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25 Minutes It is with much textual warrant that God gives us inescapable understanding. And he said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground. Literal, or was this to help Cain to understand the nature of sin. Revelation 6:9, 10 God’s exact word must be reasoned with wisdom to understand God’s exact meaning. Is blood articulate, and capable of speech? The woman is from the man as the man is from the woman and brings forth the true life’s purpose of fulfilling in him what all are to become in Christ. Galatians 4:22-31 Knowledge is the accumulation of facts, whereas wisdom is the ability to use those facts in a responsible manner. Wisdom is the skill to live in a way that is pleasing to God and knowing how to and when to apply our intelligence to our surrounding environment in a way that results in the desired purpose for our calling. We are called out to raise our voices for wisdom. In raising the voice there is an urgency, there is a longing, and there is a passion. Searching for wisdom requires intensity. True wisdom is God centered. True wisdom means we know God and that means we know Christ for he is the only way we can come to God. True wisdom means that we have an awe, respect, and even a holy reverence before God. This isn’t a fear that paralyzes us, for perfect love casts out all fear. But it is a fear that reminds us that we are creatures and that God is the Creator. If thought is the sixth sense, then wisdom is the seventh. Because wisdom produces the thought that is wise that we understand righteousness and justice and equity, every good path. We cry out for wisdom to indwell us. A major problem in today’s society is that man’s knowledge has surpassed his wisdom. Remember the “eyes” of Genesis chapter 3. God tells us how this plays in the sifting of the people in both the everyday and the mystical awareness. II Chronicles 16:9 Amos 8:12 Daniel 12:4 The first step in becoming wise is to listen to wisdom. And wisdom is listening for truth and when heard it is confirmed by the Holy Spirit. Listen to how God’s word opens up with a big “if” and follows up with commanding us to hear. Proverbs 2:1-11 Proverbs 1:1-7 Receiving, treasuring, attending, inclining, calling out, raising your voice, seeking, and searching all boil down to one weighty concept: hearing the word of God. It is by the marvelous grace of God through the teaching of the Determinate Counsel that we submissively receive His counsel and vigorously seek out its hidden and intense wisdom. We are to listen for powerful statements, kind reminders, insightful thinking, good counsel, unbiased judgment, compassion, balance, inner discernment, belief challenges, contemplative reasoning, open mindedness, experience, spirituality, and prayerful consideration of love for the hearer. The central focus of wisdom is how truth is obtained, revealed, and understood. As we are learning we listen to the inner voice, we hear with the ear, we live in a relationship with Jesus in our suffering and liberation, finding providential help as the word speaks to the depth and breadth of our spiritual search. There is the need to incline our hearts, our minds to be open and receptive to truth when it appears. Hearing the word of God is an active process to be prized above all other things. Our passion in this life is to seek wisdom from God that we might be of the same mind as is Christ in obedience, in judgment, in prayer, in witnessing. Wisdom will furnish us with the strength to overcome when exposed to temptation. Wisdom will cause us to hate sin and lament our transgressions. Wisdom will cause us to cry to God for His deep and complete searching to know our hearts, to try us that we may be led in His way. Wisdom will purpose the convictions of our consciences, which is our spiritual essence, to unite our behavior to the law of God through meditation, contemplation, so that it focuses on the oneness, the transcendent situations, and ultimate concern for the awareness of God’s presence always in our life. Wisdom will enhance our will to believe and accept all that is truth so that our pure potentiality characterizes the kind of love that is of the “so” nature that grows stronger over time and eternity. Wisdom will take us to such a high consciousness that we will be conscious of a consciousness higher than our own. And we will be conscious of how that consciousness is conscious of us. It’s called wisdom. Man’s desire will be to search back and forth from one bible verse to another, and from one bible chapter to another, as they compare scripture with scripture in reading the words of the Lord that had previously been sealed. Something wonderful happens. Knowledge shall increase. The reason knowledge increases is because in “the time of the end” increasing numbers of humans will have the unprecedented opportunity to read for themselves and to understand the words of God. Those three words, knowledge shall increase, begins an amazing journey considering that this does not only apply to the Holy scriptures. There is a knowledge tsunami in the world today. But God’s intent was for biblical knowledge specifically. However, this additional knowledge does not necessarily mean we are becoming wiser.We need humble hearts, a sincere desire for truth, a willingness to turn from sin, and an openness to the deep moving of “the Spirit of truth”. So God gives us additional insight. Daniel 12:9, 10 God’s purposed plan is that in the time of the end, when a knowledge of His words shall increase, such knowledge shall draw, impress, convict, cleanse, and purify human hearts from sin, selfishness, and falsehood. Open the eyes of your heart. The evidence is overwhelming of a most fearsome event getting closer. Too many people are reluctant to study the bible and find out what it really says. They might find some things in their lives that need to be changed or conflict with what they thought they knew. And they don’t want to change because they feel comfortable, so it’s easiest just not to learn what the word of God truly means. A wise person continues his search for truth. The combination of knowing and doing makes for true wisdom. A wise man is humble enough to hear and so he’s able to increase his knowledge. He’s constantly seeking truth everywhere. He realizes that we never get to point that we know it