₦airaland Forum

Whoever speaks on their own does so to gain personal glory, but he who seeks the glory of the One who sent him is a man of truth; there is nothing false about him. (John 7:18 NIV)

You and I are going to face God sometime. We are going to come face to face with God literally in eternity and then the question is going to arise, has God at any point failed us? Shall we be able, on any detail, to say, "Lord, You failed me, You were not true to Your word"? Such a position is unthinkable, that ever any being should be able to lay a charge like that at God's door, to have any question as to God's truth, reality, and faithfulness. The Holy Spirit has been sent as the Spirit of truth to guide us into all the truth, so that there shall be no shadow whatever between God and ourselves as to His absolute faithfulness, His truth to Himself, and to all His word. The Holy Spirit has come for that. If that is true, then the Holy Spirit will deal with all disciples in the School of Christ to undercut everything that is not true, that is not genuine, to make every such disciple to stand upon a foundation which can abide before God in the day of His a bsolute and utter vindication. But in order that this may be so, you and I, under the Holy Spirit's teaching, have to be dealt with very faithfully, and have to come to the place where we are perfectly adjustable before God, where there is all responsiveness to the Holy Spirit, and nothing in us that resists or refuses the Holy Spirit, but where we are perfectly open and ready for the biggest consequence of the Holy Spirit putting His finger upon anything in our lives needing to be dealt with and adjusted. He is here for that.

The alternative to such a work of the Holy Spirit being allowed to be done in us is that we shall find ourselves in a false position, and it is far, far too costly to find ourselves in a false position, even though it only be on certain points. This is a false world we are living in, a world that is carried on upon lies. The whole constitution of this world is a lie, and it is in the very nature of man, though multitudes do not know it, but think they are true. They are trying to build the world on a false foundation. The Kingdom of God is altogether other. It is built upon Jesus Christ, the Truth.

Goshen360: Blessed article, @ the OP.

Thanks bro

Alwaystrue: @ichuka,
May Christ help us and may we also be willing to receive his help for the transformation to His glorious body.
As students in the school of Christ, and runners in the race of life, we should always avoid distractions as well as we press on to the mark.

Amen sis!!

Pastor Olu T: God bless u bro for this wonderful right, this surely is one of my favorites scriptures in the bible.

May He bless u too bro!!

If anyone wants to follow in My footsteps, he must give up all right to himself, carry his cross every day and keep close behind Me. (Luke 9:23 Phillips)

The Cross is applied according to every man's make-up. What would be the Cross to me would never be the Cross to you, and the Cross may mean something different for every one of us. But it is universal. That is the point – central and universal. It touches us all perhaps in a different way, and it raises questions and issues for each one of us peculiarly. That is our challenge of the Cross, and then it is a matter of whether we, in what we are, will come and allow the Cross to deal with us. It is no use our saying, "What shall this man do?" the Lord will at once answer, "What is that to thee? Follow thou Me." There is a personal, individual, shall I say, private application of the Cross to every one of us, and our spiritual growth depends entirely upon the Cross doing its work in us, and our response to it personally.

So, you see, it is very necessary that we should recognize that this cannot be taken as a kind of a general thing. It has to become peculiar to each one of us. Oh, beloved, do believe that this is not just teaching, or doctrine. It is of very great importance. But I would beg you not to accept it merely because I am saying it and emphasizing it, nor even because I tell you that so far as some of us are concerned, it is a proved thing. I would ask you for one thing only, namely, not to close your heart to it, not to say, "That is a teaching!" but just to ask the Lord, "Is this right?" taking an attitude simply and honestly before the Lord, even should you feel it is not true, and so leaving room for the possibility that the prejudice may, after all, spring from yourself, from something in your constitution or in your upbringing. Will you go to the Lord with this and say, "Lord I do not see, it is difficult for me to believe it; but, if it is true, then, Lord, I am open to the truth, and I want You to take me definitely in hand on the ground of the truth." There is not one of us, I am sure, who wants to stand in the presence of the Lord later on, and for the Lord to say, "My child, I would have led you into something very much fuller if only you had given Me the chance." Will you take a very honest and open-hearted attitude toward the Lord in the matter?

Pastor Olu T: Nice write up @ op.

The Holy Spirit is not working to sanctify the church for He had already done that. Just as the article portray there is a need to forsake all n go to the father for spiritual health, n also the scripture u quoted when we do we are constantly being sanctified by the WORD. Just to add a scripture

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

Romans 12:1-2

Bro,how can we present ourselves as a living sacrifice,holy acceptable to God without been under the Lordship of the Holyspirit?

