Jesus = Love

Compromise.

Tue, 05 Jun 2012 18:34:25 -0400

This is gonna be a short’un.

Never compromise who you are for the sake of acceptance. Once we compromise enough, we lose sight of who we are, throwing our own true identity off. And when that happens, we become insecure about who we are and we try to live up to standards that we know we aren’t able to. But once you stand true in who you really are, you will be secure. of course there will be things you will want to work on, but you will be secure because God says you are. It’s just like the golden rule of Jesus: Love others as yourself.” But if you don’t know who you are, how are you able to love others? If you don’t grasp a reality of how God sees you, how will you see others like that?

Never compromise who you are for the sake of acceptance.

ilovemyself323: LIGHT <3

Tue, 15 May 2012 00:18:53 -0400

ilovemyself323:

LIGHT <3

Confession & Forgiveness.

Wed, 09 May 2012 23:54:00 -0400

Confession is a big part of the Christian life. If you pray the magical prayer and confess your sins, you are forgiven. But a lot of the churches I have been to taught me that we have to confess daily to keep a strong relationship with God. Basically, confess after every single sin you commit, and they make it sound like we will lose our salvation if you don’t, which isn’t the case.

Confession has nothing to do with your security in your relationship with Christ whatsoever. But once you start seeking the face and the mysteries of Christ, then confession will come second nature. But a lot of people get it twisted when Satan whispers into their ears saying, “Confess, or you aren’t a child of God.” He is a queer like that, and don’t fall into the trap that he lays out. Once a child, always a child. But a true confession from a true follower of God’s heart is not necessarily telling God what he did wrong, but telling the sin that it is no longer apart of him. That has helped me out a lot.

But what about forgiveness? A lot of the church goers teach that we should ask for forgiveness daily, but what does that benefit? I’m not rebuking their teaching, but think about this. Constantly asking for forgiveness over and over is like asking Christ to get back on the cross. He took away the sin of the world so that we could walk in his forgiveness and finished work. I have had many a conversation about the good ole’ one time forgiveness deal, and one even gave me a hypothetical situation to paint a picture.

Two men are in a church. One says that he believes in the one time forgiveness, and the other says that he does not. The forgiven man asks why, and the “unforgiven man” replies “because I have leaks.”

When we are filled with the holy spirit, from top to bottom, but if we have leaks, it sounds to me that the holy spirit would leak right out of him, leaving nothing to fill him up. Once we realize we are forgiven, and once the “old man” dies, we can live an absolutely, positively FREE life. Yes, you will face temptation, but once you live freely, you can understand that the temptation that you’re seeing is actually just a hologram of what you were and not who you are now, a beautiful child of God and a heir to the kingdom. Yes, it is very important to confess, but you aren’t going to lose your relationship with Christ over not confessing it.

Here is an example: for Christmas, I get a Wii with all the Mario games. It’s amazing! But later that day, I ask my dad if he can buy me a Wii. Dad looks at me with a confused look and says, “Huh? You already have one. Play it!” Kind of a stupid example, but instead of asking for something that has already been given to us, thank him for it and use it to your advantage of the advancement of God’s kingdom.

Christ is a groom and we (the church and individual people) are the bride. Once we enter that holy matrimony, we’re together forever. Once we slip up, it’s not a matter of asking for forgiveness, but thanking him for the forgiveness that he has provided, and tell that stumbling block that it is no longer apart of you, and live in perfect harmony with your spouse. I’ve been married to Jesus now for about six months now, and I’ve learned, like in any other relationship, instead of obeying commands of God as a slave, we do it because we love him and want to make him happy. If we do that, he will bless you out the wazzoo. He just wants you to rest in him and be with him like a husband and a wife want to be with each other.

So if we are forgiven, there is no real point to sin. Yes, we will stumble and fall, but when we do we can still cling to the cross spotless as he saw you before. In Hebrews 10:17 it says that God will remember your sin no more. Then it says in 18 that “Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin. So walk in his freedom and forgiveness! He wants you to! Christ took away the sin, and God forgave you of your sin once you received his awesome gift, so walk in perfect harmony with Christ, doing what he says out of love and walking with him boldly, without flaw, and loving others that desperately need it but don’t get it from this world.

Yeah so forgiveness is pretty cool.

Prayer.

Tue, 08 May 2012 23:25:08 -0400

Another churchy word that sort of gets old after a while, if we aren’t using it correctly. But if we learn to pray correctly, it’s a night and day difference.

Prayer is the most powerful thing we can do as Christians besides love. With the victory and power and love that we have in Christ, we are able to do a lot more than we think is possible. What is better than talking to the creator about your day?

