Temptation

Jesus cautioned us, "Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation..." (Matt. 26:41).  We need to pray that we be not tempted (Matt. 6:13).  As Christians our danger of being tempted lies in our flesh (James 1:14).  Our temptation is common to man (I Cor. 10:13).

Temptation hinders our spiritual growth.  It hinders our fellowship with God.  It reduces our power in prayer.  It is deceitful and gives us no advance warning.  It results in more power to the flesh and less to our spirits.  It weakens our resistance to sin.  It robs us of our rewards.

But God is faithful who will not suffer us to be tempted.  We can pray and resist temptation.  God will make a way to escape temptation (I Cor. 10:13).  God can deliver us from evil (Matt. 6:13).

We can count it joy when we are tempted (James 1:2).  Not because there is an opportunity to sin.  Instead, it is an opportunity to claim God's grace and resist the temptation.  We can claim God's power in moments of temptation.  Pray that we be not tempted.

Will You Harden Your Heart?

The Bible warns about hardening the human heart.  When a person hardens his heart he forces God to take other steps to reach this person he would never have had to reach.  It can be a man.  It can be a woman.

There are reasons for hardening the heart.  But, who hardens the heart?  God?  Or man?  Or both?  God says in Romans 9:18 "Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and on whom he will be hardeneth."  God will neve harden a heart that is first hardened against him.

Why do people harden their hearts against God?  Deceitfulness of sin causes it (II Kings 17:13, 14; Heb. 3:13).  Also in Daniel 5:18, 20 Nebuchadnezzar hardened his heart against God.  In Mark 3:4, 5 God hardened some hearts because of prejudice.

What dangers are there in hardening the heart?  It cuts off all hope of salvation.  It then leads to wickedness, for which one will pay in Hell forever.  Dying without Christ means sudden destruction without any hope (Prov. 29:1).  It also means being engulfed in the terrible wrath of God (Rom. 2:5).  Don't forget Proverbs 3:7-14.

The best thing is to keep one's heart open to God.  Be saved early in life.  Live for God.  Be ready to go up in the rapture.  Be ready to live forever with God in eternity.  You will be glad you did.

Mother's Prayer of Faith

Mother, do you pray the prayer of faith?  Do you believe God will answer your prayers?  Do you know how to pray a prayer of faith?

What is faith praying?  Jesus was in a wind storm on the Sea of Galilee asleep while his apostles began to be afraid their boat would sink.  Satan was trying to destroy all 13 of them.  They woke Jesus.  Jesus stopped the storm.  Then he turned to his apostles and asked, Why are ye so fearful?  How is it that ye have no faith?"

The storm was a perfect opportunity for the disciples to express great faith, and stop the storm.  But, being human, fear took hold of their minds.  Have we ever been in similar situations like this before?  Instead of using faith, we were fear filled?

What is faith?  Faith is facing a problem, a situation that could kill us, or destroy our desires, or hinder our hopes.  That is an opportunity to use faith.

What is faith?  Faith is correctly assessing the situation we are facing.  maybe we can remove the situation ourselves.  Or --- perhaps we need God's help in controlling the problem.  Or, perhaps we can do nothing, and must depend entirely on God.  That's what the disciples faced that day.

What is faith?  Faith is a decision.  It pushes fear away.  It makes the decision that God can solve the situation by himself.  Faith decides to believe God will.  Faith asks God to deal with the problem entirely.  Faith does not doubt that God will act.  Faith makes the decision to rest the problem in God's hands.

But what if it takes time to remove the problems?  Faith continues to believe God will act, eventually.  Yes, faith may let Satan test you.  But push the doubts away and ask God's power to resolve the problem.  Do that every time doubts appear.  Don't hesitate.  Return immediately to faith.  Your faith will grow stronger.  Praise God for victory.

God will answer!  God will give a victory!  Then you can praise for his power and blessing!

Two Adams

Adam was created.  Christ was born of a woman.  Adam had a beginning.  Christ is eternal.  He took on a body in time.

Adam was mortal, fleshly and spiritual.  Christ is Head and Lord over the new creation.  The old creation was sinful and dying because of a sinful and dying Head.  But the new creation is holy and living because of a living Head. 

God gave Adam a job.  He failed.  God gave Christ a job.  He finished it.

Adam was a son of God.  Christ was God's only begotten Son.  Adam was a worshipper of God.  Christ was God to be worshipped.  The breath of God was in Adam.  Christ was God in a human body.  Adam repudiated God's truth.  Christ vindicated God's truth.

Adam was the father of flesh of all men.  Christ was the giver of life to all who believe.