Ephesians Chapter 5
:26 That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, 27 That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.he Church
No matter how STINKY we might term the Church to be,fact is the HOLY SPIRIT is working to cleanse and sanctify it by the Word to be presented to CHRIST as a GLORIOUS CHURCH!!

All the believers were one in heart and soul. (Acts 4:32 ISV)

The Lord must have a company in the earth who, in every respect, are a heavenly people. Their spiritual resources of life, power, wisdom, knowledge, and purpose must be heavenly and by mediation of the Holy Spirit alone. Their means and methods must be Divinely supplied and dictated. Their energy must be directly Divine energy; which means that they must have been separated from their own. The spiritual relationships and associations must be heavenly. It was the resolving into an earthly institution and system which cost the Church its Throne power at the beginning, and there can be no recovery without a clear position as to traditional relationships. There will need to be a purely heavenly position as to the really heavenly nature of the Body of Christ – the Church, without any contradictions in earthly orders. We have heard it said that at a certain gathering of servants of the Lord "it was like a touch of heaven; everyone dropped – for t he time being – their differences of denomination and earthly divisions." This speaks for itself. But why go back to them?

"They were of one mind and one soul." We can never arrange this, or decide to do this heavenly business to any consequence (except failure) unless each one concerned is in it by revelation of the Holy Spirit, and is born into it through spiritual travail. We shall be wasting our time if we expect, try, or even pray for anything really effective apart from this essentially heavenly and therefore anointed ground. There is no royal road or short cut to the Throne or to Throne power; it will cost us everything here. We have known more than one to be faced with this issue, and – in trying to keep something here – miss the Lord's highest and best, and later in life to know that it was so. Will you go to the Lord and ask Him to do that deep work by His Cross in the hands of the Holy Spirit which will result in your being brought into the place where His authority is exercised through you, and His rule is registered in the rea lm where things matter most, through your heavenly union with Him?

All of us reflect the glory of the Lord with unveiled faces, we are becoming more like Him with ever-increasing glory by the Lord's Spirit. (2 Corinthians 3:18 ISV)

I believe that if we are living in the radiance of Divine Life, there will be something of it betrayed by our faces. At any rate, the world will know something if we are really living in touch with the Lord, and there will be a language which only the spiritual can enjoy and understand. There will be those spiritual counterparts of the seed of Abraham, a people different from all the rest. Now the tragedy of what is called "the Church" has so often been, and perhaps is more today than ever, that that distinctiveness is being lost. It seems today as if a set is being made in some way to remove all the offence and all the difference, and to get us near to people without anything that clashes, in the hope of winning them. Yes, that is what is going on in the religious world around; it is a conforming to this age. But what came in at Pentecost is fundamentally this, that this people of the Spirit are so utterly different in the very center of their be ing, different altogether from all other peoples, and their power and influence lie in that fact. You cannot fit them in with other things, and it is not because they are awkward and difficult and deliberately irritate people, but there is that which by reason of their spiritual constitution marks them off; and if they did but know it, this is the secret of their influence in the world.

The progress and increase of spiritual Life means this, that the gap widens all the time between the children of God and those in the world who are not such. That is not to be taken literally in this sense, that we begin a mistaken system of hiving off, shutting ourselves up, getting out of touch. That is a wrong application of the principle. The Lord Jesus is preeminently our example in that He could move in any circle, and He did so deliberately, publicans and sinners, all classes, He moved amongst them, but His power over them was in His basic difference from them. Let us be careful how we are caught in this great movement of conforming to this age. To conform is to lose spiritual power.

shdemidemi: ^^^^Now the serpent was more subtle and crafty than any living creature of the field which the Lord God had made.

HABA!!
Wetin nah,no matter our little differences,you cant dispute the fact that we are all brothers/sisters in Christ.(guy u no fit change am,ur sis/bro na ur sis/bro)

Alwaystrue: ^^^^^^^^
Reminds me of the school of grace as seen in the
Titus 2:11-14
11 For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men,
12 Teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world;
13 Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ;
14 Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.
In the school of Christ, it starts and ends with salvation. Grace comes as the favour we need to return back to the father and old things are passed away and all become new but to maintain the new we are to remain taught by grace and abide in Christ. This relates to where you said we should be occupied in the things of Christ. John 15:4-8.

For true repentance and salvation brings a change in how we do things from the point of newness. Being taught or hearing involves doing as taught:

Luke 11:28
But he said, Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it

Where you spoke on liberty, I see the liberty as being free from the shackles holding us back from maintaining constant and continuing fellowship with the Father and revelling in the grace we have to live in Christ and do His will with the right heart as we have been given all required to live in dominion.


