Hey everybody.

     I omitted an important aspect of the Mercy and Truth message from yesterday:  There MUST be a balance of mercy and truth in our souls; otherwise, we will make trouble for ourselves and others.

     If in our hearts, truth is more important than mercy, we may become more concerned with being right than with being like Jesus.  We can become hard-hearted toward those who have erred, if truth is not equally balanced with mercy within us.  The root of that imbalance is pride, which comes from losing sight of the mercy God has shown us and from taking credit for how right we are.  I believe that earlier in my life, I erred in this direction.  Jesus has corrected me by putting me through some hard chastening, and I thank him for it.  But if he sees I need even more adjustment, I feel sure he will meet that need.  I certainly pray that he will.

     Different problems arise when mercy carries more weight with us than the truth does.  We cannot be more merciful that God is.  “His mercy endures forever,” and His “lovingkindness is as high as heaven”.  But we can show mercy at the wrong time and to the wrong person, which God never does.  Truth must balance the feelings of mercy that Jesus gives us.  If it does not, then we will show mercy when God has not, and sinners will see us as suckers, and the world will take advantage of us.  Also, by doing that, we may give those sinners a wrong idea about God, for they will think He is like us.

     When we treat others with a balance of truth and mercy, we have found God’s secret path to happiness, and are very blessed.  His righteousness and His peace are on that pathway, and how good it is to find it!

Psalm 85:10: “Mercy and truth have met.  Righteousness and peace have kissed each other.”

Pastor John

 

John, 

This morning, I was in kitchen makes breakfast for Anna and me.  We had the news on, listening to the weather, and a commercial came on about people being alone and left to their own thoughts.  I got to talking to Jesus about how thankful I am that we are not left with our own thoughts anymore! 

He has given us so much and done so much for us that I don’t have time to get lost in my own thoughts, nor do I want to.  I love this scripture (Col. 3:2) “Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.”  if we do this, we will not have a problem with any self-serving spirit!  I am not talking about doing normal ordinary things.  That’s a given; we do that every day.  But while we are doing those things, our minds are occupied with the Father and the Son!! Thank you, Jesus!!  What a wonderful life we get to live in his Spirit here together.  He helps us keep our minds on things above, if we want it!

Stuart

Good morning,

A few mornings ago, I took a walk down Preacher Holmes road.  It was a pleasant morning with the sun shining through the canopy of trees.  As I walked along, I spotted a box turtle on the side of the road with its head pointed toward the opposite side of the road.  I knew that there was a very slim chance it would make it across the road before getting crushed by an oncoming vehicle. Feeling a bit good-natured, I decided to help the turtle cross to the other side, making sure to set it down pointing in the same direction as when I found it.  Then I continued my walk.

I had not gone but a short distance when I spotted another turtle attempting the same dangerous feat.  So like the first one, I picked this one up and carried it to the other side of the road.

Believe it or not, this happened two more times on the same stretch of road.  I have helped other turtles in the past but never four within a short period of time. 

Later, I thought about what I had experienced and could not help to think about my own life.  It is hard telling how many times Jesus has picked me up from some dangerous road I was attempting to cross, saving me from my own ignorance and self will.  In my youth, for example, there were jobs that I thought I wanted that did not work out.  There were relationships with friends and others that could have led to serious problems.  I could go on and on but the point is that Jesus was always there to rescue me. I made sure to point the turtles in the same direction they were traveling but Jesus pointed me in the right direction. 

Turtles cannot conceive the risk of crossing a busy road, so they are determined to go on. Thankfully, Jesus has given us his spirit to guide us away from taking the wrong road and pursuing our fleshly desires. 

By the way, I have a bit of a fondness toward box turtles.  When I was a young boy, I found a box turtle that only had three legs.  I’m not sure what happened to its missing leg, nor do I remember what I named it.  (I can only imagine.) I kept the turtle for a pet and even entered it in a pet contest at a 4-H fair and won a couple ribbons.

Tom

 

Pastor John,

Last Wednesday when Damien was telling his testimony and what Jesus opened (https://youtu.be/h4p69MHkybk?si=BNUxYDpBKs-Xg-qP). When he said Jesus took a seat beside his Father but something else [the Spirit] came out, I felt that come straight from heaven.  The Spirit fell on me and I said out loud, “Oh Jesus, I can feel that!”  I love to feel the truth!

It was the same experience when Jerry testified yesterday about the irrefutable proof that the Gentiles had been adopted into the family of God.  I felt that truth bubble out of my heart, and my soul was thrilled.

It feels like Jesus is fine tuning, sharpening and packing down deep the truth we have been taught!  I rejoice in it!  Every time I hear it, any way it comes, my heart rejoices!  This is why we live!

I keep thinking of what Sue said, “We are the chosen of the chosen!”  Amen!

