohol, pornography, addicted to their TV, or whatever the case was, if you don't break free, you're continuing to be bound by those generational curses and sins.

The only way to escape that is to confess those things and to get rid of every sort of sin and idol that's in your house. Get your TV out, get everything that is sinful and ungodly out of your house. Get rid of ungodly clothing. Whatever that is in your household that you know is not of the Lord, be quick to take it out and burn it or take it to the dump, because those things will keep you in bondage to the world, and you will not be free to serve Jesus Christ. So it's a big thing, guys, to break the cycle of sin that comes from your parents. Because of us, if not all of us had parents who served the devil one way or another and they were in bondage to sin, so if we want to be the children that are separate and free to serve the Lord, we have to cut our ties with ungodliness. I know that it is recorded in the scripture, honor your parents, but it is also written, children obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. So if your parents are calling you to do something that is against God, to serve false gods, to do things that you know are sinful, how can you obey your parents in the Lord if your parents are against the Lord? Well, you have to honor your parents, and all you do is be respectful. But you can also keep yourself from being polluted by the things your Father or your mother does. Is your Father into drugs and pornography? Does He chase after women? Does that mean that you have to? Of course not. You can keep yourself separate from the world, even if your parents are into this stuff.

And if you are of age, if you're already 20 years old, you have the choice to make your own life and to even completely be separate from your parents. I had to make the choice after I got married to separate myself both financially and spiritually from our parents. Because at the time of my marriage people in my family did not want me to be separate spiritually in order to follow my God. They wanted us to follow the ways of our elders, that is, in their churches. And so we had to confront our parents and say, “we want to be both financially independent and spiritually independent. We will not follow your gods. We will not follow the ways of dead religion and your church. But we will come out of church. We will be separate from the Baptist Church, from the Catholic Church, from organized dead religion.” And as you can imagine, this created a lot of strife. We changed our cell phone numbers. We moved away from the house that we owned, so that even our own parents did not know where we were going. And we did that in order to be right with Jesus, not because we hate people in our hearts, not because we hate or dishonor our parents, but because we love the Lord first.

So if your parents are causing you to do things that are sinful, you cannot honor them by honoring their false gods. You have to choose to come out and be separate. A lot of this is about being surrendered to the will of the Lord. If you're not surrendered to God, like the nation of Israel was not surrendered to God, you will want to take charge of your own life. For years of my life, I was not surrendered to God. I wanted to prove that I was the man of my own life. I could find a wife for myself. I could have the girlfriend of my choice. I could have the apartment or the house of my own choice. I could do the things that I pleased. And I was convinced that I only needed God at my convenience. But when I finally surrendered to the Lord, and I said, “Lord, I realize that I've made a wreck of my life, and I need to surrender my whole life to you." It wasn't until then that I could then be separate from the world and be filled with the Holy Spirit and become a true disciple.

So, a big word here is surrender. If you're not willing to surrender your heart, your soul, your mind, the direction of your life to the Lord, then you can't count the cost as Jesus said. Remember that He compares it to a man going into battle or into war. And Jesus says, wouldn't you first count the cost to see if you're able to come against him that has, you know, such and such amount of men, and you only have such and such of an amount? So first, we have to count the cost. Is it worth going with Jesus to us? Is it worth denying ourselves? Is the life with Jesus worth it? Because if it's not worth it to you, you'd be better off not calling yourself a Christian. You'd be better off just living in the world until your death.

But for those of us that want to inherit everlasting life, that want to count the cost, then we have to count the cost of being separate even from father, mother, children, brothers, sisters, even our own life that was our life of sin in the world. We have to count the cost to walk with Jesus and be separate even to the very end. We are a unique people. We are a people group that is like no other in the world. We're a people that has been called out of the world by Jesus Christ. We are special in that there are no other people like us. Those that choose to follow the Lord are made clean, they’re washed new, they’re given revelation, they’re led supernaturally, not as the mystics are of this world that are led by demons and their own imagination. But we're led by the Holy Spirit that is able to give us everlasting life.

So I want to encourage you that God has a plan for your life, Jesus has direction for you, and we need to care what God thinks of us more than others. A lot of people are so concerned about what people think of them that it just stunts their whole life. They're concerned about being accepted in the world, and because of this they cannot follow the direction that God has for them.

One last thing I wanted to speak about before ending here is that I had this thought the other day. You know how people talk about how God is outside time, and that is true, but for us, we are inside time. And what's also important to know is Jesus Christ is Emanuel, God with us, and He is inside time, and His time is also perfect. You've probably heard people say God is outside time, but you've also heard people say God's timing is perfect. Well, how could God's timing be perfect if He's outside time and time is irrelevant? God made time, and He placed us here for a purpose, for a time, and it is God's time that matters. And the more I walk with the Lord, I realize that Jesus is never in a rush. Everything happens in His timing. It is us who are in a rush. It is us who are concerned about getting everything done in time. And I've been guilty of rushing things, doing things too fast, being in a hurry. And what I realize is my Father in heaven, He's never in a rush. He's never pressed for time. Everything happens in His perfect timing. And He is inside time, because he's Emmanuel God with us. He's with us in this time. And if we learn to cooperate in His time, then we will be people that are more patient. We will be people that are separate for His purpose, not just trying to achieve things in our time and upset that the Holy Spirit, that He's interfering or causing an interruption in our time. We will be more willing to understand how God is operating in Spirit and in His truth.

So as I grow in the Lord and want to be separate from the world, I want to do better at being in God's time. It's one thing to just say God is outside of time, but it's another thing to realize God is also inside our time. Jesus came into our time. He knew what it was like to have time, and He also knows what it means to take His time. And so if you are waiting on the Lord for something, if you are waiting for the right person to come into your life, the right relationship, the right situation to get out of debt, whatever the case may be, that you're waiting on the Lord, know that God has perfect timing, and if you continue to seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and stay separate from world, then the Lord will see your faith, and He will guide you. But in everything we do, we have to wait on the Lord and just come before Him humbly.

We can't boss God around like how the Pentecostal Church does. You can't take verses from the Bible and use it as a witchcraft saying, God has to do this. He has to make me speak in a new tongue. He has to give me the voice of prophecy. He has to give me the seed of faith. We cannot boss God around and twist His arm and force Him to do our will in our time. If we are His children, we are separate from the world, but separate to do His work, to seek first His kingdom and His righteousness. And if we humble ourselves before Him and just say, “Lord, I give you my life to that you may mold me to your image, that I may be the person you want me to be, just give me the gifts that you think I need in your time.” If we start praying like that, then we will be ready to accept the things God has for us as He has it for us, instead of just always looking into the future, thinking that it will be better in a few days. We will learn to take hold of the present time for the Lord and give Him glory in our present time, we don't want to let the day that is right in front of us escape us that we get to praise the Lord today and worship Him today and honor Him today, to take a captive every thought in every word today to give Him glory.

So I want to encourage you, as the true body of Christ, as the Lord's true Church, to really be separate. Be separate from worldliness. Be separate from the deception of having to fit in to look like other people. You know, a lot of missionary kids, they get back from Africa, or they get back from wherever their parents were ministering, and they're just so eager to fit in, to look like the world, to dress like the world. My mom was a missionary kid, and a lot of her siblings wanted to fit in in the world，and because they became fruitless for the Kingdom of God. And I refuse to be fruitless. I want to make sure that I'm bearing good fruit for the Kingdom of God, not just about my own business, not just about making money in the world for my own pleasure, but that I truly can raise my children for the Lord, that I can spread the gospel, that I can live by faith in humility and in righteousness and be a light to the world.

And I want to encourage you as well to be separate from the world. Be separate from the false dreams and false hopes that the world has, that you can be different. Don't fall into the same trap that Israel fell into, thinking that they needed an earthly king, earthly security, all the safety nets that a king and a nation could offer them. Set up Jesus Christ as the king of your heart, the king of your life. Allow Him to cleanse you, to purge you, to purify you, to get sin out of your life. And then make sure you clean up your house. Go around your house, get rid of everything that is sinful in your house, and just throw it away and burn it. That way you can be sanctified, purged, purified and cleaned. On the day that you meet Jesus face to face, He will not be ashamed of you. He will not say, away from me you who commit evil, but that He will accept you as His son or as His daughter.

May the grace of Jesus be with you. 

Does Jesus Require Us To Keep The Law Of Moses (Matt 5:19)?

  Well, praise Jesus today everyone. There is a question that I've got asked a lot, and that is in regards to the law that is the Old Testament, or the Old Covenant, sometimes known as the law of Moses as it is referred to scriptures. I want to read to you what Jesus said in Matthew chapter 5. I'm starting in verse 17, Jesus said, “do not think that I came to destroy the law or the prophets. I did not come to destroy, but to fulfill.” It seems a lot of people don't understand what Jesus meant when He said that He came to fulfill. They talk about Him not destroying. And so they say all the Old Testament laws still apply, that you need to be keeping all of the laws of Moses, that is all 613 laws of the Old Testament, the Levitical law. And if you don't keep these laws, then you are disobeying Jesus, and you are disobeying God. So look at what Jesus says Here. I'm in Verse 18, Jesus says, “18For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled. 19Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20For I say to you, that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.”

 Now, as all the parables Jesus taught and all of the difficult sayings to understand, they can be taken in multiple ways, and they are multi-layered. Jesus was speaking to a Jewish audience, and often there were people in the crowds who were Pharisees, Sadducees, religious leaders, lawyers, people that believed themselves to be justified, because they knew the law of Moses, they knew the scriptures very well, and they believed that they were going to get to heaven because they were close to God by keeping the Ten Commandments, keeping Torah, keeping 613, and that they were in line with the law.