James 1:25
But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.

May we remain faithful students in the school of Christ to hear and do His will by the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

Amen Sis.
phls3:15 Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded: and if in any thing ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you. 16 Nevertheless, whereto we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule, let us mind the same thing.

17 Brethren, be followers together of me, and mark them which walk so as ye have us for an ensample. 18 (For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: 19 Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.) 20 For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: 21 Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself.
As we remain faithful students in His school,may our teacher(the HOLY SPIRIT) continue to change our vile body,that it may be FASHIONED like unto HIS GLORIOUS BOBY in JESUS name....

To him who overcomes, I will give some of the hidden manna to eat. (Revelation 2:17)
God always keeps the revelation of Himself in Christ bound up with practical situations. You and I can never get revelation other than in connection with some necessity. We cannot get it simply as a matter of information. That is information, that is not revelation. We cannot get it by studying. When the Lord gave the manna in the wilderness (a type of Christ as the Bread from heaven), He stipulated very strongly that not one fragment more than the day's need was to be gathered, and that if they went beyond the measure of immediate need, disease and death would break out and overtake them. The principle, the law, of the manna, is that God keeps revelation of Himself in Christ bound up with practical situations of necessity, and we are not going to have revelation as mere teaching, doctrine, interpretation, theory, or anything as a thing, which means that God is going to put you and me into situations where only the revelation of Christ can help us and save us....
Now then, that is why the Lord would keep us in situations which are acute, real. The Lord is against our getting out on theoretical lines with truth, out on technical lines. Oh, let us shun technique as a thing in itself and recognize this, that, although the New Testament has in it a technique, we cannot merely extract the technique and apply it. We have to come into New Testament situations to get a revelation of Christ to meet that situation. So that the Holy Spirit's way with us is to bring us into living, actual conditions and situations, and needs, in which only some fresh knowledge of the Lord Jesus can be our deliverance, our salvation, our life, and then to give us, not a revelation of truth, but a revelation of the Person, new knowledge of the Person, that we come to see Christ in some way that just meets our need. We are not drawing upon an "it," but upon a "Him."

When one turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. (2 Corinthians 3:16,17)
Liberty from what? Well, if we turn to the Lord, and are occupied with Him in the way we have indicated, the Holy Spirit sets us free. It may be you are struggling, striving, fighting, wrestling, praying, pleading, longing, yearning, asking the Lord to set you free from condemnation, free from fear, from those paralyzing bonds in which Israel was when the glory appeared. Do you want to be free from fear, from dread, from terror, from condemnation? What are you doing to get free? There is one simple, direct way, namely, to be occupied with the Lord, to turn to the Lord. Get Christ as God's satisfaction in your view, and cease trying to satisfy God yourself. Faith in Christ is all God's requirement. How deeply true were His words, "Apart from Me ye can do nothing." "Abide in Me. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in Me." That is only figurative language, which means be occ upied with Him, set your mind on Him, dwell in Him, rest in Him, abide in Him; or, as Paul would say, "Gaze on Him, behold Him," let Him be the object of your occupation, and the Spirit will make you free.
More than that, this beholding of Christ means that the Holy Spirit changes you into God's likeness: "Beholding... we are changed." It is not said, "Beholding, we begin to change ourselves," and we embark upon self-transformation with all its struggle, and conflict, and battle. We are changed by the Lord the Spirit. Be occupied with Christ, and the Spirit takes up the matter of transforming into His image. Be occupied with yourself, and you will see that the law of conformity to type operates. If you are the type, then you will conform to that type. If Christ is the type, then the Holy Spirit will conform to His likeness. Then this being occupied with Christ means that the Holy Spirit makes us sufficient as ministers of a new covenant. I do not think that ministry is such an onerous thing after all. We need to come back to the simplicity and the spontaneity of ministry. Be occupied with Christ, and the Holy Spirit will show you more and more in Christ with which to be occupied, and as He makes that livingly real, you will have something to give to others.

Happybirth day bro

[quote
author=Pastor Kun]Tithing as popular as it is in churches is one of the
least understood doctrines in churches today. Even several preachers
that preach it don't fully understand it and it's negative implication
to the gospel of Christ they just preach it because it means more money
in their pockets. However since a few of my brethen and myself started
this enlightenment campaign on the biblical truth about tithes, a lot of
NL members have come to the knowledge of truth about tithes and stopped
being fleeced of their income.

