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The Musings about Knowing what I Know
It has been just over the past three months that Jesus has helped me to clarify how to articulate that ministry He has been preparing my life for.
Have you ever been so unenlightened about His path for you?
I wanna call it confused but Jesus is not the author of confusion so I cannot. It is just a matter of not knowing or having the correct words to use to say what I know I already know.
I have known that I am gifted to teach, speak and make clear the life lessons found in the Bible. BUT can I articulate that in one little sentence or phrase that says it all. I have not been able too for many years until just recently.
I have known that I would live my whole life in ministry to Jesus whether it is talking to family, a complete stranger or my boss. It was only at the beginning that I did it without any fear. (When you do it without fear it usually turns out bad.)
The Beginning of Musing
My beginning was rocky and hard to follow because I needed to get to a place where I was actually walking in ministry to Jesus. I needed to be trained in everything from morning routines to money management, from goal setting to boundary defending, from how I thought about myself to how I thought about others.
All of that training put me in position to live in my ministry to Jesus. It all started with understanding that the more I knew Jesus the more I began to know about who I am.
This is a small part of the journey I will never regret and will never forget because it had a profound impact on who I thought I was.
I was that small tree I kept seeing on my path to my “City on the Hill” (my vision from God).
https://kathleenderbyshire.com/register/knowing-jesus-is-knowing-me/ -
Spiritual Strength
I have been going to church for 15 years. There have been times when I have not attended due to circumstances beyond my control but overall I have attended one church or another for that time frame. I have been teaching Bible Studies for at least 10 of those 15 years. I claim my blessing from God, for the great understanding of the Holy Bible, and the great zeal for applying it into my life, even when it hurts.
The application of the Bible is how we can gage our maturity in the words preached to us by the Holy Spirit and by the Book that is meant to teach us maturity. The Holy Bible is a circular book. It gives us information to apply into our life, then, to do it Biblically, we have to go back into the Bible to understand how to apply it. Do we see the people in our church doing it that way? Are our fellow pew warmers and example of that?
Let’s look at what kind of people are sitting in the pews next to us right now. As I see it there are three: those who love Jesus but don’t know Him, those who know Jesus but don’t love Him and those who love Jesus and know Him.
Those who love Jesus but don’t know Him are those who are sitting beside you because their mom sat beside you. They love Jesus because their mom loved Jesus. They love Him because people told them loving stories about Him. They may have seen His work or heard about His work in the lives of others but they know it not in their own life because they know Him not. It’s sad but very common. Is this you?
Or maybe this is you. Those who do not love Jesus but know Him are also sitting beside us in the pews. They are the ones who know Jesus but do not believe who He is. They have also been in the church for a long time based on their knowledge of Jesus. But the more they know Him the more they hate Him. Their hatred is not something they keep to themselves, they want us to hate Jesus too. They are the false prophets among us. They love Him not.
And then there are the people who love Jesus and know Jesus. These are the ones sitting beside you who worship Jesus with all their being. They want to know Jesus and they want to love Him more. They are addicted to the way they feel about Jesus. They have the spiritual strength we envy.
Guess what. You don’t have to envy it, you can have it too. You can know those who love Jesus for no reason of their own and those who hate Jesus because their knowledge is not perfected about Him. It is all about your knowledge.
We know that it takes time to learn. Knowledge lingering around in our heads without pondering its importance to our life causes our knowledge to be incomplete. No mystery is solved, no problem worked out, no advanced knowledge gained, no spiritual growth resulting in no spiritual strength.
A Christian without spiritual strength is a weak Christian. Someone who is swayed by a false prophet into hating Jesus. Someone who is lulled into thinking, the Jesus they love, is their Jesus and not their parents. We got out of the mud with our spiritual strength would it be a good thing to land back in there again. It would be tragic to say the very least.
Spiritual strength comes from loving Jesus and knowing Him or vise versa knowing Jesus and loving Him. Any other way will not give us the strength we need because we will not even know we have it. Do a search this week on strength in the Bible. Learn about the strength we have in us as a result of the Holy Spirit bringing it with Him. Then believe it so you can use it to ward off deception.