So if you wanted to be as good as they were, as a teacher of the law and a keeper of the law, you would have to first study the law and know what it says and then apply that to your life. If you read some of these Old Testament laws, they're so incredibly difficult to keep, that it is not only virtually impossible, it is impossible. We know that there are dietary laws on what you can eat and can't eat. And it's not just pig. It's other things as well. Certain things in the ocean, also, things that have, the law describes what kind of hoof on an animal that is not edible. It also talks about things like rabbits not being edible and many other things that in the West people eat all the time.

So the question arises for people that were not originally Jewish, or if they were Jewish that backslid, is in order to get to heaven, do I have to keep the Old Testament law? Do I have to keep the law of Moses? Because it appears that in these verses in Matthew chapter 5, that Jesus is saying that whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so shall be called least. So it appears that He is saying, you need to keep all of the Old Testament laws. So you can take what Jesus is saying in one or two ways. You could interpret this and say Jesus is saying that you need to keep all of the Old Testament, not just the big laws, such as, thou shalt not murder, you know, don't have any other gods before me. But you should also keep all the other dietary laws, the laws about not mixing fabric. In other words, you're sinning if your jacket has a couple specific mixed fabrics in them. And many, many other laws about purity, you know, how you wash your hands before you eat, how you prepare your food, and all of those things.

So if you think that you need to be keeping all of these laws, Jesus is saying that you need to keep it better than the Pharisees. Your righteousness has to exceed them. And we also know, if you look throughout the scriptures, that if you are going to keep some of them, you better keep all of them, because you're going to be judged according to the law. Now, I believe a lot of modern day Pharisees, even Christians, that buy into the Jewish Gospel, they put themselves under the law of Moses, or the Old Testament law, because they really think that they are going to be justified by their works. We know that, the covenant that came to Moses and the children of Israel was the first covenant that was, as Hebrew speaks of, as shadow pictures of what was to come, that Jesus fulfilled.

But see, they don't see it that way. They don't see Jesus as the fulfillment. They don't understand Him as the fulfillment. So when they read this Matthew chapter 5 the only thing that they can understand Jesus saying is that they need to keep all of the Levitical law that is the law of Moses, and unless they are keeping it more accurately than the lawyers, they will not inherit the Kingdom of God. This is going to damn many Christians, because they listened to the words of Jesus, but they heard this parable in the light of keeping the law of Moses that is the first covenant. It will damn them because there is no possible way that you're going to find true forgiveness and true justification through keeping the law, that would be the true salvation by work’s gospel, thinking that you can achieve everlasting life or an entry into God's Kingdom by keeping the law perfectly.

The Jewish people that are Judaizers and also still continue to uphold the law. Their argument to this is, do you think Jesus nailed to the cross murder so you don't have to murder anymore? Do you think He nailed to the cross adultery so you can commit adultery? And so the argument is, if you think that you can go out and commit adultery, then you would be wrong. Therefore you need to keep all the other parts of the law, like the dietary laws and all those others, otherwise you're disobeying God in all of it, and will be damned. So of course, this has brought a lot of Christians a lot of condemnation and confusion, wondering if they are bound to the Old Testament law, or are they not? Are they under the New Covenant?

Now, the second way you can understand what Jesus was teaching is in the light of the New Covenant. And I want to read to you from Hebrews, which, if you haven't read the whole book of Hebrews, I encourage you to read all the way through this, because it speaks very specifically in regards to the difference of the Old Testament, that is, the old covenant, and the first Covenant that was given to Moses, and how it was shadow pictures of what was going to be fulfilled. And comparing that to the New Covenant that Jesus made. But what I want to read to you is the crux of the matter, found in Hebrews. This is chapter 10. I'm going to start in verse 11, “11And every priest stands ministering daily and offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. 12But this Man (which we know is Jesus), after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God, 13from that time waiting till His enemies are made His footstool. 14For by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified.” 

Are they being sanctified through the 613 laws of Torah? No, but through the blood of Jesus Christ.

“14For by one sacrifice He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified.

15But the Holy Spirit also witnesses to us; for after He had said before,

16“This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws into their hearts.” 

So what laws are we talking about when Jesus says these from Matthew Chapter 5, if you interpret it in light of the New Covenant, these commandments that men teach will be the laws of the New Covenant that are put on our hearts. So listen to what this scripture says.

“I will put My laws into their hearts, and in their minds I will write them,” 17then He adds, “Their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.” 18Now where there is remission of these, there is no longer an offering for sin.”

In other words, we’re not bound by the Old Testament, rituals of purification, all the laws of, all the dietary laws and the laws of what we can wear. But we know the difference because the truth of God is on our conscience. And this is what Jesus taught. Jesus did not go around teaching the old Covenant, the law of Moses. He wasn't condemning people for wearing mixed fabrics, or for eating pork. But what He was condemning was hypocrisy. And what Jesus was teaching was the New Covenant. He wants us to enter into the New Covenant, and that is how we surpass the righteousness of the Pharisees.

So it's interesting, because this parable, if you will, or this hard saying of Jesus in regards to Matthew Chapter 5 verse 17 through 20, you can take in one or two ways. You can take it to mean that you need to keep the whole old covenant, and in so doing, you're going to try to be surpassing the righteousness of the Pharisees, and you will condemn yourself, because there's no way you can keep it. Or the second way you could interpret it is in the light of the New Covenant which Jesus made for you and for all of those who would accept the New Covenant. Does the New Covenant mean that we can just forget about righteousness and that we don't need to really repent? Of course not. Does it mean that we think we can murder people or commit adultery? Of course not. The laws of God still exist, but they are on our conscience. And Jesus taught more specifically what it means to keep His laws.

At the end of the day, Jesus is not glad that people can just keep the law of Moses without knowing Him. It's like how Jesus said to those religious Jews, that you search the scriptures, for in them you think that you have eternal life, but you refuse to come to me. Many Christians are trying to work out their salvation by keeping the Torah. They have taken on Jewish attributes. And I've watched this for years, and this has been a phenomenon especially on the Internet, where Christians have tried to obey the law of Moses by keeping the feast days and the different scriptures from the Old Testament. But they fail to understand what the New Covenant is all about. They failed to understand what receiving the Holy Spirit is about. These people that tried to justify themselves by their works of the Old Testament or the Old Covenant, think they will be saved by their many works. And they also think that the Bible itself, that is the Torah, is the greatest law on Earth or in Heaven, which we know that's not true.

One time, when I was talking to one of these Christians that was trying to become a Jew and find justification through the Torah, I asked him, “what do you think the greatest law is or the greatest authority in heaven or on Earth?” And he answered me quickly, “it is the Torah.” And I knew at that moment that he was lying and deceived. Because we know from Matthew chapter 28 that all power and all authority is given to Jesus Christ. And then He says, “go and make disciples of all nations, baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and teach them to obey everything I have commanded you. And lo or behold, I am with you always, even to the very end of the age.” The things that Jesus taught were the parables of the Kingdom of Heaven. He taught the New Covenant. We are sanctified by the blood of Jesus Christ. That doesn't mean we go on sinning and forget to repent. It doesn't mean that we just believe that Jesus did things and believe that He died on the cross, but true belief means actions. That is why James says that faith without deeds, or faith without works that is works of righteousness is dead. As the body without a soul or a spirit in it is dead, so faith without works is dead also. The works that James was speaking of are the works of righteousness, that is love, joy, peace, patience, self-control, the things that God writes on our conscience to do after we have received His Holy Spirit. But as far as trying to be justified by the law and getting circumcised, making sure that you don't eat pork and all those kinds of things, that will not sanctify any men. There are plenty of Muslims who live by those sorts of dietary laws. And they hate the true God. They hate Christians. They hate the New Covenant. They don't believe in anything about Jesus Christ. They only believe in their tradition and their religion.

If you want everlasting life, it is about obeying the words of Jesus Christ. I encourage you to come into the New Covenant. Jesus is our high priest. He has made the way for you to enter into the Holy of Holies by His blood. And if you ask Him to cleanse you from your unrighteousness, to give you a new heart and a new mind, He will wash you clean, and He will give you those new clothes of righteousness. And He will purge you and purify you and make you holy before your God. There is no other way into everlasting life, into heaven, other than getting to know Jesus personally, accepting Him into your heart, and then living for Him every single day to the very end of your life.

 I hope this helps someone to come out of deception. I hope this helps someone not to fall into the false works-based Gospel. And I also want to encourage people not to fall into the hyper grace Gospel that confuses the works of the law Gospel with the works of righteousness. So put your faith in Jesus Christ. Honor Him and please Him. Live according to your conscience, and you will do good. Of course, our conscience isn't the Holy Spirit, but God gave us each a conscience, and our conscience is like our spiritual ear. And with our conscience, we can hear the Holy Spirit speak to us. And when He puts something on our conscience that we know is right, we need to do it quickly. And when we know something is against God and evil or wrong, we reject it and cast it out immediately. If we learn to listen with the ears of our conscience, then we can learn to hear God, and we can learn to trust Him and obey Him and walk into everlasting life with Him. May the grace of Jesus be with you.