I would like NL members who have discovered the truth and have been
liberated by our writings to please come forward and share their
experience with us.[/quote]I stopped.3years,4months,2weeks,6days,00:23hrs ago and still counting!!!
details might come later.

kenshin17: LAGOS—PRESIDING Bishop of The
Redeemed Evangelical Mission, TREM,
Dr. Mike Okonkwo last Sunday said
majority of the nation’s current
political gladiators navigated their way
to power for their selfish interests and not the interest of the nation and its
teeming masses. Addressing newsmen at the opening
ceremony of this year’s Kingdom Life
Conference tagged, Open Heaven, the
presiding bishop said: “About 90 per
cent of them who are in power today
both at the federal and state levels are there not because they have
something to offer. Nigerian leaders
are not there to develop the country.
Their interest is their personal
interest.” According to him, people voted into
power at the federal and states levels
are not there to develop anything.
“For instance, each time I think of the
South South region of the country that
produces the wealth of the nation and the rate of neglect in the place, you will
be forced to ask yourself, what kind of
human beings who have brains will be
able to sit down and watch such
neglect without thinking of
developing the area. “That is why I said these people are
not honest. If they are, such places
where majority of the nation’s
resources come from, should be
developed to make the indigenes feel
a sense of belonging. So for me until we address such imbalances, I don’t
think we are ready yet to move the
nation forward.” He argued that “we need to put things
right and get people who know that
the purpose of governance is for the
benefit of the people. But the present
structure we have is such that allows
charlatans and cowboys, all in the name of politics, move into
Government Houses because of the
benefits that are there and not
because they have something to offer.
Corruption had been there but the
present magnitude is worrisome. The moment we started exchanging
money for performance and integrity
that was when we started having
more problems.”

Let him LEAD.by selling the private jet he bought over 4billion naira and use the money to empower youths and market women in his town(AWKA ETITI)

[quote
author=Zikkyy]Na wa o! i thought this thread was bout Christmas
you people don scatter this thread, there is no way i can contribute now


instead of fighting over copyright or trademark infringement, why don't
you guys fight over who going to prepare the best dish on December 25th
so i know who to visit [/quote]Lol

[quote
author=Enigma]Roman Catholic Bible is Roman Catholic
Bible. They made it in the 16th century in 1546 AD at the
Council of Trent. And they were confused about the matter such that the
majority of the bishops voting could not even support what is today's
Roman Catholic Bible. Here is one I made earlier .....
-------------------------------

Interestingly, when the Roman Catholics made their own Bible and
declared the Apocrypha of equal status with the recognised OT books they
were even confused first about their own preexisting Vulgate. Secondly,
during the decision which was as recent as the 16th century i.e. in
1546 at the Council of Trent, many of the Roman Catholics voting did
not even agree that the so-called 'Deuterocanonicals' i.e. the Apocrypha
should be part of the canonical books.

What a lot of people don't know is how the vote of the Roman Catholic
representatives/bishops went, which is as follows:

Those in favour of the eventual Roman Catholic Bible = 24
Those against the eventual Roman Catholic Bible = 15
Those who abstained from voting at all = 16

Please note the significance: of those who voted to decide on the Roman
Catholic Bible only 24 supported against 31 who could not support it
(out of which 15 were clearly against it)!

Again, this confirms that Roman Catholics are lying anytime they
say they had made the canon in the 4th century. In the 16th
century when they were making their own canon, even bishops from among
them (possibly the majority) did NOT believe the Apocrypha to be
canonical. And a clear example is Luther's Roman Catholic antagonist
i.e. "Cardinal" Cajetan who in that same 16th century confirmed that
Christians did not believe the Apocrypha to be canonical. Many
other Roman Catholics of that era and even eras before did not even
believe the Apocrypha to be canonical e.g. Erasmus, "pope" Gregory I,
Jerome etc.

Another thing, the (majority?) of the Roman Catholics who couldn't
support the eventual Roman Catholic Bible at Trent in the 16th century
must have been aware that historically Christians had always refused to
accept the Apocrypha as canonical or at least as truly or fully
canonical. Most of the "church fathers" of that very 4th century did NOT
believe the Apocrypha to be canonical. This is particularly true of the
"church fathers" who were NOT Roman Catholic and is exemplified
by Athanasius whose list even comes before anything the Roman
Catholics can produce in that 4th century! The position of other "church
fathers" of that era is well known and their own statements on the
Apocrypha can easily be produced. Even Roman Catholics of the era of the
4th century like Jerome did NOT believe the Apocrypha to be canonical.

