I love to express what I feel called to say. Writing helps me to open up my heart and do that. I hope that what I write helps you in some way. I hope it makes you think, encourages you, or inspires you. If it challenges you or if you disagree, I hope you know that I respect your right to have a different point of view.
JESUS Talks are much better than TED Talks or any other kind of talks that you can ever hear! He says: “My sheep listen to My voice; I know them, and they follow Me.” (John 10:27) Christ’s words are pain healers and chain breakers! Tune in now.
Listen to JESUS Talks. Hear Him speak To your heart. Just one word That’s been heard Will break chains And heal pains. What Christ says Within you Has the power To shower You with peace. Hear Him now. Wow! Wow! Wow!
If you’re still breathing Jesus wants you to be more and more aware of His presence. (Matthew 11:28-29) He wants you to continually listen to and obey Him so that you can be closer to Him heart-to-heart. That’s why the Bible tells Christians to, “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.” (James 4:8) Refuse to settle into the religious routine of comfortable Christianity. In every situation make it your first priority to fully surrender your life and your will to the inner Kingship of Jesus and the internal government of God. (Matthew 6:33)
Jesus through God the Holy Spirit wants to be the functioning Head of His body. Let Christ be the literal ruling and reigning King, the Lord, the absolute Master in your life and in every church! Don’t treat Him like a mere figurehead! When a program and a time frame control the worship agenda, there’s not much room for Jesus as God the Holy Spirit to take the lead.
When Christians humbly open their heart to one another they discover amazing unity! There’s a supernatural heart-to-heart unity of the Spirit among Christ-followers that can be lost if not carefully maintained. Our natural desires that the Bible calls “the flesh” (Galatians 5:19-21) can easily disrupt, interrupt, and destruct that Spirit-given unity.
The Bible tells us to make every effort to preserve the beautiful inner unity of the Spirit. (Ephesians 4:3) We Christians haven’t obeyed that Scripture very well. Instead, we have shattered our unity into hundreds of thousands of fully independent churches and denominations worldwide. How can we begin to remedy that colossal divisiveness in Christianity?
If Christ is in you, (Colossians 1:27) He wants you to recognize and live out your Spirit-produced unity with all other Christ-carriers. To do so, keep His living water (John 7:38-39) stirred up within you. (2 Timothy 1:6) Be careful not to stop His inner flowing. (1 Thessalonians 5:19) Be humble, gentle, and lovingly patient with people. (Ephesians 4:2) Listen to and obey (John 14:15) Christ’s voice. (John 10:27) Always let Him lead you (Romans 8:14) and teach you (1 John 2:27) from within. Walk in love just as Christ loved us (Ephesians 5:1-2) and even love your enemies. (Matthew 5:44)
God doesn’t want His Holy Spirit to be moved aside. (Romans 8:14) The divisiveness of institutional churches has done just that. When a church doesn’t freely welcome the Holy Spirit’s direct leadership in a Christian gathering, the Spirit is quenched. (1 Thessalonians 5:19)
Having begun a church service in the Spirit with “worship in Spirit and in truth” (John 4:24)) churches too often shift into the flesh (Galatians 3:3) — leaning on a preacher’s own understanding (Proverbs 3:5) to prepare a programmed talk about a religious topic. Having begun in the Spirit they seek to go forward by the flesh.
I believe that there are things that churches can do to be more united and more effective disciple makers. (Ephesians 3:20) We are far from our maximum potential! But when I make suggestions based on my studies of Scripture many Christians don’t want to hear them.
I don’t see the one man over a church type of leadership in the New Testament. I see it in the Old Testament but not the new. In the New Testament leadership is plural — elders, bishops (which literally means overseers like football officials), apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers. They are all plural. The risen Jesus is the only person that Scripture says can be the Head of a church or gathering of the body of Christ. However, toward the end of the first century, one man headship of churches and groups of churches began to replace the NT model of plural leadership that oversaw church meetings as the Spirit led them.
