Spiritual life

Trevor · Oct 5, 2019

Before I start on this subject, I’d like to acknowledge those at Talk Jesus who commented on my posts. Some I managed to respond to, others I tried, but I’m still trying to get to grips with the way the posting works and a couple of my posts seem to have gone astray and then when I pressed to post on one I found myself about to respond to another. It’s probably something I’m doing wrong. Hopefully I’ll eventually get it right.
The unsaved. To fully understand this subject, we first have to understand the reality of those of us who are saved and our purpose in being so. To be saved isn’t just a pathway to heaven; it’s far more than that. We are told that we are a royal priesthood, 1 Peter 2-9. What is the purpose of a priest? The purpose of a priest is to minister, this poses a question, if all the unsaved go to hell who are the royal priesthood going to minister too. I believe at present believers are being trained for a position that will, in due time, become apparent. I believe that we are in the process of moving from the carnal to the spiritual and I believe God achieves this by setting us against an enemy that can only be vanquished spiritually which causes us to pray and so move closer to our Lord and the helper the holy Spirit. The day is I believe fast approaching when our faith will be unacceptable in this world, we can already see Christians in many countries being persecuted often unto death. It won’t be too long before the Christian countries we live in receive a similar fate. When this happens we must be ready or fall at the ultimate trial. I believe that there is, if we hold fast, even unto death, an awesome adventure, but it will take courage and trust. I don’t believe that our Lord will desert us at that time. He promised that he would never leave us or forsake us. I think it wise to meditate on the death of Steven if we recall our Apostle Paul, then Saul held the coats of those who threw the stones. What was Stevens reaction to his situation, did he cry out in agony, whimper in fear, no, he was bold .After Steven finished his speech; When they heard this, they were furious and gnashed their teeth at him. But Steven, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at God’s right hand. Look he said, “I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God. At this they covered their ears and, yelling at the top of their voices, they all rushed at him, dragged him out of the city and began to stone him. Meanwhile, the witnesses laid their clothes at the feet of a young man named Saul. While they were stoning him, Steven prayed Lord Jesus receive my spirit. Then he fell on his knees and cried out, “Lord do not hold this sin against them.” When he had said this, he fell asleep. And Saul was there giving approval to his death.
Things we need to understand from this narrative, first Steven was full of the Holy Spirit, (God was with him) I don’t believe that Steven was aware of his surroundings he was so in the Spirit that he could see the Spiritual realm, when he told the people what he was seeing the people lost it, dragged him out and started to stone him, what was his reaction to that, he asked Jesus to receive his spirit and then interceded with the Lord on behalf of the people who were killing him, he then fell asleep. I don’t believe that Steven suffered I believe that he was so in the Spirit that what happened to his body didn’t affect him. The Lord didn’t leave or forsake him.
I may be wrong, I’m not Steven but I’m sharing this to encourage believers to return to the story and see if our Lord has anything to share regarding facing adversity because this may well be our experience one day. It’s interesting to note Stevens’s attitude toward the unsaved in that scenario. Even when being murdered he ministered to the fallen and intercede for them. Bob Dylan wrote a song entitled ‘You’ve got to serve somebody’ the punch line is, ‘it may be the devil, it may be the Lord, but you’ve got to serve somebody’ If a person is not serving God in the kingdom of heaven then they must be serving the god of this earth here on earth and if they are then they are deceived by an adversary who they can never, without Devine help overcome. Steven knew that.

WesleyJordan · Oct 5, 2019

We’re in agreement brother. We better get it together, and do it fast.

I heard that in Sweden, they are trying to become to first cashless society, using instead chip implants in their hands.

Let’s flash forward to year 2070, when by that time, the vast majority of the world has adopted and improved on this system and people who try to tell the government ‘no, I don’t want this chip. I’ll grow/find my own food’(which will be labeled stealing)get beheaded because the prisons are already full and there’s no private property left in the world to grow food on, let alone the seeds to do so, and there’s no room in society left for those not willing to be a part of the system...

I do hope God gives me the same spirit in this that time he gave Steven, because god knows I’m going to need it. Thanks for sharing, man. God bless you.

Trevor · Oct 5, 2019

WesleyJordan said:
We’re in agreement brother. We better get it together, and do it fast.

I heard that in Sweden, they are trying to become to first cashless society, using instead chip implants in their hands.

Let’s flash forward to year 2070, when by that time, the vast majority of the world has adopted and improved on this system and people who try to tell the government ‘no, I don’t want this chip. I’ll grow/find my own food’(which will be labeled stealing)get beheaded because the prisons are already full and there’s no private property left in the world to grow food on, let alone the seeds to do so, and there’s no room in society left for those not willing to be a part of the system...

