Abiding

“Adorn the Doctrine of God” [podcast]

Paula White Exposed [video]

THAT’s My King! Pastor Lockridge [video]

Powerful Prayers from Children-This Will Shake You [video]

The Fear of the LORD is to Hate Evil: Pride, and Arrogancy #shorts [video]

“Exhort servants (employees, slaves) to be obedient unto their own masters (bosses), and to please them well in all things; not answering again; 10 Not purloining, but shewing all good fidelity; that they may adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things.” Titus 2:9-10

The context of the above passage is instructions to all Christian “servants” (employees) and how they can be Christ’s witnesses among those they work with, including their “master” (boss, owner, etc.).

“2:10 One of the most obvious differences was that Christians did not succumb to the besetting sin of other slaves, namely, pilfering. The Christian ethic bound them to strict honesty. Is it any wonder that Christian slaves commanded higher prices at public auctions? In general they were taught to show complete and true fidelity. They were to be totally trustworthy and thus adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in every aspect of their lives and service. What was true of Christian bondservants then should be true of all Christian employees today.” William MacDonald, Believer’s Bible Commentary

“Purloining”

nosphizomai
nos-fid’-som-ahee
Middle voice from νοσφί nosphi (apart or clandestinely); to sequestrate for oneself, that is, embezzle: – keep back, purloin.

“Fidelity”

pis’-tis
From G3982; persuasion, that is, credence; moral conviction (of religious truth, or the truthfulness of God or a religious teacher), especially reliance upon Christ for salvation; abstractly constancy in such profession; by extension the system of religious (Gospel) truth itself: – assurance, belief, believe, faith, fidelity.

“Having eyes full of adultery, and that cannot cease from sin; beguiling unstable souls: an heart they have exercised with covetous practices; cursed children:” 2 Peter 2:14

“I made a covenant with mine eyes; why then should I think upon a maid?” Job 31:1

“Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. 6 In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. 7 Be not wise in thine own eyes: fear the LORD, and depart from evil.” Proverbs 3:5-7

“Giving no offence in any thing, that the ministry be not blamed: 4 But in all things approving ourselves as the ministers of God, in much patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses…” 2 Corinthians 6:3-4

You are a Christian, a disciple of Jesus Christ, and what you do – good or bad – is going to be associated with Christ. In other words, the way people perceive you due to your actions and attitudes, they are going to associate with Christ Himself.

Is your life currently a reflection of the perfect beauty and divine splendor our our LORD and Savior?

“That ye may walk honestly toward them that are without, and that ye may have lack of nothing.” 1 Thessalonians 4:12

Beloved of God, remember that our LORD Jesus informs us that we are “the salt of the earth”, sent forth by our Master Jesus to bring His healing, the preserving power of His salvation, and His bless-ed flavoring to others.

“Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men. 14 Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid. 15 Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. 16 Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.” Matthew 5:14-16

In Titus 2:10 we are instructed to “adorn the doctrine of God.”

“Adorn” means to put in proper order by decorating, garnishing, trimming. Embellishing.

kosmeō
kos-meh’-o
From G2889; to put in proper order, that is, decorate (literally or figuratively); specifically to snuff (a wick): – adorn, garnish, trim.

Think of walking into a home for the first time and seeing the furniture and yet no accessories. Pretty plain, right? Yes. The before may be somewhat functional, usable, and yet the after is going to be much more inviting, ingratiating, and attract more takers!

Perhaps because someone cared enough to put an attractive cover on their book, most would be more inclined to obtain and read the contents of that book, right? How about a living room? What does it say of those who created a warm, inviting living room? It may just communicate to us that they cared to be hospitable to those who would visit. How about food. Has anyone ever cooked for you? What did it communicate to you that it was well seasoned? Such most likely warmed your heart, instilling in you that the person who cooked that food not only wanted you to be nourished but also delighted by the taste of that nutritious food, right?

“Blessed be the LORD God of our fathers, which hath put such a thing as this in the king’s heart, to beautify the house of the LORD which is in Jerusalem:” Ezekiel 7:27

Jesus spoke of “many mansions” in His Father’s house (John 14:1-6). In Revelation 21 He gives a detailed, lavish description of the New Jerusalem, etc.

An inviting atmosphere is one that is defined, uncluttered, warm, hospitable, and inviting. Makes one want to dwell in that atmosphere.

Are our lives inviting to others? Do our lives make others want Jesus? And when they come close, when they commune with us, do we have enough flavor and substance to cause them to desire to pay a return visit? Remember how so many were drawn to our LORD? The woman at the well, the woman with the issue of blood, Zachaeus, the prodigal son, etc. We should never leave anyone without having made a powerful, bless-ed deposit into their lives.

Are there some renovations God is doing in your life?

