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20 Minutes Foremost in this last time God’s people who are assured of His word have purpose without apology. We are to have no diversion from the great work of preaching the word of God. God’s purpose in the world to come and His purpose in the present world are intricately intertwined. We must situate ourselves in the framework of confidence by reminding ourselves that the God of the bible is a God of purpose. And not just general purposes but specific ones. He is the supreme, strategic planner of the universe. He does nothing in a random or haphazard manner. And His purposes extend from eternity past to eternity future, encompassing not only the ultimate destiny of His creation, but our individual personal lives, as well. God called Abraham to assignment in establishing his people as the Hebrews. He later revealed Himself in a deeper way to Moses to bring His nation, Israel. God’s last day purpose is supremely set in Jesus who gave himself up that we may be commissioned to display His grace and glory in this present time. We are His workmanship, zealous for good works. We are called to the special assignment to primarily manifest the change of heart and character that comes from the new birth - the process of becoming holy in daily life through grateful, spirit-empowered obedience. We are coming to the occasion to employ all our thoughts, and cares, and time. There is the time coming where, not when, we will abandon all except what is assigned. Acts 6:2 We are assigned to glorify God. We are assigned to be like Christ. To exist to do good.To expand the kingdom of God. We must come to reason to know of the strong inner impulse toward our assigned course of action, especially as it is accompanied by conviction of divine influence. Our purpose is broad, collectively, our calling is specific, individually, because it lines up with the gifts given by God and our abilities. Calling is something more than a position. To be called is to accept and fulfill our God-given purpose.God calls us to become the persons He created us to be, and to do the things He designed us to do. He will partner with us as we prayerfully move forward. This process is a spiritual journey on an apostolic level in which we will learn new things about ourself and about our relationship with the Lord. We must realize that we are named in being called. God called the light and He named it day. He called the firmament and named it heaven. He called the dry land and named it earth. The beloved of God are called to be saints. And God says... II Chronicles 7:14 Acts 15:14 The truth is plain: God is pursuing with omnipotent delight a worldwide purpose of gathering a people for His name from every tribe and language and nation. He has an inexhaustible enthusiasm for the fame of His name among the nations. Do we understand what God’s word and God’s name is to do for us? Psalms 138:2 As this scripture is reasoned with, remember, neither is there salvation in any other, for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved. This text is not speaking about the specific designation of God. It does not say “all thy names”. Its about the reputation of God. The word “all” makes sense. It is referring to all of God’s reputation and fame. Our assignment is “truth” and we must come to the truth in all things...all things, especially the word of God. Do you agree? Let us reason. Is “thy word” in this text referring to the bible as a whole, or is it referring to something specific that God says or promises? What is the name being praised for? Lovingkindness and truth. An unfailing loyal love, and a faithfulness, a trustworthiness and a reliability that is of God. We are learning of the promises of God...the covenant promises. God put His reputation on the line by making this astonishing, unprecedented and undeserved covenant with His people; and by keeping this covenant, He surpasses His own reputation in the world as God. God’s covenant promise is so vast that it exceeds how we have previously thought to worship Him. Please share these thoughts with me. God has put His name, His reputation on the line by giving out His Word, His promise. He has made a promise, a covenant in particular: if He were to fail to keep it, His character would be besmirched. In other words, His character is only as good as His Word. If God can’t keep His own promises, then His reputation as an omnipotent and truthful God suffers. It really is an incredible statement, and one that we frankly see worked out in our lives all the time. We know God is faithful, but the extent to which He actually keeps His promises in our lives is truly remarkable and far beyond what we could even know, let alone expect of a God with such an immutable faithfulness like His. Now I see why it is so very fundamental that verse 1 be our praise, our worship for God with all the sincerity and zeal that is within me, with uprightness of intention and fervency of affection, with all inward impressions agreeing with my outward expressions. Our assignment is to be this with all freedom and boldness in the presence of whomever, keeping always the eye of faith toward Jesus Christ, the holy temple of God. There is so much that God reveals to us by His word. God’s name...we are still in the discovery stage of who He is...but this truth is sure...God has made Himself known to us in many ways in creation and providence, but most clearly by His word. When we come to reason the revealed truth of this word, we become the chosen. Think about this...what came first, the word or the scripture? Genesis 15:1 John 1:1-3 In the beginning was the bible, and the bible was with God, and the bible was God. The bible was in the beginning with God. All things were made through the bible, and without the bible nothing was made that was made. In the beginning was Christ Jesus, and Jesus Christ was with God, and Jesus Christ was God. Christ was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Jesus Christ, and without Jesus Christ nothing was made that was made. His name is called The Word of God. His name is not called Bible. Understand wisely the power of the Word, and the assigned commission given us concerning the Word. Are we to be like the bible or are we to be like the Word? Hebrews 4:12 Certainly, this is not referring to the bible. The bible contains dead letters. It cannot discern the thoughts and intents of the readers. That is Jesus’ speciality. Jesus says: “I am he which searcheth the reins and hearts.” It is Jesus, and not the bible, that is the Word of God. We are assigned to so know the word of God as to have spiritual discernment to identify Jesus in others. Too many are trying to live by the bible rather than by every word of God. Eternal life is not in the scripture. John 5:39, 40 John 6:63 But do not take exception with the bible, the written word of God. It is produced by the Holy Spirit, who works primarily, though not exclusively through holy scripture, which He uses to enlighten our minds and kindle faith in our hearts. Jesus is himself the eternal Word and could produce the mind of God without having recourse to the writings of the bible. But he puts honor upon the scripture, and, to set us an example, he appealed to what is written in the law; and he says this to Satan, taking it for granted that he knew well enough what was written. It is possible that those who are the devil's children may yet know very well what is written in God's book; the devils believe and tremble. This method we must take when at any time we are tempted to sin, or at any time we have the opportunity to witness. We rely upon the word...It is written. The full expression of the Word of God is that which we hear from God’s mouth, not read. That is why so many fail to come to the revealed truth of the word of God. The word is that which is said, is spoken. Inspiration is that which is given to the mind. Mark 14:30, 72 Jesus spoke the word. The Holy Spirit brought the word back to Peter’s mind. Romans 10:17 Faith is determined by what is revealed by hearing the word. That’s why two people may hear the same truth, but one comes away with a revelation and the other doesn’t. Who of the Godhead guides into all truth? John 16:13 The Word speaks the word. The Holy Spirit fulfills it. Isaiah 40:3 Luke 3:2-4 Matthew 3:1, 3, 13 Comfort(?) was sent to Isaiah to speak of Jesus’ coming to John. The Word came. There are some things in the scripture that God wants us to press for a revelation of His specific word. It is the Holy Spirit that gives a deep meaning to what is spoken. We are assigned to study to rightly divide the word.

7 Minutes Studying the bible matters because God matters. Studying the bible was never intended to be easy. And helping someone to learn how to determine the meaning of scripture is certainly a task that is more than often slow in its progress. God does not tell us that we must simply read the bible. We must study it and handle it correctly. Studying the scriptures is hard work. God wants you to understand what is written. Never pass over a word, or a verse without searching out what it is saying in the context of the situation. You may need to read the surrounding verses and chapters to discern the context. Try to gather the purpose for the writing of the text, and try to understand the specific issue being addressed.It’s helpful to know who wrote what is written, to whom it was written, when it was written, and why it was written. Also, take care to let the text speak for itself. Avoid assigning your own meanings to words in order to get the interpretation you desire. Find additional texts to support your understanding. It is always a good move to talk over your understanding with others who you know study scripture faithfully. God has given some the gift of teaching to help to correctly understand and obey scripture. It is always wise to study the bible with other believers, assisting each other in understanding and applying the truth of God’s Word. Let the bible explain itself; and respect the efforts of others to learn also. Most people will give up too soon when they discover that there is a struggle for certain in studying the word of God. You will struggle with what you believe. You will struggle with what you learn. You will struggle with what others try to share with you. You will struggle with what you think you know. If you do not think that understanding the word of God is important enough in your life to bring you to salvation then do not embark upon the road to learn what the bible teaches. It will prove to be too difficult for you. Time, much effort, and endurance are necessary. Ask yourself what are the things in life that are worth your time investment? How will bible study help you now and in the future? What are some things you’ve learned from bible study in the past? How has studying the bible changed and transformed your life? Learning to understand the bible through serious study is not like a fast food restaurant. If you want answers right now then you don’t want to spiritually grow in wisdom. There is no shortcut and you don’t finish the test early! Bible study is a life-long discipline. There will be seasons when you trudge along with consistency waiting for God to reveal something new that resonates with your circumstances. In those seasons remember that even a little bit of understanding and insight into scripture is better than nothing. Then there will be other times when you are like a person drinking from a waterfall. You may struggle to keep up with and remember all that you are understanding and taking in from scripture. Adjust how you take in the heaviness of the truth and open your ears and your mind, stepping out of the waterfall into the slow stream of reason and truth. Practice patience and faithfulness. With every text, every study ask yourself or permit someone else to ask you what are the little nuggets of wisdom and truth you gained from the study so far? If God is teaching you one thing from this study, what is it? What is something that you do not understand before from the bible that you would like to learn more about? Learn to taste the little bites of truth. It is okay if you need to go slower in the study or at a different pace, it is OK. If it takes a week to understand one verse it’s better than reading five chapters and understanding nothing. Reading, thinking, processing, and reflecting on what you learn and study takes time. A little at a time will help fill up your hungry soul. Don’t get discouraged. You are never behind in your understanding. You are simply allowing God to teach you at a different rhythm. A true and good bible study should always...always produce more questions than answers. Questions help you examine what you thought you knew in the past with what you are now learning as truth. And when you ask a question listen to hear what the word of God is saying to you. You are maturing. Review, reflect, and focus on the deeper knowledge, understanding, and relationship you are coming to with God in Christ. Bible study is absolutely hard! It requires time, effort, patience, the renewing of your mind, a heart to learn, and dependence on the Holy Spirit to be your counselor and guide. There is nothing the enemy would like more than to hinder your bible study through distraction, discouragement, and deceit. Remember, you are God’s and is there anything too hard for God?