I do hope God gives me the same spirit in this that time he gave Steven, because god knows I’m going to need it. Thanks for sharing, man. God bless you.

Me too Wesley, I'm not brave but I have in my life been filled to the brim with the Spirit of God on occasions and when that happens I could face anything. We must remember that Jesus has promised that he will never leave or forsake us. Bless you mate. As for the mark of the beast, we'll face that when it comes. By then, hopefully, the church will be those who are left after the falling away and they will stand together in the final battle. I pray that we'll be among them. I still have a healthy fear of God and my faith is a living hope so I never get blasé.

WesleyJordan · Oct 5, 2019

And that’s what I want more of, being full to the brim of the Holy Spirit. The following is some of the details of my personal testimony.

I was born in Memphis, TN, in one of the poorer areas(Raleigh), and as a family we never got the chance to experience anything good because five years after I was born, my parents began to cheat on each other, and when they caught each other they had a traumatic fight, and I don’t believe my father knows that I was hiding at the door behind him watching when he pushed my mother and she fell and broke her arm on my toys. They divorced, and the next 6-7 years were filled with my mother struggling to raise my younger sister and I by herself; she barely had any family in the area to behind with.
My mother was blessed out of nowhere and remarried to a much better man who has been taking care of her since.
When my stepfather brought me to his southern baptist church in my preteen years, I said the words the pastor told me to one of those mornings and I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior and I got baptized soon after after the Baptist way. However, my stepfather never did have any actual conversations with me about the Bible, neither did my mother, in fact she avoided going because she didn’t enjoy it, and my younger sister? All we did was fight when we were together, to the point that today we rarely speak. My biological father living in complete sin across town? He could care less, completely uninterested and self-absorbed in his career in electronics and computers. What about my pastor? I remember the one time I had read one of my stepfathers random Christian authored books, I had some question about something I saw in the Old Testament. And I had the balls to come up to the preachers office after service and asked my question. What did he tell me? That huge first half of your bible is old, hard to understand. Don’t worry about it, instead read the book of romans. (I don’t know about you, but at 13 I had no clue what Paul we talking about at all. It was all confusing. I needed some kind of person willing to try to explain and teach it to me, in a way that made sense to me. But it didn’t happen.
...and the seed that God first planted in my life was caught up by the devil and no spiritual fruit ever began to grow in my young years. And as I examine myself, honestly... not even the tree! Much less the fruit.

I had no idea of this at the time of the consequences of my parents’ sin and languishing attitude towards our raising, of course, but, momentarily skipping through to age 31, the time in my life that fruit of the spirit would have helped me(I’m 34 this November), God, in his mercy, out of nowhere, reminded me of the FACT of His existence and planted a brand new seed* in me, and this time it found fertile soil.

Now, as I’m growing in the faith and knowledge of Jesus and discovering these things and more, I realize now how much more importance I now want to place on the word of God. As I’ve began to do my own study of various subjects, testing them against my Bible, I’ve found the verse that says ‘seek and ye shall find’ is completely correct, because every time I pray now before I begin reading any book or watching anything on tv or any YouTube video on my phone, or any news articles I catch, or even any random post on this site itself, the Holy Spirit gives me insight every single time, and I can instantly recognize evil and satans work sometimes. Other times it’s subtle but it ends up being there. And as I learn about his ways and realize how much more lovely his ways are than mine, the more I love Jesus and the more I want to be like him.

My present situation is just difficult enough to need to rely on God, and I’m so sure that He has my back that it’s pointless to share details further than God seems to be in a process of refinement with me. Because he’s been slowly stripping everything away from me that I thought I needed but in fact not only did I not need it, but it was causing me to sin. And as each thing was temporarily taken away from me one after another, I finally broke down and said God, you can take all my money, my family, my car, my apartment, my best friend, my phone, my internet access, my clothes, my body’s health, my job, even my current kjv bible that I take everywhere I go, I’m just going to trust you and go along for the ride and not want for anything. And I’m so happy the Holy Spirit gave me the idea a few nights ago to come to this site. I instantly recognized after reading a dozen threads that I would find fellowship here. I would love to find a real church in Memphis, one not in bondage to the government and money, but one that knew how to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves and would be willing to meet and have fellowship and bible study in the safety of a home. We know Satan has the power to convince a man to shoot up a public church service, just watch the news.

God bless anyone that read.

*For those curious, it was the flat earth videos of a man named Rob Skiba on YouTube That he began to post that summer of 2016 that I randomly watched while wasting precious time playing evil computer games online. I gave it a hard look because the concept was jarring.