all, we never exhaust our potential to learn. If you try to teach a wise man, he’ll become even wiser because he has a desire to learn. He’s also open to the corrections of others. He takes criticism well. On the other hand, the foolish man has a closed mind. He gets upset if anyone tries to correct him or show him that he may need to consider more evidence. You’ve probably known someone like this – someone who just says no to something they don’t know and they stop looking for truth. The open mind sifts what it hears to discover what comes from God and what doesn’t. Test the spirits, whether they are of God. The open mind will always examine the evidence to be sure that his conclusions are justified. It’s called wisdom. I Corinthians 2:6, 7 Jeremiah 8:9 When you reject the word of the Lord, what wisdom do you have? And the answer is, none at all. And being chosen is not the same as election unto salvation. Make distinguish between the following passages. We know what we are today, yet we know not what we are to be. There will be Ishmaelites mingled among the called. John 6:70, 71 John 13:18-28 II Thessalonians 2:13-17 Herein we fail not in our consideration of all the truth of God...every word, even that spoken by God of God Himself. In that His word reveals to us of the beginning, our understanding predestination duly considered does not shake our faith, but rather affords the best confirmation of it. The word of God is given for us to have the understanding, the wisdom to enter into right choices, right decisions. Wisdom is not smooth words, neither does it embrace or endorse self. Wisdom recognizes what is covenantal. God talked with Cain. He counseled him to do well, to be accepted. This allowed Cain to make his own decision. The same opportunity God gives us to make choices regarding what we will do. It’s called wisdom. God in His foreknowledge already knows what choices we would make. It is the truth in His word that gives encouragement to know that it is God who is performing our growth into godliness from His calling. The genuineness of this calling is for us to determine that for to us to live is Christ. We know that we belong to God...it’s called wisdom. Brothers...sisters...friends...strangers, pray that the Holy Spirit will accommodate his language to our feeble capacity. There are words of truth that simply indicate the abandonment of those who seemed to have a chief place among the elect. How do some choose not to hear His word? As the Lord by the effectiveness of His calling accomplishes towards His elect the salvation to which He had by His eternal counsel destined them, so He has judgments against the reprobate, by which He executes His counsel concerning them. Those, therefore, whom He has created for dishonor during life and destruction at death, that they may be vessels of wrath and examples of severity, in bringing to their doom, He at one time deprives of the means of hearing His word, at another by the teaching of it blinds and stupefies them the more. Ezekiel 13:9 May we consider the following truth. Ecclesiastes 1:18 Now let’s consider the man of grief and sorrows...Jesus Christ. And while we be found in him and he in us, we too will suffer like grief, like sorrow for those we know who avoid reasoning to come to truth. If sorrow and grief is the result of true wisdom and knowledge, what was the wisdom and knowledge Jesus had that resulted in His sorrow and grief"? The same must be for us. It is the knowledge that people were rejecting Jesus, rejecting truth. The king of heaven gave his life to save people from death, and the vast majority are choosing to die. Yes, die within the reach of help. This knowledge, this understanding, this reality brought great grief and sorrow to the heart of the Son of God. Does your heart go out for those who may be just one reach from grasping hold to Christ. When your wisdom gained is divinely given you too will be touched with sorrow. But because of the wisdom given by God this sorrow and grief does not overwhelm our spirit and turn us into disheartened people. Rather it drives us, with a powerful motivation, to minister to the hearts of friends, to share the truth of salvation to souls. This wisdom means that we will be serious and sober, with a deep inner-peace having no jesting of any sorts about the plan of salvation. This wisdom is a treasure that we are to share. The infallible scriptures provide teaching and grace and power in order to experience wisdom, perpetual not periodic. Wisdom prevents us from judging the bible, instead is allows the bible to judge us. How readest thou? For the bible says he is made unto us wisdom. And God’s wisdom is Christ himself. Do we with wisdom know Christ? Luke 11:28-31

20 Minutes To gain the wisdom of the word we are to have faith in the remotest eternity, the Determinate Counsel of the Triune God. This in order that we may understand what final determination God has made with regard to His elect in Christ. All by whom Christ is received in faith will be regarded by our heavenly Father as sons and daughters. If we long to be regarded as sons and daughters of God and heirs, we must ascend unto Christ. And if this is our final goal, how infatuated is it to seek out of him what we have already obtained in him, and can only find in him? Besides, as he is the Eternal Wisdom, the Immutable Truth, the Determinate Counsel of the Father, there is no room for fear that anything which he tells us will vary in the minutest degree from that will of the Father after which we inquire. It’s called wisdom. God’s foreordained plan was mysteriously hidden, because humans almost always go against God’s plainly revealed word. God knew if we knew His ordained plan, we would interfere. We can reject God’s word. We do this all the time: sin is doing the opposite of God’s will. I say again, how can God use me to spiritually impress upon your mind and your heart that there is no room for fear that anything which He reveals to us will vary in the minutest degree from that will of the Father after which we inquire. No, rather God, who calls us to reason, faithfully discloses to us what is from the beginning, and always will be. The practical influence of this doctrine of the Determinate Counsel ought also to be exhibited in our prayers. For though a belief of our election animates us to involve God, yet when we frame our