This is a feature issue of the web site and is provided to help Christians determine the Will of God in their lives.
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When the Devil plays God
Total surrender and satanic deception
In order for Christians to have the fullness of oneness with God Christians must totally surrender their personal willing process to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is God's manifestation in our soul and is sent to us by the risen Christ. The Holy Spirit works with us within our soul to sanctify us unto God. This happens by remaking our mind so that our mind is like that of Jesus Christ full of the awareness of God our Father in Heaven. Through the Holy Spirit we are therefore bound to His very life and all the attributes of that Life which is itself Life Eternal and has the main attribute of Love. So because of this Love and this Life to which we are bound and within which we are sealed the Holy Spirit transforms our souls so that we have the mind of God. This mind set was manifested in human form as Jesus Christ. This means we grow more perfect as Jesus was perfect, even though we may stumble here and there along the way. We grow more perfect as Jesus was perfect in the ways of God, we hate evil as does God and we love righteousness as does God. We grow in love and concern for our fellow humans and for the creation that God formed within Himself. We seek knowledge of the written word of God (the Bible) so that we can fill our mind with the truths therein and learn about His ways, and His Will and Purpose for mankind. But more simply put, we seek knowledge of the written word of God so that we can find testimony to confirm our progress in becoming more fully one with the Living Word of God - Jesus Christ.
The Gospel of John, the fourth book in the New Testament part of the Bible explains that The Word was with God and was God and through Him were all things created. Further, the Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us as God incarnate, Jesus Christ. It is this same Jesus who was crucified, dead and buried, and who on the third day rose and triumphed over death and ascended into Heaven to again be with God the Father. This same Jesus Christ sends us the Holy Spirit to teach us all things so that we also may be one with God the Father in Heaven and grow into the fullness of oneness that Jesus had with the Father.
It is to this end - oneness - that we renounce our disobedience to the ways of God and follow symbolically in the footsteps of our saviour. We repent of our sins which have separated us from this oneness and eternal life and enter into a process of transformation where our souls are remolded to have the mind of Christ and our bodies become the tabernacle of the Living God.
Our turning away from sin is accomplished by accepting that Jesus Christ paid the price for our sin. Jesus who was perfect shed his blood and died. Following his physical death He entered as son of man the total blackness and agony of separation from God - the realm of eternal death. But as son of God and with the power of God overcame that separation and created a place that where He is we may be also. His victory over death and the consequences of sin are more than just symbolic events. He, as son of man, perfect in all ways, faced the reality and consequences of sin and only He as Son of God was able to triumph over that situation. It is important to realize that Jesus transformed the realities of creation itself as only the Living Word of God could do.
As a result of all of this we as Christians say we have the position of righteousness because of Jesus Christ. We say Christ is our high priest our mediator who shed His blood as a sacrifice and stands between us and God the Father so that God sees the righteousness and perfection of Jesus and not our corrupt nature. This is a change in reality, not a symbolic event. So by dying to sin with Jesus Christ we are risen with Him in righteousness. We use the expression "we are washed in the blood of the lamb", where Jesus is compared to the lambs in the Old Testament that were sacrificed for atonement of sin by the priest. Obviously this is symbolic in one way as we are not physically washed in the common sense of the word. But in a very real way His death is atonement for our sin. The sacrifice offerings of the Old Testament were like a sign portending what was to come, a kind of preparation representing the work of the Messiah who was to come. For Christians Jesus is both the lamb and the priest. So God has forgiven us and forgives us when we stumble as long as we hold our focus on becoming fully one with Him.
But here is the challenge. Transformation from the old man to the new man, often compared to being born again, is not without difficulty. If we accept Jesus Christ as our saviour and don't enter into the process of full sanctification then we can expect very hard times with respect to what goes on in our minds. For it is our minds that need to be transformed as we have already formed a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. That relationship occurs when Jesus Christ sends the Holy Spirit with the expectation that we renounce sin as a way of life and turn to God through Him for our salvation. The expectation is we have committed our souls to change - change enabled by the Holy Spirit in our souls and change that moves us towards total unconditional surrender to the Will of God. This change makes our willing process open to anything God would ask us to feel and do in His service towards His plan of creation which He had purposed and ordained in Jesus Christ - the Living Word of God. So one way or another change must come to the child of God and it will come easy or it will come hard depending upon how we focus on this process and how fully we yield our willing process to the Holy Spirit.
