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Sunday, 22 November 2009

November 22 2009

Raymond Hudson
I hope we all would realize how important our heart is to the Lord. As long as our heart is right, everything else will be taken care of.
In the first chapter of Mark, we see the matter of repenting for the kingdom. We may think we only repent at the beginning of our Christian life, but we need to be repenting all the time for the kingdom. Baptism was something John the Baptist brought people into, which was being put into the death water so they might be brought into a new life. Even Jesus went through baptism, not because He needed anything put to death, but to signify He would not live by His natural life, but would ony do the will of the One who sent Him. As a man, He lived only to God.
In chapter 2, the Pharisees were the ones who should have educating the people and bringing the people to God. They weren't, though. So when John the Baptist came, everyone flocked to him. This reveals that the Pharisees didn't have it going on. Then, the people began to flock to the Lord Jesus. No one was going to the Pharisees, even though they were the ones who should have been educating God's people. Jesus' life, however, was an attractive life. We have this life now, so our lives should become attractive to others; we should become the gospel!
Jesus said He had not come for those who were well, but those who were sick. People have to realize their real situation before they can come to Jesus for His salvation. The Pharisees, instead of coming to Jesus, became jealous of Him. They refused to repent.
When we are not living by our natural life, the life of God in us can attract those around us. You don't have to tell others; they will know you have something they don't have.
In chapter 2 and 3 of Mark, we can see that the Lord's life was really beginning to shine forth. People were coming to Him. In chapter 3, we see that everyone was watching Him about what He would do on the Sabbath about a man with a withered hand. Those who had been following the Lord were being satisfied. People with Him were fed, healed, and released from bondage. He wasn't checking on them, making sure they were doing things like they should be according to some requirements. People with Him weren't under condemnation. The Pharisees, however, were watching to see if He would do something wrong. They had no part in what He was doing. When the Lord looked around, however, He was bothered they had no heart for the things of God. They only were concerned with some outward form.
When our heart is right, everything has a way to work itself out. When our heart is not right, nothing seems right. We need to ask, "Where is my heart at?" We have this kind of Pharisaic influence in us. Rather than loving the Lord and the truth, there is something in us that loves ourselves and our being better than others. This is why we always need to be brought into repentance. The Lord knows your heart is somewhere else, but if we turn our heart to Him, He will receive us into His kingdom.
We may have been baptized and we have repented, now we must learn to no longer live by our natural life.
Eventually in chapter 3 we see that the Lord called some to Him and sent them out. Those He chose, however, did not go out on their own. They had to go out trusting in Him. They went out with the gospel, and so should we!
His relatives thought He was "beside Himself" because of His total involvement with His Father's kingdom. Wherever He went, the crowds were pressing Him. He and His followers didn't even seem to have time to eat properly. Out of their natural concern, a door was opened for the enemy. The Pharisees, in response, claimed He was casting out demons by the power of Beelzebub, the ruler of the demons. If we are not careful, we might open the door for others' accusations.
The Lord's response was that a house divided could not stand. The kingdom of God is not divided. Furthermore, He said no one can plunder the house of the strong man (Satan) unless he first thoroughly bind the strong man. Satan had to be tied up pretty good! Before we go out to preach the gospel, we have to make sure our heart is right. In order to plunder Satan's kingdom, we have to make sure he is bound.
As to the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit: They could reject Him being the Son of God, but to reject the Spirit of God through which Jesus worked was something that could not be remediated, for the Spirit was the means of God's work among them.
Jesus' whole focus was to do the will of God. This is why He said, "Who is My mother or My brother? It is they who do the will of God." We should pray for our families, but we have to stay focused on what the Lord has committed to us. The Lord had one goal, and He was not going to be swayed by anything from that goal. The natural life is a big frustration to what the Lord is after. We should not allow anything to distract us. The life within us will expose many thing within us that are not for God's will. This life will inspire, encourage, and expose us. In the process we will see many things, and yet the Lord will be there to bring us into His kingdom.
Unlike the natural Pharisees and relatives, the Lord will expose us not to shame or condemn us, but to bring us into what is real. His life is able to both expose and build us up.
This is how the Lord establishes God's kingdom.

