Selfless Faith

Psalm 143:5-8

⁵ I remember the days of old;
I meditate on all Your works;
I muse on the work of Your hands.
⁶ I spread out my hands to You;
My soul longs for You like a thirsty land.  Selah

⁷ Answer me speedily, O LORD;
My spirit fails!
Do not hide Your face from me,
Lest I be like those who go down into the pit.
⁸ Cause me to hear Your lovingkindness in the morning,
For in You do I trust;
Cause me to know the way in which I should walk,
For I lift up my soul to You.

When your spirit is broken within you, usually the flesh uses it as the opportune moment to take advantage. We all have been hurt by someone in our lifetime at some point or another. When the world throws all the wickedness it has at us, we can stand strong by the power and might of Jesus Christ through His Holy Spirit. Although it is impossible in our own strength to bless those who persecute us, nothing is impossible with God. The Holy Spirit is able to do all things. It then becomes easier for us to take the beating the world tries to lay upon us. However, how do we handle when the people we love and hold the closest to our hearts hurt us? Not the type of hurt based on appearances or bad jokes, but the type of hurt that makes you question any and everything they ever said to you. Was any of it ever true? When the faith of their hands and feet we called to be in conjunction with the faith proclaimed from their mouth, where did they stand? The answers to these questions can either draw you closer or utterly break or severely bruise your spirit.

Heartbreak and deception always comes from within. The world can try to knock down the strength the Holy Spirit puts within us to withstand evil and temptations but if it can infiltrate to the core of what or who you hold closest to you, the pain can be unbearable. I’ve been hurt before in my lifetime but Jesus Christ wiped that pain away and made life worth living. What the world once did to us is wiped away by the love of Jesus Christ.

There is another type of pain the world knows nothing about and that if it were possible for it to attack us with that type of pain, we would be utterly destroyed. However, the world cannot break into the family of Christ. Sometimes the words or actions of those who you love most and thought were the closest to you can give shocking revelations at the most unexpected times.

As painful as these feelings and situations maybe, the grace of God and the love of Jesus Christ must abound more. From our human point of view, this seems to be more impossible compared to blessing those who persecute us.  How do we work through the pain caused by those who we love? The simple and at the same time difficult answer is to allow the Holy Spirit “from our innermost being, to gush forth torrents of living water.” (John 7:38) When those feelings overcome us, as tough as it is to allow the Holy Spirit to take control, it is essential that we all Him to lead us and guide us every step of the way. Through all and all, however we may feel, “God’s grace is sufficient for us, for God’s strength is manifested and made perfect in our weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:9) Whatever may be said or done to us, let us continue to walk in God’s great grace and abide in the precious love of Jesus Christ to handle any situation or personal feeling we may be having.

Psalm 3:3-4

³ But You, O LORD, are a shield for me,
My glory and the One who lifts up my head.
⁴ I cried to the LORD with my voice,
And He heard me from His holy hill.  Selah

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Have we left our first love? Many times we get so busy being involved in serving the Lord that we forget all about loving the Lord. Then whatever it is that we do becomes a burden for us and we feel the weight of the world upon us. This is how the enemy traps us. We end up Being Under Satan’s Yoke. Have we left our first love? Join us in this special message directly from the heart of Jesus Christ, our Lord and our Deliver on how much He loves us and desires us to return back to Him, our first love. Continue reading

In Matthew 10:22, Jesus tells His disciples “And you will be hated by all for My name’s sake. But he who endures to the end will be saved.”

Are you willing to give up your position, your name, everything that you have worked to be, and to be hated by the world for the name of Jesus Christ? With our hearts, we boldly say “yes” with certainty, but I urge you to continue to pray that our flesh can become as strong as our hearts. After giving our lives over to the Lord Jesus Christ, He is in control of our hearts; we say “God knows our hearts,” which yes He does, but if we do not pray and develop our flesh to walk in the light that God has shined on our hearts, how will God knowing our hearts benefit His will? God sees our hearts, but the world sees our flesh, so we must train our our flesh to perform the tasks and duties God commands our hearts to fulfill. How do we do this? We can’t! However, we can do all things through the Lord Jesus Christ whom strengthens us!

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Paul says in Acts 21:13, “What do you mean by weeping and breaking my heart? For I am ready not only to be bound, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.”

With the certainty that Jesus gives us, and the love that He has for us, those who truly believe and completely trust in Him have no limitations to sharing the gospel. Many people reject it, but some do accept Christ into their lives after hearing the love that Christ has for them. As Paul expresses he becomes all things to all men with the hope of winning a few for Christ Jesus. At times, we will be persecuted, ridiculed, even attempts to hurt us because we share the love of Christ to the world. Let us share the same assurance and confidence that Paul has in Christ and live without fear or limitations. It is a beautiful love story how Christ died for our sins while we were still sinning; we should be honored to live without limitations, even including death, for His name, His life, and for the fact that He still lives today!

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In Paul’s epistle to the Romans, in chapter 6 verse 23, he writes “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Many people and/or some particular religions believe that they can balance their sins and their good works to make it heaven. They try to keep a scorecard or a tally system to see if they sin this much, and if they do this much amount of good works, hopefully God will over look their sins. However, what we fail to understand is we are dead to God when we sin. We are born sinners, so when we are born in the flesh, our spirits die in the eyes of God, until we repent and are born again. As Jesus said, we MUST be born again! Due to the fact that we are dead in our sins, we can do 99.9% of good in our lives and 0.1% of sin in our lives, and we will still be condemned to eternal damnation. You wonder, “I thought this God you speak of is merciful, graceful, loving, and caring.” My friends, HE IS! That’s why He sent His ONLY begotten SON to so that all who believe in Him can have everlasting life. What more can we ask for? Our sins will always outweigh any good that we do in our lives. Just the fact we are born sinners outweighs any good that we can ever do. If we look forward to judgment day to be judged for our works, and we haven’t asked Christ Jesus to cover our sins with His precious blood, in all honesty God will not even know of your good works. The same way we are blinded by sin, God is blinded by our sins and is unable to see our good works. That is why we cannot work for salvation or save ourselves. If we could, then we did not to be saved and God made a mistake by allowing His Only Son to die on a cross for our sins. Our sins will never disappear, but surely they will be covered with the blood of Christ, God’s sacrifice for us. God will always know we sinned, but He will not be able to see them because it is covered by the precious blood of His Son. For those who stop reading the Bible at the gospel of John, please keep reading as it clearly and explicitly describes why our good works mean nothing to God until we accept Christ. Amen.

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