You will find on this site streaming audio, and transcripts of sermons and teachings from various ministers that point out aspects of Christian living such as faith, courage, prayer, reading the scriptures, and many other things that come together to provide a total victory over sin in our lives and eventual oneness so complete, that we learn to live every breathing moment in a degree of oneness and righteous behavior. The objective is oneness so complete, that we know we are aware of the will of God in our lives, we know we are obedient to the will of God in our lives, we know what service God calls us to as his child, and we have the power, the persuasion, the conviction, the faith, and the means to accomplish this service. Praise be to God.
One of the reasons this transforming process can be very difficult is because our enemy the Evil One - Satan - is positioned to have access to our minds and is able to determine where we are weak and attacks us at this weak point. This happened with Peter and caused him to sin further by renouncing Jesus. Read the passage for yourself, it says a lot about how Satan is involved and can fiddle with our minds. Fiddle, is a good word here. Satan takes a weakness and distorts and magnifies it until it becomes a preoccupation and a full fledged lie, the product of a masterful deception designed to distract us from what God wants for us and lead us down a pathway of growing deception and as far away from oneness with God as Satan can manage. The strategy of Satan is to neutralize Christians through his lies and deceitful influence on our minds. This is no game or fantasy, this is serious business and so we should well understand how subtle any attack can be that Satan is capable of levelling at us.
Satan even tempted Jesus. In Luke 4 we read: 1. Then Jesus, being filled with the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness being tempted for forty days by the devil. And in those days He ate nothing, and afterward, when they had ended, He was hungry. And the devil said to Him, "If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread." But Jesus answered him, saying, "It is written, 'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.' " Then the devil, taking Him up on a high mountain, showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And the devil said to Him, "All this authority I will give You, and their glory; for this has been delivered to me, and I give it to whomever I wish. Therefore, if You will worship before me, all will be Yours." And Jesus answered and said to him, "Get behind Me, Satan! For it is written, 'You shall worship the LORD your God, and Him only you shall serve." Then he brought Him to Jerusalem, set Him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to Him, "If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down from here. For it is written: 'He shall give His angels charge over you, To keep you, ' and, 'In their hands they shall bear you up, Lest you dash your foot against a stone.' And Jesus answered and said to him, "It has been said, 'You shall not tempt the LORD your God.' " Now when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from Him until an opportune time.
The above Bible passages are full of ways in which the devil - Satan - will attack. Notice that Satan knows and can quote scripture but it is always misapplied. Notice that Satan tries to appear like an angel of Light trying to help make a decision but always with a secret agenda.
During 40 days of fasting Jesus was tempted but ate nothing. He must have been physically very weak and tired. Here we learn that our physical condition can make us susceptible to temptation. The devil often attacks when we are tired and stressed. Our minds and our bodies affect each other. We should never tax our bodies or stress out our minds beyond what we can bear. This is why we should seek the company of Christians successful in the faith. They will sense our condition and help us discover God's Will. Those successful in the faith will not tell us what to do but they will help us find the answers, they will pray for us, but they will not take the place or authority of the Holy Spirit in our life because they will know that God works in each of us in a special way and God's Will is for each of us to discover. Fellow Christians in the faith can identify when our thoughts and actions violate the written word of God because their minds should be steeped in the written word from years of reading and meditating on the word. We should care for our mind and our body with proper nutrition, rest, and care but at the same time these physical consideration are not enough and we should remember "It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God."
