Love and Obedience
June 26, 2015
John 14:10, 21, 23-24, 31
If ye love me, keep my commandments.
Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him.”
Jesus replied, “If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. He who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.
but the world must learn that I love the Father and that I do exactly what my Father has commanded me. ..
Love and Obedience
The Lord began to show how much love and obedience go hand in hand in this passage from John 14. Jesus is coming to His final hour and the words that He speaks are both weighty and meaningful. He is clearly communicating with us as He speaks to His disciples that truth, faith and love are demonstrated through our obedience to what He has been teaching us through His word.
Our greatest revelation of the Lord comes through obedience. That is when we develop sensitivity to the Holy Spirit so that we hear His voice. The more responsive and obedient we are to that voice the more clearly we discern and know it. The Holy Spirit is like our conscience in some ways. Often we have a feeling or a knowing when something isn’t right or when we are doing something wrong. We can either heed that knowing or we can ignore it, rationalize it, justify it or just disobey it. Eventually it becomes less and less as we desensitize ourselves to it. We do the same thing with the Holy Spirit within us. That is why we don’t hear the Lord the way we need and should be hearing Him. So often we have shut Him out rather than do things His way. Jesus is saying our love for Him and the Father should sensitize us to the Holy Spirit. We should be so aware of His presence and responsive to His voice and dealings in our lives. This is what our love for Him should produce in us. It is a love for God’s will and His way rather than our own mind and our own will. Just as the Father was manifested through the Son, because of the complete uncompromising obedience to all that the Father commanded Him, so Christ will be more fully manifested in us the more we walk in complete obedience and submission to His commandments to us. The commandments, the teachings or the Word of God is God’s mind for us. It is His direction, instruction, admonishment and teaching so that we might be fully equipped and come into the maturity of who He is.
If we want to see more of God in our lives, then we need to love Him the way He has instructed that we love Him, through obedience to His Word. When we truly love God through our complete obedience and surrender to Him, we will become aware of His personal leading and direction in every aspect of our lives. To know Him is to love Him and to love Him is to obey Him. Jesus promises in John 14:21 that if we really love Him through our obedience then we are loved of the Father and Jesus says, “I too will love him and show myself to him.”
This is a key point to us in this hour that we become less focused on what our will and wants are and begin to focus on the will and purpose of the Lord for us at this time. We will find the key to that revelation in our obedience to Him. We must love Him as we never have before and with that love comes the complete surrender of our hearts and wills to His will. His commands are not burdensome, but they are life giving. There are times when God stretches us way out of our comfort zone, but if we are willing to obey and trust Him the reward can be tremendous. We will see, know and demonstrate God in ways that we didn’t even know were possible for us. Let us commit to love Him completely and fully through our obedience to His Spirit and His Word. In this place we will come to truly know Him.
Blessings,
#kent
Despair
February 13, 2015
Despair
2 Corinthians 4:8
[We are] troubled on every side, yet not distressed; [we are] perplexed, but not in despair;
There may be one today that is in a place of despair. You are so low and you feel so worthless that you despair of life itself. Desperation is overtaking you and maybe you are even contemplating that the world would be better off without you. Beloved, despair is the work of the enemy. Never is it God’s intent to bring you here. God is not the author of discouragement. He values you even more than you can value yourself.
“You may say, “even God can’t love me the way I am.” God has never stopped loving you in spite of what you are. Though the world would despise you, God has not forsaken you. Even in the bondage of deepest and ugliest sin God’s heart beats for us. Even when men can’t forgive you, God can. He loves even the lowest and vilest of sinners, the greatest failures, the nobodies, the forgotten and the rejected. God didn’t come in Christ Jesus just to call out and save the golden boys and girls. He came for all and especially those rejected of the world. 1 Corinthian 1:27-31 says, “For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, [are called But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, [yea], and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption: That, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.”
