AN EXPERIENCE IN THE LORD YOU WILL NOT FORGET!
Tag: Allah or Jesus
BLESS VS. CURSE
BLESS VS. CURSE
By Rick Mathes
Romans 12:14 (NASB77) 14 Bless those who persecute you; bless and curse not.
Everyone, including myself, have an obvious motive and an ulterior one. Both or either can be blessed or cursed of the Lord. The motive on the table could be self-sacrificing or under the table, self-gratifying.
There is the form and the essence. The form of God we see with the eyes of the Holy Spirit is the body and life of Jesus. His essence, or what He’s made of is found in God’s breathed Word, our Holy Bible.
A double blessing is a double grace.
Bless the Holy Spirit with all that is within you and He will reciprocate with all that is within Him: the words and works of Jesus Christ. We know His efforts are successful because He is God: all-knowing, all-powerful and all-present. God never fails with His intentions. You might pray, “I’m not having a good time,” but you are in His perfect will nonetheless.
Your heart beats with His and His instructions for your life are perceived and accepted. The Words He has for you leap off the pages of the Gospel according to Jesus Christ. Our Lord’s Words and Works. Try my system: read and parse all the red parts of your Bible with as many commentaries as you can carry. I did. I was a red-letter theologian.
Born-again means you die to the old life which hardly any professing Christians do. They continue to drag that rotting corpse along behind them. His power, the very power of creation itself, think about this, is in you!
- How big is your God?
- How much room is there in you for the Holy Spirit?
- How much of Him will you allow in?
Your yielding to divine grace is absolutely irresistible. Like metal drawn to a magnet, you are being drawn to the foot of the Cross to repent of your sins in the mud, the blood and the tears of those that preceded you to this holy ground of forgiveness.You may not see, hear, taste, touch of smell our Lord but as heaven is real, so are all your feelings of His presence in the Holy Spirit. The blessing is Him and the curse is sure to follow if you stand at the foot of the Cross and give Him the finger!
BELIEVE OBEY
BELIEVE-OBEY
By Rick Mathes
Luke 6:46 And why do you call Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?
When you confess Jesus is Lord you have attained intellectual ascent. But when you reach down 18 inches to your heart and confess Jesus as Lord, you have put him on your throne and made Him the boss: you are under new management. There are a few guidelines along the way that you should use as a check-list and it is my purpose in this article for you to live under His Lordship and leave easy-believism in the dust of your history and step into His-story.
Jn. 3:7 There is no justification without regeneration. No matter how politically incorrect it is, you must be born-again. This is the catalyst for all that follows.
Jas. 2:20 Faith without works is a dead faith; no faith at all. For every cause there is an effect. When I’m happy I smile, sad I cry. When I love Jesus I work for Him.
Mat. 10:22 The mark of true justification is perseverance in righteousness. This means that if you are truly born-again and He’s your Lord, you never give up.
Lk. 6:46 Faith in a Jesus who is Savior but not Lord is a faith in another Jesus. It is an inevitable experience of a true believer that if you believe you obey.
Lk. 9:23 If one wants to serve Christ: pick up your cross and follow Him. You have no one to blame for your sins and their consequences but you alone.
Heb. 12:14 We must pursue holiness. To be holy we must be wholly His. We can’t hold anything back. You can’t be part saved. Indecision is a decision: you remain in the filth of sin.
In total these sign-posts are there along the way to measure your relationship to Jesus. Satan’s greatest delight is for you to live the illusion that you are saved when you are not. That’s what carnal religion is. It is a faith in Father Lucifer’s doctrines, ceremonies and traditions.
Satan uses men to invent a religion when they make God in the image and likenss of God. They turn your eyes out instead of out. You begin to obey the Lord of Hell and in short you become a Satanist if you confess you believe and don’t obey. (Read this last sentence again.)3
BELIEVE IN HIM
BELIEVE IN HIM
By Rick Mathes
Romans 4:24 but for our sake also, to whom it will be reckoned, as those who believe in Him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead,
What we do with our belief is not prescribed by manmade rules or rituals such as the Church of Rome are so choked by. No, real belief results in a real spontaneous response from our mind, to our heart and from our soul. Hands up, down, folded, all this is not something to follow because others do it that way.
