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Showing posts with the label God

Now I Know You Fear God

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When Abraham was about to kill Isaac, God stopped him and said, "Now I know you fear God..." That made me think for a while:  Didn't God know? Isn't he all-knowing? Abraham really had to do it just so God would know? It made me wonder but I knew my God. He knows everything. A friend told me God was not really omniscient because he didn't know where Adam and Eve was after the fall. He had to ask where they were. My friend referred to Genesis 3.9. I laughed and told him how ridiculous his understanding was. I hoped God had answered my friend directly, telling him something like:  "Can a man hide himself in hiding places so I do not see him?" declares the LORD "Do I not fill the heavens and the earth?" declares the LORD. [Jeremiah 23.14] Psalm 139 says he knows all about us. He declares the end from the beginning [Isaiah 46.10] and that alone tells volumes about God's omniscience. Moreover, just look at Revelation. He knows

How You Know If Your Ministry is in God's Will

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Pexels To a lot of people, a ministry favored by God is peopled, moneyed and garbed with impressive facilities. To them that's a growing church. If you're one of them, you'd always look for these things when searching for a church or when sizing up one because smart Alecks say it's how you know if your ministry is in God's will. But this standard is nowhere in the bible. It's man's invention. A church led by the Holy Spirit cannot be measured in the flesh or by any earthly measurement. God looks at it quite differently. To him, it's all spiritual because God is spirit. Going solely by spiritual merits is how you know if your ministry is in God's will or not. Here are 7 signs to watch out for: People deepen in the Word and make it always the priority. People live the Jesus LIFE and character. People give up everything. People don't care about programs. Church uses money on people, not buildings. Church operates in the 5-f

When We Misuse Grace and Mercy

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Image from Daily Mirror. Thank God he is full of grace and mercy. With the same, we should be gracious and merciful to others as well. But here's the problem---most believers misuse them. They think it's a dole out, a grace and mercy spree. And they fondly call it "giving a second chance." They lack wisdom on how God uses these divine helps. I often see pastors giving another leadership chance to their leaders who fell into willful sin. Like that church leader who left his wife and did adultery with another woman. He was suspended from ministry for a while but the pastor later simply put him back to leadership roles even without repentance. The pastor reasoned, repentance was between the sinner and God. So, there he was, this erring leader, doing ministry again even if he continued with an adulterous relationship. And the pastor thought what he did was in line with God's grace and mercy. Second Chance? Give guys like that "second chance"? God

Do You Understand GOD?

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theregister.co.uk A lot of church people believe God even if they don't understand most of what he's saying in the bible. For instance, churches still hold on to their denominations even if Jesus already revealed in his prayer how God wants all believers to be completely united [John 17.23]. I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. It is commendable to believe even if you don't see (John 20.29), but God wants us all to believe and understand. It's difficult to genuinely believe and be sold out to something you do not understand. Some say we cannot entirely understand everything about God. True, but still we need to understand what he reveals to us. The revealed things belong to us and to our children forever [Deuteronomy 29.29]. And anyway, we need to deeply understand how God wants us to "have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that (we) may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ," [Colossians 2.2].

When GOD Steps in in Politics

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rsaconsultingllc.com Elections are just a few days ahead, and the church, as usual, doesn't know what it should do---though it pretends to. A lot of them join the political circus, thinking they have to "get involved" and be God's representative (whatever that means) in the fanfare, when all it does to them is get divided, ending up fighting each other. The times armies ended up killing each other in the bible was when God fought against them. Anyway, on the other hand, some church people also refuse to get involved because---like those who involve themselves--they, too, really don't know what to do. But they have one common denominator---they think God will involve Himself someway in politics. It was the same thing when Israel was waiting for the coming Messiah---they thought he was going to get involved politically and liberate them from Rome. Jesus never lifted a finger to do it. Instead, he introduced His Kingdom. The Kingdom had its own agenda,