God is calling out to you in your despair today. Despair is the tool of devil for self-condemnation in order to destroy the precious gift of life and hope that God has given you. God is there for us when we turn to Him. It isn’t by the evidence of our feeling that we determine His presence it is according to the promise and faithfulness of His Word that He will never leave us or forsake us if we call out and believe on Him. The Lord wants to instill hope in your life today. He wants to instill in you confidence that in His eyes you are of great value and worth. No matter what your life has been or where it has taken you God can take it and use it for good if you surrender your all to Him. He is reaching out to you the hand of hope and life today. He is your lifeline that will keep you from drowning in the miry sea. Reach out and lay hold of Him. Lay hold of Christ and the precious promises for life and blessing in His Word. Jesus died for you as much as anyone else, reach out by faith and receive life from Him today.
Blessings,
#kent
Doors
January 23, 2015
Revelations 3:20
Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.
Doors
As I close my eyes I could envision rows and rows of doors in different colors and appearances. As I read the Word concerning doors it became apparent that doors are a place of entrance and exit, not just physically, but spiritually as well. Doors represent the decision making “yes” and “no’s” of our thinking and being. Through our door things come in and go out of our life. When Christ knocked on the door of our heart and understanding, he revealed Himself to us there. Our soul stood at that door and we made a decision to allow Him to come in or we shut Him out. We make that same kind of decision concerning many things that knock at our door, but none so crucial as that decision we made for or against Christ.
Behind every door is a different story, because behind every door is a different life. Each life is made up of many doors that we use to compartmentalize our lives. Jesus isn’t welcomed into every life, but to those lives that He is invited into we bring Him into our living room, the main room of our home. If the Lord is now truly a resident and not just a guest then He will knock on the various other doors within our house as well. Many of us tend to allow Jesus into only certain parts of our house, while we conveniently exclude Him from the others. We compartmentalize our home into categories and it is often this type of thinking that allows us to sin in one area while we tend to be very spiritual in another. This apparent paradox is often do to these closed doors where we don’t allow the Lord to come in.
In order for us to have the most intimate and full relationship with Christ we can have, we must open all of the doors to Him. This is often a process we go through as we mature in faith, because He keeps walking through the house of our life and knocking on all of these individual doors. He knocks on the door of our study for us to invite Him into our business and the financial part of our lives. He knocks at the kitchen for us to invite Him into what we take into our bodies in what eat and drink. He knocks at our bedroom to be invited into the intimate part of our lives and relationships. He even knocks at the door of our closets where we often store our hidden things. He is asking us to open every door to Him that He may come and live in every part of our house. This includes all of the dynamics and dimensions of our lives. At every door there is a decision to be made to open or close that door. Just because we opened the door one time doesn’t mean that we can’t or won’t change our minds and close it to the Lord at another. Every day Christ is knocking at doors and it is not just the door of salvation, it is doors that lead to every dimension of our hearts and lives. What we must realize is that as we open our doors to Jesus we are, in turn, walking through spiritual doors that lead us into greater dimensions of relationship with Him. As we allow Him into the most intimate places of our heart and life, He, in turn, allows us into the intimate places of relationship with Him.
Be careful what doors you and I may be shutting, because we want to hold on to that former life. We must resolve that there will be no locked doors to Him concerning our life. As we unlock our doors to Him we will find Him to be an open door to us. Is your life an open door to Him?
Blessings,
#kent
Three Dimensions of Jacob
July 30, 2013
Three Dimensions of Jacob
Genesis 32:22-32
That night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two maidservants and his eleven sons and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. 23 After he had sent them across the stream, he sent over all his possessions. 24 So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. 25 When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. 26 Then the man said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.”
But Jacob replied, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”
27 The man asked him, “What is your name?”
“Jacob,” he answered.
28 Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome.”
29 Jacob said, “Please tell me your name.”
But he replied, “Why do you ask my name?” Then he blessed him there.
