RSS

Tag Archives: love

Sermon 145 – FRIENDS?

22 Feb

I was counselling a young man who was struggling with the unfair behaviour of his friend. I confirmed that he was right that his so-called friend was behaving badly, but I then suggested he was having a mood because his ‘friend’ box was humanly defined to suit his selfishness. Seeing he was able to hear the truth, I went on to say, that if you’re a friend of God, friends might hurt your feelings, but they won’t drive you into a mood. There’s something wrong with your friendship with God.

What’s a friend?

I’ve asked this question on many occasions, and the general response is … ‘someone who is kind to me’, ‘someone who listens to me’, and ‘someone who makes me feel good’.

All humans are designed to want and need friends. It’s normal and it’s natural. But, there’s a problem. Our definitions and expectations are all about what someone should do for ME.

Jesus said … you are my friends if you do what I command you, John 15:14. This is the opposite to the human definition above. God expects you to keep Him happy and do what He wants; not the other way around. It’s pretty clear that the other way around is just a Satanic plot to trap humans in the fairness argument and divert them from doing it the way God says.

Jesus didn’t accumulate friends. He didn’t do good deeds to give Himself self-value and followers. More often than not, He lost friends (John 6). That’s because He was only interested in doing the will of his Father. If God is your friend, you won’t need friends to prop up your self-value, so if a friend does wrong by you, it might hurt your feelings but it won’t hurt your spirit.

Why do we have to do it God’s way?

The issue is spirit. God’s way usually doesn’t make sense, but If you don’t do it the way God says, and you do it the way of fairness, Satan will take power over your thinking. Satan will control your will and manoeuvre you away from God. This is confirmed in 2 Timothy 2:24-26 KJV.

Friendly vs friend

There’s a vast difference between being friendly with God, and being a friend of God. Friendly infers an expectation that God will look after me and care for me. That’s the human expectation of friendship and it’s contaminated by selfishness. On the other hand, if you want to be a friend of God, you have to give up your human right of fairness and trust His judgment and do what He wants; that is, not expect Him to serve your needs and wants, or be obligated to keep you happy.

You can’t be friend of God and a friend of the world at the same time, James 4:4. They are opposites. And you can only be a friend of God if you aren’t a friend of the world. The world is friendly with God, and therefore, the world expects to go to heaven if they’ve been good. But, they are not friends of God, and they won’t go to heaven. It’s the direct opposite for a true Christian; if you’re a friend of God you can be friendly with the world, but you can’t befriend the world. As soon as you try to collect worldly friends you threaten your friendship with God.

Irony

Under human friendship rules, no one has real friends. The reality is, everyone is just using and collecting other people for their own self-value status. However, if you’re a friend of God, you can have friends, because it doesn’t matter if they’re using you. All that matters is what God wants. However, if that friend opposes or challenges your friendship with God, you are required to separate. They should no longer be counted as a friend.

Example

Because God is my friend, and because my wife supports that friendship, then my wife is my friend, too. In fact, she’s my best-friend. It’s my friendship with God that sustains and uniquely blesses my relationship with my wife. If she opposed my friendship with God, how could we be friends?

How do you keep the laws of God?

This question may not sound related to’ friends’, but it is. Most people, even non-Christians, recognise that it’s good to try and keep the Ten Commandments. Everyone tries to do what’s right by the commandments, but it’s humanly impossible. God, Himself, has given us a simple instruction that doesn’t require you to be ruled by rules.

It’s found in Matthew 7:12 and it’s simply … treat others as you would like to be treated, because this fulfils all the law and the prophets, and it’s re-confirmed in Matthew 22:37-40. This means you don’t keep the laws of God by trying to be good and obey the rules, but rather, you can only keep the laws of God by first, being a friend of God and, second, by obeying his two directions towards other people. Those two instructions are … treat others as you would yourself, and hold no grievance against your friend or enemy, but instead trust His plan and purpose. Impossible to do unless you’re a friend of God.

If you walk in His love, you automatically keep the rules. If it’s not His love, the rules will give you a boundary of safety from the suction of worldly evil, but they won’t save you.

From God’s perspective, everything is measured by your relationship with your fellowman. Love is measured by relationship, not by rules. If you practice love to your neighbour with the secret expectation that ‘you get back more than what you give up’, it’s breaking the commandments of God. Be as nice as you like to your fellowman and then have a mood and hold a grievance when he hurts your feelings or attacks you without justification, and it simply means you are running by the friend rule, not the God rule.

God doesn’t say … hold a grievance when your friend hurts your feelings and turns against you. On the contrary, He actually commands us to pray for our enemies, Matthew 5:44. That takes faith and trust.

You can’t practice this strategy unless you’re a friend of God. You can try but it won’t work.

What’s LOVE?

Love = giving up something for someone else. The opposite to love is pride. Therefore, PRIDE = expecting someone to give up something for ME. This definition is confirmed in Matthew 7:12, John 6:38 & 8:29. Good friendship may look like love, but If love is motivated by pride, then it’s not love, it’s pride, no matter how it looks.

Contamination

You wouldn’t serve an omelette with 5 good eggs and one rotten egg. The omelette would be rotten. When you do a good deed for someone, that’s love, but as soon as you expect a good deed back, that’s pride. Counting up your good deeds and ignoring your pride deeds and ignoring your secret selfish motivation, does not equal love, but selfish usury. You can argue with God about your good deeds, but He’s measuring your love by the contamination.

Example

Greater love has no man than he lay down his life for his friend (John 15:13). That’s love, but it’s not love if it’s contaminated by self-value. This is confirmed in 1 Corinthians 13, where the Word of God also states that you can give your body to be burned but it will profit you nothing if it isn’t love. These statements seem contradictory but they’re really saying the same thing. That is, nothing’s genuine uncontaminated love unless you’re a friend of God, because if you’re a friend of God, then it’s His love that flows, and His love is not contaminated by pride.

Gratitude or attitude

Jesus proved Himself as love by dying for the human race. He did lay down His life for His friends and it worked because He didn’t do it for Himself but for His Heavenly Father. He did it the Father’s way, and rejected the ‘self’ way. Have you responded with a gratitude of commitment of being His friend, or like the selfish majority, are you friendly with God so that He’ll be friendly with you? One is death to self, the other is get for self.

If you have a mood or hold a grievance because someone hasn’t done right by you, you’ve got a friendship with God issue.

There’s a price to pay to be a friend of God. A Christian cannot accumulate worldly friends for their own status and self-value. A genuine Christian is someone who is a friend of God and not a friend of the world, James 4:4.

 

May God open our eyes to our selfish fairness that believes we’re Godly when it’s really just living for our own image, instead of for God’s.

 

Pastor Samuel Abbel

 

 

Advertisement
 
Leave a comment

Posted by on February 22, 2020 in friends

 

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Sermon 139 – The DICHOTOMY of LOVE & HATE

10 Aug

Is it possible for hate to be built on love, or love to be built on hate?

I asked some Christian folk how they would define HATE. Their responses were along the lines of … detesting someone, or super angry with someone.

I then asked … where does this hate originate from?

They each brought up certain incidences of injustice in their childhood, but it could all be summarised as “they hurt my feelings”.

