Now to the one who works, wages are not credited as a gift but as an obligation.
This is one of the biggest myths in Christianity. Jesus blesses those who walk by faith believing in His promises. Jesus crucified the works doctrine on the Cross.
The Bible explains he who works, the wages are not a gift from God but an obligation. The individual who does not work but trusts God who justifies the ungodly, their faith is credited as righteousness.
The Bible instructs believers to cease from striving and rest in God. Like God who rested after six days of creation work, we are to seek the sabbath rest of God.
The works of God come by the Holy Spirit. It is not by might nor by strength but by the Spirit. Human effort is a waste of time.
Abraham walked by faith and waited on God for many years. He took action when He heard the voice of God. The faith of Abraham was credited as righteousness.
Moses tended sheep for forty years waiting upon God. Then God appeared and gave him an assignment. Moses walked by faith and obeyed God.
The righteousness of Jesus comes by your unyielding faith in His promises. Your relationship with Jesus is governed by the principle of faith believing Jesus calls things that do not exist as if they did.
The barrier to knowing Jesus is insisting upon keeping your natural talents and dispositions. Jesus does not want your old life. He wants to create a new creature in Christ. He is not going to bless something He did not make.
The old nature in a human being is flawed and Jesus cannot build upon it. He wants to start over.
Jesus knows you better than you know yourself. He wants to create His originality in your personality, thoughts, emotions and decision making. This can only happen if you give up the right to yourself. Ask yourself who owns you?
Abandon yourself to Jesus and He will literally transform you into His character. He does this by engineering trials, adversity and new circumstances in your life.
Give Jesus permission to do with you as He pleases. Don’t try to hold on to your past or what seems important to you.
Learn to yield to the Holy Spirit. He will protect you and guide you in the footsteps of Jesus.
The Holy Spirit will crucify every fiber of living for self and replace with His resurrected life.
Jesus does not want you to try and figure out your life or have expectations. He wants you to walk with Him by faith and let go of the future. He wants to be a lamp unto your feet and a light unto your pathway.
Jesus likes to create unpredictable seasons in life because they cause a believer to totally depend upon Him. When life seems secure and smooth Jesus tends to get lost.
The Christ follower who has surrendered to Jesus will look at his circumstances and say this just doesn’t make any sense but it makes perfect sense to Jesus!
God created man with a will to overcome and be productive.
The human mind working through your conscience determines your thoughts and actions today.
All human beings have an inner nature to please self and defy God. If this nature is not harnessed by the Holy Spirit sin will ruin the perfect will of God.
The perfect will of God comes through prayer, reading the Bible, and listening to the voice of the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit will never lead you into sin. What happens is we decide to reject the advice of the Holy Spirit and satisfy our desires.
Every believer should work out his salvation by concentrating on Jesus and zealously seeking the will of God. When in doubt take every thought captive to the obedience of Jesus.
The Bible teaches there is a sense of fear and trembling in walking in the footsteps of Jesus to avoid calamities and disasters.
Jesus desires to bring order and peace into your life by submitting to the authority of the Holy Spirit.
Commit your works each day to Jesus and He will fill you with His perfect thoughts!
The world is populated by many non believers and those who worship false gods. Christianity is declining and has lost its appeal to many.
The question is what causes someone to come to Jesus?
Jesus was sent to the earth to offer the gift of salvation to all humanity. There is no partiality or bias in His invitation.
The cornerstone of the gift of salvation is building a personal and symbiotic relationship with the Living Christ.
Jesus wants a believer to walk by faith yielding to the Holy Spirit. He desires to give you an abundant life filled with the goodness of God.
Jesus is not about keeping laws, doing works or immersing yourself in religion. He wants a believer to seek His will above all else and learn to be obedient to His ways.
The gospel is hid to those who are anchored to the world. They have no need for God. They have defined their morality according to worldly standards and the laws of the land.
The unbeliever has no sense of a need for God. He is not convicted by personal testimonies or scripture.
The only way an unbeliever can find Jesus is to ask Him to enter his life. This action will stir God to respond in a powerful fashion.
Jesus makes nonbelievers culpable for their actions through the conviction of the Holy Spirit. They see their harmful or evil behaviors in a new light and realize they cannot escape these habits on their own.
The beauty of Jesus is you can face Him without any shame or embarrassment. The blood of Christ gives you an unabashed conscience free of your past.
The most powerful method of dealing with a non believer entrenched in darkness is through intercession.
This discipline is patterned after Jesus who makes intercession for all mankind. Intercession is filling up the flesh with the afflictions of Christ for His Body, the church.
The believer invites the Holy Spirit to make intercession for the purpose of bringing down strongholds and setting an individual free from the bondage of sin. This can be a groaning and agonizing experience fighting the demons of Satan.
Jesus creates redemption in the life of a believer through a “born again” experience. He creates a new identity and transforms a believer into the character of Jesus.
As a new creature in Christ Jesus, God creates things that nurture or satisfy a spiritual being. This consists of prayer, reading the Bible, and listening for the voice of God. The Holy Spirit will also send visions and dreams to encourage believers.
The Holy Spirit will rearrange your life with new friends, work, church and activities which nurture a wholesome spiritual life.
Jesus keeps His promises and you can trust Him implicitly!
Here I am Jesus. Come and take control. Do with me as you please!
The only way a believer can know Jesus is to identify with His death.
The Cross will cause you to die to sin but you must be willing to give Jesus permission to do His surgical work inside you. This is not an intellectual process or a religious ritual.
This is facing Jesus with an open heart and making a decision to let Him have all of you and do a deep work in transforming your personality and values into His character.
