CARNAL MIND VERSUS SPIRIT MIND!

 EVERYDAY IN THE WORD!

MONDAY JULY 03, 2023.

SUBJECT: CARNAL MIND VERSUS SPIRIT MIND!

Memory verse: “For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.” (Romans 8 vs 6.)

READ: Romans 8 vs 5:

8:5: For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, things of the Spirit.

8:6: For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.

8:7: Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be.

8:8: So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

INTIMATION:

I prefer looking at our memory verse from the Amplified Version of the Bible. It says, "Now the mind of the flesh [which is sense and reason without the Holy Spirit] is death [death that comprises all the miseries arising from sin! both here and hereafter]. But the mind of the [Holy] Spirit is life and [soul] peace [both now and forever]. (Romans 8 vs 6.)

According to this verse, this is not one mind, but two minds. There is the mind of the flesh, and there is the mind of the Spirit. That does not mean you and I have two brains, it simply means that we receive information from our natural mind (which operates without the Holy Spirit), and we get information from our spirit mind (through which the Holy Spirit communicates directly to us). According to the Scripture, we are not to be led by our carnal mind, but by the Holy Spirit Who indwells us. (Romans 8 vs 14; Galatians 5 vs 18.) The Holy Spirit is the only One who knows the mind of God, and is the revealer of the truth (John 16 vs 13). 

Before Christ came, we all were students of the carnal mind—the mind of the flesh, and were dominated by our sinful nature. But Jesus came and offered us a way out, and once you say yes to Him, He enters, and lives in you through His indwelling Holy Spirit, and makes His mind available for your inquest. The Holy Spirit begins His work by directing you according to the ways of God. But it takes your willingness and sensitivity to receive from Him.

In First Corinthians 2 vs 16, the Bible says, "For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ." This Scripture tells us that because the Holy Spirit lives in the believers, they have the mind of Christ. The problem is that although the believers have the mind of Christ and know the Word of God, they don't listen to their spirit which is being enlightened by the Holy Spirit. Instead, they listen to their natural mind which relies strictly on sense and reason without the Holy Spirit.

In every situation of life, our head will be trying to give us information. It will be yelling at us so loudly that if we don't turn our attention to our spirit we will never hear what the Lord is saying to us in that situation. That is why we must learn to live out of our spirit and not of our head.

We all have two huge vats of information within us. One is carnal information that comes off the top of our head—sensual knowledge which is always at the fore. The other is spiritual information which wells up out of our heart—rooted in our inner being. The carnal information is likened to a muddy, and polluted water, while the spiritual information is likened to clean drinking water. It is up to you to decide which source you are going to drink from.

Some people try to drink from both sources. That's what the Bible calls being ‘double-minded’ (James 1 vs 8.) Do you know what it means to be double-minded? It means that your mind is trying to tell you one thing, and your spirit is trying to tell you just the opposite. Instead of saying, "I'm not going to believe that coming from my head because it's a lie," you get in a cross-fire, going back and forth between the two thoughts.

You see, evil spirits constantly bombard us with negative thoughts. If we receive them and dwell on them, they become ours because the Bible says, “For as he think in his heart, so is he” (Proverbs 23 vs 7). If we accept the lies of the devil as reality, then they will become reality to us because of our "faith," our “belief” in them. That is why in moments of worry, stress and turmoil we have to simply take the time to turn to our inner man, the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit, and say, "Lord, what do You have to say about this?" If we listen in faith, He will speak to us and reveal to us the truth of that situation.

If we are ever going to live the happy, victorious and successful Christian life the Lord wills for us, we are going to have to decide which fountain of information we are going to drink from. We are going to have to learn to live out of our spirit, and not out of our head.

Prayer: Abba Father, You are so good that You never left us helpless, but gave us the Holy Spirit that abides with us forever. Give me the grace to always be attentive and sensitive to receive and follow His leading at all times, that I may live as You willed for me; a victorious and triumphant life, in Jesus’ Name I have prayed. Amen.

PRAISE THE LORD!

