555. Why Jesus Taught Two Covenants (Part 12): “What Must I DO to Have Eternal Life?”
Who is the Unworthy Servant? (Luke 17:10)
How do you see yourself? As a valued son or a worthless servant? As a beloved child of God or a mere minion? Jesus came to reveal our heavenly Father, so a good sign that you understand all that Jesus did for you, is you see yourself as God’s dearly loved child. But what are […]
We Are Fed the Glorious Riches of God as Our Hearts Become Rooted in His Love
Do you understand the doctrine of Grace but have difficulty living under the power of grace at times? You’re not alone.
There is no secret and no mystery you need to learn to be nourished and sustained by God, you just have to have faith in your heart toward Christ in every situation. Faith just means trust or confidence. We can have confidence in Jesus, therefore we can experience the power of grace.
I want to give you an illustration regarding how we can experience the influence of his power in our hearts. As with all word pictures, this is not a perfect example but I believe it will help you understand the direct connection you have with God as a believer.
The Mother’s Womb
The first 9 or 10 months of our lives we’re in our mothers womb. In the womb we are fed and nourished because we are organically, directly connected to our mother. The environment is a perfect balance of nutrients and safety in the amniotic fluid. When we become born again we are hidden in God with Christ. It’s like Christ is our twin in God. As he is, so are we in this world ~ 1 John 4:17. God has chosen us in Christ to receive the same quality of life that Jesus inherited.
When we become born of God we have a direct spiritual connection that sustains us just like we used to have a direct organic connection with out mother. In God, the environment we’re in is the promise of the New Covenant in the blood of Jesus but the active nutrients of that place are his promises. In the womb we receive oxygen, vitamins, minerals through the umbilical cord. In God, we receive righteousness, peace, joy, wisdom, provision and strength through our hearts by his spirit.
Just like a baby in the womb doesn’t have to convince the mother to feed it, we don’t have to try to motivate God to bless and provide for us. It’s a natural aspect of being born of and being made one with his spirit. The way we experience all of those benefits is by grace through faith.
Allowing Christ to Dwell In Your Heart by Faith
Everything God has for us is ours already in Jesus, we just have to let Christ dwell in our hearts to engage the process of being nourished and sustained by God.
God wants us to have and experience his steady stream of life and health but we must keep our hearts aware of him. He doesn’t withhold from us when we’re not in faith or trust toward him, we’re just turning our hearts to a different source of sustenance, which is the world.
But the world doesn’t give life, it actually sucks the life out of us. When we’re not in faith toward God in our hearts, we’re like a tree that pulls up its own roots from fertile ground and plants them in a desert. The world is like a desert to our hearts, it only has death. But if we all the roots of our hearts (our beliefs and expectations) to grow deep into God’s love for us, we can become whole emotionally, mentally and physically. Our physical and soulish being will begin to enjoy the same state of life as our spirit that is safe in God.
Believers are not on a journey to complete our holiness by staying out of sin or enduring suffering, we on a journey of transformation through renewing our minds so we live yielded to God and allow his life to bear fruit within us.
I believe this passage beautifully states these concepts. This passage is an excellent description of the function of grace. Take some time to meditate on the powerful truth that we are strengthened, nourished and provided for by God because he loves us. As we allow him to strengthen us, we become emotionally, physically and mentally whole; whole to the point that this world can no longer affect us with fear, worry and doubt. I pray you find a new way to live in God as you discover the powerful truth of his indwelling spirit that is seeking to bless, nourish and sustain you.
I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. ~ Ephesians 3:16-19
The post We Are Fed the Glorious Riches of God as Our Hearts Become Rooted in His Love appeared first on Forward Ministries.
Our Breakthroughs Come By God’s Grace, But Grace Must Be Received
I thoroughly enjoy processing my grace journey by thinking through how God’s grace plays into every single part of my life. I had a pretty rough period of time for about 12 weeks earlier in the year, but God has really given me some huge breakthroughs recently. I’ll tell you more about those in the future, but my whole experience got me thinking about how our breakthroughs come.
How do our breakthroughs come? By God’s grace!
How do we receive God’s grace? By Faith!
Faith is not a feeling we have to work up. It’s simply trusting God.
So God is always extending His grace to us, but if it’s true that we receive His grace by faith – by believing – then it would also be true that we could stop receiving His grace through unbelief or wrong believing.
This doesn’t mean God stops extending His grace. He is always supplying grace to us, but we still have to do our part which is to receive His gift of grace by faith.