Jesus came to save the lost and will come again to judge and rule. Notice how Satan ignores the 'saving of the lost' part of God's plan in Jesus and skips directly to ruling the kingdoms of the earth something that would not be in God's timing for that is a future step for Jesus. Notice particularly how the issue of oneness with God is side stepped. And notice the price that would be paid by Jesus: "Therefore, if You will worship before me, all will be Yours." This is always the consequence of giving into temptation, it dissipates the power of the believer and empowers Satan. And note here also that Satan is asking for worship that belongs only to God. Satan is saying, "listen to me and accept the pleasures of the flesh, accept the glory of worldly things, take your mind off of the things of God and worship me." There is much more to be learned in this Bible chapter but the last line "he departed from Him until an opportune time" is an important line. We can expect to be tempted anytime when that time is perceived by Satan as an opportunity to take us down and out and draw us deeper into sin and further from the oneness of God.
Have you ever noticed how in the country coyotes try to draw off the farm watch dog so they can get at the chickens, or sheep, or other livestock. They are very strategic and deceitful. One coyote will creep close to the farm and start howling. The watch dog will hear this and if inexperienced, go after the sound and will be drawn further out by the single coyote. Meanwhile the rest of the pack will either silently move in on the livestock or will encircle the watch dog and kill it if they can - or both. We have on our farm 3 watch dogs that have learned not to be drawn off and they go to different parts of the farm and bark thus confusing the coyotes. Our mind must be like that of Jesus. The coyote in my example is Satan. One watch dog is your conscience, your sense of God's will or your immaturity in that respect. Your other watch dog is the written word of God. Your third watch dog is the Holy Spirit. Although this is only an analogy it does show how your focus, the Bible, and the Holy Spirit should all work as one in agreement to any kind of decision you make. And always bear in mind the subtle nature of deceit and twisting of the truth that can take place. And the less of a reality any one of these is in your life the easier it will be for Satan to sidetrack God's purpose for you in His service.
Satan can play the part of God. Satan can take a weakness and appeal to our fleshly desires, our fears, our lack of faith, our ignorance of scripture, and even our conscience. It all depends on how the weakness is fashioned in our minds. Satan playing God with our conscience is an important issue because it is one way that evil can dominate our lives and for some reason is often missed in sermons and teachings. Look at the meaning of the word conscience. You will find something of this sort. "knowledge of one's own acts as right or wrong, to have one's own conscience - to feel guilty about." Another way of viewing this word is in terms of its roots and we might come up with something like "with careful thought". God within us, the Holy Spirit is NOT our conscience. Human action, human perception, human thought, human emotion and human motivation all come about as part of the functioning of the human mind. Every human has some kind of a conscience, that is the ability to reflect on the consequences of how our mind appears to be operating and the corresponding behavior and consequences that comes out of this. But no two individuals have the same conscience. Our conscience is NOT God it is a mental construct that gets created to help us make moral decisions of right and wrong. God is spirit and we as Christians are bound to God spiritually through the Holy Spirit sent to us by Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit works in our souls from a spiritual basis of action that eventually transforms our mind into one of understanding and obedience with consequent behavior which is our service to God - what He wants done in our lives. People all over the world, depending upon upbringing, culture, religious background, and such things all have very different consciences. That is why it is necessary when focussing on the transformation process engaged in with the Holy Spirit that we seek guidance from the written word of God. Our conscience is faulty, it is a weak point, it is a mental ability that itself must be transformed. Our conscience was born in sin and grew in sin just as the human soul is born in sin with the resultant separation from God. Liberalists that try to remake Christianity into something not based on scripture have helped spread this lie that God is in all mankind from birth via their conscience. They say we are all linked to God via our conscience and that our conscience is the Holy Spirit. Or some go further and even deny there is a Holy Spirit or any need for redemption through Christ and they insist that our conscience is sufficient and we do not have to be transformed or born again, all we need to do is listen to our conscience. The Bible teaches that all things are created by God and cohere or have their being in God, that God is spirit and that God makes things happen not by power or might associated with the creation but by His Spirit. Man, is a creation of God born as a soul with a mind and at the heart of man's soul is his spirit. Man is born as a living soul and born separated from God - born in sin. All that man is needs to be redeemed. God reconciles us to Himself through Christ Jesus. By this means we receive the Holy Spirit and the work of transformation begins. Our mind and all that it is including our conscience is remade in the image of the mind of Jesus Christ. And we our bound and sealed to Life Eternal - the Living Word of God - through our oneness with the Father via the Holy Spirit joining to our spirit. popup(RI) or NP(RI)
