Good morning!

I recently started reading your book Tithes & Offerings: The Right Relationship Between a Pastor and His Congregation. (Going to Jesus.com – Tithes and Offerings: The Right Relationship Between a Pastor and His Congregation)

It really touched me when I read these sentences: 

Pg. 37

The way of Christ is simple and pure, and it works. He first raises up a man to represent him and to be a shepherd of souls. Then, he gives that shepherd a flock over which he is to watch and for which he must give account to God. To keep the shepherd free to do his work without unnecessary worldly distraction, the flock supplies the shepherd’s physical needs, while he supplies their spiritual needs.

Pg. 39

The whole nation (of Israel) benefitted by bringing God’s tithes to His priests and Levites because when the physical needs of those men were provided for, they were free to devote themselves to teaching the people how to please God and be blessed.

Thank you for devoting your life to teaching us the things of God! God has taught you, you teach us and our lives are truly overflowing with blessings! We are ‘us’ because you listened & continue to listen to Jesus. You have taught us & you continue to teach us. When we take in those things we live a life beyond this world..a life beyond what we ever dreamed would be possible on this earth!

Thank you does not seem like the right words but perhaps in the English language it’s the best we have!

I hope you get to feeling better soon.

Amanda

Good morning,

I’ve listened to this sermon several times, and it is so valuable that I wanted to have it written out.  Probably has some typos, but the message is wonderful!

Debbie T.

———-

Transcript from Sunday, Oct. 18, 2026.

So in 1981 when the Lord spoke to me about Him being in charge of all things for us, he perfected some good ideas in me that weren’t perfect.  One was that He wouldn’t ever let me say that He allowed this or He allowed that to happen.  I couldn’t say that anymore.  It would come into my mind, the way it had done many times before, but the Spirit would stop it.  God was saying to me, “I’m more in charge than that.  I design what happens to you.”  Our heavenly Father does not just stand back and allow things to happen to us.

Sue, that was a beautiful testimony,  but let me perfect part of it, the way the Lord perfected my thinking.  

You said, “When you’re going through something, God will give you the faith to overcome it.”  But the truth is, when you’re going through something, God has already given you the faith to overcome it.  That’s why it has come, because He’s already given you the faith to overcome it.  That small, perfecting tweak is the difference the Voice made when it came to me.  Instead of God as a reactor to everything that happens to us, He’s the designer of everything.  You already have what you need to go through what you’re going through this coming week.  It’s already there.  Praise God.  And when you go through something, it’s just to build up your faith and make it stronger.  Isn’t that right, Sue?  He’s a perfect Father.

Who was it in the Bible that said,  “Try the spirits?”  Who said that?  John said it in first John, in his first letter.  “Try the spirits”, means to judge them to see if they’re of God.  But how are you going to do that?  Early on, when I was young in the Lord, I realized as I talked with different people who did not receive the truth that somehow, somebody had put on their hearts, like a little plaque or something, “Judge  by This.”  It was a doctrine of the Trinity.  And they judged people by that false standard.  To them, if you didn’t believe in the Trinity, you were a cult.  And that would be the end of the conversation.   I realized I couldn’t get through to them because they were judging the things I said by the standard they had been persuaded to engrave on their hearts.

The value of the truth to your life is that it enables you to judge things rightly, including the spirits that talk to you.  Some spirits sound sweet, but the truth gives a right standard to judge by.  And you will judge all things rightly if you have the Spirit of Truth.  You judge people by God’s Spirit, for in it are His knowledge, the knowledge  of God.  The truth enables you to judge rightly, to do what Jesus said in John chapter 7: “Judge righteous judgment.”  Now, Jesus knew those disciples couldn’t do that yet because the Spirit had not yet come, but he told them, ‘’When the spirit is come, it’ll remind you of everything I have said.”