I’m sure a lot of people have heard of Phil Inman’s incident this past Christmas, but for those who don’t, I’ll explain. He was in a convenient store stocking shelves for Brims potato chips. He had a heart attack and was rushed to the hospital. His main artery was 100% clogged, and there was no way that he was suppose to make it out alive. If you know my uncle, you know that everyone knows and loves him. EVERYONE. I had texts from unrecognizable numbers in the wee hours, asking if he was okay. Anyway, with a lot of prayer and declaring life into him, he was healed by the saving grace of the Father, and is now at a desk at Brims office while going to therapy 3 days a week.

A lot of the time we can pray for something small and we have faith that it will happen because of the size of the problem. But when a loved one has cancer or a terrible illness, we start to pray for it to go away out of fear of her dying, and wonder why it was so ineffective if they do pass. Did I not say enough? Did God not hear me? When praying for a death defying illness, a lot of the time, we think that we have to get a lot more people to pray for them, because they are praying out of fear of the loved one dying, putting that illness as a cap on the limits on God. But when we pray for someone who has cancer or a surgery, pray for it knowing that God has given us his power to heal and love and that he is going to be glorified regardless.

I have seen a lot of things happen when people pray through love. I’ve healed my mom, my friend has had his toes smashed into his feet ever since he was a kid, but my friend prayed for them and they stretched out, we’ve healed our friend of shingles, etc. It’s crazy what you can do through prayer. And when you pray, make it a love driven prayer, and not a fear driven prayer. Know that God can heal the cancer just as easily as a rash. It’s tremendous!

Check out Joshua in chapter ten when he commanded the sun to stand still so that the Israelite army could win the war. And it did. The whole sun stopped for 12 hours and they won. That was old covenant! We live in the new covenant where we possess so much more power than those of the old testament through the blood of Jesus! So we have the power to love, heal, and conquer! So when we pray, we need to know our identity in Christ, know what he is capable of, and let him do his thing.

It also helps to come to God without a to do list. How would you like it if your friend called you and asked you for favor upon favor, doesn’t give you any time to talk, and hangs up expecting you to do everything he asks. The Christian life isn’t about us. When we come to Christ, we come to be renewed and made new. We need to come to him asking for a to do list instead of giving one. And once you are in the will of God, it’s pretty friggin’ sweet to say the least. Find a quiet place and pray and meditate on Christ and ask him what he wants you to do. And just be the bride that Jesus, the groom, died for to be with you. He just wants to be with you! and it says in Romans 8:37-39 that there is neither height or depth that can separate us from God, and it’s really cool that he didn’t put a limit on how high or how deep.

In conclusion, pray a love driven prayer to God and not a fear driven prayer, and just rest in the fact that God calls you his son.

Stay Classy.

Breaking Bad Habits.

Tue, 08 May 2012 00:54:00 -0400

Obviously if you’ve grown up in church, you’ve heard this word a lot. There are some things I have learned over the past couple of months about temptation that really rocked my world.

Temptation: The act of being allured or enticed to do something often immoral.

It is everywhere; we cannot escape it. We are tempted every single day. And of course, we’ve all heard the saying “Temptation isn’t sin.” It’s true- Cliche, but true. But I once was in this vicious cycle of being tempted and sinning, over and over and over, and I didn’t think that there was any way to break the curse. But I finally broke it after watching a video about it

Joseph Prince, a very well known speaker, talks about breaking sin, and here is the exact cycle that we go through.

We are tempted. There is something that catches our eye and takes it off of Jesus. A lot of people think that the next step to the cycle is sin, but there is something in-between the two.
We have something called Confidence in the flesh. This is where we think we can handle it on our own. It isn’t good to have this confidence in the flesh just as we shouldn’t have confidence in a bull not to break anything in a China shop.
We sin. Because we thought as humans that we could handle it, we slipped into the trap.
After sinning, we feel guilty. I cannot tell you how many times I have continued in my addictions and have felt guilty about doing the very thing I wasn’t created for.
We make new resolutions. We tell ourselves that we will not touch or even look at the opposite sex, or not even touching weed ever again, or whatever you struggle with. With these resolutions in mind, we constantly think about not feeding your addiction, which means that the very thing that we tell ourselves that we won’t associate with is in our mind.

Whenever we make new resolutions, we put ourselves “under law.” All through Romans, I and II Corinthians, Galatians, and a few other books, it says that “Law gives power to sin.” That means that when we look at what we aren’t suppose to do, what we aren’t suppose to do is always on our minds, which ultimately leads to sin.

