Pasto John,

The Blog on “The Real Answer” is so good!  Thank you for sending it out.

It is liberating to know that when we are born again, with the evidence of speaking in other tongues, our citizenship changes from this world to a heavenly place!  That understanding takes away the pressure to participate in earthly elections.

I love knowing that we are ambassadors for Christ, and that ambassadors do not participate in elections of the country to which they are appointed to serve.  They represent the country they belong to, and for us, that is God’s heavenly kingdom. Abraham and other righteous men knew they were strangers and pilgrims on this earth, as well, and longed for a heavenly country (we recently read about that in Hebrews).

Jesus has given us a higher calling – a place of prayer!  The key is knowing who Jesus has created us to be when we are born again.  It all comes back to understanding the new birth experience.

Bess

============== 

Pastor John,

Beth and I were discussing the Blog that you sent yesterday, “The Real Answer”.

We loved its content. 

To take in the truth that you wrote about is to let go of damaging bitterness toward this world and its evil deeds.  It puts things back to where they always are, to where they have never left from, and that is with us, the body of Christ.

We cannot go out and change the world per se, but we can be changed, and with that become a real influence of holiness.  And that is the only real effect or change that we can institute in this world.  With us then, the responsibility lies.

I have copied and pasted below, something that you wrote in that blog that is beyond just true.  It is as you described it, “the real answer” and its value to us is immeasurable:

“The spiritual blindness of modern political leaders is astonishing, but the fault is not altogether theirs. Their contempt for the gospel of Jesus is the result of the problem, not the problem itself.  The fault belongs to us who believe in Jesus, for our lack of power and conviction for righteousness. The power of the Spirit, when God’s people walk in it, influences the society in which those saints live; it even affects the conscience of those who hate the gospel.  Without the Spirit’s power, in men’s eyes, the body of Christ is just another sect of talkers.”

Pastor John, after rehearsing this with Beth this morning, it occurred to me that Jesus would never have been mistaken for a man that was a part of “just another sect of talkers”. As a matter of fact, Jesus spoke little, according to those who have their account of Him recorded in the scriptures.  Jesus was known by His acts (works) and His power. His speech, or “talk” did little but to confuse the people that heard it.

The apostle Paul and those like him were known for their power and miracles and their works, not “excellency of speech” as Paul himself put it.  His, nor anyone’s “talk”…back then, would have convinced the unbelieving Jews that the Gospel of God’s deliverance had been delivered to the Gentiles; it was power that made that transition believable and palatable.

The question back then, really, for those souls who were honest with themselves, was not, “Are these men from God”, but rather it was, “This is God….now, do I want Him?”

Without the power of God flowing among us in the body of Christ, we are not challenging men today with that same question.  We are only asking them to decide whether we are the “real” body of Christ.  The power of God can and will move us past that place, to where we too are presenting every man with the real question, that is, “Do you want Him?”  I don’t think we are yet being effective until we do.

I love what you wrote. It was from heaven.

Thank you.

Jerry

Pastor John,

Both of my knees are without pain today. Neither is braced and they are working as they should. I just “ran” up a flight of stairs, for a second time this morning! I would have thought that an impossibility, three weeks ago.

I want to thank Jesus for that!  This is my second day at work without braces on 🙂

Beth and I had a sweet visit from Michelle last night. At the end of the visit, I told her something, with regard to my knees, that in hindsight, I am very thankful for.

Michelle had asked me about them, as to whether they were still feeling better. I told her, “yes”, they are still feeling good “today”.  And without giving it any thought, I went on to tell her that I don’t know if Jesus has healed my knees.

He has not told me that, but I am thankful for them feeling better today.  And if He hasn’t healed them, then I still do need a healing…..and that’s OK!  I don’t have to make anything up for Him.  He hasn’t done it.  But He can do it!  Because He is real!

I love that, pastor John.  I love “knowing” that God is real!  It keeps me from trying to defend Him if His answer about my knees, or about anything…is, “no”.  The fact that I have experienced a, “yes” in the past from God, keeps me grounded if the answer is, “no”. And, “no” is what it will undoubtedly be, sometimes. 

Having God’s Spirit inside, and walking in the “Truth”, this way of holiness has given me so many real experiences with Jesus; those experiences let me know that He is real, and that His touch is real, and that the absence of His touch is just is real! 