Let me ask you a question. If Jesus is really risen from the dead and present and active in the world today as the Holy Spirit, why isn’t He capable of being the literal Head of a church and not just a figurehead shoved to the side by human leadership? Christians can disagree about what the Bible is saying in 1 Corinthians 14:26, but if they let a congregation all consistently listen to the Spirit and then say or do what He tells them to, they will be amazed by the spiritual fruit they see in peoples’ lives.
Too many churches treat the Bible like a formal textbook when it is really a love letter from God to you. Let the Bible speak for itself! Don’t just hear about it through a preacher. Open your heart to the Bible and read it like a love letter, not like a textbook!
Jesus didn’t Need a screen For His message To be heard And be seen By the hearts Of large crowds Of people Because He spoke Spirit-prompted words That awoke Spiritual life And unity. Let Christ in you Prompt you to speak Words directly From His Spirit Not from your own Understanding.
True joy comes from more than food, drink, entertainment, and self-medication. Life is more than food and the body more than clothes. (Matthew 6:25) Christians are supposed to break the human cycle of looking at and depending on the things that are seen. Instead, we are called to look at and rely on the things that are unseen. (2 Corinthians 4:18) Worry is worthless. Jesus wants us to cast it aside and depend on Him throughout each day. (Matthew 6:31-34)
Let King Jesus wipeout your worry! Continually surrender your life and your will to the moment-by-moment inner government of Christ and His Kingdom. (Colossians 1:27) Train yourself to deny yourself (Luke 9:23) and to always be led by God the Holy Spirit. (Romans 814) Build your life on the everlasting Rock of King Jesus, not on the temporary shifting sand of human kingdoms, governments, or nations. (Matthew 7:24)
Let Jesus touch your heart every day. Stay consciously connected to His presence. Let Jesus be your interior decorator. Be still and get to know the wonderful presence of God the Son living and working within you. (Psalm 35:10 and Colossians 1:27)
Walk about step by step with Jesus as you live your daily life. It’s not enough just to hear a talk about Jesus once a week. Don’t neglect to frequently meet with and open your heart to the gathered body of Christ. (Hebrews 10:25 and 1 Corinthians 14:26)
Jesus Christ! His name remains in Christmas and Christianity, but He is mostly ignored. Too bad . . . Jesus is alive, present, amazing, and available to live in you and lead you to great joy! To experience that joy open your heart more and more to Jesus and to the gathered body of Christ. Google: The Joy of Early Christianity.
Dominating, controlling, and monopolizing leadership has tended to bore Christians with lazy lectures. (Church leaders even joke about people sleeping in church.) Pastors far too often turn church members into a passive audience and refuse to actively train, empower, and release them in hands-on discipleship and in hearing and obeying God the Holy Spirit throughout each day. (Ephesians 4:11-13) Too many pastors have turned churches into “a form of godliness but denying the power thereof.” Paul says, “from such turn away.” (2 Timothy 3:5) Paul says that when Christians come together, they all should be free to speak up in the meeting. (1 Corinthians 14:26) Let’s get back to what the Bible says.
When churches are in such a sad state of condition that they trust the state and its politics to make the culture Christian that is a bad state of affairs. There’s no such thing as cruel Christianity. When religion becomes cruel, it’s no longer Christianity.
Sermon-hearing is a very poor substitute for God’s presence. No one can preach you into inner peace. It only comes from surrendering to God’s presence. Accept no substitute for the actual presence of the living God.