The truth is valuable for your whole life, for judging situations at work, at school, at home.  How can you judge things rightly if you don’t know the truth?  You know for yourselves that when you meet God’s people, they cannot judge you rightly if they’re going by a false standard somebody talked them into engraving on their heart.  That’s why you can be merciful, because that’s the best they can do.  They can’t judge rightly.  But you have something to rejoice about because you know the truth.  You can judge rightly if you take in the truth, and God’s already given it to you.  When He gave you the Holy Ghost, He wrote the truth on your heart.  Don’t cover it over with somebody’s “good idea”.  Your answer is in the Spirit that God has given you.  “Judging righteous judgment” means judging according to what the Spirit tells you.  And it is the Spirit of truth.  You can judge nations righteously.  Paul said we’re even going to judge angels.  You’re going to judge angels use and you’re going to be put in a position (you already are but it’s not manifested yet) above the angels.

As a human born in this world, you were a little lower than the angels.  But not now.  Now you’re joint heirs with Christ and you’re going to reign with him, and he is the King of angels, which means you’re going to be princes and princesses  over angels, judging them.  Paul asked the Corinthians, “If you are not able to judge situations in this life, how are you going to judge the world?”  God sends our way conflicts and misunderstandings and people with different ways of dealing with life to train us to judge righteous judgment so that we might qualify to be good rulers with Jesus.  We already have the answer to every problem God’s going to send if we will only listen to what the Spirit is saying to our hearts, if we’ll judge by the spirit instead of by the flesh.  You have the answer.  Your heart already knows.  

Hey Pastor John.

When we read Acts 7 last night and read about Stephen I had the same feelings I had about Hannah in 1Samuel.

I had always read right over Hannah’s story until I listened to you teach about her in an Old Testament  class.*  I love her faith and steadfastness to God.  I fell in love with her!  She’s one I hope to meet one day.

After reading about Stephen last night I just could not get past him.

We don’t know anything about him until Acts 7 but wow!  After reading, I kept thinking of him being brought before the high priest and answering the charges against him.  That took something!  I thought what strength and encouragement it was for him to look up and see Jesus standing beside God!  I thought about what you said this morning about Paul and what kept him going was his love for Jesus.  That surely had to be in Stephen’s heart too.

To know that kind of love!  Whew!

Michelle

*https://goingtojesus.com/ot/gtj_otcourse-1010.html

Hey Pastor John!

The other night I finish reading God Had a Son Before Mary Did book.*  After I closed the book, I had a flood of emotions.  I didn’t expect to feel all the feelings that came.  I immediately got on my knees and just cried out to Jesus to help me take in everything I had just read.  I wanted every part of my being to take in and be completely saturated with the truth.  The feelings were so deep and so sobering!  I’ve been thinking /feeling these feelings for days. 

This morning, I watched the video that Vince posted, “The True History of Christianity”, and was overwhelmed again!  I thought, if Jesus never does anything for me again, knowing this truth is everything; it is complete and we are complete in it!

Thank you, Pastor John for teaching me the pure unaltered truth!  It has saved my life and it keeps saving me!

Michelle 

*Going to Jesus.com – God Had A Son Before Mary Did

Good morning!

I watched the link you sent us about Ephesus (https://youtu.be/CcemMtXm9Ns?is=2MD4AdAUqfnZMoJi)  and what it would have looked like.  It was interesting to see the places that Paul traveled and how things would have looked when he was there in Ephesus.  After watching the video, I wanted to read Ephesians.  So, I did. And I ended up reading the whole book.  It was so good.  And such a beautiful love letter from Paul to his precious saints in Ephesus.

When I finished, it stood out to me how Paul started his letter establishing an order.  First, his tells who God is, then he tells who the Son is, and then, he says who the body of Christ is, and then, he goes further to husbands and wives, and children. In chapter 5, Paul then says, “This is a great mystery, but I am talking about Christ and the Assembly of God.”  When I read that, this came next, “that he himself might present it [the body of Christ], with himself, as a glorious Assembly without spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing, but that it might be holy and blameless.”  I felt so much love in that.  The whole letter was full of love.  And at the end, Paul asked for prayer “that something might be given to him so that he might open his mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel.”  That touched me.  For Paul to write such a letter to the Ephesians meant he thought a lot of them.