Also, God is a God of order not confusion;. God is Holy and not comprehensible by the human mind and that is why Jesus said he is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, no man comes to the Father except through the Son. Because we are human and think in terms of the creation (and are part of the creation) so we can only perceive a relationship with God if we look to the perfect human manifestation of such a relationship and that means looking at Jesus Christ and accepting his teachings and the Holy Spirit's work in our lives. There is purpose in the coming and resurrection of Jesus Christ - something that was foreordained before the foundation of the world. This purpose and other things we learn about God and His creation make it evident that God is a God or order. Therefore God will reform our minds in an orderly way and there will be balance formed where before there were incorrect priorities and the unimportant was made important. When our minds are remade there will be orderly controlled thinking where before there was contradictions and confusion of motives, desires and feelings. There will be stability formed and faithful thinking processes. There will be anchor points put in place as a reference point to help keep truth and order foremost in our minds. There will be an unfolding of knowledge and the development of wisdom and a commitment to God's purpose and plan for our lives. And all these things will help reshape our so called conscience. We should never say the Holy Spirit is our conscience. But we can safely say the Holy Spirit will shape our conscience over time as we mature in the ways of our Lord. So a conscience immature in the ways of God will be highly susceptible to deceit through temptation. So beware.
One of the best ways to understand how Satan can manipulate our conscience and even how you might detect this manipulation before it goes too far is as follows. If you find yourself feeling guilty about something then ask yourself on a scale of one to 10, of all the things in your life that you should feel remorse over how does this item fit? Did you check your scale?. Always keep this scale handy. Consider it in your mind like the weight and balance scale that you hold up in your hand before your eyes. Important to God issues on the one side, issues of lesser importance on the other side. How does the scale tip? Did you have people on your scale - how you affect them - as top of your scale or do you have people and your affect on them near the bottom or not even on your scale? People have to be at the top of the scale - all people - Jesus taught us that. Your growth in knowledge of the written word, the Bible, where is that on your scale? Are you learning more everyday as to how the Holy Spirit wants you to change or have you fallen way behind in your learning of the spiritual things taught in the scriptures? How can your mind possibly be telling you the right things if it is not steeped in the scriptures for in the scriptures we learn of others just like us and how they loved God with all their heart, mind and soul. So where on your scale is the reading of the scriptures? The attributes in our behavior that Jesus taught, the way we extend His love to others, where is that on your scale? These teachings are explained in many ways all through the New Testament. Are you taking these teachings seriously? Do you even understand them? When you stumble and know that you have acted unrighteous and unloving do you recognize the mistake, do you make every effort to change and not recommit the mistake? Do you seek God's intervention with that problem and try to get it rooted out of your soul? Where is that on your scale of things to feel guilty about? Do you feel guilty about little things but not big things, things in the past but not things that are happening now? Where is position on the scale for this kind of conduct and mentality? Do you forgive yourself as Christ has forgiven you and will forgive you when you stumble or do you condemn and persecute yourself for being the sinful human that needs God's redemption through Jesus Christ but for some strange reason cannot forgive yourself and carry on with the important things God has for you to do? First things first and in order of importance. Remember, Satan can and will - if you let him - use your conscience in ways that the unimportant gets most of your attention and the important things get ignored because of your preoccupation with guilt over the lesser things. All sin is sin but in the scheme of remaking your mind some things are far more important than other things - this should be obvious but feelings of misplaced guilt condemn us and fill our minds with stress and struggle that should not be going on in the first place. We must rely of the peace of God and bask in His love and focus with the Holy Spirit to form a balanced mind planted firmly in His written and Living Word. Never feel guilty and condemned, we are all guilty of sin but our position before God is one of grace as we are deemed righteous. So if we sin, small or large, seek forgiveness and make the necessary changes so it will not happen again, and if it does, seek special intervention by God through prayer and meditation, and if you are still having problems seek the confidence of other Christians who are seasoned and known good warriors of God.
