Tag: carnal

CARNALITY

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CARNALITY

By Rick Mathes

Romans 6:23 (NASB77) 23  For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

A carnal Christian is one who claims allegiance to heaven but lives only for everything on earth. The temporal toys are worth more than the eternal blessings later. Carnal Christians are just demons with a mask on. The devil has learned that to beat the church to death you must o it from the inside with a pillow instead of outside with a sledge hammer

A church with no real spiritual leaders is defeated before it has ever begun You would shudder if I told you of the experiences I have had with demonic churches over the years. I was even paid to get a Bishop and two Priests a hooker for the week-end on time I now the darkside of Satan’s synagogue well because I worshipped there for 25 years. Then as a minister for over 25 years I saw from the inside that all I saw on the outside was just a prelude to an orchestration of demons behind protestant altars.

Evil associations and personal material gain are rampant to those that gather under the cross to achieve worldly success. Why even the prostitutes in South America gather to pray to the Virgin Mary for a profitable evening!

The shallowness of this tragedy is the lack of a solid gospel message. The carnal church is built around doing instead of done All these empty lives are reinforcing each other with trivial distractions, plays, music, videos and laser shows to attract those with no spiritual insight to return next Sunday for some more entertainment, with an offering of course.

Endless hours are spent on the business plan and the sermon soon becomes a brief after thought. There is no love of God but there is an all-encompassing love of the world to build bigger and better buildings: for denominations to outdo each other in worldly attractions instead of the exercise of spiritual gifts. If you call yourself a Christian and you love this world more than the next, the love of the Father is not in you. You are a carnal, demonic moron.

DEED OF DAWN

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DEEDS OF DAWN

By Rick Mathes

Romans 13:12 (NASB77) 12   The night is almost gone, and the day is at hand. Let us therefore lay aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light

The darkness of days is rapidly being overcome by the dawning of our Lord’s glory and His coming kingdom. The long wait is almost over and the wait is certainly worth it. Our King is returning and the deeds of darkness will soon be exposed in the light of His searching righteousness.

All of our deeds are like weeds that can

Grow into flowers or grow into weeds.

The works of darkness can always be seen in the night because that’s where evil lives and grows. Mutant beings that have morphed into the gargoyle image and likeness of Lucifer and his fallen angels. Nothing pleases the former “morning star” more than for you to go about his damaging works and calling him your lord: certain hell!

All you’re present and former lusts rise up for battle and then comes the dawn and their flight to our Lord’s glory. His will is Divine in His elect and the gates of hell cannot prevail. The devil will drag your memory back to the sewer of every sordid affair you ever had and remind you of all the ugly details and sickening consequences.

Lying and anger are the right and left hand punches the devil uses to drive away godly saints that want to turn your hands from fist to hands up in worship. If only you will surrender to truth the peace of God will follow you all the days of your life. The deeds of evil fade away as the dawn and it’s light breaks over the horizon of salvation.

As the sun rises, the light of the Son blots it out! Such is the Glory of the risen King. All filthiness flees and the darkness cannot overcome the Shekinah Glory of His resurrection. The remnant of  the night yielding to the day is the grey of malice

You might not want to admit it but from time to time you secretly approve bad things happening to people you are not fond of. All this means is that you are not seeing them with our Lord’s eyes. If you were, you would grieve their fallen condition and not applaud their misfortune. Stay fast and continue from night to day and the bring morning star of Jesus will shine on in your life.

DECEIT

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DECEIT

By Rick Mathes

Acts 13:10 and said, “You who are full of all deceit and fraud, you son of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness, will you not cease to make crooked the straight ways of the Lord?

The devil keeps his prey in sight and on friendly terms until the time is right to strike and make him a child of Satan. Jesus said, “I AM the way, the truth and the life.” Satan is the wrong way, a father of lies and an executioner of your soul. When you sin you are declaring, “Satan is my Lord.” Let that sink in a minute.

The sewer of truth is deceit and we all have a place for it in our hearts that we are not willing to give up. It’s this resistance to repentance that hinders knowledge. Didn’t the Word warn, “My people perish for lack of knowledge?” The lies you choose to nurture keeps you from God. Oh how He wants to hold you in His arms and love you but the slime of deceit, dripping from your soul makes God gag.