Next, I looked up Ephesus and wanted to read what was said about it and Paul.  I read over the instances that were mentioned, but the last one was in Revelation 2:4 when Jesus was talking to the pastor of Ephesus.  Jesus said: “I have something against you because you have forsaken your first love.”  I read the whole message to the pastor there and it said, “I know your works, and your labor, and your patience, and that you cannot tolerate those who are evil.  And you have put to the test those who make themselves out to be apostles but are not, and you have found them liars.  And you have patience, and you endured for my name’s sake and did not grow weary.”  But, he said, “I have against you that you have left your first love.” But Jesus had something against the pastor there and told him that he was going to remove his candlestick if he didn’t return to his first love.

That stood out to me.  I wanted to see what Jesus was saying to this pastor that was going to cause him to possibly lose something God had given him. So, I looked through your writings to find where/what you have written about that.  And I found a two-part series on “Your First Love”.  I sat down and read them.  You describe this pastor there in Ephesus and what Jesus was saying.  He had done all those things: been patient, endured hardships, didn’t tolerate evil, etc., but he did not remain humble in his attitude toward others who had gone astray or had faults and would not receive correction.  He became puffed up.  Even with all the “right” things that were done, because of his attitude, Jesus was not pleased.

It was very good to read what you wrote here and be reminded of what our first love is.  It’s easy to get caught in the trap that you see something which someone else doesn’t see; it is easy for your flesh to get stuck in what you know.  That doesn’t allow for mercy.  I love the scripture you quoted in this article, “The love of God is spread abroad in our hearts by the holy Spirit that He has given us.”  If we stay full of the Spirit and let the holy Ghost lead us in our thoughts and actions, we will have so much love in our hearts, that’s the only thing that can come out from us.  You also said that it works both ways, and the Spirit gives us the power to reject error – which led me to Jesus!  Your first love is Jesus.  The feelings he gave you when he first touched your heart and the love you felt for him and feel for him now as you realize how much he has loved you in your journey with him.  That will keep the holy Ghost alive in you!

I followed the trail this morning.  I was thankful to feel and know these things.  Jesus is the point.  And the love we have for him will compel us to be a part of the body of Christ Jesus wants to present to his Father without spot or wrinkle, holy and blameless.  I attached the article.

Amy B.

Your First Love

Pastor John,

I had to watch the meeting this morning from home.

Your message today to the young people was not from this world. The experience I had let me know that it came from Jesus.  About halfway through your message, the Spirit of God in me allowed me to feel and understand that what you were saying, the Spirit you were under was 100% Jesus and 0% you.  I felt and could hear the holy Ghost in me bearing witness and weighing the words you were speaking.  I felt each word being measured and the Spirit let me feel, and told me that it was perfect.  I don’t like saying that because those words, to my ear, sound like I am saying I was judging something about you, but I wasn’t.  I was witnessing it happen.  That has never happened to me before.  My spirit from Jesus was doing it all, and I was allowed to feel and hear the Spirit’s judgment, and I was almost holding my breath as it went on.  When you spoke the last word, I felt the last word weighed, and I knew I had heard a message that was unmixed.  There was nothing you said that didn’t come from Jesus.  I know so; the Spirit told me that it was so.

I then considered what Aaron said this morning after he had finished his song, and I knew that what Aaron had described, having zero of ourselves withheld and everything in the light is how to get there.  It is the path to perfection.  What Aaron described is how one makes themselves available to Jesus to be worthy and able to deliver such a message to God’s people.  Aaron described the path to being of a single mind, a single eye as Jesus had described.