Trevor · Oct 6, 2019

WesleyJordan said:
And that’s what I want more of, being full to the brim of the Holy Spirit. The following is some of the details of my personal testimony.

I was born in Memphis, TN, in one of the poorer areas(Raleigh), and as a family we never got the chance to experience anything good because five years after I was born, my parents began to cheat on each other, and when they caught each other they had a traumatic fight, and I don’t believe my father knows that I was hiding at the door behind him watching when he pushed my mother and she fell and broke her arm on my toys. They divorced, and the next 6-7 years were filled with my mother struggling to raise my younger sister and I by herself; she barely had any family in the area to behind with.
My mother was blessed out of nowhere and remarried to a much better man who has been taking care of her since.
When my stepfather brought me to his southern baptist church in my preteen years, I said the words the pastor told me to one of those mornings and I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior and I got baptized soon after after the Baptist way. However, my stepfather never did have any actual conversations with me about the Bible, neither did my mother, in fact she avoided going because she didn’t enjoy it, and my younger sister? All we did was fight when we were together, to the point that today we rarely speak. My biological father living in complete sin across town? He could care less, completely uninterested and self-absorbed in his career in electronics and computers. What about my pastor? I remember the one time I had read one of my stepfathers random Christian authored books, I had some question about something I saw in the Old Testament. And I had the balls to come up to the preachers office after service and asked my question. What did he tell me? That huge first half of your bible is old, hard to understand. Don’t worry about it, instead read the book of romans. (I don’t know about you, but at 13 I had no clue what Paul we talking about at all. It was all confusing. I needed some kind of person willing to try to explain and teach it to me, in a way that made sense to me. But it didn’t happen.
...and the seed that God first planted in my life was caught up by the devil and no spiritual fruit ever began to grow in my young years. And as I examine myself, honestly... not even the tree! Much less the fruit.

I had no idea of this at the time of the consequences of my parents’ sin and languishing attitude towards our raising, of course, but, momentarily skipping through to age 31, the time in my life that fruit of the spirit would have helped me(I’m 34 this November), God, in his mercy, out of nowhere, reminded me of the FACT of His existence and planted a brand new seed* in me, and this time it found fertile soil.

Now, as I’m growing in the faith and knowledge of Jesus and discovering these things and more, I realize now how much more importance I now want to place on the word of God. As I’ve began to do my own study of various subjects, testing them against my Bible, I’ve found the verse that says ‘seek and ye shall find’ is completely correct, because every time I pray now before I begin reading any book or watching anything on tv or any YouTube video on my phone, or any news articles I catch, or even any random post on this site itself, the Holy Spirit gives me insight every single time, and I can instantly recognize evil and satans work sometimes. Other times it’s subtle but it ends up being there. And as I learn about his ways and realize how much more lovely his ways are than mine, the more I love Jesus and the more I want to be like him.

My present situation is just difficult enough to need to rely on God, and I’m so sure that He has my back that it’s pointless to share details further than God seems to be in a process of refinement with me. Because he’s been slowly stripping everything away from me that I thought I needed but in fact not only did I not need it, but it was causing me to sin. And as each thing was temporarily taken away from me one after another, I finally broke down and said God, you can take all my money, my family, my car, my apartment, my best friend, my phone, my internet access, my clothes, my body’s health, my job, even my current kjv bible that I take everywhere I go, I’m just going to trust you and go along for the ride and not want for anything. And I’m so happy the Holy Spirit gave me the idea a few nights ago to come to this site. I instantly recognized after reading a dozen threads that I would find fellowship here. I would love to find a real church in Memphis, one not in bondage to the government and money, but one that knew how to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves and would be willing to meet and have fellowship and bible study in the safety of a home. We know Satan has the power to convince a man to shoot up a public church service, just watch the news.

God bless anyone that read.

*For those curious, it was the flat earth videos of a man named Rob Skiba on YouTube That he began to post that summer of 2016 that I randomly watched while wasting precious time playing evil computer games online. I gave it a hard look because the concept was jarring.

Trevor · Oct 6, 2019

WesleyJordan said:
And that’s what I want more of, being full to the brim of the Holy Spirit. The following is some of the details of my personal testimony.

