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  • Reading in Romans

    I love what you said tonight (1/27/16).  Something like this-
    “If you’re not happy with the situation you’re in, get full of the Holy Ghost.  That is God’s universal answer to all problems.  Give in to God, there’s relief. Jesus will make you happy that you’re alive.”

    That’s something I know, but it felt good to hear it.

    Also, I’m going to put this on my refrigerator.  Romans 14:19.  It’s a good thing for siblings to remember. 😉
    “Let us therefore follow after the things which make for peace, and things wherewith one may edify another.”

    Good night!

    Carrie

  • Safe Home

    Hey bro John,

    I’m so thankful for the government of God that I get to live in.  I’m protected from so much.  Jesus has to remind me of how much sometimes.  When I first came to Jesus, I grew up in the Lord where that was not the case.  There were people who brought in their own doctrines, didn’t pay their tithes, and were led by other spirits (not of God). I remember sitting there wanting the pastor to help and not let those things be.  But he didn’t.  I know those feelings of wanting order and peace came from Jesus, and he knew that was what I really longed for.  Now, here I am, living in what Jesus has put in my heart!  Thank you, Jesus, and thank you for giving me a safe home!

     Natalie

  • Wed Meeting (January 27, 2016)

    Nice quiet, sober meeting.  You said so many good things, Pastor John.  Encouraging.  I felt like you really want to protect us, and that you are responsible for us.  You will have to answer for the flock Jesus has given you. 

    I hate that strange ​woman and her new age ​religion.  I hate it deep down in my soul, because I toyed around with that stuff for a brief period in L.A., never really accepting it, but curious, and that was dangerous enough.  Thankfully, the Lord had his hand on me and drew me gradually away from those kinds of crazy doctrines and beliefs. 

    I enjoyed my west coast sunset, after the meeting.  I hope you enjoy the Sonrise tomorrow.  ;^)

    Thanks for all that you do.

     Brad

  • Security

    Pastor John,

    God has again reminded me of this: “Security is of the Lord.”

    There is no security in our job, our savings or our possessions….all can be stripped away from us in a moment, or lose their value right where they sit. The only issue is, “Will Jesus care for us today?” If the answer is, “yes”, then by some means, He will accomplish it, even when it appears impossible.  If the answer is, “no”, then we will starve, even with a belly full of food.

    He is our Security.  The rest are just His details which He can alter as He pleases.

    One day’s manna was all that the Israelites were permitted to gather because security is of the Lord, not our storeroom.

    Jerry

  • Thankful!!!

    Hey John.

    I woke up this morning feeling so thankful to have been present among God’s people this weekend as well as having my family in our house this morning.

    In this crazy world, it’s such a blessing and an honor to be called by our Lord and have the liberty to worship Him in Spirit and in Truth. It brings such joy to my heart today.

    Thank you too, for everything you have done for us. It is not to be taken lightly.

    Jim K

     

  • “Out of Your Belly”

    Hi Pastor John! 

    I have to share this with you.  It is so good to me!  I had the best day with Jesus.  Jesus has been pricking my heart about testifying.  I always find it easier to write my feelings out, as opposed to telling about them.  So, I was practicing giving a testimony I want to give, and I was practicing on Jesus.  Whew!  I was speaking out loud to Jesus, and it was like Jesus poured honey down in the car.  Just like a thick, sweet covering.  I began to stutter under the spirit and speak in tongues.  Oh, it was so good!  It was so good that I just wanted somebody there with me to feel it and drink it in.  I love when Jesus takes over.

    A few hours later, I was talking to Jesus about how wonderful that felt, and I felt the spirit flow from my stomach.  When I was seeking the holy Ghost, I would Google testimonies of “how the holy ghost felt”.  People would often say that it will bubble up from your belly.  That always left me a little curious and bewildered because I had not felt that.  I have felt it many times since, that glorious pull that just bursts from within.

    This is so good to me!

    So, I was thinking about that, and Jesus put this understanding in my heart: that is what John 7:38 is.  I completely get it.  I also get why the word “river” was used in that verse.  A river is flowing and alive, not like a pond or a lake, which are not moving and stirring. Every word Jesus uses is right.  It has meaning.

    This is probably baby stuff for everyone, but I am just loving what Jesus is teaching me.  I never know when He is going to put something in my heart or open my eyes.  I am so in love with Jesus and with this life.  I had to share this. 

     John 7:38

    “He that believes in me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly will flow rivers of living waters.”

    Beth

     

  • Love

    Hi Pastor John:

     It’s a wonderful thing to experience the love for a child, as it is with the Father and his Son.  Indeed, it’s very special. The thought I had was how precious it is to have someone who feels the same love for your child that you do.
    For God so loved this world. . .