What I do know about believing in Him, worship just happens. So as not to be distracted by others, when I want to approach Jesus and worship Him I close my eyes and get into my own little private chapel. I also have observed that everyone who approached the Lord fell on their face and were overwhelmed with shame at the sin they were still infected with. How horrible can it be to be transparent before our Lord and have Him see us as no one else can?
Repentance is the issue believers constantly wrestle with. Repenting of our sins is the absolute opposite of what our natural self wants to do. It is down-right ugly how we resist the holiness required of us by God’s breathed Word in the Bible.
Once we make an honest confession as believers in the Holy of Holies, we are supernaturally to let Him live through us. We imitate in our flesh the Lord of heavens that is clothes in our skin. When people get to know us, they get to know Him. As a bond servant, it is not too hard to conclude that we are to live to serve Him.
This can be done in a number of ways but it all begins with selflessness and sacrifice. The Lord knows all that needs to be done by us to advance the Kingdom but the heart of all efforts is our relationship to Him. It isn’t what you do t counts, it’ who you are in Him that is everything. St. Francis of Assisi said it so well when he said, “All I want to do is go about the Lord’s business and not know it.” That’s what I call humility.
Would make this suggestion to you, “Do the best you can for Jesus and let someone else get the credit” or “Replace thyself.” It’s all about Him not you.
BELIEVE AND TURN
BELIEVE AND TURN
By Rick Mathes
Acts 11:21 (NASB77) 21 And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a large number who believed turned to the Lord.
When you believe in Jesus as your Savior and Lord you automatically turn to Him in times of need It is a reflex action that certified your admission to be true and without fabrication. Your knees drop to the floor and hyour heart and soul soar like an eagle. Your strength is renewed and you are in joyous submission to your King. Your commission is strength ended by the transmission of your willingness to His acceptance.
As a true Christian your whole life is through Christ. Like hot water through aromatic coffee grounds what goes in comes out completely different and fully acceptable to the Lord. Your love is true and it rises to only one approval: that which only Jesus can bestow.
Agape love can do nothing other but evoke dedicated trust from all it touches. Our Lord never lets those who are His down. He is completely trustworthy and fellowship with Him and His is inevitable; all other social contacts than those of the church are incomparable and forced. You can’t hang out with dirty people and not get dirty. WE are in this world but not of it. Our home is our reward and our pilgrimage of the Lord’s assignment to affect His will.
It becomes a serious act of worship to go about the work of the Father. There is a joy that only a child of the promise would experience and a feeling only someone of like salvation would understand. Being and doing service in His will gives a perfect fit of safety and contentment.
The resources that are needs come from unexpected places and it really becomes humorous to see the Lord perform the task or provide the resource prayed for. I never tire of His surprises!
The wages of sin is death but the reward of our Lord’s imputed righteousness is eternity in God’s presence. Now I don’t know for sure what happens the other side of our last heartbeat but I believe the Lord gave me a glimpse of it one night when I repented of my sins back to the moment of my birth, as well as I could remember.
I felt encompassed by love like being immersed under water. Then the love soaked through me and I became love!
I know, I know that if that’s all eternity is, that’s all I want.
BELIEVE
BELIEVE
By Rick Mathes
Acts 16:31 and they said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you shall be saved, you and your household.”
Faith is reaching beyond your grasp and when you do in Christ you become a believer. So the Christian faith begins with you believing in Him. Once I knew I knew He rose from the dead, I believed and have never turned back since. It is finished business because the Lord said so from the Cross but it isn’t done. He doesn’t announce that until after the white throne judgment when He will say, “It is done.”
The bone chilling consequence of this is that there will be a moment, a blink of an eye from that point forward no one will be able to be saved. It will be too late for those that have put it off and rejected Jesus as their Lord. The Muslims, Roman Catholics, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Christian Science and other eastern cults will drop into the flaming pit, the abyss of the dark-side with evil personified in Father Satan.
