Category: indwelling Holy Spirit

Mother: A Virtuous Woman

Sunday, May 14, 2023

“Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies” (Proverbs 31:10 KJV).

Today is Mother’s Day, so we dedicate this devotional to godly women (specifically mothers). I especially dedicate this to the virtuous woman who has been in my life for almost 35 years… my mom!

Today’s Scripture is the first verse of the Bible’s “Virtuous Woman” passage (Proverbs 31:10-31). King Solomon explained that the virtuous woman:

  • has a husband who safely trusts in her (verses 11,12).
  • is not lazy, but is strong because she works to feed and clothe her family and herself (verses 13-19,21,22,24,25,27).
  • pities the poor and needy (verse 20).
  • has a husband who is well-known because of her godly lifestyle (verse 23).
  • opens her mouth with wisdom, and speaks kindly and lovingly (verse 26).
  • has children and a husband who praise her (verse 28).
  • excels in what she does (verse 29).
  • has works that praise her (verse 31).

Verse 30 explains the virtuous woman is “a woman that feareth the LORD.”

The Apostle Paul wrote that godly women should: not slander/gossip, not be controlled by alcohol and emotions (sober minded), be teachers of good things, love their husbands and children, be cautious and modest, maintain the home, be “good,” and should obey (respect) their husbands… “that the word of God be not blasphemed” (Titus 2:3-5). A Christian woman, especially a mother, should be a virtuous woman in beliefs as well as in deed. She needs to set an example for her children (especially her daughters).

A Christian woman and/or Christian mother places her faith in this sound Bible doctrine, the indwelling Holy Spirit will then take that doctrine and transform her for God’s glory (1 Thessalonians 2:13). Her mind will be renewed by sound Bible doctrine, and that will transform her outward activity (Romans 12:1,2).

Are you a Christian woman or Christian mother who desires to be the woman God intends you to be in Christ Jesus? Place your faith in this sound Bible doctrine, and God will take care of the rest!

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY TO OUR READERS WHO ARE MOTHERS!

*Adapted from a larger Bible study with the same name. The Bible study can be read here or watched here.

Archived: “What does the Bible say about motherhood?”

I Have Finished the Work! #7

Thursday, March 16, 2023

“I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do” (John 17:4 KJV).

Could we say this at the end of our life, at the conclusion of our ministry?

“If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection [mind, focus, regard] on things above, not on things on the earth” (Colossians 3:1,2). We must have this renewed mind (laid out in the first two chapters), or sin will master us. Remember Paul’s dilemma in Romans chapter 7.

“I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God” (Romans 12:1,2).

Ephesians 4:17-24: “This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart: Who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness. But ye have not so learned Christ; If so be that ye have heard him, and have been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus: That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; And be renewed in the spirit of your mind; And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.”

“For this cause also thank we God without ceasing, because, when ye received the word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe” (1 Thessalonians 2:13). When we by faith let the Holy Spirit use the Word of God rightly divided to work in us, the very life of Jesus Christ is on display!

Comatose! #5

Monday, February 27, 2023

“Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light” (Ephesians 5:14 KJV).

“Wake up!,” screams the Holy Spirit to today’s comatose professing church!

In Matthew 13:25, “the enemy” labored “while men slept.” Verse 39 identifies this “enemy” as “the devil.” The sleeping, of course, is not physical but spiritual. When people are spiritually oblivious, napping in the spiritual realm, they become more susceptible to Satan’s will. A saint not walking in the light of God’s words to him or her will fall into the spiritual trap of functional death, the Christian life not functioning (see today’s Scripture). Also, any lost people refusing to believe God’s words to them—they are content in being lost—they too will be vulnerable to Satanic deception (remaining lost). The context of the verses in Matthew chapter 13 is the Little Flock receiving and believing the Gospel of the Kingdom, God’s work (genuine), and lost Israel refusing and disbelieving the Gospel of the Kingdom, Satan’s work (counterfeit).

Satan’s evil world system is still in force now, misleading lost and saved alike, following the patterns already laid out in Scripture. It had duped the Corinthian saints (spiritual immaturity, heresies and sects, fornication, abusing spiritual gifts, petty lawsuits, mockery of the Lord’s Supper, et cetera), the Galatian saints (legalism, denominationalism, works-religion), the Ephesian saints (various sins and silly deeds delineated in Ephesians 4:17–5:21), and so on. In the verses following today’s Scripture, we read: “[15] See then that ye walk circumspectly [looking around, carefully, alertly], not as fools, but as wise, [16] Redeeming the time, because the days are evil. [17] Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is. [18] And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit;….”