prayers, it were preposterous to obtrude it upon God, or to stipulate in this way, “O Lord, if I am elected, hear me.” He would have us to rest satisfied with His promises, and not to inquire elsewhere whether or not He is disposed to hear us. We shall so be disentangled from many devices of the enemy, if we know how to make a right use of what is rightly written; but let us not inconsiderately take it to purposes different from that to which it ought to be confined. God will not change toward us with His promises. This establishes our confidence that our election is connected with our calling. But that calling and faith are of little value without perseverance. There are two aspects of calling. There is a universal call, by which God, through the external preaching of the word, invites all alike, even those for whom He designs the call to be a savor of death, and the ground of a severer condemnation. Besides this there is a special call which, for the most part, God bestows on believers only, when by the internal illumination of the Spirit He causes the word taught to take deep root in their hearts. There is however the situation where He communicates it also to those whom He enlightens for a time, and whom afterwards, in just punishment for their ingratitude, their unwillingness to reason with His word, He abandons and smites with greater blindness. God has committed His chosen called to Christ. We must not fail to understand His condescension in the ways of God as pertains to the ways of man. God condescends to our comprehension. Jeremiah 18:1-10 Isaiah 64:8 Psalms 15 Let this truth be set down as the anchor to God’s every word. The Determinate Counsel is just that...it is every aspect of God’s character. It horizons everything under the foreknowledge and foreordaining of God. Foreknowledge and foreordination are God's will, counsel, purpose, resolve, plan that associates every happening together. God both sets-up the way and knows exactly how all things were, are, and will be. God is sovereign. He directs our paths. He has written His story of mankind in order to bring to pass His will and plans. Why? To receive glory. We are His vessels, made for life or damnation according to the choice we make concerning His will. There are two standpoints by which the distinct wisdom of God is viewed. From the historical standpoint we are morally responsible for our every choice, our every deed. From the standpoint of Divine teleology, it was part of an eternal plan that explains consequences in terms of the purpose they serve rather than of the cause by which they arise. Luke 24:26 Two aspects of the same truth; our choices have consequences that are foreknown of God. Reasonable consistency of two developed experiences; our will aligned with God’s foreordain plan. God planned and ordained that Jesus should be lifted up and crucified for us who would be chosen for salvation. Jesus Christ, according to scripture sustains the entire universe and controls its comings and goings. Every heartbeat, every breath, every life and every death is in His hands. Please do not harden your heart against the scriptures simply because you cannot logically digest what is written. What is biblically truth is not always apparent truth to the mind of man. We must come to reason with the evidence of God’s election. For it is His choice. We’re talking about One who can whisper untold numbers of galaxies into existence before a moment. It is inaccurate to build divine truth on just what you think you know. We must take into account the whole of scripture. Does not the Spirit expressly teach us that the way of God is revealed in comparing spiritual with spiritual, and that is meant to say, scripture with scripture? This is the way of the Holy Ghost, “which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual”. All of God’s will is determinate and is either responsive to the responses of men or contrary. The determinate will of God turns men’s hearts and determines their response; the contrariness of God is changeable, resistible, and interactive to the responses of men. God’s resistible will was His desire that Pharaoh would let the people go, that Pharaoh would not sin, and that Pharaoh would not be hardened through pride. God was using Pharaoh as an instrument of His wrath and hatred, and He hardened him through an eternal, predestinated plan and purpose which was for His own glory – this was His eternal, irresistible, unchanging will. God hated Pharaoh from eternity past, and at present that eternal hatred hardened his heart; simultaneously, God loved Pharaoh and did not want him to sin, so much so that He was grieved over his continuance to sin. The character of God is devoted to determination, which is accomplished by His irresistible will, as God in the ways of God, as God is who He is in any given situation. They are holy ways, separate ways, and they are not even comprehensible to the ways of man except the Holy Spirit reveals them through reasoning.And it is in this way that we may accumulate the scriptural truth of every word of God. God’s mind is unchanging in every way that it is virtuous to be unchanging but open to change in every way that it is virtuous to be open to the genuineness of our relationship. When a person is in a genuine relationship with another, willingness to adjust to them is always considered a virtue. When should this apply to people and not to God? Since God is the epitome of all that is praiseworthy, and since we ordinarily consider responsiveness to be praiseworthy, should we not be inclined to view God as the most responsive Sovereign Being conceivable? He never changes His perfect character, of course, for this would not be praiseworthy. But He is willing and able to adjust His plans and emotions as His relationship with us calls for it. This adjustment was foreknown and foreordainly determined from the beginning. God changes to every one who is of faith. Though He is all holiness, all loveliness, all truthfulness, all overwhelming, all infiniteness, all wisdom, all All, He becomes more even beyond what He is to us as He is transcendent sovereignty past measurable determinatives. As we will grow in wisdom in the faith of His changes, we will give Him all the magnificence of incomparable glories that are distant after our praise. God has predetermined by appointment every tiny detail in the universe, such as the path of the dust mote in the air and all of our besetting sins. Proverbs 16:33 But the randomness of casting lots is not random to God. God is not the least taxed by keeping every sub-nuclear particle in its place. The only way to understand the truth of change as related to God is to attain the understanding from reasoning with God to know of the ultimate governing of God. This centers us in wisdom. Acts 4:27, 28 Herod and Pontius Pilate and the Gentiles and the Jews were all gathered together to do what God's foreknowledge knew and God's plan had predestined to take place in the killing of Jesus. We have God's plan and hand predestining the most horrible sins ever committed. Pilate's choices, the soldiers' cruel mockery, the piercing of his side, the cries, "Crucify him! Crucify him!"