“See, I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to build, and to plant.” Jeremiah 1:10

From brother Chris Sitter:

“Prayer… Father in Heaven, thank You so much – for your beautiful and precious and terrifying Word!!! You have been so kind to show us the little we currently understand. Please help us always to be hungry to learn more, to apply what you’ve shown us – to our own lives, to not have any iniquity that has dominion over us, to keep our hearts with all diligence, and to always be faithful – when You give us another chance to share. Please guide us, as we study your Word, and as we consider what to share – and where and how to share it, and please bring MANY SOULS to Yourself – through the Word of God presented, and please bless every other brother – who is preaching your balanced Word – to the lost and to your sheep!!! in Jesus name!”

Let’s Use Some Seasoning!

“Walk in wisdom toward them that are without, redeeming the time. 6 Let your speech be alway with grace, seasoned with salt (seasoning), that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man.” Colossians 4:5-6

Do you like plain food, food with no salt or pepper, or would you prefer Tony Chacheres cajun seasoning on it? The latter is making me hungry right now! Who would think to eat bland food? Do we think God doesn’t have flavor? He invented it. Nothing exists without Him creating it.

Is your life bland or is it seasoned with God’s love exuding in and out from you?

In light of this, what might your life look like right now and what are the possibilities of what it could look like? Do you have the flavoring of Heaven exuding from your attitude, your disposition? Memorizing applicable Scriptures will immediately begin to change your life for God’s glory!

Pour Water on the Fires of Strife!

One of the ways God’s glory shines through His people is when there is a crisis and how they react. Think about when there is strife in the workplace and notice how our LORD instructs us in this.

Think of when you are attacked, slandered, harshly, unexpectedly confronted. Memorize:

“A soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger.” Proverbs 15:1

And memorize:

“Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers.” Ephesians 4:29

What’s the principle conveyed by adorning the doctrine of God which is the revelation of Jesus Christ which/whom you have been espoused to?

When you witness, please be kept. Brush your teeth and comb your hair. Wear decent (not lavish) clothes.

When you put Scriptures in a little book to pass out, or leaflet/tract, do your best to make it attractive.

In other words, make the things of Christ attractive to others. Do not unnecessarily cast a stumblingblock before others by your own neglect or obnoxious behavior.

No one puts a cheap frame around a Picasso or Michael Angelo painting, right?

Lest someone would attempt to take this too far: Please understand that you and I can add nothing to God’s Word and yet God’s Word instructs us to “adorn the doctrine of God” – to make it attractive to others and not repel them by our own lack of aggrandizing it or the neglect of your own hygiene, etc.

Would we all agree that if God leads a believer to encase His Word in a book, that believer should be careful to adorn that book with a nice attractive cover? That way it is inviting for others to pick it up and perhaps buy and read those words of God within, right? Oh, and most important, the Word of God is all that truly matters in any man’s book. For believers, in all ministering, we follow the Nehemiah 8:8 model where we simply exactly state, use God’s actual Word and then give the sense of it, talk about it, attempt to apprehend what HE is saying (Ezekiel 3:4; 2 Timothy 4:2; 1 Peter 4:11).

Think back to what God used to attract you to Him. Was it not the clear-eyed love, joy, and peace of His people who witnessed to you? Yes. They adorned, they made attractive the holy doctrine which reveals our great God! That Word which they had already received was doing things in their lives that the LORD alone can do – love, joy, peace, etc. (Galatians 5:22-23). Their lives were adorned, they were living, tangible proof of how good Jesus is!

You cannot do this life over. You have only this one opportunity. Consider all that you are doing. It there eternal value? Is it truly to the glory of the LORD Jesus?

Your Prayer:

“So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.” Psalms 90:12

The depth of the death and burial in your life is going to determine the height of the resurrection in your life (2 Corinthians 4:10-12). Nothing is going to work right without the cross at the center of your life – Christ’s redeeming cross, and the one He commanded you to take up daily (Matthew 20:38-39; Luke 9:23-24).

PRAYER: Heavenly Father, I come to You in the name of my LORD Jesus Christ. Please forgive my self-idolatry which is at the root of all my sin. Jesus, I stop my life, right now and ask You to let Your redeeming cross and all that is divinely invested in it, to take it’s full effect in my life. Please anoint me with the oil of Your Holy Spirit to the death and burial of self so that You alone might reign in my life. I love You Father. I love You my dear LORD Jesus and thank You afresh for dying on that cross for my sins, being buried, and raised against the third day for my justification. Thank You. Not my will but thine be done – now and forevermore! In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

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MAKING PEACE WITH GOD [podcast]

Fresh Start with God

“All power is Given unto Me in Heaven and in Earth” [podcast]

His Wife Hath Made Herself Ready [podcast]

Abiding

WHAT’S On Jesus’ Prayer List? [podcast]

What Did Jesus Pray for His People?

John 17 – knowing Him. Being one with Him and the Father and one another.

Jesus prayed the highest priorities of the Father for His people as is recorded in John 17.

Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer – John 17

“Jesus’ prayer in John 17, often called the “High Priestly Prayer,” is a profound discourse to God before His crucifixion, focusing on His own glorification, the protection and unity of His disciples, and the future unity of all believers, emphasizing eternal life through knowing God and Christ, and asking for believers to be set apart in truth and one, just as He and the Father are one.

