Telling a Christian From the World

A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you , so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.
John 13:34-35 New International Version

THOUGHTS ABOUT TODAY’S VERSE…
How do you tell a Christian from those of the world? Many will say they are, but in truth are not.
How do you recognize followers (His disciples) of Jesus? How do you know who are true Christians? Jesus said they love each other and the World just as He loved His disciples. There are no “Undesireables” as far as Jesus is concerned, He has only love (Unconditional God-kind of Love) in His heart for ALL. He hates SIN, but loves people. Unconditional Love, that’s how Jesus loves and that is how we are to love also. This meant He was willing to give sacrificially and selflessly by dying for them on the cross, and He was also willing to love selflessly and practically by becoming their servant to the extent of even washing their feet. Imagine if we all read the Gospels, and committed to love each other in the same way Jesus showed His love to His disciples! Unconditional love for one another! Are you a disciple (a follower of the teaching) of Jesus? Then there should be no “Undesireables” in your life either. You should love everyone with the ‘Agape’ love of God. This is not the physical love that most people think of, it is a spiritual love. Glory to God He loves me just the same as He loved His original twelve disciples!

MY PRAYER…
Father of Compassion, and God of all grace, I thank You for teaching me to love through the example of Jesus, for removing the thought of “Undesireables” from my life. May my words and actions begin to reflect the same resemblance of His love toward Your people today. May the Holy Spirit, through His working within me begin to produce that Christ like unconditional love within me that Jesus had for the multitudes. Through Christ, my Great Example, I pray.
Amen

Christians don’t seem to understand you give to get. Some of you are NOT obeying God!
They would support sports or even gambling, but NOT a true Christian work!!
Please help this ministry’s mailings to continue by supporting it! Give a donation or love offering on a regular basis. It’s easy!
You may send your donation/love offering to me via Paypal by using my Paypal.me link.
Any donation/love offering helps.
Here’s the link: https://www.paypal.me/Duane466

God’s Commanded Commission!

Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.
Matthew 28:19-20 King James Version

THOUGHTS ABOUT TODAY’S VERSE…
Have you accepted God’s commanded commission? It is not a suggestion or a choice!

Are you born again, are you a disciple of Jesus Christ? Not just confirmed in some church on a roster, but truly born again of the Spirit of God. Just going to church does not make you a Christian or born again, just like standing in the garage does NOT make you a car! If you are born again and you know it, then this is the commission we were given by Jesus before He went to sit at the right hand of the Father. This was not just a command to the preachers and pastors in the church. He spoke this to His disciples before He was taken up, but that doesn’t mean that He limited it to only those standing there with Him. No, it was spoken to ALL His disciples both present with Him and future ones. It is a call to discipleship to each and every believer from that day forward until He comes back again for His church. How else is the work of making disciples supposed to get done if we don’t go and do it? There is a further call to some others that are to raise us up to do the work of the ministry. Those are called specifically to be Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Pastors, and Teachers. But ALL believers are called to do the work of the ministry as outlined above. We are all called to the ministry of reconciliation, reconciling the world of sinners unto Jesus.

MY PRAYER…
Father, I thank You for calling me to do the work of reconciliation, to be a pastor of your sheep. To go forth and teach the Gospel to all nations and kindred. Father, I thank You that You are the one who equips us with all that is necessary to do this work. You have given us Your Word, and You have given us Your Holy Spirit, who is our Guide, our Comforter, and our Teacher. And You have put in place Your 5-fold ministers Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Pastors, and Teachers to equip us, the saints for the work of the ministry. Father, thank You for having faith in me, before I even knew You, for placing a call on my life to do Your will and Your work here in the earth until the return of Your Son and my Lord for His church. In Jesus’ holy name I pray and thank You Lord.
Amen

Christians don’t seem to understand you give to get. Some of you are NOT obeying God!
They would support sports or even gambling, but NOT a true Christian work!!
Please help this ministry’s mailings to continue by supporting it! Give a donation or love offering on a regular basis. It’s easy!
You may send your donation/love offering to me via Paypal by using my Paypal.me link.
Any donation/love offering helps.
Here’s the link: https://www.paypal.me/Duane466

Tithing? Today?

