Good morning, Pastor John.

I just left a customer, and I am feeling so thankful for you and for the truth.  I am so thankful for Jesus!

The man said he has taught bible study for over 20 years.  He is a Methodist.  I listened to him talk while I worked.  I didn’t talk, just listened.  He started off by telling me he went to Seminary, but then fell off.  He then told me how his wife had to hold him back recently when he was with a brother who questioned the need for a communion ceremony and the meaning of it, and then he said he stopped meeting with that brother because of it.  He says he is now listening to a Catholic priest every day online and that it is helping him teach his Methodist students.  He spent ten minutes selling this man to me and telling me that in the next six months I will see that the Methodist church is cracking.

As I listened to the pride and, truthfully, just the foolish and unlearned things this man was defending and holding so tightly to, my heart ached for him.  I did not feel angry, or put off, or puffed up by his wrong thoughts, or how sure he was that he was right.  I felt so sad for him.  I left there wanting Jesus to open his eyes and his heart to the truth.

We are so blessed Jesus has touched us that it hurts to see it when others are so lost.  I dont think I have ever felt it the way I did this morning.  It is like having a banquet table of food and seeing starving people standing nearby, but who are so determined to stick to their ways that they won’t eat.

It is humbling.
Beth D.

Bro. John:

The September 10th Pearl of the Day* says, “This world can’t hurt you so bad that God’s love can’t cover it.”

That reminds me of another Pearl that Preacher Clark once said:

“When the world gives you a cold shoulder, Jesus has a warm bosom”.

Yes he does!  I love how Jesus loves us so sweetly.

Sandy 🙂

* https://pjhpearls.blogspot.com/

Good morning, John.

Amy B. reminded me that 21 years ago today, we were on the phone together as the World Trade Center was being destroyed by terrorists on 9-11.

That was the one and only time I have ever felt my knees literally knocking together with the fear of God.  Amy told me she went in the bathroom at work and threw up, and the Lord told her, “I did it.”

For a while, America was humbled and it was a good thing. There was a refreshing that blew through, which felt to good for all.  But it did not last long.  Today, this country and or society is the worst it’s ever been.  We didn’t learn anything, we are just as wicked, proud, and perverse as we’ve ever been.. rejecting God, and prosperity, has blinded us…. We have forgotten what God can do, and did.

My thought today was, “God don’t let me forget what you have done.”  He has healed, and blessed, and corrected, and prospered, and encouraged, and sent his words to us over and over again. thank you Jesus!  Keep us alive!  We can make it, but ONLY with you!  I want to always remember!

Where will we be 21 years from now?  Many of us will literally be in another world.  What sober thoughts.   What will come next in this country… and what is next for us?  Jesus is always good.  He was on 9-11-2001.  It’s worth remembering.

Gary

Bro. John:

I was awakened a few days ago with the Spirit speaking these words in my ears: 

“If you keep rubbing a dog’s nose in his mess, he’ll never lift his head up.”

As I pondered what I had just heard from the Lord, the words seemed a little odd, but then, we are God’s peculiar people, so who am I to second guess anything or any way God wants to speak to us?  I knew it was from him.  It felt like a true proverb – a door of opportunity being opened to learn more from Jesus. Then your dream and message came a few days later, and it came together for me.  I’d like to share how he opened it up to my heart.

In your email sermon you said, “We are stuck on repenting, and can’t get past it!  Constant repenting is an irritating, grating sound to God’s ears.  Jesus wants us to stop this repenting.  He wants us to just repent, get over it, and move on!”

Constant repenting and rubbing our noses in our own messes of our own making both keep us from lifting up our heads and being the child of God he has made us to be and wants us to be!  He knows who we are and where we are before we even know.  But it’s not God who keeps rubbing our noses in our messes — it’s us!  And he wants us to lift our heads up and do what we were created to do as a child of God in this beautiful kingdom he has put us in.  If we need to repent, he will let us know, if we keep our hearts true to him.  Then, as you said, repent, get over it, and move on!  How in the world can we worship him in Spirit and in Truth if we are always walking around with our heads down!  We should be the most thankful people on earth that he has given us His Spirit, made us his children, and given us a NEW PAST!  I know it and believe it because he told me so!  We are not products of our earthly union anymore!  We are strangers and pilgrims on this earth, waiting to get home to our Father and His Son, Jesus!  It’s time to let it go, repent, and move on.  It’s time to get our noses out of our messes, lift up our heads in praise to Jesus, worship him the way he desires — in Spirit and in Truth!

I have been so blessed with what the Spirit told me and your message on repentance, Bro. John!  I really am trying to keep this short, but I must say that reading about the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4 added to my joy.  When Jesus told her to go and get her husband, he already knew she didn’t have a husband, but had in the past had 5 husbands!  He did not win her heart over to him by rubbing her nose in her past.  He just let her know that he knew her and had something better for her — living water!  She didn’t pout or get angry at what he said about her husbands, she just went excitedly into the city to tell her experience with the man “which told me all things that I ever did.”  What a beautiful story!  Jesus knows everything about us and he knows how to get our hearts to repentance.  And if we are heart-seeking when he does, repentance comes easy and joy comes in the morning!  It doesn’t take grinding and struggling and hard-seeking.  He mercifully taught me that in 2006.