Good News: God Is Happy

 . . . the gospel of the glory of the blessed God . . . (1 Timothy 1:11)

This is a beautiful phrase in 1 Timothy, buried beneath the too-familiar surface of Bible buzzwords. But after you dig it up, it sounds like this: “the good news of the glory of the happy God.” The word “blessed” is not the one that means “praised,” but the one that means “happy.”

A great part of God’s glory is his happiness. 

It was inconceivable to the apostle Paul that God could be denied infinite joy and still be all-glorious. To be infinitely glorious was to be infinitely happy. He used the phrase, “the glory of the happy God,” because it is a glorious thing for God to be happy the way he is. 

God’s glory consists much in the fact that he is happy beyond our wildest imagination. As the great eighteenth-century preacher, Jonathan Edwards, said, “Part of God’s fullness which he communicates is his happiness. This happiness consists in enjoying and rejoicing in himself; so does also the creature’s happiness.” 

And this is a key part of the gospel, Paul says: “the gospel of the glory of the happy God.” It is good news that God is gloriously happy. No one would want to spend eternity with a gloomy, unhappy God. 

If God is unhappy, then the goal of the gospel — to be with God forever — is not a happy goal, and that means it would be no gospel at all. But, in fact, Jesus invites us to spend eternity with a happy God when he says, “Enter into the joy of your master” (Matthew 25:23). 

Jesus said in John 15:11, “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.” Jesus spoke, and lived, and died that his joy — God’s joy — might be in us and our joy might be full. Therefore, the gospel is “the gospel of the glory of the happy God.”

How Well Do You Know God?

 “Behold, God is great, and we know him not; the number of his years is unsearchable.” (Job 36:26)

It is impossible to know God too well. 

He is the most important person who exists. And this is because he made all others, and any importance they have is owing to him. 

Any strength or intelligence or skill or beauty that other beings have comes from him. On every scale of excellence, he is infinitely greater than the best person you ever knew or ever heard of. 

Being infinite, he is inexhaustibly interesting. It is impossible, therefore, that God be boring. His continual demonstration of the most intelligent and interesting actions is volcanic. 

As the source of every good pleasure, he himself pleases fully and finally. If that’s not how we experience him, we are either dead, or blind, or sleepwalking. 

It is therefore astonishing how little effort in this world is put into knowing God. 

It’s as though the President of the United States came to live with you for a month, and you only said hello in passing every day or so. Or as if you were flown at the speed of light for a couple of hours around the sun and the solar system, and instead of looking out the window, you played a computer game. Or as if you were invited to watch the best actors, singers, athletes, inventors, and scholars perform their best, but you declined to go, so you could watch the TV season’s final soap.

Let us pray together that our infinitely great God would incline our hearts, and open our eyes to see him as fully as we can and seek to know him more.

LET YOUR EYES BE SINGLY FOCUSED ON GOD!

 

EVERYDAY IN THE WORD!

SUNDAY JULY 02, 2023. 

SUBJECT : LET YOUR EYES BE SINGLY FOCUSED ON GOD!

Memory verse: "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding." (Proverbs 3 vs 5.)

READ: Proverbs 3 vs 5 - 6; Matthew 6 vs 22 - 23:

Proverbs 3:5: Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding.

3:6: In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths.

Matthew 6:22: The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. 

6:23: But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

INTIMATION:

Your eyes are the windows into your body and the aperture in your life. Your eye is “good” when it is focused on God and His Word (Joshua 1 vs 8; Psalm 1 vs 2). The more we know of God's Word, the more resources we will have to guide us in our daily decisions. When you have a “good” eye—one that is fixed on God, you develop the desired spiritual vision; the capacity to see clearly what God wants us to do, and to see the world from His own perspective. 

But this spiritual insight can be easily clouded. This happens when your attention is shifted from being completely focusing on God. For instance, self-serving desires, interests, and goals block that vision because it has shifted from focusing on God to bifocal vision of God and self. The quickest way to destroy a person's vision is to give him or her two. And the beclouded spiritual vision can best be restored by serving God with all your heart. 