20 Minutes This day we lay up treasure for ourselves in heaven, believing God's promises and identifying with God's people despite the sure affliction that will follow. God is faithful to His promises and what He promises His people; salvation, life and inheritance...eternal and incorruptible. We seek a higher excellence of worth, of a higher spiritual value than sacrifice, we seek the higher consciousness of wisdom and obedience. The more we place God's truth in our life, the more His Word works to make us more like Jesus. As we “treasure” or make God's Word a priority in our life, His Word renews our mind and keeps us. Hebrews 10:32-34 It is in this time that God is preparing us for an exceptionally exclusively uniquely superior individual piece of work to be undertaken. Our preparation must be with obedience by faith for both the transforming and the conforming of God’s process in this season of growth. Romans 8:29; 12:2 True transformation is not something that we accomplish by anything that we do. True transformation is solely a work of God brought about by Him renewing our minds with truth. This renewal goes far beyond just merely memorizing bible verses and bible knowledge. Bible study may increase our knowledge of the word, but knowledge alone will not transform us. We must have a wisdom-based spirituality into the likeness of Christ. Transformation is an inner work of the Spirit, revealing the truth of who and what we already are in Christ, resulting in the outflow of the fruit of His Spirit. Spiritual transformation refers primarily to a fundamental change in the character of the person seeking sacredness in the significance in life, and secondarily to a fundamental change in the pathways the individual takes to overcome fear. There is incredible power in a fear. It is always insidious, subtle. Fear is a spiritual influence that has a mission to deceive you by blocking the belief of God’s Word and promises from entering your mind. The spirit of fear opposes faith and robs you of joy and peace. It enslaves you with tormenting thoughts about...!! Fear comes from past experiences and false messages to deceive you, hoping you will come into agreement with what is opposed to truth. If you are operating in a spirit of fear, you have a fixed mindset that resists restoration and renewing. A fixed mindset pushes back on Spirit-led instructions to reason with what is revealed. Fear darkens our performing the right for God. When you waver in a point of choice between opinion and truth you will say not a word. You must allow the sword of God to cut to the heart to reveal His truth. God has not given us a spirit of fear! You must allow the Holy Spirit to wash over your mind, will, and emotions. Fear offers that defining moment for you to resist the wiles. Ask God what is this moment determined for. You will never rise above your fear until God becomes the strength in your life. You must know that the Spirit of God is always at work within you, restoring and renewing His Holy Temple—which is your body. When we know this truth in our hearts, we will transform accordingly. The Lamb was for the taking away of sins, the Lion is the conquering resurrected. Transformation brings about the effortless expression of Christ in us through the manifestation of the sacred character in this significant life lived in the perfect will of God. God desires that we move beyond the intellectual accumulation of truth to that which passes knowledge. I Timothy 2:4 This is a first-hand experience through relationship. When we encounter Christ through the Spirit and he grants us his truth, we will immediately, spontaneously, and experientially know this truth with our heart and be transformed by it. We’ve been in prayer. We’ve been listening to good teaching. We’ve learned more through reasoning with God than ever we thought we’d gain. God was growing our confidence. God has a unique design for each of our lives. And because He is a God of mystery, our time of preparation and our season of growth will be unlike that of anyone else. We may need more godly teaching and scriptural revelation. We may need to get in better physical shape. We may require spiritual growth and insight. We may need to mature emotionally. Whatever it is we need to do, some of it will be done with the help of others, but most of it will be done in private. For some of us solitude will not be our favorite pastime. But remember whose business it is that we do. We can rest in the knowledge that God is in control, His timing is perfect, and He doesn’t make mistakes. He is preparing us to handle valleys. When scripture after scripture begins ripping through your soul, know in the depths of your heart that the Lord is preparing you for something. Through you, God’s infinite power and worth will be made known so that He gets all the praise. God’s most used tool is trial. We know that the Triune minds of the Determinate Counsel have not announced a change in strategy. We’ve reasoned to such a heavenly height of understanding until we are wise to see the massive implications on our life because we desire to be used by God for His glory. We are recipients of the wisdom, understanding, knowledge, counsel, fortitude, piety, and fear of the Lord confirmed by the Holy Spirit. Acts 14:22 It is so critical that we do not have a downward spiral in our spiritual walk. We will repeatedly face pressure to disregard our God-graced standards. To stand alone in an evil day we must walk with God. Standing alone is necessary because we will not bow down or give in or be persuaded to do anything contrary to God's will. We do this by filling our life with truthfulness, righteousness, peace and faith. The word of God is telling us that the world is corrupt, filled with violence. The people view themselves as progressive; but God views them as putrid. Saturate yourself with the word of God every way you can. God will have many to stand alone. Elijah felt like he stood totally alone when he confronted the eight hundred and fifty priests and prophets of Baal. He was not aware of the 7,000 who had not bowed their knee to Baal. What God asked Noah to do was incredible. But no matter how difficult, how illogical, how costly, you will need complete obedience to walk alone with God. If you find yourself alone for the sake of righteousness, whatever you do, don't give up. God is right there with you. In every generation, God is looking for Daniels, for Esthers, men and women who are not careful to answer in truth, who understand the truths of scripture and have purposed to uphold them, to obey them, regardless of the cost. These have courage and confidence in someone greater than the emotion of fear. When you choose to stand alone, you can greatly influence others and bring glory to God. Even a child can stand alone for truth, if he has this confidence in the Lord and His Word. Daniel 1:3-6, 17 All those who will stand alone will not experience miraculous interventions. You must count the cost when you choose to stand alone. When you choose to obey God regardless of the cost, the suffering, the sacrifice can be very great. We must turn to God for the grace and strength to face whatever may come. But to stand alone, you must know the truth, you must know God’s word. Reason is what we use to determine what God's revelation is. Once God's revelation is found, it becomes the authority. Reason is the faculty of the mind through which we can logically come to rational conclusions. Once this occurs, parts which previously could not be reached by knowledge alone can and should be accepted. God calls us to this place of isolation because He has something to teach us there. There are very important realities to be aware of in order to stand alone for the truth, the word of God. You will be brought to transparency. You must be divinely sanctioned. You will be in the consciousness of truth. There will be no worse place, no worse time ever before known. Utmost brutality will be the standard practice. Slaughter will be common, even for those who are promised their lives if they surrender. Religious hatred will make things even worse. Difficult times are before us. We will suffer financial loss, family loss, and physical suffering. The anonymity and animosity of once thought friends will be caused against us. Though right and reason will be on our side, unfair representations will be constant. I Samuel 17:29 God will have a people willing to stand alone for the sake of closing out the time, for His salvation is close at hand and His righteousness will soon be revealed. If not so,...righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad. Making the choice to stand alone for God begins with your willingness and readiness to adjust your current mindset. You must be prepared to respond to problems, criticism, truth, exhaustion, excitement, expectations, disappointments, hunger, poverty, love, laughter, accusations, manipulation, sorrow, sin, tension, distrust, redemption, rejection, legalism, ritualism, religion, hypocrisy, happiness, joy, and you will learn love and servitude. To do this ask yourself today, am I in the best place to work out my own salvation? We must be learning now to stand alone. Galatians 6:4, 5 Here is the question you must ask of yourself when you see God’s principles being violated. Am I not taking a stand because I need the approval of others...because I fear being reprimanded...because I fear breaking rank...because I am afraid to take a stand for what is right in God’s eyes... Have you ever had the opportunity to take a stand for God’s word and didn’t...preferring to be silent? Daniel could have closed the windows to his chambers. Today may be the only opportunity to take a stand for God’s truth; you may never have another chance. Let’s think of standing alone in this manner...will we have to stand alone? Will the circumstances be such that we have no choice but to stand alone or lose our salvation? There be some who have already failed the test that God sent to them. If they would only repent now and cry out to God. Please do not seek to be independent because of a pride thing. Self-sufficient posture is not taking a stand for the truth of God. Standing alone means that we fully represent God’s way, especially when others fail to do so. From where does this strength and faith come? From where does this courage and determination to stand alone come? From a pure faith and trust in the plan of God. That God’s word will be fulfilled...it is being worked out in us. It is an outstanding privilege for God’s people to be able to fellowship in peace, unity and truth. However, God calls upon each one of us in times of crises, in times when a turning point for reasoning through truth must be taken, to stand up and be counted, even if we must stand alone! It’s by God’s designed determination. Sometimes opposition happens simply because there are unreasoning people in life. Sometimes resistance from another is a sign that the enemy’s toe has been stepped on. When your reasoning proves the truth of God use this as confirmation that you’re on the path God set for you. You may get weary because you have sincere concern for those who choose ignorance but don’t quit, stand strong. Ask God to take care of those who oppose learning. Many will not stand because of human nature. It is a survival instinct to avoid conflict. Faith must be based on truth, not emotion. Be even more intentional in your love for truth. Pray and post a guard at your heart that you not be woven in silken threads. Standing alone will at times mean setting up relational boundaries. Standing alone is better than changing who you are so you can please others. Standing alone means you may see friends become strangers. Watch your low walls, that no place of breaches be exposed. Remember, we will have tribulation in this world. But faith does not need support to stand alone. We stand by faith in God’s word, and it is designed to be a stand-alone faith. Faith in God is faith in God’s word, not faith in our faith. Our standing alone infers that our breath of prayer arises from our life of faith. One word is enough to cause us to endure hardship, stand in a storm, stay encouraged in a down time. It is God’s attention toward us. God is going to call for an accounting. If you fail to stand alone in obedience to the word of wisdom no amount of knowledge, no amount of testimony, will save you. It is as though you depart from the living God. Our righteousness is to surpass that of the scribes. Please let us not struggle to be authentic in our striving. Why pretend that there is an always happiness to the heart when underneath there is great compunction and sorrow for the enormous amount of pain that abounds everywhere in the world. We must be real in our love for God, for others. We thank the Lord for the power that we have when we stand together. But we are going to have to stand alone because we’re twice- born people in a world of once-born people. You will experience a spiritual pain when you stand alone for God. It is putting God first in everything and that includes suffering for the sins against God for those who have no hope of ever having a relationship with God or of pleasing Him. We will stand alone for the consideration of bearing the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves, that these may be drawn to Christ. Our standing alone is for this prevailing reason...for Christ’s sake and the disgust and contempt for sin! We stand alone for God as the distinct transaction that has been completed in Christ. Christ paid our debt. If Christ served in that dread warfare for me as my substitute, how can it be that I should myself not be determined to the edge of the sword. And if we stand alone in Christ, for Christ, payment for God’s justice cannot be demanded