The Truth
We always need to know the truth about any given situation especially about why our lives are working well or not working as well as we would like them to. Jesus told us in John 8:32 that when we know the truth, that knowledge of the truth will set us free.
In another Bible verse, Hosea 4:6, it says that my people are perishing for a lack of knowledge. If we know the truth we can be free. If we don’t know the truth we will be in bondage or even perish. It can be very costly to not know the truth.
So what is the truth that you and I need to know so that we can be free and live a much better life? We need to know that because of painful childhood experiences that all of us are living so much less than the Abundant Life that Jesus promised us in John 10:10. These painful childhood experiences cause us to believe lies about our value, our worth and our importance. These painful childhood experiences also cause each of us not to be able to trust God as much as we need to. As a result we trust ourselves and we live in the fear of more pain so we never become who God really intended us to be.
The Truth
I want to share with you a subject that is near and dear to my heart, and it’s really, really important. I call this subject the truth. If you want to hear the truth, and you’re looking for the truth, and you want the truth, then you’re at the right place because you’re going to hear the truth.
I want to start out with a scripture verse that says, “My people perish for a lack of knowledge.” It’s so vitally important. That’s Hosea 4:6 if you want to look it up. “My people perish for a lack of knowledge.” Well, what it is that would cause God’s people to perish? What did they lack? What knowledge do they lack? What is it that people need to know in order to be able to know the truth and be set free? Jesus said, “You shall know the truth, and be set free.” We need to understand what is the truth?
Why do we need to know the truth? Just ask yourself the question, is my life working? Am I satisfied? Do I have peace? Do I have joy? Do I have the abundant life that Jesus promised? Read More
Ways to Change False Beliefs
I want to talk to you now about ways to change false beliefs. It’s exciting to be able to realize that you can actually change false beliefs, but you can’t do it yourself. It’s really hard to do it ourselves, and I think that’s because God really wants us to get together. He wants us to build each other up in love out of Ephesians and supply what each of us needs.
Well, you know what, I can tell you honestly that what we believe about ourselves is not true. It came from the knowledge of good and evil, from childhood experiences that we misinterpreted and our faulty judgments and they are incorrect explanations because the left side of our brain always, always makes explanations about everything that happens to us. Every experience we have, we have explanations. When the knowledge of good and evil, which we got from Adam and Eve, thank you Adam and Eve for that gift. Not really, it makes our lives extremely difficult. Read More
Protest and Medication
I want to talk right now about a subject that really I have had to deal with and I’m sure you’ve had to deal with, the subject we all seem to have to deal with. But I want to tell you a story first, and the reason I want to tell you this story is I saw something on Facebook that was just amazing. My wife saw this. She said, “Hey, hon, come here and look at this.” What I saw was a dog, a scruffy looking dog, looked like it had never had a bath. This dog was jumping and biting the leash.
What had obviously happened, I later found out, or seemed to be what I thought, was happening was that somebody had found this dog, and they put him on a leash, and he didn’t want to be on the leash. I mean, he did not want to be on the leash. He was biting the leash. . He was jumping, he was running, and he tried to run away, and the leash would stop him and almost choke him. It wasn’t a choke collar. It was just a leash. It was an amazing sight.
This dog kept doing this, and doing this, and doing this, and finally the dog was exhausted and just lay down. When the dog lay down, the people came over and gently petted it, and the dog was so exhausted it couldn’t fight anymore. Because it couldn’t fight anymore, they stroked it gently, and then they went ahead and stroked it some more, and they talked to it in a very, endearing and loving way. The dog began to melt. The dog began to let go. The dog began to just receive. It was an amazing sight, and eventually they were able to pick up the dog and love the dog. Read More
Good Pain Or Bad Pain
The subject that I want to talk to you about is good pain, bad pain. You’re going to say to me, “What? Can there be Good pain?” I want to talk to you first of all about pain. We were not created to endure pain. We were not created by God to ever have pain. Remember, he created us perfect. We had a perfect relationship with God and Adam had a perfect relationship with Eve. There was no pain. They were naked and unashamed. They were not ashamed. They had no pain. They had a perfect relationship but, as you know, that wasn’t good enough for them so they disobeyed God and they ate of the apple.
From then on, human beings, from that moment they ate and disobeyed God, we are all now subject to pain. That’s why they hid in Genesis 3. That’s why they hid in the trees. That’s why they hid from God: because they were afraid. They were naked, they were afraid, and I believe they were afraid of punishment for what they had done, and so here comes pain.
Pain is a very, very difficult thing for human beings. We’re just not wired for pain. God didn’t create us for pain. We know what happened. What we want to look at today is the reality of good pain and bad pain. Can there be good pain? Read More
Fruit is Not the Root
I want to talk to you about a subject that is really, really, important to the body of Christ. It’s vitally important, and that subject is the fruit is not the root. You’re going to say, “What?” Jesus said the fruit was to be looked at, to be examined, in fact let me see here, in Matthew 7:20, in verse 17, actually a little bit before, Jesus said, “Therefore by your fruit she will know them.” In verse 17 he says, “So every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree can’t bear good fruit.” Well that makes sense doesn’t it? It makes sense that a bad tree can’t bear good fruit and a good tree can’t bear bad fruit. What is Jesus talking about here? Is He talking about behavior, or is He talking about doctrine? Read More