GOD's Next

Giving up everything for Jesus is not a popular salvation teaching in church today. I think no one sees salvation this way. We're used to Paul's by grace through faith doctrine, not of ourselves, not of our works, it is a gift from God, so no one can boast. Which is true because Paul got his teachings from Christ's revelations. But church misses what it means to be saved  by faith . Faith means we believe and obey all that Jesus did for us and all he taught---ALL he taught---among which is giving up everything to be a true disciple.  Photo above by Rapha Wilde on Unsplash . Non-Christians must see that receiving Jesus into their lives for salvation includes giving up everything they have for him, not just receiving Jesus. You see this principle in the Book of Acts and elsewhere in the epistles, like those who were persecuted and "joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property, because you knew that you yourselves had better and lasting possessions," [Hebrew...

One small botanical seed is powerful. In time it can propagate and cover an entire mountain with forest. God's Word is Seed and it can work more powerfully. The big difference is, God's spiritual Seed is not bound by time. It can grow an entire nation in a day. It is designed to fulfill the impossible. Who hath heard such a thing? who hath seen such things? Shall the earth be made to bring forth in one day? or shall a nation be born at once? for as soon as Zion travailed, she brought forth her children. [Isaiah 66] Photo above by Gabriella Clare Marino on Unsplash .  One-Word Creation As soon as Zion travailed, nations were born through her. That didn't take a day. Travailing and birth happened in a split second. How? With one Word from God. One Word. If you think that to be impossible or you need to argue against it, watch how God created the universe. Just one Word per phase. The short sentence God declared during creation was really "one Word." When he declare...

19 Not a blacksmith could be found in the whole land of Israel, because the Philistines had said, “Otherwise the Hebrews will make swords or spears!” 20 So all Israel went down to the Philistines to have their plow points, mattocks, axes and sickles sharpened.  So on the day of the battle not a soldier with Saul and Jonathan had a sword or spear in his hand; only Saul and his son Jonathan had them. [1 Samuel 13] Photo by Diogo Cardoso on Unsplash . First, the enemy limited them to inferior weaponry. Second, the enemy eliminated all means of sharpening. Third, it was the enemy who decided what kind of weapons Israel could have. Fourth, only the enemy could sharpen Israel's weapons. Fifth, the enemy decided who could have a sword and who couldn't. They were practically at the mercy of the enemy. Click here for a book review of God's Flesh. It was a useless war where everything was dictated by the enemy. Can you imagine having your enemy sharpen your sword? Not only is that r...

Unless God opens up the meaning of Scriptures to you, you won't understand any of it. At best all you'd get is what the smart and wise of this world also get--the letter--which kills, according to Paul the apostle. What counts in the Kingdom is getting the Spirit of the Word, not the letter. [Image above by Aaron Burden, Unsplash]. He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant--not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. [2 Corinthians 3.6] The Spirit gives life, says Jesus in John. "The words I have spoken to you are Spirit and life." So, it's the "spoken" Word you should get--spoken straight from God's own mouth--without which all you get is an intelligent appreciation of the bible. An earthly interpretation. Intelligent but it does not remove the veil that the god of this world has covered minds with. It cannot remove the curtain that keeps you from entering the holy of holies. The same thi...

Reddit It has so little to do with the preacher, if any. Believe me. In fact, I think it has NOTHING to do at all with the preacher or program. I've listened to a lot of boring preachers but I didn't doze off. Lousy programs bore me but I don't get sleepy during worship programs--though I'd be aching to go home ASAP. Sleeping in bed is better. You're sleepy simply because you're sleepy. You're either tired or lazy. Worse, you're carnal. By God's grace, people are wide awake when I preach. Probably they watch and wonder about my gray hair or red nose. On some occasions, I catch 2 or 3 sleepers and I let them enjoy their nap. Some preachers would be offended. Not me. Like Paul, I'd let them sleep and fall off from the third floor. After they regain consciousness, they become totally changed. Some are honestly tired. They did something important Saturday night, spent overtime on it and I understand that. Some unthinking companies requ...

Public Domain Pictures Human theology puts God in a box. More so this thing they call hermeneutics . I studied hermeneutics just to find out why they put it on a high pedestal and worship it as a god. They say you can't interpret the bible without these two, practically negating the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit. If you tell them this, they'd concede a little and say that theology and hermeneutics depend on the Holy Spirit or the Holy Spirit uses theology and hermeneutics. Do they? Does HE? Just look at "contextualization." Why did Jesus cut-short Isaiah 61? Shouldn't he have quoted the whole verse and also mention about proclaiming   "the year of the LORD's favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn," to complete verse 2. In fact, he should've quoted up to verse 3 to complete the work of the Messiah. Another is the passage on Jesus being God's Son "called out of Egypt" [Matthew 2.15]....

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...

Image from WallpapersCraft. "He was with God in the beginning." Moses saw creation in the beginning, but God took John further back in time. John saw things before  the creation. And he saw that "in the beginning was the Word." It's powerful when I sit back and try to imagine all this. Moses said, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." But John saw that in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God. Creation came only afterward. They talked of the same thing but saw differently. So, I imagine  "the beginning" covered a lengthy stretch of time, especially when John saw things prior to creation---specifically, when "the Word was with God."  He saw the companionship, relationship and fellowship of the Word and God. He tried to stress this by repeating, "He was with God in the beginning." I see an effort of emphasis here, an accentuation of God and the Word together for a period. A pow...

Image from cnet.com "...and the Word was with God." It's the foremost reason why we cannot afford to ignore the Word. There was nothing and no one in the beginning but God and the Word. Before anything else came to being---when there was nothing but deep black emptiness (in fact, "emptiness" and "black" didn't even exist)---there was God and the Word. The Word was already there with God. The Word was God . So, God was with God in the beginning. Sometimes, I like to read it "In the beginning was God and God was with the Word, and God was the Word." It makes you see more how the Word takes prominence in it all. You cannot just go content in the morning with your 15-minute "devotion" if you understand this. You'd see clearly why the Word must be meditated day and night. There's so much to know about Him that even a lifetime wouldn't suffice to cover even a third of it---even if we lived 100 lifetimes--...

Image above from Inside Higher ED. Paul said guard your life and doctrine closely. And this is understood as doctrines found in the bible, nothing more, since there were no denominational doctrines in Paul's time. All churches believed one and the same set of bible doctrines, which was consistent with Jesus' prayer in John 17.23---complete unity of all believers. But then one day, actual experience in life began contradicting bible truths. Things said in the bible didn't happen to them. Real life contradicted what the bible said. And as more church people experienced this, they concluded that truth should be adjusted to their experience. That should solve the conflict. But the problem was, different folks had different experiences. This becomes the problem when you adjust truth to your experience rather than adjust experience to God's truth. So they adjusted Scriptures to their own experiences. One group found it hard to experience real holiness, so they...

Image above from Flickr. It's alarming when the church relies mainly on its intellect, logic and reason to understand God and his Word---which is where it's plunging headlong today. And at best, what it thinks it has spiritually is just plain instinct, not spiritual discernment. Instinct has to do with a fixed mindset or action in response to a stimulus. It's really inbred thinking pattern. God can use it to reveal to you but it's not the Holy Spirit's gift. Lots of mothers, even non-Christians, have instincts. Nothing spiritual about that. You can know a used cup was left on the table by your spouse (and not your child or someone else) due mainly to familiarity. If you've been counseling folks for years, you get to a point where sometimes you can easily tell their emotions by simply seeing familiar hints on their faces or moods. That's intuition and has nothing to do with God's spiritual gifts. What It Is and It Is Not God's discernm...