Faith and Words

We are always exercising faith. Faith is our contribution to the reality created in our lives. But faith is mixed with words to create results. The real issue is, what words do we choose to mix faith with. If we vocalize negative thoughts, hopeless feelings, and suggestions of the enemy about God, we inject our faith into those concepts and they become our reality. If we do this long enough we will find ourselves in permanent belief in the lies about God and will experience what we think to be God's wrath when in fact He only is pouring His love and passion on us. This is the condition of all those in hell. They will experience the outcome of their faith placed in the words of the head dispenser of death. On the other hand we must inject our faith into the words of God if we want to experience His life and power. It is not enough to immerse ourselves in religious culture and jargon and activities. We have to choose to repent of our faith in the Devil's word and choose to mingle faith with God's word both about ourselves and about Himself. We are always placing faith in someone and their word. The condition of our spiritual life is the sure-fire indicator of what we are placing faith in.

Inductive sand

Sometimes inductive Bible study is like digging a hole deep into sand. The deeper you dig the more sand of God's Word pours into the cavity. But then I notice that as connections and links are connected from all over the Word to this passage, that it is also mixed with the dry cement from my own soul. Then when the water of Life is stirred into the mix by the Holy Spirit it can harden into solid foundation that is reliable for me to build on.

Ministry Frustrations

In trying to minister and encourage my children and other people, I have felt for a long time that my own personal failure to grow and heal in key personal relationships are a major block in effectiveness for others. I have pondered why this is for years. On the surface it seems almost arbitrary, like God is blocking or withholding breakthroughs for others through my ministry to them as leverage to force me to face my own issues first. But then it seems I am always stymied for one reason or another from resolving these problems or even being able to identify them very well.

I feel very much crippled in a work that God seems to be asking us to enter. There now seems to be emerging in my mind a more plausible explanation of this handicap. Maybe my heart can't really believe God can heal and release others from roots that I have not personally been freed from. Maybe I would be jealous and angry if God healed someone else in front of me with a powerful experience of grace that I want for myself. Maybe it involves principles of maturity. After all, one cannot efficiently minister to or mentor another person who is moving into a greater maturity level than the level of the one trying to help them. That one simply doesn't have the knowledge from personal experience and the natural intuition that is learned from entering that realm himself.

We cannot offer grace that we have not received into our own heart. We can only talk about it and point to others who have experienced it. This becomes a major handicap in ministry to others when I am nearly at the same level of maturity or need as my children or others who desire help.

I feel more and more like the cripple at the gate yearning for complete freedom inside and out to not only have the physical ability but the emotional and spiritual abandon to celebrate life and God's goodness. When that freedom arrives in me, many will be amazed and run together to discover for themselves what great power can so transform my identity from a begging, depressed cripple to a leaping, enthusiastic cheerleader for God's goodness and greatness.

Lord Jesus, come!

Fruit and Seeds

Eve was attracted by fruit. We are fruit producers either by spirit or flesh. We can be an attraction for God by offering healthy spirit fruit for others to consume as well as using seeds to plant. Or we can attract attention to ourselves by offering from our flesh “good” fruit that looks like “life” fruit. If fruit is received from the Spirit of God it produces life from God, imparting life to others. If fruit is self-produced, whether good or evil, it ends in sucking away life.

If those receiving ministry from us are not receiving infusions of God's kind of life, then we are offering second-hand fruit that originated in us instead of being passed through us from the Spirit.

Fruit that is produced in us by the Spirit is valid for us and meant to attract others to God, the source. But when they taste our fruit we must be careful to give them seed directly from the Source and not from our own fruit. For fruit grown in our flesh, even if it was planted by the Spirit and is Spirit fruit, that fruit bears seeds of the flesh if used to plant in someone else's soul. The fruit can be received by others as tasty nourishment and enjoyment but we must not have them use our seed to grow their crop. We must hook them up with the original Supplier for truly life-imparting seeds.

Our fruit must be available to be consumed by others for nourishment, however. We are made broken bread and crushed grapes to produce sweet juice to attract others to enter into the fellowship of the believers.

When we offer solutions to people's problems, we offer them our “good” fruit. It may be fruit that was grown from valid Spirit seed, but it is now common, flesh seed. These solutions and advice sound right, logical and even spiritual, but they are still flesh righteousness. We can let people examine and taste our fruit and draw encouragement and temporary strength from it. But we must share with them how we came about to having this fruit, how Jesus is the seed in us that produces fruit. Then we must help them learn how to receive the Seed of God into their own ground and encourage its growth while protecting their hearts.

Let us plant the seeds from God with our mouths and share fertilizer with our hearts.

Virus Definition Source

(for context see previous post)

The flesh/law arrangement worked well until sin compromised its integrity. But the label and identity still remains. Our minds still think the Law of God originally written into our flesh is a reliable source of information about what is right. But what changed in the Garden of Eden was a substitution of Good vs. Evil instead of the correct view of Life vs. Death. It looked like a valid change because on the surface it looks almost identical. But the Good vs. Evil paradigm masks the real result of that thinking – they both end up in death. And when we use the Good/Evil virus definitions they do not catch all the hidden lies slipped through the flesh under pretense of valid LAW. That is why the LAW of God written in our flesh originally intended as a valid guidance system is no longer reliable. God had to add other resources that it is imperative for us to use if we are to have righteous output from our lives.

We need God's written Word as an objective source of virus definitions and we need our sync cable connected through our spirit to God's Spirit to correctly understand and appropriately apply the Word to the rest of the data and programs in our soul. If we plug our sync cable into the LAW socket in our flesh, Satan will feed us false sync signals that will distort the Word and misapply it while appearing to be completely reliable and true. This is left-brain religion and is very dominant in legalism.

(Romans 8:4) When we walk according to the spirit – our sync cable connected to the spirit/Spirit – we will observe that our output will satisfy the strict demands of the LAW/guidance system that we can still see written in our flesh. But it has to be observed, not attempted. Romans 8 is all about cause and effect. Where we plug in will determine whether we use the Good/Evil paradigm or the Life/Death paradigm. It will also decide the quality and reliability of the power we run on.