This has been so very good to me today.  I have felt the joy of that “water springing up into everlasting life!”  Let’s lift our heads up and be the children of God he has made us to be!  Let us stop rubbing our noses in the old past of our messes and rejoice that we are no longer there!  Praise Jesus forever!  He is worthy!  He is good!  He is faithful to his Word!  And HE is the Lifter Up of our heads!

Love,

Sandy  🙂

Hey Pastor John,

I hope you and Barbara are feeling better.  This has been really something with all the sickness the past couple of weeks.  I wanted to tell you what Jesus did for me.

When we first started getting messages about everyone testing positive it was so sad.  It broke my heart to read each message.  When things like this happen everything in me worries, and I began asking Jesus, “oh know, what have I done wrong?”  Then the worry just takes over.  

The other day I was talking to Jesus about all the sickness, and he flipped something inside for me.  Instead of feeling worry and dread I began feeling so much love.  I would read messages of someone testing positive but right behind it I would see messages of someone asking, how can I help?  The love we have for each other just flooded my heart.  I hated to see all who were sick but something about the sweet, gentle love I was feeling was special and was from Jesus.

I know that we should “check ourselves”, that is a good thing.  But the love that I have felt and seen goes beyond this world.  I’m so thankful to be a part of this family.  I really do feel like Jesus has put us here together.  Through good and bad, through sickness and health, we have been joined together!

I’m looking forward to being together again!

Michelle

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I have felt the same love that Michelle talks about. I also felt the positive, glad feeling that “we’re in this boat together”! If our fellowship causes us to become ill so be it! I’ll take fellowship with illness over no fellowship any day!

Allison

Good morning, Pastor John.

Want to hear something sweet? 

Recently on an Old Testament class* cd, you talked about God “cutting a covenant” with Abraham.  That really stood out to me.  I have always wondered why they did that by cutting the animals in two.  I don’t remember ever hearing the answer for that before.  As I listened to you explain what it meant for God to cut a covenant with Abraham, I was struck by God’s love for Abraham.

It’s been 9 years since Jesus gave me the holy Ghost, and I am still overwhelmed every time I see God’s love.  I remember the first time I took the Old Testament class, and how amazed I was to see God as loving.  I had grown to believe He was hard and far away, punishing not loving.  In my mind, He was more like the Accuser than my Father.  But it wasn’t always like that because I have memories as a child, of God being my very best friend.  I don’t remember a lot of my childhood, but I remember getting alone with God and pouring my heart out to Him.  I remember taking my hurts to Him.  I remember finding a quiet spot in all the mess of my family and singing Amazing Grace to Him because I thought He liked that song.  God was my safe place.  Somewhere over time, Christianity, sin, and wrong ideas robbed me of knowing that.

I have been talking to Jesus about knowing God loves me.  Then I heard about God cutting the covenant with Abraham, and I could feel my heart soften hearing about God’s love. 

I got up this morning and read today’s Random Thought.  I feel like Jesus is talking and reminding me and all of us how much our Father loves us.  There was the songs by brother Gary, “You’re gonna make it”, “God’s promises to the assemblies” and John David’s testimony about fellowship and what is eternal.  God has made our fellowship eternal!   There are so many benefits for us in fellowship and not being alone in this world. God didn’t leave us without family, just like He didn’t leave Abraham without family.

You know, feeling God’s love changes Him in my heart from God to Father.  I find myself now, eight years old again and pouring my heart out to Him, my safe place.

https://www.goingtojesus.com/gtj_thoughts.html?tname=rdt09-03

“Our heavenly Father wants us to rest in His promises, to trust Him so much that we are at peace.  He offered Abraham His life, using the death of animals, to get the point across to Abraham.  How much more, then, should we rest in His love for us when He has given us His life, using the death of His Son?  Paul pointed this out in Romans 8:32: “He who did not spare His own Son, but gave him up for us all, how shall He not also, with him, freely give us all things?”

Beth D.

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

I have been praying about fellowship for a while now.  John David’s recent testimonies have stirred that prayer up.

I have been asking Jesus to teach me more about fellowship and to let me value it like he does.  If it is what is eternal, then I want it etched in my soul.  I want to hear and live what Jesus is telling us.

I was just listening to an Old Testament* cd again about slander and in it, you asked, “What did it do to Eve, to take in slander from the serpent?”  I felt like Jesus made things a little clearer about fellowship.  I thought about us; what could ever come between us to ever doubt our hearts with each other?  If Eve could have rested in God’s love for her, if she could have trusted that love, her whole life would have been different. Not eating of the tree of life, which was a sweet gift from God protecting them from death and pain. 

If Satan ever wanted to hurt us as a body, that old trick he used on Eve would do it. It’s still the same, that whisper that says we can’t trust one another’s heart or intentions or love.  To really know each other’s heart and to trust Jesus, and to know we are loved, is protection from division.  That protects our fellowship.  Then we can see division coming a mile away.

For years now, I have asked Jesus to help me know I am loved – not in words but to really know.  It seems insane to even say that to Jesus, but I know how much I need to know it.

Beth D.

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If Jesus lets us feel loved, we will know that we are loved.  That is the only way to know.  I pray that he will do that for all of us, all the time.  We can help, too, by loving one another with the love of God.  What a sweet life that is!

jdc

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