Thus Saith The LORD

     One time I was talking to an elder, someone I respected and I relayed something I believe GOD told me, and his wise words stopped me dead in my tracks.  He said, "Kristina, be very careful when you say GOD said this, or thus saith the LORD, because if He didn't say it, He will humble you in a very embarrassing and humiliatingly way.  Boy, was the best advice I've even taken heed to.  There seems to be a plethora of self-proclaimed prophets out there taking to the stage and patriotic assemblies, in particular the Awakening Tour.  The mere fact that it forces you to re-mortgage your house just to go should be red flag enough.  If a Christian convention costs you some of your retirement money, then you I can assure you that you are better off keeping that money in your IRA, and not paying the penalty for early withdrawal, because it will cost you more than just dollars and sense.  And I mean that the way I wrote it. 

     I've been watching some of these as of late, because I've been doubting myself.  Whenever I think I got it wrong, I turn to those I know have it wrong, and then I feel so much better.  Scripture is clear, John 16:13 says  GOD does speak to us through the Holy Spirit, however, He speaks to us about us.  When someone says, "GOD told me to proclaim this on YouTube or in public, and it's their own version of a modern prophecy concerning current events, and they are using the words they alleged GOD said in first person, you can be absolutely assured YHVH GOD, the one who said, "Let there be light,"  did not say that to them.  

     I can only give you an example of when I truly and positively heard GOD speak to me as audibly in my spirit as possible without others hearing it.  It happened on March 20, 2012 in the oddest of places.  I wasn't in a church, or at a Christian Conference or any place I would expect to hear from GOD.  In fact, I wasn't even looking for GOD, speaking to GOD, or seeking him in anyway shape or form.  I was actually as a country music artist's concert at the Grand Ole' Opry.  He hears specifically, “Kristina, I have a work for you to do, here.”  There is no way I made that up in my head, because at the time, I had just spent the previous near three years as far away from God as I could have been. I hadn’t opened my Bible in a very long time.  Fifteen minutes before that I had a spiritual awakening equivalent to being born-again, again, if that were possible, and it is not, by the way. We’ll get into that another day.   When we accept the gift of grace through Jesus as our Savior, it’s a package deal. The Holy Spirit living in us is the bonus gift.  The Holy Spirit is the operator between God and man. He’s the direct connect to the Father. It’s kind of like, “Operator, connect me to…,” (Some of you may not be even old enough to know that the old fashion way of connecting to another person with the telephone, was via a central person at a switchboard, as in way back when).  If you need something more contemporary, as soon as you pull up a web-browser, you are connected to the Internet. Now, are we connecting? (No pun intended, well, maybe intended a little bit.) 

Now, how do you know that it is God? There is a simple litmus test you can put the words you hear to, and that will tell you who you are listening to, yourself, the enemy, or God. Ask yourself these questions, and then you’ll know if it’s God or his enemy masquerading as an angel of light, because, the devil’s minions know Scripture even better than we do, hard to fathom, but it’s the truth. 

These are the ways to test it?

1 Does it build me up in my faith and knowledge of God and His grace? 2. Does it lead me to a deeper relationship with God? ll it work for the benefit of His Kingdom? 4 Does it line up with not only Scripture, but the principle behind Scripture? 5. Does it line up with the character of God?

     If you can answer yes to ALL those questions, and it has to be all, you just heard from God, via His Operator, the Holy Spirit.   If you think that you have heard from God about someone else sinning and that you should go confront them, in all likelihood, that is the devil trying to spark division among the brethren.  If the Holy Spirit makes us aware of something in another person’s life, that is a direct command to pray for that person, not go knocking on his door. You see, God wants a relationship with that person directly, through the Holy Spirit, and not through you. We are no one’s holy spirit, and we need to stop acting like we are.  A great example would be that neighbor, friend, or brother/sister in Christ who is getting a divorce, does not need to hear from you that God hates divorce, because guess what, folks, that person already knows that, and I’m going to venture a guess that person isn’t too happy about it either.  If both parties are listening to God for themselves, and God wants that couple to stay married, GOD will work on both their hearts, we don’t need to. (Please read 1 Corinthians 7 for further information)  I dare say, even if they go through with the divorce, the Sovereign hand of God will intervene and that couple will reunite, if that is the will of God. 