Thanks to the Christians who compiled the Bible even before there
was any such thing as either "the Catholic Church" or the Roman
Catholic Church, and thanks to other wiser Christians through the ages,
Christians (mostly in the West at least) today have a Bible/canon which
is essentially the same as Christians in the late 1st century and early
second century.

[/quote]Nice post bro!!

Mubby4luv: Persin don die finish dey no go allow am RIP. #smh for dey Catholic

Abeg help me tell them

HBD SIR!

Don't say that the things which God has made clean are impure. (Acts 10:15 GW)

"Who was I that I could withstand God?" Now what we have here is that, over against the sovereignty of the Spirit, was the fixed tradition of Peter in the one case, and the same in the case of those at Jerusalem who "contended with him" for doing what he did. On a later occasion Peter fell into the same old traditional snare and Paul had to contend with him very strongly about it. The point is that the Lord was making for spiritual increase, but an obstacle encountered was this unpreparedness to leave room for the sovereignty of the Spirit. If a child or servant of God in his or her secret walk and history with God is led to move in a way that is not according to the recognized and established system, but new and different, and seemingly in violation of all the accepted and fixed conventions or associations, there is all too often a repetition of what took place in Jerusalem; a suspicion, a contention, and an opposition.

Now, dear friends, look here: we have got to take ourselves honestly in hand over this or we may be found to be "withstanding God" and "limiting the Holy One." Read the Gospels and the Acts again, and ask the question as you proceed, "How can this, and that, and that be interpreted or construed as doing violence to an accepted and long established Divine order?" You will not get far before you are in the company of those who opposed Christ at every step, and of the Judaizers who pursued Paul across the world with the one object of making his ministry impossible. They were very jealous and zealous for the divinely established order – as they believed it to be. Do you not recognize that every movement of God down the ages has been in conflict with something that men believed to be the Divine order, and those concerned have been regarded as doing the Devil's work? It was so with Christ, and it was so with the apostles. It has been so again and again when God has moved to enlarge His people by ignoring their fixed framework of custom. It is so easy to use thoughtless and misapplied slogans, or apply fragments of Scripture wrongly (such as, "By their fruits ye shall know them". Very often such damaging dagger-thrusts are only because of a failure to give the Lord room and right to take some of His children by a way that is new, unusual, or very strange.... So we see that for all enlargement and increase we must leave room for God to do new things, strange things, things that we cannot understand for the moment. We only put ourselves outside of His intention to enlarge spiritually if we bind Him to our own fixed judgments.

The anointing you received from Him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you. But as His anointing teaches you about all things and as that anointing is real, not counterfeit – just as it has taught you, remain in Him. (1 John 2:27 NIV)

The School of Christ; that is, the School where Christ is the great Lesson and the Spirit the great Teacher; in the School where the teaching is not objective, but subjective; where the teaching is not of things, but an inward making of Christ a part of us by experience – that is the nature of this School. "Ye shall see the heaven opened." "He saw the heavens opened and the Spirit of God descending upon Him." What is the meaning of the anointing of the Holy Spirit? It is nothing less and nothing other than the Holy Spirit taking His place as absolute Lord. The anointing carries with it the absolute Lordship of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit as Lord. That means that all other lordships have been deposed and set aside; the lordship of our own lives; the lordship of our own minds, our own wills, our own desires; the lordship of others. The lordship of every interest and every influence is regarded as having given place to the undivided a nd unreserved lordship of the Holy Spirit, and the anointing can never be known or enjoyed, unless that has taken place....

Do you ask for the anointing of the Holy Spirit? Why do you ask for the anointing of the Holy Spirit? Is the anointing something that you crave? To what end? That you may be used, may have power, may have influence, may be able to do a lot of wonderful things? The first and preeminent thing the anointing means is that we can do nothing but what the anointing teaches and leads to do. The anointing takes everything out of our hands. The anointing takes charge of the reputation. The anointing takes charge of the very purpose of God. The anointing takes complete control of everything and all is from that moment in the hands of the Holy Spirit, and we must remember that if we are going to learn Christ, that learning Christ is by the Holy Spirit's dealing with us, and that means that we have to go exactly the same way as Christ went in principle and in law... "The Son can do nothing out from Himself." You see, there is the negative side of the anointing; while the positive side can be summed up in one word – the Father only. Perhaps that is a little different idea of the anointing from what we have had, "Oh, to be anointed of the Holy Spirit! What wonders will follow; how wonderful that life will be!" The first and the abiding thing about the anointing is that we are imprisoned into the Lordship of the Spirit of God, so that there can be nothing if He does not do it. Nothing!