I then asked … what was your reaction to these hurt feelings?

Their answers included … withdraw, blame, feel bad, switch-off, block-it, and justify why they were wrong, and determine not to be told what to do.

I then asked … how do you cover these hurt feelings?

Assuming that you didn’t retaliate with perverted rebellious behaviour, their common answers were basically … be good, be nice, and be busy.

I then asked … why do you cover these hurt feelings?

I received a range of responses, but they effectively boiled down to … “so my IMAGE isn’t tainted”.

I then asked … how do you propagate this IMAGE and why?

The responses included … increase my knowledge, increase my skills, be nice, popularity, and work harder. We do these things to protect and build our image, and to position myself above my neighbour, so ultimately, I’m the boss and no one can tell me what to do.

I then asked … how would you define LOVE?

The general responses were … caring, warming to someone, no anger, respectful, and wanting to be around someone. That is, practicing these things and expecting them in return.

I then asked … can you live in middle ground between hate and love?

They generally agreed that you could, but, this is the typically wrong perspective of the modern Christian.

God’s perspective

Now, let’s look at it from God’s perspective. God says, middle ground is neither hot nor cold (revelation 3:16), and therefore, cold. So, from God’s perspective, there’s no middle ground, it’s either love or hate. If you don’t operate in love, then you operate in hate, and if you operate in hate then you are not operating in love. It’s either, love or hate.

Middle ground

If you live in middle ground, then you call your hate, ‘good’, and God says that’s evil (Isaiah 5:20,21). And, if you live in middle ground, then you worship your own IMAGE, and God says that’s defying and disrespecting His 2nd commandment. It may not be graven into wood or stone, but you’re still ignorantly bowing down to it and worshiping it.

Middle ground means … I worship ME and pretend to worship God.

Hate is the opposite of love

God defines hate as … the fruit of “I love ME as No.1, so don’t TELL ME what to do”; and God defines love as … God, the Father is No.1, so He TELLS me what to do, and I do what I’m told.

Love is … “ok, God, I don’t like it, but Your will, not mine, be done”. Love is seeing from God’s perspective. God’s insight flows from doing what’s right in His eyes, rather than what’s right in your own eyes.

Hate is just the secret worship of ME, and love is the worship of God, for God.

Hate judges, love evaluates. Hate bosses, love trusts God’s plan.

You can’t make a judgement against someone, unless you live in hate, and you can’t love IMAGE unless you live in hate.

So, in reality, reacting to hurt offences is just loving myself, first, and hate flows from this self-love.

Self- love is focused on the other person’s offence against me. Agape love is focused on God’s will and how I serve it, for God.

You have to be dead first before you can be resurrected

The truth is, if you’re not dead to yourself you can’t properly see God, you will automatically operate in hidden hatred and make your judgments from that foundation, and more importantly, you can never be resurrected into His life. Without death there’s no heaven, no matter how good you think you are.

Good doesn’t cut it

You can’t solve your pride by trying to be more respectful, more good, more committed, or keeping silent with no apparent offensive opinion, or practicing pretense. That’s salvation by works, not by faith. Good will never cancel out hate. The only solution is turning to God to address your hate, and this can’t happen until you agree that you have it. You can’t change your sinful heart. You have to call out to God to change it, and He’ll use hate to do it.

The test

The test will be your reaction to being bossed, corrected, or someone who challenges or mocks your opinion, especially with intimidation. You should take your moody reaction to Christ and ask Him to address your pride.

Ok, we fail, but there’s a big difference between ignorantly and blindly living in hate (like King Saul) and falling into it (like David).

I then asked … how can you reverse self-love into God’s love?

Just as the foundation of hate is self-love (known as ‘pride’), so, the foundation of God’s love is the hate of hate, that is, the hate of sin (Zechariah 8:17, & Revelations 2:6). Consequently, you can hate on the foundation of love, if you hate sin, but you can never love on the foundation of hate.

That’s why, God hated Esau (Romans 9:13), because as much as Esau tried, his heart was focused on himself. That’s why God loved David and hated King Saul. They both sinned, but David repented because his heart was toward God. Saul’s’ heart was towards Saul.

What’s hate got to do with it?

Because, firstly, hate defines your relationship with God (1 John 2:11). If your love is built on the foundation of hate, whether you want to know it or not, then you are not related to God even though you vehemently demand you are.

And, secondly, because, you need hate to find God’s love. Just as hate controls everybody’s moods, so hate is the pill that you must swallow in order to stop hating. This means you have to suffer hate (Matthew 24:9) and the devaluing of your opinion to cure your hatred and high opinion of yourself … that’s the ‘cross’, that’s the place of ‘baptism into His death’ (Romans 6:4), that’s where you deny yourself, daily (Mark 8:34, Luke 9:23). Without hate, you can’t find the cross, you can’t die, and you can’t be resurrected to eternal life (John 12:25).

Why won’t so-called Christians listen to this truth?

Pride believes it has.

Pride blames and doesn’t accept responsibility for its sinful reactions.

Pride believes it’s good already.

Pride feeds on the FEAR of looking bad, of losing its IMAGE, and of persecution (Galatians 6:12).

The solution

Nothing of self, all of God.

 

May God open the eyes of His remnant to see their sin and instead be willing to suffer reproach for His Name!

 

Pastor Clive Douglas

 

 

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on August 10, 2019 in hate

 

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Sermon 135 – I HURT, I HATE, I WON’T

10 Feb

After 24 years in ministry I’ve concluded that just about every modern Christian has come to Christ because they’re hurting. They’ve come to get God to fix their hurt.

The hurt is pretty-much always some mis-treatment or mis-understanding from a parent. More often than not, the general hurt is the child’s perception, right or wrong, of the father liking a sibling more than themselves.

Once a person takes on the hurt, their spirit will automatically hate the person who hurt them. Everyone will admit they’ve been hurt, but few will admit they hate. Everyone knows hate is wrong so we cover our hate with niceness and politeness, and helps, and call it love. Eventually their fruit verifies their hate. In God’s eyes we’re lying to ourselves.

Everyone I’ve counselled has come to Christ and practiced the love of God on a base of HATE. How can that possibly work and invariably it doesn’t, it’s all built on secret hate. In truth, their love is fake; it’s just a pretense. You can prove it’s fake by their fruit. Sooner or later, their real fruit will ooze out behind the nice façade.

POWER = control over others

It’s not really hurt or hate that’s the real problem. Hurt and hate are just excuses to justify my right for self-power. Satan wants power. Women want power over men. Men demand their power. Humanity is just a competition for power. Everybody lusts for power so no one will tell them what they can or can’t do. Power means you serve me, not me serve you. Power means I control my environment so you serve my wants for ME = no hassles for ME.

Techniques of Evil Power

The lie … if I remain calm and you lose it, I win. The truth … Jesus picked up a whip and went for it in the temple.

The lie … if you hurt me, then I have the right to hurt you. The truth … resist not evil.

The lie … I know, I’m right you’re wrong, so I have the right to intimidate you with fear. Truth … there is no fear in love.

The lie … I’m hurting, you’re responsible to make me happy. Truth … I’m just moody.