For as much as God hates divorce, God hates sin. Both exist, both fall under the umbrella of Grace. There are some cases where it will be God Himself who will initiate the divorce.  The Scripture says, “What God has brought together, let no MAN put asunder.”  Did you catch that no man part? That does not mean no judge, it means no man in his own mind and heart by his will of “disposable marriages.” God does will the separation of a husband and wife, either by death or by divorce in certain circumstances, when it benefits the couple or the Kingdom. (Isaiah 55:8-9 My thoughts are not your thoughts neither are your ways my ways) This is a subject for another blog entry, right now, we are talking about hearing from God, concerning your own walk with Him, not the person sitting in the pew next to you, behind you or in front of you.  Case in point,

 When Peter saw him, he asked “Lord, what about him?”  Jesus answered, “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me.” (John 21:21)  

      In other words, Peter, shut up and mind your own business. Keep your eyes on our relationship, you and me, only.  Scripture does allow us to intervene in some cases, especially if a particular sin could lead to imminent danger or disaster.  “Brother and sister, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently. But watch yourselves, or you may also be tempted.”  (Galatians 6:1)  A prime example of course would be in 2 Samuel. Over a year after David “ruled” over Bathsheba in between the royal sheets, Nathan brought a parable to David, who was incensed, then Nathan held up the mirror to David, and the king took ownership of his sin.  Because Nathan was a prophet, close to God, we can assume God talked to him about how to deal with this, we now have the most wonderful repentant Psalm in the Bible, Psalm 51. 

 God speaks individually for your relationship with him to blossom into a beautiful garden of love and grace, for your benefit, for the Kingdom's sake, and for His Glory.  He does not tattle on brother John Doe.  God knows how to get through to him better than you. Just have a nice lovely chat with God about brother John Doe, and trust God with him. It really doesn’t matter what you say to God about brother John Doe, because God knows how to filter out the bad and leave in the good. He’s like that, you know. 

  Their Truth, My Truth, and GOD's Truth:

 Three Different Trees

     While praying for one of my clients from the food pantry where I volunteer, I thought about his life story that he told me and how he ended up where he is living now, if you could call that living.  It's a very rewarding and frustrating job to deliver food to these people, especially the ones living in such abject and pitiful situations.  One client, in particular, has everything under the sun gone wrong against him, and he is completely innocent in his dire situation, or so he thinks.  I want to help them in other ways, besides just bringing them their monthly food boxes, but I am powerless to help some of them.  There are just too many problem with their living situations for me to tackle.  I decided its best to help where I can and pray for them about the other things.  I thought that I could offer solutions and ideas to help them, but then it occurred to me that I only know their side of the story.  

     While praying about this one in particular, I told GOD that his story just seemed a little off, and then the wisdom of GOD hit me like a ton of bricks.  The Holy Spirit put it in me like this:  Their stories may be an exaggeration, but to them it's their truth.  To them, it really did happen that way, and their plight is really as bad as they have told me, even if it's not the whole truth.  Then, GOD related it to us, all of mankind, and He hit me with another ton of bricks to really flatten the curve of my own story.  I've been blaming quite a few people for my own plight and situation, while they have been blaming me for being in the wrong as far as they are concerned. There are many people who have done me wrong, as I see it, but I will  use two men in particular to best describe the point I am trying to make. 

     To one, nothing I say is truth to him, it's only truth to me in his eyes, and none of it means anything to him, because it would interfere with his current happy lifestyle.  Biblically speaking, the truth I've been speaking to him comes straight from Scripture.  GOD has already shown me that this man has created God in his own image, an image that is acceptable to him, one who accepts his actions as okay.  His ways are not offensive to his God in his mind. In his mind, what the Bible says is not necessarily truth, well, things have changed, he says.  Things didn't change, he did.  He chooses not to read or pay attention to the passages that speak to his new way of life.  He likes his last seat in the back row of the contemporary mega church, way up in the balcony, where no one will bother him. The soothing message of just how much GOD loves him, regardless of how he lives, makes him feel better about himself, while the Scripture passages I share with him make him uncomfortable enough to ignore them as if they do not exist or as if they are obsolete today.  According to him, this wonderful pastor and the enjoyable music that is played at this mega church speak quite the contrary to the things I've been telling him are in Scripture.  In essence, he prefers his "truth" to the Truth.  The real truth makes him look bad. It says that because he has turned his back on GOD he may have lost his salvation, and well, that's just unacceptable to him.  Regardless of the Truth in the Bible, his truth is as much truth to him as the Bible is Truth to me. 