...these few hours in history were the climax of the worst wickedness that has ever been performed on the planet or ever will be. And God planned it so that we might be saved from those sins. In other words, what the devil did in unleashing all of that was commit suicide. And I pray that when we contemplate our faith in a sovereign God who governs the dust motes, when we contemplate believing in a totally sovereign God, I pray that we center our faith right on the cross and every truth brought forth by it. Some think it pathetic. Some think it most powerful. One thought is toward perishing, the other toward salvation. Faith begins and ends at the cross...for by one man...God gave us His Son. Take away the cross, you forfeit eternity. You see, brothers and sisters, when we work out in our minds to stay in the revealing of the Determinate Counsel, if we stay right there and then just work out from there as far as our mind can handle, then we'll be in safe hands. Our minds will be safe, and our hearts will be safe, because we'll be kept humble. The reason most cannot understand the determinate wisdom of God is because they fail to enter His counsel. The worst sin that was ever to be committed was foreknown and ordained by God the Father and God the Son. Wisdom is personified as a woman who has much to offer to any who may heed her words. Proverbs 1:20-33; 8:1

25 Minutes There is no place in the plan of God for human viewpoint thinking. Disunity among God’s people stem from the mindset of the natural person. So, what God allows me to write is for the few (faithful in every way). The word of God must be the source of learning. Human viewpoint makes societal norms standard against what the bible teaches. Homosexuality was once sinful, distasteful, abnormal. Today, most think it is simply how a person is born...that’s not biblical truth. There is an eternal distinction between human thinking and divine reasoning. Human centered thinking rejects those parts of the bible which they find above their ability to understand. Divine reasoning embraces the wisdom of the gospel. Human thinking operates according to a human-centered mindset, but the spiritual person operates according to a divine reasoning centered mindset. This is a life transition. This is a transition due to a strengthened faith in Christ that powers the response to truth. If you seek spiritual understanding from God through the Holy Spirit, you will come to recognize that human thinking is directly associated with attachments. To reason divinely we must discard our attachments from our humanness. Human attachments spring up from a universal human sea of self-interest. And self-interest is a great deceiver. And though the Holy Spirit is available, human attachments will seal you off from an awareness of the higher realms. You have a vague belief that your thinking is in line with what is truth. This does not mean we lose the reality of our interconnectedness with every living being around us. Goodness and integrity are continued exchanges with others. Now, this is not criticizing human thinking. It is in our suffering, our sacrificing that we hold these two qualities together. We are to know the greatness of God in human terms, but we are not to lack the divine vision offered through the Holy Spirit. In this we recognize that we must re- orient our focus to the path that the Spirit directs. We are to return to that divine image where our thoughts reflected what God thought. Genesis 2:19 This is why we are given a heavenly standard to guide us – the Word. Now we come to see how our truth clarifying efforts are principled to more efficiently spread the truth to reach minds and hearts that judge the word of God not as being suggestive but rather divinely inspired. And now, both the message and those who choose to hear are uppermost in our minds. With divine reasoning there is an accompanying inner spiritual change – calmness, heavenward focus. And what comes naturally to the human mind will no longer stand in the way of God’s purpose. And divine reasoning will present us with power and authority to understand things from the perspective of the kingdom of heaven. Verbal communication will be by revelation making plain what previously only been suggested. We will savor the things that be of God, not those that be of men. Recall when Peter’s natural tendency was to see things in human terms and made him an adversary of Jesus...he contested the word. Matthew 16:22, 23 Divine reasoning is returning to what we learned long time ago...we go to the Determinate Counsel. We need to look up and see heavenly things, but there is more to it than that, in a strangely contradictory way. In one way it is the very greatness, even divinity of Jesus, which causes our limited understanding of the nature of God, to think in human terms. But to understand the nature of his divine sacrifice we need to see him as God. In the Determinate Counsel we can divinely reason how the great and holy one was to fulfill his mission of service to others and to enter into glory through humility. And as he emptied himself, our attachment is made so complete in him that his divineness is our consolation and with that the mind for divine reasoning is presented us. And it is in this reasoning that we are to leave ourselves behind, take up our cross, and follow him. Do not be deceived about how difficult that is. To lose oneself is directly opposed to human thinking when there is so much emphasis on self fulfilment. We are in the times when the values of society dominate all fields of human