Sunday, 18 October 2009

Tedario Smith
The portion we are sharing on is in 1 John 5
But I would like to start with Matthew 16 "And I also say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it."
There is some bad news here. There is the building and there's the gates of Hades. The gates of Hades are pushing against what God is doing to build up the church universally, locally, and even individually.
John's book is written to the believer. One thing the believer will struggle with is the matter of sin. Jesus has promised He will build His church. This is not based on our feeling, but His Word.
Some men are going to begin working on a building here. They will be working based on a plan, they will not be working haphazardly. They will have their steel-toed boots and hardhats, because some hazardous things will be going on. In the same way, there are some hazardous things that go on in our beings, so we should have some protective gear as well!
We all have a spirit, a soul, and a body. God created us in this way in His wisdom. Due to this arrangement, however, there is a struggle. Our flesh, even our good flesh, is in contention with what God desires to do. John in 1 John 5 wants to bring us to something. In the last verse, we are warned to guard ourselves against idols, for we are magnetically attracted to the world. "The whole world lies in the evil one." In Galatians 1:4 we read, "Who gave Himself for our sins that He might rescue us out of the present evil age according to the will of our God and Father." The evil age is still about us. There is much in this age that our flesh is attracted to. We all need to confess this. There is something in us that wants what this age can offer. There is also a part of us in our spirit that is warring against our flesh, saying, "Wait a minute! You've been born into an eternal thing! If you dwell in this age, you will frustrate what the Lord is trying to do in this age."
Some people have a funny idea of what the church is about. They want to do it their way. Paul was a very qualified individual, but he counted all those things loss so that Christ make have His place. The age can cause us to think we need to be somebody. We don't necessarily practice counting Christ more excellent than ourselves in the building up of the church! Yet it is not we, but Christ who builds, and we are the material He uses.
In 1 John 5 we read, And this is the boldness we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us...If anyone sees his brother sinning a sin not unto death, he shall ask, and He shall give life to him...there is a sin unto death. I do not say he should make a request regarding that....we know everyone who is begotten of God does not sin, but he who is begotten of God keeps himself, and the evil one does not touch him. We know that the whole world lies in the evil one, and we know the Son of God has come and given us an understanding that we might know Him who is true and that we are in Him who is true...His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true. Little children, guard yourselves from idols."
We have a dual status. W are the children of God, but many times we live as though we are a child of this age. We have the Bible that reveals the truth to us, and we have the Spirit to confirm that truth and usher us into it. Sin is just anything that violates God's law or will or the nature of who God is. You don't need anyone to tell you when you are sinning. (1 John 1:8...If we say we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves.) We know sin is still in us. That is part of our dual status as those who still are in this flesh. John tells us, "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us of our sins and cleanse us." That means we don't have to worry about it SO MUCH. He says further, "If we say we have not sinned, we make Him a liar." Later yet he says, "These things I write to you that you may not sin." But if anyone sins, we have an Advocate! We have an advocate, and we are told if we confess, He is righteous and faithful to forgive us our sins. In 1 John 5, we are told if we ask anything according to His will, He will do it.
The hardest thing about sin is to just let go of it. We still want to talk about it. In 1 John 1:7, we are told if we walk in the light as He is in the light, the blood of His Son Jesus cleanses us from every sin! We need to be in Him. In Galatians we are told if we walk by the Spirit, we shall by no means fulfill the lusts of the flesh. If we are in the light with Him, we are not in the flesh. And if we ARE in the flesh, His blood can cleanse us. Otherwise, there would be no material available for His building, for we all are corrupt!
John says he who practices sin is of the devil, because the devil has sinned from the beginning. The Son was manifested to destroy the works of the devil. The gates of Hades is pushing against what God is doing. If I am not careful, I will find myself pushing against what God is doing if I am in my flesh. We need to take God's provision.
Another provision of God is in 1 John 3:9. Everyone begotten of God does not practice sin! Some say if we are borg again,we do not sin anymore. We all know from the rest of the Bible, however, that this isn't the case. Little tendrils of God's life have been spreading in us. What is of our flesh is not transformed by God's life. Our spirit is now our inner man. To this part of us, the world is not attractive. John says the reason the person begotten does not sin is because "his seed abides in him." We have become, according to John 15, branches of the vine. That life enables us to stand with God as the building One. We find ourselves able to stand with God, even as we have no confidence in ourselves (that is to say, our flesh).
Sometimes we need to buffet our flesh. We certainly need to cooperate with God in all He has arranged for us, and thank Him for it. All our transactions of our daily activities have to be transactions in Christ. Everything in this world that is under the hand of Satan is an idol. He is in all the good stuff.
I appreciate that when I came into the church life that the brothers told me, "You need to read your Bible. You shouldn't let others read it for you." In it we find what is opposed to what God is doing, and what God has provided so that we might stand against what the world is doing to frustrate what God is doing in us, and to keep us free from abiding in sin. (Meaning we don't accept sin.) We need to learn to walk according to the Spirit, for the Spirit has been given to us as the antidote for sin and the postive means for building up.

