Solidarity

 “Continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering.” Hebrews 13:3. 

Tortured believing prisoners might be ill-treated for reasons besides their faith, perhaps for loyalties or nationality or race, yet still we should identify with their suffering. God hears our prayers for them prayed in genuine sincerity and earnestness. Such sincere earnestness comes from spending time identifying with them as though we were there with them such that we feel a bond, a sense that what is happening to them is happening to us. Fervent prayer like this makes a difference because it reaches Heaven and the heart of God. Believers are one in solidarity and spirit.

Foundational trust

Not a time to trust any superpowers right now. Their power is as a foundation of sand when a storm is coming and the house needs to withstand rising water levels and torrential rain. Now is time to trust God and trust the Christ, Jesus, sent by God. Their teachings are the most solid foundation for our lives.  Some foundational teachings of Jesus Christ:

Give to those who ask of you - without letting anyone know you are doing it.

Have faith that God will make happen what you command with undoubting faith to happen.

Be watchful for opportunities to pray and for causes to pray about for the overall cause of Jesus Christ.

Forgive those who do you wrong, especially forgiving them as you ask God for forgiveness of your wrongs.

Do not worry about how you will get by, just like the birds do not worry how they will get by. Trust God to care. 

Build back better with your focus on those who believe in and obey Lord Jesus the Christ. 

Turn from lying and hating, idolatry and fornication. Let the teachings of Jesus cleanse your life from all such things and the Holy Spirit work within you to cleanse you and make you pure.

Continue in all this and let the words of Jesus remain within you. Then Jesus will raise you to life at the resurrection and give you life forever, as promised for those who believe in who Jesus truly is. 

The way of God

 Knowing what the Bible says is not the same as knowing and obeying the Father. Jesus helps us know God and obey what God says.

Springtime

 It is spring. The buds are appearing, opening, blooming as flowers on trees. The authority of the Lord Jesus Christ’s name is in full swing. We look forward to resurrection of the ones who hold to Lord Jesus’ teachings. 

Put down your umbrella!

 “Put down your umbrella” said Jesus to me. Jesus is the umbrella we need: the teachings of Jesus are what we need above us as protection from the wrath of God the Father. Storms are coming. Make sure you have Jesus as  your soul’s umbrella. Accept the teachings of Jesus as the commands of lord and master. Aa the hymn says, “Hide me, O my saviour hide, till the storm of life is past”.

Power and influence

 Trinitarian doctrines are a way for chief priests to retain power and influence. Many of us forsake these people and trust Jesus Himself. 

Hidden power

 Though hidden, Jesus is raised to power. Being hidden is no weakness for Jesus. 

Three resurrections

 First God raised Lazarus - for His own Son, Jesus. Then God raised Jesus - for Jesus’ disciples. So next, God is clearly going to raise the many disciples - through Jesus His Son.

Freedom

 The lie is to think that Jesus is not lord and master. Having Jesus as master to release you from your sinful ways, this is freedom.

Not alone

 “I and the children You have given me” God did not send Jesus to be isolated. God gives others from among us to Jesus. Jesus has some of us as His own. He is our Master and the Lord of us.

What it means that Jesus is the Son of God

 What it means that Jesus is the Son of God? The Father, God, produced the Son, producing the Son’s existence personally, bringing about the Son’s natural human body, giving the Son grace to be ever stronger and stronger is spirit and to live righteously, giving the Son the commands to lead to eternal life, works to do, words to teach,  and chastening during mortal life such that Jesus was perfected in righteousness, then directing towards obedient death and raising from death and personally making the Son both Lord and Christ, now eternally alive from the dead. All the personal workings of God the Father to produce all that Jesus the Son is. Making Jesus in spirit a man who reaches through time to the distant past and eternal future, the same yesterday and today, and so forever. The Father produced all this in Jesus His only-begotten Son. Much of this is produced by God to some extent in other children of God too, yet all epitomised in the firstborn Son, putting His glory in Jesus and the other children bearing Jesus’ own glory, all the work of the One True God, the Father. The faith all this produces by persuading others to believe, this faith is produced by God who is Father of this faith and the hope and love it all produces is the work of God through Jesus, by the Spirit. It all brings about rebirth by sprit. 

Rebirth. Faith and hope and love

 Yesterday I was asked by noble, local street preachers, was I born again. Today it is clear. The truth I knew long ago is that there is a mighty lord, a master, invisible to our eyes but perceptible by spirit, as this lord sees fit to reveal this to those who are positive in accepting this. What comes clear too is that this lord is Jesus - Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth. Let every human tremble at this. What is clearest of all to the reason is that this lord, this Jesus, is alive from the dead. So this is hope. God the Father made this hope possible by raising Jesus from the dead. So this faith, this hope, is real and made by God Himself, and this is the rebirth that counts, hopefully leading to sincere love towards all who have this hope within.

