Keep watching and praying that you may not come into temptation; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.

Mark 14:38

It is the heart willing to say yes and to follow it with obeying that sustains.  It is the heart, the spirit, that wants to follow, that chooses to believe, follow, and obey that receives the blessing.

Life grows from a willing spirit.  The heart that chooses to go on, the heart that has a will to live.

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[W]e know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge makes arrogant, but love edifies. If anyone supposes that he knows anything, he has not yet known as he ought to know; but if anyone loves God, he is known by Him.

1 Corinthians 8:1-3 (portion)

Love builds up.  It edifies.  It substantiates.  Love is the substance of the Gospel.  The man without love is without God, for God is love.

The Kingdom of God requires diligence, patience, long-suffering, peace, and trust, because these are what love are.  Perhaps one of the greatest equalizers in the universe is the power of love.  Both kings and those who the world regards as “nobody”s can have it, and it can make either of their hearts warm, and soft, and alive.  Both can possess everything that matters in this life, and never lack, because love is enough.

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God blessed them and said to them, Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.

Genesis 1:28

This is the first command of the Bible.  God told man to fill the Earth, and rule over it.  Man was created to be a servant, to serve the will of God under His authority, and to have sovereignty over all the Earth.

In the fall, this image got corrupted.  Man’s image became broken, corrupted, and he could only rule with what was in his heart.  What originally was designed to be a ruler ship out of a pure and upright heart has turned, over the centuries has time and again demonstrated man’s corruption.

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See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ.

Colossians 2:8

Our English word Philosophy comes nearly directly from the Greek, “philosophia”.  It is a compound word made up of two Greek words, “Philo”, which is the affectionate love for something, and Sophia, meaning wisdom.  Quite plainly, “philosophy” means “love of wisdom”.  It is a love of thought, rational thinking and the laying out of things, and ordered structural analysis.

While this might sound very noble and the very thing a Christian would want, and in some capacity, it may be, Paul warns directly of being taken captive by it.

So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more.

Ephesians 4:17-19

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I have seen that every labor and every skill which is done is the result of rivalry between a man and his neighbor. This too is vanity and striving after wind.

Ecclesiastes 4:4

There is a way which seems right to a man, But its end is the way of death (Proverbs 14:12, Proverbs 16:25).  There is that which looks like labor and achievement, but, as a despondent King Solomon observed, it all the result of rivalry, envy, between a man and his neighbor.  It is vanity, meaningless, and a striving after the wind.

Consider the words of the apostle John.  He said that everyone who truly loves is born of God (1 John 4:7).  If love is the restoration God is looking to bring to the human heart (Matthew 22:40), then love is principally the one thing which fallen man cannot do (1 Peter 1:22, Galatians 5:6).  There is no true benevolence, as King Solomon pointed out, there is no real industry.  What appears to be love at the outset is really a misidentified attempting to gratify the flesh.

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I will give You thanks in the great congregation; I will praise You among a mighty throng.

Psalm 35:18

God’s way for Christians has always been the local church.  And, I don’t mean the house church, primarily.  It is God that has set up pastors and leaders in the body, to equip and teach them, to bring them to maturity in faith (Ephesians 4:11-13).  Even the verse most commonly referred to in the support of the house church indicates both the meeting together in the temple courts as a great assembly as well as house to house, sharing meals (Acts 2:46).

The passage from Ephesians 4 describing ministry roles has two very important aspects.  For some it is a job-description, detailing the calling of some and the role of their ministry.  For others, it could be likened to an street address for being trained.  Those who want to be equipped should find their way around such people that are apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers, because that is who God has given to do the job.  If you don’t see the job getting done, it could be that you are in the wrong spot!

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Do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.

Matthew 7:6

The Scriptures are sufficient for the Christian life.  They show the way of Salvation, Jesus Christ, and they instruct in righteousness, fully equipping the man of God for every work of service.  The Scriptures are not the sum total of everything knowable about God of course, for Jesus Himself said that He had much more that He wanted to share that He couldn’t, because it would be too much for His disciples (John 16:12).  The Holy Spirit is here to guide us into all truth.  But, when that comes, the object is not necessarily to write a new book about it.

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Truly I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says is going to happen, it will be granted him.

Mark 11:23

Faith preaching gets a bad name these days.  Somewhere along the line, in the culture of today, in a large degree the church in the West, the church has taken up the concept of a supernatural faith as almost a negative thing.  It is not a surprise, really, for the carnal mind will always be at war against true spirituality.  And hence faith, because faith does not align with the carnal intellect but with the spirit of a man, seems peculiar.

Jesus’ words are clear, however.  The disciples were rebuked time and again for their unbelief, their lack of faith.  This word, unbelief, is simply anti-faith.  It is the same word, unbelief, doubt, lack of faith, that is simply the Greek word for faith (some form of the word “pistis”) with the prefix “a-”  attached.  Where all the variants of the words translated “faith”, “believe”, or “trust” all come from the same Greek word.  The Greek word for unbelief, transliterated into English, is “apistis”.

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Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock.

Matthew 7:24-25

The words of Jesus still speak to us today, directly where we need it the most.  In a day when things a shaking around us, and power ministries are reaching levels where the pressures cause great collapses in ministry, the “words in red” speak directly to the heart of the problem, as they have for nearly 2000 years.

Jesus said, if you have heard His words and do them, your house will be built upon the solid rock, and even when the storms come (and they will come), your house remains standing, no matter what pressures come.

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Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves.

Matthew 7:15

Everyone knows that false prophets come in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves.  Cult watch pages abound with calling this or that minister a false prophet, and often simply serve to spark fear in everything of God.  Many of these are either completely cessationist (believing that all the miraculous power of God has ceased), or at least non-Spirit-filled.  They all generally deny basic doctrines such as speaking in other tongues (Acts 2:4) for the church today, and should generally be ignored (2 Timothy 3:5).  They do not enter the Kingdom themselves, and shut the door in the faces of those who are trying (Matthew 23:13).

What is the mark of a false prophet?  They present themselves as something they are not.  Moreover, Jesus called them ravenous.  Not every reference to “wolves” in the Bible is an evil reference.  When Jacob blessed his sons, he called his son Benjamin a ravenous wolf  as well (see Genesis 49:27 and surrounding chapter).

Jesus also cautioned about the yeast of the Pharisees, which in Luke 12:1 He identified as hypocrisy.

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