Faith Is, Chapter Eighteen

 

I am presently talking with you about the things of God that will set you free. Jesus said in John 8:31-32,

 

"If you continue in my word, then are you my disciples indeed;    And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."

 

The religious world has again place us into bondage by laying upon us burdens of guilt and painting a picture of us as just being rags and filth in the eyes of our Father. They have placed on us rose colored glasses which blind us to the love of our Father and cause us to see Him as a harsh dictator that gives us laws to live by and if we fail in any of these laws He will cast us into an eternal fire of punishment in which there is never an escape from.

 

Oh, they will tell you that God is a loving God but that He is also a just God who gives us the opportunity of choosing our own destiny and if we make do not do all the things that He told us to do, He will not forgive us and will punish us horrifically through out eternity without any way to escape or to be redeemed. According to them we have just two choices. We can choose to obey God and live forever in complete bliss or we can do our own thing and go to hell and be punished forever. They tell us that we have to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling because if we make just one mistake we will miss going to heaven and be punished forever in the lake of fire prepared for the devil and his angels.

 

You will probably already have thought this as you read what I just wrote, "Well, Dave, that is what the Bible says will happen to us!" That's what I thought also until I stopped trusting my carnal mind and it's attempt to understand these things. When I opened my mind to allow the Holy Spirit to explain to me what He was saying in the Bible and not what men were telling me what He meant, He began to reveal to me an entirely different understanding of the love of my Father than what religion had taught me.

 

How did all this happen to me? When I was in my early 20's I begin asking my Father to teach me how to love the way that He loves. To fill me with His love. Little did I know what I was really asking my Father to do. However, I asked Him to do this and I had the faith to believe that He would do it. I thought that I would all of a sudden be filled with this awesome over powering emotional love that would just overwhelm me.

 

Then I remembered when I was 9 or 10 years old and went forward to be baptized. For days I was living on cloud nine, so to speak. I mean that at that young tender age my own outlook on life was changed. Well, it didn't take long for me to come down to earth once again as life began to take it's toll on me. I was still given all these rules and regulations and was painted a picture of my Father as being a stern, demanding Father who was ready to send me to hell if I made a mistake.

 

I am sure that many of you who are reading this have experienced the same thing that I experienced. I was so burdened down with all the rules and regulations that I soon discovered that I could not be faithful to and I finally came to the point when I was thirty four years old that I had had enough! I went before my Father and I told Him that I had tried my best to obey Him and to control my thoughts and actions the way He wanted me to. I told Him that if He didn't show me that He was real and fill me with His Spirit that I was going to give up and forget about trying to live the way He wanted me to because I just can't do it.

 

Little did I know that He was leading me to this point in my life in order to get me to the point that I was at the end of my rope and realized that I, of myself, cannot live as He wanted me to live. All this time He was gradually revealing Himself to me. He was bringing me to the place where I would accept His word that John the Baptist spoke about when he told all of Judea in Matt. 3:11,

 

"I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance: but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire:"

 

Paul said in 1 Cor. 12:13,

 

"For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit."  

 

He began to open all these scriptures up to me and to show me what He was really saying and that what I had been taught by men was not the truth. He revealed to me what Paul said in 1 Cor. 6:17,

 

          "He that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit." (one spirit with the Lord)

    

It finally dawn on me that if I ask Him to baptize me in His Spirit He would do it because that is His will. Did I begin to speak in tongues and prophesy as the household of Cornelius did when the Lord baptized them in His Spirit? No! I did not! What did happen, though, was that the Bible came alive to me and I was able to see the meaning of what the scriptures were saying and I began to understand what I had studied for years as the Spirit began to teach me.

 

A few weeks later I was sitting on top of a two story apartment building tying in an electrical service and I began to praise God and thank Him for baptizing me in His Spirit and I opened my mouth and without thinking about it spoke these words, "Pray unda Coresties!" Which I found out much later was Greek for Praise be unto Christ!

