Category Archives: Spiritual Development

Practical teachings from the Bible for every day living.

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The Fear of the Lord As a Manifestation of the Spirit

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The Fear of God Is A Manifestation of the Spirit

As we continue to look at the Fear of the Lord, the following illustration is of note. Back in 1994, there was a very famous television evangelist who was in prison; his name is Jim Bakker. Jim Bakker had the largest Christian television network in the whole world, but he got caught up in fraud, and adultery. The government prosecuted him for the mail fraud he committed, and he was thrown into jail for five years. John Bevere visited him while in prison. This was part of the conversation they had.

After he had talked for a while, I felt like I wanted to ask him some questions. The first question I asked was, “Jim, when did you fall out of love with Jesus? When did you stop loving Jesus? Was it when you committed adultery with Jessica Hahn seven years before you got thrown into prison? Was it the fraud? When did it really happen?” Because I remember he was so on fire for God in the earlier years. He looked at me and said, “John, I didn’t.” I said, “What do you mean, you didn’t?” He said, “I didn’t fall out of love with Jesus; I loved Him all the way through it.” And then he saw total bewilderment on my face. I said, “What do you mean?!” He said, “John, I loved Jesus, but I didn’t fear God.” There are millions of Christians in America who love Jesus but don’t fear Him, and it is the fear of the Lord that perfects holiness in our life.” 1

In today’s blog, we continue to look at the Fear of the Lord in our everyday life.

[Tweet “The fear of the Lord falling upon people is one of the manifestations of the Spirit.”]

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#S3-051: How to Locate Your God Ordained Place [Encore Podcast]

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Josh McDowell told this great story. An executive hirer, a “headhunter” who goes out and hires corporation executives for other firms, once told me, “When I get an executive that I’m trying to hire for someone else, I like to disarm him. I offer him a drink, take my coat off, then my vest, undo my tie, throw up my feet and talk about baseball, football, family, whatever until he’s all relaxed. Then, when I think I’ve got him relaxed, I lean over, look him square in the eye and say, “What’s your purpose in life?” It’s amazing how top executives fall apart at that question. “Well, I was interviewing this fellow the other day, had him all disarmed, with my feet up on his desk, talking about football. Then I leaned up and said, ‘What’s your purpose in life, Bob?’ And he said, without blinking an eye, ‘To go to heaven and take as many people with me as I can.’ For the first time in my career, I was speechless.” What about you? Do you know what your place is in God? Do you know how to find it?

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[Tweet “If God promotes you from little to much, it is obvious that little was not your place.”]

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#S3-049: Why It’s Tremendously Important to Take Your Stand [Podcast]

Defending Your Bean Patch

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One unknown writer wrote these words. “We will never cease to be plagued with sin, but we will never again be brought under the dominion of sin.” 1 You must understand that the very reason why we are not in the Garden of Eden today is because there was a child of the King who was given dominion by the King and he chose not to use it. He refused to take a stand. That’s why we have the sin mess in the first place. Taking your stand and using your God give dominion is a key issue in the Kingdom of God. Jesus said so (Lk. 11:20).

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[Tweet “If you want to have a great victory, you need to take on the traits of David’s mighty men.”]

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#S3-040: Why the Awesome Hand of God Brings Blessing [Podcast]

God's Mighty Power and Anointing

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Proverbs 21:1 says the king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord. That means all the kings, not just the good ones, not just the righteous ones. So, in last week’s podcast, we honed in on the phrase ‘the Hand of the Lord’. What does that mean, ‘the heart of the king is in the hand of the Lord?’ The Bible speaks of the ‘hand of the Lord’, the ‘finger of God,’ and the arm of the Lord. But here, in Proverbs twenty-one verse one, we have hand of God, not arm or finger. We saw that the phrase ‘the hand of the Lord’ or the phrase ‘the hand of God’ occurs fifty-five times in the Bible. What is the Hand of Lord? Is it a good thing or a bad thing? Is it something you want to experience or something you don’t want to experience? And so, we looked at the negative side, the judgment side of the hand of the Lord. We saw it manifest in the case of Israel’s sin. We saw it manifest in the New Testament of Ananias and Saphira and we pretty much determined that we don’t want any of that ‘hand of the Lord’ in judgment business because our God is a consuming fire. There is a positive side to the hand of the Lord. There is a blessing side and as believer’s we want all there is of the blessing which comes from the hand of God in our daily life. The heart of the king is in the hand of the Lord. That’s what we are talking about in this week’s Light on Life.

