Sj: Be Excellent at What You Do

✅Where is our largest battle field?

Our largest battle field, (at least for this writing) is the world around us.  The world that we participate in everyday.  Do you know that the Lord can send us into the world to learn it’s ways without our feet ever having to leave home?  That’s the internet’s task.  Daniel had to be taken captive in Babylon, but we have it much easier.

There are places on the web, internet, or tv where I am taught about the lawyers, scribes, and pharasees.  I learn about the world’s morals (or lack of), norms, and expectation and I never have to leave my seat.  Or... I can worship with other believers, hear a powerful sermon, or chat live via the internet.  Do you have a prayer need and don’t want to wait till the pastor wakes up in the morning?  Enter the internet.  

The first time the Lord led to me get some schooling on media, I balked.  I humbly reminded the Lord that I had committed my eyes into His service and would not look at anything vile ever again.  The Lord reminded me I had also promised to obey.  I started with old vcr tapes of the Christian Faith Generals.  I watched AA Allen, Smith Wigglesworth, Kathryn Kuhlman, Oral Roberts, John G. Lake, and more.  I watched the series on God’s Generals by Roberts Liardon.  (All of this by watching TV.) lol

Later, there were historical things to learn.  I could learn about the exit from Egypt, the great flood, about the pharaohs, and much more.  I never left home nor had to pay for a plane ticket to Egypt.  But the best was that there always a ‘voice’ behind the scenes narrating what the Lord was doing in the event.  If I watched a special on the Red Sea, the Lord would always bring in many other little pieces of tidbits that would relate to His opinion of the Red Sea and it’s role on the earth.  Was the Red Sea birthed by the fire and brimstone that fell upon Sodom and Gahmorah?  Can you imagine in your mind large bolders of fire falling into the waters?  Do you begin to wonder where they are coming from?  Or why they are smashing a city?  Could there be a god who is angry? Might one try to find out?  We all know that inquiring minds always want to know.  lol

Anyway, it’s been several years now of this type of schooling.  Each movie, tv show, video, or Youtube always has a purpose for me because I have commited myself to always following His guidance.  As my education began to become more focused, my studies began to follow a path toward biblical counseling.  I got to tell you, some things are really strange out there in the world.  My most resent series was watching the story of Gypsi Rose, the girl who killed her mother and just recently got out of jail.  There were parts of that show that I could barely sit through, but do we really think that those we are going to be witnessing to or counseling are going to be ‘pretty and clean’ people?  No.  The weird thing was that Gypsi’s mother had a striking resemblence (character wise) as someone I knew years ago.  It made me question as to how people can become this way... so manipulative and easy to lie about something to get their way.  What can we do about it?  How can we help someone? How can we help a victim of the manipultor or even the manipulator him/herself.  

The Lord needs his people to be educated.  Consider a doctor.  He needs doctors... good doctors.  Doctors need schooling... good schooling.  Doctor are strange.  They study some yucky stuff, and they play around with cadaviers just a calmly as a fishermen puts a  worm

on a hook.  The Lord gives them a delight to do their studies.  They find it a joy to fix a broken leg or operate and give a person a second chance in life.  But, they have to get skilled. 

You and I have to get skilled.  We have to be the best at what we do.  We have to be the ones that can solve a problem that someone needs help solving.  

We’re servants.  

We’re to serve their needs as we have been called and trained to do.

We need to be excellent in our tasks.

Everyone has an area of excellence.

Be the best you can be.  

Study to show yourself approved... unto God.  

sj🦋

 

Called into leadership, not a Service position

So, I was listening to Joyce Meyer talk about God's purpose

for our lives. One of the things she tries to do is get the pressure off of us by teach us to trust the Lord to be able to get the information to us concerning what He wants us to do in a way

we can understand. Then she started sharing how she experimented with finding her call.

She said that she tried several different roles and positions but found that the Lord had called her to be a leader. She tried being a ‘service’ member of the body of Christ, but found out quickly she was called to lead, not follow. When I heard her say that, I was startled and immediatly asked the Lord if a person could say that. It seemed so… so… ‘unreligious.’ 

We are expected to say we are called to be the service worker and when someone says they are NOT called to that position, it shocks us. We hear things like.. “let the Lord exault you,” which is true, but don’t we believe it is important to know what we are NOT called to do?