I urge you... to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God – this is your spiritual act of worship. (Romans 12:1 NIV)

You have a life, and that life is a great trust, a great responsibility. It can stay in its own ambitions, its own interests, its own worldly concerns and considerations, it can stay by itself. Will you give your life to God, will you let it go to Him, will you put it on the altar and let the knife be taken that God may have it utterly? If you will, God will multiply your life, God will extend your life, God will make much more of it than ever it would have been if you had kept it in your own hands. Have you got something in your life that you are holding on to as a Christian; you are not letting that go to the Lord? You know what it is. I should miss it if I tried to catalog the things it might be. You know you have something where you are not letting go to the Lord. The Lord has put His finger on something, and you are holding on. You have an argument which you think is a very good argument. You have a reason you think perfectly good, so you are holding o n. Deep down the truth is you are not prepared to let that go....

There are times when, in recognition that a certain course is the Lord’s way, we have to wait for the Lord’s time and see to it that our strength of will coming into alliance with some purpose of God is not jeopardizing the fruitfulness of that thing, and doing other people harm and making other people suffer. There are times when we have to come back to the Lord and say, "Lord, You have shown me that is Your way for me, but I can see that it is going to involve others in a great deal of suffering. I do want to be sure of Your time in this, and that I am not taking hold of it; it is not my strength of will to do Your will. I want to do this thing in self-sacrificing love, so that the least loss shall be suffered by others." We have seen people who are right as to their objective, right as to what the Lord wants, but the way in which they do it often spoils the whole thing. They take hold of Divine things, and while the thing is right, they are spoiling it by bringing their own strength of will into alliance with it. This applies in many ways. We must be circumcised in heart to do the will of God, ready to let go and let God determine the way to accomplish it. May the Lord interpret His Word and make it fruitful. I know it is challenging. It searches us all; we shall all come up against it. But oh, see what happened in heaven, and see that He desires that as it is in heaven, so it shall be on earth.

@op
great post!!but those that will argue will always do so.i really don't knw why some brethren cant see/undrstand that tithe was never part of the Gospel of Christ which is Grace!!
cheers bro!

Ephesians 6:4
Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.
.
Deuteronomy 4:9
Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them fade from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them.
.
Proverb6:22 Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it.
.
Exodus10:Moses said, "We shall go with our YOUNG and our old; with our SONs and our DAUGHTERs, with our flocks and our herds we shall go, for we must hold a feast to the LORD." 10Then he said to them, "Thus may the LORD be with you, if ever I let you and your LITTLE ONES GO! Take heed, for evil is in your mind. 11"Not so! Go now, the men among you, and serve the LORD, for that is what you desire." So they were driven out from Pharaoh's presence.…
Most parents left there children in Egypt thats the truth of the matter.

The disciples came to Him and asked, “Do You realize You offended the Pharisees by what You just said?” Jesus replied, “Every plant not planted by My heavenly Father will be uprooted.” (Matthew 15:12,13 NLT)

Organized Christianity as it is today cannot understand anything that is not organized, that is not advertised, that is not run. It must have names that carry weight, that mean influence. If you can get people with some title, you are going to have the guarantee of success for your Christian enterprise. And so the letters and the titles strung on are a necessary requisite for the success of the Lord’s work. You must write it up in the press, you must give a report of it, you must be able to make some kind of return that people can read, and say, "This is a successful thing." If you cannot do that, the whole thing is doomed to failure. They say, "You must advertise, you must have publicity, you must organize, you must bring in all these things to support it, to carry it on." If you did none of those; if you were never heard of in the press; if you never had a report; if you never had any names; if there was nothing at all that came out in a public way for people to take account of, what is the verdict of organized Christianity? "Nothing is being done. You are doing nothing. It is a-hole-in-a-corner sort of thing." Is that true? What must we say about that? There was a striking absence of all that in the beginning, and a marvelous manifestation of power, of progress, of effectiveness, so that nothing could stand in the way. We must only conclude, we are driven to this extremity, that the Lord can do His own work. Evidently the risen Lord is able to carry on His own work; the Holy Ghost knows how to manage things. What a surprising discovery! Forgive my irony. I say, this is that upon which Hebrews 12:26-28 is fixed. “I will shake the earth and the heavens”; that which can be shaken will be shaken; that which cannot be shaken will remain; and what is that? It is what God has done. “Whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever.” What God does is done in a spiritual way; it is spiritual, it is heavenly, it is eternal.

