Taking God at his word

I want to share today about the wonderful thing that God has given us to reveal his truth and to reveal his promises to us. It is called the Bible. The Bible is such a rich book full of many great wonderful things that we cannot know in a lifetime. The Bible has been around for many years and has been translated from language to language. Their is such a deep history in it and many Bible teachers throughout the ages have tried to learn more from its depth by studying and revealing so many aspects of it. When I was younger I always use to read things to see how fast I could read it. I read things to learn more and more things about something or to know more than someone else. My attitude sometimes is still the same of the Bible I look at those who can quote scripture and who can tell me all these wonderful things and I'm like I want that. Little did I know it led me to realize how little I knew about the Bible. The promises of God were thrown out for depth and thrown out for knowing more of the bible and quoting this verse and that verse. My pride has led me to realize how much I have allowed myself to be distracted by those things then rather allow the promises of God into my heart.
I am going through a season of realizing that the promises of God and the understanding he has given me in his word allow me to be free from anything else. The law was fulfilled in Christ Jesus. The law was broken when the law hung him on the cross and he overcame because he was innocent. He died for those he could only see in his heart and for you and me. He fulfilled the law meaning that the requirements were met by him. He was perfect without blame in all of the laws. It allows you and me to enter into the kingdom of God without doing anything but believing in that promise. He died and he rose again to restore us to a perfect place in Christ. Wait!? What, you mean all those times I needed to repent and wail and weep at the altar? Ya that is right you are perfect because you believed in God, that he sent his perfect sacrifice to take our place. You mean that I don't have to follow the law that God gave in the Bible? The law was revealed to us by Moses many moons ago and passed down to reveal sin. Yes that is right they never had the Bible such a great gift to understand all these great benefits we have. BENEFITS!? hold on hold on that sounds like a bad relationship to me, your in it for Benefits!? No, God freely has given us his benefits with the relationship. 
God revealed sin by the law, the Pharisees and Saducees thought that the law was what got them right with God. Wrong, the promise was already in front of them, no man could fulfill the law. The Old Testament was full of those who were waiting on the promises of the coming Messiah but yet took actions and used the benefits of Jesus in the Old Testament. Those who knew God or were after his heart(King David) progressed years beyond his time. His knowledge of God allowed him to understand the full picture. His many prophecies concerning the coming and who he was tell us this story. The Law keepers then were out to lunch in their assumptions of scripture. They were trying to earn their way to heaven on their own works. We grow in societies where we need to go to work to earn. We need to go do this to earn this. We often still want our works to get what we want. Our works are not bad, but they are not required any more. It is the acknowledgment of sin and the understanding that God loves the world that he frees us from trying to fulfill it on our own. We our changed by his goodness because lets face it. A man died for you and me, for man and woman alike. I don't know many who would do that today. It scares me to even think about that. To allow us to be right with God and be like him. Wait, be like him no no no that doesn't come until after. I am like Christ because he is in me. What!? You can't say that!? If Christ lives in me, then the hope of all glory is in me. Colossians 1:27. Well that can't be right!? Your not perfect!? I don't have to be perfect I just have to receive his love and respond and accept it. 
God paid the price so that we are free. His grace surpasses our understanding so often that we can't wrap are minds around it. We don't have to do anything. The truth has set you free but if the truth is just Jesus then you are missing out. He is the word! The living and active word when we believe the word, we believe Jesus and Jesus is looking right at us in the promises. Maybe it sounds to good to be true and hard to grasp and many scripture are saying this can't be right can it. It's that easy!? The work is finished on the cross, he paid for our sins 2000 years ago and he continues to pay the price today, tomorrow and forever more. Nothing will stop it. Repenting is to change your thinking, renew your mind. Confess your sins that is all we need to do and to understand that he loves us the same as he did before. Hebrews 8:12 says he forgives our wickedness and doesn't remember them no more. Wait what!? again, Ya that is right if your reminded of your sins that is not God. Its the act of confessing them is the only requirement he asks. Condemnation is not God, reminding is not God. Ya so what happens when that thought comes. You thank God he has made you pure and you stand on truth. That is how important truth is, and the word is. That we know who we are in Christ that we our the righteousness from God by faith in Jesus Christ in whom we believe (Romans 3:22) If we believe in Christ Jesus we are right with God, no matter what we do. 
When we understand this goodness that we our the image of God and we look at him and understand how he looks at us and how much he values us and loves us then we raise the bar for who we are. Sin cannot hold us down, when we look at what we shouldn't do we become what we don't want to become. When we look at God we become like him because we our looking at him. Don't allow Satan to remind you or look at the law and say I have to do this and that, because it is already fulfilled. Look at the hope of all glory and realize that you our the hope of God's glory. What we fell short of he placed in us so that we would never depart from it again. God bless you