endeavor. Discussions of suffering, sacrificial service is likely to be greeted with deep suspicion if not divinely reasoned with. It is this human thinking that blocks the path in front of Jesus, rather than being his follower. The human conception of the mind leads to social inferencing. Divine reasoning embodies an extension of experience to interact with the unseen minds of God. This is termed “faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God”. Human thinking is the generalization and indirect reflection of the essential attributes and interrelations between things, feelings and behaviors rooted in the brain, observable physical cues. But to reason with the word of God through the Holy Spirit is a broader process whereby relational character traits of the human and the divine starts from the premise that the mind is the origin of all behavior. If we be in the “our” image and the “our” likeness of the Godhead then reason says that the very core of God’s omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence must be His mind. And we are rendered candidates to have the mind of Christ. And for what reason. That we may have divine reasoning to be early arisers of understanding the intent of the purposes of God. By this is gained the capacity to view God not traditionally but intentionally. Human thinking details itself as God’s interpreters. Divine reasoning features its judgments on proof-texts, scripturally harmonious with the law and the testimony. If God can take a lowly rod and use it to open a pathway through the sea; if He can take a prophet's ass and use it to speak a message of rebuke to a wayward prophet, then what is to prevent Him from having determined to alter events presented in the gems of truth to show His entering into our realm for His people? If we say what God cannot do, when all that He does and will do, is already determined are we not limiting His omniscience and omnipotence? It is possible that originality is expressed in inspiration. Are the thoughts of God written by men? Can what is written in the spirit of prophecy be wisdom written or spoken in earlier times? Then can the method of God's providence as it has been written be more clearly and powerfully unfolded? Scripture is given by inspiration means God’s Spirit worked in men to write in their words. The words were penned, the men inspired. Now divinely reason the impact of God and Christ writing with “the finger”. Exodus 31:18 John 8:6 Human thinking does not resource spiritual awareness. Inspiration is not diminished by God using uninspired sources. The originality of truth is the weight given to every word of God as He determined it to be written. The Holy Spirit, He superintended the words and moved the men to produce the scriptures as well as the prophets to speak them. Learn to divinely reason with the word of God forsaking human thinking. You would be better attuned to the wisdom occasioned by the impact and the effectiveness of understanding the work of the Holy Spirit. Man’s intellect alone is not sufficient to discern the truths found in the word of God. The divine scheme of God’s word is to move us beyond our capacities that by His grace the redemption of the power of the mind may open our eyes to the all- encompassing reality of the boundless mystery and possibilities of God. The reality of human experience and spiritual reasoning will expose undeniable evidence that every word of God must converge into truth. Deviation from God’s truth is a reality of human thinking making one vulnerable to narrow- mindedness. Whenever we study the holy scriptures, we may be confronted with divine and human wisdom. Human thinking can be enlightened by divine grace through the gift of faith. There is a rich relationship between reason and revelation. They are positioned by conviction. The conviction that one must have an idea of God before one can have faith in God. These are compatible avenues to truth. Building the kingdom of God requires more than human thinking. Divine reasoning is our learning from a higher power. Human thinking works under the limitations of a finite mind and shares in the defects of a sinful nature. It is blinded by foregone conclusions, often dominated by pride. It misreads the facts or misapplies the logic. Note how God’s choice of reasoning is the mode of revelation. We find reasoning consistent with what is revealed in scriptural writings enhancing our relationship with God. We trust not the arm of flesh. Reason is a property of both humans and God. There we find humans reasoning with God and God reasoning with humans. And this event may be both a revelation and an exercise of reason. Divine reasoning is so spiritually insightful in that it understands that one thing is the case from the belief that one or more other things are the case. It may be deductive, inductive, or abductive. If “A” is truth and “B” is truth and “A” plus “B” equals “C”, then “C” is truth. If Ellen White is a messenger from God and God communicates with all His messengers, then we can know for truth that God communicates with Ellen White. In our seeking to learn by study, we use the method of reason. In our seeking to learn by faith, we rely on revelation. Being obedient to the heavenly decree, we seek learning by reason and by revelation. One may not understand the 4th commandment. But that one has faith in Jesus as revealed as the Son of God. And that one studies based upon what is revealed and reasons that living by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God means obeying the 4th commandment with or without understanding is the truth to be obeyed. We reason out what to ask God. Yet we do not expect an answer unless we have studied the issue first. The answer will agree with the law and the testimony, the principles of the gospel. Reason prepares us for the revelation. There is no conflict. The truths of which we are aware are because God has revealed them to us and we hold these truths by faith. We know by divine reasoning that something is truth because God shows it to be truth; and we have faith that something is truth because God says it. Divine reasoning gives wisdom where God’s demonstrations are available. If God infers a thing in His reason and alters that thing as was in the counsel determined to change to influence our relationship with Him and with others it is by reason. It is implicit