Peace is the fruit God’s presence. (Galatians 5:22-23) Jesus put it this way: “Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28)
Moses knew something that most Christians today don’t know — God’s presence is essential! Moses said to God: “If Your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. How will anyone know that You are pleased with me and with Your people unless You go with us? What else will distinguish me and Your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?” (Exodus 33:15-16) God didn’t just give Moses and the children of Israel the Ten Commandments. He gave them His presence — cloud by day and fire by night. (Exodus 13:21)
Moses said to God: “Show me Your glory,” (Exodus 33:18) and God did! Paul declared that “the ministry of the Spirit” is even more glorious than the glory that Moses experienced! He said that Christ-followers can now behold the Lord’s glory and be “transformed into His image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.” (2 Corinthians 3:7-18)
Jesus demonstrates His presence (Matthew 28:20) in the world today in and through the Person of God the Holy Spirit. When we ignore the direct inner leading of the Spirit, (Romans 8:14) we humans tend to hide behind religion while our hearts and actions wander far from God’s presence (Titus 1:16) and our lives fill with anxiety. (Philippians 4:6-7)
God never intended for preaching to replace His presence! Preaching is supposed to announce and demonstrate the presence of God, not to replace it. (1 Corinthians 2:4-5)
Church attendance without ongoing heart-to-heart interaction and intimacy with Jesus is like being married but your only contact with your mate is to hear a Sunday morning lecture about your spouse. That wouldn’t be much of a marriage.
Can a person be a Christian and not be a Spirit-led disciple of Jesus? The Bible doesn’t present that as an option.
Where there’s little or no heart-to-heart sharing and interaction people aren’t truly “assembled together.” (Hebrews 10:25) No amount of sermon hearing can make a Spirit-led disciple. That requires moment by moment surrender and obedience to the presence of the risen Jesus.
History shows that the concept of “God and Country” often leads to “might makes right” and produces many cruel and tragic events. Faith and politics don’t have a great track record of producing peace and love and the other fruit of the Holy Spirit.
The Assyrians invaded Israel — the 10 northern tribes of the children of Abraham. (2 Kings 17) They hauled them off and scattered them across their empire where they were inbred with other people groups and were lost as a distinct ethnicity. They are known as the 10 lost tribes of Isreal.
Later the nation of Judah was invaded by Babylon and taken into captivity for 70 years, however, they mostly stayed separate from other people groups and kept their identity as children of Abraham. After 70 years many of them returned to Jerusalem and reestablished the nation of Judea which was eventually conquered by Rome. Jesus was born in Bethlehem in the Roman province of Judea. (Micah 5:2) Through Jesus, those who have faith are now considered to be the children of Abraham. (Galatians 3:7)
Is the phrase “God and Country” accurate? Does God still have special countries? God tried working with a country once. He did miracles among them. He gave them His laws. He revealed Himself to them in many supernatural ways. God called His chosen country Israel to follow and obey Him. But instead of doing what God required they mainly followed human leaders and each individual did whatever they personally desired. They eventually split into two different countries — Israel and Judah.
Even when it spit in two, God didn’t want to give up on the one nation He had called to be His own. He sent many prophets to them to call them back to Himself. He gave them many opportunities to follow and obey Him. Still, they mostly ignored Him and did whatever they wanted, including many evil things.
So, God looked beyond human nations with their physical borders. He decided to establish His own kingdom as one to rule and govern people from within themselves — the kingdom of God. (Romans 14:17) In order to build His invisible interior (Luke 17:20-21) kingdom, God needed human beings who would allow themselves to be set free from their bondage to the forces and presence of evil. (John 8:32)
To do that, God the Word (John 1:1) took on human flesh (John 1:14) and became a human being. As many as received Him to them He gave the power to become sons of God (John 1:12) and to become the building blocks — the “living stones” (1 Peter 2:5) — in His kingdom’s inner government of God.
The invisible kingdom of God is made up of people from all nations, (Matthew 28:19) tribes, peoples, and languages (Revelation 7:9) who are directly led from deep inside by God the Holy Spirit. (Romans 8:14) Life’s most important question is are you a citizen of the invisible interior kingdom of God? (Colossians 1:13)
So, what about other nations — all of the visible nations that have mere human leaders? God has given them authority to keep peace and order (Romans 13:1-2) so that His invisible kingdom can be proclaimed, spread, and demonstrated through the radically transformed thoughts, words, and behaviors of the people who have become children of God.
And what about Israel? God still loves Israel. Jesus sent (and continues to send) His disciples to go and make more disciples for the kingdom of God out of (from) all nations. (Matthew 28:20) The phrase “all nations” includes Israel.
I grew up hearing about “God and Country.” It was a Boy Scout medal. I earned every major rank, medal, and badge in the Boy Scouts except for “God and Country.” Why?