Bring all the tithes into the storehouse, (Your Local Church, the place you should be attending)
That there may be food in My house,
And try Me now in this,”
Says the LORD of hosts,
“If I will not open for you the windows of heaven (one translation says floodgates of heaven)
And pour out for you such blessing
That there will not be room enough to receive it.
“And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes,
So that he will not destroy the fruit of your ground,
Nor shall the vine fail to bear fruit for you in the field,”
Says the LORD of hosts;

Malachi 3:10-11 New King James Version

THOUGHTS ABOUT TODAY’S VERSE…
To Tithe or not To Tithe, that is NOT a question!

The scripture is very clear about what we are to do. And don’t use the excuse “That’s Old Testament, it doesn’t apply today.” Wrong answer – God never changes! The New Testament is full of tithing examples also.
Tithing, you mean we’re really supposed to do that? No, We GET to do that, we have a choice. God won’t make you do anything you don’t want to do. But, if you’re not tithing you are NOT doing God’s Word, if you are not doing God’s Word you can NOT expect to get anything from Him. And if you are not tithing God said: “You are cursed with a curse!” Tithing should always be done with a willing heart and a cheerful heart, not because you have to. What is a tithe you ask? It is a tenth or 10% of your first fruits. In other words to make it easy for, when you get your check the first thing you should do is put aside your tithe. It’s easy take the check amount, let’s say it is $1,534.20 your tithe is 10% of that. Just pick up the decimal point and move it one place to the left, $153.42 that’s your tithe and that is supposed to come out first for God before you do anything else with the money, it is His. God even says to test or prove (the only place in the Bible where God says this) Him by bringing your tithes into His storehouse, your local church where you are a member and are pastored, and see if He won’t open the windows of heaven and pour out more blessings than you can contain. You are a member of a local church somewhere right? That’s in His word also! The Hebrew word translated here as windows (‘arubbah) could also have been translated as a sluice gate (an opening for water or better yet a dam). He wants to flood you with blessings…will you let Him? And that’s not all, He says He’ll rebuke the devourer for our sakes and all we do will prosper. Is the devourer eating up your income? You have a choice, Life or death, Blessings or curse…Tithe or not to tithe. God even helps with the choice, in Deuteronomy 30 verse 19, He tells us to choose life!
I chose the Blessings!

MY PRAYER…
Father, help us to understand your plan. Help us to see how the Kingdom of God works. Open our spiritual eyes and show us Your ways. Lord help us to obey Your Word, help us to reap the blessings You have promised for obedience. Help us to reap the blessings and prosperity You have commanded us to have.
In Jesus’ name I pray.
Amen

Christians don’t seem to understand you give to get. Some of you are NOT obeying God!
They would support sports or even gambling, but NOT a true Christian work!!
Please help this ministry’s mailings to continue by supporting it! Give a donation or love offering on a regular basis. It’s easy!
You may send your donation/love offering to me via Paypal by using my Paypal.me link.
Any donation/love offering helps.
Here’s the link: https://www.paypal.me/Duane466

Aliens

For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ,
Philippians 3:20 New King James Version

THOUGHTS ABOUT TODAY’S VERSE…
No matter what your passport or birth certificate says, IF, if you are a Christian, (a born again, Bible toting, Bible believing, Faith believing, Christ inside, Christ-like, loving person) there is no earthly country that can hold you, no borders that can claim you and no flag that flies above you, except Jesus and the Kingdom of Heaven. You have more in common with a Christian believing aboriginal tribesman from Australia, a Christian refugee in Sudan Africa, the Bedouin brother (Christian) in Kuwait, or the Holy Spirit-filled Brazilian housewife, than you do with your next door neighbor if that neighbor doesn’t know Christ as Lord and Savior. We are but aliens in a foreign land. We are in this world, but we are not of it. My retirement program through Jesus is out of this world! Where are you from? Better yet, where are you headed?
Are you an ‘alien’ in this world?

