the Holy Life

Posted on June 21, 2011 by th1bill Jer 7:3 Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, Amend your ways and your doings, and I will cause you to dwell in this place.
Jer 7:4 Trust ye not in lying words, saying, The temple of the LORD, The temple of the LORD, The temple of the LORD, are these.
Jer 7:5 For if ye throughly amend your ways and your doings; if ye throughly execute judgment between a man and his neighbour;
Jer 7:6 If ye oppress not the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, and shed not innocent blood in this place, neither walk after other gods to your hurt:
Jer 7:7 Then will I cause you to dwell in this place, in the land that I gave to your fathers, for ever and ever.
Jer 7:8 Behold, ye trust in lying words, that cannot profit.
In last Sunday´s Scripture Lesson the question was asked that is, by and large, ignored in this world today, ¨How much of your daily lifestyle is shaped by popular culture and how much is influenced by God´s Word?¨
The Grumpy Old Men´s Class did run 7 to 10 when I assumed the privilege of teaching it, for the want of a willing teacher. Because of my teaching the possibility of living a ¨Holy Life,¨ (a life devoted to the service of God. Rom. 12:1) combined with problems that occur in any Church Family with a very Biblical Pastor, two members left the class and the fellowship of the Church. Others have left for an assortment of reasons until the class is now made up of 3 to 5 members on any given Sunday. And here we are now striving to build the LORD´s Church Family with, hopefully, dedicated Christ Followers.
In verse 3 we see Jeremiah delivering a message to God´s people that, through-out the past six thousand years, has never changed, ¨Amend your ways.¨ From the time God called Abraham away from his family in Genesis, the LORD has looked for a separate, a different people. God created Adam a perfect man with a free will and Adam chose to follow his good looking woman, Eve, and to disobey God From that moment forward the ¨world¨ has been trouble and God has been calling people, all people, to return to Him. (2Pet. 3:9)
Jesus reduced the Ten Commandments down to two Great Commandments, which if followed, will see a man or a woman obeying all 613 explanations. Yet, in spite of Jesus’ statement in the Gospels that He had not come to do away with the Law and that not one title would ever pass away, the New Testament Christian, an oxymoron, has, indeed cast the Law into the Dung Heap! And yet if we go no further than the Book of Romans we find Paul, in the KJV mentioning the Law 78 times in 52 verses.
Now, up front, we are not under the penalty of the Law, we, Christians, are under Grace but the Law is very important to us for many reasons, two of them I´ll mention here. First, the Law is the perfect Word Picture, or Illustration of Jesus who is God in the flesh of a man. And second, the Law is our Code Of Conduct! This is the example we are to seek to model to the Lost Man.
Over the years I have been permanently banned from a number of web sites, claiming to be Christian, because my teaching of the importance of the Law to the Christian has offended folks. God has not put His call on any man´s life to tickle the ears of the masses. If you look at teachers like Joel Osteen and Rick Warren you will see that tickling ears builds monster followings but who are they following? If a man, any man, follows God and obeys God to receive his messages, only, from God, he will offend people. God´s ways are not preferred by most of the world, that is why The Christian Faith is such a small following.
So, can a man live a Holy life? Not without the indwelling of the Holy Spirit! When Jesus departed the Disciples, He promised the Comforter would be sent, by Him, to us. That is the Holy Spirit and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is there with any Saved Man. The difference between a God fearing Christian and a carnal Christian is the quenching of the Holy Spirit. The God fearing Christian makes the effort to listen to the Spirit he or she is indwelt by and everybody else quenches that same Spirit whether saved and indwelt or unsaved and the Spirit knocking at their heart´s door. With the indwelling of the Spirit of God and the personal commitment to follow the leading of the Spirit, any person can lead a life dedicated to God, a Holy life.
Like myself, you will have times that you stiffen your neck and disobey but, again, like myself, you will fall down, repent and be forgiven and reinstated if you love God.

Where Do You Stand?