    The other man has many things against me, none of which I really know, because he refuses to speak to me, but his truth is just as viable and real to him as the first man's is to him.  I can't fight this second man's truth with Scripture, because I don't know what his truth is to him. I only know what my truth is to me, and how it relates to me.  The crux of the problem is that we have two different truths.  I only know mine, he only knows his, and I'm going to venture a guess that neither one of our truths are GOD's Truth.  I can only make assumptions about him  based mainly on misinformation that I myself have had to conclude or deduce, and quite frankly, I could be way off base here.  He has a huge advantage over me because he knows all about me, and I know nothing about him, that is his choice.  The only truth I know about him is that GOD has a huge work for him to do, and there are days when I even doubt that truth, because his actions toward me prove otherwise. 

     So, the moral of this story is, as humans, we make up our own truths, and to us they are rock solid, whether they are GOD's truth, close to GOD's truth, or even way off of GOD's truth.  We are  judgmental by nature, and we judge other people's truths as lies if we believe they are lies.  We can't convince anyone of their lies being lies because our lies to ourselves are truth to us only.  Does that make sense?  What I am saying is that we all lie to ourselves that our truth is the truth.  How do we find the actual truth? Well, the truth is in the Bible, all of it, but unfortunately, we feed our lies into Scripture and pick and choose what truth means from those Scriptures.  We take our personal doctrines not from Scripture, but we force our doctrines into Scripture with select verses that seem to agree with our doctrine.  If I had to use a picture to describe it, I guess I could use a fruit tree.  The roots are GOD's truth, His actual Words, but the leaves and fruit that grow off the stem and the root are our truth. Hence, to us, the leaves and the fruit are just as much of the tree as the root.  The leaves and fruit are the truth we accept because they are the most visible to our naked eye. 

      My fruit tree may be an apple, another's fruit tree may be a peach tree and another's an orange tree.  They are all trees to us, they are all truths to us, but the actual truth for all our trees is in the roots, which are under the ground and they all look exactly alike, because the roots are GOD's truth.  So, what can we do about all these differing lies we convince ourselves are the rock solid truth.  Nothing, absolutely nothing. 

   We cannot ever convince the other that their fruit or leaves aren't really GOD's truth, only GOD can do that. Our own leaves and fruit are likely not GOD's truth.  Somehow, we have to learn to live with each other's lies, and just keep searching our own trees' roots, and pray that somehow, we can live acceptable lives to GOD, and thank Him with all we have that Jesus's death on the cross is the grace that keeps our trees standing, until it's time for our trees to fall. The best we can do is to keep praying, keep studying, and keep believing that the Living Water of Jesus will extend to the next generation we leave behind when our own trees fall to the ground. (Pun not intended, but if the fruit fits, eat it!)

 

Why do bad things happen to good people?

 

But he knows the way that I take; when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold. (Job 23:10)

 So many people, righteous people, seem to suffer some of the most horrific tragedies, and we are left scratching our heads wondering, why her, why him or even why me? Let’s get one thing straight, NO one is righteous, NONE!  (Romans 3:23) There is only One who was righteous, without sin, I think we can all agree on that. If you believe that you were born without sin, then you can stop reading right here, the rest of this blog will not interest you. Now, if you are like 99.9% of the population, and you believe that in your natural state you are a sinner of some kind, then the rest of this blog might interest you.

I’m a silver jewelry freak. No, I don’t collect it, but it’s all I wear. I don’t know why, but I don’t like to wear gold. So, I’m going to use silver here even though the verse at the top uses gold. Maybe I think I could never reach gold status and silver is all I think I can attain, I don’t know, but it matters not, I love silver jewelry.