That may leave you perhaps in a vague, perplexed position, not knowing where you are, but I have no doubt about the truth of the message. If you do not feel you can accept it; if you disagree; if you revolt; if you feel it cuts clean across all your training, all your acceptance; if you feel that it runs counter to all that you know, all I ask of you is honesty with God. I ask you to come and ask Him to open to you the meaning of the letter to the Hebrews, why it was written, what its significance is, why God has preserved it, what its application is now. Have honest dealings with the Lord. Please do not go away hot in spirit, antagonistic; do not lay this at the door of any man. At least give God a chance.... May the Lord give us His own interpretation, give us honesty of heart, and show us His meaning in having brought us to this consideration.

Candour: Indeed its all gone. Calvary put an end to traditions. Why continue in the shadows when the substance has come?

The cross put an end to the useless and unprofitable system of laws, ordinances and an earthly priesthood that was only concerned with the outward show and couldn't do anything to help the spirit man. Christ brought a better hope and covenant that works from the inside out to create a new being with fruits visible on the outside.

The old is indeed gone and buried. The new has come. Let us leave it that way. Any attempt to incorporate the old in the new deforms it and renders it unprofitable.

God bless you

Luke 5:36] He told them this parable: "No one tears a patch from a new garment and sews it on an old one. If he does, he will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old. [37] And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. [38] No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins. [39] And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for he says, 'The old is better.'
very true bro.

Come out of her, My people, so that you don't participate in her sins and also suffer from her diseases. (Revelation 18:4 ISV)

What is the spiritual life in the matter of worship? Oh, it is not ecclesiastical architecture, it is not vestments, it is not ordinances, and it is not rites. They pass out with Calvary; the perpetuating of anything like that is a contradiction of Calvary. See where we are today. The maintenance of that sort of thing is because of a failure to perceive what the Lord Jesus has brought in.... Why, then, perpetuate a thing which God has dismissed in the Cross and, by keeping to the lower, fail to reach the higher? Do you see where things are astray today? I know how sweeping this is, but all this has to do with worship. Now note that when there is a failure to recognize the spiritual meaning of all this and to enter into it... and a maintaining of the old thing... you are still on a soul level, and you are open to deception; the whole thing may be a ghastly deception. And how does that deception work? In this way: that so many good Christian people are absolu tely in bondage to a traditional system which is cutting clean across Divine revelation for them. It is their traditional system which is simply barring the way to spiritual revelation, whereas the Cross of the Lord Jesus represents the liberty in the spirit for God to lead into the fullness of His Life and Light.

That is the whole purpose of the Letter to the Hebrews. It was for that very purpose. Here were a people that had received light concerning the true nature of fellowship with God in Christ – that the Lord Jesus had taken the place of the Temple and the priesthood and the sacrifices and the ordinances... and even the Sabbath. Now it is no longer a matter of form, ceremony, external rites, buildings, priests, sacrifices; it is all Christ. They had seen that. The writer had called upon them to go outside the religious, formal, historic, traditional camp, and that brought persecution, ostracism, isolation, loneliness, and all manner of things. The official religious people made it very hard for them because of that. The price to be paid for what is truly spiritual and heavenly was... and is... great, and they were dangerously in peril of going back to the old thing. The Letter to the Hebrews was written just to save them from that peril and to tell them m ore fully about the great change that had come about in the Cross – the work of the Lord Jesus... to tell them that one system, the earthly representation, had passed and the other, the heavenly reality, had come in.... To know the Lord in Life, we must be free from the grave clothes of outward systems. Why, then, perpetuate a system? The Lord Jesus put all that away in His Cross; it is all gone.

The message about the cross is nonsense to those who are being destroyed, but it is God's power to us who are being saved. (1 Corinthians 1:18 ISV)


Have you got a Cross in your history? Have you got a grave in your history? If you have not then you are dwelling in the shadows. You may get flashes and touches, but they will be fleeting, transient, coming and going. If you have a Cross and a grave in your experience, in your history, the Holy Spirit has got what He requires, and it is blessedly possible for you to have the abiding of this risen Life in which all these values are made good, and growingly good. What is the new creation? With it there comes first of all a new consciousness. You are conscious that things are new, and things are different. It is a new consciousness as to the Lord. You are alive to that to which you were never alive before; in every realm things are the same, yet entirely different. Somehow or other you move in the same surroundings, and touch the same people, but there is something new. There is a new consciousness. Things have become different....