of us; justice will not expect the same debt to be twice paid. We stand victoriously in life or in death, not to take the place of Christ, but because of Christ, we are acceptable to God. We stand alone by grace alone in faith alone. Grace alone means that God loves, forgives, and saves us not because of who we are or what we do, but because of Christ. Faith alone is that given by God to us that will enable us to stand alone, to suffer. The bible says we are to stand. We will have to stand alone for those who resist the wisdom of God. What a stand alone example was Stephen. This brother, speaking with wisdom and being full of faith and the Holy Ghost saw Jesus standing. He couldn’t help but stand before kneeling. Please reason with this truth...we want the Holy Spirit to do more than abide in us, we want the Holy Spirit to preside in us. Stephen reviewed bible history and it was not just in his knowledge, it was his wisdom why the church people stoned him. Would there have been a Saul/Paul had Stephen not stood alone? God has entrusted us with faculties that we may not faint in the hour of temptation, of trial, nor be overcome in the time of persecution. To stand alone is a revelation of your true spiritual condition. Your standing alone will place you under much provocation. We are to temper our speech and guard against the danger of misconstruction so as to never show any weakness in the purpose of the word of God. The biblical implication is that those who stand firm to the end despite incitements to do otherwise, are showing that they are genuine children of God who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. These will be the ones who will stand alone...they are the few. Let us study the word of God reasoning with every word, every verse, to glean the more relevant truths. We have to know what we believe and why we believe, so that when the challenges come, we will stand firm in our faith. We must be fully persuaded on every truth. The Sea of Galilee flows out into the river Jordan bringing life to the arid desert. Eventually, the river reaches its end as it flows into the Dead Sea, a place devoid of life. We can’t be content to just go with the flow if our life is hid with Christ in God. How important is the truth to us? To what height are we willing to stand alone to defend it? We are to appeal to God in a very solemn matter as to the truth of all that He has spoken. It ain’t over...we all will stand. What’s your account? Romans 14:7-10

12 Minutes Reason with these next few words to begin to understand on a panoramic level. Again I say, God is love. And love is over faith and hope and reason. Love never fails, but faith will one day be unnecessary, as it will be turned to sight, and hope will be realized and be unneeded after that. Love, on the other hand, will sustain throughout eternity. Yet as the seed of God, our faith is vitally important, for through faith comes our being as the Word. And our faith is as the object of that word...it is Jesus. We fix our eyes on Jesus, who is the author and perfector of faith. The power of faith, then, is not on its own merits, for faith is temporary. Rather, the power of faith is in the One who began the faith and who will complete the faith. Because He is trustworthy, the faith itself is an assurance, an argument for and the evidence of things not seen. Love is greater than both faith and hope. We couldn't live our lives without faith or hope: without faith, we cannot know the God of love; without hope, we would not endure in our faith until we meet him face to face. But in spite of the importance of faith and hope, love is even more crucial. Without love, there can be no redemption. Love is what determined God the Father to send His only Son to die for us. Thus, love is the virtue upon which all faith and hope now stand in Christ – the supreme act of sacrificial love. And we, as His seed, send our roots down into the depths of the love of Christ, the love of God that we may comprehend it. Not by standing aside and merely observing it, but by rooting our lives in it. Drinking it up. Savoring it. Depending on it. Taking some risks on the basis of it. God is producing a character in us that in every way all ways will please Him. We are becoming like strong trees planted by streams of water that go on bearing fruit, even in the time of drought. Are we ready to see?? What must we have, to come and reason with God? Faith! And we please God when we come by faith to reason with Him and that faith is our earthly pursuit. Once we are united with the One who has created us in His Image, some needs will simply vanish once we leave this world. We come to reason with God to gain understanding for a cause, an explanation, or justification for an idea, a thought, an action, or event. We come to think, to understand, and to form judgments by a process of sensibleness and soundness based upon His truth as He gives us wisdom to know His purpose. Reasoning helps us deliberate about the consequences of our doing life as we sift evidences that our conclusions may be in the will of God. With that, let the Holy Spirit construct higher truth for our learning. What does it mean to move beyond reasoning? Realizing the eternal consequences of our faith. Faith and reason are compatible, but some things are strictly a matter of faith. There is something about our experience as the seed of God in our inner life that gives us the deepest reason to believe in God, to have an eternal faith that ends with the appearing of Jesus. How can something eternal end? Faith comes by hearing and hearing by Jesus, the Word of God. He is our eternal evidence and when we see him will we believe it is him? He is whom we have heard in all our reasoning. Jesus is the beginning, the progress, and the strength of faith that comes by hearing. The word of God is therefore the word of faith. God is love and must transcend faith and reason. And both faith and reason are gifts of God. Or we can say are gifts of love. Neither to be slighted. But nothing is to reduce what pleases God and that is faith. And faith will conclude truth transcendently beyond reason. And it is in Christ that we find this planted rationality as his seed. Jesus tells us things before they happen so that when they happen we believe. Oh, we of no faith. If we believe that Jesus is God then what he says already is! Let me get to the point. Reason alone is untenable. It needs faith to declare it as truth. And it is God’s love and our love for God that impels us to act in the reasoning of the truth of His word by faith. Our Creator stepped out of eternity and was incarnated into humanity, only to be crucified as a propitiation for our sins and that He did it out of self-sacrificing, self-denying love is to accept a concept existing in a realm where reason itself simply cannot reach without faith. The sacrificial atonement of Christ, who suffered the second death in our stead, is not the kind of truth that one can find from reason alone. Reason in and of itself can take us far in the quest for truth but it won’t take us to Golgotha. That event determined in counsel is beyond us. It is based upon a kind of love that looks like God. Who has seen God? I tell you God’s love looks like Jesus. It is His Word, and that Word is to be the seed in us that makes us so like him that we be as he is. And here is where we reason to evidence the faith of our love for God. We cannot anymore do sin...if we are His seed. This is our assertion to the life of Jesus. Brothers and sisters, friends and strangers, the salvation event is radical! It was designed with deep-seated, profound, uncompromising love. It ain’t a thing to play with. The other side to reckon with is sin. If there was no sin, salvation would not have been necessary. To manifest being a child of God, to remain being a child of God, we, if God’s seed remain in us, cannot sin. And that does it. We move beyond reason to evidence our faith because we not only love God, but we love one another. I John 3:1-11 Verse 5 is understandable because Jesus is the ‘only Son’ who came from the Father who sent him. The remaining texts are ejaculatory articulations of divine involvement and enablement of the seed, between being born again and the day of judgment. These statements create the impression to compare the status of the children of God with that of the Son of God. Is our faith truthfully founded upon the evidence that when Jesus comes we will be like him? It is through reason that we are to investigate these things that we may resolve the truth of them that our faith is of Jesus and our obedience to cease from sin changes the conditional “if you love me” to “because you love me” keep my commandments. “If” is conditional. “Because” is the stating of a truth. How deep is the seed of God planted in our life? We must be a community not torn apart by doctrinal differences. God’s principles, instructions, and revelations are to resolve any matter of discord when faith is centered in His every word. Not just the word you want to hear, but in the preceptualization of every word that things to be understood may be truthfully regarded. Let no one think they have illumination above ordinary morality except it be in the light of the word of God. It is not God’s people who claim to be without sin. It is faith in the word of God that says if His seed remains in us, we cannot sin. And if we are born again, we have godly sorrow that brought repentance for sin and if we are His seed we will not sin, and having faith in hearing the word, says now we are the sons of God because of the love He bestows upon us, and He has taken away our sins. In this the divinity of Christ minimizes our humanity as we experience fellowship with God. We have assurance of the indwelling of God through our abiding relationship with Him, through His Son Jesus Christ. He has, therefore, given us His written word to show us the pattern of His Son that we might build this temple according to what He reveals to us...the perfect holiness of His Son. The latter truth spoken by God in the Garden is now before us, “the seed” of Christ. And the beast, that seed of the serpent dragon, knowing that he was thwarted in his every attempt to destroy “the seed” turns his wrath against those men and women all over the world, who keep the commandments of God. The reason the dragon must make war with the remnant of her seed, is to cause them to die. Especially those refusing to worship his image which is being installed in the minds of the wicked. God’s seed will have to endure the sorrowful twinge at the edge of a memory of what would have been had sin never been. For believers, the combined taste of joy and sorrow is a familiar one. It’s the taste we live with every day in this fallen world. Even on days where we experience deep joy, there’s always the accompanying flavor of sorrow. And then on those days where we experience profound sorrow, there’s always joy right there in the midst of it. Our sorrow comes from an awareness that things are not what they should be. There’s sorrow over the fallenness of this world, it’s depth and breadth. There’s sorrow because we know how things began and what happened to bring us to this place of brokenness. There’s sorrow over how the curse of sin affects the world around us and that of our own hearts. There’s sorrow over how the fall comes to bear in our individual life through conflict, illness, heartache, and loss. There’s sorrow over injustice, tragedy, abuse, and death. There is sadness in the spiritual path. And yet there will be buoyant joy in the knowledge that the last day trials are only for the moment. God’s willing sadness and joy given us is mingled together. We acknowledge its presence as we move into so great a cloud of witnesses claiming God’s promise. There is no one who is a greater picture of this astounding effect of joy and pain than Jesus. He is called the man of sorrows. He bore the weight of the pain of this world and looked to the joy set before Him, the redemption of all things. We will remember His intent and purposeful pleasure in structuring our lives in His divine pattern. We will sin no more in perfect obedience to all of God’s commands and we will bear the testimony of our faith in Jesus Christ. We are the true spiritual seed of the woman, the remnant of her seed. We have learned to accept Christ’s righteousness instead of trying to establish our own. And we will overcome by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of our testimony and some even by a victorious martyr’s death. Revelation 12:11 The passage of time will be but a solo moment as faith sees across the portal to the roundest, fullest happiness which will never fade, filling the everlasting ages with His praise. Jesus is God’s opposition to sin. His appearance was for the offering as us in him and him in us. We have faith that we are children of God enlivened by the activity of the Spirit. And that is the metaphor of ‘the seed of God’ being analogous to ‘being born of God’. The content of our faith must be pregnant in this, that Jesus is the Son of God, and as such we are paralleled with his prayer in John 17. We have no excuse, no reason to sin. God the Father sends His Son into the world to give to those who believe in the Son, eternal life, enabling them to be sons and daughters. Jesus is the essential forgiveness as the atoning sacrifice for our sin bringing us to be sons and daughters of God. The Holy Spirit becomes the guiding influence in our life. We become the seed principle of the Holy Spirit. And then it is only through faith that we receive God’s light of salvation and be born into the family of God giving us life ‘through’ him and continuously ‘in’ him. His seed is His salvific event reasoned by faith in the beginning of His love.