Very few believers are willing to make this drastic decision. They want to hang on to worldly attractions and desires.
Come to Jesus and agree to die to self centered living and sever all ties to the world. Be willing to identify with Jesus and pray the Cross will become a reality in your life. Jesus will crucify your natural life (from birth) and give you a new identity built on the foundation of God.
Every human being deals with presumptuous (or intentional) sin which is visible in your conscious state. As a believer you are accountable to Jesus to turn away from all forms of darkness. Jesus will give you the ability to live a life pleasing to Him through the Holy Spirit.
There is also sin residing deep in your subconscious state which God will also deal with through the Holy Spirit. The responsibility of a believer is to seek out the Holy Spirit for repentance and be open to the conviction and correction of sins which are not visible to you.
Jesus desires to have a personal and embracing relationship with a believer. He wants you to seek His will with a passionate zeal and a desire to please Him.
The Cross will cause pain and suffering but the outcome will give a believer a very special relationship with the Living Christ.
Because it has been given to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given.
Why doesn’t Jesus speak precisely without beating around the bush with parables?
Jesus explains you must be a Christ follower committed to seeking Him above all else to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God. If you are not a believer it’s impossible to understand God.
This is because your mind is programmed with the wisdom of the world which is foolish with God.
Jesus goes on to say the Christ follower will be given more than he has and he will have an abundance. However, the unbeliever who does believe in God will lose everything he has.
Jesus does not think or act like a human being. And, He has no ego.
We are self driven people concerned about our own needs.
There has to be a born again transformation to understand Jesus. This happens when an individual makes a commitment to follow Jesus above all else. He becomes a new creature in Christ and his eyes are opened to the truths of Jesus.
The new believer has spiritual wisdom through the Holy Spirit who dwells in all believers. He is the life of Christ and enables you understand the mysteries of God.
The word from the Holy Spirit is apostasy which is the act of rejecting or abandoning religion.
This happens because people sample the Jesus of religion and cannot perceive any value or enhancement for their life.
The underlying cause for apostasy are the leaders in the Body of Christ. They should be guiding people to the Living Christ but insist on promoting a church and pushing laws and works. This turns people off.
The miracle of the Living Christ is an individual can have a personal and symbiotic relationship with Jesus. You can hear His voice and abide in His living presence. Jesus is life changing. He gives an individual a new identity through a born again transformation.
Jesus is perfect and without sin. As a believer you must ask Jesus to pour His blood over you and be willing to turn away from darkness. This is a consistent discipline in the life of a believer.
Jesus desires to share His life with a believer. Ask and He will fill you with love, joy, strength, wisdom and protection. These attributes come from heaven and cannot be found on earth.
Jesus becomes alive through the Holy Spirit. He is the life of Christ and is sealed in all believers. Invite the Holy Spirit to have authority over your life and you will be amazed at how He will reorder your life and be present in all the details of your day.
Jesus wants you to walk in oneness with Him by faith. This is His priority above all else. You must learn to know Jesus and be obedient to His instructions.
Come to Jesus and be enveloped by His Spirit and Truth. Your life will never be the same!
For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
Today, the discussion deals with how God works to make you presentable and special in the eyes of Jesus.
It is impossible to match up to the standards of Jesus but you can become a delight to His eyes.
From the beginning God saw the immortality of mankind and prepared a perfect solution so human beings could be like God and do good works.
You and I have been created in the image of God but we can never please God without Jesus.
The natural man is hopelessly lost. He has an inner nature to defy God and satisfy self. He is driven by the desires of the world.
God knew this predicament and asked Jesus, His only Son, to become a sacrifice for all mankind. The miracle of the Cross is the ability for God to give an individual a new identity through a born again experience.
The commitment to Christ sets a new plan into action for a believer. He becomes transformed into a new creature in Christ filled with the values of Jesus.
This process gives the new believer the capability to do good works like Jesus. This happens by God baptizing a believer into the death and resurrection of Christ. He dies to self and lives for Jesus.
God has sealed the new believer with the Holy Spirit. He is the life of Christ and a burning fire that creates a new spiritual being.
The born again experience is relevant to the seriousness and depth of a believer’s commitment to live for Jesus. If you are lukewarm about Jesus, He will be lukewarm about you.
The secret is to zealously seek the will of Jesus for your life and live under the authority of the Holy Spirit. He will introduce you to the reality of the Living Christ and your life will never be the same!
The word today from the Holy Spirit is paradox meaning a statement that sounds reasonable but leads to a conclusion that is senseless and not biblically acceptable.
The paradoxical expression has been defined through human thoughts not by the mind of God.
God does not think or act like a human being. He has no ego while humans are self driven people. Jesus is also controversial and unpredictable. The Bible explains what seems like a good decision can lead to destruction.
There is also a lack of understanding with many believers about the deeper truths of God like spiritual warfare, retribution, and the role of the Holy Spirit. Unfortunately, many churches will not touch these subjects because they turn off believers and conflict with the motives of church leaders.
The method to verify the accuracy of biblical truth is through the Holy Spirit who lives in all believers. He is the life of Jesus can be trusted implicitly. He will always bring glory to Jesus.
The Holy Spirit brings the reality of the Living Christ into the life of a believer. He speaks consistently to His people, teaches the truths of Jesus and dispels false myths.
The secret is to yield to His authority. He wants to be a lamp unto your feet and a light unto your pathway.
The Holy Spirits wants to be in all the moments of your life. Learn to listen to His voice and be obedient to His instructions.
Don’t make assumptions about Jesus but rely on the veracity of the Holy Spirit!
Hal Hollister Ministry 