Michelle 

==========

Jerry’s Testimony:

Convincing Evidence

The earliest saints were not confused about the importance of the sound of the Spirit, and that knowledge played a critical role in Peter convincing the doubtful leaders of the Assembly in Jerusalem that Gentiles had received God’s Spirit.  Peter and the six Jewish brothers with him knew that God had given Gentiles the Spirit because they “heard them speaking in tongues and magnifying God” (Acts 10:46).  They were astonished to hear the sound of the Spirit coming from the mouths of uncircumcised Gentiles, but that sound is what compelled them to believe what God had done, and when Peter brought his report back to Jerusalem, it also compelled the elders of the Assembly there to accept it.  They were, at first, displeased that Peter had gone to a Gentile’s house (Acts 11:2–3), but they could not deny Peter’s testimony when he told them,

Acts 11

15. “As I began to speak, the holy Spirit fell on them just as on us at the beginning.
16. Then I remembered the word of the Lord, how he used to say, ‘John indeed baptized with water, but you will be baptized with holy Spirit.’
17. Inasmuch, then, as God gave them the same gift He gave to us who believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I, that I could withstand God?”
18. When they had heard these things, they fell silent, but then they began glorifying God, saying, “Then, God has granted repentance unto life to the Gentiles, too!”

The above is an observation brought to my attention some years ago by a dear brother, Jerry Durham, whose testimony was sent to me in an email, a copy of which follows:

One morning, I was getting ready for work, making my lunch for that day, and as I began crossing the kitchen floor, the Spirit of God started preaching in my inner being.  It wasn’t audible in the room, but it was loud and clear to me.  So I just listened.  This is what I heard: “What was it that convinced the Jews that the Gentiles had been grafted into Christ?”

God’s people at that time, the Jews, knew that the Gentiles did not belong to God; in the minds of Jews, that was an impossibility.  Jesus himself had called us Gentiles “dogs” (Mt. 15:26), and He sent His disciples only to the house of Israel (Mt. 10:5).  And so, the Israelites – all Israelites – knew that the Gentiles did not belong to God – and we truly did not (Eph. 2:11–12)!  If any Gentile had claimed to belong to the God of the Jews, that Gentile would have been laughed at, at the very least.

It is impossible that any Gentile, or “dog”, as Jesus had called Gentiles, could have persuaded a Jew that he was in covenant with the God of Israel simply by claiming it was so.  And a Gentile surely couldn’t have persuaded a Jew that he belonged to God by claiming that he “got saved” or that he had “accepted Jesus as his personal Lord and Savior,” as Christians say now.  There was absolutely nothing that would have convinced a Jew that any of the Gentiles were also the children of God.  Both God and Jesus had taught them otherwise.

When God grafted us Gentiles into this New Covenant in His Son, He had to send the Jews a convincing witness from heaven that such a thing had taken place; otherwise, who among them would believe such a thing?  God had to send a “testimony,” a “sign,” from Himself that nobody could doubt, an irrefutable sign so that His people, the Jews, could not deny it.   

Now, for that sign!

When Peter was sent to Cornelius the Gentile’s house to preach the gospel of Christ, it says in Acts 10:44–46, “While Peter was still saying these things, the holy Spirit fell on all those who heard the Word.  And those of the circumcision who believed, as many as came with Peter, were astonished because the gift of the holy Spirit had also been poured out on the Gentiles!  They knew this because they heard them speaking in tongues and magnifying God.”

So, a sign, God’s proof from heaven, was given that day which astonished those Jews, something that caused Peter to confess in verse 47 that the Gentiles had received God’s Spirit, as well as the Jews.  That sign is what proved to Peter and the Jews with him that something impossible had just happened.

The Scriptures tell us that tongues are a sign for unbelievers (1Cor. 14:22).  Who could have been in a state of unbelief more than those faithful Jews with Peter on that day?  That is, unbelief that God would give Gentiles – “dogs”! – His holy Spirit.  But God sent the Jews a sign that day, an irrefutable sign that their God, Jehovah, had done it, so that they would not stumble in their faith at the mercy of God which had been poured out on us poor Gentiles!

God poured out His sign of this covenant on the Jews first, in the second chapter of Acts, and they staggered under the power of God.  Then, after the Jews were fully saturated with the truth and convinced of how the Spirit is received, He poured it out on us Gentiles, His adopted children (cf. Rom. 8:15–16).  He washed us Gentiles of our sins and gave us the same sign, in love, for the whole world to understand.  And how we need the same type of conversion today for the body of Christ, staggering under the power of God, the kind of conversion that would convince even an unbelieving Jew!

God taught me this in my kitchen, bro. John.  I can tell this truth, for it is my testimony.