13 Minutes This outstanding truth must be taken to expect what God says will happen in God’s particular way, and do not think about any possible problems or difficulties that could hinder His providence. Accept His every truth without question, without objection. The seed signifies the principle of spiritual life as imparted to the believer, which abides in him without possibility of removal or extinction. I John 3:9 Declaring anything less is a denial of God’s provision through the death of Christ. The truth is boldly proclaimed, plainly stated, and never doubted, that every true believer has been given God’s gift of spirit. This is how we are one body, and our oneness comes from that truth, from that Word, from Christ. If you are still thinking with your natural mind, you are lessening the power and effectiveness of the new birth.We are to have a God-glorifying understanding of being born again. The basic truth that we should seriously consider is that the seed, the spirit in us, is perfect, permanent, and with potential. We are blessed with spiritual blessings. Either you are or you’re not. Is this a choice or is this an act of faith in God’s word? The word is to have permanence in our life. We are not born again by man’s seed. That which caused us to be born again, is the Word of God that is imperishable, living, abiding, and lasting forever. And as a result, that is who we are. We are forever. And what is it to believe this? The hope of glory, Christ in us. The picture is complete. God’s sovereign act in the beginning put our hope in Him as His seed. Think about what God does for us in Christ Jesus. Ephesians 3:17-19 Filled with all the fulness of God far exceeds the measure of faith given. This must be wholly reasoned with spirituality. For the fullness of God is the totality of everything God is: His attributes, His character, His perfection, His holiness, His power, His love, it’s His image, His likeness. The fullness of God is His complete nature; it is who He is. We thank God that this is the prayer of the writer and not a declaration of station. None can fully comprehend it because in its full extent it surpasses knowledge. The fulness of God is unknowable by finite minds. How can we know it? Though the love of Christ may be better perceived and known by his true seed than it generally is by those who will not remain, yet it cannot be fully understood on this side of heaven. Being filled with the fulness of God is a high expression. If it was not written in scripture, we should never use it. Let’s understand it not of His fulness as God is in Himself, but of His fulness as a God who is in a covenant relationship with us, as a God to His people. Let’s think of it as a fulness that God is ready to bestow, as He is the One who is willing to fill us all to the utmost of our capacity as we are in conformity with Him. Think about it...we are that seed in bodily form. And, it is in that truth that we powerfully affirm the fact that Jesus is God. The fulness of God is found in Christ. And we are his seed and as such that fulness is in us...but only as we are in Christ and Christ is in us. Colossians 2:9, 10 We know how faith comes...and because we know that is the truth of God, we know that no word of God is mere propaganda, but an awesome truth. God really does want to fill His creation with seed of Himself. Beings whose life will be qualitatively like His own, not because He has any fascination with us, but because our wills freely conform to His. God is performing a good work in us. Why would we not want to so reason with God as to intricately, even tortuously, eliminate the mindful distractions of the human surmising with the word to have constant streams of meditative thought brought forth by the Holy Spirit. Our sufficiency is of God. If we are Christ’s seed, then why do we not believe what God says about us? Why do we still have subpar faith in His word? Maybe we should begin writing down in our mind what the word says and means to us. We don’t have any problem reading the word, but our natural mind wanders in doubt and is in some degree in unbelief. This is due to the word being spiritual and the flesh mind being not. Imagine not believing Genesis 3:15. Could you do what you don’t believe? The seed of God believes not only with the mind and the heart...God’s seed believes with the mouth. Speaking truth accomplishes what pleases God. Isaiah 55:11 God will have a seed that is so faithful, and faith is so absolutely needed to be so obedient, that we will speak the truth despite opposition and in the image and likeness of God will be so like Jesus, that we will be spared the experience of death. We will do as Jesus did. Point blank...it is impossible to please God without faith. Not difficult, not able to achieve, not without reservation...it is impossible. John 8:29 When the Holy Spirit says that a thing is impossible, it is so in a very absolute sense. Do not attempt the impossible. For only with God are all things possible. So, to rush upon an impossibility is madness. We must not hope to please God by any invention of our own, however clever, nor by any labor of our own, however ardent; since infallible inspiration declares that, without faith it is impossible to please God. The man Cain was accepted by God, but what the man did, because it was done without faith, did not please God. If one shows to be your enemy, what faith do you have in them? When the word of God, which performed creation, is not enough for any to rest upon, they may pretend what they will of righteousness and obedience, but when the want of faith creates variance, God can take no pleasure in it. When we come to God we must believe He is, in every position He assumes. God is pleased with us when we are pleased with God and all His doings. By pleasing God we shall become the means of good to others: our example will rebuke and stimulate; our peace will convince and invite. This is what God would have me do, and I will do it in joyful fellowship with others, or alone by myself, as the case may be; but do it I must, if I be the seed of God. Now, to more intimately express the Holy Spirit’s involvement as the ultimate author of truth, knowing that nothing has its origin in man, we must hear the power of the voice in the whisper of the roaring thunder. We ask God to prepare us for truth...let us come to the truth of the spiritual essence of what it is to be the seed of God. Our focus is on Jesus and His Word above all else. We trust that the Bible has all the answers and truths we need to live a holy and pleasing life before God knowing that we don’t need anything beyond what God has provided for us in His Word.All scripture is sacred and not to be tampered with. Hear the Word, not the man. Do not hear what the word of God does not say. The bible is not just a book, it is the ultimate authority of God. In it we find description and instruction for life, for faith. The bible tells us that God’s thoughts are higher than our thoughts, for we cannot know nor see what He can know and can see, because He is God, and He knows all things and He sees all things. That is easy for us to reason in our minds, but to abandon our steadfastness of mind requires a faith that says none of us have seen salvation, yet we have the evidence of it in the reality of Jesus Christ in whom we eagerly await. He is also the evidence of the hope that saves us which we cannot see. Romans 8:24, 25

12 Minutes This seed becomes the kingdom of God which slept, slumbered, but rises up to propagate intentional acts of faith to cultivate selected fruit to harvest from with those same traits of character. Our Lord chose to compare the way His Word works to a seed. There is a germination process of the Word of God in our life that takes time and can’t be avoided. God has given us a job to plant the seed of truth of the word. None are able to cause that seed to grow, it is only God Who gives the growth. This is our experience as the nature of the seed is to grow...to grow in the love of God. We don’t study the word of God with the thought that, O’ I know this, or I have read or heard about this many times before. We seek the growth into the full corn in the ear as we still study and reason further that we not miss any precious life sustaining and fruit nurturing ingredients. This so that we do not randomly sow scripture in our hearts out of ignorance. God is love, Jesus is called the Word because he declares God in every utterance. He is that essential wisdom that is thought. And it is thought that gives conception to every operation. There is nothing we are more sure of than that we think, yet nothing we are more in the dark about than how we think; who can declare the creation of thought. This is why we cannot fathom the eternal mind but we so adore the depth, the height, the unreachableness of its omniscience. The Word is the Being that never began. He is the essence and substance of the distinct Person of God. And we are his seed. There are many desert places where reason and truth may settle when blown by “the Wind”. May our righteousness be that infusion which makes fertile the land. When we grasp and comprehend the revelation of His love in His Word with the help of the Holy Spirit, that is the seed which indeed sows the fulfillment of God’s promises, God’s purposes as we scatter the word that gathers. We expect to harvest an orchard of generous love when our love makes another feel loved. Now the depth of our utterances must find deep root in the truth. Not only to bring forth blades, but trees. Those who are now his seed are being strengthened in him as they suffer such incomprehensible grief of seeing other seed dampening off because of the soil-borne fungi. This seed was not deep enough in the word. It was subject to becoming a natural offspring of the world. These have not the full understanding of the most protuberant affliction to ever come upon the world...sin. Sin is the most serious thing man will ever deal with. Sin is a spiritual virus that invades the whole being. It's a deadly disease that infects every part of the human: our body, our mind, our emotions, our relationships, our motives...absolutely everything. We don't have the strength on our own to overcome its power. Sin is inherited, it is blood borne, it is contagious. What makes it so? Whosoever rejects the healthiness of truth suffers from the worse form of cancer - apostate cancer. It can only be diagnosed with the word of God. It is the cause of all trouble, the root of all sorrow. All have this terminal disease. How is it that sin is both transgression and disease? Romans 8:2 We, every one of us, needs a cleaning and the blood of Christ is the great cleansing cure. With this truth we come to reason why the enmity and “the seed” are the cure. We who are that unique and privileged seed among the nations, determined and chosen, are the blessed seed due to our proximity to Christ, being born again by the word, by the water, through the blood of Christ. The storyline of scripture reveals how the historical figures in the bible bear witness to the coming Christ by faith. In scripture, all things are directed towards him, and so only as we are made perfect by faith in him, do God’s people find their blessing, as children of Abraham, as the seed of the woman. There’s a reason the last day seed is that peculiar people. It has the spirit of Christ, a spirit of full consecration to the Lord, and separateness from the world and its selfish aims. It is peculiar in its adherence to the Word of the Lord as its only law, the basis of all truth, of all reason. It is peculiar in that it rejects worldly wisdom when it conflicts with the divine revelation of God. It is peculiar in that it is in the world, but not of the world. It is peculiar in that it has a decided faith and acts in harmony with its faith, and with zeal. It is peculiar in that it is self-sacrificing and knows no will but the will of its Creator God. It is peculiar in that it knows the truth and is able to give a reason for the hope within, while others merely speculate and wonder and doubt. It is peculiar because it avoids strife and contentions, except where principles are involved; and even when contending earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints, this seed has been entrusted with the great work of blessing all the families of the earth, and bringing them to the knowledge of the Lord, and into harmony, if they will, with the new covenant sealed by the precious blood of Jesus Christ. It is peculiar because it is determined to overcome. Jesus is the seed. Jesus is the Word. The first prophecy pointing to the last things declares that we are his seed...we are his word. His seed had to be planted in us before conception could take place giving us our born again nature. And God controls the law of seedtime and the harvest. God holds special regards for His last day people. This seed has special characteristics that will show as did that tender plant that is “the seed”. Isaiah 53:2; 11:1 Romans 9:27-29 The “seed” reflects back to the “remnant”. The seed resembles the original. When we reason with God’s prophecy, we should give ourselves fully to the work of finding our lost brothers and sisters, as our Father does. He is gathering. We should also love the seed of the woman, be patient with them, and humble ourselves, so we can walk the path of faith tandemly. We resemble and imitate Christ in life and inherit his characteristics. When we have these characteristics, we are called the “seed of God”, “the children of God. We are endowed with the very life of Christ. I Corinthians 6:17 We must be Word minded, meditating on it to be continually planting seed from scripture. It is a simple but profound truth that we are to do. If we are God’s Word, we have a distinct part to play... Romans 10:14, 17 No one can experience the new birth unless they have read in the Word of God who He is or if they be of those who are convinced of His existence as Supreme enough to lead them to their chief end and the glorifying of Him. The God of nature imprinted common natural notions upon the contemplative hearts of those who knew not the Word, but that they had a sense of Deity and the regard and reason to know that this Deity made distinguishment between them and lesser creatures. By this way they knew the invisible things of God as He was not the object of their sense, but these things were sensible as a work of creation. They could not come by natural light to the knowledge of the three Persons in the Godhead, but they did come to at least so much knowledge as was sufficient to keep them from idolatry. This was that truth which they held in their understanding. The plant grows by receiving that which God has provided to sustain its life, whether visible or invisible but that it is available and the part they must play in its reception is the determined faith. That part is to believe what God’s Word declares, and is acted upon, then the Father places His imperishable seed within the person and they become a child of God. As the seed builds up energy it enlarges and breaks through the ground to compliment God’s generosity and grace in giving the water of the Holy Spirit and the Light of the Son and the miracle of life. It is the seed’s confession of being raised from the dead. I Peter 1:23