In Him is No Darkness at All

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In Christ is no darkness at all, but that's after he takes you to his darkness.  Before light, he makes you spend time in God's darkness, like what he did with Paul. Paul was blinded by God so that he remained seeing God's darkness for three days. In the same way, the Israelites spent days in the desert facing Sinai so they could see the dark clouds on top of the mountain before they could proceed deeper into the wilderness and cross the Jordan. There's something about God's darkness that makes you see light more, and something about it to dispel the darkness in this world. After meeting God's darkness, you experience no darkness in Him at all. No wonder most men of God go through a dark phase in their lives---not the darkness of wickedness and sin but the darkness of uncertainty and hard trials---to break the earthen vessel they are in and come out shining as bright as Jesus the Light of the world. Jesus himself entered that darkness before being promote

God Never Repairs

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SkitterPhoto They say God repairs the brokenhearted. Probably, if the heart break  is God initiated, like in the case of Lazarus dying, and his family brokenhearted, so the glory of God may be revealed [Jn.11.14]. But most times he demolishes, not just repairs, what remains standing. And especially, he never repairs man's broken efforts. In the case of Lazarus, God demolished unbelief in his disciples that they "may believe." Redress like that are never accomplished with mere, skin-deep repairs. The remedy should deal with the foundation. Demolishing is foundational. We often think God repairs problematic churches through the revival services we have. We pray for these services well, thinking God would use them to repair the broken lives of believers who fell into sin, or broken relationships gone sour. We imagine God doing a little bit here and there, tinkering with some malfunctioning parts in our lives, and eventually making us whole again. We don't

A God Who Hides

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He's a God who hides. That's why we seek him. If his entirety is all readily and easily seen, then we wouldn't have to seek him at all. He hides so we can seek and pursue him once we see glimpses of him. It's God's glory to hide matters, but it's the glory of kings to seek and find them [Prov.25]. Desperate seekers of God are real kings of the King, thus the KING of kings. It's like God hiding from us and then we see a glimpse of him turning into a street corner or an alley and see him smiling, enjoying the "game." He's a God who hides [Isa.45.15].  Of course, he intentionally lets himself be seen a short timely moment by us--by those who wholeheartedly seek him with their whole lives (God's flesh on earth)--just before he turns into a corner. That's enough for us to run as fast as we can, never taking our sights off that corner, eager to catch up with him and grab him as Jacob did before he was about to meet Esau in the book

God as Your Stronghold

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Origin "My Life's Stronghold is God." -Ps.27 We read about it several times in the bible that God is a stronghold. Do we know what "stronghold" means? Often, we associate "stronghold" with the devil, like "the devil's stronghold." So, what do we mean by God is my  stronghold ? How does God become a  stronghold?  If you don't know what it means to have God as stronghold, that's a stronghold. Devil as Stronghold When a person has strong propensities to sin and evil, we say that it's due to a stronghold . And we mean that the devil's hold on that person is really strong. No matter how much that person wants to change and start going to church, he just can't. When presented with a situation that makes him choose between good and evil, he is likely to choose evil even if in his mind he wants good. If he chooses good, it'll just be for a moment---probably 5 seconds---and then back to evil again

Why God Hides Answers

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"It's God's glory to hide matters; and to seek them out is kings' glory." Proverbs 25 God wants kings. That's the main reason why God hides answers. Some people ask me why God often does not answer prayers pronto. Or, why does he hide answers so that even when they're so obvious most people still do not see them and thus err. One guy asked me why people who are fanatics of  feng shui and Chinese New Year traditions still get rich? Doesn't God curse those who believe in  superstitions? He did so in the bible and he judged them immediately. Why not today? In short, it's a why-God-hides-answers issue. So instantly I asked God about it and got an instant answer. It's for hardening their hearts. God hides obvious answers to people to harden their hearts, because anyway, they are hopelessly resigned to wrong and even evil paths. So God allows them to be further misled by making it look like they get more blessed. He Wants Kings Onl

