Pastor John,
I enjoyed this evening’s meeting very much. I want to share what I learned and understood, from the things you were teaching us.
(1) No one chooses the truth of God – everyone chooses the desire of their heart….everyone. It is up to God whether that desire is godly, or not; in ourselves, we are powerless to desire the things of God – and powerless NOT to desire the lusts of our own heart.
Men are traveling in every conceivable spiritual direction, following their heart and claiming it to be the right way. It is up to Jesus to decide who desires what is truly holy in God’s sight.
It is just as your father said many years ago, pastor John: “Everything you believe could be a lie….for all you know!” Preacher Clark was telling us: Everyman is right in his own eyes. We are at the mercy of God as to whether our “right” leads us to God’s righteousness.
We are powerless to desire holiness, for that is the heart of God. Who can know or conceive of such a thing so high above man, without the Creator of man leading? But we do have a part to play as we depend on God’s mercy. Our part is to walk humbly before the Lord, to hate evil, and turn from every sin, to love the household of faith, to prefer the unity of the body of Christ above our own selves, and to treat every man on earth like he may one day be converted by the Lord and be our brother in Christ. He just may be – one day – no matter his condition today.
(2) Keep our garden free from weeds. In other words – keep the spiritual no-harms (those things that do not minister to the Lord, nor edify the body of Christ) out of our life while they are still in their infancy, and before they grow up and become hard to dismantle. It is easy to manage a weed when it first sprouts, easy to see in an otherwise clean garden, and easy to pull up because there is no root to fight against. Don’t let a weed grow a root in your holy garden, and it will pull up as fast as you can pinch it between your fingers.
(3) Jesus described Four Kinds of Soil in Mathew 13, one in which the foolish hear the Word of God, but because they have no depth of soul for the Word of God to grow in, once that seed springs up, it cannot grow roots, and when the heat of sun comes up, it is scorched and withers and dies.
The opposite is true for the wise in Christ; their soul provides no depth for weeds to grow in, so that when the seed of a fruitless weed sprouts, it cannot take root. Therefore, when the heat of the Son comes up, that weed is scorched and withers away 🙂 We had some scorching of weeds in last Sunday’s meeting! A lot of good heat from the Son!
(4) The spirit of man is the candle of the LORD, searching all the inward parts…..(Prov. 20:27 KJV). In other words, the Lord tries our spirits with the spirits of the people around us. If a person brings out your worst, the Lord has shined His candle on your worst and is inviting you to seek Him to be rid of it.
The foolish learn to avoid those circumstances which reveal their hidden “worst,” while the wise seek out the Lord’s candle to reveal it, to get free of it before the coming judgment of the Lord.
Amen, amen and amen!
Loved tonight’s meeting, pastor John! Thank you!
Jerry