Even as a young boy and then as a teenager, the phrase “God and Country” never sounded right to me. I wasn’t a Christian then, but I did believe in some sort of Creator. It always sounded crazy to try to put a temporary human country on the same level as the eternal Almighty God. I just couldn’t do it, so I refused to earn the “God and Country” metal.
Another thing that has always bothered me is to see a nation’s flag being flown in (or on) a church building. If a church wants to fly a flag, I believe that it should be a flag that represents only Christ and His kingdom, not any other nation. A Christian’s citizenship is in Heaven. (Philippians 3:20) Jesus should have our total allegiance!
You can flow with inner freedom. You can flow like the wind — like a giraffe — like an atom. Train yourself to overflow with the freedom of wild animals and with the joy of glorifying and flowing with the Lord. God the Holy Spirit wants to freely flow from within you.
Everything God made is based on flow. Even the infinitesimally small building blocks of all creation — atoms — are based on flow. The electrons orbiting in atoms are flowing incredibly faster than the speed of sound creating what appears to us as solid matter.
Nature doesn’t resist God’s flow. Neither should you.
Wind flows, rivers flow, waves flow, sound flows, light flows, time flows, electricity flows, smells flow, clouds flow, thoughts flow, feelings flow, ideas flow, brain waves flow, blood flows, sap flows. Even the earth flows as it spins and orbits the sun.
The whole universe flows. Life itself flows.
God created you to flow with the living water (John 7:38-39) of the leading of His Spirit. (Romans 8:14) Allowing God to train and disciple you to flow like that, more and more effectively and consistently throughout each day, is what true Christianity is all about.
The best place for finding hope is anywhere you talk to and listen to Jesus. Don’t settle for just knowing information about Him. Talk to Him now. Doctrine without discipleship makes Christians spiritually docile.
Jesus isn’t seasonal like Christmas or regional like Christian nationalism. He’s always everywhere but people are usually unaware. He can be encountered anywhere.
It’s good to look back to Christ’s first coming and forward to His promised return. However, we Christians too often forget to look around us, look within us, and look within each other at the presence of the risen Jesus here and now in this very moment. Here and now is the best place to meet Him.
Several years after Jesus rose from the dead and ascended the writer of Hebrews told Christ-followers to be “Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of your faith.” We are still invited to “Behold the Lamb of God.”
When Lazarus died and Jesus came to raise him, Mary and Martha, looked back to the past and said, “Lord, if You had been here,” he wouldn’t have died. Then they looked to the future and acknowledeged that their brother would rise on resurrection day. But they missed the point of Jesus coming to see them. Christ came to do a mighty miracle at that moment.
So it is with you and me. Constantly rely on the presence of Jesus and let Him do mighty miracles within you, around you, and through you now! Be led moment by moment by His Spirit.
To hunger and thirst for righteousness is to inwardly yearn and deeply groan for more heart-to-heart connection with Jesus and greater awareness of His reality and of His presence.
Listen to, surrender to, and obey God the Holy Spirit. Let Him create within you an intense ongoing longing for more and more of “Christ in you, the hope of glory,” not just when you die but every moment you’re alive!
Be Spirit-led With Jesus as your Head. Be Spirit-fed Not spiritually dead. Have you not read Where Jesus said, You can’t live on just bread?
I want the hope that empowers me to wait with joyful anticipation! I want to be a cheerful waiter, not a grumpy one.
To continually focus on and surrender to the presence of Jesus is to wait well! In the light of Christ’s presence there is joyful patience that overflows with the fruit of the Spirit. Inner disturbance disappears into peace when Christ-awareness is cultivated, embraced, and maintained.
The pearl of great price (Matthew 13:45-46) which is the inner government of God (Luke 17:21) is built on ongoing conscious awareness of “Christ in you.” (Colossians 1:27) Your own thoughts, feelings, and desires and the cares of life continually work to distract you from the conscious awareness of Christ’s presence. Refuse to let them disrupt your awareness of the risen Jesus. (Colossians 3:2)
Ongoing consciousness awareness of the presence of the risen Jesus is the key to Spirit-led Christianity. Notice Him now. Notice Him later. Notice Him always! (John 15:4) Christ-awareness gives you the capacity to hear and learn directly from Jesus.