    He just wanted to share his Son with a people who love his Son as much as He does.
    And what is most touching is that He loved us while we were yet in sin.
    It was overwhelming to me to think the Father wanted to share His Son with us so we could experience the love He has for us through His Son.

    Billy M

  • Let Us Be Prepared . . .

    I cannot remember who sent me this email, but it is very good!  Thanks, somebody!

    Pastor John

    ============
     
    Let us be prepared . . . for a visitation from the Lord.

    Job 11:13-14 KJV
    If thou prepare thine heart and stretch out thine hands toward him, if iniquity be in thine hand, put it far away, and let not wickedness dwell in thy tabernacles.

    Proverbs 30:24-25 KJV
    There be four things which are little upon the earth, but they are exceeding wise: The ants are a people not strong, yet they prepare their meat in the summer.

    Malachi 3:1 KJV
    Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in: behold, he shall come, saith the Lord of hosts.

    Isaiah 40:3 KJV
    The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
    ============

    Let us be prepared . . . to be delivered from our enemies!

    1 Samuel 7:3 KJV
    [3] And Samuel spake unto all the house of Israel, saying, If ye do return unto the Lord with all your hearts, then put away the strange gods and Ashtaroth from among you, and prepare your hearts unto the Lord , and serve him only: and he will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines.

    Esther 7:10 KJV
    [10] So they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai. Then was the king’s wrath pacified.
    ============

    Let us be prepared . . . to be blessed – even if we live in a time of great darkness and confusion.

    2 Chronicles 30:18-19 KJV
    For a multitude of the people, even many of Ephraim, and Manasseh, Issachar, and Zebulun, had not cleansed themselves, yet did they eat the passover otherwise than it was written. But Hezekiah prayed for them, saying, The good Lord pardon every one that prepareth his heart to seek God, the Lord God of his fathers, though he be not cleansed according to the purification of the sanctuary.
    ============

    Let us be prepared . . . to receive our brothers when they surrender to the one whom God has chosen to be their king!

    1 Chronicles 12:38-39 KJV
    [38] All these men of war, that could keep rank, came with a perfect heart to Hebron, to make David king over all Israel: and all the rest also of Israel were of one heart to make David king. [39] And there they were with David three days, eating and drinking: for their brethren had prepared for them.

    Ezra 7:10 KJV
    For Ezra had prepared his heart to seek the law of the Lord, and to do it, and to teach in Israel statutes and judgments.

    Isaiah 57:14 KJV
    And shall say, Cast ye up, cast ye up, prepare the way, take up the stumblingblock out of the way of my people.

    Isaiah 62:10 KJV
    Go through, go through the gates; prepare ye the way of the people; cast up, cast up the highway; gather out the stones; lift up a standard for the people.
    ============

    Let us make preparations . . . for the service of God.

    1 Chronicles 22:5 KJV
    And David said, Solomon my son is young and tender, and the house that is to be builded for the Lord must be exceeding magnifical, of fame and of glory throughout all countries: I will therefore now make preparation for it. So David prepared abundantly before his death.

    1 Chronicles 29:3 KJV
    [3] Moreover, because I have set my affection to the house of my God, I have of mine own proper good, of gold and silver, which I have given to the house of my God, over and above all that I have prepared for the holy house,

    1 Chronicles 29:16-18 KJV
    O Lord our God, all this store that we have prepared to build thee an house for thine holy name cometh of thine hand, and is all thine own.  I know also, my God, that thou triest the heart, and hast pleasure in uprightness. As for me, in the uprightness of mine heart I have willingly offered all these things: and now have I seen with joy thy people, which are present here, to offer willingly unto thee.  O Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and of Israel, our fathers, keep this for ever in the imagination of the thoughts of the heart of thy people, and prepare their heart unto thee:
    ============

    2 Timothy 2:20-21 KJV
    [20] But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood and of earth; and some to honour, and some to dishonour. [21] If a man therefore purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honour, sanctified, and meet for the master’s use, and prepared unto every good work.
    ============

    2 Chronicles 12:13-14 KJV
    [13] So king Rehoboam strengthened himself in Jerusalem, and reigned: for Rehoboam was one and forty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned seventeen years in Jerusalem, the city which the Lord had chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, to put his name there. And his mother’s name was Naamah an Ammonitess. [14] And he did evil, because he prepared not his heart to seek the Lord .
    ============

    2 Chronicles 20:31-33 KJV
    [31] And Jehoshaphat reigned over Judah: he was thirty and five years old when he began to reign, and he reigned twenty and five years in Jerusalem. And his mother’s name was Azubah the daughter of Shilhi. [32] And he walked in the way of Asa his father, and departed not from it, doing that which was right in the sight of the Lord . [33] Howbeit the high places were not taken away: for as yet the people had not prepared their hearts unto the God of their fathers.
    ============

    2 Chronicles 27:6 KJV
    [6] So Jotham became mighty, because he prepared his ways before the Lord his God.
    ============

    2 Chronicles 29:36 KJV
    [36] And Hezekiah rejoiced, and all the people, that God had prepared the people: for the thing was done suddenly.
    ============

    Let us be prepared . . . to be visited.