Receiving our Lord’s offer is the best choice you will ever have to make. His grace is handed to you and all it costs is everything you have and you are. In fact, the rest of your life is none of your business. You didn’t come to Him, He extended His hand, the Master’s hand and you reached back a slave evermore subservient to His slightest wish. This is the biblical truth! Don’t let anyone “soft-soap” you out of this fact with any scripture twisting.
He earned your trust through the witnesses of the sixty-six book library we call our Bible. They looked forward to the Cross and now we look backward to the same Cross.
WE do this to hear His voice ring through the ages in word and deed; As Josh McDowell has put it in his book “Evidence Deserves a Verdict.” Is Jesus a liar, lunatic or Lord? Let the Holy Spirit open your eares to hear the saints as they speak to you from the precious pages of His gospel.
“Look and be saved!” Moses had a foreshadow of His crucifixion. By His stripes we have been healed. Once you look into those pitiful eyes of our dying Savior, what choice is there but to yield to His call, “Believe in Me and be saved.” What is your plan B compared to Him?
BEFORE THE DAWN
BEFORE THE DAWN
By Rick Mathes
John 3:36 (NASB77) 36 “He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.”
The world is a howling wilderness to those who go recklessly through it, stumbling in their self-made darkness: world gone mad. They have no concept of the consequences of their random and unleashed actions of sinful aggressions. It becomes a merry-go-round of evil, careening before them with a forever of no beginnings or ends of cowardly suicide of integrity and character.
Another night of lurking fear as the streets darken and the shadows flee the sundown and beams of thinning traffic headlights: loneliness no human should ever be asked to endure. Road-rage and taunt nerves cause tempers to flare and fights to spontaneously ignite. The irresistible lure of the taverns and relief of liquid levity is only one swallow away: the devil knows. “Pass that joint my way, bro.” The shakes from last night still linger. I can’t believe there is another day when I prayed last night would be my last: a dog returning to his vomit.
My sorrow is overwhelming me when I revue those shadows that follow me. Skinned knuckles, bloody mouth, vomit and shame: night after night: Can I ever be truly sorry for living the same horrors day after day, after day, after day?
The shroud of death, coffin and hearse are lined up and prepared for my demise: my enemies would rejoice. “Oh look, there’s a big Mack truck!” It’s coming my way and all I need is a sharp turn to the left and this nightmare would end and who would care: no one? They can hold my funeral in a phone booth.
Some would fake tears and regrets but the day would dawn and if the truth be said, my passing into oblivion of the abyss would be secretly celebrated. What hope is there for me for you for that matter?
If ever there was a time for the Holy Spirit to breathe His life into me once again it is now and I pray that it will be for you also! Suck it up and drink it in deeply right now as you read this.
I need the right loving spirit to give me a Son-rise (sunrise) in my soul that will quench my prideful and hardened heart. I don’t even know what “humble” is so I cry out to You Lord, “I can’t!” and I can hear the heavens echo your response, “I CAN!”
I come to your Cross and beg forgiveness and as your Word promises, you forgive me with your atoning blood. Help me to accept it and put the past behind. It keeps rearing its ugliness to destroy the flickering joy within me. I receive the forgiveness and pledge to become a forgiver, forever.
The dawn has come to light and the night drifts slowly into the horizon of defeat. It has not power over the Light of the Word, the only Son of God, and my Savior!
BEFORE THE DAWN
BEFORE THE DAWN
By Rick Mathes
John 3:36 (NASB77) 36 “He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.”
The world is a howling wilderness to those who go recklessly through it, stumbling in their self-made darkness: world gone mad. They have no concept of the consequences of their random and unleashed actions of sinful aggressions. It becomes a merry-go-round of evil, careening before them with a forever of no beginnings or ends of cowardly suicide of integrity and character.
Another night of lurking fear as the streets darken and the shadows flee the sundown and beams of thinning traffic headlights: loneliness no human should ever be asked to endure. Road-rage and taunt nerves cause tempers to flare and fights to spontaneously ignite. The irresistible lure of the taverns and relief of liquid levity is only one swallow away: the devil knows. “Pass that joint my way, bro.” The shakes from last night still linger. I can’t believe there is another day when I prayed last night would be my last: a dog returning to his vomit.