True Christianity is Christ awareness! Settle for nothing less. To continually be aware of Jesus and enjoy His presence will bring your life into focus.
The purpose of church is to raise our awareness of the actual presence of Jesus. If it doesn’t do that it’s missing the point. Religion is a substitute for Christ-awareness. Christianity without Christ-awareness is empty religion.
To read the Bible without Christ-awareness is to ignore the power of the Book! Analysis of the Bible without the awareness of the presence of Jesus leads to blind religious pride. To be aware of the presence of Jesus for a single moment is more powerful than all the theology you can learn in a lifetime.
Stop for a moment. Look around you. Listen to Jesus. Wake up and become aware of His presence with you and in you.
Here and there And everywhere The presence Of Jesus Can lead us. Learn to hear And obey What Jesus Has to say. Let your fear Disappear. Be of good cheer. (Matthew 28:20) (Colossians 127) (Romans 8:14) (John10:27) (John 14:15) (1 John 4:18) (John 16:33)
It’s not enough to say, Lord, have Your way. We need to lay aside Every bit of our pride And let God’s Spirit Overshadow us. May God Himself decide And His Spirit guide All that we think and do.
If there’s nothing supernatural about your faith, it’s just religious tradition — a form of godliness but denying its power. (2 Timothy3:5) Churches need to stop lecturing people with monologues called sermons and begin to demonstrate the actual presence of Jesus. (1 Corinthians 2:4)
We’ve reduced Jesus to a sermon subject, a talk topic, a lecture lesion. We’ve forgotten who He really is: Emmanuel — God with us! (Matthew 1:23)
Religious information served up in a Sunday sermon can’t compare with “Christ in you, the hope of glory!” (Colossians 1:27) “Stir up the gift that is in you.” (1 Timothy 1:6)
“Draw near to God.” (James 4:8) Don’t just hear a talk about Him.
Christianity is so much more than sitting through a Sunday sermon! It’s fun, exciting, and amazing! Google: The Joy of Early Christianity.
When I see you and all people with tenderness and compassion my heart becomes an intensive care unit. (ICU) Dare to care intensively! See people with your heart not just with your eyes. Let God the Holy Spirit continually tenderize your heart with His fruit and His spiritual gifts. Spirituality isn’t about what we eat and drink. It’s about “righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.” (Romans 14:17)
Life defies logic. It’s been a mystery throughout history. We all experience it with its pain and pleasure, but we don’t even know what it is. Live it up higher and higher! Behold the Lamb of God! Accept no substitutes for the risen Jesus.
To continually do that is to see the greatest light. (2 Corinthians 4:6) It is to come out of deep darkness. It is to live a life celebrating the dawn of a new day. It is to have your burdens shattered and your oppression removed. It is to have your heart enlarged and made new so that it always overflows and rejoices (Isaiah 9:2-4) with glorious joy-filled rivers of living water! (John 7:37-39) It is to take the burdens off of your shoulders (Isaiah 9:2-4) and to seek first (Matthew 6:33) to constantly surrender the government of your life to Christ’s shoulders (Isaiah 9:6) so that He can establish and rule His kingdom within you! (Luke 17:21) Never stop looking unto the risen Jesus — the author and finisher of your faith. (Hebrews 12:2)
Lord, help us look beyond church and discover the peace and joy that comes from the direct personal leadership of the Spirit (Romans 8:14) and from letting “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:25) take full Headship and control of any churches and “ministries” that belong to Him. (Google: Beyond Church Ekklesia.)
True love, Intensive Caring, Means sharing Your heart, Baring Your soul, And bearing The burdens Of others.
Pray For Us . . . Jesus Cease us. Lead us, Teach us, By Your Spirit.
Free Gas for Your Think Tank -- Fill Your Mind and Your Heart With Hope 