Sunday, 11 October 2009

The Pearl of Great Price

Tedario Smith October 11, 2009
In the OT we are told that the children of Israel's shoes did not wear out, etc., and that they had food and even water from a rock that followed them. If we have faith, we realize all things we need are already taken care of by God. We are not abandoned as orphans! He is caring for us in love.
The Gospel is not merely the four books in the beginning of the NT; the Gospel is the entire OT and NT. It is the well-speaking of God; that thing that has a certainty for what we have, where we are, and where we are going. It is focused on Jesus Christ. As such a person, He becomes our Savior, our Redeemer, and our content!
We should have the practice of speaking the Gospel to one another. The age that surrounds us exists to bring us OUT of the awareness of the Gospel. Therefore we need to always be brought into the Gospel by the Word.
In Matthew 16:16-18 we read that Jesus says something particular. (Remember, Jesus Christ is Himself the content of the Gospel.) Simon declares by revelation in these verses that he realizes Jesus is the Christ and the Son of the Living God. Jesus responds that upon this revelation (that Peter experienced concerning Him) that He would build His church! Then, on the day of Resurrection, He breathed Himself into them the Breath of Life. He came and He sowed Himself into those who had believed in Him.
In the first ten years of my salvation, my realization of Christ was mainly of someone who died on the cross so I might not have to go to hell. During the past twenty years, however, I have seen something more. My Christ today is something more! He is the Christ who is building up His church... which is us! We see in all the shadows of the OT... to Abraham God promised His offspring would be as the stars in the heavens. That was us God was referring to. (This was mankind that God had threatened to totally wipe out before Noah found grace in His eyes, and built that ark! That ark became the means for 8 souls to be saved from that age. That was a picture of the Gospel in the OT.)
The Lord gave us the power to choose Him. Mankind has the choice. Man usually uses this choice to go astray. One day, however, I realized I have nothing, can do nothing, and am nothing. All I have is of value is whatever God is doing in me and through me. This is what we should seek. We were all something lost, as in the parables in Luke 15. God didn't create us to merely be wanderers. He created us to be part of this living organism, the church. In the church, we have God's life, we can abide in God's life, and we can minister God's life to others. Because we have it, we can give it to others!
Matthew 13:44-45 tells us a man sold everything to buy something of great value to him. My "light" in this, my burden, is to see that the Word of God become living and operative to us (Hebrews 4:12). It doesn't matter if we understand what we read or not! Our spirit must be FED! Our spirit needs FOOD if we are to be one with God for His intention to build up the church. This is God's Gospel... not just to save us from hell, but to have us as His Bride!
We need to have experiences of wrestling with God as Jacob did, not to let Him go until He blesses us. This is WHY He comes to wrestle with us. If there is a treasure to be had, it is WORTH wrestling for. When we gain them, they become our treasure. Others may not be able to recognize what has become our treasure unless we help them appreciate its worth. "One man's junk is another man's treasure." Some may see what we treasure as unappealing, simply because they don't know the story behind it. Once they know what has taken place, they will come to treasure it.
When we come to the Word, we need to come to find Jesus, the One in whom GOD delights. Jesus is God's treasure. When we come to the Scriptures, we must come to Christ so that we might have another experience of Christ. What we gain of Christ is what will remain. All MY earthly "treasures" are going to burn. Therefore, let us seek after Christ. And how shall we find Him? One way is to find Him in the Word.