11 Minutes One thing was made most certain in God’s dealing with the situation that occurred in the Garden. Satan’s judgment was fixed. He knows there will be a deathblow. Satan would have this eternal dread hanging over him that with the birth of every male child this could be the very one who would be his end. And Adam and Eve heard it as they all stood before God. At the time of the giving of this promise no child had been born to Adam and Eve.They learned of their generations to follow. Adam and Eve were so impressed with the message of hope that they reinforced it in the minds of their children and their children passed it on from generation to generation. This is the first prophecy of Jesus. It is impossible to see the fulfillment of this promise without reflecting on and seriously considering the Word of God. Isaiah 7:14 Luke 1:30-35 Because of Adam’s sin this would be completely impossible without a wonder from God. SOP - There is not, and cannot be, a natural enmity between fallen angels and fallen humans. Both are evil. Through apostasy both cherish evil sentiments. Wicked angels and wicked people are leagued in a desperate confederacy against the good. Satan knew that if he could induce the human race, as he had induced angels, to unite with him in his rebellion, he would have a strong force with which to carry on his rebellion. {CTr 28.3} In the hosts of evil there is jarring and discord, but they are all firm allies in fighting against heaven. Their one aim is to disparage God, and their great numbers lead them to entertain the hope that they will be able to dethrone Omnipotence. {CTr 28.4} When Adam and Eve were placed in the Garden of Eden, they were innocent and sinless, in perfect harmony with God. Enmity had no natural existence in their hearts. But when they transgressed, their nature was no longer sinless. They became evil, for they had placed themselves on the side of the fallen foe, doing the very things that God specified they should not do. Had there been no interference on the part of God, fallen humans would have formed a firm alliance with Satan against heaven. But when the words were spoken, “I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel,” Satan knew that although he had succeeded in making human beings sin, although he had led them to believe his lie and to question God, although he had succeeded in depraving human nature, some arrangement had been made whereby the beings who had fallen would be placed on vantage ground, their nature renewed in godliness. He saw that his actions in tempting them would react upon himself, and that he would be placed where he could not become conqueror. . . . {CTr 28.5}. God shall see His seed...and only God can bring forth beauty from death...it is He that can make us new. God’s Word is itself a divine action. For us to come to God reasonably it is vital to see how God’s earlier revelation prepares the way for His latter purposes. If we consider that God stands outside of time and created all things for the purpose of putting them under His Son’s feet, then we must study the Bible as one unified but unfolding plan of God’s will, God’s providence, God’s determination. We must put together the fact that the One God has related to His people in divergent ways. The study of last things reasoned in the most crucial verse in the Bible shows God’s purpose in the first sermon prophecy of Jesus’ sacrifice to redeem his people. The whole of scripture is packed into every word of this verse. And we may allowably and reasonably expect every scripture to prepare and make room for the truth deliberately creating the fulfillment of God’s covenant in this single verse. It was the establishment of the covenant of grace. It establishes the principle that runs throughout the word, creating an expectation of not only “this seed” being actively opposed to sin but showing the intense hostility that will come in the very end between those born by the sperm and those born of the Spirit. This verse establishes a cosmic explanation for the disorder of the world: Satan’s work begins on earth. It even shows us God’s attitude toward Satan. God doesn’t call Lucifer Satan by name, He through inspiration insinuates the depraved character of the fallen angel by speaking to the instrument of his use, the serpent. This being done to discount the notion of Satan being capable of contending in power against God. He is just a representative of evil having a high aptitude for the element of deception. Satan is not the opposite of God. Nothing can be the opposite of God. God is not bound by anything. There is no tomorrow for God. There is no yesterday. There is only ‘now’. He is right now at the creation of the world, right now at the crucifixion, right now at the end of this age. Right now. Why do people give this adversary recognition. God is all- powerful, everywhere present, and all-knowing. Satan is none of these. He does not have unlimited power, he cannot be everywhere at once, and he does not know everything. He is a created, limited being. He depends upon God for his existence. Without God's permission, Satan is not able to do anything. He cannot create or search the human heart. Therefore the conflict between God and Satan is not really a struggle between two great equal and opposing powers with the outcome still in doubt. All power and authority belong to God and Him alone. This adversary morphs from the serpent to the great red dragon and because he has read the bible, he knows his eventual future end. The principle of the victory of the kingdom of God over the kingdom of darkness is established from the beginning. Let there be light. Last things are purposed. God’s prophecy already declared triumph. The enmity premise will be of such a devious nature that true hatred will be concealed until the first human crime. That one act will set the temperament for those who think to please God in their way as opposed to His way, by their words and works, rather than through obedience to His commands as reasoned in His revelations. Unpleasant feelings are created which subsequently generate the enmity. But in this prophecy God promises a Savior and at what cost to Him and the whole of creation. Pause to consider the significance of the price God paid. God gave the life of the Creator to pay the penalty for us. Nothing else would have been sufficient. The cost would have been paid even for one human being. God reasoned that with this payment it was not merely adequate to meet the cost of one person's redemption, but is so great it satisfies the cost for all the sins of the whole of mankind for all time! This One was the Only One who could be exactly as is God. This One is more than life. This One is the very source of all life. God’s glory, majesty, and exaltation is greater than life itself. No matter what happens, God is greater than life! How can we understand God’s sorrow? How can we not love Him with all our heart, and with all our soul, and with all our might, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength, with all our mind. Considering the spiritual perspective, so, what is man...? If we are not moved with compassion for the hurting, the lost, then we need to pray for God to remove our heart of stone and give us the heart of Jesus. He tells us of the earth mother of His Son and those who are in Christ, and how in enemy occupied territory His plan of redemption is worked out within the context of the assurance of victory, rather than the prospect of defeat. We are to be equipped and ready for battle, but with the certainty that the decisive battle with the enemy has already taken place and has been won. We teach this passage as the reasoned truth, as the first evidence of God’s unfathomable love for man. Genesis 3:15 A seed has all the ingredients of what it will be when fully grown. This is to be our faith, our trust in God’s promise to have everything we need to be completely godly and fully effective as His servant. It was after this promise was given that Satan engaged in a relentless but futile effort to destroy the ancestral line of the coming “seed” and then to kill the Christchild himself. In the garden and on the cross, Jesus saw each of us, and therefore the Savior’s atonement in the garden and on the cross is intimate as well as infinite. Infinite in that it spans the eternities. Intimate in that the Savior felt every person’s pains, remorse, desire for, or lack of repentance, sufferings, and sicknesses. Under what time and circumstances will he see us? It was after the cross that Jesus’ seed was prominently germinated. Dormancy was its condition since the Garden. It was in the state of suspended animation until conditions were right for its coming forth to grow in the fullness of time. It is the blood of Christ that anchors the root of the seed as the water of the Holy Spirit is absorbed whereby the seed emerges up into the rising of the Son. The seed struggles to break through that which is the dust of the ground. And the air of life gives the seed resilience to the environment. This “seed” is that of God. Mark 4:26-32

25 Minutes Let the word of the One who is love tell us what love is. As God guides me in this writing, I so want you to know that I so want to love you as God wants us to love one another...and so I lay my love down at your feet as I attempt to show us what love is. Just the idea of love makes it the most powerful word of creation. It is an ideal that we must strive toward. It literally, emotionally, ideally, and spiritually commands intimate faithfulness. Love has no conflict because it is an enduring choice. It requires understanding of and being for the other person more than for ourselves. The challenge to all of us is to love others as part of our love of God and for God. “Of”, relates to something coming from the original, from the cause. “For”, shows a purpose. To bear the weight of this great word is critical in that we cannot ignore the sheer scale by which we fine it difficult to grasp God’s love for us. Love is a deep understanding of God which betokens an ultimate togetherness of our commitments and directions. We lose the inner meaning of love when we think about our feelings and feel about our thoughts. Love is not all feeling nor is emotion its core. Emotions are basic drives that often summarize areas of reflection and judgment which we crystallize in a certain way that lessens the written word. Emotions locate feelings in the subconscious, out of which it comes to conscious life. Feelings reflect our past, our views, our motives, faith, our understanding of ourselves which makes recognizing love a complicated task. What love does is remove such contradictions as good or ill, truth or lie, in our thinking and atttitudes. Love is to be bound up to thought and action as the whole response to truth. Any falsity in any relationship, human to human, human to divine, is deviation from principle. Love is a powerful experience of dependance upon God. It is a powerful motive to examine yourself and to search the openness and transparency of a spiritual relationship with others. The fulness of our humanness unites to the divine sharing of ourselves without fear. Love can look anything in the face and respond with care, hope and faith. We live in God’s creation as He has created us. Love is the wonder of being face to face with God and seeing the awe-filled beauty of who we are. We are not alone. Love is conditionally responsive...”if you love me keep”...”he who loveth God love his brother also”. God’s love is central to the bigger truth. And that bigger truth is that love gives significant consequence to the life of every person and their relationships. Love has its origin with God and goes beyond our weaknesses and is the underlying reality of all our lives. Love is the norm by which God commands us to live in our relationships with one another and with Him. Here is the hard side of the truth of love. The reliability of the words by which it is expressed must be insistent on the need for uprightness before God meaning that this love does not die on our failings. It outlasts our pettiness and comes through our failures. This point is completely basic...love is given by God, reflects the character of God, is written in the creation of God and is exemplified by the conquering commitment of love in Jesus’ life despite the sorrow that we subjected him to. Love, and I pray you know what it is, can move us beyond fallible human relationships. It is evident that love has power to image us not as objects of worship, but as an exclusive creation of God. Psalms 82:6 John 10:34 We are to have the kind of love that we can trust. The kind that recognizes and abides through our weaknesses, through our sin. That love cannot be