We fight not against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers that are not of this world. We fight against the Evil One who would destroy us and prevent us from having the fullness of oneness with the Living God. So now comes the worst and most deceptive attack on our spiritual well being; when Satan takes some weakness of our mind in some very subtle twist and starts to work it because it evokes a guilty response or memory, or some other attribute that can be worked against this oneness. Let's take just one example, something that sounds noble and for which there is scriptural backing but also something that should never be undertaken unless ordained by God. Let's say you or someone else gets preoccupied with the notion you must jump on the first plane to Africa, leaving all, and be a missionary. More and more you worry and fret about this and become obsessed with the notion. Soon you think that you will only have peace of mind if you just give into what has become an obsession of your conscience (possibly an immature conscience at that). Indeed some ministers teach "Do you find yourself more and more thinking that you should be doing a certain thing?" Then they say, this could be God. Yes it could, But it could also be Satan playing on an as yet not fully matured Christian mind, a mind still subject to confusion, lack of faith, and not filled with knowledge and wisdom and operating with an unbalanced scale. Let's say in your church or from a TV ministry you or someone else seems to get prompted to do this thing and you or they feel totally guilty. Let's say it is you. Your conscience is bothering you to no end. You just have to give in and do it. So in tears and emotional distress you or whoever is our example, surrender to being a missionary, leave their wife (or husband) and family (for whom they have a responsibility before God), their home, possessions. and even their debts, their friends and their work, even their wallet and their broken down car, supposedly giving all up to God, thinking that God has brought upon them this very noble thing they feared most in doing. Note the word feared. Just because we fear doing something or wish not to do something does not mean that God will ask us to do it nor does it mean that God even wants us to do it. God is beyond all that. God does not play games, God is in the business of life. But because we fear or because we have desires not rooted in God but rooted in the world, or for many other reasons any of which may constitute a weakness that can be distorted and about which truths can be twisted and scriptures applied out of context to the situation, we are vulnerable. For people like in this example, Satan may have struck their conscience with guilt and remorse and they assumed that a guilty feeling must always come from God. Not so!!! But they think God must be telling them to do this very thing they now dread or don't want to do, but cannot bring themselves to disobey what they now are convinced God wants them to do. And maybe others are irresponsibly telling them to do this thing simply because they did and they think it is a great thing to do and must always be in the Will of God.. This can happen! Yes this can happen in our example whether it is you, someone else, or me. If not as in our example something just as terrible.
Anything, that takes away from what God really wants us to do in His service in our life is a terrible tragedy even if it is something as noble as being a missionary. Dear reader, God wants us to do what God wants, not what a guilty conscience wants. Maybe we just want to do great things for God. But listen! Anything, no matter how insignificant it might appear to us, if called by God to do it, then it is indeed a great thing. No you might not be viewed as a great person by doing it. You may even be misunderstood and slandered. But you will earn the favor of God in the same degree as anyone else doing what God wants them to do. Really hear this - I beg of you! Learn the value of doing what God wants, in the way God wants it to be done, and in the time or place that God wants it done. This is your greatest reward. For both you and God will know that you heard, you obeyed, and you did this thing in His service and that is all that you need. Your reward awaits you in Heaven and is just as great as if you spoke on the radio and 1000 souls were saved to Christ. God should get the glory for their salvation not the evangelist on the radio. God should get the glory for what you did, not you. To think otherwise is sheer pride, vanity, and an outright lie. For unless you realize that it is not you but God within you that accomplishes His work then you have the wrong focus. You cannot save anyone. In fact you only exist and cohere as part of God's creation at His discretion. How then can you possibly take credit for anything. For it is the creator that formed you and works within you and around you, that goes before you and clears a path, and that gives your life any meaning at all. He should always receive all the glory. To try and steal the glory from God is a sin. Such conceit will trip you up. Your reward is only in obedience and service according to that obedience. We should only be following the instructions of the Holy Spirit and if we obey and do what is asked as our service to God then our reward will also be great. Listen closely! The reward is in doing the Will of God not in the specifics of what is done. The reward is in obedience not what that obedience accomplishes.