In Acts 13:27 we see that those who condemned Jesus condemned the very One who they read about every week! May that never be our experience! The church should be the stronghold that is pushing out in the midst of the devil's stronghold of tis world. We need to push back against what is pushing against us in the world. We face so much religious influence, even within us. We need to push out against this. As we come to the Word, we need to find Christ as our portion so that He might build His church!
Raymond Hudson
The enemy does his best to distract us from the Lord, even as we say, "I am fighting for the Lord... Where are YOU?" Elijah thought he was the only one standing for the Lord, even though the Lord had 7000 others. Therefore we need to ask that the Lord might join us to the Lord for what He is fighting for. Many things are going on today, and it is easy to just gain knowledge and thus become "reasonable" about things. All things are lawful to us, but do all things build up? The Lord paid such a high price for this pearl. He empied Himself and became in the likeness of sinful man (Philippians 2). We want to talk about the high price the Lord paid, and yet we can't make three meetings a week for Him. We have knowledge, not life. When death is operating, Paul said, life was operating in others. We need to be able to put our self-life to death, so that we might build up. The Lord has given us time, and yet we feel we have no time to give to HIM! We rationalize everything. The church is a pearl. Unless it is something of life, we shouldn't receive just anything.
Next week we are going to start building something here. It is going to cost us. It is going us some time, finance, and prayer. The Lord knows... and we feel justified withholding our time, etc. But the Lord EMPTIED HIMSELF. Let this mind be in you that was also in Christ JESUS! His mind was obedient all the way, even to the cross. Sacrifice is something we all can understanding. We all should be accountable to this Living One who has done everything for us. THe young ones can pray for their friends. When you pray for your friends, you live a certain way before them. Don't let the world shape you! You are special! (Romans 12:2) I've seen a lot change from one thing to another. Used to be you could get by on one income; now you need two. Should we buy into this, or should we live by faith!? We need to live by faith. We must be careful about losing our first love.
We may get heavy sometimes and think we are the only ones. We need to believe there are others out there fighting. We are not the only ones. And we need to lead our kids into this. "As for me and my HOUSE, we will serve the LORD" (Joshua) We shouldn't be allowed ourselves to be shaped by this age. This life we have received is for us to experience. We are not against knowlege. but we can never get away from LIFE!
We should beware of the enemy bringing in excuses which CHEAT us. The enemy will try to spread division and gossip among us. (Gossip only goes as far as people give it an ear.) We need to fight. We need to thank the Lord for every saint. When we see the value of the Pearl, we will free up our time and our finance and our prayer for it. When we become distracted away, however, things get cloudy and we live a "Lone Ranger" life. Once we see the value, however, we realize it is worthy. The age may have changed, but the Lord has not changed. Our situation may have changed, but the Lord's faithfulness has not changed. Things are not the same, but the Lord is still the Lord. Our job is to fight and exercise. We are all in this together. As we pray, the Lord will have a way.
We need to speak. The Gospel is our living a certain kind of life. When you live the Gospel, others can see who the Lord is, and they will come to treasure Him as you do.