Jerry

Good morning Pastor John,

I’m up reading in the TFAS book (God Had a Son before Mary Did),* and something you wrote under “Concealing Angels” is so good to me!  You said, “If our heavenly Father were a publicity hound, He would let us know about all from which His protecting angels save us. But our Father, as Jesus demonstrated, is meek and lowly.”

This follows your explanation about the differences between the nature of God and the nature of humans, and it is so good to me!  The flesh wants to be seen and praised for doing a good job—or even just for not doing a bad one.  Whether it’s a promotion at work, a grade in school, or simply cooking a tasty meal, the flesh wants acknowledgment.  But God’s nature is the complete opposite.  It’s so opposite that He even hid His greatest creation, the Son.  It’s so opposite that we must feel our way in the darkness and wait for Him to reveal truth to our hearts.  Whew.  And when we take on His nature, we become like our Father—meek and lowly—walking around with the greatest gift, the answer for any and every problem quietly rolling through us, waiting for a sincere and hungry heart to share it with.  Telling that hungry heart it is none of us and all of God.

So, if any child of God goes through a season of being ignored, just praise God because He is making you just like Him.  I love that so much!

I’m taking this into the office today.  I have an interview for another position at work, and this is the perfect preparation.

See you soon, dear pastor.

Love,

Beth

* https://goingtojesus.com/gtj_books.html?tname=fands

Pastor John,

This latest Blog is so good!  Ben and I just finished a wonderful conversation after reading this blog and I wanted to share.  I was telling Ben what I have heard you say many times that when you receive the holy Ghost, it’s like being nailed to the cross. You’ve told us that even though you may be nailed to the cross, that flesh is not willing to give up so easily.  And there have even been some who survived the cross after they were taken down.  You have told us that we must let that flesh (our carnal mind) die!  And how many times when praying for us, have you laid hands on us and exhorted us to, “Let Him Live!”   I told Ben that we have two choices:  we can feed the flesh or we can feed the Spirit.  How do we feed the flesh?  It boils down to how we spend our free time:  What we watch, what we listen to, what we read, where we go, who we spend time around.  Are we feeding our flesh by mostly doing those things that our old carnal nature always loved, or are we feeding our Spirit by “taking time to be holy”.  We have the choice.  Are we going to feed the flesh and starve the Spirit, or will we starve the flesh and feed the Spirit?  Only by feeding our Spirit, will we be able to develop the mind of Christ and have the strength we need to overcome this world.  

It was so encouraging to read this line at the end of the blog, “But if we live according to the Spirit, even the weakest of us will overcome the world”.  That says to me that anyone with the spirit of God can overcome this world, no matter how weak he may feel.  We may be weak, but He is strong so let’s let Him live!

Hurry home, we all miss you!!

Lee Ann

==========

The Danger of a Carnal Mind

Immediately, while he was yet speaking, Judas appeared, who was one of the twelve, and with him a large multitude with swords and clubs sent by the chief priests, and the scribes, and the elders. Now, the one who betrayed him had given them a cue, saying, “Whoever I kiss is the man.  Arrest him, and lead him away under guard.”  And when he had come, he went up at once to him, and said to him, “O Rabbi!  Rabbi!”  And he kissed him affectionately.  Then they laid their hands on him and arrested him. . . .  And then Jesus answered and said to them, “Did you come out as against a robber, with swords and clubs to capture me?  I was with you every day, teaching in the temple, and you didn’t arrest me.  But this has happened so that the scriptures might be fulfilled.”  And then they all forsook him and fled. Mark 14:43–46, 48–50

    God sent His Son to the best people on earth, Israel, whom He had chosen and blessed with His law and with His prophets.  They were the best people, not because they were in themselves better than others, but because God had given them His law and His prophets to prepare them for the coming of His Son, their Messiah.  No other nation was even close to being prepared for the Son because no other nation had been given the blessings that God had given to Israel.  Had God sent His Son to any other nation on earth, the people there would have ridiculed him more viciously, abused him cruelly, and killed him much sooner than the Jews did.  Jesus survived as long as he did in Israel only because the human nature in Israelites had been tamed, to an extent, even within those who did not honor God’s law and prophets.