    Luke 1:17 KJV
    And he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elias, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just; to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.
    ============

    Let us be, as God is, prepared . . . for Judgment!

    Psalm 9:7-8 KJV
    [7] But the Lord shall endure for ever: he hath prepared his throne for judgment. [8] And he shall judge the world in righteousness, he shall minister judgment to the people in uprightness.

    Isaiah 30:33 KJV
    [33] For Tophet is ordained of old; yea, for the king it is prepared; he hath made it deep and large: the pile thereof is fire and much wood; the breath of the Lord , like a stream of brimstone, doth kindle it.

    Esther 5:3-4 KJV
    [3] Then said the king unto her, What wilt thou, queen Esther? and what is thy request? it shall be even given thee to the half of the kingdom. [4] And Esther answered, If it seem good unto the king, let the king and Haman come this day unto the banquet that I have prepared for him.

    Amos 4:12 KJV
    [12] Therefore thus will I do unto thee, O Israel: and because I will do this unto thee, prepare to meet thy God, O Israel.

    Luke 12:47 KJV
    [47] And that servant, which knew his lord’s will, and prepared not himself , neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes .

    Hebrews 11:7 KJV
    [7] By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith.

  • “Son of Man”

    Pastor John,

    What did Jesus mean when he called himself “Son of man” in Mark 2:10: “So that you might know that the Son of man has the authority on earth to forgive sins.”  He was saying that he had authority to forgive sins, so why didn’t he call himself Son of God?

    Margaret

    ===========

    Hi Margaret.

    In the Bible, “Son of man” appears to have been a common way of saying “human”.  God calls Ezekiel, “son of man” a number of times.  (“You human”.) For another example, John said in Revelation 1 that the heavenly being whom he saw standing in the midst of the golden candlesticks was “like a son of man”; that is, having the form of a human.  Some translations actually say it that way, or something like it.  So, that may have been what Jesus was thinking, at least sometimes.

    Jesus’ use of the term, “Son of man” in connection with his being able to forgive sins has something to do with the fact that he has shared our sad, mortal state.  Compare that idea with what the author of Hebrews said:

    Hebrews 5

    1. For every high priest, being taken from among men, is ordained on behalf of men in matters pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins,
    2. being able to deal gently with the ignorant and misguided because he, too, is encompassed with weakness,
    3. for which reason he ought to make offerings for sins for himself as well as for the people.

    Hope that helps!

    Pastor John

     

  • Mark 1:24

    Pastor John,

    ​Since no one knew about Jesus​, how did the demons say they knew him​,​ as in Mark 1:24?

    Margaret

    =============

    ​Hi Margaret!

    In the Father and Son book*, I deal with that issue pretty thoroughly. Here is a section of the book that might help:

    ​Pastor John​

    Believing and Confessing Ignorantly

    John 9

    Jesus said, “For judgment I came into this world, so that they may see, who do not see, and so that those who do see might be made blind.”

    Some of the Pharisees who were with him heard these things, and they said to him, “We are not blind, too, are we?”

    Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no sin, but now you say, ‘We see’; therefore, your sin remains.”

    It is foolhardy to claim to know God, or even to claim to belong to Him, without possessing His kind of life (Rom. 8:9b). Anybody who thinks he knows God without having the life that the Son gives has more in common with Satan than he knows.  Satan had nothing but his own cherub-life with which he was created and knew nothing about the Son; still, he was absolutely confident that he knew God.  That kind of confidence is the worst kind of blindness.

    When put on trial, even though the Son of God confessed who he was before the judges of Israel, they did not know him.  Seeing only the son of Mary before them, they judged Jesus’ confession that he was a divine person to be blasphemous because it was contrary to what they thought they knew, especially the first of the Ten Commandments.  But they were blind to God’s Truth, who was standing right before them, because they claimed to already know the truth.  “Claiming to be wise,” Paul would later say, “they became fools” (Rom. 1:22).  Whoever hungers for God’s kind of righteousness is blessed because only those who feel their need of God’s kind of righteousness will ever receive it (Mt. 5:6).  On the other hand, whoever thinks he is good and wise enough without God’s life will remain spiritually blind (Jn. 9:41).

    Men’s ignorance of God led to misunderstanding the Son, and misunderstanding the Son led to hatred of him. That was one reason Jesus commanded demons to keep silent about him:

    Luke 4

    [The demon said,] “Agh! What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are – the holy one of God!”

    35a. But Jesus rebuked it, saying, “Shut up, and come out of him!”