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[Tweet “Physical strength is rooted in the spirit of man not the muscles of man. It has spiritual roots.”]

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#S3-038: Why Diversity Empowers Us Actually to Overcome Racism [Podcast]

Overcoming the Spirit of Division

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I heard this story this week from a good friend who has been following this series on ‘How to Overcome Racism’ in the church. And his story illustrates the reason why we need to teach and are teaching on the subject of racism. As it turns out, he was attending a church in Phoenix Arizona and volunteered to work with the Pastor in building up the work of God there. The Pastor was African-American as was most of the congregation. The volunteer was Caucasian. As it turns out, he was passing out fliers in the neighborhood with a young lady from the church who was all working for God. So both of them are going house to house. After a while, they decide to take a break from their labors. They hadn’t eaten anything, so they decide to go to a restaurant. Now mind you, he was not romantically interested in this lady. They were just hungry and wanted to replenish themselves. While they are in the restaurant, he notices someone staring at them to the point where it got to be uncomfortable. He didn’t think about it. He didn’t really put the pieces together. A few months after this, the pastor calls him into his office and tells him he has to leave the church.’Leave the church, why?’, he asks. The pastor tells him, ‘Because, you are demon possessed.’ So this man begins to quote the Word of God all the while confessing the Lordship of Jesus. So he says to the pastor, ‘Does this sound like I’m demon possessed?’ ‘No’, says the pastor but you’re still going to have to leave the church. The church, apparently, didn’t approve of anything interracial. Months later when judgment fell on that church this pastor reconnected with this man and apologized. He had gotten pressure from his deacons and constituents in the church and had caved into their demands. Racism in the church. It exists. There’s no need to hide from it. There’s no need to act like it’s not there. It shouldn’t be there but is there and that’s why we’re doing this series on ‘How to Overcome Racism in the Church’. We’re continuing on with it in this week’s Light on Life.

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[Tweet “Diversity is God’s idea. In His magnificent creation, He did not make everything the same.”]

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#S3-037: Yet More of How to Overcome Racism in the Church [Podcast]

Overcoming the Spirit of Division

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Once the Devil was walking along with one of his cohorts. They saw a man ahead of them pick up something shiny. What did he find? asked the cohort. A piece of the truth, the Devil replied. Doesn’t it bother you that he found a piece of the truth? asked the cohort. No, said the Devil, I will see to it that he makes a religion out of it. 1 There has always been religion on the world. A shiny piece of the truth, not the whole truth just a piece of it. A piece of a truth can lead to a whole lie. Israel had descended from the truth of God’s Word into a miry pit of ‘piece religion.’ They had pieces of the truth but not the whole truth.

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[Tweet “Every person is noble and of royal blood. For from one blood, God made all men to dwell on earth.”]

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#S3-036: Even More of How to Overcome Racism in the Church [Podcast]

Overcoming the Spirit of Division

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Vivian Malone, a young black woman, enrolled as a student at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa in 1963. Federal troops helped ensure her entrance into the school, but Governor George Wallace tried to block her way. When he failed, Malone became the first African-American student ever to graduate from the University of Alabama. Years later, Governor Wallace was taken in his wheelchair to Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, where he asked black people to forgive him for his racism, bigotry, and specifically his ill-treatment of Vivian Malone. He asked Malone for forgiveness. Malone said she had forgiven the governor years before. When asked why she had done that, Malone said, “I’m a Christian, and I grew up in the church. I was taught that we are all equal in the eyes of God. I was also taught that you forgive people, no matter what. And that was why I had to do it. I didn’t feel as if I had a choice.” 1 Vivian Malone had it right. All are equal in the eyes of the Lord. We don’t have a choice about walking in love and forgiveness. Obeying the Bible; believing the Word of God just like it says; rising up against the spirit of division with the love of God, is the only real cure to racism.

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[Tweet “No matter how you cut it, prejudice and racism just has an icky feel to it, doesn’t it?”]