You can't accomplish your goals when your attention and resources are divided. Have you ever tried to have one of your eyes looking down and the other looking up? It is impossible, and that is how having your eyes focused on two things at the same one time is impossible. If you really want to prosper, then you need to forget everything else and press toward this one goal of putting the kingdom of God first. The Lord is saying that He wants you to have a single focus of your eyes on Him. At first, you might think it is impossible to be totally committed to, and focused upon God in everything you do. Yes, it can be so if you have to rely on human strength. But we don't live the Christian life in our own strength. 

For instance, If you think that supporting your family and earning money is strictly up to you, then you are going to have a divided heart, and divided heart is going to allow darkness to enter your life and hinder you in your relationship with God. The Lord knows what is best for us. He is a better judge of what we want than we are! We must trust Him completely in everything we do, and let Him the choice we make at any circumstances.

However, we should not omit careful thinking or belittle our God-given ability to reason, but we should not trust our own ideas to the exclusion of God’s leading. We must not be wise in our own eyes. We should always be willing to listen to and be corrected by God’s Word and wise counselors. Bring your decisions to God in prayer; use the Bible as your guide and then follow God’s leading.

King Solomon thirsted for God’s leading; spiritual vision, and earnestly asked for it from God and he was endowed with it, and he received even more than he asked from God (First Kings 4 vs 9 - 13). Consequently, he became the wisest king in Israel’s history, and the wisest man the world has ever known outside of Jesus Christ. This culminated in his writing most of the Books of wisdom (Proverbs and Ecclesiastes) in the Scriptures. He said that to receive God’s guidance, we must acknowledge God in all our ways and in all we do.

About a thousand years later, Jesus emphasized this same truth; seeking first the kingdom of God (Matthew 6 vs 33). Look at your values and priorities. What is important to you? Where is God on that list? What is His advice? Make Him a vital part of everything you do, then He will guide you because you will be working to accomplish His purposes.

Jesus warned against divided attention when He said in Luke 16 vs 13, "No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon." Have your focus on the kingdom, and adjoining righteousness of God, and all other things shall be added to you.

Prayer: Abba Father, by strength shall no man prevail. Outside of You we can do nothing. Endue me with the spirit of total obedience and commitment to You in all my ways that will make me completely focused on You, in Jesus’ Name I have prayed, Amen.

PRAISE THE LORD!

God’s Pleasure to Do You Good

 

“Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” (Luke 12:32)

Jesus will not sit by and let us disbelieve without a fight. He takes up the weapon of the word and speaks it with power for all who struggle to believe.

His aim is to defeat the fear that God is not the kind of God who really wants to be good to us — that he is not really generous and helpful and kind and tender, but is basically irked with us — ill-disposed and angry.

Sometimes, even if we believe in our heads that God is good to us, we may feel in our hearts that his goodness is somehow forced or constrained, perhaps like a judge who has been maneuvered by a clever attorney into a corner on some technicality of court proceeding, so he has to dismiss the charges against the prisoner whom he really would rather send to jail.

But Jesus is at pains to help us not feel that way about God. He is striving in Luke 12:32 to describe for us the indescribable worth and excellency of God’s soul by showing the unbridled pleasure he takes in giving us the kingdom.

“Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” Every little word of this stunning sentence is intended to help take away the fear that Jesus knows we struggle with; namely, that God begrudges his benefits; that he is constrained and out of character when he does nice things; that at bottom he is angry and loves to vent his anger.

Luke 12:32 is a sentence about the nature of God. It’s about the kind of heart God has. It’s a verse about what makes God glad — not merely about what God will do or what he has to do, but what he delights to do, what he loves to do and takes pleasure in doing. Every word counts. “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”

THE DECEPTIVE POWER OF RICHES!

 EVERYDAY IN THE WORD!

SATURDAY JULY 01, 2023. 

SUBJECT : THE DECEPTIVE POWER OF RICHES!

Memory verse: “And the disciples were astonished at His words. But Jesus answered again and said to them, “Children, how hard it is for those who trust in riches to enter the kingdom of God!” (Mark 10 vs 24.)

READ: First Timothy 6 vs 17 - 19:

6:17: Command those who are rich in this present age not be haughty, nor to trust in uncertain riches but in the living God, who gives us richly all things to enjoy.