MY PRAYER…
Glorious God and Almighty Father, I look forward to the day when people from every language, tribe, and nation, join with the angels and the 24 elders around Your throne and worship You in joyous praise. I am anxious to see the mansion you have for me in Your House. Father, help us to become one with our brothers and sisters around the world, that we might worship You as Your church, not many different churches. Lord, help us to reach our neighbors and share You with them. Lord, prepare us, prepare our hearts, for that glorious day when You come to take us home to be with You forever! Lord, we give You ALL praise and ALL glory forever.
Amen

Christians don’t seem to understand you give to get. Some of you are NOT obeying God!
They would support sports or even gambling, but NOT a true Christian work!!
Please help this ministry’s mailings to continue by supporting it! Give a donation or love offering on a regular basis. It’s easy!
You may send your donation/love offering to me via Paypal by using my Paypal.me link.
Any donation/love offering helps.
Here’s the link: https://www.paypal.me/Duane466

Daily Spiritual Maintenance

“The cares and anxieties of the world, and distractions of the age, the pleasure, delight, false glamour and deceitfulness of riches, and the craving and passionate desire for other things creep in and choke and suffocate the Word, and it becomes fruitless.”
Mark 4:19 The Amplified Bible

THOUGHTS ABOUT TODAY’S VERSE…
Are you performing daily routine spiritual maintenance?
Are you aware that the seemingly innocent things in your everyday life can suffocate your spiritual life if you are not careful and you allow it? I heard a story once that the Lord told a woman during prayer one day that this nation had become a nation of maintenance men (& women too). “You have so many things to maintain,” He told her. “You maintain your house. You maintain your car, your yard, your boat, your machines, your hair… and the list goes on and on.”

This nation, especially Christians, have become maintainers of so many natural things that we don’t have any time left to maintain our own spirit or our spiritual walk with Jesus! Our daily walk with the Lord! As Christians we must protect that precious time with Him and if anything add to it, not take away from it. We should be tithing (at a minimum) of our time to the Lord also. A tenth of 24 hours is 2.4 hours, that’s the least we should be giving Him each day! But He says tithes AND offerings. An offering is above and beyond your tithe!

If you have found yourself in the situation described above, too many things to maintain and no time for God. Then it’s time to simplify your life. I’ve had to learn that myself. Now when I’m considering something that I think I need, I don’t just count the cost in dollars and cents. I think about how much time it will take to maintain it. I check to see if I can spiritually afford it. Where will the time come from that I need to maintain and use it? Am I going to have to take from my time with the Lord to maintain this new thing. Is it really something I need, or do I just want it? You can’t expect the heathen world to think like this, but we as Christians should be doing so every day.

Second Timothy 2:4 says, “Don’t get entangled in the affairs of this life. It so easy to do that because the things of this world, the natural things, are so much more real to our senses than the things of the spiritual world. But we must remember we are a spirit and we must train ourselves to be sensitive to the spiritual world as well. One thing I’ve learned since becoming a Christian: Nothing is as important as spending time in prayer, meditation of the word, and just being with the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. Absolutely nothing in my life is as vital as that. Because this life, as I know it, will pass away one day and all that is in it. All my earthly toys and high maintenance items will pass away, they will not come with me. What will then be most important – should right now be most important! Where will I spend eternity?

