Tag: aftercare

 

IS IT TRUE?

By Rick Mathes

Matthew 11:2 (NASB) Now when John, while imprisoned,

heard of the works of Christ, he sent word by his disciples

Now is where you are at this moment in time, considering this verse from the Holy Scriptures. Now is all we ever have. Yesterday is fading away, tomorrow is coming into view. Put your feet into the Israeli sand just outside this deplorable dungeon cell and look around as see the cage that God’s most favored Prophet is enclosed. John, the prime choice of the Ancient of Days among men, breathtaking!

I have never been convicted of a felony so I don’t know the cold, hard reality of incarceration in a jail cell much less the hole John was relegated to; locked down in a steel paneled closet, desolate and depressed. Oh, how I know the place he was in! (A dark, lonely and empty oblivion of endless, black, nothingness, a living hell) I lived in a wallpapered and paneled cell hand-cuffed to a bottle of booze, drugs and deep money problems until I broke those satanic chains of addiction and set my soul free in Him.

John was in a deep, black mood lonely and abandoned by all the hopes and dreams that had sustained him all those long years in the wilderness. The hope of the Messiah! He was abandoned by but a very few of his disciples and looked forward to a long, and agonizing life in prison or maybe the relief of a quick and painless beheading!

He was confused that his cousin hadn’t roused an army to wage war on the Roman infidels. The kingdom that he announced wasn’t in sight. Was his life and cause a lost one? Had he spent his life and years of austerity and hope in vain? Was he a loser?

Neither does Islam nor the Roman Popery understand their destiny of trampled earthly kingdoms. They crave worldly power through arms and money in the here and now with an addictiveness that will inevitably consume itself. No more Roman or Muslim heresy will exist for the eternity of time when our Lord returns! Both have replaced creed with greed as has the carnal world of counterfeit Christianity. How sad!

Feeding into what I call “the game” will bring power and immorality in procreation, power or wealth here while Jesus offers only His glory there in His eternity.

Now is the now we battle on our knees in prayer and lift up the sword of the Spirit. In His time we will rest in an eternal peace and the fatal attraction of this earth will fade away in the Light of His Glory.

Hang in there John!

 

IN THE MORNING

By Rick Mathes

Psalm 5:3 (NASB77) ³ In the morning, O Lord, Thou wilt hear my voice; In the morning I will order my prayer to Thee and eagerly watch.

Prayer is the wind in your sail and he deadly weapon in your arsenal. It kills sin on the spot without any hesitancy or remorse. It is relentless in its pursuit of anything that harms our Lord even gives Him any displeasure. You are without excuse when you harbor your favorite sin. Remember that the sin you have is the sin you want because if you didn’t want it more than you do want it you wouldn’t have it. I can’t make it any plainer than that.

Prayer will bring you victory over the legions of devils in hell if only you will unleash the Holy Spirit within you. Darkness cannot dwell in the light any more than sin can remain in the presence of the Christ within you. Do not fear or doubt but maintain unreserved faith and trust in your Lord. The gates of hell cannot prevail against you, He will never give you more than you can bear, He will always provide a way out, He will never leave nor forsake you, no one can take you out of His hand, and where He is you will be. What more could you possibly ask for?

While in he essence of prayer you will experience glimpses of holiness that will overpower any obstacle that Satan places in your way. The devil loses it completely when he finds you repenting of your sins, submitting to His Lordship, and obeying His commands. The pulpits of too many churches are filled with demons that preach ear-tickling stories, epigrams and illustrations but have drained the Blood of Christ out of any prayers they may lead you in. A Prayerless church is a Spiritless church; run from it!

Most importantly and very feared by the evil one is that prayer revels Christ in a way that exposes the Angel of Light, Lucifer for the counterfeit that he is. The curtain has been ripped from top to bottom. The way into the very presence of God Himself is prepared by His Son and your Savior Jesus Christ, for you to walk in.

All you have to do is humble yourself, pray, seek His face and turn from your evil ways, then He will hear your prayer, forgive your sins and heal your sin battered soul. AMEN!

IN THE LORD

By Rick Mathes

Acts 16:31 (NASB) ³¹ they said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.”

C.H. Spurgeon: Does the father’s faith save the family? Yes! No! Yes is does in some way, namely, that the father’s faith makes him pray for his family and God hears his prayer and the family is saved. No, the father’s faith cannot be a substitute for the faith of the children. They must believe too.