6:18: Let them do good, that they be rich in good works, ready to give, willing to share,

6:19: storing up for themselves a good foundation for the time to come, that they may lay hold on eternal life.

INTIMATION:

People recognize that riches give them power. It enables them to put food on the table and pay their bills. The power in riches have been given various names: 'purchasing power,' ‘bargaining power,’ ‘economic power,’ negotiating power,’ and so on. So, people see giving their riches away as loosing power. Therefore, they think they are loosing in life by giving out their riches.

In imagining that their wealth is their strongest defense, rich people are sadly mistaken. Riches cannot provide safety because there are too many ways for it to lose its power. For instance, the government may cease to back it; thieves may steal it; inflation may rob it of all value. Eventually, in many circumstances your wealth can lose its power. But God never loses His power. He is always dependable and ever faithful.

Jesus laid emphasis on the teaching about money and riches because of its importance to our daily lives, and on our relationship with God. Churches don't preach on them today in the way and manner Jesus did, apparently because of fear of the perception of the congregants. Most of the time something is said about money and riches from the pulpit is to motivate the congregants to give toward funding ministries or projects. But the subject of money is very important for our Christian race.

Let us revisit the story of the rich young man. After the man walked away unwilling to part with his money, the Lord said, "How hard shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God! And the disciples were astonished at His words. But Jesus answered again, and said to them, children, how hard is it for them that trust in riches to enter the kingdom of God!" (Mark 10 vs 23 - 24.)

You could say it this way, "How hard it is for rich people to be born again." That's quite a statement, because people often see riches as blessings from God indicating God’s approval. That was why the disciples were astonished at Jesus’ remarks. But Jesus clarified His statement thus, "How hard is it for them that trust in riches to enter into the kingdom." 

He isn't saying that riches itself makes it difficult to be saved. Rather He is saying that having lots of riches can trick people into putting faith in their riches because of the associated powers in it. Instead they should put their trust in God who gives them the power to get the riches. However, riches aren’t the problem, but how you trust in the associated powers is the issue.

The parable of a certain rich man told by Jesus in Luke 12 vs 20 - 21, says, “But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul will be required of you; then whose will those things be which you have provided? So is he who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.” In the parable God called the rich man who trusted in his plentiful harvest a fool! So is everyone who trusts in uncertain riches. The rich man died even before he could begin to use what was stored in his barns.

Planning for retirement—preparing for life before death—is wise, but neglecting life after death is disastrous. If you accumulate wealth only to enrich yourself, with no concern for helping others, you will enter eternity empty-handed. Jesus challenges us to think beyond earthbound goals and to use what we have been given for God’s kingdom. Faith, service, and obedience are the way to become rich toward God.

Where do you look for security and safety, in uncertain wealth or God who is always faithful? All of us will say, "Oh yes, I'm trusting in the Lord," but you have to do more than just say it. As the apostle James said in his epistle, "Faith without works is dead" (James 2 vs 26). Someone who is really trusting in the Lord will prove it by giving out of their resources toward kingdom advancement endeavors.

The danger with riches is that you can get to where you trust in what riches can do, that is, relying on its inherent powers to work for you more than you trust in God. Then, when you come upon a problem that riches can't solve, you will feel like the earth is crumbling beneath you. God will still be there to help you, but you would have learned to trust in His ability to deliver you. This is the major reason why giving is important: because learning to trust God starts with your riches.

The psalmist in Psalm 18 vs 2 says, “The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.” Unlike riches, God’s protection of His people is limitless and can take many forms. God is the supreme controller of all circumstances. In Him all finalities rest. 

The Scripture, in Lamentations 3 vs 37 notes, “Who is he who speaks and it comes to pass, when the Lord has not commanded it?” Only with God’s approval will your riches provide a safe haven for you. Therefore, put your trust in Him that controls all circumstances.

Prayer: Abba Father, by You all things consist. You are my shield and buckler. My absolute trust and confidence is in You who never fails. May I never live to put my trust in any other thing but You, in Jesus’ Name I have prayed. 

PRAISE THE LORD!

Step aside with Jesus by ClaudyGod