Sunday, 20 September 2009

Steve Whitfield September 20, 2009

The church is God's desire, the object of His heart. It is the reason everything exists. It is the pearl of great price which He, as the "merchant," has paid everything for.
We may see this from time to time, but for the most part we live our lives as though this doesn't matter. When you begin to care about the church as He does, however, things start to happen in our lives! Why? Because it causes God to MOVE. He gets involved with people who care about His treasure, the church.
In spite of man's failure, the church remains the pearl of God's heart as a "work in progress". In spite of the fact we are low, have failed, and are often deluded into thinking we are fine... we remain the object of God's will and love! Because of us, and in spite of everything negative about us, God sent His Son.
Christ came and lived on the earth as humanity living out God's desire on the earth. Christ, in this sense, is the miniature of what God desires in the church. He is the prototype. In everything He did on this earth, Christ expressed God. Thus the church should not express anything else. The church should not express Luther-ism, for instance. As that which is totally focused on Christ, the church should thus be full of grace and reality!
Therefore, we are here for Christ and the church and nothing besides. As we enjoy Him, He has a way to take all the "blemishes" away. When you enjoy something of Christ, we even look younger, because something of the inward blemishes from the old and fallen creation are being dealt with. Praise the Lord for His sanctifying work in the church! (Ephesians 5:25-27)
According to Ephesians 3:10-11, God makes known His multifarious wisdom through the church! In spite of all Satan can do, He still is able to gain us, even using what Satan has done to display something about His ability. We shall become to the praise of the glory of His grace (Eph. 1:6), for it is through His grace that we are being transformed.
Thus, the church is composed of saved sinners who shall be transformed into a glorious Bride, without spot or wrinkle, to be presented to Christ as His counterpart.
How good it is to be sinners saved by grace!
Lastly, we can take comfort in the Lord's wisdom and PRUDENCE. Not only has He the wisdom, He has the way to carry it out. Before the world began, He had a plan. In time, He is carrying that plan out, regardless of the frustrations. His intention is to have the church, and He will not be deterred, and cannot be. Everything will be as He desired, because He is not only a God of wisdom for planning, but also of prudence for providing whatever is necessary, even having prepared it beforehand, for what He has planned.