that God is a reasoning Being and that reasoning belongs both in human-human relations and in divine-human relations. With certainty, God’s understanding exceeds ours, but that does not prevent Him from reasoning with us in terms we understand. Now human thinking may conflict with divine reasoning when faith is not manifested. Was God willing to change based on Abraham’s cry for mercy for Sodom...did Abraham reason that the judge of all the earth is right? His divine reasoning was in defense of those who might not deserve the punishment that was due the rest. Thus, in the divine-human relation, reason may not only function as a mode of revealing God’s will, it may also serve to influence divine action in the interest of the right. Divine reasoning is a consciously deeper awakening into the wisdom from God. The perception of truth is more determined. The thinking, the reasoning process is attitudinally invested with the will of God. The expressions are continuing in the mentorship of the Holy Spirit. The approach to truth is holistic and absorbed in spirituality. The mind is powered with greater visioning purposing brilliant light from the scriptures. The abundance of understanding grows the love for the truth. Divine reasoning changes the way we think...we think with a spiritual mindset that is completely under God’s control. With that the output is as the input from the Spirit of God...divine. And having spiritual influence on those who choose to hear the word of God as though nothing could ever matter again but that which is of the Determinate Counsel in its eternal purposing. This renders our greatest source of wisdom showing in the bible’s solutions to all that challenges our searching. And we experience peace in unhindered likeness of mind with Christ. The word is brought to the graces whereby it is the book of our life. It’s the book we live with, the book we live by, the book we are willing to die for. When divine reasoning is sought in God our repentance is deep seated, our forgiveness passionate, our love dedicated, our faith is unfathomable. Difficult circumstances reveal our gratitude for God’s amazing grace. Divine reasoning becomes the relevancy to discern the essence of what is revealed in the word of God. The consistent message throughout the gospel is covenanted in the life and death of Christ. Divine reasoning accepts God’s appointed sufferings as disciplines to bring about greater spiritual mindedness. Divine reasoning is a gift. Human thinking is so limited in its reasoning, it fails to recognize how the Spirit of God is guiding us into spiritual wisdom. One aspect of the function of divine reasoning is acquiring divine image. And this derives divine character. Divine reasoning affects the whole personality. It produces peace, which is reconciliation with God and the tranquility that comes as a result. It is being in the will of God and knowing it. So, as we consider divine reasoning from the perspective of coming to understand the thought of God, we see the thinking of God as the word by God uttered that we might give place to all that is impossible to be inherently purposeful by the Determinate Counsel. We see this divine reasoning in the sacredness of human life as we encounter the Lord through his word. Faith and reason are considered to be sources of justification for conscientious belief. With divine reasoning we remove theorizing all the particulars of learned knowledge. We ascend from effects to a cause, and we descend from a cause to effects. We have an evidence altogether independent of our confidence in the veracity of human thinking. The scripture scheme of reasoning is true in the nature of things; and self-evident, so that it needs nothing besides its intrinsic verisimilitude to compel our assent to it. We are offered the view of God operating on our characters through a manifestation of His own character, in order that by leading us to participate in some measure of His moral likeness, we may also in some measure participate of His happiness. Come, let us reason together. The reasonableness consists in there being a direct and divine connection between believing every word which the bible inculcates, and a being formed by the principles, to the character, which the bible recommends. Divine reasoning removes assumptions and it harmonizes the end of ends, the arriving at the place, the situation, or the condition, as a result of a course of action of His providence, and subjects everything to it. It savors resolve through revelation rather than rejection by human thinking. Truth and right prevails while viewed in itself as it runs up to the mysteries of God. The mystery of the kingdom of God, the mystery of the wisdom of God, the mystery of His will, the mystery of Christ, the mystery of the gospel, the mystery hidden for ages and now made manifest, the mystery of iniquity, the mystery of faith in a pure conscience. These measured by a divine reasoning through revelation, not by human standards. We arrange and contrast these to our understanding that we be made confidently dependent upon the Counsel’s purpose that God intends us to partake of. Without divine reasoning we are wholly ignorant of what degree of new knowledge it were to be expected God would give us by revelation, upon supposition of His affording, or how far, or in what way, He would interpose miraculously, to qualify us to whom He should originally make the revelation, for communicating the knowledge given by it; and to secure our doing it to the age in which we live, and to secure its being transmitted to posterity. It ain’t over, as divine reason enhances our belief in, and conformity to every comprehended precept. For the moral character of God is to be exhibited by impress and influence upon our minds. There is a great and important difference between human thinking and divine reasoning. Human thinking stands as an isolated, strange and unintelligible nature, and is apt even to suggest the idea, that the word holds out a premium for believing improbabilities. Divine reasoning stands indissolubly united with an act of Divine holiness and compassion, which radiates to the heart an appeal of tenderness most intelligible in its nature and object, and most compelling in its influence to reveal truth through the wisdom of God. Surely this speaks of the transcendent expediency of apprehending Christ.