Coming persecution martyrs and Christians

 

The abundance of your heart

 The Abundance Of Your Heart

Well, praise Jesus. It is a blessing to be part of the Lord's little flock. All of us at some point were in the world, we were sinners, we were hypocrites, we were losers to the Kingdom of God, people who could not stop sinning, people who continued to relapse into sin. But when we put our faith in Jesus Christ, He called us out of sin, and He calls us into the newness of life. It is a blessing to be with the Lord and just to be walking with Him for our mind to be renewed.

What I was thinking about last night in the day before is just how, whatever we are thinking about, whatever we're filling our heart with, that is what we're going to be speaking about and and acting out. That is why when you even see little children who have watched a violent film or even cartoon, they then are acting out those violent moves. It's very important that we watch what goes in through our eyes, what we listen to, because we know that out of the abundance of a man his mouth speaks, Jesus said that a good tree bears good fruit, a bad tree bears bad fruit and out of the evil of someone's heart, an evil person speaks, and out of the goodness or out of the good of a good person's heart, the good speak(Luke 6:43-45). So if what is coming out of us is evil and perverted, there's no way we have a good heart. But if what you're speaking is pure and holy, and you're continually speaking about the truth of God, it's because you are in prayer. It's because you are spending time with the Spirit of God, the one who offers us life and fills us up. We're like that cup being filled with the joy of the Lord, being filled with the fruit of the Holy Spirit. And that is what is spilling out of our life. And when others see it, they know that we have been with the Lord. I want to make sure that I'm always spending time with Jesus, that I am walking with Him that way. Every day is a new day to encourage others to live by faith. No matter what trials come my way, I'm still able to overcome and that when I speak, that it is out of the overflowing of my heart.

A lot of people wonder, how do you always focus on the Lord? How are you always speaking for Jesus? And they can't muster up enough joy or enough faith to speak to anyone about the Lord. They just don't have it in them. But at the same time, they haven't been filling themselves with the joy of the Lord. They’ve been filling themselves with just the news, with movies, with worldly music, with the ideas of friends, the amount of time that they have put Jesus into their hearts compared to Satan, that is, the world and everything around them, it's like probably 99.99% the world and 0.001% something from the Lord Jesus. So no wonder when they speak, they have no desire to speak about the things of the Kingdom of God, they have no revelation, they have nothing to offer to the church.

And this is one thing that the church has gotten wrong, not just in America, but across the world. For many church goers, church is all about going to church to get filled. You go to church empty, and you listen to a guy, a pastor, who supposedly has had a word from God, and he's going to fill you up. He's going to nourish you. He's going to give you spiritual meat. And when you're going to church, you're coming, you're waiting for this sermon, and you think that that is spiritual meat for you, but you still leave empty. This is not how God designed His church to be. In fact, when we get together, it is written, each of us should have a word from the Lord, a spiritual song, some kind of a joyous thing in our life to share. Not things that are just gossipy or not things that just cause others to be feeling down. But when the body of Christ truly gets together, it's to encourage one another in the Lord to do what’s right. And you don't come empty like the members of the False Church do. When we come together, it is to encourage others in righteousness and in truth, to lift them up, to bring other people into the hands of Jesus, that we may be mutually edified.

So the question is, where have we been spending our time in what has been filling our hearts? Because if we've been putting evil into our hearts, then evil is going to come out. We know that lust starts in the heart, hatred, murderous thoughts, all of these start in the heart. So how is it that Christians think that they can go rent a movie or go out to the movies and they can watch Hollywood actors perform these wicked acts. They can murder people. They can be committing adultery, fornication. You go out and you watch some horror film, or, even just some comedy, and it has the most perverted things in it. And how can you think to yourself that you're not engaging with those idolaters and murders in your heart? So if you watch one of those sorts of movies, you become a murderer at heart. You become an adulterer or a fornicator at heart. And we know that no one committing sin is going to enter into God's Kingdom. So what you've done is you've just put evil into your heart. And then you think when you go to church, or when you go around other Christians, you're going to have something good to say and encouraging. It's just not going to happen. That is why the American Church and the churches around the world that are patterned after the American Church and after the Catholic Church, do not have victory over sin. They can't really overcome all of the snares of Satan. They're constantly depressed, or they are just filled with worldliness, self gratification, it's all about them. But they can't offer anything to the true body of Christ. They can't their fruit themselves, and they can't encourage others to bear good fruit. 

As I walk with the Lord, I want to myself be upright and pure, and I also want to encourage others to do the same. Ever since I was young, I've always wanted to help people in some way. And I remember one time when I was really young, just we were on a road trip, and on this road trip, we were going from, I think it was California to Texas, or something like that. And along the way, we would meet different people, and some people were like homeless, they were beggars, people that were down and out. And occasionally these people would come up to our motor home. And I remember one day, I must have been about 13 years old, it was like a homeless lady, she came over to  our mobile home and was asking for money. And so I gave her what I had which was like three bucks. And then, I got scolded for giving the homeless person money, because I was told they're probably gonna go spend it on drugs and whatever. I didn't care. I just thought, I want to be able to be a light for Jesus, as I've progressed in my faith, I still want to be an encouragement to others. The same heart the Lord has given me to help others, to bring the things that are the goodness out of my heart.

But the Lord has also called me to a very specific mission, and He hasn't given me money to just share with the whole world. He's called me to a specific area and to specific people to be able to financially support. And this for me can be an area of condemnation, as it is to many people, because a lot of people ask for money. A lot of people now are down and out. A lot of people will want something from you. And we know what Jesus said when someone is without a shirt or without a jacket, give them, walk with them the extra mile, give to those to ask. And we want to give to anyone who asks. But a lot of times we don't have what people ask for. Some people need things that are so extravagant, there's no way we could give that to them. It's kind of like when, I believe Peter was asked from the beggar, to give that beggar money. And he said to him, “I don't have money to offer you, but what I do have, I will give for you. Get up to your feet and walk.” (Acts3:6)I think he said. And he lifted up that beggar's hand, and by the grace of Jesus, he gave him the power to walk and to be made new in Jesus Christ.

So what we do have, we need to offer to people, which is the truth that we have been putting into us, and the love and the good treasure out of our heart. And I want the treasure in my heart to be righteousness and truth, so that whoever asks me whatever it is, I can offer them something better than just something with a monetary value, not just American dollars, but that I can offer them the value to their heart, which is everlasting life through Jesus Christ who I have found, because Jesus is in my heart, and I continue to ask Him to renew my spirit By His Holy Spirit. He overflows my heart with His truth and with the treasure that comes from heaven. As Jesus said, where your treasure is, there your heart will also be(Matthew6:21). So whoever we come into contact with, we want to be able to encourage them in the Lord and to ask Jesus to give them His blessing, so that, if they want to repent of their sins, if they want a repent of dead religion and just the Lukewarm Church culture, if people want to repent of all of that stuff in America, that we have something better to offer them, which is the love of Jesus Christ.

And so whatever you've been putting into your heart, that is what you're going to have to offer to others. It's not that you just muster up a little bit more goodness, that you muster up a little bit more love for people, even though you're not feeling loving. But if you spend time with Jesus, if you walk with Him, if you trust Him, and if you obey Him, He's going to fill you up with His treasures, and then, when people ask, you are ready to share that treasure from the Kingdom of God with others.

 So I hope this encourages someone to really go after the Lord and pray to Him. And just that you might ask the Holy Spirit to fill you, and that you would become an indwelling place for the Holy Spirit, not for demons or evil Spirits, not for anything in this world, but that you would have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in you, and that the out-spilling of your life would be the love that God is offering to others through you, because He is in you. So, “Lord Jesus, I pray for those who want to know the truth. I pray for those who have needs, who need to overcome, who have addictions, who have problems with their family, with divorce, with broken marriages. I pray for people that they may come into the newness of life with you, and that you may offer them everything that they need, that they would truly repent of their sins and come into the newness of life and be blessed by you and not fall under the curse of God. We know that you came to save people from their sins, not to condemn people and send people to hell. So I just pray for your church, for the brothers and sisters in the Lord, that they would overcome in your name and be filled with your Holy Spirit. I pray this in your name Lord Jesus, amen.” 

 

The theatrical preacher

 

The Theatrical Preacher 

You've probably come across some of those preachers and pastors that are very theatrical. They hang on every word and they love the way they sound when they preach the scriptures or when they pray. But following Jesus isn't about how good we look outwardly to men. It's about our heart condition and how genuine our relationship is with our Father in heaven. Following Jesus is about holiness. It is about walking the righteous path. It is about hearing from the Holy Spirit and then diligently acting out the things He calls us to do every day in our life. Following Jesus is not about listening to sermons. It's not about church attendance. It's not about paying tithe or helping missionaries go overseas. A lot of churches have made a relationship with God just into the religion of their little cultures but instead of being obedient to Jesus in coming out of sin and calling others to come out of sin. They've made it about all of these ceremonies. Do we really know Jesus Christ? Do we have a relationship with Him and are we calling others into the true body of Christ? Or are we making disciples of hell? Are we calling people into dead religion? Are we leading people astray by organizations that look good on the outside but on the inside they are full of death? Make sure that you're not deceived by dead religion. Come into a genuine relationship with Jesus Christ who loves you and who cares for your soul. May the grace of Jesus be with you. 