As we learn to obey, God may give us greater responsibilities but understand this, it is our privilege to serve God. As we learn to obey and serve we may be trusted with greater responsibilities which is a privilege but the reward is in obeying God. God will then use us as it pleases Him. He is after all God. If we are not happy doing what He wants for us then we earn His displeasure. He is God, we are His creation. We obey and serve and in return we win his favor regardless of the outcome of the service. To serve God in any way or capacity is a privilege. Greater responsibilities are at God's discretion and according to His purpose and based on our readiness and capability to obey. If you undertake a responsibility or undertaking that God has not asked you to do then you are violating the Will of God. God does not need us, it is we that need God. To be allowed to do anything in the service of God is therefore a privilege and must be done out of obeyance and in faith and in the manner and time God directs.
So given this very important matter of obeying God, Satan pretends he is God by taking advantage of our mind set and it's weak points and causing us to redirect ourselves from that which God really wants us to do. He does this while we are caught up in the obeyance issue while intimidated by weaknesses in our conscience and overall mind set. He will try to convince us that God does not want us to do this thing but rather we should be doing that thing. And we are told that surely God will go with us if such a thing were to happen but in so doing - since we did not properly really seek the Will of God and our mind was yet immature in the things of God - we have allowed a crack in our mind set that now must be repaired, a crack that could turn into a chasm like an earthquake in our mind.
Becoming a missionary is not the noblest thing we can do in the way of service to God. Doing what God wants us to do is the noblest thing we can do in the way of service to God. We cannot tell God what our service will be, He will tell us in His time and in a way that is unmistakable. That is why people new to this transformation should wait upon God and grow and mature in His ways for us. Anything that God asks us to do we should do but service is service and there is no higher service than doing what God has told us to do. The Bible says to go into the world and preach the gospel. A lot of Christians think that because of this verse and others like it that it is the highest calling to be a preacher or a minister or a teacher. There is NO highest in this regard in the Kingdom of Heaven. Every calling is high because it is a calling from God. Every calling is a privilege because it is an opportunity to serve God as He wants to be served. Some responsibilities may be more than others but if not engaged in with humility and obedience one will earn the displeasure of God. For Jesus made it quite clear, that the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven will serve the lowest. This whole concept must be properly understood. True greatness is in obedient service and the objective of that service is doing things that bring others in closer oneness with God. Jesus healed the sick, tended to the poor, and was very concerned about little children. He fed the hungry of body and spirit. He healed the sick in body and spirit. Jesus always addressed people from what was in their heart and he always cared for the whole person. Jesus quite simply loved people and we are supposed to do the same. We must all take the gospel into the world. We do so by our words and our conduct but mostly by the Love we exhibit in our lives. In fact the Bible teaches that we should do all things as unto our Lord. This may sound strange if you drive a bus, dig ditches, repair TVs, perform surgery, or you are an architect. It should not sound strange, we should always strive for excellence and apply ourselves in joy and love for whereever we are placed and for whatever we are asked to do by God and for God. Whether housewife or missionary, all service is and will be used by God and our lives should in that capacity reflect His purpose and His Love. Does your scale reflect this?