Phil. 4:19 And my God shall supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. (ASV)

When I became a Christian in 1990, I was riding a bicycle with slick tires ten miles to and from work in the rainy winter of that year, I had not a dime to tithe. But I did, not understanding the tithe I took ten per cent of what was in my pockets and I gave it. I came to understand the tithe better as I studied and today I do not even keep track of all I give and much is given anomalously so that there is no record.

Before that first month was over I was driving myself to and from work and all my bills were being paid in spite of my tithing what I did not have the ability to tithe. Can you out give God? Absolutely not!

According to the News, I am about to be devastated by the possible collapse of my countries government and yet, I cannot find it in myself to be concerned. I am 100% disabled and my wife was forced into retirement so that every dime we have to live on comes from the government… but I know better than that! Everything, not just my money, comes form my God! My God is the one that created everything we see and feel by speaking it into existence, there is no-one as rich as He is and without Him I have nothing but with Him I can stand firmly on my life verse, Psa. 23:1 The LORD is my Shepard and ¨I shall not want.¨

Christianity is a very proactive faith and without that faith, you are lost!

Inventory of One´s Self

John3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. 17 For God didn’t send his Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world should be saved through him. 18 He who believes in him is not judged. He who doesn’t believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God. 19 This is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light; for their works were evil. 20 For everyone who does evil hates the light, and doesn’t come to the light, lest his works would be exposed. 21 But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his works may be revealed, that they have been done in God.””
Heb.10:24 Let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good works, 25 not forsaking our own assembling together, as the custom of some is, but exhorting one another; and so much the more, as you see the Day approaching. 26 For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remains no more a sacrifice for sins, 27 but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and a fierceness of fire which will devour the adversaries. (WEB)
These two quotes from scripture can feel odd together but in reality, it is always important to remember that the Bible has one author and about forty scribes that recorded the words of God. With that knowledge in hand it is reasonable and understandable to say that no portion of scripture can be understood without the light of all scripture shinning on it.
My point? There are hundreds of millions that believe they are saved for a multitude of reasons when there is only one reason anyone is ever saved and that has nothing to do with ourselves. Although there are many that argue against the truth, that does not make it untrue and the truth is that Jesus, the man without sin, died for our sins.
Oh, great… everyone is going to Heaven! No! Jesus, God in the flesh of a man, taught that many are called but few are saved. (Matt. 7:13 – 15) In fact there are now and there have always been many False Prophets. If a man or a woman does not read the scriptures, on a regular basis, they will never come to understand that the Word of God, the Bible, is living and vibrant. Every time I read the scriptures, from Genesis through the Revelation, I have new mysteries revealed to me by the Holy Spirit.
Now, there I go upsetting folks. A Proff. at a Seminary who was also a Pastor told me not to hand him that Holy Ghost c__p! And as I have made this journey for the past 21 years, I have encountered a large number of people that have no idea of what or who the Holy Gost/Holy Spirit is, in Church and out of Church. That is a distressing point and needs to be examined. The scriptures teach us that when Jesus ascended to be with the Father that His Disciples were overcome/indwelt with the Spirit of God and in the Book of the Acts we see people that are saved are also indwelt with the Holy Spirit. Based on this teaching of the Bible, I do not feel out of line judging folks, as per Matt. 7, and asking them to do a Spiritual Inventory of themselves.
Some of them will find that they were indwelt with the Holy Spirit, the moment they were saved, and have been disobedient by quenching the Spirit. (1Thes. 5:19) These are Carnal Christians but the bulk of all people will find that they are not saved and need to take care of the business. Have You?

I owe Keith and a couple of others an apology because I began this BLOG and then gave up on it.  i have read all of the comments and thank you, everyone.  I have been under the weather for a long time now but I am back and I will be paying more attention to this format and my Facebook page.

The jewel of my, my wife's and my daughter's life bloomed yesterday as we saw her give the flower of her virginity to her husband (I pray) and they are gone to Cabo San Lucas for their honeymoon this morning.

I have become much more bed ridden but that just means I have more time to work where God wants me to.

God bless everyone.