30 So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.”
31 The sun rose above him as he passed Peniel, and he was limping because of his hip. 32 Therefore to this day the Israelites do not eat the tendon attached to the socket of the hip, because the socket of Jacob’s hip was touched near the tendon.
Many of us will remember this story of Jacob. We often say that Jacob wrestled with an angel. As I was meditating upon Jacob this morning I felt like the Lord gave a little insight into this man Jacob. Jacob’s life is like our spiritual journey. Consider with me some of the analogies I felt like the Lord was showing me and I know there is so much more to this than what we will share here today.
When Jacob came into this world, he came in with his first-born twin named Esau. Now Esau was hairy, red and ruddy. He was a man of the earth and field. You might say he was the Adamic nature. The scripture that gives us great insight into these three dimensions of Jacob, which is a type of us, is found in 1 Corinthians 15:45-49. “If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. 45So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. 46The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. 47The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven. 48As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the man from heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. 49And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven.” While Esau is a type of the body, which is pretty much self-centered and driven by its needs and wants, Jacob is a little more subtle. Jacob is a type of the soul. The soul is where our identity lies. It is our mind, will and emotion. It is expressive of who we are as a person. Like Jacob, most of us have our spiritual side and then we have our fleshly side, for our soul is a mixture of flesh and spirit. Even the name Jacob means “heel holder or supplanter”. The truth was he was an artful manipulator. Even so, Jacob had a spiritual side that hungered for the things of God and the desire for the inheritance or birthright that would normally go to the firstborn. The trouble with the firstborn is that he had little or no appreciation for the birthright. Yes, he wanted the blessing that came through the birthright, but he didn’t have a heart or desire for the legacy and the responsibility that it carried with it. Jacob, on the other hand, did, but he sought to gain it through unscrupulous means, even though, prophetically it had been spoken that the older would serve the younger. Jacob is like us in so many ways. He was always cunning and devising in the flesh how he might obtain the things of the spirit. Whether it was his life, livelihood, his wives or his children, Jacob set about with natural wisdom and understanding to obtain them. That is not to say that Jacob did not have his spiritual side. He encountered God at Bethel in the dream of the stairway or ladder with ascending and descending angels. He experienced God’s blessing, protection and wisdom in his life, but like us, we often seem to struggle and work so hard only to come up so short of our dreams and strongest desires. We have that Labon in our lives, Jacob’s father-in-law, that is always promising so much and delivering so little. No wonder, like Jacob, so many of us are frustrated physically and spiritually.
Even though Jacob knew God and had a relationship with Him, he had his shortcomings, his fears and demons to face. His biggest fear was his brother Esau, the one he had taken the birthright and the blessing from. It is like even though we possess the promises and blessings of God we face our own mortality. Faced with who we are in the natural we fear. In the natural we perceive our weaknesses, our failures, the ungodly part of our nature. That is what Jacob faced in Esau.
In Genesis 32 we see Jacob escaping Labon and his stronghold to return to the promise land, but there he must face his Esau. In this place of fear for himself and his family, he is crying out for answers and favor from God. Try and scheme as he will, he fears the strength of the flesh that is represented in Esau and his ability to take from him all that he has labored to build. While he possesses the promises and the birthright they are of little value to him in his own identity. He sends his family and the others on ahead and takes them over the ford of Jabbok, which means emptying. He sent away his family and all that he had and now, empty, he is left alone. There he encounters this third man. The scripture doesn’t say it is an angel, but it is definitely an agent of God. There, Jacob wrestles with this man till daybreak. Could this be the spirit of Christ in us? The spiritual man that we need to change our nature? The first thing that had to happen in Jacob was an emptying and laying down of all that he loved and possessed. Then there was a battle, the struggle and wrestling with that old soulish nature of Jacob, the heel-holder, supplanter and deceiver. These two men seemed pretty equally matched for strength for they wrestled through the night till daybreak. Is this our place of prayer and intercession where we are in a spiritual battle. Have we come to the place that we are going to lay hold of God and let go of everything else unto He blesses us? Are we the overcomers that will prevail with God and man?