Jesus has moved in my life many times, and if He doesn’t do something for me that I ask Him to, I don’t have to say that He did do it.

Because, so many times, He does do it!  There is a real difference.  And because experience has taught me that, I don’t have to claim to have something from Him that I don’t really have.  Because I know that it is possible to really receive it from Him!Experience with God keeps God’s children from moving into a place where we try and explain away God’s blessings, or the absence of them.  One healing would turn a man from ever saying, “healings aren’t for today” or “God doesn’t heal anymore”.

One experience can make a man spend the rest of his life waiting on God.  And that is a good thing.

Because I have heard God speak plainly to my own heart, and daily out of my own mouth, through the holy Ghost that He has given me, I don’t have to defend Him if He is silent.  Because God has moved unmovable obstacles in my life, I do not have to make excuses for Him when my way is blocked.  Because He is Lord of “all things” and all of my life, I do not have to blame the Devil when things go wrong….knowing that my Father remains in charge of everything, including my hardships.

Experience with God keeps me from needing to negotiate the doctrine that I have been taught, that I know is from God.  Experience with God keeps me from needing to reinvent my belief system about Him.

Actually, what I experience from God replaces what I believe about Him, altogether.  Which is better!   I have learned to love, appreciate and prefer what I have experienced, over what I believe 🙂 

Those experiences from God have saved me from being a liar about Him, providing me with real godly testimonies in place of doctrines of my own imagination and self-will.That I would have passed on as fact in the absence of fear and experience with God.God has blessed my life!

He has filled my life with Truth and Power and Love and Experience with Him, in the Spirit, that have  saved me from having to prop up a doctrine that attempts to explain a life in God that has no power, that has no experience.  I do not know that life.  I have never experienced that kind of religion. The only religion that I have ever known centers around constant experience with the keeping power of God.  Take that away, and we would have no religion.

I thank God for the many experiences that I have had with Him.  Beginning the very first day when I was converted. When I was born again of His Spirit, it came in speaking!  He set the precedent then of what life in Him was. Experience!  🙂

Jerry

Bro John,

This is so good & so true. The very thing that people in Christianity are praying for is what they are holding on to the most. But oh how I do love your last sentence: “To come out of Christianity is such a frightening thought to them that only God knows how to enter that tender part of their hearts with His Son’s piercing, liberating light.”

That gives so much hope for those precious people who are really crying inside their hearts to be set free from those hard, religious ceremonies & forms that really mean nothing to them (when they get honest enough with themselves & desperate enough to admit it). What a grand time that will be when sincere souls realize something not’s right with all that & God enters that special place in their hearts with His truth & His feelings of what’s really right. 

You used to sing a song about letting go of the stone that’s pulling you down. I really like that song but I can’t remember many of the words. Be nice for you to sing it for us soon!

Thanks for sending this out. Makes me want to pray more for God’s people that are still bound by Christianity’s hold but deep down inside wanting a way out. 

Sheila

============ 

You Can’t Tell Them

Pastor John Clark, Sr.

“Save us, O LORD our God, and gather us from among the heathen,

to give thanks unto thy holy name, and to triumph in thy praise.”

Psalm 106:47

This is the unwitting prayer of every soul in Christianity who truly loves God.  In crying out for truth and unity, they are crying out to be delivered from Christian ministers, Christian traditions, and Christian doctrines, for those are the things that are confusing and dividing them.  But if you tell them that, they will turn against you.

God has to show them that the thing they love, Christianity, is the very thing that is confusing and dividing them.  It is the thing God most hates.  Sincere believers everywhere are praying for God’s cure for the deadly disease of division, while clinging with all their might to the thing that divides them: Christianity.  They are like a man pleading to be rescued from drowning while holding on to a boulder.  You can’t have it both ways.  The prayer of sincere children of God to be united with others who believe will never be answered until they let go of the stone that is pulling them down.

But you can’t tell that to God’s children.  To come out of Christianity is such a frightening thought to them that only God knows how to enter that tender part of their hearts with His Son’s piercing, liberating light.

Pastor John, 

I was considering this morning how often the truth of God is rejected by those who hear it.  A Bible verse then came to mind, and then an understanding of what God is doing for our little part of the body of Christ here, through those countless rejections:

John 7:17 (KJV)

“If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself.”