Jerry Durham

Pastor John,

I was blessed by reading today’s Random Thought this morning (https://goingtojesus.com/gtj_thoughts.html?tname=rdt08-09). The following sentences from it reminded me of an experience I had earlier this week at work. 

“According to Jesus, the fundamental reason that God’s children are hated by the world is simply that they do not belong to this world. (…)  Everybody in the world, except them, is trying to fit in with one group or another in this world, and because those humble children of God do not spend their lives trying to please any group on earth, all of earth’s groups hate them.”

For one reason or another, quite often, certain lines of machines (at times most of them) are not being started at the beginning of the shift, and are not operating for hours, sometimes for the whole day. When that happens, the operators that are supposed to be working on those lines are told to do certain cleaning tasks, or help out on other lines, but sometimes, for hours, we’re literally not doing anything productive – people just hang out, talk, etc. That was the case one of the days this week. Other people from my “block” joined other people on other lines or in other operator stations, who also had nothing to do, and I was left at my station by myself. After a while I had the thought to start walking around, and see if I could join one of those groups and be engaged in their conversation, but when I started approaching a certain pair of guys, I could tell (and feel) that I didn’t need to be a part of the kind of fellowship they were having; so I walked past them, and tried to see if there were others I could possibly hang out with. But in each case I had the same feeling: In that particular moment I wasn’t to be involved in any of those groups or conversations. So, I slowly walked back to my block, sat down on one of the furnitures, and I was just sitting there. Then I had the thought that if people saw that I was just sitting there by myself, not really interested in whatever fun activities or chats others were having, they might think that I’m an “oddball” or some kind of an outsider. Now the wonderful thing after having this thought was that it didn’t bother me for one second. In my heart I felt zero fear or worry over what people might think. I knew exactly why I was feeling the way I was feeling, and I felt no urge whatsoever to try to convince people that I am not the way they might think. Sitting there by myself, I felt as happy and content as one can be, feeling that God, in that moment, was showing me, I was not of this world. 

Now, during my first week at the factory, I had a couple of amazing conversations with people (Ukrainians), having the opportunity to share some of my testimonies and the truth with them (I am not sure I had ever felt the leading and the power of the Spirit while sharing with people, as much as I did in these specific situations); also, I feel that in general I have a good relationship with most of my colleagues. So it is not that I am trying to separate myself or be different, but in this particular moment, I felt like the Spirit was separating me from everyone else, and it didn’t feel uncomfortable at all. For which I am very thankful, because I know I couldn’t have done that to myself – it was Jesus who had done something in my heart that made me feel the way I did. 

Zoli

 

Morning!

I don’t think the thought of sin wearying God has ever entered my mind, or at least not into my heart.  But of course it does.  Just look at how much it wearies us!

I’ve been listening to the readings from the Father and the Son book*, and a thought came to me: a good measuring stick for those feelings of not letting go of who you were—and not rejoicing in who He’s made you to be—is this: What spirit cannot rejoice in the goodness of God? What spirit can never let go of its sin?  So, what spirit is whispering and keeping you from rejoicing?  It sure sounds a lot more like one of the fallen than the Risen!

And who cares about the things of this world more than the one who only has this world: “the god of this world”.  Who walks around consumed and burdened by this world more than the god of it?  It gives a whole new light on who is who.

It was a feel-good thought for me!

Beth

P.S.  God said this to Israel.

Isaiah 43:

24b. “You burdened me with your sins; you wearied me with your iniquities.

25. I am He who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.

26. Remind me!  Let us enter into judgment together!  You do the talking, so that you may be vindicated.”

* God Had a Son Chapter 1

 

Hi Pastor John,

I really enjoyed Damien’s knowledge transfer of what Jesus showed him about the sacrifice on the Day of Atonements. (See related links below.)

As I was thinking about some questions related to it, I was listening to our music play in the background this morning.  I realized our recent song lyrics are all about Jesus.  The Spirit started showing me the type of humility God had in order to watch His own Son Jesus suffer and die.  If he had been an earthly father, he would done everything to stop what Jesus was going through.  He was showing us what a heavenly Father would do!  But also, when God accepted Jesus’ sacrifice, God was entrusting Jesus with His kind of power.  Jesus had paid the price and was rewarded by God with that position in heaven, to be our High Priest, because he had proven he could be entrusted with it by overcoming the world with God’s kind of life. 

By design, and from the beginning of all things, Jesus’ plan all along was to transfer that trust to us as his children through the Spirit. If we feel that trust, the love and fear of God can flow freely through us to actively live and respect this kind of heavenly life we’ve been given.  It’s like Aunt Sue said, “We are the chosen of the chosen!” Jesus is very serious (and seriously, deeply happy to the heavenliest degree) when we live that truth through walking in the Spirit he died for us to have!

Wendy

Going to Jesus.com – Spiritual Light

Going to Jesus.com Tracts – The Sacrifice of Christ