Two extremes to each elements of our faith

 

Two Extremes to Each Element of Our Faith

There are two sides or two extremes to each element of our faith; For example, you can be overconfident in your faith, believing that you are saved long ago, that you are entitled to everlasting life, and you are not worried about your salvation with the Lord Jesus at all.  You believe that there is nothing that you can do to lose your salvation, there is noting that you can do to make God love you more or less, and you are convinced that you can live life however YOU want because God has to let you into His Kingdom.  But on the opposite end of the spectrum are those of us who are very insecure about our faith, every day we are wondering if we are saved, every day we are wondering if God loves us and if He approves of us.  There are errors to BOTH sides!  The side to being over confident of your faith leads to PRIDE, arrogance, not working your salvation out with God, not worrying that you are actually sinning.  And if this is you, you need to go and REPENT before the LORD, because being prideful or arrogant or so secure about your faith that you don’t work out your relationship with God can be VERY damning.  MANY Christians fall into this category and they will find themselves in HELL in the end because they NEVER TRULY REPENTED.  But again on the opposite side of the spectrum, if you find yourself falling into depression, if you find yourself always worrying that God doesn’t love you, then also that is something you need to address with Jesus, because He DOES offer forgiveness for us quickly, when we have a right heart, and He DOES give us the security we need through the HOLY SPIRIT.  That is why the Holy Spirit is called the Comforter, because He comforts us when we are right with Him.  Make sure you just work out your relationship with Jesus and don’t fall to either of the extremes.  Rather walk the straight and narrow path with Jesus and know that He is your guide, He is your protector, and he is your ever-present help in the times of trouble.  He is worthy to lead you and guide you.  He is our salvation.  May the grace of Jesus be with you. 

Heaven and hell each will receive their reward

 Heaven And Hell Each Will Receive Their Reward

   Praise Jesus. Everyone, even the best of Christians, can be deceived by the devil, or they can start to believe that maybe hell doesn't exist. some Christians ... (Live streaming interrupted for a few seconds) how hot hell is, or how long people are in hell, if hell is eternal. But the fact is, hell is real, demons are real, heaven is real, Satan Israel, Jesus Christ is real. And we will spend eternity in one of two places, either heaven or hell. There is no purgatory. If you're looking for some sort of middle ground in between heaven and hell, that would be Earth. Earth is the place to choose good or evil. And each of us are then rewarded according to our works. As Jesus said, when He comes, He will give each according to their works. The Christian Church has done a very poor job about teaching this. They say God sees everyone the same. He sees everyone as sinners. And as long as you've prayed the prayer of faith, those who are faithful, meaning they prayed a prayer will be accepted into heaven for all eternity, as sinners. And the other sinners who haven't said that the sinners' prayer will automatically go to hell. So they have a bit of crazy theology, because they believe themselves to be saved in going to heaven, because they have prayed the prayer, and they're sorry, even though they continue to sin. Yet everyone else is the damn to go to hell.

But Jesus never spoke about a magic prayer that would get us into His kingdom. In fact, He spoke quite the contrary. Jesus gave parables, like the one about the guy who got into the kingdom, but he still had his old garments on. And they asked the guy, why do you still have on your dirty garments? And the guy was speechless. So the master said, bind him hand and foot and cast him into outer darkness. What does that represent? That parable represents a Christian who never repented, who thought he was in the Kingdom of heaven, who thought he was on his way to everlasting life, but who never cleaned up his act, never got sin out of his life, never held Jesus' hand, and obeyed Jesus Christ.

So what will we expect that Jesus will say to us when we die and we're still in our sins and haven't truly repented? Do we expect Him to say, good and well done, my faithful servant? Do we expect Him to say, come into my kingdom and pollute my children? I know you have a little porn in your life, I know that you have a little addictions, but bring that in and spread that around with my children. What do we expect a holy God to say to us? He's not gonna allow any of His children or any of His kingdom to be polluted. And we would bring pollution into His kingdom if we're not wearing our white robes, if we're not made clean. The way to be made clean is by the blood of the Lamb, the word of our testimony. That's the way we are made clean and overcome. We call on the name of Jesus. Obviously, no one can do it on their own, but Jesus has made the way. And if you call on Him and say, Lord, “purify me from my unrighteousness. I know that I am a sinner. I know I need your salvation.” Then He will come to you and He will purge you, and He will pull all that sin out of your life and remove it from you as far as the East is from the west.

But if you do not do that work, to repent, then Jesus will certainly not do the work for you. There are a whole lot of Christians that preach the doctrine that you can't do any work for the Lord, He's done it all for you. Well, why do many Christians go to Hell then? Who is that guy that's in the kingdom with his dirty robes on? That's not an atheist. An atheist doesn't want to go to heaven. People of different religions, they don't want to go to the Christian heaven. They don't care about Jesus. Those who are ending up in hell, or in the lake of fire, that are people that are saying things like, Lord, didn't we cast out demons? Didn't we heal the sick? Didn't we preach sermons? Didn't we hear your gospel? These are Christians, and they are the ones being rejected because they have sin in their life. So we have to take this seriously. We have to take Jesus and His words seriously.

 He loves us. He cares for us. But if we don't do the work to overcome He's not going to do our job for us. Jesus respects our wishes. If we wish to do evil and we wish not to go into His kingdom, then He will not force us to go into His kingdom. If we choose to do wrong, He’s not going to force us to do right. He respects your free will, your choice. So knowing that you have to choose to do good, He's not going to force your hand to do it. He's not going to force you to have a dream or a vision. He's not going to force you to speak in new tongues. It's not like His spirit forcefully comes upon you and manipulates you like a demon. People wonder, why am I not speaking in a new tongue? Why am I not having visions and dreams? Of course, you can't make yourself have spiritual gifts, but you do need to seek after them. You need to seek after Holiness, seek after the gifts that the spirit of God has for you. Because if you're not seeking after Him, and it's not your will, why would God force something on you that is not your will? If your will is to chase the world and to do everything like the world, then God will leave you to the work of your own flesh, because that's your choice.

So you have to choose good over evil, which is a hard thing to do. You have to choose to push off the flesh. You daily have to deny yourself. It is easy, guys, to live for Satan, because you don't have to do anything when you wake up, serving yourself, you are by default serving the devil. So all you have to do to serve the devil is just wake up and forget to pray. Wake up and just think about yourself. Wake up and have a lack of self control, you'll already naturally be serving the devil. It doesn't take any discipline, but to overcome, takes discipline. To succeed and have success, takes discipline. And to enter through the narrow gate, by the way of Jesus Christ, takes 100% dedication. It's impossible in the flesh, but through Jesus Christ, all things are possible. But He expects that you work for Him with all of your heart, all of your soul, all of your mind and all of your strength. So don't buy into that gospel that says God rewards all equally. You know that just everyone's either just going to heaven or hell if they've said a prayer. None of that's true. Jesus will reward every single person exactly according to what their faith was, what they actually did with His words, if they served Him, or if they didn't. And apparently there's even levels of this.

 I want to read to you, E.G. what Jesus says in Luke Chapter twelve. I'm going to read first Verse 47 and 48.  47And that servant who knew his master’s will, and did not prepare himself or do according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes. So though the person or the Christian that knows the will of God and rejects it willfully, the wilful sinners, they will be punished in hell with many stripes, Jesus says. But Verse 48, 48But he who did not know, yet committed things deserving of stripes, shall be beaten with few. For everyone to whom much is given, from him much will be required; and to whom much has been committed, of him they will ask the more. This is a pretty scary verse here, because it's saying that in hell, people are going to be punished who are Christians worse than the atheist, worse than worse than the unbelieving, worse than the ignorant. You would be better to be an ignorant atheist or agnostic, or someone who just doesn't know what they believe and just has a good heart before God, and go your life like that, claiming you're not a Christian, you don't believe anything, because your punishment in hell will be less stripes. I'm not exactly sure what stripes are. Maybe, I mean, for a servant, that would be like being beaten. But how is A devil? How is a serpent going to beat you? How is God going to beat someone? I don't know how that happens, but it's pretty severe, guys. For those who are pastors, teachers, elders in the church, Jesus said things like, it would be better for you if a millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea. That's pretty severe. It would be better not to be a Christian at all. You would still deserve death by doing things against God, but at least your punishment in hell wouldn't be as severe as Christians. They're going to take the worst of it. So there are levels, there are levels of punishment.

The pastors in church say, oh no, everyone's a sinner. Everyone's a sinner, and every sin deserves hell. Well, true, even breaking one of God’s laws will send you to hell. But there are sins that you can repent of quickly. And there are sins that are so damnable for a Christian to fall into, such as this sort of hypocrisy, knowing what you ought to do and doing the opposite that it will put you in a place in hell that is so horrible, that you will wish that you are never born. You will wish that you never existed at all. So I encourage you to repent of Christian hypocrisy. A lot of us have been hypocrites. I was a hypocrite. I was a sinner. I lived my life as a sinning hypocrite in church. But when Jesus exposed these things to me and revealed to me that I was unproductive, that I was like the unproductive servant ready to be cut off and thrown into the fire. I knew what I had to do. I had to repent. I had to get right with my master. Because I like...(Live streaming interrupted for a few seconds). 

The truth is Jesus Christ, and we need to make sure that we are really following Him and obey Him. The reward is great for those that know Jesus and who loved Him. I want to read to you from Luke chapter twelve, starting in verse 35. 35“Let your waist be girded and your lamps burning; 36and you yourselves be like men who wait for their master, when he will return from the wedding, that when he comes and knocks they may open to him immediately. 37Blessed are those servants whom the master, when he comes, will find watching. Assuredly, I say to you that he will gird himself and have them sit down to eat, and will come and serve them. 38And if he should come in the second watch, or come in the third watch, and find them so, blessed are those servants.