My sorrow is overwhelming me when I revue those shadows that follow me. Skinned knuckles, bloody mouth, vomit and shame: night after night: Can I ever be truly sorry for living the same horrors day after day, after day, after day?
The shroud of death, coffin and hearse are lined up and prepared for my demise: my enemies would rejoice. “Oh look, there’s a big Mack truck!” It’s coming my way and all I need is a sharp turn to the left and this nightmare would end and who would care: no one? They can hold my funeral in a phone booth.
Some would fake tears and regrets but the day would dawn and if the truth be said, my passing into oblivion of the abyss would be secretly celebrated. What hope is there for me for you for that matter?
If ever there was a time for the Holy Spirit to breathe His life into me once again it is now and I pray that it will be for you also! Suck it up and drink it in deeply right now as you read this.
I need the right loving spirit to give me a Son-rise (sunrise) in my soul that will quench my prideful and hardened heart. I don’t even know what “humble” is so I cry out to You Lord, “I can’t!” and I can hear the heavens echo your response, “I CAN!”
I come to your Cross and beg forgiveness and as your Word promises, you forgive me with your atoning blood. Help me to accept it and put the past behind. It keeps rearing its ugliness to destroy the flickering joy within me. I receive the forgiveness and pledge to become a forgiver, forever.
The dawn has come to light and the night drifts slowly into the horizon of defeat. It has not power over the Light of the Word, the only Son of God, and my Savior!
10 FAVORITE MESSAGES
BROADCASTS iTunes
- 100 Shirts
- https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/i-did-it-to-me/id394124782?i=1199451132&mt=2
- A Father’s Discipline
- http://traffic.libsyn.com/missiongate/Mission-Gate-Podcast-36.mp3
- Agree to Disagree
- http://traffic.libsyn..com/missiongate/Mission-Gate-Podcast-18.mp3
- At the Well
- https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/at-the-well/id39424782?i=121885793&mt=2
- Backslider Anonymous
- https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/backslider-anonymous/id394124782?i=158531924&mt=2
- Back to Basics Part 1
- http://traffic.libsyn.com/missiongate/Mission-Gate-Podcast-14.mp3
- Back to Basics Part 2
- http://traffic.libsyn.com/missiongate/Mission-Gate-Podcast-15.mp3
- Bad Dates
- https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/bad-dates/id394124782?i=120756349&mt=2
- Bless the Lord
- http://traffic.libsyn.com/missiongate/Mission-Gate-Podcast-29.mp3
- Brother O
- http://traffic.libsyn.com/misisongate/Mission-Gate-Podcast-6.mp3
BEARING FRUIT
BEARING FRUIT
By Rick Mathes
Colossians 1:10 so that you may walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God;
No one can say for certain if another person is saved or not because even God’s elect will slip and sin from time to time. As a shepherd, I look for the fruit of the Spirit to craft a sermon or Bible study for my sheep. There are definite sign posts along the narrow road to heaven or the wide highway to hell.
One very telling characteristic of a fellow believer is we put away childish things. There was a time when we did some really crazy things and we marvel that we escaped unscathed. So thee was a time when it was fun to say it was fun, then it because fun to say it was crazy but then came the time when it was crazy to say this was fun. That’s when we had to put them away.
Another effort a born again believer will make is to cultivate a good solid understanding of God’s Word. Unless someone has their head in the bible, I really doubt they know Jesus for who He is. If you are His, you read His love letters to you (The Bible).
Striving after Christ’s ideal model of a follower of His is found in Mathew chapter 5 and is called the Beatitudes. These guidelines are in a progression so you need to do the first before you tackle the second and then the third and so on to of all things, persecution. If you do the opposite of each step you have the stairway to hell.
The best signpost of your being on the narrow road is your partaking of deeper things. The Word is shallow enough for an infant to splash in and yet can be deep enough to drown an elephant.
It mainly boils down to overcoming temptation. My surest test of your salvation is when you consider the temptation a testing of the Lord to find out how deep your love for Him is. The most valid assurance of your love for Him is your hate of sin. You hate the sin that killed God’s Son. That despising of evil things means you are bearing good fruit of good things. Sounds like you are saved! AMEN.
Rick Mathes 