What is our greatest blessing? Isn’t it to be delivered of our former nature with all of its weaknesses, lust and affections?
That morning, at daybreak, the man said, “let me go, it is daybreak.” Jacob said, “I won’t let you go till you bless me.” In Genesis 32:27-31 it goes on to tell us,” The man asked him, “What is your name?”
“Jacob,” he answered.
28 Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome.”29 Jacob said, “Please tell me your name.”
But he replied, “Why do you ask my name?” Then he blessed him there. 30 So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.” 31 The sun rose above him as he passed Peniel, and he was limping because of his hip. 32 Therefore to this day the Israelites do not eat the tendon attached to the socket of the hip, because the socket of Jacob’s hip was touched near the tendon.” It is there that Jacob prevailed with God and received a new name and a new nature. The new name is Israel, “God Prevails”. The agent of God touched Jacob in the hollow of his hip, so that the sinew shrank and he crossed over Peniel, which means, “facing God”. Jacob would always walk with a limp, no longer dependent upon his own strength and ability.
We have a similar word to us in 2 Peter 1:19, “We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts.” There is a day for our transformation and new nature to come forth in its fullness, but we wrestle on through the night till we, like Jacob, prevail with God and lay hold of the promises of our inheritance. Then, no more do we need fear our strongholds like Labon or our mortality and flesh, like Esau. No longer are we afraid to loose the things we possess and love. The losses and the wounds we suffer are a small price to pay for the glory we lay hold of. God’s nature and character will prevail in us if we faint not. We will see the face of God, our Lord, and live; no longer after the flesh, but after the spirit. These are the three dimensions of Jacob, body, soul and spirit.
Blessings,
kent
Integrity
May 2, 2013
Integrity
Job 2:3
And the LORD said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that [there is] none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil? and still he holdeth fast his integrity, although thou movedst me against him, to destroy him without cause.
This passage in Job exemplifies what a man of integrity is. This is a virtue and attribute that is lacking more and more in us as individuals and as a society at large. God saw something in Job’s integrity that He wanted to draw not only our attention too, but also the devil’s. Job was a man that even in the adversity and tremendous trial and testing didn’t waiver in his integrity. It was by those principles that he governed his life and not even the loss of all things could move him from the integrity of his heart. How does that contrast with so many of us today that are like the waves of the sea tossed to and fro, shifting our beliefs, doctrines, behaviors and convictions based on what is politically correct at the moment. We’re all for God until calamity strikes and then we turn bitter and resentful toward Him. If anybody had a right to be bitter and forsake God it was Job, yet the calamities that afflicted his life only solidified the uncompromising conviction of his heart. That conviction was basically, “God you are what I live for and who I die for, I didn’t bring anything into this world and I am not taking anything out, though You slay me yet will I love YOU.” What a testimony of surrender, commitment and integrity toward God Job maintained. Most of us would have folded like a house of cards.
Integrity is completeness. Completeness in the sense that God Himself is our fullness and completion as human beings, without Him we are wanderers in a strange land looking for purpose and reason for existence. Job knew what his was. Integrity is uprightness that comes from a consistent and faith filled relationship with our God. It is simplicity and innocence that acts and behaves the same whether others are observing it or not. It doesn’t act one way in the light and another way in the darkness; it is ever a light and a standard that holds consistent. We can only be perfect in our integrity to the extent the Lord is the Principal and the Sovereign of our lives.
David was considered a man of integrity. Now David wasn’t perfect and he made some major blunders, but it was said of him that he was a man after God’s own heart. Isn’t this where true integrity comes from, our heart towards God? It is only He that can establish us and keep us in that integrity, but He wants us all to have it and maintain it in our daily lives and walk. It is in our power and free will to desire and pursue the integrity of God’s righteousness. God will honor the desires of our heart when they are pure and sincere toward Him.