The inevitable question hangs tough today, demanding an answer. Millions want to know, “If God is (real), how could He allow such evil? Yesterday, twenty innocent (in the eye of God) little people entered Heaven, never to feel pain again and we, like Job, are left to work this over, trying to wrap our heads around this evil. In the first book of the Bible, we find Gen. 1:26 and we see that God made man in His Image. God is a Spirit being and in no manor human at the point of Creation and that is important to remember here. And in the Bible, we learn that God created all that has been created for “His” pleasure... God has free will and because we are created in the image of God, we have free will. In the first chapters of Genesis we see that free will has good and evil options to work with ad sometimes from. We find early on that God, the Creator, walked with Adam in the cool of the evening. Adam and God both longed for fellowship and both chose to enjoy the other. And in the second chapter, we see God finds that Adam is without a help mate and God removes one of Adam's ribs and creates the most beautiful, perfect vision of a woman and rings her to Adam to wed. God's free will is always perfect and His actions are always time just right. Adam was alone just long enough to know that he was incomplete, just long enough to develop the need for his mate. If God had created Eve at the same time He did Adam it is quite possible that Adam might never have realized his deep need need of the fellowship she brought to his life. If Adam had never had the opportunity to realize his need for companionship, he and we might never have had the opportunity to realize that his need was a picture of the free will love God feels for us. (The first three chapters of Genesis cannot be exhaustively taught from the pulpit in a year, maybe two.) The other side of free will is evil! But, you see, without the ability to exercise free will, there can be no love and love is the good every one of us needs. Love is not the product Hollywood pushes onto our children when we fail to live the truth in front of them. What Hollywood is selling is a soft side of evil. No! I did not just call the coupling of a man and his wife evil. However, what is ignored in the church today, the back seat activities of teens and the married but not to each other activities, promoted by Hollywood and Broadway is evil... soft, wanted but evil! And I assure you that you need to study the Book of Job until you can see the love of God that I see there. As bad as it appears, God knew Job's breaking point and He never allowed Satan to push Job that hard. When Job's trial was over and he had learned how strong his faith was, he ws completely restored and he was blessed wit hthe knowledge he would never have gained. The moms and dads are mentally collapsed today and the journey back is very, very hard to travel. When my very best friend took an eighty-one mm in the chest, I was the first to find him and I remember nothing of the following three months other than what I was told I did. The parents of these missing babies do not have an ever present enemy and they are not supplied with a never ending supply of munitions, praise God. They need our tears and our prayers and no, they will not be healed in ninety days and they will not be healed in twenty years. These fellow parents, grandparents, classmates, brothers and sisters are hurt and incomplete until the day they, I pray, go home to Heaven. Please, cease not to pray.

Where in the world to begin? Today the people of Newtown had a visit from Evil. I have a firend with the screen name, Major. Major and I knew Evil and lived with him for a long time. I suspect that, like myself, Major has had his heart ripped out of his chest, once more. Evil murdered 20 children, at least some of them and possibly all of them, Kindergärtners. And to add to the carnage, he murdered 6 adults. I have a number of dreams that refuse to leave me alone and have often awakened my wife with screams for her to get in the damned hole before they kill her. For three tours I lived, ate, drank and slept with Evil and I now live to warn people that they never want to know what I and Major know. You see, as close as we lived to evil for as long as we did, we do not know the horror of the Evil these babes now hold in their precious hearts and it brings tears to my eyes to know it. It is a sad thing but as they gather all the knowledge and as they do all the interviews and as they publish it for us to know, you must understand, neither they, the officials and reporters, nor any of us will ever know the permanent damage done to these babies. Some of the victims will not even become aware of the damage done to them for Decades yet, themselves. My doctors accuse me of being hyper-vigilant because I need to know who is behind me and what they are doing. Some of the Little People will now have this same need and they are to darned young to know the Face of Death and his brother, Evil, these are Small Americans! My call is to prayer. (2Chro. 7:14) I'm not crazy, these evil deeds were never known in this land before I became a man and joined the military. I spent seven years, ten months in the service to my country and when I returned home, it was common to have weekend Sex Parties with fifty people or more attending... pure evil! Our nation and these babies need the prayers of God's people. If you are not indwelt with the Holy Spirit, I, neither, expect you to understand this need nor should you fall on your face and pray, God will not listen to you! On the other hand, there is a small group that, like myself, live with the guiding hand of the Spirit of God, and now is the time for us to pray for the hand of God to be on these babes, their parents, the teachers, the police and our nation, please pray without ceasing.