I was born in Memphis, TN, in one of the poorer areas(Raleigh), and as a family we never got the chance to experience anything good because five years after I was born, my parents began to cheat on each other, and when they caught each other they had a traumatic fight, and I don’t believe my father knows that I was hiding at the door behind him watching when he pushed my mother and she fell and broke her arm on my toys. They divorced, and the next 6-7 years were filled with my mother struggling to raise my younger sister and I by herself; she barely had any family in the area to behind with.
My mother was blessed out of nowhere and remarried to a much better man who has been taking care of her since.
When my stepfather brought me to his southern baptist church in my preteen years, I said the words the pastor told me to one of those mornings and I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior and I got baptized soon after after the Baptist way. However, my stepfather never did have any actual conversations with me about the Bible, neither did my mother, in fact she avoided going because she didn’t enjoy it, and my younger sister? All we did was fight when we were together, to the point that today we rarely speak. My biological father living in complete sin across town? He could care less, completely uninterested and self-absorbed in his career in electronics and computers. What about my pastor? I remember the one time I had read one of my stepfathers random Christian authored books, I had some question about something I saw in the Old Testament. And I had the balls to come up to the preachers office after service and asked my question. What did he tell me? That huge first half of your bible is old, hard to understand. Don’t worry about it, instead read the book of romans. (I don’t know about you, but at 13 I had no clue what Paul we talking about at all. It was all confusing. I needed some kind of person willing to try to explain and teach it to me, in a way that made sense to me. But it didn’t happen.
...and the seed that God first planted in my life was caught up by the devil and no spiritual fruit ever began to grow in my young years. And as I examine myself, honestly... not even the tree! Much less the fruit.

I had no idea of this at the time of the consequences of my parents’ sin and languishing attitude towards our raising, of course, but, momentarily skipping through to age 31, the time in my life that fruit of the spirit would have helped me(I’m 34 this November), God, in his mercy, out of nowhere, reminded me of the FACT of His existence and planted a brand new seed* in me, and this time it found fertile soil.

Now, as I’m growing in the faith and knowledge of Jesus and discovering these things and more, I realize now how much more importance I now want to place on the word of God. As I’ve began to do my own study of various subjects, testing them against my Bible, I’ve found the verse that says ‘seek and ye shall find’ is completely correct, because every time I pray now before I begin reading any book or watching anything on tv or any YouTube video on my phone, or any news articles I catch, or even any random post on this site itself, the Holy Spirit gives me insight every single time, and I can instantly recognize evil and satans work sometimes. Other times it’s subtle but it ends up being there. And as I learn about his ways and realize how much more lovely his ways are than mine, the more I love Jesus and the more I want to be like him.

My present situation is just difficult enough to need to rely on God, and I’m so sure that He has my back that it’s pointless to share details further than God seems to be in a process of refinement with me. Because he’s been slowly stripping everything away from me that I thought I needed but in fact not only did I not need it, but it was causing me to sin. And as each thing was temporarily taken away from me one after another, I finally broke down and said God, you can take all my money, my family, my car, my apartment, my best friend, my phone, my internet access, my clothes, my body’s health, my job, even my current kjv bible that I take everywhere I go, I’m just going to trust you and go along for the ride and not want for anything. And I’m so happy the Holy Spirit gave me the idea a few nights ago to come to this site. I instantly recognized after reading a dozen threads that I would find fellowship here. I would love to find a real church in Memphis, one not in bondage to the government and money, but one that knew how to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves and would be willing to meet and have fellowship and bible study in the safety of a home. We know Satan has the power to convince a man to shoot up a public church service, just watch the news.

God bless anyone that read.

*For those curious, it was the flat earth videos of a man named Rob Skiba on YouTube That he began to post that summer of 2016 that I randomly watched while wasting precious time playing evil computer games online. I gave it a hard look because the concept was jarring.