Having offered His precious, sinless blood to the Father for the redemption of the fallen race, Jesus Christ is now seated at the right hand of the Father making intercession for all of His saints.”

“But this man, because he continueth ever, hath an unchangeable priesthood. 25 Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them. 26 For such an high priest became us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens;” Hebrews 7:24-26

Due to His perfect sacrifice and redemption of fallen mankind, we who are His, are invited to “come boldly…”

“Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession. 15 For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. 16 Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.” Hebrews 4:14-16

As we “come boldly unto the throne of grace” the LORD is going to fill us with His grace and love.

Those most powerfully used by God to help others, are those who are set apart to Him, crying out to the LORD to be filled with His gracious Holy Spirit and to be made more and more one with Him.

Debbie Lord writes:

“GOD is our sustaining force via prayer:

The Holy Spirit praying for us from within,

Jesus, our risen Savior and High Priest praying for us at the right hand of God, Brothers and Sisters in Christ praying for us on this earth, and us praying for believers everywhere,

even those we’ve never met. Ephesians 6:18

Each member of Christ’s body should be assured of the constant prayer of other believers as well as lifting up in prayer other believers themselves.”

Memory Truth:

“For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.” James 1:20

We grow in Christ’s grace to realize that our own misguided, unwarranted, self-righteous attitudes and actions of wrath on sinners, is not of God.

Pray to “grow in grace” (2 Peter 3:18). When we are growing in His grace in that abiding oneness, His ministry of grace will flow through us. It has been wisely stated that “We can never lead someone else to a place we aren’t ourselves walking in.”

“For it is a good thing that the heart be established with grace…” Hebrews 13:9

WHEN we see something in God’s Word, such as the verse above, let us pray it – pray He will bring it fully into our lives.

WHO has God Used to Truly Minister to Us?

Did God use vessels of self-righteous wrath?

Or, has the LORD used crucified vessels who were full of His love?

Can we not reflect back on how God used others to minister to us? Who did He use? It wasn’t the harsh self-righteous ones He used but rather the vessels of His love – who when they spoke His truth, did it out of His concern and desire for us to truly come to Him… right?

There is so much evil in this fallen world. We are bombarded with words, attitudes, and images daily with the iniquity of fallen mankind. That will not change till Jesus returns. For now, we must abide in Christ, to seek Him to make us one with Him and the Father who are one in agreement, unison, etc. It’s only in being made one with the Father and Jesus that God’s love will fill and flow from us. May God settle us at His feet, truly.

YOUR PRAYER: Holy Father in Heaven, I come to You in the name of my LORD Jesus Christ. Please teach me Your ways and make me, and Your body, one with You. In Jesus’ holy Name, amen.

Pouring prayerfully over the prayer of our LORD Jesus recorded in John 17 would greatly benefit us saints.

John 17: Jesus’ Prayer, the Real “LORD’s Prayer”

The High Priestly Prayer of Our Savior: Beholding the Highest Divine Priorities in the Prayer of Jesus

“1 These words spake Jesus, and lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee:

2 As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him.

3 And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.

4 I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.

5 And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.

6 I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept thy word.

7 Now they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee.

8 For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me.

9 I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine.

10 And all mine are thine, and thine are mine; and I am glorified in them.

11 And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are.

12 While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name: those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled.

13 And now come I to thee; and these things I speak in the world, that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves.

14 I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.

15 I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil.

16 They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.

17 Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.

18 As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world.

19 And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth.

20 Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word;

21 That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.

22 And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one:

23 I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.

24 Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.

25 O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee: but I have known thee, and these have known that thou hast sent me.

26 And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.”

The Gospel key to walking in God’s love is the cross. The Bible teaches us that “God is love” and it’s only the crucified vessel that will be full of God’s love and used effectively by the LORD.

“And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. 17 Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world. 18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.” 1 John 4:16-18

All ungodly fear is cast out when we are full of the love of God. Being full of the love of God requires that we seek His face and become one with him (John 17). Fear is ejected when God’s love permeates our hearts via fellowship with Him (1 John 4:16-18).

Ministry from Heaven can only come out of a crucified vessel.

“Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. 11 For we which live are alway delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh. 12 So then death worketh in us, but life in you.” 2 Corinthians 4:10-12

Love is at the top of the divine list of priorities and can only come out of the oneness our Father desires us to have with Him (1 Corinthians 13). Are we asking Him to be made one with Him? (See John 17.)

“Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. 8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.” 1 John 4:7-8

Sister Debbie Lord offers us the opportunity to pray this Scriptural prayer: “Lord, I pray for your saints world over, that You would draw us closer and closer (increasingly) to Yourself as time grows short. Please help us give up and let go so that You can live in us fully and minister to us, in us and THROUGH us. I ask this in Jesus’ Name. Amen.”