And there is yet other ways we can get trapped by Satan. The obvious is we don't understand what the Holy Spirit is saying in our lives, but there are those that run ahead of God. Whatever our service is if we don't act according to God's timing that service may not get properly performed. Also, God may require us to prepare for that service or allow other things to take place first. But maybe our immature mind set wants to get out there and get that thing done, work, work, work, right away, full gear forward like a charging rhino ramming a Sherman tank. Our attitude is God needs me, this thing won't get done unless I do it, and that sort of thing. Such conceit! Maybe we want to get some of the glory, be the first, not follow and build on the work of another, or many other attitudes. Maybe there is deep seated doubt and our enthusiasm is in some way a compensation. But when all is said and done if our timing and preparation are not as God requires that we should not be surprised by disappointment and failure. Again we see how a weakness in the mind can be manipulated by Satan playing the role of God and sidetracking what God wants done.
Sorting all this out takes a mature Christian mind set. That most often takes time and sometimes an entire lifetime to develop. Certainly, a life without prayer and meditation, a life without grounding in the scriptures, a life without a suitable fullness of oneness and focus on the transforming process, will always have problems sorting out God's Will and direction of service. Personally, I think God often takes us from where we are at and requires that from that point our service begins. Sometimes this has to happen over and over until we finally get it straight. But God will never forsake us. That service may change or become multi faceted over time but the Holy Spirit proceeds in an orderly fashion. There are many factors in the Christian part of the world today that make the transformation process more difficult than it should be and the outcome uncertain and a trail of disillusionment and confused Christians that are left floundering doing the best that they know.
The Christian movement is split up with many denominations and further breakups within denominations. Some denominations have given up on the authority of the Bible and taken to doctrine and teachings that go directly against very clear teachings in the Bible. This means that Christian leadership is failing the body of Christ. Basically this seems, at least to unbelievers, to result in a religion that is not consistent and where adherents don't show unity and love for one another because they have not learned how to work together so that denominational boundaries are not an issue. Further it demonstrates to unbelievers that Christians cannot agree on what Christianity is all about or why would they separate from each other behind denominational boundaries. What is the most fundamental and important thing that can happen in the life of a Christian? Full oneness with God is the answer. Everything else is towards that single end. Oneness with God is oneness with He that is Eternal Life and who is Love. That oneness can only happen through Jesus Christ, the Word of God incarnate and triumphant over the consequences of sin that make that oneness impossible. That oneness is only possible when the Holy Spirit is sent to us from Jesus Christ from where He occupies the most important position before God as ordained before the beginning of the world. The fullness of that oneness can only happen as we focus on the transforming work of the Holy Spirit to mould our minds into the image of the mind of Jesus Christ. Oneness as understood in this context is the single most important doctrine and purpose that all Christians should have in common if they indeed claim to follow He in whose name they have taken to identify themselves. This is why spreading the word of God is important. But there is a deeper sense to spreading the gospel of salvation from sin. When someone excepts and believes in this message we are literally spreading the relationship of oneness with the Living Word. How can we spread something we don't have? And if we don't have this oneness how dare we call ourselves Christians? And if we don't foster, promote, and grow in this oneness how dare we say we are part of the body of Christ? And if we deny this oneness we deny the Holy Spirit and therefore we deny the manifestation of God the Father in our lives and have not eternal life. For only if we have oneness with God do we have Eternal Life for God is Eternal Life.
How different things would be if all Christian ministries united about this one theme. But God will make it happen. If we blow it as it looks like we are doing then he will make it happen anyway and the disgrace is upon our heads. And when it does happen there will be one single outreach divided into many voices using many means and cross supporting each other in a committed revival of oneness. It can be no other way, there is only one real outreach - God's Will for us through oneness. And there is only one name under Heaven that can effect that oneness - Jesus Christ - the Living Word of God. And to spread this is to give every Christian the responsibility to work out with the Holy Spirit their oneness and sanctification to God. And this responsibility lies upon all Christians to cross support each others growth. And this responsibility demands that Christian leadership world wide master the skills necessary to help all members of the body of Christ to achieve the objective of oneness as Jesus so prayed, so be it.
Lord God our Father in Heaven, in reverence we ask that by your Holy Spirit and not by our might, bring us together in oneness under our Savior and King - Christ Jesus - God Incarnate - Son of God - The Living Word - our Eternal Life.
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