BOSS

Everyone under the origin of Satan wants to be their own boss. By hating the hurt from authority, you can justify your want. The problem is, once you set that precedent based on hate, you block God being the boss. I’ve challenged fake Christians about their fake love and in some occasions had the person state … “ok, you’re the boss”. Once somebody declares that, they confirm they’re into ‘position’. You see, a pastor isn’t the boss, he’s a servant, and servants can never be the boss, but a fake Christian evaluates everything through the eyes of who’s the boss, because they envy the boss, because they want to be the boss so they can tell everyone what to do instead of being told. They hate being told what to do. If you won’t be a servant as He instructs, then you won’t be told by God what to do = defiance.

Genesis 3

This all started in the Garden. Satan conned Eve to get smarter by eating the forbidden fruit. She knew it was wrong but what the heck. She shared it with Adam to make sure he was involved in the crime. When God came visiting, they hid. Instead of taking the blame for their actions, they BLAMED the one that made them do it. Adam even blamed God that it was His fault for making the woman.

Multiple times I’ve been thanked for helping people and then been blamed for pointing out that they were not obeying God’s laws. Hate always turns a blind eye to the help it was given and always ends up showing its appreciation with blame.

Selfish humanity always blames God and mother nature when things go wrong; they never blame their own sin, and they certainly never place the blame at Satan’s feet; they always have a go at Jesus first. Hate always lays the blame at Jesus’ feet.

You can’t blame authority and then say you are under authority. Blame is the evidence of your contradiction.

Satanic plot

Satan hates God’s authority. He can’t change that, but what he can change is man’s authority. If he can get a man or woman to hate authority and lift up their own sceptre, then he can control them, and make a mockery of God’s creation and thus question God’s right to rule. That’s exactly what happened in the Garden.

In every single case of hurt-hatred, as in the Garden, Satan uses the woman to defame the man. When the man takes the bait and tries to defend his authority his hatred of authority back-fires against him and he becomes hated by his children. And, so the hatred just keeps flowing. Hate attracts hate.

You HURT me. I HATE you. You WON’T TELL me what I can and can’t do

Once you allow your hurt to turn to hate, you immediately defy the law of God. You’ve just broken the 5th commandment of God to respect your parents. Once you break the law, the consequence is sin and death. Satan’s now got you. You’re his. You can cover your hate with as much good works and niceness as you like but it’s just fake love and false salvation. Jesus came to save the BAD. Fake GOOD covers the BAD, and thus your good blocks your salvation.

You see, HATE YOU simply means, I LOVE ME. That’s ANTI-CHRIST! So, love built on hate is the love of you, not the love of God. That’s Satan, not Holy Spirit.

Human love = love ME = hate anyone that loves someone else more than ME.

God love = love God = hate ME (Luke 14:26) = regard your neighbour more important than you.

Everyone gets married on the presumption that it’s your role to make me happy. How selfish we are! Marrying Jesus is exactly the opposite … it’s how can I serve Jesus for His happiness? Marriage isn’t to make you happy; it’s to address your will through the clash of two wills.

The LOVE of God

What’s the difference between a genuine Christian and a fake Christian when it comes to hurt?

  1. A fake Christian hates the person who hurt them. A genuine Christian hates the evil behind the person. There’s a massive difference between hating the evil and hating the person who’s done the evil. Hating the person will increase the love of yourself; hating the evil will increase your love of God, and it’s impossible to find this love unless you willing cop the hate for Him.

Unlike the 1st Adam, a genuine Christian will feel the hurt and recognise Satan behind the hurt and leave the person to God. They don’t take the bait, they take the blame. That’s dying to self and trusting God. That’s the pathway set by the 2nd Adam. This is impossible for anyone, fake Christian or non-Christian, who retains hate against an authority. Hate will always blame and retaliate, love will cop the hurt and trust the Creator and stay free from Satan.

  1. A genuine Christian knows that God has called us to be hated (Matthew 10:22). A fake Christian can’t hack that; they reserve the right to hate back.

A fake Christian will take the hurter on and resist them. A true Christian will take the hate on by copping it and Christ will be his strength.

  1. A fake Christian uses the hurt as an excuse to hate, but the real agenda is so they can be the BOSS of themselves. A genuine Christian is a servant, not a boss.

Love is not doing good deeds or being nice (1 Corinthians 13). Love is doing what God wants, not what you or others want = dying to self. Good deeds are only good if they flow from love. Good doesn’t cut it; only love does.

The FRUIT of hating an authority is always …

  1. ELEVATION … I’m special, I’m important
  2. ENVY … I hate you because you like them more than me (James 3:14,15).
  3. STUBBORNNESS … You’re not going to tell me that I’m wrong. I’ll wait till you understand my point of view.
  4. BLAME … If you’ve got a problem with me, then it’s your fault; and, if I’ve got a problem with you, then it’s your fault. You won’t listen to ME. You don’t understand ME.
  5. TELL … You can correct me, but don’t TELL me what to do; I’ll TELL you whether you’re right or wrong. I’m the BOSS of my life, not you. You won’t tell me I’m stupid!
  6. FEAR … eg. being left out, being put-down, being found-out
  7. LIE … to protect not being exposed as a fraud.
  8. MOOD … hate is always offended at correction or any suggestion they may be wrong (Hebrews 12:8). Moodiness is a craft to manipulate you to do my will.

I’ve observed this fruit in every single case of a fake Christian.

Dysfunctional Family … man vs. woman boss

Ever since the Garden, every woman is under the influence of Satan for the purpose of defaming the man. If the man resists the woman through hurt-hate-blame she will take him to hell. If he humbles himself by turning to the Lord, he can save the woman from hell. It’s the man’s responsibility to humble himself by trusting the Lord’s will. Society is failing simply because men won’t humble themselves to the Lord. Most men either resist a woman’s control, or withdraw for peace and harmony and surrender their authority to the woman’s control, never realising that they actually surrendered to Satan’s control.

The transferal of hate

  1. Intimidating fathers will drive boys to hate their father and thus to seek comfort and understanding from their mothers.
  2. Wives that hate men will drive their sons against their father by stirring the father to retaliate against the wife’s disrespect and the sons will automatically support the mother and hate the father.
  3. Boys hate BOSSY mothers and run the risk of loving men instead of a woman, and girls will hate intimidating fathers and fathers that favour other siblings over them and run the risk of loving women instead of a man.

The objective of Satan is to make sure that women hate men and men hate men, and men hate women and woman hate woman, and thus to make everyone their own boss, and thus dismantle the God-given authority of man over woman (Genesis 3:16) and thus destroy God’s plan. Just have a look at both modern Western and Eastern society and you’ll see that Satan is winning.

The family only changes when the father lets go his hate and submits to the will of the Father.

I have observed either the hatred of women or the hatred of men in every single case of a fake Christian.

The real issue

Humanity doesn’t like to be TOLD; it likes to TELL. Everybody is vying for a higher position so I can TELL you what to do instead of you TELLING me.