disillusioned, because in principle it has no weakness, no sin. The prime conception of love is as our duty. Our duty to obedience to every word of God. Our duty to faithfulness to every way of God, in all circumstances. Our duty to doing the will of God as reasoned and guided by His Word. This duty dissociates us from emotion, from feelings. It means giving priority to others, putting the needs and problems of others before our own, whereby we receive innner strength. Know of what source this inner strength is derived. Remember when Martha chided Mary. Jesus’ love commended Mary for her commitment to learning and at the same time allowed Martha to cool down. Jesus refused to allow his disciples to be censored for picking grain on Sabbath. Jesus loved people where they were. Even those he rebuked. He loved a prostitute. He loved a leper. He loved a thief on a cross. His love was tested in straightforward ways. Jesus is our central truth in God and is always able to relativize our performance to our circumstances and situations. As we seek an open loving heart and sincere commitment to one another in Jesus, God so loves us. Love is a matter of knowledge, of understanding, of reasoning, of wisdom, love is a matter of will, to do that which is the determination of God. Love is founded in having a right conduct and carrying it out as an act of the mind. Love is the power contained within, that is only relevant when it is given as our whole self. Deep within this meaning of love is the idea of being good enough to be loved. This vulnerability is because the measurement standard is not Jesus Christ. Too many are aware of things about themselves which they “feel” make them unworthy of love. God treats the past as justified in Christ. Let nothing paralyse the ability that God gives you to love and to be loved. The things you cannot talk about to anybody, talk about with God. Your love is of such value to God that He gave His only Son who was willing to come as you are. You are inestimably valuable. You will not fail in your love. And in Christ, you will learn to love better. Ask God to give you a new heart. Do not ration out love. Give, as was given you. Love is not to have an agenda separate from the fulfillment of the law. Galatians 5:14 Our hope is to move into the enjoyment of God’s love which is not an individual act of the will, but encompasses the whole relationship in grace. This begins with the undeserving commitment of God to us as persons. As Jesus took his disciple through the many failures to love and give, we too may take that journey. It validates our response to God to love one another however pathetic are our present abilities. These relationships penetrate deep, locking us into individual performance, keeping our focus open instead of self-regarding. There will be times your love will suffer for good. You will mourn for the ones you know are troubled in spirit. Your heart pains will drive you to your very knees. But you have a joy that is God-given. And you hang on to the God Who gives it, not the joy “itself”. It is those who truly love God and one another who experience joy. Joy is at God’s disposal as a fruit of His Spirit working in our lives. It is not a possession we can claim for ourselves. The big challenge for all of us is therefore whether we work at our own agenda of happiness, or whether we open up our lives to God and to the provisions of His love. Then it is that the richness of those with whom we live becomes evident and blesses us. God knows better what and how to bless us. Jesus loves us so much that he desires to live with us for life. Love, as God’s intent for love to be, offers deep communion. Bible truth shows that we are created, we are born again to grow in relationships which express who we are. We can be ourselves before God in solitude, but we are to love one another in communion. This is no illusion. The heart of the matter is whether in God’s hand we are willing to be shaped to commune with. What a most generous act...to give love to another. Christ did this, and in doing so, God bought us with a price. And he is ours, and we are his. He’s our Song of Songs. God’s love is the very ground of our existence. This truth reinterprets us as God’s care invested in His creation. His love is direct, personal, open and unmanipulative, and can be seen in every way of Jesus. The sheer transforming vitality of his love is amazing. A woman, kissing and crying upon his feet and drying them with her hair. One who touched the “him of his garment”, a rich little man in a tree, a deaf and dumb person whose friends brought him to Jesus, one at a well who could not contain her joy, and the children who were made well by him. Let us be encouraged ever to show love. And to those who know not what they do...Father forgive them. Love for God opens up our hearts with longings for the revelations of the patterns of purposes concealed in His truths. In this we come to the spirituality of love. The recognition that there is something more to being human than sensory experience, and that the greater whole of which we are part is divine in nature. In our communion with God, we achieve and manifest higher levels of development than the ordinary person. The greatest of those levels is love. We have a surer faith in Christ in knowing to God we have worth, and a capacity for love and generosity, that opens our hearts to essential and true spirituality. God’s word not only reaches spiritual highs but renders the truth that Jesus was touched with the “feeling” of our infirmities to share with us the human lows that we encounter. Loving and being loved are not “givens.” Love is not something we always knew, we do not automatically know how to do it well, especially when it comes to loving ourselves and feeling worthy of being loved by another. There are internal conditions that sets the cornerstone for us to enter into loving relationships with others. Though God places in the heart the ability to trust, and to have faith, it cannot be assumed that the thing called “love” will be experienced. It is something learned through conscious intention with a reasoning and mature mind that permits reflection and expanded life experiences that make room for a broader social and spiritual circle, where people are able to observe themselves and others with curiosity, attention, compassion, and kindness. I John 4:20, 21 We see beneath the surface to the quiet underneath richness to the core of sharing self. We elevate our intention to invest mindfully in one another. With empathy we recognize imperfections made perfect in Christ. We move from emotional energy to a spiritual momentum fueled by the will of God. We gain wisdom beyond the illusion of physical vulnerability. With thoughts of peace, we show nurturant behaviors that acknowledges the consequence that love is an outward worthwhile truth that honors and give glory to God. This is the love wherewith we become like Christ. We share our lives to evolve. We, in truth, navigate our mutual trials and triumphs, and in tribulations we come to appreciate other’s wisdomed strength and we too grow from them, creating a unique bond. Our lives show no empty spaces, for our passion for our love of God in Christ fully engages our faith in our divine existence to be ever mindful that we are the pleasure of God of whom we each are one. We make large God’s principle of love.

15 Minutes Psalm 102:27 God has a people who will continue to grow in their knowledge of who God is and, hopefully, in their intimacy with Him. There is a God that worldly wisdom wants, and there is a God who is as divine wisdom teaches...and they are not the same God. Dulled spiritual senses lead to a harden heart so that these become comfortable with or complacent about studying to show themselves approved. Overwhelmed by God’s divine candor, and lacking humility, too many reside in ignorance. Prayerfully looking at the passages studied again and reflecting on the different aspects of God presented with care and concern under the guidance of the Holy Spirit will transform natural views by conceptual evidence of truth. See God’s power, God’s authority, infinite power, unlimited authority. Almightiness applies to the God of the bible. The faculty of God is such that He can perform all things in polarity, having two opposite or contradictory tendencies or aspects according to His will. Deuteronomy 32:39 Isaiah 45:7 Romans 9:13 God is the Most High who is the Creator who by His word and through His wisdom gave the vast universe its form, stability, and regularity. Have we learned that God’s intervention generally consists in the reestablishment of order, arranged according to a plan, is the same for all people: the Israelites of the northern kingdom, the Judeans of the southern kingdom, the Arameans of Damascus, and the Assyrians and others for His performance. God’s elect knows the God of the last judgment. Our faith in God is to sum up all the attributes of the Being who is ruler of all the universe, perfect in power, wisdom, and goodness, who is worshipped as the very source of all things visible and invisible. Let’s try to reason with truth. We were created not according to “man-kind” but according to “God-kind”, according to the image of God. God desires to gain an image, an expression, in humanity, and for this He created man according to His character image inwardly and bearing His behavior likeness outwardly. The fullness in the understanding of the word of God speaks of how God will gain His image being expressed corporately in man. We need to ask ourselves as we reason with God Is there any difference between image and likeness? What is the image of God? How can an invisible God have a visible image? Who can be the image of God? How can we as human beings have God’s image and bear His likeness? We are to be God’s expression on earth. We are made in such a special way that even our redemption required a change in heavenly things...a different expression. His change was necessary that we might be changed that at the time of his manifestation we will see him as he is and be like him. II Corinthians 3:18 Is our God omniscient...all knowing? Did our God know that as man we would fall? Why did our God create man in His image, His likeness? We were not created as a hopeful experiment for God. We were created to reflect the beauty, the goodness, the creativeness, the holiness of God. We were to be so like Him, not in His omni spheres, but in attaining always unto godliness in every revealed realm of life. God is so creative that diversity is innate within His power to inclusively connect and unite all creation in uniqueness and interrelation. Creation is so organized that whatever we do has universal repercussions. As we reason about God's good creation and our place in it, we come to a great starting point and important truth. God expects us to change. It is as His likeness was determined to show all more of His glory as He condescended in the form of humanity that was determined to give us the power to ascend unto heavenliness. Be not obsessed with God’s changing from Spirit to flesh and blood to flesh and bone. Rather be obsessed with the reasoning of how and why God created us with the power to effect outcome by choice as a “likeness” of His attributes. God expects us to change; He expects us to think differently, and therefore to act differently from the world, and from the way we have been in the past. And it is because we have Jesus that we count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus. Look at what we choose to do for his sake. Philippians 3:7-14 Things that we choose to leave behind are more than the things we failed in. They more meaningfully are those things whereby we were highly successful in. We reason that clinging to what we perceive to be the best part of ourselves is to lose Christ. With pride as our motivator, we might be tempted to look back on our lives to our own perceived successes and dwell on the way things used to be. It certainly is not wisdom that we seek to return. Ecclesiastes 7:10 We reason that the most important thing is our soul’s salvation. Everything else in life, past successes in particular, are not adequate at all in succeeding in what matters most. God’s priority is to save us. What “likeness” is in us that we set our minds on things above? We change our minds about what it means to worship God as coming to His likeness shifts our mindset and anchors our perspective on the sacrifice of Christ that provides our salvation. We reason the essence of true worship is not external, but internal, heart and head, sentiment and thought, spirit and truth. Worship will push us into our destiny and cleanse us of our past and we will change our behavior by doing what we know is right in serving our brother and sister. God loves us just as we are and better still God loves us so much that He will not let us stay there. God does not want to make us like Him. He wants to make us like Jesus...human with an indwelling divine spirit. That is why we need no more proof of God’s love...look to the cross. Luke 2:52 Romans 8:28, 29 God designed this destination for us long ago before we were created. And it was on purpose. Why did God determine all things before ever bringing forth anything? God does not change our circumstances. In His likeness He wants us to reason through our circumstances to begin to transform back to the “image”. Peace, wonderful peace comes to us as the reason of and when we learn from Jesus, we find rest for our souls, no matter what our circumstances are. God’s greatest change was from the Spiritual to the accommodation of the indwelling the human body. The Holy Spirit made his body a “meet habitation” for his holy soul, every way ready and complying with all actings of grace and virtue. The Spirit preserved the divine nature of Jesus as pure from all defilement of sin from the stock of sinful flesh of common humanity. And so we know that God does not change His mind, not in an eternal sense. However, He does in a temporal sense.