There are many ways we can stop-up the pipeline of God’s grace through unbelief. Maybe, after you read this post, God will show you something specific that you’re doing to stop up that pipeline. One way I used to do this was by receiving guilt and condemnation. Instead of receiving God’s forgiveness provided to me through His shed blood, when I sinned I would try to pay for my own sins by feeling guilty and condemned. As a Christian, I was believing wrong by thinking I had to pay for my own sins.
I very rarely ever mess with guilt and condemnation anymore because… (see Romans 8:1)
If the devil does try to bury me with guilt and condemnation I turn away from it and turn instead to God’s grace once again by believing (trusting) that I am:
1.) Unconditionally Loved (see Romans 8:35-39) and (Psalm 36:5)
2.) Completely Forgiven (see Matthew 26:27-28) and (Ephesians 1:7)
3.) Righteous through Jesus!! (see Philippians 3:9) and (2 Corinthians 5:21)
So remember that the breakthroughs in your life come by way of God’s grace and you can always choose to receive God’s grace through faith!
You can’t earn it. You can’t do enough to deserve it. You’ll never be able to merit it. But THAT’S O.K. because God’s grace is His unearned, undeserved, unmerited favor and it is a free gift to you. It’s for your salvation, when you trust in Jesus and receive Him as your Lord and Savior, and also for your everyday life, as you choose to receive it by trusting in Him to help you through the circumstances of your daily life instead of trusting in yourself and your own efforts!
Have a great weekend living in God’s grace!
#FreedomLiving
If you have not yet made Jesus your Savior and received the wonderful joy that His finished work on the cross has provided for you to live in, please visit my page here titled Jesus In The Driver’s Seat. On this page I explain the good news of the gospel and you will have the opportunity to pray a prayer of salvation, making Jesus your Savior! Jesus loves you and His arms are wide open!
Sandra McCollom
Growing to Your Full Stature in Christ
In understanding spiritual maturity, one thing I’ve found to be vitally important is that mere knowledge of the Word of God without knowing, understanding, believing and experiencing the unconditional love of God will rarely, if ever, enable us to interpret, understand and communicate the Gospel of Jesus Christ correctly!
NOW ABOUT food offered to idols: of course we know that all of us possess knowledge [concerning these matters. Yet mere] knowledge causes people to be puffed up (to bear themselves loftily and be proud), but love (affection and goodwill and benevolence) edifies and builds up and encourages one to grow [to his full stature]. 2If anyone imagines that he has come to know and understand much [of divine things, without
love], he does not yet perceive and recognize and understand as strongly and clearly, nor has he become as intimately acquainted with anything as he ought or as is necessary. I Cor 8:1-2 (AMP) Paul is addressing one of the many problems the early church was facing at that time—food that had been offered to idols.
In issues of disagreement within the church, there will always be people who have their particular doctrinal opinions and scriptures to prove their point of view.
That’s why Paul said, “…of course we know that all of us possess knowledge concerning these matters”
But he continued, “Yet mere knowledge causes people to be puffed up (to bear themselves loftily and be proud)…”
Paul was saying that if all we have is mere knowledge of scripture, it will cause us to be lofty and proud!
Then he said, “…but love (affection and goodwill and benevolence) edifies and builds up and encourages one to grow [to his full stature].”
The J B Phillips translation says: “…Now to deal with the matter of meat which has been sacrificed to idols. It is not easy to think that we “know” over problems like this, but we should remember that while knowledge may make a man look big, it is only love that can make him grow to his full stature.”
This means: No matter how much scriptural knowledge we think we have or how much we know about the Bible, without also knowing, believing and experiencing the unconditional love of God for people, we may still be quite ignorant of things we ought to know.
That ye, being rooted and grounded in love, May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God. Eph. 3:17-19 (KJV)
With our hearts firmly established in the finished work of Christ and deeply rooted in the unconditional love of God, we are able to comprehend (to lay hold of so as to make one’s own, to take into one’s self, or to appropriate with beneficial effect) the deep things of God.
Comprehending the deep things of God’s unconditional love clearly supersedes mere knowledge!
True spiritual maturity is not how much scriptural knowledge we accumulate or how many scriptures
we commit to memory.
True spiritual maturity is when we are firmly rooted, grounded and persuaded
of the unconditional love of God for people! Then we are empowered to interpret the Bible!
Knowledge of scripture without a healthy revelation of God’s love for people is powerless to touch, heal, and transform lives!
Only within the unconditional love of God demonstrated by Jesus Christ are we able to have a healthy biblical understanding that will enable us to grow to our full stature in Christ.
-Blessings, Arthur
What happens if you don’t bear fruit?