Adam was lower than the angels.  Christ was the Creator of angels.

Adam was tempted and fell.  Christ was tempted and did not fall in any way.  Adam died.  Christ died but came back into his dead body and still lives.  Adam's life was derived.  Christ is still alive forever.

Adam broke God's law and later died.  Christ kept all of God's laws and lives.

By Adam came the curse.  By Christ the curse is removed.  By Adam there are thorns and thistles.  By Christ there will be a new earth with no thorns or thistles.  By Adam Paradise was lost.  By Christ a heavenly Paradise was gained for all believers.

Stand Fast

We are to stand fast in the Lord (Phil. 4:1) as birds in the air, and as fishes are in the sea.  We are to lean on the Lord.

"...that whether I come and see you, or else be absent, I may hear of your affairs, that ye stand fast in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel;" (Phil. 1:27).

Paul was writing to the chuch in Philippi, Greece.  He was urging them to stand together as a church.  They were to stand for the same faith together.  There was to be no division among them over the gospel of Jesus Christ.

In Christendom today there is much division about the gospel.  Some add baptism to the death, burial and resurrection of Christ.  Some add good works to the gospel, and thus change the gospel.

But the gospel is entirely about who Jesus is.  It is in the character of his being.  There is no fault or sin in Christ.  he is the essence of holiness.  Thus he is pure.  Therefore when they preached Christ, they preached a pure gospel, a pure person!

When we accept Christ we believe the purity of God is in the place of our evil.  We accept his holiness to replace our unholiness.

But we are to do more.  Paul wrote the Corinthians to, "Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong," (I Cor. 16:13).

We are to stand fast in the faith.  We are to belive that we stand fast in our faith in Jesus.  There are times when a believer may doubt his faith.  There are times when he may stray.  But, when he returns to his commitment, his faith is that he has Christ's sinlessness in the place of his sinfulness.  This is before God.  This is in his heart.  This is before others.  He is saved and he knows it.

"Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free...." (Gal. 5:1).  We believers are, in Christ, made free from sin, free from the separation of death, free from hell.  We are in the liberty that Christ makes possible for us.  It is not that we are to sin.  It is that we are free from the yoke of bondage.  We are in the liberty of freedom to live for Christ in a sin-sick world.

How Does God Cleanse Us Christians?

When we accept Christ we may have much of this world with us.  That depends upon what we have said before we have been saved.  If we have lived a wicked life God has a lot to remove from us.

But God changes us believers.  God for one thing, prunes us (John 15:1-11).  The word prune means to cut off the vine with pruning hooks.  It depends on how much of the vine is pruned (Isa. 18:5).  For the vine to produce many grapes the vine needs to be pruned.  To prune is to cut off many limbs.

This cleanses us saints healthily.  By that I mean God removes all curse words.  That may take time.  God convicts us that those words are wrong and we need to stop using them.  He may embarrass us before some others and we stop using some words.  Some times we may think some bad words, and God may convict us of those words.  We must cease using them.

God makes us feel guilty when we use those words.  It depends upon how guilty we feel when we use them.  Over time God will remove those words from our vocabulary.

We need to confess our guilt to God when we use bad words.  The more we confess them the more quickly we will stop using them.  That may take some time.  Don't give up.  God will cleanse your vocabulary.

God may just stop the use of some bad words.  Other times God may, as I said above, deal with us so severely that he will purge us of them.  At any rate, God wants to clean our language so clean that we don't have to worry about what we say.  Our vocabulary is going to be clean.

Faith Makes The Difference

The difference between the world and the Christian is his faith, not his life.  Some believer's lives don't always measure up to Christ's standards.  But the Christian's faith can change situations.  That creates a big difference.

The difference between the Christian and his condemnation is his faith.  "He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God," (John 3:18).

The differnce between the sinner and eternal life is his faith.  John 3:36 says, "He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that beieveth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him."

It is by faith we become  children of God.  Galatians 3:26 says, "For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus."

It is by faith we have peace with God.  "Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ," (Rom. 5:1).

It is by faith we are purified.  Acts 15:9 says, "And put no difference between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith."

It is by faith Christ dwells in our hearts.  Ephesians 3:17 says, "That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith that ye, being rooted and grounded in love."

Faith is not a feeling.  Faith is a decision we make.  We make that decision for the rest of our lives.  We may backslide in our living, but we still believe that Christ is our eternal life.  That faith never changes.

Why Does God Allow Sickness?