MY PRAYER…
Precious Father, thank You for calling me into Your marvelous Kingdom and for translating me out of darkness. Increase in me the knowledge of You, Oh Lord, that I may know the full calling you have placed upon my life. Take me Lord and do with me what You will, I have chosen to give myself unto You, I have made the choice. I have chosen the way You told us to choose. I have chosen life! (Deut 30:19) Father take this earthen vessel and mold and shape me, put me in Your fire and burn up that which is not of You, Oh Lord. Lord help me to learn to maintain my walk with You first of all. You said if we would seek first the kingdom of God, and Your righteousness; that all these other things would be added unto us. Father help me to make You first always. In Jesus’ name I pray.
Amen

Christians don’t seem to understand you give to get. Some of you are NOT obeying God!
They would support sports or even gambling, but NOT a true Christian work!!
Please help this ministry’s mailings to continue by supporting it! Give a donation or love offering on a regular basis. It’s easy!
You may send your donation/love offering to me via Paypal by using my Paypal.me link.
Any donation/love offering helps.
Here’s the link: https://www.paypal.me/Duane466

Temptation, Who Me?

Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.
1 Cor 10:12-13 New King James Version

THOUGHTS ABOUT TODAY’S VERSE…
So you think you are above temptation, think again!
Even Jesus was tempted by Satan in the wilderness! He didn’t succumb to that temptation however. Better yet, you need to take heed, Jesus warned His disciples: “Watch and pray, that you enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”(Matt 26:41) What did they do? They went to sleep instead. Temptation is common to man, God knows that, that’s why He says that when temptation comes He will make a way to escape so that you may be able to bear the temptation. Notice God said when, not if temptation comes. That word suffer (KJV, is from the Greek) actually means allow (NKJV), God will not allow you to be tempted more than you can bear. God does NOT say that He brings the temptation, as many have interpreted this verse (The Word says God will not tempt any man!), but that when it comes He makes a way for us to escape it. That way is His Word…get to know His Word. Meditate His Word and put it in your heart, for out of the abundance of the heart flow the issues of life! (Proverbs 4:23)

MY PRAYER…
Father, I desire that I might be filled with the knowledge of Your will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; that I might walk worthy of You, being pleasing and fruitful in every good work, and increasing always in Your knowledge. That I might be strengthened with all might, according to Your glorious power, unto all patience and longsuffering with joyfulness and being delivered from temptation. I give thanks unto You, Father, who has made me able to be a partaker of the inheritance of the saints in light. I thank You Father for delivering me from the power of darkness, and for translating me into the kingdom of Your dear Son. In the Holy name of Jesus, I pray.
Amen

Christians don’t seem to understand you give to get. Some of you are NOT obeying God!
They would support sports or even gambling, but NOT a true Christian work!!
Please help this ministry’s mailings to continue by supporting it! Give a donation or love offering on a regular basis. It’s easy!
You may send your donation/love offering to me via Paypal by using my Paypal.me link.
Any donation/love offering helps.
Here’s the link: https://www.paypal.me/Duane466

Resisting Sin

Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.
Hebrews 12:3-4 New International Version

THOUGHTS ABOUT TODAY’S VERSE…
Have you resisted sin to the point of shedding your blood?
Are we such that we should consider ourselves better than Jesus was? Have any of us resisted opposition or withstood persecution to the point of shedding our blood? Not because we were shot, or stabbed, or injured in some other way, but just because we resisted so hard spiritually that blood issued forth from our pores. Jesus did! Then we should not raise a ruckus about running our race with endurance, should we? Or seeking first the Kingdom of God and His Righteousness. But know this, he (or she) who is a disciple of Jesus shall be a partaker of all that Jesus partook of, both good and evil. Know that He will not cast us off, and if we endure to the end in faith with Him, that we shall be partakers of an inheritance from God and be children of The ‘Most High’ God. What was the condition necessary to be children of God? Enduring to the end in Faith! Whatever is His in the Kingdom of God shall also be ours if we endure in the faith to the end. We will be Kings and Priests forever, Amen!