It’s buying the lies Satan throws at us that leads to pride. We have success with a little lie; get more things so we escalate our lies and deceit to get a bigger slice of the world’s toys and trinkets. We become like a decorated Christmas tree blinking and beautiful. But when the decorations are put away we notice that the tree is dead. It was all a false façade with no living substance to sustain it.

Everything contrary to truth is a fraud. When Pilate asked, “What is truth?” Jesus didn’t waste is breath explaining it to him because all Pilate was doing was concealing that hate that throbbed through his heart. Most inquirers are only conceiving evil plans and distracting truth by semi-truth twisting or circular reasoning. It’s all relative they claim because they don’t want the light to shine on their darkness.

Lies and deceit can only encourage sin. They have no other motive but to slash that whip on the Lord’s back one more time. The dirty-duo grinds that crown of thorns into His head again and again. They thrust the sword of death into His heart again and again all because you have polluted your souls with unconfessed sin.

In the last analysis your heart hardens I was shocked to learn I had four hardened arteries. Within two days I was on the operating table and my physical life was extended. But a hardened heart has no cure but to repent, submit and obey Him. Otherwise you are going to burn baby burn!

CHURCH CORRUPTIONS

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CHURCH CORRUPTIONS

By Rick Mathes

1 Corinthians 1:2 (NASB77) 2  to the church of God which is at Corinth, to those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, saints by calling, with all who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours:

Every denomination has a “Church of Corinth” that has drifted in its leadership and lost its first love and focus. There are a few basic corruptions that know no religious distinctive. When Satan gets his nose into your church fellowship, his body is soon to follow.

Following humn leaders, that are humanists, only provides you with a veneer of a carnal communityof self-gratification. The devil knows that to disrupt the church he needs access to the pulpit he is often relegated to a leadership position because of our shamefuil apathy.

When earthly wisdom is favored, spiritual absolutes are compromised and wateed down to relative absurdities. A twelve inch ruler is 12 inches long and not 11 or 13 inches long depending on your personal law or rule of measurement. The same applies to salvation. Jesus is the ony way and you can’t be part saved by believing otherwise.

Like a fish out of water, the Word of God. You are signing hour own death warrant or rather certificate of dying in flames continuing action. Without the “Rock that don’t role,” your faith will only have the substance and constancy of cotton candy. It will tase good but there is nothing thee.

There’s no sense o flattering yourself with self-gratifying deeds, prayers or rituals. When you are your own god, you will have to deal with your own hell all by yourself! Pride of self dropped Lucifer from the highest plateaus in glory down the rungs to the dungeon of glow-torch flames from hell.

The culprit is lack of discipline. You are sovereign over you. The sin you have you want becaue if you didn’t want it more than you do want it, you wouldn’t have it! It’s that simple. Love the Lord more than the sin.

All the above shaken up and spread out is a fragmenting of the Body of Christ. When the head is sick the whole boy suffers. When lall yur body parrs are bruised, battered and broken, they can no longer work together in harmony. The corruption of your church has polited you too. Don’t be a Corinthian Church that even 50 years after Paul wrote the third letter to them, things got worse because of the younger members disrespecting the elders.

BY YOUR DEEDS

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BY YOUR DEEDS

By Rick Mathes

Acts 26:20 but kept declaring both to those of Damascus first, and also at Jerusalem and then throughout all the region of Judea, and even to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, performing deeds appropriate to repentance.

Pray this: “Father God, by your grace I have been saved; Brother Jesus, by your stripes I have been healed: Holy Spirit, you know the mind of the Father and the heart of the Son, What does God want me to do?”

For openers, it is an answer to prayer when the Holy Spirit convicts you of the sin you have been hiding in that dark closet in your soul. Our deepest desire should be to be wholly holy. Any compromise is spiritual prostitution. A little lie with the truth or a little truth in the lie is deceitful beyond compare: neither integrity nor character. In either case the simple law of non-contradiction occurs: A cannot be non A. Sin is spiritual cancer and it must be removed or you will die and eternal death while still on your feet.

The Lord sees us in ways our natural eyes are unable to. If you could see my heart as the Lord sees it, you would run from me and I would be terrified to see yours. We really are sin-machines and our deeds show it. It is only in His shed blood that we receive a full pardon. When Father God looks upon us all He sees is His Son interceding for us. We truly are forgiven and our sins forgotten.

This is how it works; 1) You approach the Cross and as Jesus for forgiveness, 2) He will extend His blessing, 3) You receive the forgiveness (no guilt) and 4) You become a forgiver. The tough one is to walk away from guilt and become a virgin all over again. Flush your toilet and move on.

