Study To Be God's Buddy
By Abraham Israel
Many people who long to receive something from God these days, run after different men of God and women of God thinking that once they receive a prayer from them along with the laying on of hands upon their head, they will receive a greater spirituality, anointing and growth. This is a baloney of the devil that has entered in to the mind of people to make them deceived spiritually.
In these days of instant cofee, any time money, fastfood that people love because it is served fast, flying fast to criss cross around the world, internet online technology that saves people's time and the fastest gizmos that becomes the hit of the day in the market, people are constantly looking for faster and powerful way to do each days work more effeciently and easily without much effort on our part. But these kind of instantaneous things and cravings have made us spiritually shallow people looking for quick fix in our spiritual lives too.
In these days of instant cofee, any time money, fastfood that people love because it is served fast, flying fast to criss cross around the world, internet online technology that saves people's time and the fastest gizmos that becomes the hit of the day in the market, people are constantly looking for faster and powerful way to do each days work more effeciently and easily without much effort on our part. But these kind of instantaneous things and cravings have made us spiritually shallow people looking for quick fix in our spiritual lives too.
Touching God Through His Word And Obedience
Times have changed but the way God has instructed all humans to approach Him through His word have not changed. Jesus the Word made flesh has remained the same for all of us to approach Him personally (John 1:14; Heb 13:8). Of course I agree that the oppurtunity given to us by God to learn about Him and His ways are way too high than any other generation that has lived since the beginning of creation and that too at the click of a button. We today have the oppurtunity to store a huge data resources of the word of God in our cell phones, ipads, laptops and computers. I praise God for this priviledge that was not available to any other generation till date.
But having such a huge spiritual resources at hand is of no use, if we fail to use it to draw near to God. If all the spiritual library of resource materials we have is enough to produce men and women of God, we must be having the greatest men and women of God in the past two thousand years. But these books, tapes, videos and other resources are of no use if we fail to walk in the way we have learned, and thus there are no quick fix to genuine spirituality. Jesus Himself began to do and to teach people the word of God (Acts 1:1-2). He is the only perfect example we are given to follow in our lives (1 Peter 2:21). Head knowledge of the word becomes a spiritual food to our heart only when we intensely desire to know God and obey the word to please Him (John 7:17; John 14:15). When we love Jesus and keep His word, both the Father and Jesus have promised to make their home in our hearts inorder to speak and commune with us intimately as a sign of His approval over our lives (John 14:23). Just having a head knowledge about God does not make us spiritual. It is one thing to know about God and totally it is quite another thing to know God personally in person. The more we know God in person personally, the more spiritual we become.
When God approves a person as spiritual and trustworthy, he puts a seal of anointing upon him to make him a blessing to many (1 Tim 1:12). This approval does not come to some one by chance, it is purely by ones desire to know God through His word that pleases God to put such a seal upon people. As these days in which we are living are the end of the end times, demonic doctrines are creeping in to the Church to make it a inffective witness instead of being a God appointed glorious Church of the end of the end times (1 Tim 4:1-4). So we should touch God and keep in touch with Him perpetually to keep ourselves from deception of the wicked one.
Demons Invading The End of End Times Church
Just in the recent past, God showed me in a dream of people possessed by demonic spirits deceitfully sneaking in to the Church and teaching wrong doctrines of deceit to deceive the Church. Then I heard the voice of the Spirit clearly speaking in the dream saying, "Some will depart from faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons." (1 Tim 4:1). In my spirit I felt angry against these deceitful things of the devils. The other day I saw a demon speak in counterfeit tongues trying to deceive a man of God, God clearly revealed it to him by the gift of the "discerning of spirits" (1 Cor 12:10). I praise God for it. Satan will easily deceive the Church which is grounded on the physical manifestation of the Spirit apart from the word of God. This is why all the Churches of our end of end times should be grounded in the word of God which will naturally produce the mighty manifestation of the Spirit to those who believe the word of God. The external character of these end of end times ministers of God will be inline with the word they speak, just like Jesus' character was inline with what He spoke (1 Thess 1:5; 2:13; Matt 5:19; Luke 23:4).
I have clearly come to a conclusion that in these end of end times, only those who are grounded strongly in the word of God will be able to not only discern the true work of God from the deceitful tactics of the demonic counterfeits, but also overcome it by faith in the name of our Lord Jesus. Only those people in whom the word of God abides will overcome the wicked furious one who knows that the end of all his deceit is coming to an end in this world in a few decades (1 John 2:13-14; Rev 12:12).
The believers in our generation can stand fast and stead fast in faith to overcome satanic deception only when they can stay strong and get soaked in the word of God (1 John 5:4-5; 1 Cor 16:13; 1 Peter 5:9). I believe all believer should grow consistently from the milk drinking stage to the meat eating mature stage in the word of God, to really know God intimately, to discern the good and evil of our end time, in which deception will be a God-ordained means to seperate the whole hearted disciple of Jesus from the lukewarm so called believers of the end time (1 Peter 2:2; 1 Cor 3:2-3; Heb 5:12-14; 1 John 2:13; 2 Thess 2:8-12).