Let’ survey various households and investigate them.

Sinners:

For a believing father, a household of outlaws is a real tragedy. When your children are rotten and vile, it’s almost impossible to turn them around. Think. You planted seeds, failed to water and harvested them akin to their planting: sinners.

Worldliness:

It’s hard to find that fine line of providing or spoiling. The children can be caught up in all the latest technical gadgets and then turn carnal where God, sin, death and repentance are a real joke.

Moral:

The prayer of a righteous father avails much. The gospel according to Jesus taught at an early age will mean a world of difference in your children’s upbringing. They will have  wholesome and fresh future before them that even the Gates of Hell will not prevail against.

Procrastination:

The NIV says, “If you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and confess with your mouth God raised Him from the dead, you are saved.” This is a professor that has built faith on intellectual ascent. This is not enough. The NASB states, “If you confess Jesus AS Lord…. “ The heartfelt “believe and obey” is necessary for salvation. The cause is the “IS” and the effect the “AS.” You must walk your talk as well as talk it. (or shut up!)

Well this I just a short outline of the fiber of some families. Maybe, just maybe you will look at your family with new eyes.

IN THE HOLE WITH JESUS

By Rick Mathes

The last 30 years I have actively spent preaching in jails and prisons has given me a diary of memories that few men have ever experienced. I have been before tens of thousands of mankind’s scum of humanity, diamond hunting for those that truly repented of their crimes and have become born again.as I did at age 38. It was then I put down the bottle and picked up the Bible. I threw away the drugs and grasped the Cross of Christ. I laid down my evil ways and lifted my holy hands to the King and determined to share that good news and devote the rest of my life turning lives from crime to Christ.

The most memorable times for me were walking the prison tiers and sounding the trumpet for the Lord’s return. But the highlight of even those times was preaching monthly to a chapel of death-row inmates or even more memorable was to go into the “hole” of solitary confinement with the worst of those about to be executed! The cells were dark, damp, humid and stifling.

With this in mind I can’t help but imagine Jesus and the three condemned prisoners together waiting for the brief moment before Pilate to have their fate determined. I remember standing before a booking-sergeant as a juvenile delinquent and giving him my ring, watch, belt and shoe laces. I can still feel the fear, cold sweat and downright terror of the unknown. My policeman step-father would always show up and bail me out so I literally could do any crime and I did!

The only way for Jesus to set me free was to die in my place on that bloody death-stake. With this in mind, I wish I had been a “fly on the wall” what the four of them were talking about. Three at least knew their fate was to be a barbarous death.. I have to ask, “What did they say to Jesus?”  and “What did He say to them?” What would you expect Him to say to you given the same circumstances? Interesting.

Knowing what I know now I would be begging His forgiveness for the sins I had committed that condemned Him. Oh how horrid I would feel!

But these three condemned killers didn’t have a clue and neither do countless millions on this little blue pearl called planet earth. We Christians know now that we are just passing through and will never again be in solitary confinement awaiting eternal death. We have stepped out in freedom with our special “death row partner.” He has provided for us eternal life in heaven and not death in the flames of hell. Only one in three made this choice. How about you or the loved one next to you? Choose today which gate you will walk through: the Lord’s Mission Gate or Satan’s gate to hell.

IN MY NAME

By Rick Mathes

John 16:23 (NASB77) ²³  “And in that day you will ask Me no question. Truly, truly, I say to you, if you shall ask the Father for anything, He will give it to you in My name.

Think about it. If I prayed to God and asked Him to answer my prayer according to the name of Lucifer, what would be His response? We pray to the greater authority if we want our prayer to be answered and God is omnipotent. It’s a no brainer! There is no other object of prayer if you expect to be answered by the “I AM.” So with that major premise we can rely on an  prayer if it is one Jesus would petition His Father for, given our set of circumstances.

Our whole earth experience is a journey to the restoration of our first nature which is to fulfill the will of our God. This is our certainty the prayer will be answered. I ask, what would I ask God for that isn’t in His will, nothing. All that I am wants to fulfill all that He is through me so I face this pilgrimage with obedience and a determination in mind, my reward in glory.