Jesus wants to take care of His children. He wants us to come into the wedding feast. He wants to serve us and bless us. He doesn't wish that anyone perish or go to hell. But if we don't keep watch, if we don't serve the Lord now, then certainly He will reject us. And many Christians will find their end in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, because they don't repent themselves, they don't come out of hypocrisy, and they teach others to live a hypocritical Christian life. Jesus said in Verse 39, 39But know this, that if the master of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched and not allowed his house to be broken into. 40Therefore you also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.” Don't believe people that think they have the Rapture all figured out, the return of the Lord, when Jesus is going to come.

Because the true Church knows that they have to keep watch all the time. We need to make sure that we are staying upright and pure, keeping ourselves undefiled, unstained from the world. Are you right with Jesus Christ? Are you living for Him? Or are you allowing bitterness and evil and depression and all the doctrines of demons to come into your life? I encourage you to repent. Repent of dead religion, repent of addiction, repent of pornography, drugs, and alcohol, everything that is promiscuous in the world. Repent of living for yourself. Reconcile yourself to your creator, Jesus Christ. If you call on Him, He will save you from your sins. He loves you, and He wants to give you everlasting life. There is great hope in the name of Jesus. May the grace of Jesus be with you.

KJV Only Deception

 If you are convinced that the 1611 KJV is the infalible, flawless "Word of God" in English; I challenge you to type in to Google, "translation errors in the KJV".  A brief look will prove to you that the KJV is VERY flawed. The real Word of God is perfect and not flawed, therefore the KJV cannot be the flawless Word. If you want to know the truth, get to know Jesus for real and stop playing games. 

Which version is God's word?

Jesus Christ Himself is the infallible Word of God, not the Bible in any version in English or any other version. This is what Jesus Christ said Himself in regards to the scriptures...

John 5:39-44

John 5:39-44 NKJV

You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me. But you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life. “I do not receive honor from men. But I know you, that you do not have the love of God in you. I have come in My Father’s name, and you do not receive Me; if another comes in his own name, him you will receive. How can you believe, who receive honor from one another, and do not seek the honor that comes from the only God? 

Over Spiritualizing Faith

 Over Spiritualizing Faith 

Well, praise Jesus today everyone. I wanted to talk about this topic because a lot of people especially as they're starting their faith with Jesus, they are very confused what it means to follow the Lord to receive His Holy Spirit. And in many different ways, they can over spiritualize their faith. It happens when you start thinking you just have to be in a dark room praying all day long to fulfill what Jesus said about praying to your father in the secret place. And some people think that's what it means to be a Christian, that you lock yourself in a dark closet and all day long and all night, you pray. You don't sleep at all. You don't have any enjoyment in life, and all you do is you just pray and rock back and forth in the dark. And they think that's very spiritual.

And people tend to grab onto things that appear to be spiritual. Spiritual men, men that dressed differently, do things differently, eat special they have special diets. And they tend to grab onto that and think that there is something extraordinary about that. But the plain things that Jesus said to do, they leave those things undone because it seems too mundane to them. And so we have a generation of people that love being spiritual, but they don't love or obey Jesus. I want to read to you what Jesus said, for those of us that do want to obey Him, found in Matthew chapter 16. I'm going to start in Verse 24. Then Jesus said to His disciples, “if anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it. But whoever loses his life for My sake, will find it. For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give an exchange for his soul? For the son of man will come in the glory of His father with His angels, and then He will reward each according to his works.”

 See, Christians don't like that passage very much, because Jesus was very blunt to say that you will be judged according to what you say and what you do. We have an example of this also in the Old Testament, where Cain kills Abel, and before Cain is going to kill Abel, God has a personal word with Cain, and He tells Cain that he has the choice to choose good or evil, and he will be rewarded for doing what is good. But if he does what is bad, sin lies at the door, and its desire is to kill him, to destroy him. And the same is for each of us. Each of us have been given a conscience. And Jesus stands at our door, and He knocks and He says, will we listen to our conscience? Will we learn to hear Him? Will we receive the words that He puts on our conscience? Will we receive Him into our heart and life, and choose to make a distinction between good and evil, right and wrong? Or will we be like the religious crowd who tries to over spiritualize everything to look good to people or to make ourselves feel good?

 I think what another title for the same message could be would be something like instead of over Spiritualizing Faith, it could read rather Sensationalizing God, because what a lot of people are really looking for isn't so much, they wouldn't see it as if they're over spiritualizing, because a lot of people love to be spiritual. But what they are really looking for is an experience. But a lot of people, they put this feeling of experience over righteousness. They put that the feeling of receiving in experience when they get baptized, or in experience of of feeling love. And they put that feeling, or that emotion, over the reality of obedience and discipline before Jesus Christ. So you have a group of people that love to talk about the spiritual realm. They love to talk about God, prayer, supernatural activity, prayers being answered, all these miraculous signs and wonders. But at the end of the day, what they're elevating is sensationalism. They love the way it feels when you can pray in tongues. They love the way feels when they hear other people worshipping in church, it makes them feel good. But what we have to remember is, these sorts of feelings are of the flesh. The flesh has feelings. We can feel hurt, we can feel down, we can feel depressed. And just because you have feelings does not mean that you are abiding in Jesus Christ in growing in your faith. In fact, it could be the exact opposite. That is why a lot of Christians are falling away from the faith and thinking that they're very spiritual. Because they find the spiritual men of God who are working signs and wonders and have wonderful words from God. And they think that they're being fed and nourished because they're chasing after this this spiritualist. And it becomes just like a Hollywood movie for them. They love seeing what the guy is going to do next or see what miracles going to happen. And instead of it being about righteousness and self-discipline in them hearing from the Lord for themselves, it becomes all about entertainment. It becomes about, what is the guy going to say next? And will it come true? Will it come to pass? It's like a show to them, maybe equal to the Chosen. People are addicted to that kind of stuff, because it doesn't really convict them to the core and cause them to change. It just makes them feel good about themselves or feel entertained. So what I'm talking about is far as spiritualizing or over spiritualizing our faith is the element of trying to make everything sensational, feel good. And these Christians apply to every part of their faith, prayer becomes something that they're just making sensational So they don't want to pray unless they have immediate results the way they want. They can't wait on God in prayer. They expect it to be like in a movie. Hollywood has totally warped people's minds. They can't tell the difference between what a Christian is in reality versus what Hollywood has portrayed it to be.

So in regards to prayer, guys, we should have a quiet place to pray, but also, when we pray to God, we're just praying with our mind and with our heart, how you would just talk to a friend, but remember,  Jesus is also our King and our Lord. Some people are over spiritualizing it to the point that they cannot function in life and take care of their own children, e.g. because they think, their children are physical. So how can I take care of my children and be praying to God so that so they're neglecting their children because they're having so much prayer time in the closet. And Jesus has asked them to take care of these children. So things like this happen all the time. Often when I go to pray about something, the Lord just tells me, ‘go, go speak what I've told you to say. Don't waste any more time.” Not that any time is wasted in prayer. But a lot of people are trying to hear something from God that they already know. They know what they should be doing, yet they're trying to have a different word from God that sounds better to them because they're addicted to this form of just feeling spiritual. So unless they have some kind of physical word or revelation or dream, they don't feel like they've heard from God. But Jesus speaks to us in a way that is so natural, that is very easy to push it off as it was just my own thought. It couldn't be that natural. It needs to be more sensational. It needs to be more epic. It needs to be more bold. And they just neglect the things that the Holy Spirit is telling them. And they don't recognize Jesus because their senses have become so dull from watching movies, from sensational music, from the whole Christian realm. They have totally over spiritualized their faith to the extent that they have a very dull senses to the Holy Spirit. It sounds counter-intuitive that if you would try to be so sensitive to the spirit, that you would be totally desensitized, but that is what's happening. We need to pay a lot more attention to the reality of the truth of Jesus, the things that Jesus actually said. So He says, “whoever desires to save his life will lose it. “Well, are we losing our life for the Gospel? Are you pursuing Jesus with all your heart, or every day when you wake up is it all about you, you, you? Are you praying to God to just have more money, have a bigger house, have a bigger business? Those are the things that we have to watch out for. The Lord can bless us with those things. You know, if you're single, He can bless you with with marriage and a spouse and a family.

But everything has to be submitted to the Lord first. And often we have our own desires first. And then we treat Jesus as if he's a genie to do our work for us. And then we say, Lord, I pray in your name for this, that and the other. And we try to get more and more spiritual and say prayers in a certain way that we will be heard. And none of that pleases God. If we just do the things that we know, seeking first the Lord's Kingdom, His righteousness, listening to our conscience, doing what we know is right, then the Lord will bless us, and we will grow in our faith.

A lot of us need to do really simple things, like work out our relationship with our spouse. We need to repent of certain things. We need to confess certain things to a brother or a sister and get animosity off of her chest. We need to get out of debt, things we need to confess or detox of. It's the very basic things in life that you know that you know is right, that you know that you have to do, but you're refusing to do that because you're looking for something more spiritual than that. So that's what I mean when I'm talking about over spiritualizing your faith.

A lot of Christians are just trying to live a spiritual life that is sensational and that they think is epic. But the very basic, mundane things that Jesus has called them to do, they're neglecting that. But the more we just carry out the commands of Jesus in our life, that is love, patience, loving others as ourselves, loving God with all of our heart. The basic, the basic things that we know, then the more we will grow in our faith, the more He will teach us, and the more spiritual power He will give us the more power to overcome, the more spiritual authority, the more boldness to share our faith. the more spiritual power to be able to to lead our family in righteousness, all of those things. 