Not only do we have a new consciousness, but we have a new capacity. The Holy Spirit gives capacities that none of us have by nature. We may by nature be very limited in our capabilities. By the anointing of the Holy Spirit we may have capabilities that the best men and women of this world without the Holy Spirit have not got. A truly Spirit-indwelt child of God has capabilities and capacities that no one else has. This very breathing carries with it capacity. Until Adam was breathed into he had no capacities for all that he was intended to do; but when he became a living soul by the breath of God he had capacities for knowing, for doing, for understanding. The new creation is like that, with new capacities, capabilities for knowing, for understanding, for doing, that we never had before. No child of God ought ever to settle down and finally accept the position that they "cannot" in any particular. We should never say in any matter that is present ed to us in the will of God, "I cannot." The presence of the Holy Spirit means capability and capacity for doing things which we could never do before. We ought to prove the Lord in that way...........

Proveb10:9 Whoever walks in integrity walks securely,but whoever takes crooked paths will be found out.
Matt7:18 A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Therefore by their fruits you will know them.
Great write-up bro!

I have told you all this so that you may find your peace in Me. You will find trouble in the world – but, never lose heart, I have conquered the world! (John 16:33 Phillips)

When the spiritual stands to confront the merely formal, traditional, nominal and "natural," then there is going to be trouble. This is not now merely the reaction from the world: it is the reaction from religion. I would go further, and say it may be the reaction from Christianity. There is a very great difference between formal, traditional, nominal, "natural" Christianity, on the one side, and spiritual Christianity, on the other; a great deal of difference. So much so, that this also becomes a battlefield – the battlefield of a lot of trouble.

Leave formalism alone, and everything will go on quite quietly. Leave traditionalism alone – that is, the set order of things as it has always been; that framework of things as it has been constituted and set up and established by man; that Christianity which is the fixed, accepted system of things – and you will escape a great deal of trouble. But seek to bring in a truly spiritual order of things, and trouble arises at once. And YOU are the trouble maker! The truth is that the trouble lies in the existing condition, the situation, the state; but it is only brought out by your action. And so spiritual men and women, and spiritual ministry, are called "trouble makers," because the two things cannot go on together. That is where Israel was. They had the traditions, they had the oracles, they had the ordinances, they had the testimonies; they had the forms, they had the system – they had it all; but , in the days of the prophets, there was ever this vast gap between the "externals" and "internals" of life in relation with God. The heart is far removed from the lips. The spiritual reality is not found in the formal. You may have it all – but then bring in the truly spiritual meaning of things, and trouble begins in that very realm. It is the trouble which arises when what is external and traditional comes into conflict with something which is truly spiritual.

I love you with an everlasting love. (Jeremiah 31:3 GW)

"I have borne with you all this time because I love you; anything could have happened to you, but I have not let it, I have shown you infinite longsuffering and patience, and earnest solicitude for your eternal well-being: because I love you, I have kept you alive, and have brought you to this time and to this place; I have not let you go." Oh, that this might come home to us! We may, all unconsciously, be hearing this message now simply because of this infinite love of God which has been preserving us unto this hour to let us know it. You may think it is quite fortuitous that you are hearing it – just one of the chance happenings of life; but if you knew the truth it is this infinite love of God which has held you to this time in relation to the infinite purposes of that love to let you know it. There is nothing casual about it, there is sovereign love here. "Because I have so loved, because, self-sufficient as I am, I cann ot do without you" – oh, mystery of Divine love! – "because I so much wanted you I created you, and now at this moment I am drawing you." We cannot take that in, but that is the teaching of the Word of God... God does not want that kind of love that is not love at all because it gets everything that it wants to satiate its own lusts. That is not love. This love of God must make us like itself, it must be after its own kind. And so, strangely enough, many have come to find the love of God through the dark way of suffering – to discover that God was not their enemy but their friend, when they thought that He was pursuing with the object of destroying them....

Listen again, whoever you may be. If you know yourself only a little you must be amazed at this statement, but if it does not come to you as the most wonderful thing that ever was or could be, there is something grievously the matter with you; that such a One should say to such as WE, "I have loved THEE, with an everlasting love." May God Himself bring that home to us with something of its implication, something of its meaning and value, its glory, its wonder. If He should graciously do that, we shall be worshipers for the rest of our lives; there will be something about us that is in the nature of awe and wonder and we shall go softly. The realization of it will smite all our pride to the dust. There is no room for pride here. This will remove all those horrible things - pride, avarice, covetousness, self-interest, worldly ambition - and we shall be very humble, very grateful people, full of a great longing somehow to requite tha t love, somehow to win for that One His rights..................