MY PRAYER…
Father God, help us to understand Your ways. Help us to have the strength to endure. Lord, help us to walk in Your ways and to set ourselves on the things that You have set before us to do. Lord, strengthen us and help us to keep a pure, willing heart through the working of Your Holy Spirit within us. Help us Lord, to finish our race with endurance.
In Jesus name I pray.
Amen

Christians don’t seem to understand you give to get. Some of you are NOT obeying God!
They would support sports or even gambling, but NOT a true Christian work!!
Please help this ministry’s mailings to continue by supporting it! Give a donation or love offering on a regular basis. It’s easy!
You may send your donation/love offering to me via Paypal by using my Paypal.me link.
Any donation/love offering helps.
Here’s the link: https://www.paypal.me/Duane466

Followers of Jesus

A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you , so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.
John 13:34-35 New International Version

THOUGHTS ABOUT TODAY’S VERSE…
How do you recognize the followers of Jesus, the true (the Authentic) Christians? How do you know who the true (Authentic) Christians are? How do you separate the true Christians from the one’s who claim to be Christian, but are really just religious people punching a time clock? Jesus said they (the true, Authentic Christians, the ones who are Christ-like) love each other just as He loved the disciples. In the immediate context, this means He was willing to give sacrificially and selflessly by dying for them on the cross, and He was also willing to love selflessly and practically by becoming their servant and even to the washing of their feet to show them how they must be. His ministry reveals what a Christian is to be like…ALL the time, not just on Sunday mornings in church. He also said in His Word: “Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.” (Heb. 10:25) In the book of Acts they met daily from house to house. Imagine that, they were doing His Word! Imagine if we all read, understood, and did the Gospels, and committed to love each other in the same way Jesus showed His love to His disciples! Are you a disciple of Jesus, a true (Authentic) Christian, or are you just a religious social (Counterfeit) Christian? You are a true (Authentic) Christian if you love the Brethren all the time and bear the fruit of a Christ-like life. Otherwise you’re only a social Christian, a religious counterfeit.

MY PRAYER…
Father of Compassion, Mercy, and God of all grace, I thank You for teaching me to love through the example of Your Son Jesus. May my words and actions reflect some resemblance of His love toward Your people today. May I learn to walk, talk and live the life that He lived everyday of my life. Father, help me to not be a religious counterfeit like the Pharisees and Sadducees. Through Christ, my Great and Glorious example, I pray.
Amen

Christians don’t seem to understand you give to get. Some of you are NOT obeying God!
They would support sports or even gambling, but NOT a true Christian work!!
Please help this ministry’s mailings to continue by supporting it! Give a donation or love offering on a regular basis. It’s easy!
You may send your donation/love offering to me via Paypal by using my Paypal.me link.
Any donation/love offering helps.
Here’s the link: https://www.paypal.me/Duane466

Buried

And when the sixth hour was come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour.
And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? which is, being interpreted, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
Mark 15:33-34 King James Version

THOUGHTS ABOUT TODAY’S VERSE…
Have you buried the ‘old man’ yet?
The deaths (yes I meant the plural) of Jesus was not a pleasant sight. He died the most horrible, humiliating death of all times. But what He did, He did for us. Few people realize that His deaths that day on the cross were both a death in the physical as a man and a spiritual death or separation from God. You see when He took the sin of mankind on His physical body and in His soul it caused a separation (a spiritual death) from God the Father, from all that He had ever known. For He was with God from the very beginning, He is the beginning and the end. But once sin was upon Him He could no longer be in the presence of God the Father. He died, was buried and taken into the very pit of hell, separated from the very presence of God. God hadn’t really forsaken Him, He just couldn’t remain in God’s presence clothed in sin (our sin, the sins of the world) and He felt the presence of God leave Him so He cried out: My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? He died that spiritual death so that we might live and not be separated from God by sin. If you are in Christ and Christ is in you, you, your old man, the sin nature inherited from Adam, died on the cross with Jesus and was buried with Him that day also. When God raised Him from the very pit of hell by the power of the Holy spirit our sin that Jesus had taken on for us was left behind and He was restored spiritually with the Father once again so that we might also be. Your new man (your Christian spirit) now lives with Him and with the Father. Jesus did this for us that we might come back into the very presence of God that man once knew in the garden of Eden before the ‘Fall’. That we could now come boldly before the Throne of Grace and receive Mercy from God our Father.