One reason for sickness is that we are all sinners.  Sin in our bodies makes us naturally weaker.  God is perfect in every way and neither of the three of them ever gets sick.  But in our sin-weakness in our flesh we are more susceptible to diseases that travel from person to person.  When we get perfect bodies we will never again get any disease of any kind forever.

But we are weak sinners in our flesh.  One reason we get diseases is that some diseases are contagious and stay with the individual in our flesh perpetually.  It continues until we die.  There are several diseases of that nature.  Cancer does not kill.  It weakens certain organs so that the organs fail to function and quits.  So with some other diseases.  Not ever person gets those diseases.

Many of us get colds and we get over them.  We can get some diseases and take certain medicines and conquer that disease or diseases.  That's good.

One reason we get a certain disease is in what we eat.  We can eat non-nutritiously.  We can eat some foods that produce very little health.  Over time we can break down our healthy systems and become sick.

Sometimes sickness is to keep us humble and increase our faith.  That happened to Paul and many others.  Some sickness produces a heaviness and trial of our faith (I Peter 1:6, 7).

Some sicknesses produces a complete surrender of our will, as with Catherine Marshall, wife of a Chaplin of the U.S. Senate.  She became well.

Some sickness produces humility (II Cor. 12:7).  Some sickness is allowed to make us more perfect in our weakness (II Cor. 12:9).  Some sickness produces greater faith in God.  Sometimes God sends some sicknesses to bring a saint back to God (Psa. 119:67, 68).  Some sickness leads us to become stronger, stablished, strenghtened and settled (I Peter 5:10).

Praise God, the day is coming soon when we will be perfect in body and spirit.  That's when Jesus comes for us.  We will never become sick again.  Forever!

What Do We Do When We Believe?

Believing in Jesus Christ is the greatest decision a person can ever make in his or her life.  In our early years as children we were safe.  Had we died in those early years we would have been taken to Paradise.  We would have then been adult people.  There are no babies in heaven.

But the time came in our boyhood or girlhood days when God held us accountable for the sins we commit.  After that, if we had died, we would have gone to hell.

But, the day came when, as a teenager or somewhere in our adult life, we accepted Jesus Christ as our personal Saviour.  And that simple decision changed our lives completely.  It turned us around.  Our old sins were dropped.  Cursing, lying, adultery, stealing, and all other sins; we turned loose of them.  Nothing else we have done has caused such a change.

We opened our Bibles and began reading it.  We started going to church.  We began seeking Christians as our friends.  We began understanding the Bible.  We understood what the Bible teacher or pastor said as they explained it.  We grew in knowledge and that knowledge changed our way of living.  We accepted positions in church.  Some of us became Bible teachers.  All of us were changed for the better.  And just because of the fact that we accepted Jesus as our Saviour.

What Do We Do When We Repent?

Repentance is one of the two essentials to being saved.  The second essential is faith.  But today I want us to examine repentance.

The word repentance means "to change one's mind."  There can be no salvation without it.  We must have an afterthought about our sinfulness.

First, we cannot hide from our sins.  We cannot bury ourselves in activities.  We cannot ignore our sins.  We can't jump to faith and neglect repentance.  We just must face our sinfulness and admit we have sinned before God.  There should be, as Pendleton said, "a deep sense of shame."  If there is no shame, there is no repentance.  Repentance shames self.

There should be a hatred for sin.  We see ourselves as we really are: sinners before a holy God. 

Then in repentance we should feel sorrow for our sins.  We need to regret that we have sinned.  This can be different in different people.  No one can feel the same about one's sins.  But we must have some degree of shame.

Then we agree within ourselves that we want to forsake our sins.  We see our sins as God sees them.  We want to rid ourselves of them.  We confess to God that we have sinned and ask God to forgive us of them all.  And he does!

That's repentance of our sins!

Have you repented?

Believe In Vain Or Believe In Victory

Paul wrote in I Corinthians 15:2, "By which ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I have preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain."

Believed in vain?  What could that be?  Believing that good works can save one from hell.  Believing that morality will save one from hell.  Some have that faith, but it will not save a person.

Believing that joining a church and using that as the means of getting to heaven is vain faith.  It will not save us.

Baptism is very important in our Christian lives.  Christ was baptized by John the Baptist.  We are not to be sprinkled or have water poured on our heads.  Baptism is a burial in water.  That shows how, in a figure or picture, that God washes away our sins.  Christ did this on the cross in his intense suffering.  The water is a symbol of Christ's suffering.  It pictures how Christ's suffering washes away our sins.

But the pastor raises us up out of the water.  That pictures that we are in Christ, sinless.  It represents the resurrection of Christ.  Christ's baptism was a symbol of picture of our salvation.  Our resurrection out of the water pictures the resurrection of Christ's body being raised from the grave, sinless.  So are we, in Christ.