15 Minutes God is in accordance with His love. There is nothing that we could ever say to give expression to God’s ultimate highness and authority, it cannot be even thought of by another or any other. If we could only experience God. If our closeness with God was as internal silence. Just deep breathing. In..., out...! In, out. Feel God in your heartbeat. Think how our wordlessness can speak the awe of His glory as we wonder before God. God is so wonderful in His judgment, in His redemption, in His revelation, in His promises, that as we know Him, we are humbly struck silent. God is not some distant Being whom we worship by description only. Worshiping God illuminates our understanding. It models our faith reflectively to explore the old and the new testaments to reason with the obsolete phenomenon rather than the traditional theological explanation. In this, the Holy Spirit discloses and makes known different functions and meanings in diverse texts and contexts. Oh, if only we had the wisdom, the reasoning to conceptually explain sensibly how God could be understood to be God. We consider His relationship, His agency, His attributes. Our approach...to what can God be likened? What similarities to another god can be attributed to God? None, there can be no other god. And because our faith is shaped by the Christ-event, we look to our investigation of Jesus as our central Word for the uniqueness of proclaiming God as the ultimate reality of all things as the one cannot be without the other. This reality is of such excellence that God humiliates God self in Jesus unto death and predetermination. Nothing that God does can be sub-summed to the compliment that God the Father acknowledges His Son. God leads history to the purpose God has chosen. And because He is God, He, the holy One and He, the only One. This is a “vertical” relation. God is above anything else in authority and power. God is free to decide and to act in order to achieve God’s purposes. But this relation also has a “horizontal”, historical aspect. God leads God’s people as a shepherd to their future of peace and justice. In this sense God is proceeding to God’s kingdom. And God’s kingdom is a reality in this world and is being realized. God’s true power is the power He has given us to make judgment choices. That was part of the creation image and likeness. And to live that image, that likeness is the exercising of our choice as it is determined by God’s character, God’s will, God’s purposes, God’s mercy and righteousness. And with this awesome gift of free will, of choice, we are to have wisdom as reasoned with God. That means with every choice we are to realize the sure consequences. So, it is more than just the power of choice...it is the power of the right choice as it reflects the mind of Christ. And there’s an even deeper dimension...God’s purpose to reproduce Himself. God is a Family. And He loves to have sons and daughters. Otherwise, we would not have been created in His image (God’s character) and in His likeness (God’s features). The marring brought that to an end. So, now the power of God is working in accordance with the word of God in our lives, we speak God's word. And we speak simply because we have found our place in God, the life and the power of God is at work in us, and we gain command over life issues and circumstances. We walk in God's way. We have an understanding and knowledge of who God is as we bring His express image to others. The power to suffer and to die for others is love; the power to suffer and die for another is ultimate, divine, perfect love. God’s determination in His people reaches this dimension. And this power of God cannot have a more competent element, a more credible witness than the love, the life of Jesus. This power is indeed often hidden in human life and in the history of this world. But the crucified is risen and exalted. This means that our understanding of God’s power must be in accordance with God’s love. No means of manipulation, threat and coercion...choice alone. God’s power cooperating with human power without diminishing it. God is the unchangeable changer. He cannot gain or lose His attributes. But He does grow in grace and mercy. And whatever the circumstances we find ourselves in, the power of the Most High God is able to change the situations for good as He determined in the counsel and it is by our prayers that He accomplishes His will. When we reasonably investigate God’s specific promise that He does not change, His promise is based upon His character and His authority to uphold it. When God says He does not lie, it is because God’s nature is truthful and He has the power to uphold that truth. When God says He does not break His promises, it is because His nature and authority does not permit it. God said He does not change, this promise is specifically in reference to His covenantal promise to Israel that He would bless all nations through them despite their disobedience. Yet God offered to move that promise from Abraham to Moses. Was this design of intervention, of changing the fate decisioned in the Determinate Counsel? Pray, study, and reason with the 32nd chapter of Exodus. God has every right to judge us in our sin but consider the situation and the appeal in that passage because He promised to fulfill His covenant of redemption for mankind through Abraham. This covenant promise of God was fulfilled by the arrival of God Jesus in the flesh. When Jesus became flesh, God was changing. In fact, this is His providential fulfilling of the promise He gave beginning in Genesis 3:15 and 12:1-3 just as He said He would. Did God become flesh in order to fulfill His promise...it was determined ever before there was anything except the Godhead in Determinate Counsel. To best reason with this, one must understand the difference between nature and position. In order, for God to be faithful and always fulfill His covenant promises, it must require that His character, His nature never change. However, such promises do not necessitate that His position cannot change. Pause. We’ll return to this thought shortly. Remember the promise of Malachi is that God’s promise will not change based upon His truthful nature. Oh, what ignorance we possess when we fail to realize, to reason with the full influx of the truth as it is presented by God Himself. God calls us foolish, having no understanding, no knowledge. If we would but ask for wisdom, not thinking we know what we do not. To what is our God referring when He instructs us that He changes not. To what humbling state of hearing are we to ascend to gain the insightfulness to reason with His purposes determined for our attaining? Hear and consider, think and reflect... Malachi 3:6 Let’s ratify this change not comment. Here we have God's immutability asserted by Himself, and glorified in it. Is God a just revenger of those that rebel against Him? Is He the bountiful rewarder of those that diligently seek Him? In both these He is unchangeable. He is as much an enemy to sin as ever He was, and impenitent sinners will find Him so. God’s judgment is never antiquated, or out of date, but against those that go on still in their trespasses the curse of His law still remains in full force, power, and virtue. Israel had reason to say that He was an unchangeable God, for He had been faithful to His covenant with them and their fathers; if He had not adhered to that, they would have been consumed long ago and cut off from being a people; they had been false and fickle in their conduct to Him, and He might justly have abandoned them, and then they would soon have been consumed and ruined; but because He remembered His covenant, and would not violate that, nor alter the thing that had gone forth out of His lips, they were preserved from ruin and recovered from the brink of it. It was purely because He would be as good as His word. Now as God had kept Israel from ruin, while the covenant of peculiarity remained in force, purely because He would be faithful to that covenant, and would show that He is not a man that He should lie, so, when that covenant should be superseded and set aside by the new covenant, Jesus, and they, by rejecting the blessings of it, lay themselves open to the curses, God will show that in the determinations of His wrath, as well as in those of His mercy, neither is He a man, that He should repent, but will then be as true to His threatenings as previously He had been to His promises. If we are wise, or if we are becoming wise, we may all apply this very sensibly to ourselves; because we have to do with a God that changes not in His character. However, God can in His nature lower Himself in position, to the point of a servant in order to best fulfill His promises. He doesn’t have to change His character to do this, rather He lowers Himself in His nature to do this. He takes on a different position. In fact, we could take it one step further and say, Jesus’s position lowers so that he can fulfill his promises in accordance with his nature. This is our Sovereign God. Philippians 2:5-8

20 Minutes Please, please let us hear, let us speak the word. Not just as simply sounds, but as real power. Our words may not manifest reality to bring forth worlds, but they can manifest the faith in the uniqueness and power of God to give us wisdom that the words we speak are actually the overflow of our hearts in communion with all our brothers, sisters, and strangers. God gives us such blessings in the seriousness of the word that when spoken to give an answer to everyone who asks us to give the reason for the hope that we have in all readiness, they hear why and how we love the Lord. Our words should demonstrate the power of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in our lives. When the word is serious to us it causes our thoughts to line up with God’s patterns to teach, correct, rebuke, encourage, direct, guide, comfort, and confront. God’s word is never contradictory when we have the mindset to effectively relate to the scripture. We should always evaluate our perception of the word to see if there’s anything holding us back from hearing God speak through the Word. Do we not understand that the word empowers us to intentionally interact with God. When we stall God’s word as though we know all that it has to say, we need to adjust our attitude. We should with deep sorrow and celebratory joy have the attitude of expectancy that with every word studied we learn something new about who God is. The word, when believed in seriously, will deposit revelation and understanding, reason and wisdom of the truth that we never come to the end of all there is to learn about God. With His character is revealed the reasoning of His interactions, His involvements with His people. The word is a testament to God’s movement designed to confirm His promises toward us. He wants us personally involved in His experience. That’s why it is so important that we know the word is serious as it is presented in every event of the bible. The problem is that too many cannot discern the difference between their words and God’s words. God speaks from the posture of truth and love. There are too many of us who speak from the stance of judgment and self-importance. Remember, there is another name for the One who guides us into all truth. It is “The Comforter”. Words should be filled with peace in reasoning by faith with what is written...it is God! And negative word without reasoning is just self-talk because of unfamiliarity with the word. There are to be no human add-ons. We will only hear God’s word when the Holy Spirit nurtures the mind. It is the word that gives us evidence of God’s character and His mind. In this God wants us to see, to hear how He relates in the various situations, circumstances, and events that are brought forth for our learning, for our knowledge of the scriptures and laws and in the midst of the most violently oppressive times ever known. He wants us to be filled with an absolute certainty as to the real and different path to peace, love and truth. Where else would such clarity and certainty come from other than the very God whose word is serious. The Word is expressed as a radical and essential message from God. It is a sword. This two-edged sword is the word spoken by one and heard by the other that convicts, convinces, and transforms by the word, both the speaker and the hearer. It is a dialogue. It forms an unbreakable bond with God. It is His will, and our purpose in life. It is manifested in the flesh. God’s Word is a Person and His name is Jesus Christ, our perfect Savior. The whole bible is about Him. The whole bible testifies of Him. Knowing the word is knowing more about the Son’s Father, the Father’s Son, and the Spirit that is Them. It is God with us in the beginning and in His coming quickly. Please see the evidence of the power of the word. Study the, “And God saids”, in Genesis chapter