The fulcrum or balance point of all energies and effort expended is simply in faith. The witnesses of His life, death, and resurrection deserve our respect and agreement that His Story is God-breathed truth.

Satan, however, has a battering-ram of hindrances. Let me just focus on a few of their most glaring encroachments of our faith.

Insincerity: Prayer for some is a learned experience and the mirror of that style of prayer those they admire they display. This often includes the language of the King James era or tongues, unknown languages just to name a few.

Willfulness: It has been said and widely believed by much of the world that man invented religion and God to explain the unexplainable. Some with this mindset feel like they are praying into thin air to a god which is not listening.

Selfishness: These prayer warriors have a severe “I” disease. The remedy is to replace the words I, me and mine with He, Him and His will cure.

Impatience: God answers all prayers with yes, no or not yet. WE live in a modern generation of largely instant gratification so God’s response to prayer with a “not yet” is rejected. Often He is protecting us from an adverse reaction to our prayer being answered in righteousness.

 

IN ME

By Rick Mathes

John 15:4 Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you, unless you abide in Me.

The parable of the vine illustrates our attachment to the Lord. Let me illustrate my experience. My birth-father was killed in WWII, my mother soon remarried and with a name change and step-brothers and sisters from my step-fathers 3 previous wives I began a new life. The one thing that couldn’t be exchanged to this new family was my real-father’s blood that ran through my veins; no one could take that away from me not even me. So it is when you are born again. The Holy Spirit runs through your arteries to your new heart and it cannot be removed or exchange for another spirit. You have a new “Abba” now!

Here is a brief word study on what you can find in Him:

• Joy: happiness, gladness, bliss, gusto, zest, exuberance, and euphoria.
• Love: fondness, tenderness, attachment, devotion, loyalty and respect.
• Knowledge: cognition, gnosis, perception, grasp, mastery and foresight.
• Persecution: chastisement, discipline, shame, degrading, and downgrading.
• Rights: birthright, prerogative, privilege, authority, and entitlement.
• Works: deeds, action, achievement, effort, measure, and performance.
• Glory: praise, honor, extolment, commendation, adulation, and tribute.

Here is a brief word study on what you will find that is not in a believer:

• Jealousy: resentment, ill will, bitterness, hostility, greed and rivalry.
• Ambition: reason, motive, impetus, ideal, aspiration, and driving force.
• Selfishness: self-interest, egotism, self-centeredness, and ego trip.
• Pride: conceit, vanity, egoism, vainglory, boastfulness and anything self.
• Self-seeking: self-interest, self-pity, envy, stinginess and littleness.
• Self-assertion: audacity, nerve, impudence, insolence and presumption.
• Self-love: ego, conceit, vanity, self-devotion, envious and avaricious.
• Weakness: feebleness, impotence, enfeeblement and fatigue.
• Fruitless: uselessness, worthlessness, pointlessness, and impossibility.

So here we have material for you to clearly see the contrasts of those who love Him and those who turned their backs. Which one are you?

 

IMPOSSIBLE

By Rick Mathes

Matthew 19:25 And when the disciples heard this, they were very astonished and said, “Then who can be saved?”

Jesus, our creator-redeemer, is all knowing. He knows what choices you make between Him and Rev. Lucifer. Father God is holy and just when He judges and apart from faith in His Son as Lord, you are going to be on an eternal barbeque! This is akin to a vacation to Detroit Michigan.

He can’t save those who are owned by the evil one and have no desire to be saved. Unbelief is unforgiveable in this life or the next. When you refuse the calling, you are refused. What do you expect? If you are going to keep your sins you will remain an unsaved sinner. It cannot be otherwise. You are resisting His Cross so don’t be surprised when He resists you!

It all returns to the hard, cold fact that you have no desire to be convicted of sin much less repent. When you refuse the calling you have forfeited your opportunity to be chosen. This bold and foolish hard-headed approach to Christ’s pleading has the devil’s fingerprints all over it. He has convinced you to hold on to your sinning and don’t let go today at least. Maybe when you get old you can get religion.

There was a time when it was fun to say it was fun. Then is was fun to say it was crazy. But there came a time when it was crazy to say, “This is fun.” When you hurt those you love, you have crossed the line and this party is over. You need to put a bullet in your head or drop to your knees and beg the Lord for mercy.