Those who will depart from faith are those who will believe the gospel of prosperity and saftey, where the god who is projected before people is none other than the coveteous mammon (1 Tim 4:1). This type of gospel will be more legalistic and the people who will follow it will be lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, who will have an outward form of godliness but will deny the power behind it, so that it will not convict them of their sin to really touch their heart and change it in to the likeness and character of God (John 16:7-9; 1 Tim 4:2-3; 1 Thes 5:3).
God whom we follow is the richest person in the whole universe and owns it all (Ps 24:1; Gen 1:1), He is our loving Father in Heaven who first wants to save us from the penalty, power and presence of sin because we are destroyed day by day perpetually by it. Sin is to our soul what sickness is to our body. The reason Father God sent Jesus is to save every human from sin and not poverty (John 3:17; Matt 1:21). God deals with sin until we die and then he rewards us eternally with all external riches, power and authority according to measure we have cooperated with Him to destroy the sin which He hates during our lifetime on earth (1 Cor 9:24-27; Matt 25:21, 23). He wants to take out the disease of sin and would like to use us on earth for His glory as much as possible. These days the gospel that people declare is a corrupted one which proclaims that God has come to make us comfortable and prosperous. Because of coveteousness in the heart of the ministers of God, they want to peddle the word of God for their own gain saying that the reason all people must give to their ministry is to honor God and God will return to them hundredfold, these are end time charlatans who are deceiving the unskilled believer in the name of God. Don't be deceived, give to God as much as you want out of a cheerful heart and not by the compulsion to give created by greedy ministers of God (2 Cor 9:7), instead be full of gratitude towards God for having saved you from sin and having given you the eternal life of God to live abundant life of doing God's will on earth as it is in heaven (1 John 5:11-12; John 10:10; Matt 6:10).
We cannot follow both God and money as clearly spelt out by Jesus, yet we see many in our generation bringing a false gospel that says that we can have both money and God (Luke 16:13). What a deception! Stay away from it. We as the followers of Jesus are commanded to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and not love material things and temporal riches (Mark 12:29-30), then seek His kingdom of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit (Matt 6:31-33). For those who do such things are promised by God that He himself will supply their food and clothes to live on earth and enjoy life (1 Tim 6:17). For those who learn to live in this kingdom lifestyle are also promised a higher spiritual benefit of contentment in their earthly life (1 Tim 6:6, 8). Such kingdom lifestyle will make us effieceintly store our riches in heaven more and more before we leave this earth, and also as a result of it we will be having a heaven seeking pilgrim heart which will be full of heaven inside it even while we live on earth (Matt 6:19-21).Praise the Lord!
My Life and its Blessedness
I know personally in my early twenties when God touched my life through a critical physcial infirmity and called me in to ministry, the first thing that I felt was a intense hunger for the word of God. Literally the word of God became as sweet as honey to my taste (Psa 119:103). This hunger for the word of God was given supernaturally because I was seeking to know God intimately in my life. God and His word are one (John 1:1). If we can ever know God, it can be only through His word. Actually I was very skeptical intially as any other good evangelical brought up can be about the manifestation of the Spirit, His gifts, Baptism of the Spirit and the very third person of the God head who is the Holy Spirit. But by the mercies of God He began to reveal Himself to me through His word and I began to be grounded in it by the grace of the Lord Jesus for the past decade of my life and ministry.
For nearly five years from my twenties I spent time to learn and relearn the word of God in order to get convinced whether the Baptism of the Holy Spirit is true or not (Acts 1:8; 2:3-4, 38-39). But finally I found out that it is not only true but essential to every believer to be a effective and powerful witness for Jesus.
Thus as I delved deeper and deeper in to the word of God, my life has become a heaven to experience on earth. Believe me, no matter what the trials, how many devils try to harass me, how many people betray me and speak against me to bring disrepute, one thing sustains me and keeps me joyful all the time, it is the word of God that echoes in the innermost being of my soul. This word of God that has become the voice of God to me in all situations. Now I encourage all people to see the word of God and find God through it in their lives too. Truly Bible is the greatest book that every human can invest their life and be rewarded for eternity ahead. Praise the Lord!
This is the reason Apostle Paul clearly told to his spiritual son, "Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth." (2 Tim 2:15, KJV). In other words, when our life is grounded on the word of God through studying to obey it passionately, automatically we will be able to divide the truth rightly and discern the demonic from the original doctrines. We will then never be ashamed to expound the word of God before people and stand before God with the approval of His anointing over our life and ministry. May the Lord help us all to show ourselves approved before God and people so that we might cause the world to turn upside down through the power of God which always follows the preaching, teaching and declaration of the eternal word of God!
"In opposition... to all the suggestions of the devil, the sole, simple, and sufficient answer is the word of God. This puts to flight all the powers of darkness. The Christian finds this to be true in his individual experience. It dissipates his doubts; it drives away his fears; it delivers him from the power of Satan." — Charles Hodge
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