Consequently, the real issue is WILL. My will vs. your will and ultimately, God’s will. Everybody is willing to give up their will where they’re willing. That counts for little. What God wants is what you won’t give up. Humanity uses the hurt as an excuse to retain one’s will, then protects its will by blaming, mocking and intimidation, education, money and popularity all for the purpose of being its own BOSS, so your hurt can’t touch me. It then runs to its DRUG to appease its hurt. Humanity loves its sin.

As a consequence, I’ve discovered that the modern church is saltless and selfish, seeking prosperity rather than death. Its love is fake, simply covering its evil with good works, social fun and emotional worship.

Stubbornness is just self-worship

The truth is, if you choose to focus on the injustice of the hurt instead of focusing on God and trust His plan, you’re simply using the hurt to hide the fact that YOU are the centre of You and that you are too stubborn to bend your will. God calls stubbornness, “idolatry” (1 Samuel 15:23), the worship of yourself … “No one’s going to TELL me what I can and can’t do!” If you’ve ever said those words in your heart, then you’re into idolatry … the worship of yourself. There’s no way you’re a Christian until you repent.

Repent

Repent = I give up my hate; I acknowledge that I’m the one who’s evil; I give up my will to Christ. I’m willing to be hurt for Christ’s sake. I’m willing to take the blame for Christ’s sake.

“Not my will but thine be done”

Like Christian in Pilgrims Progress, you can walk along the Christian walk from the wicker gate to the cross, but you can never cross-over to the celestial city until you lay your hate at the cross, until you sacrifice the drug that’s sustaining your hate, and fully surrender your will to His. There has to be PAIN for GAIN. The cross is painful. The cross is fearful. There’s no POSITION at the cross.

If you were sucked in by the half-truth that you are saved by inviting Jesus into your heart, then know that you’ve been conned. True salvation is on the other side of your greatest fear. By faith, that fear has to be sacrificed to the will of God, before you are saved. Jesus faced this dilemma. Abraham faced this dilemma, and Jesus said you cannot be His disciple until you pick up your cross and follow Him (Luke 9:23). He also stated that as they hated Him, they will also hate you (Luke 10:22-25).

Copping the blame, right or wrong, is a sign of Christ. Blaming someone else is a sign of Satan.

If you’re going to serve Christ, then like Christ, you have to cop the blame. If you decline to cop the blame then you are not saved, no matter how good you declare yourself to be. It’s not based on fairness, it’s based on God’s love that keeps you free from Satan.

When the prodigal son came to his senses and returned, he didn’t say to his father “you’re the boss”; he said “I have sinned against heaven and you and am not worthy to be called your servant.” To be a nothing for Christ was his whole objective; not to negotiate to get back the boss position of sonship.

The DRUG

What’s the drug you run to, to pacify your hurt or pain when it all gets too much?

Many Christians I have counselled confirmed that they run to things like … surfing, animals, women, money, helps, drugs, alcohol, business, pornography.

In every person’s heart who’s taken the bait of hating authority, there will be a drug that you use to pacify your hurt, and protect your hate, camouflage your fears and elevate your position over others. At the cross, you’ll have to give it up. The drug is your idol. If the sacrifice is not painful or fearful, then you haven’t picked the right drug. You can’t love God and keep your drug of self-glorification.

The IRONY

Adam wouldn’t take the blame. Eve wouldn’t take the blame. Satan wouldn’t take the blame. So, Jesus took the blame, and God exalted Him above every creature in heaven, on earth and under the earth (Philippians 2:7-11).

When you finally submit to the will of God and stop defending your own, the irony is, love knows it has the freedom to hate, the freedom to retaliate, the freedom to run, the freedom to fight back, and the power of position through Christ (Ecclesiastes 3). Love never loses, only hate loses.

Solution

Stop trying to be important, by letting others be important. Transfer your trust from yourself to the Creator and cop the hate. Sacrifice what you won’t, and sacrifice your drug.

“Ah Lord God, Thou hast made the heavens and the earth by Your great power. Nothing is too hard for Thee.”  Jeremiah 32:17

 

Pastor Frank Whistler

 

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on February 10, 2019 in Authority, Blame

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Sermon 134 – I’M HURTING

15 Jan

I spoke with a young Christian man who was hurting over his divorce. He blamed her for hurting him, and she blamed him for hurting her, and they listed their justifiable grievances as their excuses to hold onto the pain. In reality, their marriage was never going to work. They both entered the relationship with hatred and sooner or later this hatred would inevitably flare-up.

The young man had been hurt by his father’s cruel words, so he had decided as a child that he would never be like his father, but would always be kind to hurting children. Sounds right, but his kindness was built on a foundation of hatred towards his father, so, sub-consciously, it was always tempered for his own value and self-worth. In other words, his kindness was always contaminated with self-value, to compensate for his own hurt, so when he saw people hurting other people it gave him license to blame.

The wife had also entered the relationship looking for relief from her pain, but like the husband, her good deeds were a camouflage for her inner secret hurts. Sooner or later there would be a collision of hurts. We all marry for selfish reasons but very few learn to swallow our pride and allow God to use the marriage to break our selfishness.

It’s natural

All of us carry these hurts; it’s just part of humanity, infected by Satan’s lust for power and control.  Evil in people always uses hurts to put you below them. It’s a competition for position. ‘Hurt’ is just Satan’s way to blind you to the real issue of pride and self.

That’s why Jesus said … cast all your cares on Me because the Devil is your adversary (1 Peter 5:7), and that’s also why Jesus was wounded for our rejections (Isaiah 53). Only by faith in Him can you escape the Satanic cycle of self-destruction of put-ups and put-downs.

Most Christians think they’re free from Satan, but they lie to themselves. You can measure their lack of faith by their mood at the point of hurt.

The problem

The problem is, no one casts; they carry it. Why? Pride carries, faith casts. If you can’t cast it, it’s because of your pride. You can cover your pride with as much good deeds as you like to make yourself feel better about yourself, but it will never fix the underlying problem of your hurt pride.

Marriage and relationships is one of God’s pathways to expose this hurt pride in us. If you allow God to open your eyes to yourself (instead of feeding your pride by ‘blaming’), you will begin to see your hurt pride, and by faith in Christ, you’ll be able to cast it. That’s the only path to freedom. Forgiveness is casting, not carrying.

Blame

Blame is not a characteristic of The Holy Spirit. It’s a characteristic of Satan. As soon as you blame someone for hurting you or getting you into trouble, you’re simply affirming your blood connection to your first forefather, Adam. Adam was too proud to look bad, so he shifted responsibility for his own actions by blaming Eve. It simply locked him into Satanic manipulation; Satan was now pulling his chain through Eve.

That’s how it always works … if the man won’t stand for God’s laws and instructions, Satan will pull him down through the woman, and not only will he lose his own salvation, but his children will turn out to be murderers unless they themselves stand on God’s laws.  They may not physically murder like Cain, but God will overlook their good deeds and judge their hatred as murder against their fellow-man (1 John 3:15).

What’s your reaction when someone hurts you or hurts your feelings?

The normal inherent sinful reaction is …. have a mood, blame, it’s not fair, hurt them back, hate them and excuse it because they started it. The only reason we would react this way is because we love ourselves more than God.