Verse 27 in Matthew chapter 16 says, for the Son of man will come in the glory of His father with His angels, and then He will render each according to his works.

The things that you do are very important. Christians have downplayed this for ages, saying that your works are not important. It's not by works that we're saved so no one can boast. And they twist what Jesus said for their ideas of what the Apostle Paul said to their own demise. You know, there are the works of the flesh. Many Christians think they will be saved for how much money they gave to the church. They think that they will be saved by their work of going on mission trips, or their work on feeding the homeless, or their work of how many sermons they've presented, or whatever the case may be. But those are all works that the flesh can achieve and do. But the kind of works Jesus is speaking about in Mathew chapter 16 verse 27, is the works that are given to us through the Holy Spirit, that are righteous works that are holy, those things we need to have in order to follow Jesus into life. You can't say, I'm saved without those things. That is why Brother James, he says in The Book of James, that faith without works is dead. It doesn't matter how spiritual you are. It doesn't matter how how long you have been supposedly saved. If faith is not accompanying your works, then you have dead faith. Don't listen to Christians that tell you, “it's all about faith, Brother. You don't have to have works. You don't have to repent. God loves you as you are.”

 Jesus has called us to overcome and He gives us faith to overcome sin in temptation, to overcome demons, to cast out evil thoughts and things that are demonic from our lives. If we start to learn to take every thought captive and pray in the spirit and just do what we know is right, just the simple truth, then we will start overcoming, and our faith will become more and more genuine. But if you try to over spiritualize your faith by believing your spiritual because I prayed for one whole hour today, I fasted this week two different times. You know, the Pharisees were rebuked by Jesus for that sort of thing. Jesus gives that parable about the guy who says “I fast three days a week”, or whatever the case was. And when he's praying, he's looking up with his nose in the air, and then the other guy is beating his chest, saying, “Lord, I'm a sinner. Forgive me. Let me repent.” At the end of the day, who is justified the man that feels he is spiritual and that he fasted and that he was able to pray for an hour a day? Or is it the man that just prayed from the bottom of his heart a plain prayer “Lord, I know that I'm a sinner. Forgive me. Make me pure”? At the end of the day, we all know it's the man that prayed and said, “Lord, forgive me.” We know it's the prayer that was honest from the bottom of this man's heart that prayed with humility, with his face to the floor.

So if we also want to find peace with God, we have to come with a humble heart, and we have to come with a right minded heart, not thinking that it's all about being over spiritual, just hearing really nice songs. Some people literally think that they're going to get closer to God by listening to Christian radio and Christian songs every time they get in their car. All that's doing is pumping more and more garbage into your mind. Most Christian music is is not glorifying to God. There is some, but most Christian music is It's just like this catchy, upbeat music that sounds good to your ear, but doesn't put any truth into your heart whatsoever. And people listen to this kind of music, and they literally think they're getting closer to God, because they're listening to Christian music. they're reading Christian books, they're going to church once a week, or whatever the case is. And they're wondering why they're still depressed, why they still can't get their feet on the ground. It's because they're not working out their relationship with Jesus and doing the things that they know.

If we live each day according to the conscience Jesus is given us,  we'll do good. If we just say, “Lord, speak to my conscience today. Help me to do what is right quickly. However, I can obey the fastest way. Let me do that.” And then go about your day. The Lord will bless you If you seek first His kingdom and your diligent to speak out what is the truth and speak against error, the Lord is going to bless you.

After all, faith is not about just being in a dark closet all the time. Jesus didn't do that. Jesus was out preaching. He was speaking to His disciples. He was doing the work of the Kingdom of God. And each of us have to find what Jesus wants for us. We have to just pray and say, “Lord, where is my mission field? What do you want me doing?” See, not everyone is called to preach on the Internet. Not everyone is called to be a missionary overseas. Not all of us are called to be like a pastor or a preacher. Some of us are called just to raise children. Some of us are called just to whatever the task is that is throughout our day. But the devil would have you feel very guilty for not being spiritual enough, “you didn't pray as much as brother so and so, you didn't go out street evangelizing like a sister or brother so and so.” It's not about that, guys. It's not about comparing yourself to other members of the body of Christ. But rather, it's about asking Jesus what your ministry is. Because, as the Apostle Paul says, some are like hands or feet or eyes or ears. All of us make up the body of Christ. And one can't say to the other, you are useless, you're worthless, unless you're like me. So each of us would do a lot better not to be comparing ourselves in our supposed spiritualism to others, but rather just going before the Lord and humility and say, “make me Lord who you want me to be. And let me be an encouragement to the body of Christ. Let me be uplifting to others, not a gossip, not a busy body, not tearing down others, not not doing evil to others or causing others problems. Let me just be a light for you. Let me shine brightly and be an encouragement to your body.” And if we stay humble before the Lord, He will use us for His holy purpose. We will be as a vessel of honor used for His purpose. But you can't be a vessel of honor if you yourself think you're high and mighty or over spiritual.

I wanted just to talk about a few ways that people over sensationalized their faith just briefly here, because we've discussed some of them already, but one of them is in regards to Baptism. Baptism is pretty simple. You just get dumped in water by a brother or sister who loves the Lord. That is it. And you do it to fulfill all righteousness as Jesus had said. Remember, when Jesus was baptized by John, He said, let us do this to fulfill all righteousness. Even though Jesus was perfect and sinless. He did it as an example for us also to follow. The water represents the grave. It's nothing holy. So if you're baptized in some mud puddle, it doesn't matter, because it represents death. When you go under the water, that represents that you leave your flesh in the grave, and when you come out, that represents coming into the newness of life. So a lot of people here, expect something very sensational to happen. They think that if all the stars have aligned correctly, and if the right guy baptizes them, and they are feeling emotional enough and have prayed up enough that they will come out automatically speaking in a new tongue, or they expect something to happen, but because their hearts are set on this sensational kind of spiritualism, and instead of on true repentance, the Holy Spirit, they just don't feel anything. They come up and they're upset, and they think, what did I do wrong? I didn't speak in tongues, I don't feel like I'm forgiven. And then they're upset, maybe they're upset at God or themselves. They think, did the person that baptize me, did he lack faith? Did I lack faith? And they just don't know. But I'll tell you what the reason is. The reason is they're focusing on this kind of spiritualism, rather than obeying the words of Jesus, and just doing what they know is right. They are not being baptized for true repentance, but for sensationalism. A lot of the Pentecostals do this. The Pentecostal faith thinks that as soon as you're baptized, you'll be speaking in tongues. And they have all the verses to prove it to you from Acts. 

Now, from what I have seen, walking with the Holy Spirit, He hardly ever, if ever does the same exact thing twice. You know, some people come to the Lord, and then they're baptized with water, and then they receive the Holy Spirit. Some people receive the Holy Spirit and a new language, and then later they find water Baptism. It's not a formula. You can't go through the scriptures in Acts enough time to make a formula that will work for you. Because we are not guided by the book of Acts, were guided by the Holy Spirit. So rather than trying to to formulate the perfect formula and steps for yourself to follow, you would do better just to pray and say, “Lord, I want to be baptized to follow you. I love you. I care for your commandments. And I want to be baptized to follow you. And whatever happens, I place into your hands. But I am doing my part before you, Lord, to obey you and to do what you have asked. And I know you'll hold up your end because, because you are true and you always do what is right. So Lord, if you want to give me a gift at this time, give it to me. but let me wait upon you, Lord, for your perfect timing.” That is how we have to be. But we can't be demanding that God give us the gift of prophecy or the gift of tongues, or some other gift that you just think is sensational because you just were baptized.

So people, they're over spiritualizing Baptism. They're over spiritualizing music, E.g.. Music is a wonderful thing in the body of Christ. We can glorify God with music. But church has made music just a sensational thing to get people all hyped up. And in church, they say, “it’s the Holy Spirit, it is the Holy Ghost. All of these kids are all wanting to repent.” And everyones all hyped up at camp or in church. And, the hype only is temporary. It's very plastic. Because after they leave there, they're back to looking at porn, back to sleeping around. They're falling back into all sorts of idolatry and adultery. They're messing around with the world. So obviously it was not the Holy Spirit, but it was a sensational feeling that they elevated in church.

If you really want to do something for the Lord, and He's given you the gift of music, then use it for the Lord. If you are a musician, then play whatever music you have, or sing to please Jesus, not to please men. That is the big problem with music, is it gratifies the flesh. And a lot of Christians are making a lot of money off of music. God has given them the ability and the talent for His kingdom, yet they're turning around and using it for their own glory, to make themselves look good and to make just a lot of money. So we need to be careful that we don't over spiritualize music as well, like the Christian church as.

 So, Another thing is love. People over spiritualized love. They think love is a feeling. They've turned it just into a feeling of their flesh. And this is a really big problem, guys, because people fall in love with their girlfriend, then they end up getting married, and then after they're married, the devil tells them, well, your girlfriend wasn't the prettiest girl, and you don't really have those feelings of love for her anymore, therefore you should get divorced. And because, love to them only is a feeling and a sensation. They believe Satan. And they get divorced because they no longer are in love with their spouse. Love is not a feeling, but obviously it is an action. You choose to love someone, or you choose to hate them. And if you choose to love Jesus, you will obey Him. It's not just a feeling, but it is an action. The same with your spouse, your husband or your wife. You marry, and those initial feelings that you once had, of the butterfly kind of love, those eventually leave you, and then you grow into a deeper sort of love and a passion for each other, and you have to cultivate that sort of love, and it comes through dedication. It comes through working out your relationship daily and choosing as an action to love, not just a butterfly feeling in your heart when you first meet a boy or a girl that you like.