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#S3-035: More of How to Overcome Racism in the Church [Podcast]

Overcoming the Spirit of Division

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A visitor to a mental hospital was astonished to note that there were only three guards watching over a hundred dangerous inmates. He asked his guide, “Don’t you fear that these people will overpower the guards and escape?” “No,” was the reply. “Lunatics never unite.” 1 Lunatics never unite, did you hear that? Racism is strife. Racism is lunacy. Lunatics never unite. In last week’s podcast, we drilled down into the word strife and we looked at some of the companions of strife. One of these companions is the word ‘disorder’ in 2 Corinthians 12:20. We are going to take a look at that and more as we continue looking at overcoming racism in the church in this week’s Light on Life.

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[Tweet “This mess we’re seeing in America is Bible Prophecy. Jesus prophesied it, so it’s not going away.”]

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#S3:034: How to Overcome Racism in the Church [Podcast]

Overcoming the Spirit of Division

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In the 1960’s the church deacon board mobilized lookout squads, and on Sundays, these took turns patrolling the entrances lest any black “troublemakers” try to integrate us. I still have one of the cards the deacons printed up to give to any civil rights demonstrators who might appear: Believing the motives of your group to be ulterior and foreign to the teaching of God’s word, we cannot extend a welcome to you and respectfully request you to leave the premises quietly. Scripture does NOT teach “the brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of God.” He is the Creator of all, but only the Father of those who have been regenerated. If any one of you is here with a sincere desire to know Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord, we shall be glad to deal individually with you from the Word of God. (Unanimous Statement of Pastor and Deacons, August 1960) When Congress passed the Civil Rights Acts, our church founded a private school as a haven for whites, expressly barring all black students. A few “liberal” members left the church in protest when the kindergarten turned down the daughter of a black Bible professor, but most of us approved of the decision. A year later the church board rejected a Carver Bible Institute student for membership (his name was Tony Evans).1. What is racism and how can we overcome it? We’ll be taking a look at this in this new series.

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[Tweet “Racism is a demonic spirit of division who’s aim is to magnify the difference between people.”]

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#S3:031: How to Ask Questions and Stay in Humility [Podcast]

How to Increase the Presence of God in Your Everyday Life

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Today, we are picking back up with the series on increasing the Presence of God in your everyday life. The series is about adjustments, adjustments you can make in your heart. We’ve spent some time looking at this prayer adjustment as we look at the believer’s role in praying for kings and presidents and God-ordained authority. We left off talking about a second king, Nebuchadnezzar whom God set-up but then brought down because he refused to acknowledge that it was God who sets men up and takes them down when they don’t act right. Nebuchadnezzar, as we saw, was not acting right. he got over into pride and God took his mind from him for a seven-year period. We looked at Job who also got over into some areas he shouldn’t have gotten into over the trial he experienced. We saw how God mercifully positioned Job into a place of humility so the grace of God could resurrect him from his tragedy. We’re going to pick up right where we left off, with Job, Nebuchadnezzar, and a new king that you would never have guessed that God would anoint to be king. All this and more on this week’s Light on Life.

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[Tweet “God dealing with pride in the world of men is a more common issue than we realize.”]

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#S3-029: Why God Sets Up the Lowest of Men as Authority [Podcast]

How to Increase the Presence of God in Your Everyday Life

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In the last podcast in this series, ‘How Do You Pray for A President You Don’t Agree With?‘ we referenced Cyrus, an ungodly leader, whom God allowed to ascend the throne. Cyrus was a man full of pride. He was a false god worshiper. He was not a lover of the only true Father God in heaven. He treated Him just like any of the other gods of the nations he conquered. God used his religious tolerance policies to His own advantage bringing Israel back to Jerusalem from Babylonian captivity. In this week’s podcast, we begin to take a look at a second king whom God allowed to come to power, Nebuchadnezzar.

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[Tweet “The best candidate for President may be the most inferior as far as God is concerned.”]

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Encore Post: How to Be Up In A Down World

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The world is a negative place. Just turn on the nightly news if you doubt it. I very rarely tune into the news because of this. You can protect yourself from all the gloominess but it takes some work. If you aren’t proactive, it’s easy to be swept away in the tidal wave of negativity around you. Jack Nicholson said, “In my last year of school, I was voted Class Optimist and Class Pessimist. Looking back, I realize I was only half right.1 No matter which half are you, you can grow. You can be an up person in a down world.

[Tweet “They say a mind is a terrible thing to waste. The same is true of your heart.”]