Crisis of heritage

 We are in a crisis. But the real crisis is not gas and inflation, sanctions and combat operations. It is the crisis of respect or disrespect for the commands of God among supposedly Christian roots nations. Britain. USA. Russia and in the middle, Ukraine. War clouds loom. Mushroom clouds are foretold. Do we keep disrespecting God?  Where is the Christian heritage the strongest?

The new way

When I was a child I grew up in a world of traditions loosely based on eroded forms of Christianity filtered by Western history, passed down from generation to generation, mostly orally, with loss of accuracy with each successive hand over. So it was a mixture of concepts I received. The teachings given me included a denial of credibility of information about spirits. Materialism replaced such information. Risk aversion perhaps motivated such denial. Children were taught to not believe that ghosts exist. Spirits of natural elements such as living things, elements of wind and rain, any attribution of spiritual existence to anything natural, attributing real veracity to supernatural things, all was denied. The maturity of growing education and help of scriptures gradually persuaded me these denials were foolish. The denials would lead to atheism. Science supposedly justified such denials. The idea given by traditional Western post-Christian supposedly enlightened society was (is) that it is evil to believe there is any reality in traditional teachings about spirits and rituals of magic. Only medicine in its Western form was to be accepted. Yet mature understanding makes me realise that God enshrines in the gospel and the way of Christ some important applications of traditions about spirits. The wrongdoing is not in accepting the reality and wisdom of things pertaining to spirits. The wrongdoing is in refusing to put aside lesser spirit worship and refusing to be devoted to worship of the Most High God. The wrongdoing is in failing to be a servant of Christ. We need not reject truthful information about how witches use rituals and drugs to draw spirits into inanimate objects or their own bodies. We instead accept the ritual of eating the bread of communion of Christ’s body and drinking the blood of the covenant to identify with Christ and receive Him into our human bodies having been baptised into His name. We have the presence of Christ joining with us in this identification with Him and know by persuasion that He is alive from the dead having died a sacrificial death on a symbolic cross. The traditional ways of spirit persist, yet we are given over to receiving the living human Christ alive from the dead and the charismatic gifts of the Holy Spirit of the Most High God, rather than serving elemental spirits and angelic gods. The other spirits do exist, we know this, yet we are freed from slavery to them as lordship of Jesus Christ supersedes any lesser mastery over us. God Himself, the Father of Jesus, in sovereignty over us frees us to serve only the Father who is God.  This is eternal life.

The lord’s day

 When Jesus said, “the Son of Man is lord of the sabbath” it was clearly the seventh day (which we call Saturday) that He meant. The true lord’s day is clearly the day of which Jesus is lord, hence the seventh day sabbath is the lord’s day. 

Love peace

 So much focus towards aggression, violence and war, even thoughts of total war, as a means of rebirth and of fixing economic woes, but the message from heaven is to move the focus away from involvement in violence and seek to be stablished in peace, turning swords into ploughshares as the ultimate mark of maturity, with violence and warfare being as temporary a measure as possible. The sheep receive heavenly protection from the wolves and eagles, as a billy-goat is given to the sheep to stave off the wolves and eagles, until the great shepherd comes. King David was not permitted to build God’s temple because he shed too much blood. Solomon his son was a more peaceloving king full of wisdom and he could build the temple in peace.

Woe

 Where are the true believers who do not hate other believers? True believers repent of any hatred of a believer. They do not try to justify their hatred. We in the West live in a sea of hatred and haters, lies and liars. Woe.

Trust and worship

 Distinguish between the wind and rain elements and the Father God who commands them when we ask Him to bring about our prayers. Praying to God with faith or commanding Nature with faith without doubt is a way to know when we are bowing to God rather than bowing to the elemental forces around us in the Nature which are subject to God’s authority. We are commanded, in Christ, to refrain from bowing to elemental forces of Nature and natural elements. We instead must bow our attitude and target our service and servitude towards God the Father. So we can focus our trust in God as we pray and our service can follow the answers to prayer from God. 

Trust

 The Father, God, is to be trusted. You, or anyone who trusts God, can command Nature and, through God the Father, your command will be obeyed if you believe without doubting. This Father is fully righteous in His teachings of love for those around us, especially believers, and in saving the day for such folk wisely and powerfully. Trust God. Jesus has this faith too and uses it miraculously. Trust also Jesus. Jesus Christ, the living Lord, having emerged triumphant, the one begotten Son of God, is the firstborn from the dead. His powerful name drives Nature. Trust Jesus. 

Having emerged triumphant

 Jesus Christ, the living Lord, having emerged triumphant, the one begotten Son of God, is the firstborn from the dead.