MY PRAYER…
Holy Father God, You are without comparison in Your majesty and might. I thank You Lord that You made a way for me to live spiritually where there was no way. You provided payment in full for my sin through Jesus. I thank You Lord that You through Your love and Your grace have given me eternal life through Your Son and my Lord, Jesus. Lord I thank for seeing me through the veil of Jesus’ blood and not as I really was.
In Jesus name.
Amen

Christians don’t seem to understand you give to get. Some of you are NOT obeying God!
They would support sports or even gambling, but NOT a true Christian work!!
Please help this ministry’s mailings to continue by supporting it! Give a donation or love offering on a regular basis. It’s easy!
You may send your donation/love offering to me via Paypal by using my Paypal.me link.
Any donation/love offering helps.
Here’s the link: https://www.paypal.me/Duane466

“For God so loved the World!”

For God so greatly loved and dearly prized the world that He [even] gave up His only begotten (unique) Son, that whoever believes in (trusts in, clings to, relies on) Him shall not perish (come to destruction, be lost) but have eternal (everlasting) life. John 3:16 Amplified Version (I turned the volume up a little so you could hear what God was saying.)

THOUGHTS ABOUT TODAY’S VERSE…
Have you noticed the Bible doesn’t just say, “for God so loved just the Christians”? Nor does it say for God so loved the Jews, catholics, or religious people. Read it closely, it says “for God so loved the world!” That’s everyone out there in this world, yes even those the Bible refers to as gentiles or heathens. Even those who claim to be atheists and don’t believe there is a God, God loves even them anyway. Those who are not Christian – yet! It also doesn’t just say, “God loves you”? Now don’t let me confuse you, it does say God loves us many times, but each time it does, it shows us His love as well. What a gift from God! How many of you could give (sacrifice) your only son because you loved someone? Abraham was willing to sacrifice Isaac because he loved God so much that when God asked him to sacrifice Isaac he was willing. However, Abraham knew by faith that God would have to raise him up, because God had promised him he would be the father of many nations and Isaac was his only true son. God loved us so much that He not only sent His only son to die for us, but He knew before hand the terrible, hideous death He would suffer. Notice that it doesn’t say “God so loved the Christians”, it Says the World, That includes a world full of sinners, adulterers, immoral people, homosexuals, and even satanists and witches, pagans, and the horde of other just plain degenerate people, people that don’t love or even care about Him or maybe don’t know about Him (yet). That doesn’t change God’s Love for them! It doesn’t mean He condones or approves of what they are or are doing – only that He loves them. But, God so greatly loved the world! (Everyone in the world, no matter how bad or evil they currently are). He demonstrated His love through His Son’s sacrifice on the Cross. Have you received that unconditional love yet?

MY PRAYER…
Loving Father and almighty God, thank You for loving me even when I was yet a sinner. Thank You for both saying it and showing it. Thank You for sending Your only begotten Son to die for me, to take my place on the cross. To bear the punishment I was due, in His body for me! Thank You Father, that You made a way for me where there was no way. That You have, through Jesus, raised up many sons and daughters. Please know, Father, that I now love You, too! Accept my words and my actions today as a testimony of my love. Search into my heart and see the love I have for You. Help me Father to be able to share that love with others. In Jesus’ name I pray.
Amen

Christians don’t seem to understand you give to get. Some of you are NOT obeying God!
They would support sports or even gambling, but NOT a true Christian work!!
Please help this ministry’s mailings to continue by supporting it! Give a donation or love offering on a regular basis. It’s easy!
You may send your donation/love offering to me via Paypal by using my Paypal.me link.
Any donation/love offering helps.
Here’s the link: https://www.paypal.me/Duane466