 

When this happened I no longer had to walk by faith but my Father revealed to me that He was real and that He loved me and listened to my prayers. I was filled with joy unspeakable. Isaiah 54:12 says,

 

"For you shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands!" 

 

I now knew that I knew, that I knew, that I knew, that God was real and not just some character in a book. Let me make a very powerful statement to you! When the Lord reveals the truth to you there is no man or circumstance that can take the truth from you!

 

When I had asked the Lord to show me how to love as He loves, little did I know what I was asking the Lord to do! What I was really asking the Lord to do was to reveal Himself to me because He is Love!! Love is not some attribute of Gods but it is who He is! John said in 1 Jn. 4:8,

 

"He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love."

 

That is why Jesus had all those things to say to us in His sermon on the Mount as recorded in Matt. 5-7. In Matt. 5:43-48,

 

"You have heard that it has been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate your enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That you may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he makes his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love them which love you, what reward have you? do not even the publicans the same? And if you salute your brethren only, what do you more than others? do not even the publicans so? Be you therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect."

 

Religion has painted a different picture of our Father than this. They paint a picture of a revengeful, unforgiving, judgmental, and hateful God who loves only those who love Him. They paint a picture of a God who is not able to redeem His own children but will send the majority of them to a burning fire forever because they did not obey Him. They paint a picture of a God who is unable to inspire His own children and they ignore such scriptures as John 3:16,

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved."

 

and Titus 2:11,

 

" For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. 

 

and 1 John 2:1-2,

 

"And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous:    And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world." 

 

and in John 6:24 just to mention a few.

 

"No man can come to me, except the Father which has sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day." 

 

What can I say to you to get you to understand first of all that God is the Father of all spirits. Numbers 16:22,

 

"And they fell upon their faces, and said, O God, the God of the spirits of all flesh, shall one man sin, and wilt thou be wroth with all the congregation?"

 

If God is the Father of all flesh, then the seed of God is in every man. We are all children of God and as such are the object of His affection. Only God can draw a man to Jesus and if He does not do this then there is nothing we can do to cause that man to come to Jesus. I know this is not what you have been taught but open your eyes and listen to what the word of the Lord says in John 16:7-11,

 

"It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you. And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: Of sin, because they believe not on me; Of righteousness, because I go to my Father, and you see me no more;  Of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged." 

 

I think that you would agree with me that if no man can come to the Jesus unless he is drawn by His Father then God is not drawing all men unto Himself in this age that we live in. I know that you have been taught to believe that we must be soul winners for Jesus. Preachers have constantly ask us how many souls we have saved. Well, the answer to that question is NONE! That is not our goal in life. It is our responsibility to preach the gospel not to save souls. Paul said in 1 Cor. 1:20-25,

 

"Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?    For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.    For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom:    But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness;    But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God, and the wisdom of God.    Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men." 

 

The point I am making to you is that our Father did not leave His success up to men to bring it about but rather choose to anoint men and women to preach His gospel to all the nations and through this spoken gospel He would draw by His Spirit those who choose to believe His word. There will come a time, perhaps not in this age that we are living in, when every knee will bow and confess that Jesus is Lord.

 

Paul said in Rom. 14:11,

 

" For it is written, As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God."   

 

What shall they confess? Paul said in Phil. 2:9-11,

 

"Wherefore God also has highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name:    That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth;    And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."

 

You may never see this come to pass while in this fleshly body but it will come to pass and you shall be a witness of it happening. God is going to reconcile all things back to Himself. Paul said in Col. 1:19-22,

 

"For it pleased the Father that in him should all fullness dwell;    And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven.    And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled    In the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight!"

 

Peter said in Acts 3:20-21,

 

"And he shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you:    Whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God has spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began."

 

There is coming a day in which the Lord shall restore all of His creation back to the order that they were created in. As I said before, this may not come in this age that we are living in but there are ages to follow and there will come a time in which every knee will bow and confess that Jesus is Lord!!