Too many though hold on to some particle of their sin. You can’t be part pregnant anymore than you can be part Christian. All you are doing is playing, “Let’s make a deal” with the Lord. What part of “Thou shalt not” don’t you understand? God so loved the world that He didn’t send a committee: He sent His only Son! When Jesus says, “Stop it” all He wants to here from you is “Yes Sir!” There are those that continue in the Roman Catholic mentality: do more good than bad and everything will be just fine: nonsense!

Don’t be captive to your selfish motives and false religion of good works. The impossible is very possible if you will just stop being so neglectful of your soul’s condition. You are a very unforgiving sinner because you have never tasted the sweetness of Christ’s atonement. The nails didn’t hold Him to that Cross, His love for you did

It is possible if hyou say I can, I will and I must surrender my life to Him. Believe me, when you get to the end of your rope you will find Jesus. When you finally say “I can’t” you will hear Him say, “I can.” AMEN?

I’M SORRY

By Rick Mathes

2 Corinthians 7:10 (NASB77) ¹⁰  For the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation; but the sorrow of the world produces death.

The tear of a repentant son washes away many sins. When love is mutual, forgiveness is most available to a father-son relationship. God so loved us He sent His Son to pay the price for our forgiveness. No sorrow on our part will ever trump the sin against God that caused it. We just don’t have the mind of holiness much less a sinful life that allows us into God’s throne room of blessings. Satan attacks us body and mind to separate our God breathed soul from the love of God. Rejection is unavoidable because no darkness can possibly exclude us from God’s grae because it is the fruit of unbelief, the unforgiveable sin.

Forgiveness from Jesus must be preceded by sorrow and repentance if you aren’t sincerely sorry and committed. mind, heart and soul  to never do that sin again. You are just in tears because you got caught. If you haven’t been caught yet, you still walk around in the shame of being found out. Listen to me! Put the sin on the table, take a good look at it and kill it. I promise that if you slay Goliath the Philistines will run for the hills.

Satan will start by planting bad thoughts about God into your mind. His favorite distractions from truth are doubt and fear. Those are the opposite of the keys to heaven, faith and trust. These thoughts manifest themselves into facts that are contrary to God’s Word and inevitably harden the heart to love, truth and forgiveness. Sin, death and hell rise to the surface all because of thelack of sorrow for offending God. This is unbelief in its highest degree Hell becomes a certainty.

It is much better to be born twice and die once that to be born once and die twice: to the flesh and to the spirit because of lack of repentance. Rejecting the atonement of Christ’s death on the cross is a death of the worst kind. It is irreversible the moment after your last breath. Jesus said from the cross, “It is finished!” That is, the way of salvation is complete in Him only. He won’t say “It is done.” Until after the white throne judgment so you still have time to say,”I’m sorry.”

I SEE HIM

By Rick Mathes

John 12:21 (NASB77) ²¹  these therefore came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida of Galilee, and began to ask him, saying, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”

I have glaucoma which is a disease of the eyes which is certain to cause blindness in time. There is no cure but with prescriptions eye-drops will be able to postpone until I have returned to Jesus and I receive new eyes in glory. It has caused me to be grateful that I have vision and will certainly in His day see Him as He is!

It also caused me to think of other ways I can see Him if I do go blind before my last heartbeat. I received Him as my Savior and made Him Lord of my life. I can clearly see Him with my eyes of faith both in His word and in His church. He is visible in you and all believers because you reflect His image and likeness.

His love is so special that when it is generated from Him I immediately recognize Him in nature as well as in His image and likeness in His children of promise. There is just something special about a believer. And quite frankly, I would rather see Christ in you than hear about Him from you.

God is love and when I see His love in action, I see Him. Nothing draws you closer to the real deal but a holy consecration of all you are for all He is. The vision of His heavenly being comes into focus the closer you are to His holiness. There is a reality to what you see.

What we see of Him in the natural is just an illustration, like a mask but with the eyes of the Holy Spirit what we see of Him in the supernatural is that golden moment when the veil of His glory is pulled back, just for an instant so that we might glimpse Him as He is. It explains our hope of heaven we confirm in our being that the best is yet to come.

My enthusiasm for His Word has given me many spiritual visions of Him and His as I travel through His adventures in the Word of God and in this passing earth experience that has amazed the angels.