Jesus is a gardener or vinedresser. And like any good vinedresser, when he sees a branch not growing properly he stakes it up and supports it. He does the same with you. Jesus is not looking for a reason to throw you away. In John when Jesus teaches about being engrafted into himself, he promises to lift us up and carry us when we are not producing the kind of fruit that a believer should. Watch the above video for more on this subject.
The post What happens if you don’t bear fruit? appeared first on Forward Ministries.
Live in the Peace that Jesus Promised You
Peace is a vital necessity for abundant life. No man can live the abundant life unless he has peace with God!
Jesus said in John 14:27 AMP, “Peace I leave with you; My [own] peace I now give and bequeath to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. [Stop allowing yourselves to be agitated and disturbed; and do not permit yourselves to be fearful and intimidated and cowardly and unsettled.]”
But peace with God is not something you can pray for. Peace with God comes when we trust and believe that we have been justified or made the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus!
(Romans 5:1 KJV) “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ:”
The peace of God only has one origin, and only flows from one source: The Gospel of Jesus Christ- the good-news of God’s love for people, demonstrated in and through the finished work of Jesus Christ!
(Romans 10:15 KJV) “…How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things!”
Believe today that you are justified, and made righteous through the finished work of Jesus, and experience the peace that Jesus bequeathed to you!
529. Jesus Died; We Inherited
"For this reason He is the mediator of a new covenant, so that, since a death has taken place for the redemption of the transgressions that were committed under the first covenant, those who have been called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance. For where a covenant is, there must of necessity be the death of the one who made it. For a covenant is valid only when men are dead, for it is never in force while the one who made it lives." (Hebrews 9:15-17)
Stop Trying to Believe and Rest in God’s Love for You
As a rule, the majority of believers in the church do not really understand faith!
Many have come to believe that living by faith is virtually inaccessible for them and only really meant for the Super Saints. Others believe they have to “grow faith.” Still others feel that they are too weak or fallible to ever experience something good from God through faith. But nothing could be farther from the truth!
Whether you are cultured or uncultured, educated or uneducated, rich or poor, strong or weak, the Gospel of Jesus Christ is for you and will work for you!
I like what Paul says in Romans 1:16, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth;…” But guess what? He also says that faith comes by hearing the Gospel or the Word of God!
“So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”
Our word for salvation comes from the Greek word soteria which speaks of “a condition where nothing is missing, nothing is broken and nothing is withheld—wholeness.”
It is more than simple forgiveness and going to Heaven; it includes deliverance, protection, prosperity, peace, and healing. And according to Paul, faith is the agent that activates it in our lives.
“But I just don’t have that kind of faith,” you say. That’s the beauty (and power) of the Gospel—it’s not about you! It’s about Jesus!
I remember a time in my life when I was just beginning to grasp this concept.
One spring while we were still living in South Africa, I realized that no one in my family had been to the doctor all year. (This was very unusual for our family.)
It stopped me in my tracks. Because as a faith preacher, I realized that I hadn’t purposefully believed God for healing, so I couldn’t understand how I was experiencing the benefits of salvation without “fighting the ‘so called’ good fight of faith.” That’s when God revealed and explained the true definition of our fight of the faith to me.
He said, “Arthur, the scripture says when you are rooted and grounded in my love, you experience the fullness of my benefits!” (Eph. 3:17-19)
I realized it wasn’t so much about my “faith,” but it was about me becoming fully persuaded and absolutely convinced of God’s extravagant, unconditional love for me in and through what Jesus did for me on the cross!
So I stopped trying to do faith and began to believe and rest in the fact that God completely and unconditionally loves me.
Because faith and living by faith will not make any sense, unless in the depths of our hearts we become fully persuaded that God “LOVES US UNCONDITIONALLY AND EXTRAVAGANTLY—without respect, boundaries, caution, limits, and without regret!
This is the true message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ!
No matter what has happened in your past, or what is happening right now, or what might happen in your future, God cannot and will not (He refuses to) stop LOVING YOU!
Blessings on you this month, Arthur
What Does The Lord’s Prayer Look Like Under Grace? And Should You Pray It?
Hey there.
Let’s hit another nail in the coffin of tradition…
The Lord’s prayer is not a New Covenant prayer!
Jesus gave a model for prayer, not something to repeat.
Remember that the Lord’s Prayer was before the cross.
The New Covenant only started after the cross so we have to look at the Lord’s Prayer from a New Covenant Grace perspective.
By doing that you’ll realize that the Lord’s prayer is fulfilled by Jesus and cannot be directly applied to your life!
In this video I’ll show you that the Lord’s Prayer is not a New Covenant Prayer because of what Jesus has accomplished on the cross for you.