God said … when you’re reviled, don’t revile back. When you’re mistreated, don’t mistreat them back (Matthew 5:39). Why did He advise this? Because the moment you retaliate based on the foundation of hatred for hurts against you, you put yourself under Satanic control. Satan uses hurt feelings to control you. God uses hurt feelings to free you.

This generation has been taught … don’t let anyone tell you what you can and can’t do, so how are they ever going to do what God tells them to do? Sadly, Satan is winning the war and most will never be able to do as they’re told.

How do we stop this hurt-reaction cycle?

We have to love God more than ourselves. How? Suffer enough hurts till we learn to cast instead of defend our pride.

The real issue

The issue is not ‘hurts’, it’s hate. And the reason we justify our unfair hurts is because we love our position. We hate being put-down. We’re born with the love of ourselves and we have to hate this love if we’re ever going to discover the love of God (Matthew 6:24).

There’s only 2 types of love … you either love God, or you love yourself. If you love yourself, you actually hate your fellow-man and God. That’s why Jesus said that if you want to be His disciple you have to hate yourself. This doesn’t mean despise yourself, it means … have zero to do with loving yourself. You can’t love yourself and love God at the same time. To love God, you have to hate your selfishness. If you routinely feed on your hurt selfishness, don’t say you love God. You can believe you love Him and you can think you love your fellowman, but it’s a lie.

The lie

The modern church teaches that you must love yourself first before you can love your fellow-man. The Word of God says the opposite … you must hate yourself first before you can love God and love your fellow-man (Luke 14:26).

What’s selfishness?

Selfishness is simply focussing on my hurt feelings, resulting in fake goodness and excuses to blame. The young man couldn’t see how he had hurt his wife’s feelings, he could only see how she had hurt his. Selfishness analyses and diagnoses from its hurt feelings. That’s why we have to hate it.

What’s love?

Focussing on serving God and faithfully trusting His higher plan by suffering my hurts for His glory.

The irony

If you love God and you’ve learnt to cast and you’re willing to suffer and lose for His sake, then there are times when you can retaliate like Elisha, you can withhold forgiveness like the Father (Matthew 6:15), you can call people names (Matthew 23:27), and you will hate evil and even curse (Psalm 109), but if you love yourself you can’t do any of these things without it being sin. Whatever is not of Faith and Love, is sin (Romans 14:23).

 

May God open the eyes of His remnant.

 

Pastor Frank Whistler

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on January 15, 2019 in hurt

 

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Sermon 117 – The Peninnah Syndrome

03 Feb

There’s a show on tv called “married at first sight” … desperate people looking for love and relying on the skills of a team of marriage psychologists to match them with the perfect partner without having ever met. The world is looking for love, and instead of turning to the Creator of love they’re turning to the evil love of homosexuality, or the emotional love of erotic music, or the social connection of erotic night-clubs, or prostitution, pornography and paedophilia.

The modern church has misled people with false hopes of love. It’s selling love to attract the desperate world to its meetings to increase its numbers and income rather than training people to form an army against the onslaught of the world. Love is popular, as is the Pentecostal anti-satan warfare with your mouth, but persecution is not. Grace has become the popular catch-cry; meanwhile homosexuality flourishes because the church has lost its saltiness.

Hannah

In 1 Samuel, we read the story of Elkanah and his two wives, Hannah and Peninnah. Hannah suffered the social embarrassment of being barren, but her husband had a special love for her, whereas, Peninnah, even though she had several children, lived in bitter envy of Hannah, and regularly mocked and spitefully ridiculed her because she saw her as more loved. Peninnah was Hannah’s enemy.

The question is … why was Hannah more loved? The answer is, there was something in Hannah that was attractive and there was something in Peninnah that wasn’t. You can’t be attracted to envy and bitchiness. All Peninnah had to do was stop her envy and she would have been attractive like Hannah.

Why couldn’t she? The answer is that love flows from the heart; it can’t be generated by psychology pairing. If your heart is full of envy then the wrong love will flow. You have to be dead to yourself for the agape love of God to flow out.

The only key to love is …

God 1st, neighbour 2nd. If you make yourself 1st, you’ll never find Hannah’s love. When you’re the most important thing, envy will dictate your spirit whether you know it or not.

Why is this phenomenon so common yet more often than not, hidden?

Because Satan comes as a wolf in sheep’s clothing. On the outside he seems nice and caring but on the inside, he’s full of envy. The story of Hannah is more than just a historical event; it also has the Spirit of God hidden in its pages. It’s really the story of Satan’s envy of Jesus’ special relationship with the Father. Instead of being satisfied with his position, Satan hates Jesus because He seems higher, but ultimately, Satan wants the top position of the Father. It’s not really about love at all; it’s all about CONTROL and the desperate selfish desire to be No.1.

Envy is a satanic trait; it’s not a characteristic of the Holy Spirit

The Word of God declares that love envies not (1 Corinthians 13). So, if you routinely practice envy it confirms that your heart is captured by Satan, and bitterness and spite will eventually flow out of you. That means you are not saved for heaven. This is the state of the false church; they have a relationship with God but they hate those who are more loved by Him.

God was on Hannah’s side

I’ve asked people who they feel for … Hannah or Peninnah? Routinely, I get the response, Peninnah, because she was less loved. Somehow, they can’t see Hannah’s pain. Standing on the side of Peninnah means you are standing against Hannah and thus on Satan’s side, not God’s.

I’ve worked with many Christians, both male and female, who appear loving and caring on the outside, but in time, expose an inner evil of bitter envy just because they see someone else as more loved, more popular, more successful, especially if they seem to walk closer with God. This is the Peninnah syndrome. They may be related to Christ, but they hate someone else being closer to Him. They want to be the centre of attention. They are the false church.

The enemy of the true church is the false church

The Psalms are full of David’s remorseful pain because those who pretended to be close to him were actually his hidden enemies (eg. Psalm 41, 54, & 55).  God calls the false church, tares. It is set up by Satan for the purpose of deceiving the world and to oppress the true church. The Bible declares that the time will come when false Christians will betray the genuine ones even to the point of having them killed and believing it’s for a godly purpose (John 16:2).  Jesus, Himself, warns us that a man’s foes shall be they of his own household (Matthew 10:36).

Like Hannah, without you even saying nothing, the false church will misunderstand your intentions (v.14,15) and call you insane and demonic. This was the reaction of the false church when God directed us away from Sunday (Rome’s holy day) to Saturday (God’s holy day, Matthew 5:17-19) sabbath as a sign of separation.

Be encouraged

Contrary to popular false belief, Hannah’s experience proves that a genuine Christian will suffer periods of barrenness. Faith waits on God; it doesn’t expect or demand God’s prosperity. It’s grateful when it has it and it’s trusting when it doesn’t (Philippians 4:11,12).

If you’re a true Christian, then you must expect the ridicule and spite of family within the false church. You must expect to be hated by family and friends within the false church. In fact, if it’s not happening then you are probably the false church … if they called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more shall they call them of His household, Matthew 10:25.

The false church is actually under the power of God. Like Hannah’s dilemma forced her to turn to God, God is simply using Satan’s envy to turn the remnant towards Himself. Faith flourishes under attack.