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The 3 Ways to Gain Peace
As a Christian we are not to be in turmoil with the world or anything in the world. The Bible was written for us to have peace from it. John tells us that Jesus spoke to us, so in Him we may have peace. In the world we will have tribulation, but we are not to go nuts, go insane or go berserk because Jesus has overcome the world. When He overcame the world, He gave us His peace in knowing Him. In knowing Him we just have to read the Words He spoke. He spoke all of His Words so in Him we can have peace (John 16:33).
I know that sounds tough, but it isn’t. When you become a Christian, God woos you until you fall head over heels in love with Him. Imagine, when you fall in love for the first time. You cannot get them out of your mind. That is what Jesus is doing with us. He has chosen us as His bride and He is making us fall in love with Him, day by day. Peace comes with this love. There are three ways you can gain this peace: calm yourself by talking to Jesus, know the laws of God and believe unto righteousness to sow peace.
Way One: Calm Yourself by Talking to God
My favorites part of being a Christian is the ability to speak to Jesus. When I first became a Christian, I had no idea how to speak to Jesus but in time I learned, no matter where I am or what I am doing I can speak to Jesus about anything. I would rather have a one-sided conversation with Jesus than a two-sided conversation resulting in hurt feelings. I learned to keep my mouth shut and talk with Jesus after the fact. Fifteen years later, I am becoming an expert at it. We all have feelings and sometimes they get out of control or hurt. As Christians, we have a God who cares about not only us but all the other people we are supposed to serve. He knows we will be hurt sometimes and He doesn’t want us to be the one doing the hurting.
Philippians 4:6-7 says, “be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” We can say anything to Jesus and He will listen. I have said many things to Jesus including my misguided complaints against Him. There was a time when life was not as it should be, in my eyes, and I blamed Jesus for the way it was turning out. I couldn’t believe He wanted me to live that way, but He had a purpose for what was happening in my life. You are that purpose. Jesus taught me that I am not the only one He loves and taught me to calm myself and love, not only Him but His law.
Way Two: Know the Law of God
Because Jesus allowed me to say anything to Him I was able to speak until I discovered the real reasons why I could not have peace. I was so filled with sin that it had to be rooted out and dealt with. The only Person who can make that happen is Jesus Himself. I was reading the Word of God at the same time I was dealing with the sin bubbling up like ditch water. It stank, and it was good for nothing but carp. I needed to be taught how to use His Word to heal my wounds. I fell in love with the Law of God knowing its healing power in my life.
Psalm 119:165 tells us “Great peace have those who love Your law, and nothing causes them to stumble.” God says that if we love His law nothing will cause us to stumble. He is not saying you will never stumble but if you love the law of not lying you will not stumble when faced with a situation that might cause you to lie. It is one law at a time that changes us. We fall in love with one law at a time and we are changed by that love. To know the laws of God is to be changed by them. There might be some laws you don’t know yet or love, but when you know them and fall in love with them, you will not stumble. When we don’t stumble because we love the laws of God it is easy to believe unto righteousness.
Way Three: Believe unto Righteousness to Sow Peace
When you talk to Jesus about everything that is bothering you, and find He responds, you believe there is hope. Hope that life will get better. Hope the pain you are suffering will go away. Hope there will be peace in your life someday. You will learn His law more knowing He can be trusted with your dirty swamp waters. The swamp water begins to clear, and you can actually see beyond it. This is the fruit from your belief. Living, clear water, even in your ditches.
James 3:18 tells us the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. The living clear water in our heart is the fruit of the righteousness we now have from loving the law of God. Our hearts filled with this clear living water is sown to others. John 7:38 tells us those who believe will have living water coming out of them. This is how we sow peace. We can believe in Jesus and be righteous. We can sow peace by holding our tongue during a time of strife. The calm feeling we have is felt by others as peace and they want it. Peace sown.
We must set our mind to having this peace. If you cannot seem to gain peace in your life, then the Word of God is not in you. There can be no other result from the Words of Jesus then peace. He has told us what will happen in the world. He has told us what will happen to us. He has told us what He is doing. His Word gives us the hope we need for the peace we need to do what He has called us to do.