Sunday, 30 August 2009

Steve Whitfield August 30, 2009
In our physical families we love our brothers and sisters because they have the same life as us. I don't care about the people "out there" as much as I love my own kids. They may cause headaches, but you love them. Everyone in a family may not seem to get along, but once the family is threatened, it becomes evident they love each other and that they care about what happens to others in the family.
Sometimes it may not seem we care about each other, but there is love, and we express that love to one another in different ways. God expresses His love to us in so many ways! We all have different personalities, so the Lord expresses His love in many different ways. My name is Steve Whitfield, and Ted Smith is Ted Smith. The Lord loves each one of us the same, but that love is expressed differently to each of us according to who we are.
In this section, we read there is a sin unto death. We do not have to worry about what that is. As long as we are in the house, we all have to enjoy the Father.
Verse 4 reads, "For everything that has been begotten of God overcomes the world, and this is the victory that has overcome the world: our faith." The enemy does everything to destroy this faith, but this faith gains the victory!
In chapter 14:7 of Romans we read, "The kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness, faith, love and joy in the Holy Spirit." We also read that faith comes out of hearing, and that through the Word of God! (Romans 10:17). So this faith comes out of the Lord's speaking.
If you drive down a certain avenue, you will hear how many cars are booming with a certain music, because everyone is trying to get something through hearing. They think they can get the meaning through the propaganda being put out. They think they can get something satisfying. They think they can get something that will help them overcome, but that kind of faith actually destroys and tears down!
Everyone wants to hear something, but our faith, which comes by hearing, overcomes the world! And this faith comes not by our hearing what we want to hear, but through the Word of God. (If your faith is in something else, it will be destroyed, because it is unworthy of our trust.) The faith that overcomes the world comes only through the Bible and the Word of Christ.
When the Word gets into our being, we eventually find we have the energy to overcome. Everything begotten of God overcomes the world. Our faith is an intricate plan of God. He planned it. First of all, He revealed His Son to us. Thus, He gave us a revelation of Christ (Gal. 1:16). We had a lot of sin, but one day we heard that there was a way for us to come to God through Jesus. What was imparted to us what was a revelation of Christ Himself!
When we saw Jesus, we saw Him doing something. In Matthew 16:16-17 we read that Jesus responds to Peter, "My Father has revealed this to you, and...upon this rock I will build My church..." We first see Jesus, and then He shows us the church.
The revelation is not merely that Jesus is a good man or a prophet, but that He is the Christ, the Son of the living God! When we see this, Jesus reveals something further to us. Upon this revelation, He is building His church!
Our faith is not something happenstance, but progressive. It starts out with God initiating something, and this initiating is by revelation. Peter didn't get it by intelligent reasoning. He got it by revelation. And upon this revelation of Christ (and nothing else, including Bible study or our good heart or any other ability) the Lord builds His church.
The revelation comes about by means of the Father intervening in our life by showing us CHrist. The Father initiates this revelation. Jesus was there all the time in front of Peter, but it wasn't until the Father revealed Christ to Peter that Peter could claim, "You are the Christ! The Son of the living God!" Christ is more than Matthew 16 and 17, even. He revealed so much in the Word.
Do we see Christ as a person, or do we see Christ as someone associated with Sunday morning or some meeting? If we do not see CHrist as a person, we should ask the Lord to grant us a revelation so that we might see Him as He is! He should possess us. Once we see Him as He is, as the Christ and Son of the Living God, we will get excited about Him! And once we get excited about Him, He will show us the church, and thus put the church on our heart as well! I am so glad the Lord has put the church on my heart, for it is on God's heart! Christ is on God's heart, and the church is on Christ's heart. After we see this, God will give us all kinds of "views".
In Acts 10, Peter was praying on a housetop in Joppa, and the Lord gave Cornelius a vision, and the Lord gave Peter a vision. Cornelius' vision involved Peter's praying on a housetop, and Peter's involved a great sheet being let down filled with unclean animals he was told to eat! This was a progressive thing. (We cannot overcome anything for the Lord, just as Peter couldn't at first overcome his religious concepts about eating so that he might go among the Gentiles. Peter may have thought he was strong because of his revelation in Matthew 16, but he was still weak. But our faith overcomes as it progresses within us!)
In the OT the Lord didn't provide the "antidote" for the germs from the Gentiles yet, but after Christ's death on the cross, that inoculation had been applied, and Peter could go to the Gentiles. We may even feel that some people are too "dirty" for us to talk to. Yet the Lord died for that person's sins! The Lord sends us, but we may need a particular view so that the Lord might get through to us and get through us to reach others for the building up of His church.
Saul was holding the coats when Stephen was being stoned. Saul later was met on the road as he was breathing out threats and murders to round up more Christians in Damascus. It was there the Lord revealed Himself to Paul. Paul got a particular view from this, for the Lord indicated that if Paul touched any of His believers, he was touching Christ Himself. (Why do you persecute ME?)
The Lord gives us particular views according to who we are and what we need. We all receive a revelation of Christ, but eventually the particular aspects or visions we receive will be dependent upon who we are and what He is after in our situation. Our faith is like a camera, but like a camera that paints a little more each time we receive a further vision. Those strokes eventually cover the canvas until we really have a complete view. These paint strokes become our faith, and that faith overcomes the world, not us. What the Lord has "painted" in us becomes a scenery that no one can take away from you, and which overcomes. That scenery is our faith.
Satan wants to sift us and take our faith away (Luke 22:31). But the more circumstances we encounter and the more we see Christ as He is being revealed to us in various things, the stronger we become. As we see vision after vision, we progress. We shouldn't be satisfied with our initial vision of Christ. We shouldn't be complacent. The enemy is trying to knock us out of the running. So don't think you are strong enough in the faith or that you have gained it all. We should always have an expectant attitude. "Lord, what's next? What more do You have for me?" The Lord should be fresh for us everyday. As we see more and more of the "scenery" our faith is strengthened.