By their fruits you shall know them

Like Peninnah, the false church will be exposed by its envy and hate towards the true church, but, like Hannah, despite the attacks and spite, the true church will know it’s loved.

The mouth of Peninnah says … you can’t tell me I’m not a Christian / you love them more than me / what’s wrong with wanting love? / my feelings are the truth / I’m special / advise me but don’t tell me what to do.

You need a Peninnah to create a Samuel

Peninnah didn’t know it, but Satan’s whole purpose was to use her to destroy God’s plan through Hannah. Satan’s plan was to get Hannah to murmur against the unfairness so he could bring about her destruction (1 Corinthians 10:10) so there wouldn’t be a Samuel. Without Peninnah, Hannah would not have gone to God in desperation. She may have eventually had a son, but she would not have had a Samuel. Eventually, we shall reap Samuels (something worthy and purposeful for the kingdom of God) if we faint not.

 

Pastor John Cormack

 

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on February 3, 2018 in Envy

 

Tags: , ,

Sermon 104 – The Rain Falls on the Just and the Unjust

15 Aug

ABC news radio recently announced the past discovery in the National Gallery of Australia of a stolen statue known as the dancing Shiva idol belonging to the Sripuranthan tribe in southern India.  Two years ago the Australian government had returned the idol to the Indian authorities but it was being held in police custody as evidence of the crime. The tribes people were now expressing their frustrations to the authorities. They wanted the idol returned to their temple because they believed that the idol brought them good luck. To their thinking, when the idol was with them the rains came and their crops prospered and life was happy.

It reminds me of the Jews burning incense to the queen of heaven, Jeremiah 44:16-19. They worshipped the Lord God and at the same time made cakes to the queen of heaven. They adopted whatever technique gave them the most apparent prosperity. Life was based on getting the best deal; it wasn’t based on trusting God. Consequently, their thinking was the fruit of their contaminated spirits and their behaviour was irrational, but not to them.

What’s idol worship?

Obviously, bowing to a statue is clearly idol worship, but does western society practice idol worship without recognising their contradictory behaviour?  ISIS thinks so.

There’s a difference between thinking that you’re good because things are going good and being thankful when things are going well. One is the love of self and the other is the love of God. If you say you’re a Christian, then one is using God as your idol for your own well-being and the other is serving God whatever the circumstances. They’re miles apart. Sadly, most Christians have been indoctrinated by our humanistic society to believe that they are worshiping God when in fact they’re just using Him for their own self-value.

David was thankful for things working out well, but if you read the Psalms & the Book of Samuel you’ll quickly recognise that most of his life was surviving the satanic hassles fired against him. Think about Saul’s hatred, Absalom’s rebellion, and the loss of Ziglag. Despite the conflicts, he retained a God confidence attitude, and fought his own selfishness. Everything was based on trusting God’s plan, not chasing the best for himself.

If you give self an inch, it will take a mile

The current motto supporting homosexuality is … Love is Love.

In other words, their argument is that any type of good feelings is love. As if sin is going to feel bad! Everyone knows that sin is not love, whether it feels good or not. Once you give sin licence, of course it won’t be able to stop itself, so evil just calls the sin ‘love’ so it can justify it. What rubbish! Humanism can talk itself into anything, because self is its idol. Homosexuality is just an excuse for more self-idol worship and anti-christ resistance to the will of God.

Christians are losing the war

Everyone is born under satanic influence with the desire to worship themselves.  It’s the pride of thinking that we are of importance. It’s heavily promoted by our humanistic society. In fact, in modern society no one’s allowed to fail; no one’s allowed to feel bad. But the truth is, our children are being manipulated into thinking of themselves first; to protect their rights; to love themselves first before their neighbour. The whole process of modern society is to devalue Christianity and negate God and His rules from inhibiting our selfish passions.

We’re all subjected to the temptation of thinking we’re pretty good when something goes our way, but it’s temptation, and if you’re saved you have to wake up to the trick and resist Satan, not by telling Satan to rack-off, but rather by not giving ground to your pride.

Whatever is not of faith, is sin, Romans 14:23

It’s this inherent satanic inspired self-love that has to die daily, by surrendering in faith to the will of God. You can camouflage this pride with good works or happy attitudes, but if it’s not of faith then the good works are just a smoke screen to get into the good books of others, to protect your self-value to be liked and not dis-liked.

Why does the rain fall on the just and the unjust? Matthew 5:45

So why does the rain fall on the unjust too? Because, if it just fell on the just, everyone would swap sides so they could get the deal, so how would you know who was fair-dinkum? Plus, the just would be full of their own importance over the unjust, and thus get lost in their selfishness.

The rain falls on the just and the unjust. So, if you think you’re just because it rains on your life, how does that prove that you are just? Thinking that you’re just actually suggests that you are full of your own importance, like the Pharisee vs the Publican in Luke 18:10, and therefore you’ve either fallen into the pit of self-elevation, or you are actually one of the unjust.

The just walk by faith, Galatians 3:11

The unjust think they deserve God’s goodness on them, but the just don’t think they deserve anything, they’re just grateful when it rains on them; they don’t bemoan when it rains on the unjust more; and they trust God when it doesn’t rain on them. Any other pattern in your behaviour and attitude is contrary to faith, and therefore is evidence of using God for your idol worship. We all face the temptation to have a mood when it doesn’t work to our advantage, but that’s the tempter’s strategy to trick us into our pride. Love doesn’t fall to pride, and if it does it repents.

Think of it this way … the unjust have 70 or so years; the just have eternity. There’s no need for envy.

Why resist the temptation to think we’re something?

That’s simple … we’re all born in sin and therefore fully susceptible to demonic influence. Our pride opens the door to these familiar spirits (Isaiah 8:19) that will work against you and against the will of God.

I’ve lost count of the character changes I’ve observed when people open their heart to their pride. Recently, I was counselling a Christian man who felt the pride of his daughter’s achievements. I could sense there was pride in his picture because the outward manner of his children, including the daughter, began to show signs of superior self-value and say and do things that were out of character. I drew his attention to the fact that his children were showing the same unhealthy characteristics of their self-centered grandfather.  I pointed out to this man that his pride had opened the door to the spirits operating behind his family chain. When he looked he thankfully could see what I was pointing out to him. He recognised his healthy joy had turned to unhealthy pride. Instead of being thankful for the Lord’s rain, he had succumbed to the pride that he was the one who had done it for his daughter. He repented and his children’s attitude reverted back to normal behaviour.

We’re not fighting flesh and blood but principalities and powers, Ephesians 6

Demons attack and tempt in order to activate your pride. Don’t worry about the demons, rather, keep a check on your pride. It’s the thing that will kill you.

God doesn’t stop your pride; you’re responsible to do it.

 

Pastor Greg Saunders

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on August 15, 2016 in Pride, Thankfulness

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Sermon 66 – EXERCISE FOR LIFE

17 Jan

If you don’t exercise you will atrophy. That is, your body will deteriorate and eventually die.