Hi Wesley, on reading your post I was struck by how similar our pasts have been. I had a hard father who was not averse to using his belt on occasions and, like your dad, he was occasionally violent with my mother. I was a precocious child possibly because I had little love in my life. My father was to preoccupied with his own business and my mother was to preoccupied trying to please him, hence I was left to my own devices so right and wrong didn’t mean a lot to me accept that when I did things that displeased my father, his belt would come off and I would be punished. I found later in life that I was harsh on him and because of his reclusive personality, often misunderstood him. He was not a family man, this was born out by the fact that my sister left home at fifteen to escape his moods and he informed me that when I reached fifteen I was to leave as well. True to his word, when I left school at fifteen he took me to Canterbury where I sat an exam to enter the apprentice school in Harrogate, (Yorkshire), then he changed his job and moved house to a flat that didn’t have a room for me. So from fifteen I was more or less on my own. If I did need to stay at home I had a camp bed on the landing. Suffice it to say I spent my time in other places. This is beginning to sound like a testimony but a point is not far away. I only lasted for a year and fifty three days in the army and then 23528559 junior private Reed was free. After that I spent a couple of years in the merchant navy and went around the world a couple of times, spent some time working on the River Thames as a lighter man for a while, and a mate on the pilot cutters. I entered a marriage that failed after five years. I was at the time working as a overhead crane driver in a lead refinery. During this time I was singing, on occasions, with a friend’s band and it was at one of these gigs that I met Helen whom I have been with now for fifty two years. Not long after we met we both started working in a mental hospital for the subnormal, Helen in the office and me as a student nurse. I was still playing music and a friend of mine and I began playing at the hospital functions. I was not enjoying my experience as a nurse because, back then in the nineteen sixties nursing in mental institutions could be quite a brutal affair as many of the male nurses were more suited to crowd control than nursing and so mistreated the patients. A charge nurse, who enjoyed our music, offered to become our manager and booked us into a pub where an all star football team made up of disc jockeys from the national radio stations that had been playing a charity match with the local team would be drinking after the match. With them was a street musician who had a record in the charts. In our first set, we invited the busker to sing his hit. This he did and afterwards he encouraged us to go to London and play our music on the streets. He mentioned one hundred pounds a week, well, we were only earning eight pounds fifty as nurses and so we decided to give it a go. We duly arrived in London and started to play, we didn’t earn anything like the money he had mentioned but, as soon as I started to play, I had an epiphany, I knew in my spirit that this is what I had to do, and so for the past fifty years I have been a street musician. Whilst busking I came into contact with the word of God through a person who, during a debate on evolution verses creation, tossed a miniature Gideon bible across a room to me, it opened at where Jesus and Pilate were talking, Pilate asked Jesus if he was a king. Our Lord answered “my kingdom is not of this world, at that moment it struck me, I wasn’t part of this world either, I had never fitted in, had never been accepted and never found a place where I belonged. Maybe, I thought, I could be of his kingdom. From then on I started to read about Jesus and when I read what he called us to do I realised that if everyone adhered to his teachings, we would be in heaven and so from that time, I called myself a Christian. Around that time Helen and I were living in a room in a house in the West End of London, it could be said, it was a house of disrepute. In this house there were street musicians, shoplifters, prostitutes, there was even the daughter of the American ambassador. One day I saw two men leaving the room next to ours, they had just raped a Swedish girl. One of the men, Scotty, was notorious in the west end of London, if he walked into a pub, many would leave, he was bad news. He left London and went to the US, ten years later he returned and a friend said to me, Scotties back and he’s gone all religious. We of coarse took it with a pinch of salt, but, one day he came into a friends music shop where I was doing some work and asked me if I was a Christian, I said I was, he then asked if I was born again I didn’t know about being born again so I answered in the negative. He then pointed me to the scripture where Jesus said unless one is born again they cannot enter the kingdom of heaven; well I wasn’t going to be told by Brian, that’s his real name, that I needed anything, so I said something to defuse the situation. Brian had an awesome understanding of scripture and so we became friends. He never again mentioned being born again. Years later my life was a mess, my marriage was on the rocks and I was about to lose my home and my family. That’s when God spoke into my heart. He said” have you figured it out yet” I knew he meant my purpose on the planet, I told him I wouldn’t know where to start. He said” how about giving my way a go.” When I asked him what his way is, I knew that it was in the scriptures, I also knew that I had to say the sinner’s prayer and make covenant. I prayed the prayer with Brian and a friend and made covenant. Since then everything has changed, Helen not wanting to destroy the family and not knowing what to do about her feelings also made a commitment to Jesus. That was thirty seven years ago and in those blessed years, our lives have been totally changed. We are now a truly blessed family and now awake to joy rather than pain. We still are, on occasions, attacked by the enemy but now, being in the kingdom of heaven, we have the means to defend ourselves. My father is now long dead but, before his death we became, to a degree, reconciled. I have come to realise, by my own understanding of myself and the affect that the damage done to me affected my family. And that my father too, had to deal with the damage done to him by his family. And where does the curse originate? Possibly in a garden somewhere, where someone ate a forbidden fruit. It has also occurred to me that the adventures I have experienced in my life would never have happened without my father. I now hold a deep love for him and my mother. Bless you Wesley.

WesleyJordan · Oct 6, 2019

Brother Trevor, thank you so much for sharing! I read every word!

I’m so thankful that Jesus is still patiently tarrying... all of us sinners need time to come to knowledge, faith, repentance. Because of his grace, I was given the opportunity to be salvaged instead of thrown away. I’m thankful that god loved me enough to want to salvage me. And it’s awesome to know that the only reason he hasn’t come back yet in judgement is because he still has room in his kingdom for sinners like us.

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