one. And when you get to the second chapter and hear the very climax expressed in the resting, the blessing, the sanctifying, pray. Is there a lesson here? The sabbath was made for man that we may by the word rest in God as we are being blessed by Jesus as we are being sanctified by the Holy Spirit in our communing with the Godhead. God created by resting. The Sabbath was of a different form than was the other days. Everything brought forth on the six days was outwardly visible. But the Sabbath symbolizes to God's children the fact that God is still creating by the word. It is the Sabbath that is producing in us the eternal and everlasting life. The Sabbath is that spiritual dimension of life that the physical alone cannot supply. Toward this end, the Sabbath is no mere afterthought of a tremendous creation. It is the deliberate word of God saying, “I am not yet finished creating. I am reproducing Myself, and you are to be the pleasure of My spiritual creation." By God's own word, He is memorialized and therefore honored by our observance of the Sabbath. God ceased what He was doing in the role of Christ as our Sabbath rest. There is coming a permanent rest for the people of God for the Sabbath is the foreshadowing of Christ in whom we rest and are blessed and are sanctified and are made holy. Jesus is the Word to whom we come, and he is our Sabbath rest in the flesh. Colossians 1:16, 17 Matthew 11:28 God’s Word is so powerful because it gives us all the answers we need for living a godly life. The bible itself is that word which gives us the understanding of the importance of the Word of God. The word is serious. The word is that truth that confirms our being made in the image, the likeness of God as it is His spirit that was breathed into us. Mere humans need food and water to sustain them physically. But our spirit doesn’t need food and water. It needs God’s word because God is Spirit. We are enduring by His word in this world. It is that pillar of truth that supports every teaching for the sum of God’s word is truth. And there is no way we will feed on the Word of God and not grow spiritually. And in that growth our faith progresses in building a deeper relationship with God. The word is serious. I first learned how serious it was when my momma told me as a child that every word in it was truth. That was an important moment for me. That is when I challenged God. I told Him that I would not accept His every word unless I was taught it under a tree. It was a stamp for good. That’s where Jesus saw Nathanael and it was “a” Nathaniel that God first used to teach me. John 1:48, 50 All things that happen to us along the way are determined. The word is serious. Our ultimate belief in the word of God comes when God allows us to come see. John 4:29 The word is determined by God, defined by God, and so are we. And therefore, we cannot know who we are without God. We can’t know who we are individually until we are saturated with His Word telling us. It is the word that moves us from the bible to the truth. Many read and study the bible but fail to understand the truth. Why? Their spirit does not resonate with the Word. They don’t come to see Jesus. Too many people believe what seems right to them. Why can’t they come to the truth of the word of God? They forget they are children. God says “ask”. We ask questions for answers. To come to the truth, you should ask What and Why and When and How and Where and Who. Asking questions is the key to understanding. God wants us to learn how to ask the right questions and reason with Him to reveal the right answers. Reasoning with God through the word is bible study. If anyone is so indifferent to the word as to just deny it without reasoning what can the Holy Spirit teach you. Do you remember that question put to Jesus – what is truth. The powerful aspect of truth is that it is the word in all seriousness. It is the individualization of the word that corresponds to our being. Truth is God’s mind, thought, word. Christ is the truth. And truth is not just saying anything you feel like saying. Study the word of God as they are what God means. When you realize it is He who speaks the word, you will know that you have truth. God is ultimate reality, and truth is what conforms to Him. The place that this reality and its representation in truth become most profoundly One is Jesus Himself...in the beginning was the Word, the reason and the revelation of all things real. And the Word is serious. And the truth of the bible says that the word became us. How serious are we to be about the word? We believe that when we go to the book all of it is true, and it has a centered foundation, a gathering place. And He is the Word, and all these words are meant to make Him plain. All these words are meant to highlight Him. This is a book about Jesus from beginning to end, as it leads to Him and flows from Him. God’s intentions revealed in the bible are the supreme and the final authority in testing all claims about what is truth and what is right. In matters not addressed by the bible, what is true and right is assessed by criteria consistent with the teachings of scripture that do nothing to abort the life giving word. Reasoning with the word presents trajectories and principles and transformative views of our life and heart and society and world, that if we’re confident with this Book, we can discern all kinds of moral issues that may confront us. We with integrity and authenticity, come to know the word as the truth. The worth of the truth of the word is found in the reason, and Christ is the reason we credit the word as truth. Unless we come to a reasonable, solid persuasion and conviction of the truth of the gospel by the internal evidences of it, by a sight of its glory, it is impossible that we should have any thorough and effectual conviction of it at all. The Word is serious.

10 Minutes Every word read or studied from the bible, every word spoken concerning the content of the bible must be characterized by deep thought. The most somber disposition must be displayed to ensure there is no trifling with the distinctive character of each word. Every word of truth read or spoken must be reflective of good judgment. We are to have a strong sense of responsibility to humbly hear and receive the word of God. And whenever we have the opportunity to share the word in any manner, it is to be as though we breathe out that spirit which was breathed into us at the beginning. Every word of God carries with it, its own creative power. Every word has its own fulfilment in that it is alive and incorruptible. The word is eternal because God is eternal. The word is living because God is living. The word is powerful because God is powerful. Everything that is true of God is true of His word. We receive the very life of God when He gives us the seed of His word. All things that He determined, everything in His plan for our life comes within our reach. God determined His will, the Word declared it, and we are to hear it. When we are serious about the word, we give it access to the deepest parts of our being, inviting it to test our hearts. There is an ever-increasing effectiveness of the word when we understand its capability to allow God to speak to us deep inside – in our spirit when we receive it. The word of God is grounded in the truth and builds faith that we can overcome every subtilty that opposes the presence and purposes of God in this world. When Jesus’ words are in us, they empower us to want what he wants and will what he wills. When we pray with his word in us, we’re so tuned to God’s will that we don’t need to pray, ‘If it be Thy will’. We already know God’s will because the word in us has renewed our minds shaping our sanctification. Every word of God which we truly receive in our spirit reveals itself in our thoughts, our deeds, and our words. God is the God of covenant. He created man in His image and His likeness, which implies that we also have a covenant nature. And God’s covenant is of such a truth of commitment that He promises us Himself! God gave us, He gives us Himself in Jesus Christ. And now God’s words become our words. This is what fulfills the promises of the covenant...when we declare them with our mouths. And with that we make two faith avowals; Abba, Father and Jesus is Lord. We could do neither of these without the Holy Spirit. It is He who bears witness with, in, and to us that we are God’s children. And it is He who testifies with and to us that Jesus is Lord. The seriousness of the word must be so principled as to detail the circumstances of our life that we abandon the world. Our desire is to perfectly fulfil God’s righteous standards and re-establish the love relationship we enjoyed before the fall. The solution is in the Christ of the cross. The word of God is not silent, sullen or remote; He’s the God of revelation who personally speaks and declares Himself to His people. With every word He reveals something about His own character and integrity. And His word is not ‘economical’ with the truth. It prevails exceedingly above our thoughts. And yet, we are made capable to spiritually grasp understanding through our reasoning with God under the graces of the presiding Holy Spirit. Jesus is himself ‘the truth’. All his words are fully the revelation of God’s truth. The written record of God’s word to us as expressed in temporal form does not contain everything that God ever says to His people. God is infinite. And we are to have no averseness to any word in scripture. There are revelations and deeper sufficiencies however, that teaches us all we need to know about God. We need but to allow the Word to breathe on us that our wisdom shows to be consistent with the word of God. While here, everything we need to understand about God is reasoned in the scripture when we learn to die to our own thoughts, emotions, feelings, desires and ambitions, and surrender to His full control. God makes Himself known to us in many ways in creation and in His providence, but when it comes to His word...the judgments of His mouth are magnified even above the designation of His glory. God is fixed in His position and in His character, but His word extends to His fixed determination. His name is used for everything which the name of God covers, everything the thought or feeling of which is aroused in the mind by mentioning, hearing, remembering who He is in authority, His interests, His pleasure, His commands, His excellences, His doings and yet even so are greater things done by His word. The wonders of grace exceed the wonders of nature; and what is discovered of God by revelation is the much more greater discerned and encountered by reason. In this we come to the essential Word...we come to know Jesus. Number the words in the bible that Jesus spoke. They are finite. Now think on how many words he most surely spoke in just the three and a half years of his ministry. Jesus’ seriousness in the word can be heard in just one of his words. He says “Go”. I pray that we undertake to know how serious is the word. By it we grow in the grace of God, and it increases our relationship with Him. But and if we do not seek to understand the fulness of the word the opposite can happen. We can slide away from God in the other direction. Now think of the intercourse between God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in the Counsel of Determination. Think of the passages of directives to His four living creatures, His Seraphims, His Cherubims. Think of the groanings of the Holy Spirit making serious the ascendant words of our prayers. Now think of the words that are not rooted in the bible and the bible alone as was shared to the unfallen worlds. This was received in the pure state of innocence as the inspired word of God. Think of how the recording angels embrace every word spoken that the twenty and four elders present to God. Some in our favor and some for our disservice to God. As we study God’s word our seriousness of mind must be as disciplined as self- awareness allows us to understand spiritual answers that we may expand and clarify truth by wisdom and reason. In this we maintain the peace of mind to wait with patience for every issue inwardly impressed to be outwardly expressed, in the uprightness of intention and fervency of affection, that none who speaks or receives the truth of the word will be ashamed of it. Here's the new reality that too many forget...Jesus is the Son of God, yes. And Jesus is God, yes. He is the one who after He created everything, now upholds all things by the word of His power. All things cohere in Him, and they are unto Him. And He conquers in the same way that He creates....through the power of His word. If He has power to do all of these amazing things by His words, can we even begin to imagine what the Lord can do with those who gratefully and eagerly receive these words? I say to us again...the word is serious.