Alvin

Opinions hurt

I want to tell you about an encounter I had about a week ago in the mall. I was just fresh from doing street evangelism and ministry on the coast of Canada. I was still looking for opportunities to minister to people and quite sensitive spiritually speaking to the things around me. As I went into the book store and started looking at bibles and the Christian section I noticed a man looking at the New Age section next to me. I didn't think much of it but then I started to discern spiritually a darkness or heaviness in the realm around me. I then started to receive knowledge about this man as I opened my ears to God I heard the word betrayal in my spirit. I then kind of looked at what he was looking at and felt like he was seeking something on a lost relationship. My eyes then glanced immediately to his ring finger. Their was no ring, their was a young boy that came over to him later and I assumed it was his son. As I begin to feel things out and wondering how I should approach him I felt a check and didn't really know what to do with it. It caused me to withdraw from that part and slowly walk somewhere else in the book store. I started praying for him and praying for those things that I felt and then I didn't know whether or not if I should approach him. Now in my mind I felt he was betrayed by someone a partner and that he was married at one time. I did not actually approach this man but I could tell what was going on inside me wanted out. As I retreated to a safe distance I then decided to leave the store and carry on my way. It was a weird feeling for me to leave him as it was because I felt the hurt and pain he was going through but yet I just couldn't approach him on the inside something wasn't right. I ended up leaving and felt somewhat out of the ordinary about the whole experience because their was something more that wasn't being said. 
I then carried on and kind of left it in the back of my mind and I was sitting in the movie theater watching a movie. My heart was still hungry for God and as I sat in the middle of the movie and a good hour in the holy spirit started gave me knowledge on the events of what just happened. 

Isaiah 11:3 - He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes or decide by what he hears with his ears ...

I had been praying this verse over myself for quite some time and I went back to it often in my mind from time to time. God expounded on how I formed an opinion that he was married and judged by what I saw with my eyes. In this case if I would have approached him and told him the words of knowledge i had "thought" I had received I could have made a bad name for "my" God. I know that he is his own defender but my flesh and misrepresentation of him would have led to more roads or whatever the case it could have turned out just fine. Either way it is a reminder to those who move in the prophetic and not even that but what goes into your ear must not be what forms in your mind as an opinion that is unmovable. Or by what you see with your eyes because then the fact is its hard to love those that we see if we form opinions. One of the greatest keys to hearing from God is not thinking. Sounds funny but when we allow ourselves to put the good in our minds and Love the Lord god with all your heart mind and soul it establishes honor and allows God to speak freely in our minds. Opinions also get in the way of hearing and operating in a ministry spirit because it holds back Gods eyes and how he views those people. We are human and Jesus did not judge by what he saw or by what he heard. We know that he only did what he saw his father doing and only spoke as his father did in heaven. 
This is giving up your will and your life this is the cross Christ took to glorify his father. Speak life and not death our tongues our powerful and when we can steward our tongues and mouths and weigh our thoughts we show God that we our ready to receive his word for others. 


God Bless you 

Alvin