    Paul listed some of God’s blessings on Israel in his letter to Roman believers:

    Romans 9:

3. There have even been times I prayed to be accursed from Christ for my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh,
4. who are the Israelites, whose are the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service   of God, and the promises,
5. whose are the fathers, and from whom, according to the flesh, is Christ, who is above all.  God be blessed forever.  Amen.

    The Bible makes it very clear that most of the people in Israel failed to take advantage of those blessings and be prepared for the Son.  But some did; some were thankful for God’s mercy, and they obeyed His law and believed His prophets.  Jesus’ disciples were among them.  They were among the best of the best.

    At the same time, before the day of Pentecost in Acts 2, the disciples were without the Spirit (Jn. 14:17) and were still carnally minded.  They still had hope for a worldly kingdom (cf. Acts 1:6), and sometimes, even during the Last Supper, they bickered over who would occupy the most exalted offices in that kingdom (Lk. 22:24).  They were still, as Paul would later say it, “in the flesh”, instead of in the Spirit.  That is why in the Garden of Gethsemane, “they all forsook him and fled.”

    The disciples had done very well to stay with Jesus until they arrested him at Gethsemane; they did the best that carnally minded men could do.  Nobody on earth could have done any better.  But they needed more power than they possessed at that time to go with Jesus all the way to the cross.  That is the point that we do not want to miss.

    The best that any of us can do as long as we have a carnal mind is to make it to the garden with Jesus; we cannot go all the way with him to the cross.  The disciples loved Jesus, but they loved their own lives more.  They feared God, but when the hardest trial came, they feared men more and forsook Jesus and fled quickly into the night.  Jesus kept his disciples from falling as long as he was with them; he said so in his prayer to the Father at the Last Supper: “While I was with them in the world, I kept them in your name.  Those you gave me, I watched over, and not one of them has been lost except the son of damnation so that the scripture might be fulfilled” (Jn 17:12).  But Jesus could not keep them from deserting him in the end.  They didn’t have the spiritual strength to go with him all the way, and there was nothing Jesus could do to change that except to die for them and offer himself to God as a sacrifice for their sin so that God would give them the same strength He had given to Jesus.

    David was moved by the Spirit to say that man, even in his very best state, is altogether vanity (Ps. 39:5).  The disciples proved how true that was when they forsook the Holy One they loved in order to save their own skin.  But Jesus was not surprised or disappointed.  He knew that even the best of the best people on earth could not go with him all the way to the cross and that they would desert him.  Human nature cannot go all the way with Jesus.

    In 1981, Jesus taught me that our greatest enemy is not Satan; it is our natural, carnal mind that does not and cannot know God or please Him.  The natural, carnal mind with which we were born is more than just a hindrance to us; it is deadly.  It is not just different from God’s ways and thoughts; it is contrary to them.  “The flesh [that is, our fleshly nature] desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit desires what is contrary to the flesh.  These are opposed to one another,” Paul said.

    If we who have the Spirit fail to develop the mind of Christ that is in the Spirit, if we remain carnally minded even after being given the Spirit, we may never see the face of God.   Even the best of us will come short of the glory of God if we continue to think and live according to our fleshly nature after being made new creatures in Christ, partakers of God’s divine nature.  But if we live according to the Spirit, even the weakest of us will overcome the world.

    My friend, your night with Jesus in the garden surrounded by an angry mob is coming.  Pray to escape your carnal mind, for the carnal mind will cause you to make the wrong choice, to forsake Jesus – and it will justify you for doing it – so that you, like his carnally minded disciples, flee into the darkness.  No, our greatest enemy is not Satan; it is our own carnal nature, the old us that was without hope and without God in this world.