The vital life is exhibited by the works we produce. I know it’s by grace we are saved not by works but as James taught, if there aren’t any works there is good cause to question the health of this barren tree with no fruit. As the verse clearly teaches, we must repent, turn to God and prove that transaction by deeds. I wouldn’t trust it any other way.

God inhabits His praises like the fragrance of a rose. He also activates good works like a kaleidoscope of good deeds. I would rather see the sermon over hearing it, wouldn’t you? If you aren’t walking your talk, your talking is moot. It’s a waste of oxygen. The Comforter will bring you comfort in the highest degree.

The proof of repentance is a gift of the Holy Spirit. He is to infuse Christ and His efforts into you. You cannot do it without the Holy Spirit and it won’t get done without you. Your hands pick up the baton of continued blessing. Don’t drop it: press on!

CONQUERERS

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CONQUERERS

By Rick Mathes

Romans 8:37 (NASB77) 37  But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.

C.H. Spurgeon: Jesus is the representative man for His people. The head has triumphed and the members share in the victory. While a man’s head is above the water you cannot drown his body.

All the hope of ministry lies in the

Spirit of God operating on the spirits of men.

Jess disciples in His absence. The Holy Spirit then is all the Christ we need until His return. We pay so little attention to the Spirit of God that maybe now, in this devotional, we can give credit where credit is due.

Can you even imagine they removed the head of a trained monkey and attached it to a headless body of another monkey and it retained all its knowledge and training! A surgeon removed the heart from a patient and put it into a pan and then returned and put the silent heart into the man again and it began to throb with life. Where is life if all our body parts can be replaced? In Christ!

This inner vitality from Him makes us “able not to sin.” We have put out the flames of hell and have been resurrected from the dead. There was a time we walked around looking for a place to be buried but we were cowards to take our life. Now we cherish the Lord because His is the way, the truth and the life. We can defeat the most evil demons of hell and not even fear Lucifer himself because we win!

Sin cannot have dominance over us any more than darkness can put out light. All of hell, all sin, all demons and Lucifer himself is nothing more than an itch on God’s nose! So why are you surrendering to the losers?

Finally, we have a Commander-in-Chief that leads us to certain victory. We join Him as family, His family and full heirs to His estate. It is this eternal Glory in His Kingdom that we pledge our life, liberty and fortunes.

It all begins at the beginning: we are more than conquerors because we put on the full armor of God and fight our battles on our knees in prayer. Imagine that! We have His ear, His full attention anytime we need Him. What more assurance do we need that the battle is ours?

WHAT IS MAN?

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WHAT IS MAN?

Psalm 8:4 (NASB77) 4   What is man, that Thou dost take thought of him? And the son of man, that Thou dost care for him?

Man lives on the fragile edge of life. His future can cut either way as God permits. The dilemma is in what he is made of. Prior to the fall he was God’s image and likeness but after the fall a deadly transformation occurred. The man became a monster!

His heart is wicked beyond measure and there is no good in him at least not enough good to be worthy to step into the Lord’s presence. Unless the mind is in motion the body and soul won’t respond. When you are blind to the Holy Spirit the Bible is just a volume of useless words. In this condition your affections are prostituted from our Lord’s approval to the devil’s revelries and shameful enjoyments.

The blind mind, paralyzes the body, pollutes the soul and enslaves the will. Satan knows exactly how to take you down. His only goal is to strip ou of every shred of righteousness so that your condition is deplorable and so unattractive that Christians will pass you by in your anguish.

The moment of truth comes when you realize you cannot better yourself. In a thought, you are not able to not sin. Helpless to every temptation, you are merely a puppet in the hands of any demon assigned to you: a plaything for sordid amusement. You cannot, I repeat, you cannot no nor ever work out your salvation by what you do. It is by our Lord’s gracious mercy alone that you can be spared an eternal death in the furnace of hades. Your only relief is to be born of God.

To survive man must have an understanding of the Word and be supernaturally enlightened. His heart needs to be renewed and his will emancipated. Then he will be able not to sin in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Face the facts:

Jesus saves us from the:

  • Penalty of sin
  • Power of sin
  • Pollution of sin

Be the man of God He created you to be and break the cuffs that are leading you to Satan’s mansion, the Department of Corrections.

BLESS VS. CURSE

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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

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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

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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!