Let’s put this theory to the test. Don’t think of Purple elephants. See what I did there? It says all throughout the bible that Jesus became sin and died. When he died, the sin that had separated us from God is gone. When we get saved, we die to ourselves and come alive in Christ. Therefore, we divorced the law that gave sin it’s power, married Christ, and when we do that he sews what he wants you to do (or not do) on your heart; so whatever you don’t have peace about is probably the Holy Spirit saying “Seriously bro?” And we don’t have to be bound by the list of rules that so many turn off of Christianity by. It’s a whole lot easier to be free in Christ if we don’t abide by a rule book. Honestly, there is no love in a rulebook.

It also says in Romans that we have so much power in Christ that it is hard to even get a glimpse of it. We have the power to not sin. Romans 6:14 says “For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.”

To conclude, the next time you are tempted, do not try to fight it-flee it! And look at God’s face instead of a rule book, and he will tell you what to do and not to do, since he has sown the perfect law on your heart.

#likeabau5

The Holy Spirit.

Fri, 04 May 2012 19:26:00 -0400

Greetings.

I live in the bible belt where there is a baptist church on every single corner. And a lot of the ones that I have been to is very stand offish to the whole spiritual realm. But it says all throughout the bible about the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. God is the Father, Jesus is the Son, and we possess the Holy Spirit through the first two. I do understand why churches that want to keep members don’t speak too much on the subject, but if you are a devout follower of Christ, you have the holy spirit.

The reason the people i have talked to over the course of time about the spirit, spiritual gifts, etc. are very stand offish about it is because of the fact that a lot of people use the spiritual gifts to put them on a pedestal instead of God. I agree 1,000% with that statement that there are people like that. But once we find our identity in Christ, and once we understand that God is 0% theological and 100% supernatural, we can begin to open our eyes to the individual gifts of the spirit that God has given us.

What are some of those spiritual gifts? I’m glad you asked.

There are a lot, so I’ll just name off a few: Healing, wisdom, knowledge, discerning between holy and evil spirits, prophesy, tongues, etc. (I Cor. 14)

We need to understand before we realize our gift that the Christian life is NOT about us. The Christian life that we live is to worship the Father that is now in perfect communion with His own children as we were in Adam and Eve’s time. And our duty is to make disciples, and for them to make disciples, and for them to make disciples, and get people around the world that there is so much than the world tells you what to live for. It’s incredible. So once we get that down, it’s time to figure out your spiritual gift. Just worship God, find a quiet place like it says in Mark 5 and pray about. These gifts aren’t for you to receive, but for you to bless others with. And trust me, it blessed the crap out of me when someone prophesied over me.

I can’t state it enough that these gifts weren’t given to you to keep to yourself, but to bless others with. my mom was on the couch one night in my living room and she was screaming at a sharp pain in her foot. Like Jesus, I went to her and declared healing over her foot, and it worked. She couldn’t even touch it, but after Christ’s love entered into her foot, it healed. Not because I’m an awesome person in Christ, but because Christ is awesome through me.

Once you find your spiritual gift, work it/them out regularly so that you can bless people. Do not use it to your own advantage, but to Christ’s.

One last thing. If you are eager to find a spiritual gift but God hasn’t revealed it to you yet, don’t try to rush Him. God’s timing is perfect. Just worship Him and seek His glorious, gracious face and they will come. And even if you don’t find yours after years of prayer and worship, don’t get discouraged! You are not any less loved by God because you don’t have a spiritual gift, and God has a whole lot in store for you if you seek Him.

Yeahhhhh.

Love.

Fri, 04 May 2012 16:30:00 -0400

Christ, as I stated in my previous blog, is the ultimate source of everything love, and we cannot show love to others if we haven’t received the love of the father ourselves. Instead of showing others His mighty grace and sufficient love, we reflect it off of the love that we possess.

I was worshiping in my room last night and The Lord gave me a vision. A vision almost too good for words. But before I fill you in on what I saw, I will give you some brief history. I was always taught that I was suppose to tell people about God and His own love, but anyone I was bold enough to tell would nine times out of ten say “No thank you.” I didn’t understand why the track I gave them didn’t work. But on November 11th, I joined a group of good looking guys and girls and each one of those people understands God’s love so well that I was almost incapable of apprehending any of it. So love is a pretty big deal.