20 Minutes John 14:26 This makes the Holy Spirit our living bible. He delivers the word of God to us directly at critical junctures in our lives as required. Through the ministry of the Holy Spirit, God has placed His word in our hearts and minds. This is the covenant, God’s promise. I John 2:20, 27 We are assigned to know the Word and how the bible is to be instrumented to introduce others to the Word. This is how God gives gifts to others through us. This is how we are assigned an ambassador for Christ. He wants us to use the bible in order to do our assignment, and to serve and benefit others. The movements, the events, the undertakings, the behaviors, the pursuits inside this book are invitations to explore our hearts and create a likeness of who we want our lives to be like. This is a profound, life changing principle that should direct every aspect of our relations with others. It is our assigned purpose, our appointed position, our ordained ministry. Our assignments are simply ways we express our love for God and serve Him. We do this not for reward. God is our reward. We wait for the full manifestation when Christ brings us home to our rightful inheritance. Numbers 18:20 The Lord fulfills our ultimate calling while we engage in our assignment. We are a witness to the entire nation that God called us to be a peculiar people whose inheritance is found in God Himself. Our focus is founded in Christ and him crucified. God gives us one word of instruction at a time. And it is not just instruction and the next step that we need, but the continuous, daily flow of instruction available to us while spending quality time in His presence. Remember how the Holy Spirit speaks to us the word of God. Acts 8:26-40 For Phillip to stay in tune with his assignment, he needed to hear the Spirit speak, and he had to diligently listen and be willing to take the next step. He was in a great revival where miracles were being performed; unclean spirits were coming out of the possessed, and the lame and the sick were being healed. The Spirit speaks and tells him he is to go to the desert. Phillip did not judge himself as any more important than God’s direction nor did he think that he was the “star” of the revival, so he was able to and chose to quickly obey. Where did Phillip find himself when he took one step forward in his assignment? No one knew where he was but God. We each have a unique assignment. We were not born to do what someone else is supposed to do and they were not born to do what we are supposed to do. We are all born with a purpose and our assignment is to follow and seek to finish that purpose before the Lord’s return. We are not a mistake. Though we are in the center of God’s will, we still face all sorts of challenges. Yet, we have divine grace to fulfill our assignment. Becoming who we were created to be is possible only through the grace, power and anointing of God. Our purpose has a heavenly origin, and therefore, it is beyond the perception of our natural senses. It transcends the boundaries of human reason and ability. We categorically need the Spirit of God to fulfill His unique assignment. We need to go through God’s process of transformation and maturation so we can be prepared to receive His anointing. To “anoint” means to endow someone with divine ability to do what they could not do according to their own nature and gifts. God purposes us to do His will. This divine anointing is not given to us arbitrarily. It is not given to us with an option to use it or not. And it is not given to us merely for our own purposes. It is granted exclusively for the fulfillment of a specific purpose, call or assignment. It is through the study of the word of God that we learn how to connect our anointing with our purpose. This is why some are more capable of reasoning the word of God for the deep revelations of truth. They do not frustrate their calling, their purpose, their assignment. It is impossible for the self to die without the anointing. It is the grace of the strength and wisdom of God. Acts 1:8 This anointing is the only place from which we can minister to others, to bless others. It is granted exclusively to fulfill the divine assignment that separates and consecrates us for a specific God-given mission in this life. Anointing is a sign of God’s equipping us to fulfill an assignment He’s given us. When God gives us an assignment, a plan, or a strategy, He is going to empower us. This unction is also proof that we are operating in the right calling. It comes to us in that place where we surrender our will, our full will, to the will of the Father. After our redemption experience, the unfolding of our divine assignment is the greatest undertaking of our lives.Our earthly influence and heavenly reward are tied to the deployment of our divine assignment. There is this certain thing we need to note about our divine assignment. It is the fact that our assignment was finished and perfected before we were created. It is now our task to find out and enter into what was finished before we were created. Bear in mind the determined assignment of Christ and how upon finding out and entering into that assignment he grew in wisdom and came to do His Father’s work. Psalms 139:15, 16 Luke 2:40, 49 Our assignment is why we are called. It is to bless the world with the worth and quality of our personhood and attract others to follow our inspiration and motivation to enter into the