So, let’s look at silver in its natural state.  When silver nuggets are mined in their raw form, they are mixed with several elements and impurities which have to be refined out in order to make that beautiful shining necklace, earrings, or bracelet that pretties up our flawed bodies.  Are you starting to get the picture? The only process to remove the impurities of the silver nugget is to boil or melt the silver in hot liquid. The hotter the fire, the more times it is boiled, the finer the silver becomes, until it can reach a point of 99.9% pure. It can never reach 100%, nor can we ever reach 100% pure, so don’t even try. Shoot for that 99%, and you won’t be frustrated.  

And the words of the LORD are flawless, like silver purified in a crucible, like gold refined seven times. (Psalm 12:6)

 The most we can be refined is six times because we can’t make flawless state. Now does that mean you will go through only six trials, of course not, but the heat of the flames determines the refining process.  If you have been selected to go through that refining process, consider yourself considerably blessed and honored in the sight of God. Let’s look at a few people honored by God. 

My favorite is Samson, so we will start with him. Of all the Biblical heroes, he was the most flawed, had the most impurities, yet, God chose to refine him. The trouble he got into was his own fault. The man had an eye for women that took over the commonsense in his brain. He didn’t just love women, but he loved bad women. He wasn’t satisfied with a woman from his hometown or tribe, no, he had to have Philistine women. All of them got him into some hot water, or boiled. It took the hottest test to finally refine him. In the last act of his life, he did his greatest deed, but as a prisoner, chained to columns in a Philistine palace, a man with his eyes poked out while being mocked by a detestable people.  I can relate to this guy!

Now, to name just a few others, Moses, a well-educated man with a temper, trained eighty years in the desert. Forty of them hidden with a foreign people, taking care of sheep, then forty more in the wilderness, leading a group of complainers and whiners to the Promise Land, only never to set foot in it. Jacob, the trickster, 100 years of wrestling with God, the father of the twelve tribes which produced Joseph. He was trained in Potiphar's Prison in order to be the Prime minister of Egypt and savior of the family of Jacob, the line which produced Jesus. Rahab, forced into prostitution to support her family, hung a red scarlet rope out her window, which meant “open for business,” to save her family, also in the line of Jesus. Ruth, a widow Moabite, chose to follow her mother-in-law on foot in the wilderness, with no guarantee of ever finding a husband again, because, truly, people, if you’re a purebred, you are not going to marry a Moabite woman, except if your name is Boaz, again, also in the line of Jesus. 

David, the runt of the litter, trained to be the greatest king of all Israel and in the history of the world, running from Saul in the desert, hiding in caves, faking madness to save his own skin with the king of Gath, where Goliath hailed as his hometown, years before.  And even after Saul died, and David was placed where God had foretold he would be placed, on the throne, it took over seven years for him to finally reign the entire kingdom. Yet, even then, he had a lot of impurities in him, and had to be refined a few more times, including but not limited to, running from his own murderous son, wanting to take over his throne. In all that, he did manage to finish well, as opposed to his son Solomon. He lived in a time of peace with no fiery trials. He had wisdom and riches more than any and ended up with over a 1000 women in his palace at his "disposal," to do with anything he wanted to do, surely, a 'fifty shades of gray' kind of story. He was a man who ended up finishing very badly, causing the kingdom to be divided. 

Last, but surely not least, Paul, a well-educated self-righteous Pharisee, arrogant and on a mission to murder as many Christians as he could get his grubby hands on, who had suffered more than any other human (after Jesus). He lived a privileged life before he became a believer and follower of Yeshua, but after that, he spent the rest of his life in the fiery furnace of affliction until GOD took him Home.  He was whipped, stoned, beaten, and even unjustly imprisoned much of his life, all while writing most of the New Testament, only to be executed in Rome. Are we starting to see a pattern here? 

 So, the next time you are tempted to say, why me? Instead of saying in a groaning complaining tone, I suggest you bend the knee, bow the head, and in tears and humility, say, “Oh, God, why me? What good do you see in me that I should be so honored to go through these fiery furnaces?"