Back to the vision. Dan Mohlor said that we shouldn’t bring people to the Lord, but give them the Lord. As my eyes were closed, I pictured me in heaven with millions of people and in the middle was a giant figure with a face too bright for sight, and I couldn’t help but drop to my knees and bow. But then an earth quake (or should I say heaven quake) erupted and the floor of heaven caved in and we all including God, fell through and landed on earth. As soon as we landed on the earth, I saw people sprinting across earth and in about 5 seconds the earth was solid white and pure.

I was perplexed at the idea, but I came to think of it and there was a lot of truth in that vision. We need to bring Christ to earth, or be Christ, and just love others for who they are and show them what agape love is, as opposed to human love.

In the Garden of Edan, Adam and Eve had the ultimate source of love watching over them 24/7. They were just given the entire earth to play in and worship God. But after the fall of man, the went from receiving love to needing love. Human love is basically asking for love in return, for instance, “I love you, do you love me back?” and God gave and gave without expecting anything in return. I mean, he is the source of all love. And once Christ died for all of us, we can go back to that receiving love that Adam and Eve had, and we can love the lost and/or other Christians without expecting any love in return. We just have to take off our goggles and put on our Jesus Goggles. Once we receive the love that God so desperately wants to cloth you in, we cannot help but love others. Paul talks about all the spiritual gifts: knowledge, tongues, prophesy, healing, etc. but if we don’t do it out of our nature, which is love, we really don’t gain a thing.

In conclusion, don’t try to love others as Christ loved us. Just love Christ and ask him for those Jesus Goggles and if you are truly desiring it, He will give it to you. Because it says Christ loved us first.

Boom.

I Am as He is.

Fri, 04 May 2012 01:59:00 -0400

Congratulations. You are reading my very first blog on here. Get up and go give someone nearby a solid, crisp, loud high five because this right here deserves it. Neat-o.

This title has been heard by many church goers, but if you really think about it, how many actually apply it to their lives? Normal, everyday church goers hear a statement like this and think to themselves, “Wow. That’s something.” But what does this statement truly mean? For as long as I can remember, I would be in church every time the doors would be open, Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night for youth night. It was good that I was there,and it was fun, don’t get me wrong, but no one really taught me what I needed to know. We would have a speaker that would either scare you out of hell or guilt you into heaven, and tell us that we are wrong, or the famous “The positions for silent Christians are filled.” I appreciate the cause, and I’m not rebuking the church or any of the authorities, but our identity in Christ is the most basic, yet most important thing that we should know, and for some reason the church doesn’t speak about that as much as they need to.

Identity: Condition or character as to who a person is.

Here’s a hypothetical example: Let’s say my friend wants me to go into a business with him and sell protein shakes. I get really excited, but he then drills me about how many people I have gotten on my first day. Being new to the product and not even trying a single shake myself for a personal testimony, and him telling me to go without telling me anything about the product that I am selling is very confusing in my part. The same rule applies with our identity. We need to know first who God is (The source of all love and hope for all things tangible), who Christ is (The son of God- The sacrifice that God gave to restore the brokenness between man and God; He is our “Medium”) and lastly, our part (because of the finished work of Christ dying on the cross to take our sins completely away, we are now in perfect communion with God as Adam and Eve were before they ate the fruit) before we go out and further His Kingdom by telling others about His Redeeming grace.

Our identity in Christ should be what we desire. Knowing that we are righteous, blameless, and holy before the very creator of the universe because of the living sacrifice manifested through us is the best way to radiate Christ. Once I came to the realization that God sees me as perfect because of Christ in me, my perspective on everything changed; I’m freaking loved by the creator! It took me 18 years to learn who I am in Christ. There is no better feeling. But if I want to continue into this wonderful marriage with Jesus, I have to throw away my own opinion and “Die to self,” if you will. And once your old sinful mind is out of the picture all is left for Christ’s desires. Once we put on these Jesus Goggles, we can look at discipleship and The Great Commission as a desire more than a guilt ridden command from a youth pastor. We look at the solution (the finished work) and not so much at the problem.

Now, back to the title. As I previously stated, we are viewed as perfect in God’s eyes when we have Christ in us, so there is no need to feel as if you aren’t worthy because good news: you’re not. But once you say the words “I do,” you are worth it in God’s eyes. All this being said, if you are one of God’s children, then who cares what people say about you or what Satan throws at you to get distracted because you belong to Christ. Nothing can ever separate you from the love of the Father.

In conclusion, Christ is righteous, blameless, perfect, and everything else, and if Christ is in us and God sees those attributes, then we should walk with a humble righteousness, knowing, receiving, and reflecting God so that others can see who He is. Stop being guilty and start being righteous.

Being righteous is pretty sweet. Ayyeeoo.