    And later in the same chapter . . .

    And demons also came out of many, crying aloud, and saying, “You are the Messiah, the Son of God!” But he rebuked them and did not let them speak because they knew him to be the Messiah.

    These two scenes seem to suggest that demons knew the Son, but the fact that demons cried out that Jesus was “the holy one”, “the Messiah”, or even “the Son of God” does not in the least mean that they knew the hidden Son. Everyone in heaven knew that God had caused Mary to conceive a child and that her son was to be the Messiah.  When Jesus was born in Bethlehem, God’s angel proclaimed to some shepherds that the Messiah had been born (Lk. 2:8–11).  But the angel did not know the Son; nor did he understand what the word “Messiah” meant in God’s mind.  As for demons, whenever Jesus drew near them, the power of God that was in him moved them to declare things beyond their understanding, just as the power of God had moved Balaam’s donkey and Israel’s prophets to speak things beyond theirs.  The Son of God said very plainly that no one knew him except the Father (Mt. 11:27), and we should hold on to that truth regardless of how things appear.  Otherwise, we may become confused when we see that certain men or demons of that time spoke as if they did know him.  Jesus was never confused:

    John 6

    Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, who will we go to? You have words of eternal life.

    And we have believed and are sure that you are the living God’s Messiah!”

    Jesus answered them, “Didn’t I choose you twelve, and one of you is an accuser?”

    It also appears that Peter understood what he was saying at Caesarea Philippi when he exclaimed, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God!” (Mt. 16:16). However, moments later, Jesus rebuked Peter sharply, saying, “Get behind me, Satan!” (Mt. 16:23).  Peter did not know about the hidden Son of God when he called Jesus the Son of God.  He called Jesus the Son of God only because, as Jesus immediately said, God had touched Peter (Mt. 16:17).  Peter was giving expression to something he felt, not to something he understood.

    If we, on this side of Pentecost, impose on the pre-Pentecost disciples or demons a knowledge they did not possess, we miss so much of the story! We know the truth about such terms as “Messiah” and “the Son of God”, but what did those terms mean to Jesus’ disciples?  Even after the resurrection, they were expecting the Messiah to reign as an earthly king and to restore Israel’s former glory (Acts 1:6).  Many in Israel believed that Jesus was the Messiah, but when they professed faith in Jesus, “he did not trust himself to them because . . . he knew what was in man” (Jn. 2:24–25).  More to the point, he knew what was not in man – God’s kind of life.  Jesus did not trust even his disciples when they claimed to believe in him:

    John 16

    His disciples said to him, “Ah! Now you’re talking plainly and using no figure of speech.

    We know now that you know everything, and you have no need for anyone to question you; by this, we believe that you came from God.”

    Jesus answered them, “Do you now believe?

    32a. Behold, an hour is coming, and has now come, when you will be scattered, each to his own house, and you will forsake me.”

    While he walked on earth, the Son of God had to deal with people who hated him with human hatred, some of whom even said that he was demon-possessed (Jn. 8:52). He also dealt with people who loved him with human love, some of whom even tried to force him to be their king (Jn. 6:15).  He dealt with angels who called him Messiah and ministered to him (Lk. 2:11; Mk. 1:13), and he dealt with demons who called him the “Holy One of God” and trembled at his presence (Lk. 4:34).  But neither humans, angels, nor demons knew that, from the beginning, there had been a Son of God in heaven who alone possessed God’s kind of life and who had been God’s agent in the creation of all things.  While the Son walked on earth, regardless of what anyone said or thought about him, pro or con, nobody really knew what they were talking about because nobody had God’s kind of life.

    A perceptive brother in Christ summarized this thought so well that I felt it would be better to quote him than to paraphrase his comments. We must understand, he said, that the universal spiritual ignorance which existed before the day of Pentecost “allows the seemingly endless contradictions and impossibilities to be true.  Every pre-Pentecost event or story that we read about occurred with zero knowledge of what God was doing.  To truly understand those stories, there cannot be an ounce of human pride that allows us the thought, ‘Well, they understood something.’  No, they didn’t.  Everybody was profoundly ignorant of God as this all worked out.  It is breathtaking.”  Yes, it is, brother.

    When Jesus commanded his disciples not to talk about who he was, he did so because he knew that when they saw him perform miracles, they were likely to say too much in their excitement, especially concerning who they thought he might be (e.g., Mt. 16:15–20; 17:1–9). The Son of God had come to rescue fallen man, and he did not want anyone, whether disciples or demons, to talk much about him, for nobody really knew what to say.  Whether they loved him or hated him, they were only loving or hating who they thought he was.

    *To read pastor John’s entire Father and Son book please click on the link below:

    http://www.goingtojesus.com/text/books/fatherandson.pdf

     

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