“For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection.” Romans 6:5

After death, comes life! If you are a believer, your natural person died with Jesus on the cross. This was to remove all sin and allow you to be free from the bondage of sin. Your sin died with Jesus on the cross so you can be united together with Him in the likeness of His death.

The sin has died but the cause of it still lives in you. This is why you are united in the likeness of His resurrection. Jesus has placed His resurrected Spirit within you and this gives you the ability to live a life pleasing to God. You won’t be perfect but you will reflect the nature of God in your life.

If you choose to live through your crucified body, this will bring misery, destruction, and death. God can’t help you because you are rejecting (or denying) what He did on the cross for you.

If you choose to live through His resurrected Spirit, He will bless your life and keep you away from sin.

Your only hope is in the resurrected life of Jesus. You can experience this today by drawing upon His Spirit!

 

 

“Go and sin no more.” John 8:11

Christianity wants to control people and God wants to set people free. Religion wants you to conform to laws and works to please God. This is an insult to the name of Jesus and repulsive to what He did on the cross. The works of God were finished on the cross. You can’t do anything for God because Jesus has completed the works of God.

You are saved by placing your faith in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus did not tell the adulteress to join a church, attend a bible study, or do something good to make up for her sins. He told her to go and sin no more.

Think of it this way. You come to God by placing your faith in the name of Jesus, asking for His blood to cover your sins, and living out your life yoked to God through His Spirit.

God’s priority is your walk of faith and obedience to His voice. He wants you to be closely united to Him regardless of the circumstances in your life. This is what pleases God and will cause Him to release you into doing His work. You can’t be useful to God until He has seen your faith in action. You have to “walk the talk”.

Faith is your foundation to walking with God. The works you do for God will come from the Spirit of God living inside you. He will direct you and live His life through you.

For example, I spent four years of my life doing evangelism for God. I was directed where to go, what to say, and His Spirit worked through me to touch thousands. I did this with a wife and pre school daughter living out of suitcases at times and usually with very little money in my pocket. This ministry was ordained and anointed by God and the results came from Him. I just went along for the ride.

The point of this message is forget about doing things for God and focus on having a personal and intimate relationship with God. Your faith will make you whole!

 

 

“What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?” Romans 8:31-32

The work of God to call you to Himself is an amazing story of His love. He chose you before you were born and called you to be His heir. Then He justified you through Jesus so your sins could be forgiven and you could be reconciled to God. Finally, He will glorify you through the gift of eternal life and remove every imperfection from your life.

This verse in the Book of Romans testifies to the love of God for His people. The act of God to sacrifice His Son demonstrates how much He loves you and desires to freely give you all things through the life of His Son living within you.

Who can be against you if God is for you? He wants to fight your battles, protect you from your enemies, and keep you away from evil. He promises you an abundant life filled with His goodness.

This promise is available to all who love God and are called according to His purposes. If you are one with God and obedient to His voice you have no reason to worry about your life. This is because you have a benefactor who goes before you and will supply every need in your life.

God desires to give you more than you think or ask. How great is our God!

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.” Matthew 7:7-8

God is near you at this very moment! You can’t see Him but all He needs to enter your life today is an invitation. If you are a believer, He lives in you through the Holy Spirit.

God won’t compete with your individuality and He will never exert His will upon you without your consent. God loves you and wants you to become His child. He desires to protect you and give you an abundant life.

The greatest gift you will ever receive is the gift of eternal life. This is the beginning of a relationship with God. You make a decision for Jesus, the Son of God, and this gift is given to you. The Holy Spirit is placed inside your body and He will dwell with you for as long as you are here on the earth. Eternal life is living with God today and has nothing to do with time.

Today you can find strength, wisdom, and peace that does not come from your human creation. These attributes come from the life of Jesus living within you and are made available to you by His death on the cross.

You have to come to Him with humility and be willing to confess your sins and ask for forgiveness. This will allow you to draw near to God and enjoy His presence.

Ask God to fill you with His living water today and you will never thirst again and He will renew you to meet every challenge in your life!

God will do for you what you can never do for yourself!

 

“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Matthew 6:21

Think about what your priorities are in life, how you spend your time and money, and what occupies your thoughts. The treasures you pursue on earth are an indication of the condition of your heart.

God wants you to pursue Him with a serious devotion to do His will. He wants you to make Him your priority over all things.

Don’t look at what you have or want but look to God with a desire to have a deep and personal relationship with Him. Learn to honor and cherish almighty God through prayer, His Word, and living by faith.

Become anchored to God through His Spirit dwelling inside you and listen for His voice.

Treasure God by committing each day of your life to Him. Seek God out for wisdom and guidance in all your activities and relationships.

Your life should be an open book to God with no restrictions. Give God access to every detail of your life.

This is not about participating in religion, doing works for God, or making sacrifices for Him. It is about giving your heart to God and following Him.

When you meet the living God and experience His power and glory, you will want more of Him above all else in life. He will become your source of life and your only hope for the future.

 

Do everything without grumbling or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, “children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation.” Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky as you hold firmly to the word of life. Philippians 2:15-16

If you are grumbling or complaining, then you are unhappy with the condition of your life and lacking for something more.

The problem is not so much the lack of what you want but your feelings associated with the void in your life. There is nothing wrong with going before God and presenting your needs and desires and sharing your feelings with Him. But the grumbling needs to stop with God and not go any further.