While chaos is erupting around you, you will be the one people look to for peace in the situation. They will look to you for stability. If this is what you want than gaining a peace from Jesus is the only way you will be able to do this. You must calm yourself enough to hear from Jesus, know His laws enough to know what is right and wrong and know that you are about to sow a peace no one will be able to understand unless they love Jesus Christ. Therefore, I beseech you, brothers and sisters, to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called, with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (Ephesians 4:1). Our love for each other, our lowliness and gentleness with longsuffering bearing with each other comes from a bond of peace. You can have this peace, with me, and your brethren. It is the best feeling in the world to know that there is nothing you can do that God cannot handle so go live in peace.
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Too Much Information
Have you ever seen or heard something you wished you had not? Has someone told you a dirty little secret they should not have yet you still heard it? Has God told you something you wish you didn’t know? There will always be a time in our life we think we have too much information. Unfortunately, we cannot unknow what we know. Sometimes, I would like to just hit the rewind button and write over that knowledge with other more desirable information but it cannot be done. Knowledge is very important to every human being. We thrive based on the knowledge we have. We are destroyed by lack of knowledge (Hosea 4:6). There are three ways to deal with desirable or undesirable knowledge from said information. We can ignore/repeat it, we can neglect/use it or we can disregard/keep it. The choices are ours to make.
Ignore or Repeat
When we get undesirable personal knowledge about people our maturity level determines whether we ignore the information or we repeat it (1 Corinthians 14:20). Ignoring the information doesn’t mean we ignore the person especially if they are in need of hope. What it means is we can discern if we should even have that information. Is it desirable information or undesirable. If we make the decision we should not have this knowledge we should ignore it but we cannot unknow it so we pray. If we make the decision to repeat the undesirable information we are choosing to perpetuate what the Life Skills Encyclopedia calls tail bearing. Gossiping hurts you and it hurts everyone around you. You cannot unlearn this knowledge but you can choose to not speak of it.
Neglect or use
In the event you are lucky enough to hear a Word from God, who is the source of all knowledge, will you choose to neglect it or will you use it to gain further knowledge. The only way to unknow the knowledge of God is if He removes it from you (Luke 8:18). The reason He will remove it is neglect of His Words. On the other hand, He gives more knowledge when we use the knowledge He gives us. Each piece of information He gives us may very well dangle in midair for some time until one piece of information He gives us joins all the pieces together to create a complete knowledge about what He has been teaching us. Using those pieces of information has resulted in our great discovery of the knowledge of God.
Disregard or Keep
We are blessed enough to be able to use information from both human minds and the mind of God. We also have another avenue to receive information, the devil. The more information we speak about the more information the devil knows we have and what we are using it for. If we neglect the information from God the devil also knows. He has been studying humans for eons. He knows what we are capable of doing and he can fool us with information that sounds like it is from God. It is our job to be able to discern whether we are hearing from the devil or God. If it is from the devil we should disregard that information because it is meant to get us into trouble. If it is from God we need to keep it in our heart. The heart or soul is where we keep the pieces of information God means to use later to complete our knowledge.
Consider the Source
We always have to take the source into consideration. This can be a major obstacle for some folks because they can be deceived by the source of the information. There are three sources of information, man, God and the devil. There are only two types of information, false or true, and both can be skewed in the reception. Each person is apt to make up their own mind about information based on their history and who is giving them the information. We are called to be discerning with the information we receive because we cannot unlearn the knowledge we have. We need to be careful what we listen too so we will obtain more desirable information rather than undesirable information. We can gain desirable information from man, from God and from the devil. We need to learn how to use it appropriately to become more knowledgeable about our God. From God, you can never have too much information.
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Awareness Makes us Abound Part 2
Being aware of our actions is something even the world preaches. How much more does God preach it? Open the first page of the Bible, is it there? Yes it is. God wants us to be aware of how this world came into being. He is making us aware of His actions. He is not shy in telling us the actions of those He created either. He tells us how some folks disobeyed Him and some obeyed Him. Our awareness of these facts gives us hope for our own behaviour. There is no way to improve any of our life skills until we are aware of the actions we are taking to create our own issues. God has this knowledge and we have this knowledge.