That is not vain faith.  It is baptism that pictures the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus' body.  Christ was in that resurrected body.  He was sinless.  In our resurrection from water we picture that we are sinless in Christ.  No, we still have sin in our flesh.  But the raising up of our bodies from the water pictures the day in our future when we will be sinless in our flesh!  Forever!

Have you been buried in water and raised up from water by the authority of a New Testament church by a God called preacher?

Jude's Advice to Christians

1.  Jude writes, "...I gave all dilegence to write unto you---and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints" (Jude 3).  We are living in a time of great spiritual and moral falling away.  We need to strongly hold to biblical faith.  We need to believe it.  We need to hear it taught, and preached.  We need to read it at home.  We need to grow stronger in it.

2.  "But ye, beloved building up yourselves on your most holy faith..." (Jude 20).  The biblical faith we have is holy faith.  It is holy because it came from God.  We need to keep it holy in our minds.  We need to tell others that this faith is holy and needs to be regarded as such.

3.  We need to be "...praying in the Holy Ghost" (Jude 20).  The Spirit will lead us to pray more often as we yield to him.  He will  lead us to pray about people we know are lost.  The Spirit will lead us to pray about backsliders, that they will return to church.  We need to pray for our church and workers that we will grow and be faithful.

4.  "Keep yourselves in the love of God..." (Jude 21).  Tell ourselves that God loves us.  Thank God in prayer for loving us.  Tell God that we love them.  Tell others that we love God.  We ask for so many things.  We tell our family members we love them.  We need to tell God that we love them.

5.  "And others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire..." (Jude 23).  The lost are going to hell fire.  We need to pull, that's right, pull them out of hell fire.  We need to pray that they will get saved.  We need to witness to them about Christ on the cross and his resurrection.  We need to tell them to repent and believe in Jesus.  That will save them.  Who do you know that's lost?

Turkey Is Coming Alive

In the early days of the previous century Turkey was the dominant power in the Mideast.  She ruled over all of the land of Israel.  However, a British General took some troops and forced Turkey to surrender the control over the land now known as Isreal.

France and England held sway in that area.  From that time forward Jews began to return to their former territory.  In 1948 Israel declared themselves a seperate nation and the United Nations accepted her.  God brought Israel back home.

The Arabs did not approve of Israel becoming a nation in that part of what they thought was their territory.  As a result Israel has had to fight and win several conflicts with the Arabs.

But Turkey is now flexing her muscles.  She is breaking her ties with Israel.  She is aligning herself with Russia.  She is pulling away from Europe.  She is becoming militarily stronger.  She has made treaties with Iran.  She is wooing the Arab world into her domain.  Turkey is planning to have greater influence over the Arabic world.

Soon, Turkey will join Russia in an attack on Israel (Ezek. 38:1-6).  Instead of being Israel's partner, she will become Israel's enemy.  Syria is allowing Russia to build an enormous naval port just north of Israel.  Russia is trying to break in on Israel's military language and learn what Israel will do.

Israel will very soon attack Iran to prevent them from using nuclear bombs to wipe Israel off the face of the map.  Will that cause the Arab terrorist groups plus Syria to attack Israel?  Or, when Israel strikes Iran will Israel destroy Syria's capital of Damascus (Isa. 17:1) and the Arab group who are designed to destroy Israel?

Will that cause Russia to gather her allies and attack Israel?  God will defend Israel.  On the other side of this will the Rapture occur?  Will the Antichrist appear right after that?  Are you ready for you trip to heaven?

Facing A New Year

The U.S. Senate ignored the overwhelming majority of Americans and passed the Health Bill.  Edgar Carlisle thinks the bill should be excluded.  We are a democracy.  I hope there are enough Republicans to throw that and some other bills out the back door in 2010!

We are facing a Socialist President who would like to turn America into a dictatorship.  But American wants to ge a democracy.  Even though the world is moving toward a one-world government we can hold to a democracy for quite a while.  We will have enough votes to change these bills.  We also have enough guns to lend support to what America wants.  Why have Americans bought so many weapons since Obama became President?

We, as a nation, are facing a world that is turning toward world government.  This is Biblical prophecy.  But we, in our nation, do not have to follow the trend.  At least, not for now!  Edgar Carlisle is for our having a democracy, and for individual freedom.  We must avoid government control.  I like what I heard Sarah Palin say that Americans need to be set free.  Congress needs to pass only bills that they have to pass.  Otherwise, give Americans maximum freedom!