If you truly believe God has power and authority over all things in heaven and earth, then you ask God for help in filling your lack and then you let go. This lack is now in the hands of God and you have to trust Him to fulfill all your needs.

It also doesn’t do any good to argue with God. You will never win because He will do things His way. You have to learn to be content whether you have an abundance or scarcity in your life.

You become blameless before God and filled with His purity when you depend on Him for all your needs and can be thankful regardless of your circumstances.

You live in a perverse and evil world where greed abounds and many people will sacrifice their godly values to get what they want.

The promise to those who walk with God and look to Him for their every need is they will be like a bright star shining in the night.

 

“I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.” John 15:5

The concept of employing individual effort to accomplish your goals is an insult to God. This shows a lack of respect and rudeness toward God.

God created you in His image and has given you the life of Jesus to function  within you in the form of the Holy Spirit. He wants you to draw upon Him for your every need.

Jesus said that apart from Me you can accomplish nothing. When you rely on self or individuality to meet life’s needs you are denying God and expressing a disdain for who He is.

You can only walk with God when you are yoked to His Spirit. You need to have this attitude implanted deep in your heart, “In Him we live and move and have our being.”

You develop this intimacy with God through prayer and filling yourself with His Word. You listen and follow the still small voice of God!

When you “Come unto Me” you give up the right to your life for God. He becomes your everything and you live by faith breathing in His promises.

You develop an unflappable faith in God and nothing can shake up your world. You can be as secure and confident as almighty God because you are living for Him.

 

 

 

“He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork (or fan) is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clean out His threshing floor, and gather the wheat into His barn; but the chaff He will burn with unquenchable fire.” Luke 3:16-17

This quote from John the Baptist refers to Jesus and the work of His Holy Spirit. He is holding a winnowing fork in His hand and this fork will separate the good grain from the chaff. The good grain will be placed in a barn and the chaff will burn up with an unquenchable fire.

This is about salvation and the separation of the righteous from the wicked or evil. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. He is the only way to God.

The deeper significance is the work the Spirit of God does in believers. God penetrates your heart and soul with the piercing of His Spirit to identify your sin and remove it from your life.

He has given believers the keys to the kingdom of God to bind evil and loosen goodness functioning in the manner of the winnowing fork.

What you bind on earth through prayer, intercession, and executing the counsel and judgment of God will be bound in Heaven. No sin will travel to Heaven.

What you loosen on earth through offering salvation to others, performing merciful acts, and sharing the love of God will have everlasting results and travel to Heaven.

Sin cannot live with God! You must seek the blood of Jesus to forgive you for your sins and ask His Spirit to clean out your house and make you acceptable to Him.

The act of the cross provides a propitiation (appeasement or atonement) to God for your sins. This is the only method to be reconciled with God!

 

“Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.” Romans 6:4

If you are a believer, you actually died with Jesus on the cross and the resurrected power that raised Jesus from death back to life is now at work in you to create a new person.

Change always begins inside you and then moves outside into your life. God’s primary concern is with your inner being. He wants you to seek Him out and learn to depend on Him for all your needs. This is completely contrary to the world that we live in today.

God wants to purify your thoughts, your words, and your motives. This is the process of transforming you into a spiritual being with the personality of Jesus. He wants to take away your thinking patterns, ideas, and habits that are not of Him.

As you learn to think and act differently, life will change for you. You will have a different perspective on life and you will be able to discern good from evil.

The initial process is to remove the gunk from inside you and replace it with the nature of God. Then you are ready to handle change and new challenges with the strength, wisdom and peace of God at work in your life.

Jesus would have been a failure if He was not one with God during His life here on earth. This is where God wants to take you in your relationship with Him. He wants you to become so closely united with Him that nothing can shake you up or lead you astray.

Your world might be spinning apart but you can live without fear because God is within you and will do for you what you cannot do for yourself.

You can’t rush change into your life because your life no longer belongs to you. God will determine when you are prepared for new challenges. All you can do is have a willing heart to let Him have His way with you.

 

 

“So it was, as they were burying a man, that suddenly they spied a band of raiders; and they put the man in the tomb of Elisha; and when the man was let down and touched the bones of Elisha, he revived and stood on his feet.” 2 Kings 13:21

This is one of most amazing stories in the Bible and proves the omnipotence of almighty God.

The Israelites were in the process of burying a dead man and they saw a band of enemy raiders nearby so they quickly tossed the corpse into the tomb of Elisha, the prophet of God.

The corpse touched the dead bones of Elisha and the man was resurrected from the dead.

Can you imagine the impact this must have had on both the dead man and the Israelites involved? They witnessed the glory of God at work to perform a mighty miracle. Nothing is impossible with God.

This miracle and the other signs and wonders performed by Jesus do not live in the history of the Bible. They are alive today!

God is the same yesterday, today, and forever! He is at work this very moment raising people from the dead, healing and restoring the sick and injured and dispatching His angels around the world to do His work.

This is the God you worship and He desires to show you His glory and power. You must walk by faith trusting Him for all your needs and make Him the center of your life. Then you will see new life come out of death!

Jesus told Martha, the sister of Lazarus, “I am the resurrection and the life and the one who believes in Me will live even though they die”. Then Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead back to life.

If you are a believer, this resurrected life is in you at this very moment. Ask God to empower you with His life today!

He is alive and ready to perform miracles in your life!