By God hiding His truth (doctrine) from those who are not “doing His will”, God is keeping us free from the disobedient, and free from their sin…and the destruction of communion and fellowship that would surely follow.

That is wonderful.

Jerry

===========

That is why I thank God, Jerry, for every person that is here, and for every person that is not!  God is blessing us both ways.

Pastor John

Pastor John,

I very much enjoyed listening to you and others talk this morning in your basement about the things of the Lord.

You all spoke about the ever-growing resistance of man to the biblical fact that “salvation” is a future event, and not something that happens now, while you are living on this earth. As Jesus pointed out: “He that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved” (Mt. 24:13).  And that salvation is also attributed to your actions on this earth, as James clearly stated: “Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only” (James 2:4).

In the overwhelming resistance that is offered up against these two truths, there appears to be revealed a mentality of man toward God that is very akin to the the nature of man regarding other things.

It is, in a spiritual sense, a welfare mentality; men want it now, and they do not want to have to work for it.

When we, in this natural world, work hard everyday, do our best, and are proud of our work, there is a feeling that accompanies that which lets us enjoy our rest when it is time to rest, and to feel that we have earned it – and the freedom to enjoy our pay when payday comes, feeling that we have earned that as well.

It is truly the same in the spiritual realm.   Anyone who gives their all to Jesus, everyday, will feel justified to receive the rest when it finally comes on “payday”; that is, whenssalvation is given to all of those who have obeyed. Those feelings are built into the spiritual, just as well as the natural.  Only those dishonest in either, or both, try to skate around it.

Jerry

Looking for something else in my computer files today, I happened upon a  conversation from some time ago with an internet friend whom I have not personally met.  Her fellowship was a blessing to me, and so, I saved some of our conversation.  I thought you might enjoy seeing this.

Pastor John

Me to Sister Jewel:

You know what lies at the root of the confusion among God’s people?  It’s not understanding that the baptism of the holy ghost is the new birth.

Jewel W:

Those that have not the Spirit of Christ are none of His.

Me:

Amen.  Thanks for the reply. It was a godly one.

Jewel W:

Those that are born of The Spirit are like the wind.  Wind moves.  Air just sits.  The devil is the Prince of the air.  “Church folks” just sit.

Me:

Very good thought!  We are praying for the power of the Lord to be with us all, and fill us. Without that, it is all just one big quarrel.

Jewel W:

Amen.  If we have the same spirit we get along.

Me:

Always.  God in me loves God in you.  And He can get along with Himself just fine, if we don’t interfere.

Jewel W:

That is Right, bro.

Pastor John,

Beth and I were in separate rooms of the house the other day, and though I could not hear her clearly, I knew she had begun to speak. I did not know if she was talking to Jesus, or to me 🙂 As I walked toward the kitchen where she was, to see if she was speaking to me, I heard the last sentence that she spoke, which was………”they say you don’t have to obey God.”

When I heard her say that, the Spirit then spoke to me. It was a very pleasant surprise, and unexpected. This is what I heard:

“You don’t have to obey God.

If you are “having” to obey God, then you are not obeying God.
The Spirit that you have IS God, and it is never “having” to obey.

If you are “having” to obey, that is just the flesh, holding its true desires in restraint, that is not obedience to God. That is a different Spirit.

You don’t make the choice to obey God, you can’t obey God. You make the choice to walk in the Spirit, the Spirit obeys God.

 Jerry

Pastor John, 

Beth and I watched a Benny Hinn Video tonight that just brought us to tears. We both wept while watching these deaf people receive their hearing, and some, while still unlearned in speech, were “signing” frantically, “Loud, Loud, it’s loud, I can hear!”  I loved feeling that brother John!

A few hours later, I was standing in the bathroom shaving and I heard God’s Spirit speak: “Even people that want to continue in sin, want to be healed.  But you have got to love Jesus to come to this truth. You can’t stand it if you don’t.  It keeps this work free, from what brother Benny Hinn can’t keep out of his work.”

Praise God Pastor John!  That is wonderful, for us!

I can understand why your father said that for all of the healings and for all of the miracles, “This is better than that.”

Amen!

Jerry