Exercise is stress. As babies we had to learn to stand and walk. If you don’t put yourself under that stress then you will never train the neural pathways from your brain to your muscles which are designed to make your muscles work, and your bones will never be strong enough to support your vertical weight. It’s not automatic, it has to be stressed. It’s a stress to get up and walk. Running is a stress on your body. Like a tree needs the wind to stress it so it can strengthen itself, so moderate exercise is necessary for your body to stay healthy. And exercise needs to be done 3 times per week for 20-30 minutes in order to at least maintain and hopefully improve your level of strength. Yet, if you exercise incorrectly you will hurt your body and even potentially break it, and also teach your nerve pathways the wrong information for your muscles.

The same thing is true for our spirits.
Read the rest of this entry »

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on January 17, 2014 in Resist evil

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Sermon 64 – I’M GOOD

16 Nov

Q. What is good?

Q. Do you think of yourself as good?

Q. What % of good are you?

Q. What % of good confirms you are a Christian?

Q. What % do you place on your fellowman thinking that you are good?

Q. Why are you trying to be good?

Q. Is good a measurement of salvation?
Read the rest of this entry »

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on November 16, 2013 in Elevation, Pride

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Sermon 62 – WHO’S GETTING THE BETTER DEAL?

12 Oct

Often when I counsel folk I might ask … who have you got an irritation with? Sometimes they know but quite often they have no feelings at all against people.

How can you have –ve feelings against people and not even know it?

Here are my thoughts …
Read the rest of this entry »

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on October 12, 2013 in Envy

 

Tags: , , , , , ,

Sermon 48 – All I need is LOVE

09 Mar

The Live for Love Christian

To most people, Love = no Rejection

Everybody wants to be loved. They crave it, but most human beings believe love is … you giving me what makes me happy. When you don’t give me what makes me happy, then you’re not loving. From a wounded spirit’s point of view if you say or do anything that doesn’t make me happy then you are not being loving and if you correct me then you are rejecting me. The opposite to your love for ME is your rejection of ME. It’s all about ME!

Whether you understand it or not, everyone marries for position. They say it’s for love because that’s what they recognise is the feeling, but the real hidden reason is elevation of one’s self-worth. Women have relationships for security; for friendship; to feel valued; for spite against another woman; to not be a failure in the eyes of other women; basically for self-value. Men have relationships to show off the beauty they caught; to get into a family that’s higher up the status quo; to have sex. In this generation, everyone’s having relationships for the benefit of their own self value.

The love of self is alive and well

A friend of mine financed a couple into a house because they couldn’t get a bank loan. They said they were grateful but the real thanks he received for his generosity was the wife secretly hated his own son for having rejected her desire to marry him. In the course of time, what he discovered was that the wife really wanted to marry his son because that would have given her an elevated social position over her brother whom she envied, and she held his son in contempt for even considering that she wasn’t good enough for him. Wow!

The real issue to most people is Love vs. Rejection. I want love, I hate rejection.

The woman was desperate to be loved, but the love she was looking for was the love of herself. She expected men to swoon over her and couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t. She didn’t view relationships through the eyes of love; she viewed everything through the window of rejection. That is, if you don’t reject me (ie. make me feel good) then you must love me, and if you do reject me (make me feel bad) you are bad and unkind and selfish. Everything she planned was based on avoiding rejection and this was her secret motivation in every interaction, and whether you can accept this or not, this behaviour pattern is the norm.

There were two key trees in the garden; the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and the Tree of Life.

Adam and Eve could eat from the tree of life but they were not permitted to eat from the tree of knowledge. One tree led to life and the other tree led to death. Why didn’t they eat from the tree of life? They didn’t have to, they didn’t need to, or perhaps it just didn’t occur to them, or perhaps they were too comfortable in their Garden, but if they had eaten from this tree they would have seen things differently to how they perceived things after eating from the forbidden tree.

God is love. He created man in His own image, including the ability to love. Everybody wants God to love them; that’s why they come to Him …”I need your love, I want your love”. Satan knows that God has created everyone to be loved, so he has to counterfeit this ‘love’ need if he wants to trap people in his control. So he set up a system where you will find love … in YOURSELF. Under this system, you don’t need God to tell you what’s right or wrong, you can figure it out for yourself, and no one needs to tell you what to do. Perfect, everybody wants that. In fact, you’ll be able to tell everyone else what’s right and wrong. This satanic system is easy; it’s inherent; you don’t have to think about it and you don’t have to give up anything to have it; so people just fall for it.

The Tree of Knowledge is God’s knowledge (v.22) but when you eat from it you become responsible for that knowledge between good and evil, but human beings can’t do 100% good and thus the power of knowledge leads down the path of of your OWN experiential deductions to excuse evil as good.

In the Garden of Eden, Satan sold the idea of love by inviting Eve to love herself by tempting her to eat the fruit that would make her into her own god and feel like god. The trick was that it’s not really love, but rather the love of me; which is really pride.

You can’t eat from the tree of knowledge without becoming your own god and using God’s knowledge to promote you.

It’s not the tree that’s the problem, it’s the human. Human beings inherit God’s knowledge of good and evil mixed with the contamination of their envy and pride. Thus they see good and evil through the eyes of their own sinful rightness. Thus every human being has their own perception of what’s right and wrong and doesn’t like being told they’re not right.

That’s why people don’t understand the love of God; they are only willing to find love from their own tree of their own knowledge and they only trust their own experience. They’ve worked out how to love God from their own tree, and it’s not love at all, it’s pride. When you eat from the tree of your own knowledge, everything you do is to improve your POSITION above people, even using your own false love of God, without you even being aware of it; without you knowing it.

Satan’s sale pitch covers all bases; like in the temptation of Jesus, Satan will even give you back God’s love once you’re committed to this system. Thus Christians walk around thinking they DO love God and He loves them, completely oblivious to the fact that all they are doing is eating from the tree of “I know”, and not from the tree of Life. You can’t survive if you eat from the forbidden tree, unless you give it up.

If you want the love of God you have to suffer the rejection of others, and that fear of being rejected is enough for people to take the easy way out; besides it’s right to love, isn’t it, and under Satan’s system you’re told and convinced you are loving?

You do get knowledge from the tree of knowledge, but it gets polluted by your rulership and you end up with … ‘I know better than you, don’t tell me’.

The tree of knowledge does give you knowledge. It wasn’t forbidden because it was a bad tree, but rather because man was not capable of managing its power. It was created by God [Satan counterfeits, he doesn’t create] for the purpose of testing man’s love and to demonstrate man is not able to compete with God; man does fall to evil, God doesn’t. Before they ate from the forbidden fruit they already knew what was right and wrong, otherwise God could not have advised them to not eat from that particular tree; they knew it was wrong to do so.

Because of Eve’s sin, everyone is born with the inherited knowledge of good and evil but it’s contaminated by the pride of self-love. Therefore, everyone measures good and evil according to their own blurred vision based on what they’ve been taught and what they’ve experienced. No one can see good and evil through God’s eyes until they repent of their self-love and trust His wisdom rather than their own. Consequently, if someone starts dictating to you what’s right and wrong, our own self-love will automatically inwardly retaliate with ‘you won’t tell me I’m wrong; you’re wrong’. No one likes being told what to do and no one likes being told they’re wrong. It simply becomes an argument of who’s right and who’s wrong. Why? Because everyone thinks they’re right and everyone thinks they know. It’s this inherited self-rightness that must be repented off, not the bad we have done. The bad is simply the expression of our self-rightness.