I always begin each Life Skills Session with awareness training. We can only begin our abundant life with awareness. We need to know what we are doing that is robbing us of abundance first then we need to modify the lies into truth to pursue the abundant life. It makes sense but how often do we try to skip the awareness phase and move right into the doing phase. If we do not know where we are going when we go how can we get to this unknown place. This is why so many people, including Christians, are going in circles all of their life. Let us stop, learn what we are doing wrong and go in the right direction. This is the way to go from foolishly spinning in circles to the straight path of knowledge.
Abound in Knowledge
If we incline our ear to wisdom and apply our heart to understanding we will find the knowledge of God (Proverbs 2). The straight path to knowledge is wisdom and understanding. There is only one place to learn – the Lord. Reading the Word of God is the only way to acquire the knowledge we need to dispel the lies that make us into fools. We first learn of our sin then made aware of the lies causing us to go down the path of sin. The devil fears God because His truth sets us free from those lies. The last thing he wants us to do is abound in knowledge so he feeds us lies so close to the truth that we believe them. When we read God Word He will feed us truths so thoroughly we will begin to learn of the lies. This can only happen if we are reading His Word and gaining the knowledge of Him. The devil wishes for us to be enslaved but God wished for us to be enriched in everything by Him (I Corinthians 1:5). Being enriched in the Lord makes us abound in knowledge all day long.
“Gold there is, and rubies in abundance, but lips that speak knowledge are a rare jewel.” (Proverbs 20:15) How rare is it to speak to someone who knows what the deep lies are that cause them to sin. Jesus said when you are His disciple you shall know the truth and IT shall set you free (John 8:32). This alone should send you searching for the truth in His Words. The freedom of knowing why we act foolishly helps us to put the lies off and strive to prevent sin from happening again in the future. If we feel foolish behaviour bubbling up we can push it back down with the Truth. Knowing and using the Word of God is how we will be able to push those lies back down (Matthew 4:1-11). This knowledge first comes from a fear of the Lord (Proverbs 1:7) and knowing the devil has come to destroy everything God has created including you (John 10:10). Jesus has come to give life more abundantly and He does this with His Word. Do not let yourself be destroyed from lack of knowledge. He will be with you as you learn. He will neither leave you nor forsake you (Hebrews 13:5). Speaking the Truth will make us abound in knowledge all day long.
You know where to go to get this knowledge and you know speaking the truth makes us abound in knowledge the only place left to go is to set our heart on seeking it. This is not easy but worth every minute we go seeking. We need to decide if we want to be the rare jewel that speaks knowledge in our world. If our answer is “yes” we need to set our heart to go after it at all costs. Is living a life free from anguish worth it? Is living a life free from sin worth it? Is the current pain for the future joy worth it? I say, “YES!” Jesus says, “YES!” “The heart of the discerning acquires knowledge, for the ears of the wise seek it out.” (Proverbs 15:14) Your ears have heard His Word now we must have a discerning heart that acquires knowledge with ears that seek to hear it. This is harder than it looks today because there are fewer “rare jewels” than there used to be. Check the statistics on church going Canadians today compared to yesteryear. There are more false churches and more false prophets today (Matthew 24:11) we need to weed through for the one who actually teaches the truth. It is easier to weed through people is we do not rely on them for the knowledge we need. No one knows you better than the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 2:11). Don’t look to people for the truth but to God’s Word. It is the only place we can trust to find the whole truth. Always seek the truth from the Word of God and you will abound in knowledge all the day long.
Your Choice to Escape
Being aware of our actions and the ramifications of them is how we can become aware of our thought process too. Sometimes admitting to the general lies leads us to begin seeing the deeper lies that made us who we are today. The general sins are the sins everyone already sees, it is the deep sins we need to get too. When we start recognizing them we can either ignore them to continue in the foolishness or we can pay attention to them to become knowledgeable. We have the choice. How can we choose anything else but God? If we call ourselves a Christian the choice should be easy. There is a lot of pain involved in gaining this knowledge but we have one thing on the world when it comes to dealing with it – Jesus! We can call on Him to give us the knowledge we need to endure it. We might be tempted to walk away because of the anguish but God will always provide an escape before we sin (1 Corinthians 10:13). The escape will be based on whether you chose to abound in foolishness or abound in knowledge. Choose to abound in knowledge and God will tell you the escape.