Integrity has been a slippery slope for many of us. As God is raising His standard in us, He is calling us to be men and women of integrity and uprightness. He wants us to not just have the shell of integrity, but like Job, it dwells in the innermost parts of our heart and being. It is in practice whether others see it or not, because God always sees our heart. It is uncompromising in it’s commitment to God’s standards of righteousness. Job 31:6, Job says, “Let me be weighed in an even balance, that God may know mine integrity.” Do we want to make that request?
Integrity is much akin to wisdom, it helps us to establish and hold our course in life. Proverbs 11:3 says, “The integrity of the upright shall guide them: but the perverseness of transgressors shall destroy them.”
Recently we talked about the legacy our lives will leave. Integrity is definitely a part of that legacy we want to leave. “The just [man] walketh in his integrity: his children [are] blessed after him. Proverbs 20:7).”
Integrity is exemplified in the nature of Christ that God is working in us as we submit ourselves to Him. Even as Job, let’s make it the standard and foundation in our lives.
Blessings,
kent
Word from the Lord: Rest and Surrender
December 27, 2012
Jeremiah 31:25
For I have given rest to the weary and joy to the sorrowing.
Word from the Lord: Rest and Surrender
Lift up your head you who are weary and heavy laden. I am your rest, your comfort and your strength. Come and rest in My presence, commune and fellowship with Me. Worship me and be strengthened as My Life will flow back into you and well up within. Focus on Me, cease to allow your problems and challenges to consume all of your energy. I am your refuge. I am your strength. I am your wisdom, provision, power and deliverer.
I know it is often hard for you to open up your hand and release the control to me, but until you do, you will be continually frustrated and stressed about your circumstances. When you come to Me with open hands and open heart; sharing everything with Me and making me a partner in all that confronts you, then am I able to work on your behalf and bring about solutions and provisions that are far beyond your ability, power or wisdom without Me.
In My presence is fullness of joy. At My right hand are treasures for evermore. How long will you struggle and frustrate My better plans and purposes of you? I am not looking for what you can produce or how good you can be. I am looking for a life surrender to allow Me to live and show Myself strong in you.
When a child wants to help a parent with a project, left to their knowledge and abilities they will most likely make a mess of it. If the child is willing to submit to the guiding teaching hand of the parent then they are able to learn what they did not know and gain the experience they lacked in their immaturity. I am discipling you in My ways, if you will humble yourself and walk with Me, not ahead of Me. If you will wait and watch, you will learn. I am a faithful teacher, but My lessons take time and patience. They take faith, humility and the trust that I will do what I have said I will do.
Abraham got his Ishmael, because he and Sara ran ahead of Me, trying to produce in their own strength what I had promised them. Their efforts produced the works of the flesh and not of the Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit is produced by the Spirit as you allow the process of the Spirit to work in and through you. If you try and produce it in your strength it will only be a counterfeit and not bear the fruit that only I in you, can produce.
Many things want to distract you. Many things rob the higher things that I want to give you. It is a time to put you focus upon Me. Operate out of a place of practicing, living and operating in My presence. Turn your will, emotions and your mind continually back to me. Abide in a place of continual prayer, praise, worship and acknowledgement of My presence that is with you. Your highest is not in being self-sufficient, but in being God-sufficient. This is what it is to walk in the Spirit and by the Spirit, overcome the works of the flesh. When your identity is in Me then you become what I am. What you see me do, you do. What you hear me speak, you say.
Come now and rest yourself in My presence. Experience My joy, My peace and My direction in your life. There is no richer place in this earth than the center of My will and purpose for you because there, My kingdom has come and there My will is done in earth as it is in heaven.
If you want My best. If you seek My highest, then come and abide with Me in My presence. The world will pass away and all that is of the world. My kingdom is not meat or drink, but righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. There you will find fullness, rest and contentment.
Come and abide in Me.
Blessings,
kent
tricklesoftruth 