So, basically what I am thinking is that if you are called to be a leader, then prepare to be that leader, and to be a GREAT one. Don’t get all bashful about it and wait until gold dust falls all over your head. Don’t be ashamed to say that you are called to lead. Don’t be afraid to reject jobs in the body of Christ that are NOT what you are called to do. Just make sure you are doing your best to understand the Lord’s call and then be as faithful as you can. That way, you’ll be ready when He needs you.

https://youtu.be/o9f6qdUsTeM?si=i9Sdu7RFulXfmlID 

Rick Joyner: Don’t waste your trials.

Rick Joyner shares:  Don’t Waste Your Trials 

Everyone wants the mature fruit, but not many are willing to do what it takes to plant a tree and cultivate it until it has matured and can bear fruit. 

The price of bearing spiritual fruit is to take up our crosses daily, not occasionally. We must live not seeking our own will, but His. It is a life that is not self-seeking, but self-sacrificing. 

Even so, just one moment of the glory and anointing of God that we experience is worth any sacrifice many times over. It is a basic spiritual principle that between the place where we receive the promise of God and the Promised Land, or the fulfillment of the promises, there will be a wilderness that is the opposite of what we have been promised. 

We must learn to endure the hard, dry times in order to get to the land flowing with milk and honey. Even so, in the wilderness we will experience great things, and that is where the dwelling place of God was built in the midst of His people. 

Don't waste your trials. It will be hard at times, but it will always be worth it.

Joyner, Rick (2015-12-03). Army of the Dawn (Kindle Locations 370-377). MorningStar Publications, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

The Topic of Demons in the Church

Many have been in church their whole lives and never heard teachings about Spiritual warfare. It is a purpose in my life to get this message out to the Body of Christ that the ’devil is alive and well on planet earth’ (also the name of a book written many years ago by Hal Lindsay.) Bible scholars say that up to one third of Jesus’ ministry on earth was spent in the deliverance ministry through casting out demons and healing people from demonic oppression. Do we believe that Jesus cast out all of the demons necessary and we no longer need that componet in the Church today? No, it says that as Jesus left, he commissioned us to continue to cast out demons.

We don’t want to deal with demons.

I called a minister to ask him if he could teach me about spiritual warfare and how to deal with demons. He told me to not get involved. He said that he’d been there and was glad to get out of that type of ministry. He said that we, the Body of Christ, don’t need to be playing around with the demonic. I don’t know what his personal experience was, but obviously it was not a good experience. But still, that does not change the fact that sticking our heads in the sand and avoiding the topic is going to satisfy the great commission Jesus gave to us.

Hos 4.6 says that the Lord’s people die because of ignorance.

Jesus cast a demon out of a lady who had been hunched over for 18 years. When Jesus cast the demon out, she was healed and free of the afflicition. Are you afflicted with any physical issues? Do you know for sure that they are NOT demonic? Not all physical afflictions are a demon sitting on a part of the body causing great pain and eventually death, but… some are. Some are demonic attacks that are meant to kill you, steal from you, and destroy your life. To ignore this is to ‘give a place to the devil.’ (Eph 4.27)

Scary and radical Deliverance Ministries

I am not a fan of radical deliverance meetings. I am not saying they are WRONG, but I am saying that I have a peace with a quieter approach. Kenneth Hagin taught that handing out a bag for people to throw up in (when they were delivered from a demon) was just asking for a demon. I will try to find that sermon again and share it. I am more comfortable in a meeting where things are much quieter. I understand that demons cast people down on the ground and make them look as if they are dead, but I also know that many are delivered without a visual profile taking place. The point is to be delivered, and that is a Jesus job. It is by His power, and in His name that demons are cast out. Anyway, that’s just my opinion, but is also one reason that many refuse to go to delieverance meetings. I am just saying that there is more than one way to cast out a demon. The point is that they need cast out.

Oppressed or Possessed

Some believe a christian can be possessed. I don’t. But I am not going to argue the point. I believe that oppression can be strong enough to make it look and feel as if someone is possessed. Have you ever covered yourself with sand at the lake or beach? It’s heavy. Oppression is like that. It’s heavy and makes life hard. Some say that a christian can be possessed and use Jesus casting demons “out” as support for this. I submit that Jesus cast demons out but that this was ‘before the filling of the Holy Spirit’ was available. Still, I don’t believe that the topic of ‘oppression vs possession’ is important enough to keep us from agreement in that people need deliverance.

Jesus has set us free. Let us receive this freedeom and help others get free.

Begin with the prayer for understanding, mercy, and love.