How God is My All

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Aside from what we see in the bible as God being our God, King, Lord, Savior, Shepherd, Friend, etc., I have discovered Him to be my all in many other ways. Here they are, how God is my all, in radical and extreme ways. I've discovered my Jesus to also be... My Food God is not just my food Provider so that I and my family always find something good to eat on our dinner table. The fact is, he is my Food. I find that I literally live on Him. Without Him I starve, and I don't want to starve to death. And He's the kind of Food that is always within reach anytime I'm hungry, and I even snack on Him when I'm not hungry but just want to nibble on Him. Also, I've realized that since I discovered Him as my Food (and Drink), I never get hungry (or thirsty) again, but instead develop an appetite for Him, not instigated by hunger anymore, but by mere love for him, or what I call severe indulgence or extreme fondness. I eat God. That's how God is my all.

God's Face is the Only Food I Crave For

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If it isn't God's face, I don't want any part in it. I want God, period. He alone satisfies my soul. He alone is the Apple of my eyes. Show me God and I'll go all the way with you. If you can't, never invite me to anything else you and your church have. I'll get bored to death. I'm tired of everything else. God's face is the only food I crave for. If you can interview Moses today, and ask him what one thing he desires, he'd probably answer you something like the above. That's why he was God's friend. With other prophets God spoke through dreams, but with Moses, he spoke face to face. Because Moses once said something to this effect: "God's face is the only food I crave for." That's being God's flesh on earth. Imagine an 80-year old man going up and down a high mountain several times, even without eating for 40 days and night. All that just to see God's face. And I can't understand why believers today just sit

Seeing and Hearing God is Genuine Church

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Church has devolved through centuries of nothing--nothing but men's efforts, achievements, doctrines, and programs. What we call "church" today is a social gathering shrouded in "born again" religion. But John tells us of a genuine church. This church is a real fellowship of believers. And the fellowship is based on supernatural factors: seeing God and hearing God. This is the true basis for church. "We confirm to you what we have seen and heard. This way, you will also have fellowship with us," [1Jn.1.3].  This is among Kingdom principles on being God's flesh. John had to proclaim or pass on to them what they (the apostles) had seen and heard--they saw and heard the Life, who is God. They touched, talked to, and smelled God. Yes, God himself! And they wanted to pass that on to us so we may have true fellowship. Genuine fellowship in church is making their experience our experience. It's never about programs or activities or gatherings or

No God in Church

They say God is in their church--that's what church people hype about. If you bite the bait and go there, they'd try to make it look and feel like that--that God is there. They'd make everything solemn or lively, look serious with what they're doing, then chant that "God is here, Amen?" The rest would answer, "Amen!" If you don't respond accordingly, they'd say something's wrong with you spiritually. But if you'd be honest about it, there's no sign of him there. No God in church. All you see is what man is doing in church. All you have is a man-encounter. But they'd say, you must believe that God is there, even if you don't see him. Happy are those who believe and yet not see. You must believe that where two or three are gathered in His Name... Okay, but God is still not there. His omnipresence is probably there, as it is present in beer houses, sex dens, drug sessions, and Congress, but it's not the kind of presen

God is Not a Problem Solver

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Sure, God can solve problems. He's so good at it. But he does not want to be our problem solver, just like a church pastor is not there to be a problem solver. Many church people see God as problem solver so they bring him all their problems. If you get to attend a prayer meeting today, you'd hear all sorts of problems they want God to solve. But God is not a problem solver. He is God. And as God he has lots of things in mind he wants done. So he wants us to be problem solvers, strategic servants out to solve problems the devil has devised to destroy man. God wants us to solve what he sees as real problems--not problems spoiled and silly men want you to solve for them so they'd live happily ever after in their carnal flesh. That's what most church people want from God and from their pastors--make them happily serve God. And a lot of pastors act accordingly. You have problems? You think you need God to answer your problems? Well, chances are, you'd be frustrate