Acts 1:1-5

Act 1:1 The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach,
Act 1:2 Until the day in which he was taken up, after that he through the Holy Ghost had given commandments unto the apostles whom he had chosen:
Act 1:3 To whom also he shewed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God:
Act 1:4 And, being assembled together with them, commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which, saith he, ye have heard of me.
Act 1:5 For John truly baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence.

There are a rather odd assortment of teachings today that, simply put, defy the very Word of God. More and more, these days, I find myself having reason to teach elementary school basics to young adults due to the true State of the Union. There is no story nor any written record that can be, properly, used without the lost art of comprehension. The above text is one, such, example.

The Book of The Acts of the Apostles is not well taught in churches these days and it is easily overlooked due to the lack of the proper name being used as the title, thereof. When we read the least read part of the Bible, the Index, and we read Acts, it has no real impact. And yet, herein, lies the recorded History of the Early Church, after the Genesis, a major foundation block for the building of Grounded Christianity.

Often, I have been reminded of my years as a soldier and as a carpenter. In Basic Training, Boot Camp to the Marines, we were taught the foundation a successful soldier builds his life on. As a carpenter before I could ever erect the first wall I needed a solid foundation to build on or all my work would fail. As a soldier, if my machine-gun failed because I was to drunk to clean it before I laid down to rest I would not have been successful the next day when the enemy sought to bring my chopper to the ground. The same is true of the Christian, with no foundation, nothing can be built that can endure.

Saint Luke begins this historical record with mention of it´s intended recipient, Theophilus. The name is oft defined as the Lover of God and it is a popular belief that he was Luke´s benefactor and reason for his education as a doctor. Both this record and the Book of Luke are addressed to him and look to be for his Spiritual Profit.

In verse 2 we learn that, to the horror and disdain of the, Self Proclaimed, New Testament Christian, that Jesus, the Messiah, the Christ, left His Apostles and therefore, His Followers with commandments! This is a touchy subject among a rebellious people and that is just what these Modern Day ?Converts? are, rebellious.

If a man, any man will revere God so much as to hunger for His Word, he or she will read it... from beginning to end. The remarkable thing that is discovered by such a reader that has prayed and submitted themselves to the perfect Will of God is that the context of the scriptures is one, from Genesis 1:1 through the very last Amen of The Revelation of Jesus, the Christ. The message, throughout is the message of Salvation through faith in Jesus Christ alone.

On one forum I am presently about to reply with the reasoning behind my rebuke for his heretical offering that Salvation is offered through faith but can be earned by good works. The saddest point of this is that this gent is not alone in this belief. If a person does not read the scriptures in their context they are without a foundation to stand on and if you do not swtand on the truth, you will fall for anything.

In verse three it is important to note that the record of Jesus´ death and resurrection is verified and particularly that He taught for forty consecutive days after His death and burial. And in verses four and five comes the heart of the matter for this lesson, all followers of the Christ are indwelt (baptized) with or by the Holy Spirit of God, the Father and God, the Son.

We are commanded not to quench the Spirit (1Thes. 5:19) so it is possible to be a saved man and still be Carnal. That being said, the single, most important thing any man can ever do is a Spiritual Inventory. This is a matter that needs to be cared for over and over, the more often the better. No-one can do it for you and you cannot do it for yourself without an honest Prayer Life. You must, prayerfully submit yourself to the will of God for your life!

This, inventory, is best accomplished by the person that has devoted their life to the study of the Word of God. This Does Not Require A Degree In Biblical Studies! A degree can be a hindrance. There are teachers in seminaries, around the world, that teach against the Word of God being infallible. Couple bad information, teaching, with the truth that the mind, like the computer, is only as good as the information it contains.

If you can fall on your face and submit to God, He is able and He will accomplish the work He has begun in you. May God bless you and yours.