So in regards to end times, this is another one that I see especially on the Internet right now. We know that Jesus talks about end times. We know He talks about the end of the age, and all those things are true. But people are also over spiritualizing these end times things, and they're making it very sensational, instead of asking Jesus about it and trusting Him and just walking with Him in faith and growing in their faith. Now they are just into what all these prophets are saying, because it's very entertaining, like a Hollywood movie.

So another one would be in regards to church and mission trips. people will feel like they are very spiritual and they're doing very good for God if they're keeping up their church attendants, paying their tithes, going on mission trips, praying, going to prayer meetings, that is not what makes us right with God, or in the truth. If you want to be in the truth, it's not about feeling spiritual because you're going to church and mission trips and all of that.

If you want to be in the truth, that all starts with with walking with Jesus for real, and that happens through your prayer life. But then obeying the very simple, basic, mundane things that you know you ought to do. And when you do something that you've been putting on the back burner for a while, when you do that in faith, no matter how simple or hard it is, after you do it you know, you just know that you stepped 1 foot forward in faith. And Jesus blesses you for that, and you grow in your faith. And then He gives you more knowledge of the truth, then He gives you more understanding and more discipline. That is how you will grow your faith. But this whole deception is huge in regards to church and how they've over spiritualized it in mission trips and all that stuff.

The last one that I wanted to speak of briefly here, talk about a few of the questions that you guys have emailed me about, is in regards to visions and dreams. Now, in regards to visions and dreams, we know that we're not to despise prophecies the Apostle Paul talks about that. We know that we shouldn't just disregard dreams and visions and say that they are not of the Lord. However, we are not led by dreams and visions and by prophets. We are led by the Holy Spirit. I know some people that every time they have a dream, or every time their wife has a dream, they think, oh, she must have heard from God. What did you dream? What did you hear? And they're suddenly, they're over spiritualizing a dream. And dreams often come from the flesh. They come from your own imagination. Sometimes they come from demons. One such dream that men have is this compelling feeling, that you have love for some other woman when you're married. This happens to many men, probably every man, and this feeling that is demonic, but Satan makes it feel so real you actually loved this woman that you were in high school with or college, or whatever the case was, you should have married her and not your wife. And then Satan really wants you to think that this is a true, a vision. This this is where you should have went. And it's totally 100% satanic. But that should tell you just how seducive Satan's power is to not only distraction to pull you to hell. He can literally make those grips of feel like it's true love and passion, and you should pursue it. Its Satanic, guys. Dreams and visions can come from your own mind. They can come from Satan or a demon. They can come from someone, what someone said during the day, a book you read, or it could come from the Holy Spirit, and you will not know unless you're being guided by the Holy Spirit first.

 I have many different dreams and visions, and many of them come from Satan, and I know immediately, and I can rebuke it and cast it out, even if it sounds like it's good. So we are not led by those things. We can't over spiritualize dreams as if they're the ones that lead us, or visions are the ones that lead us. Who leads us is the Holy Spirit, and He is the Spirit that comes from Jesus Christ. The early disciples received the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, and it came as tongues of fire, and they spoke each in a new tongue, and they encouraged other people that spoke many different languages. It was very convincing people came into the faith. But that was the first century. How will Jesus work in your life? How will He work in my life? What spiritual gifts will He give us that truly come from Him?

How will we know that we have received Him? The only way you're gonna know is if you work that relationship out with Jesus, and you say, “Lord, please become my teacher. I don't want anybody else to be my teacher. I don't want anyone else to spiritually move me. I don't want to be thrown off course by a dream or a vision or a prophecy, whether it is a world prophecy or a personal prophecy. I don't want to be thrown off by a father in law or a brother or a mother. I don't want to be thrown off by what people think. I only want to be guided by your Spirit. I want to place myself before you, Lord, and be guided by you.” And if you can put yourself at the feet of Jesus and He sees your heart, then he's going to give you the better gift of the Holy Spirit, to teach you, to lead you, to guide you, to bring to your memory things that you already know, and tell you of things to come.

 So that is what I encourage you to do. Wait upon the Lord and receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. It all starts with listening to your conscience, asking the Lord to convict your conscience, and then doing 100% what you know is right and 100% rejecting what you know is wrong, as simple as that. It's the basics of the Gospel are not complicated. It simply follow Jesus, do what you know is right, reject what you know is wrong. If you do that, you'll be sure to go the right direction. At this point, I'm gonna go over a few questions that I received from emails.

I first wanted just to give everyone a bit of encouragement.The other day, the Lord was just showing me how much He loved each of us or His children, the body of Christ. And if you have children yourself, you know how much you love your children. You would do anything for them. And you would rather die than see your children suffer. You'd rather die than see your children die. And if we have that kind of love for our children and we're evil, then how much more does Jesus love and care for each of us? A lot of people get the impression that God just hates the world. He hates them, and He's just going to kill them, and they can't ever make it to the Lord. But Jesus does not want to see anybody end in hell, He wants all people to come into the truth. And the early disciples also wanted this. They had the heart of Christ, and they wanted people to come into a relationship with God.

So I want to say that to encourage anyone out there right now who is feeling down in their faith, feeling like they can't get to God, that maybe God doesn't love them, or they can't really repent. Maybe you have intrusive thoughts that you think keep you from truly repenting. Jesus loves you, and He will make the way for you to go with them, because, He loves and cares for your soul. But you do have to just work your relationship out with Him. Jesus is love, but He is also stern. And so in humility, just go before Him and work out your relationship with Him, and He will bear with you. He will lift you up, and He will help you.

So, moving on to speaking about a few questions here, one that's a pretty good question that I want to address that is also in connection with this topic of sensationalizing God, or or spiritual walk. The question I received was, it's that passage that says that God reveals things to babes, but hides them from the wise and prudent.A child can understand the gospel. Yet Peter said that the words of Paul are hard to understand. How is it most seem to understand the words of Paul, yet few understand the words of the Lord Jesus Christ? And Okay. So the question here is, how is it that the gospel is simple and it should be plain and easy to understand, but Paul over complicates the gospel, or, rather, people over complicate what Paul is saying. I have seen this a lot, and this is a multi-faceted question. The first thing I want to address here is that, I've seen on the Internet over some time, the Apostle Paul and his writing under attack. People will say that The Apostle Paul was a false Apostle, because, He said things like, “not many of not many of you should be considered fathers, or you don't have many fathers. I am your father.” And the Apostle Paul said things that opposed Jesus. And so they say The Apostle Paul was false, you shouldn't read his gospel, he stole the gospel. Guys. I've heard this about the Apostle Paul from when I was in college. I went to Fresno Pacific University. And during the time I was there, there was a great number of college students and I suppose faculty who were very opposed to Paul. And what I found was all of them were opposed to Paul for unrighteous reasons. At Fresno Pacific my college, a lot of of women were offended by the Apostle Paul because of the things he said in regards to women and keeping silent in the church, and because they wanted to lord their authority over men and to be pastors and all of that, they were very offended at Paul. Other people didn't like how Paul taught repentance, or many different things that Paul taught, they disagreed with, and so they would just like to to hate on Paul and say he's false. The Apostle Paul if you read about his testimony, how he saw the light, how Jesus revealed Himself to him, it was very supernatural. The early Apostles confirmed that a Paul truly did hear from God. Otherwise we wouldn't have that story about the three men, the man who basically was told to go and take away the scales from Paul's eyes that's what I'm remembering. Anyway, guys the early Apostles confirm that the Apostle Paul was a true believer.

Does that mean everything that the Apostle Paul said was a 100% accurate? Of course not. We also know that Peter receiving the Holy Spirit and being a man of God, also stumbled. And at one point, Paul rebukes Peter for falling back into hypocrisy. So, they grew in their faith. They grew in the knowledge of the truth, and they tried the best they could encourage others to come into the faith. But that doesn't mean that the things they wrote were 100% flawless. We know that a lot of things at the Apostle Paul said, E.G. he says, in my opinion. So if it's in this man's opinion, it could be the opinion of God very likely, but it also may not be. And that is why the Apostle Paul writes, “I think that I have the heart of Christ. I believe that I do. But this is my opinion.” So are all the opinions of the Apostle Paul the truth? Of course not. We know that Jesus Himself is the truth. We know that He called the Apostle Paul, and the Apostle Paul did many signs and wonders, and he did lead many people to the Lord. But at the end of the day, we follow Jesus and His gospel. We don't follow the Apostle Paul and the Apostle Paul's ideas. But that doesn't mean the Apostle Paul was false or leading people to hell. 

And Just because Paul's gospel or the things he wrote was hard to understand, does not mean it's not true. And I'll give you some a proof of that. If you think the Apostle Pauls writings are hard to understand, and many of them are, consider how hard is to understand the book of Daniel and his revelations, or the book of Ezekiel and his revelations. Consider how difficult it is to understand some of the old Testament prophecies. Another words, guys, the Gospel is easy enough for a child to swim in and to understand and for a child to repent and to understand the basics of the Gospel. But the depths of God and the depths of the Gospel, and the specifics of a lot of it are so deep, it is deep enough for a theologian to completely drown in and to get lost and to to make a whole new doctrine that's false.