Both a worldly person as well as an unsurrendered Christian will make their judgments based on what they believe is right and wrong, but will be ignorant to the fact that all their knowledge will be drawn from the tree of knowledge which has been contaminated by their own selfish perspectives.

So what’s the tree of knowledge that leads to death?

It’s when the tree of God’s knowledge gets polluted with ‘I know’ and gets re-designed and re-shaped by us to become the tree of our own self-knowledge. We ignorantly become ‘wise in our own eyes’ (v.6), not wise in God’s eyes. We lose God’s wisdom. It actually evolves into the tree of the love of ME; the tree that promotes ME. If I eat from this tree I will see from my point of view and that will be what I know is right. As my own god I now decide what’s right and what’s wrong, and I make judgments against people based on my rightness. Thus I break the laws of God and pronounce condemnation on myself (James 4:11,12).

People go on a journey of increased knowledge all for the subtle purpose of promoting their prowess over others. In our society, education is a god, and religious rank and piety is a god. Knowledge is power to anyone that eats from the forbidden tree.

You can check what tree you’re eating from

After they had eaten from the tree all they gained was the knowledge that they were naked … so what? Did they gain anything from this new knowledge or did they become bound by it? What they lost was the ability to see righteously. They lost the ability to think clearly, so much so they hid from their true friend, they lied and blamed each other for the sin, and because they couldn’t see that they could have and should have repented they were separated from God. So what did they gain from their new found knowledge? Nothing at all, in fact they lost everything. They already had the true knowledge of God and they foolishly sacrificed it for the feeling of being their own god. They had been conned and they didn’t even know it. Wow!

The Laodicean church doesn’t know it is naked

The bible starts in Genesis with humans choosing to be their own god, becoming wise in their own eyes, and seeing that they were naked. But, the bible ends in Revelation with the lukewarm and financially comfortable Laodicean church ignorant that it is naked. In other words, when you are your own god you can see things from a physical point of view. You may have made yourself prosperous, but you lose your vision from a spiritual perspective. You become blind to God’s perspective and read everything (including the spiritual) from the physical, not the heart. You can see that you are physically naked; you can even agree that you are a sinner, but, like King Saul in 1 Samuel 15, it’s all for the purpose of retaining your position in the eyes of others. When you choose the option of elevated position you lose the ability to see from your spirit and even though you worship the true God it’s all to look good in the eyes of others, and eventually God separates Himself from you.

Blindness hides from the Truth but thinks it has the truth

The consequence of eating from the forbidden tree was to hide from the Truth, Lie, TELL God what’s right, and blame. BLAME is not a characteristic of God. Any time you BLAME someone, you are simply eating from your “I know” tree.

The Beatles wrote a chart stopper when they sung “all I need is love”. They tapped into the cause of the rebellious spirit. They hit the mark in everyone’s soul of the desperate lostness and the absolute craving to be valued by others, and thus started the revolution of rock and roll. The love they were selling was not the love of God but the love of yourself … Satan’s counterfeit love.

Satan sells the feel-good package of “live for love”; love will make you happy and love is right; whereas God’s love is free to everyone that dies for it.

When you eat the fruit of “self-value” you come under the will of satan, and under the curse of God

Whenever we hear a whisper that we should promote ourselves, automatically there’s a temptation to eat from the forbidden tree and a resultant choice as to whether you will neglect the tree of Life. Obviously the tree of life is Jesus … He is the Way the Truth and the Life. It’s this tree and this tree alone that gives you the humility to use God’s knowledge righteously. The whisper is to entice you to eat the fruit that promotes you to be a god; to sit in judgment over everyone else; to feel good about yourself; but ultimately to keep you separated from the tree of Life.

But if you really want to walk in the love of God you have to die to the love of yourself; you have to give up the desire to elevate your position; you have to give up the need for others to like you; you have to genuinely sacrifice the fear of what others think of you; you have to be willing to be rejected.

You can only do this by trust; by waiting on God for His plan for your life; not by telling God what He’s supposed to do and when. Without this sacrifice of self you can’t eat of the tree of life.

How do you trust God?

1. Repent of promoting our own knowledge. Give up every desire to promote yourself.

2. Don’t promote yourself, but rather trust God’s outcome.

Fake love becomes a competition to see who is loved the most.

Recently I spoke with 3 women. They were members of a Christian fellowship and were friends but each one hated the other even though they pretended to love each other, otherwise they would not have been liked by others. As I delved into their hearts it became apparent that they were using love as a weapon against each other. One woman believed the pastor loved her the most above the other woman. Another woman was retaliating in her heart with, so what, my husband loves me more than your husband loves you; whilst the third woman, knowing that her husband didn’t understand love at all, defended her position with, so what, my husband is the elder, he is the most spiritually intelligent.

They were simply eating from the tree of ‘promote me’; the tree of ‘I think I’m pretty good’; the tree of the knowledge of ‘I’m right, you’re wrong’, and they were using every personal positive quality they could get their hands on to fire as arrows against each other. They couldn’t see that they were doing this until it was pointed out to them. When you eat from the tree of I know, you can’t see your sin you can only see the wrong someone’s done towards you; you can only see you’re right and they’re wrong.

Who do you love the most?

Do you love husband, wife, children or friends the most? When it all comes down to it, if you don’t love God the most, you love yourself the most.

You listened to the voice of your wife

In Genesis 3:17, God said to Adam …because you listened to the voice of your wife you will be cursed in your work. Women like to be better than other women; they hate being below another woman; so women devise arrows to shoot at other women to put them down or to put them back in their place, all without anyone ever having to say a word. What God means ‘when a man is enticed by the voice of his wife’ is that his wife is tempting him to eat from his own self-value tree so she can control him to do what she wants under the influence of Satan. If the man is into his own tree of self-value he’ll take the bait because it makes him feel good. He will think everything’s alright but he won’t be able to see what’s going down, simply because, like Adam, he never stopped long enough to see what tree he was eating from. He never stopped long enough to consult God’s opinion. He got conned and the consequence was the curse of work.

Why do women do this? They like to have someone to blame if it all goes wrong, but more importantly, like the 3 women above, they love to use their husband’s arrows to shoot down other women so it will promote themselves above other women.

In 1 John 4, The Bible declares that God is love and that you can know you are in God and God is in you when you practice this love towards your brethren. If you say you love God and yet like shooting arrows at your brother to put him in his place, you’re a liar and the truth is not in you. If you say you walk in His commandments but covet your neighbour’s wife or goods or status, you’re a liar and the truth is not in you. Most Christians are liars and thus not Christian at all. They eat from their own tree and love God on the basis of their own knowledge and can’t imagine why God wouldn’t love them back, but they never eat from the tree of life.

God’s love is only accessed through the death of wanting yourself to be loved. I suggest you repent of eating from the tree of your own knowledge and eat from the tree of Life before you’re put out from the Garden. Take up your cross daily and follow Him and no longer eat from the Tree of “I know”.

Pastor Scot Waynard

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on March 9, 2013 in Elevation, god, Love, Pride

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

← Older posts