Plus we’ll break the Lord’s Prayer down phrase by phrase so that you’ll see what Jesus was actually saying was mostly not meant for you in the way we often think so that you won’t be praying in vain pray as the heathen do.
Click on the image below to watch the Video:
Click HERE to watch on YouTube
You might ask yourself, should we still pray the Lord’s prayer? Many people misunderstand the Lord’s Prayer to be a prayer we are supposed to recite word for word.
Some people treat the Lord’s Prayer as a magic formula, as if the words themselves have some specific power or influence with God.
The Bible teaches the opposite.
God is far more interested in our hearts when we pray than He is in the words we use.
Jesus says in Matthew 6:6-7,
But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not use vain repetitions as the heathen do. For they think that they will be heard for their many words
The Lord’s Prayer should be understood as a model, a pattern, of how you could pray. It gives us some “ingredients” that you can use.
But the Lord’s Prayer is not a formula that if you follow that particular pattern or if you strictly follow what it says that that gives your words special power or that you’ll persuade God in doing something for you faster.
So, the Lord’s Prayer is not a prayer we are to memorize and recite back to God.
Jesus gave a model for prayer, not something to repeat!
You’ve gone to far when you think you – and your children – should memorize the Lord’s Prayer.
Remember, it’s not about words you say, God looks at your heart.
He’s is far more interested in us communicating with Him and that we fellowship from heart to heart than He is in the specific words we use.
But we do want the words we use in our communication with God and others to be full of grace.
As Colossians 4:6 says,
Let your conversation be always full of grace…
And, the Lord’s prayer is, by large, NOT full of grace!
Thus, we can’t just take that prayer and recite that at the dinner table.
Just don’t do it.
You’ll be happier off and those around you too 
I’d better get off the toilet now,
Bas
The Holy Spirit is a Better Teacher than the Law
I get confused when I talk to some Christians about the Old Covenant Law and works. It’s as if as soon as you bring up the Law the conversation drifts toward works. It’s almost like some Christians don’t know that the Law was for a 1500 year period of time before the Holy Spirit was given. It’s almost as if some Christians think that God still relates to us based on our works rather than based on the indwelling of his spirit. It’s almost as if some Christians think that saying we’re no longer under the Law means our actions are of no consequence. Hmmm, go figure 
Of course our actions matter now but they don’t affect out right standing with God. Righteousness is a spiritual condition that doesn’t come through keeping laws. The OC Law was never meant for righteousness because again, keeping laws doesn’t give you spiritual life.
So…do works matter now? Of course, but why bring up the Law when we start talking about works? Do you see where I’m going? The Law is fulfilled and had its place. If you’d like to discuss Christian behavior, that’s another subject all together.
I believe the Holy Spirit is a much better teacher than external laws. Believers are under the influence of God’s inner presence that is ever present and leads us according to his truth and life. By the way, the Holy Spirit will never violate any of his previously revealed morality and justice.
Our deeds and works will be tried at the final judgment but that’s not for righteousness, that’s for reward. Even unbeliever’s works are not judged for righteousness. The righteousness issue is settled. One must understand that it’s settled when taking the conversation to how we’re to live as believers. The Holy Spirit has the power, whereas the Law did not, to empower us to live worthy of the holiness and righteousness we’ve been given in Christ. But the Holy Spirit doesn’t empower you to keep the Law, he empowers you to have life and that more abundantly.
Now that the Spirit of God has been given, let’s teach people to look to him for guidance rather than rules than only reveal sin. Let’s inspire people to trust God because when they do their hearts will be open to him and they will be infused with a power that is not their own, the power of grace, the power of sonship.
Galatians 3:23 NLT Before the way of faith in Christ was available to us, we were placed under guard by the law. We were kept in protective custody, so to speak, until the way of faith was revealed. 24 Let me put it another way. The law was our guardian until Christ came; it protected us until we could be made right with God through faith. 25 And now that the way of faith has come, we no longer need the law as our guardian. 26 For you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus.
I pray that when you mess up, you don’t wonder if you’ve lost position with God. I pray that the next time you mess up you rest easy knowing you’re forgiven and God still loves you. And I pray the next time you mess up you make the decision that you don’t want that behavior in your life anymore and you turn to God for grace to overcome those destructive behaviors.
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The post The Holy Spirit is a Better Teacher than the Law appeared first on Forward Ministries.
The Cry for Faith
Daily I am confronted with this heart cry for faith. The one in despondence seeks to find someone who can believe for him. He cannot believe for himself, and yet he has every privilege and every right in the family of God. He knows that he is a child of God and yet the sense… Read More
The post The Cry for Faith appeared first on Positive Words.
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