perfecting of the character that is Jesus Christ. It is in Christ that we are to become a better excellence of ourselves. Because we do not know how gifted and valuable we are to God until we allow God to introduce us to ourself as we can be in Jesus. May I say that our divine assignment is doing what God wants us to do; having what God wants us to have; going where God wants us to go and then becoming who God ultimately wants us to become, which is like Christ. In the journey of providence, God is calling us to love others as we go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.We must share the truth of Christ with people who don’t yet know him. In a world of people desperate for hope, we must be willing to share Jesus. God places a word in our spirit...He gives us a revelation. As our lives surround that revelation it comes to life within us. That revelation released into the world through our thoughts, our words, and our actions is our godly assignment. We listen to the Spirit of God. We make critical choices, hard decisions. We trust God to fill every void with His grace and provision as we walk in our godly assignment. God’s appointed assigment for us is exhaustive. It applies to everything under heaven. There is not a single thing that is random. All things are appointed. Further, every single thing under heaven has an appointed time. All things matter, and there is a difference in things under heaven and things under the sun. Under heaven is viewed from the divine perspective. It is God’s design. It is not vaporous. God will deploy angels on our behalf. They will be our resource for preparation, provision, and protection. Let this, I pray, be understood clearly...God has a very specific assigned task for us. We are to carry forth the proclaiming of the everlasting gospel. Please note that task is for “us”. We is “us,” and us is a group of people. But there is an even greater task at hand to which we’re assigned. Our major assignment is not to preach, to teach the gospel. This is not to say in any way that it is not important to God's work. We have to make sure that we give matters the right priorities. Proclaiming the gospel is certainly a huge and very vital part of the responsibility assigned the people of God. But God's major work is something far bigger and far more important than that. God is reproducing Himself in His called, chosen elect. Right from the beginning, God wanted to make sure that we understand where He is headed with His Word. And it took the assignment of the cross to get His people on track with His purpose. Our assignment in a broad generality is to gather His people, but it is spelled out more specifically for the individual as the mystical union with Christ...”I am crucified”. To outward appearance I live as other people do, my natural life is supported as others are; yet in Christ, there is a higher and nobler principle that supports and actuates me, that of faith in Christ, and especially as eyeing the wonders of his love in giving himself for me, giving me the assignment of transformation. II Corinthians 3:18 Philippians 1:6 We are, I am, recipient of the performance of God. Being brought back into the image of God. Not by chance, but assigned in the Determinate Counsel. This is God’s transcendent purpose. Our worth comes from a Creator who assigned a purpose to us before He created any of us. When we walk with God, it may not make things easy in our assignment, but it makes them possible. Walking with Him gives us assurance of His presence and power in our lives. Many times He will also lead us into new territory where we are surrounded by unfamiliar faces in order to teach us lessons that we couldn’t learn any other way. God’s assignments are blessings. True purpose can only be found by anchoring our lives in the character and call of God. It defines our life - not in terms of what we think but what God knows. And God knows exactly where we need to be and who we need to be with, in order to equip us for our life assignment. And He is working to get us exactly where we need to be. It's the place where our passion for our assignment meets God’s promises. What does it mean to be in alignment with God? It is when our hearts are right with God, where our spirits, souls, and bodies work together in peace and harmony. We are three- part beings; spirit, soul, and body. When we are aligned with God, the spirit rules the soul and body...our spirits are born-again. By His grace, He orchestrates every detail of our lives for the ultimate purpose of His glory. God is gathering His people and we have a significant role to fulfill in His working in us both to will and to do. We are to know our assignment in the body of Christ. Our assignment may be as simple as being kind to strangers, but it may also be serving as one sent from God to a hostile situation where we lose our life, or any number of assignments in between. Either way, God has equipped us with His spirit, He continually leads us and He will be our peace as we work out the details through the guidance of the Holy Spirit. God didn’t create us to do a job for Him, He created us to be His child, plain and simple. We must step into every opportunity to love people. We must steward our love intentionally. We are to know acknowledgeably that God is our Father and Christ is our Savior and in them is our assigned purpose fulfilled.

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.