If we're not bringing each thing to the Lord, then we're bound to get wrapped up in some false doctrine that we find somewhere in the Bible. For years, people have tried to understand the Book of Revelation. John who wrote Revelation, was having visions from Jesus, and he truly was a brother in the Lord. Yet the Book of Revelation is very difficult to understand. Theologians have been debating sections and entire chapters in the entire Book of Revelation for years and years, and still they haven't come to conclusions. But that doesn't mean that the Book of Revelation is false. It just shows the depth of revelation. Jesus has revealed to me bits and parts of revelation. I'm talking specifically the Book of Revelation, but He has not revealed everything. There's a lot of it that I read, and I have no idea what to make of it. I just have no idea. I have no clarity on that. But that doesn't mean that it's not true. That doesn't mean that it's not a noble word or a true vision. It just means that I don't understand it. And a lot of the scriptures are like that. If you've ever read through the Old Testament and the prophecies of the prophets, there are some pretty weird things that happen, some pretty crazy stuff with Elijah and Elisha. The prophets of old, the visions they have, it just makes you scratch your head. And just because we don't understand all of that doesn't mean that, the basics of the gospel have to be complicated. And we certainly don't have to make any doctrines off of things that we don't understand or don't know. There are some people that take bits and parts of the Apostle Paul's Gospel, and they make entire churches off of those doctrines as if they are doctrines straight from God and then they're very quick to accuse others for not being biblical, like they are, because they don't follow the Apostle Paul’s Gospel, such things as a head covering for the angels. You've probably heard of that one, how the Apostle Paul talks about wearing this head covering for the angels. And people scratch their head and they think, what is he talking about? A head covering for the angels? And there's many other things that the Apostle Paul says that Christians start an entire different gospel with that just complicates the basics of the Gospel, which is to repent, to be baptized, to put your faith in Jesus, not the Apostle Paul, and then to be led by His Holy Spirit.

 So all of this to say, if you do want to know the truth, you first have to go to Jesus and receive His Gospel. And then He can show you other things in His time when He deems it necessary for you to know. But a lot of things are not necessary for us to know. We're on a need to know basis with the Holy Spirit. And so you could ask all day long about a certain scripture and not hear anything from the Lord, just because you don't need to know that. It's pretty easy for us to get sidetracked on a certain little doctrine that we think is important, while neglecting a really important thing in our own personal life.

 So what I'd encourage anyone to do is to first just go to the Lord, get yourself right with Him. Make sure that you're listening to His gospel, because no one else has the unadulterated truth other than Jesus. And then once you know you've received the Holy Spirit, then just be led by Him and say, “Lord, teach me the things that you want me to know. Help me to understand the things that are beneficial to my walk. But let me not get distracted by things that the Apostle Paul wrote, or some other some other disciples. Help me really to hear your words first, so that I may not be distracted by anything else, not a Bible verse, not a brother, a sister, or a preacher, or a prophet or a church or a revelation or a dream, a list goes on and on. But I just want to make sure, Lord, that I hear from you.”

 So, I hope that gives some clarity to the difference between Peter and Paul and why some people think His Gospel is hard to understand. The truth is, the gospel's very simple, but, also, things are very complicated. The Bible is easy enough for a child to understand, but it's complicated and deep enough for theologian to die in. So we have to just make sure that we are before the feet of Jesus and learning from Him. And if we do that, we'll be going the right direction.

So next question here. Someone asked, if you are coming out of sin and see the same sin in others, that is in yourself, is it a sin or hypocrisy to point it out? I think that's a good question, because a lot of us, as we're coming out of the world, we still have certain sins in our life, but we can see those sins in others. So should we not say anything about it? Because we'd be a hypocrite if we did? And should we not say anything about Jesus until we're sinless? Satan can really twist your mind on this, but, it comes down to where your heart is. If you're coming to other people in pride and saying, “you got to quit smoking, but you haven't quit smoking”, they're going to know you're a hypocrite. But let's say it was smoking marijuana, and you're trying to give up drugs in alcohol and smoking pot, but you're still doing that. The right way would be to say something like, “man, I know this is wrong. I do it myself. I'm trying to give it up, but I also know you're in the wrong for doing it, because I know we're against God by doing these things.” So when you give someone your rebuke, you always put yourself under your same word. Because at the end of the day, none of us are above the Gospel we preach. If we preach don't look at pornography, we are also condemned if we are looking at pornography. If we preach don't murder or don't commit adultery, yet we have murderous thoughts and adulterous thoughts and hatred against our brother, we're also condemned by our words. So however you go out to preach the Gospel or share with others, make sure that your audience also knows that you are under the same gospel that you preach, that you're not above your own words. And, any anyone who is truly with the Lord knows this. I know in good conscience that I cannot preach the Gospel of righteousness and repentance if I am sinning. And so every day I have to make sure I'm right with my wife, that everything is right with my children and right with my family and my neighbor, and as much as possible, that I am in right standing with others. Otherwise, I have no business coming on YouTube or telling anyone about the Gospel when they know I'm a hypocrite. So it's all about how you approach it. And of course, you can tell others about Jesus and about repentance, even if you are still coming out of sin. But you just need to make sure that you are including yourself in that saying I I'm gonna choose to walk the righteous road. I am working my heart is overcoming these sins, and I know that anyone who doesn't overcome sin will also find their place in hell. So we just have to be straightforward with where we are and straightforward with what the truth is. But a good question to address. And also, on that same note, guys, it's much, much better to appear to be a hypocrite to the world and at peace with God. I'd much rather everyone say, Andrew is a hypocrite, but actually be right with God than for God to think I'm a hypocrite and for everyone else to think that I'm a really good person.

So keep that in mind also, it doesn't matter what people think or how hypocritical people think you are, if you are in right standing with Jesus Christ. And that is where we want to be. Okay, so two more questions, and I'm going to try to end this at about an hour. So, another good question I received was, how does one wait for the Lord? That's a really good question. I have a couple of playlists, if you go through my playlists on receiving the Holy Spirit and the topic of waiting on the Lord and listening for Him in prayer. If you haven't got a chance to see that yet, I really did my best to explain that in those playlists. But, as far as those who are listening right now waiting on the Lord, it's through our prayer life. And when I first started just learning to pray, it was something that was difficult, because the first thing about waiting on the Lord is choosing not to go to your pastor for answers. So I just knew if I want to hear from God, I'm going to mess this whole thing up if I just run to my pastor and say, “what do you think about this?” If you do that, you immediately trump God, and you put Him on a lower shelf.

So the very first thing about waiting on the Lord is making sure that you are not asking a pastor or or someone else in your life the truth Waiting on the Lord is about waiting on Him, not going to other people for answers. And the way you do that is just by simply praying and saying, “Lord Jesus, please help me to hear from you. I have a question about and then fill in the blank to what your question is. And I please pray that you help me to understand this. Please give me guidance in my life and help me to understand what your will is for me in this.” And then you wait on the Lord to answer that for you, instead of running to the Internet or a book or someone else for answers. So it's all about bringing things to Jesus and setting Him as your King and your Lord, not someone else. And that's the sure way to wait on the Lord. Most people here get impatient, and then they go run to someone else's literature and they think they've got the answer. But if you want to wait on the Lord, you have to wait on Him and not someone else. That's the key.

One last question here that I receive, that I can address is, let's see this here, if I may have already addressed this one. But let me see. The one last question I actually, I believe I already addressed it. It was the same one about preaching. Should we preach the Gospel if we're not yet personally right with Jesus? As far as preaching the Gospel, I mean, if you have big sins in your life, and you know it, your number one goal is to get right with Jesus yourself. So it would be pretty useless to try to go out and save the world if you yourself are not in right standing with the Lord yet and in His salvation. So before you are concerned about getting on the Internet and preaching Jesus or going out on the street, or whatever the Lord has led you to preach, get your own life in order first. And that is very important because, we do want to be lights and ambassadors. We want to be ones that are shining for Jesus. And if your own life is a huge mess and you're trying to go out and preach, you're neglecting your first task. The most spiritual authority you have, of course, is over your own your own soul. Self-control is only given to you for yourself, not someone else. So it would be quite impossible to preach to others and to put others into an area of self-control when you yourself are out of control. So if you're still in sin and in bondage, figure the first thing out first, which is to get your own life in order. And when your own life is in order, and if and when and how the Lord has called you to preach the Gospel, then then spread the gospel the way the Lord has you. I hope that makes sense.

I'm going to end this live stream here, but I just want to pray for anyone that wants prayer. “Lord Jesus, I thank you that you bless us, that you protect us from evil when we call on your name. You are our ever present help in the time of trouble. And we want to really put ourselves at your feet. We want to be humbled before you. We want you to be our one and only teacher, and that only you would have permission to move us one way or the other. I pray that those who are listening would have their ears open to the truth and their eyes opened to your truth, that they would see your grace in your mercy, not your judgment. I pray that they would truly be connected to your Spirit and come into a living relationship with you. I pray for those that are oppressed or possessed by demons, that their demons would be cast out, and that they would learn to take every thought captive, that they could walk in your truth and in the newness of life. Bless those who hear this message that want repentance, grant repentance to them, granted that their shackles may be broken, to overcome, that they may be able to throw off addiction or whatever sin they have in their life, to be able to be free from the world, and the bondage of Satan. I pray that your children may be truly set free to do your work and to live for you with all of their hearts. Lord Jesus, in your name we pray, amen. “