If there is no renewed mind, thinking like a mature grace saint (Romans 12:1,2), we will be “fools… unwise… [not] understanding what the will of the Lord is.” Since the vast majority of the professing church has never paid much attention to the warnings the Holy Spirit issued 2,000 years ago, there is no filling of the Holy Spirit, and therefore no real spiritual fruit and meaningful Christian influence on the world. Like with Israel of old, a spiritual coma incapacitates….

Comatose! #3

Saturday, February 25, 2023

“Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light” (Ephesians 5:14 KJV).

“Wake up!,” screams the Holy Spirit to today’s comatose professing church!

Never are we Christians called to be sinless in this life, for until “the day of redemption” (Ephesians 4:30) or “the redemption of our [physical] body” (Romans 8:23), we will be in these fallen bodies of flesh that are biologically related to Adam. When we want to walk contrary to our identity in Jesus Christ, we will “Quench [hinder, extinguish]… the Spirit” (1 Thessalonians 5:19) and we will “grieve [sadden, pain, hurt]… the Spirit” (Ephesians 4:30). For a believer in Christ to sin is one thing, for him or her to sin in private is another, but for the Christian to flaunt sinful conduct in front of the eyes of the lost world is something else entirely!

When we have Christian pastors sharing obscene jokes in the pulpit or on social media (and I have seen and heard it), church members assembling and wearing vulgar attire during services (and I have seen and heard it), Christians engaged in public drunkenness (and I have seen and heard it), it should never surprise us when people snicker at the Bible and have no desire to hear anything about “Jesus.”

Christians have habitually complained about the evils in the world—but how many of them have shared the Gospel of Grace even once to rescue some poor unsaved soul from that same evil world system? Would they know enough of the Scriptures to teach so much as a children’s Sunday School class? Yet, they are the very individuals whining about “delinquent youth” and “ignorant young people!” They disparage the science professors who teach humanism in the name of “higher education,” but what sound Bible doctrine have these Christians taught their kids?

Instead of organizing concerts and potluck suppers, re-translating the Bible, scheming to raise money so as to fund denominational programs, preachers and teachers need to be laboring to impart doctrinal life to their practically dead church members and students. As the Lord Jesus stated, “…the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life” (John 6:63). Here is the key to recovering from a spiritual coma….

Scrooges and Christians

Friday, December 16, 2022

“Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17 KJV).

To the old identity, we say, “Bah, Humbug!” To the new, we say, “God has blessed us, everyone in Christ.”

Other than Jesus Christ’s conception and birth as found in the Holy Bible, there is one other classic story associated with Christmastime. British author Charles Dickens’ 1843 book, A Christmas Carol, focuses on the transformation of Ebenezer Scrooge (the novella has some Christian influence).

From the onset, Scrooge is a wealthy, miserable, mean, stingy, and selfish old man. His employee, Bob Cratchit, is underpaid (yet, strangely, Ebenezer observes, Cratchit is cheerful). Scrooge refuses to donate to charities collecting for the destitute—to him, Christmastime is a time for others to “pick his pocket.” He even refuses to attend his nephew’s Christmas party. What a miser!

Through visitations by four Spirits—his deceased business partner, Jacob Marley; and the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Christmas Present, and Christmas Future—Scrooge is forced to realize what a thoroughly rotten man he is. Once confronted with his future, the awful events that lie ahead, he asks for another chance to make things right (which, thankfully, he receives and does!). The Scrooge at the end of the book is drastically different from the Scrooge at the beginning. Scrooge is now loving, warm, cheerful, and generous—he is a brand-new man.

Bible-believing Christians recognize parallels between Dickens’ work and the Holy Scriptures. The sinner starts off rotten, a rebel from birth—selfish, miserable, and mean. When he or she comes to realize that pitiful condition he or she is in, and comes by simple faith in Jesus Christ’s finished crosswork as sufficient payment for their sins, God gives him or her a new identity (today’s Scripture). That identity is designed to influence subsequent actions. Scrooge did not simply change his outward activity; he had a change in heart first. This Christmas, let us be submissive to God’s Holy Spirit working in our hearts, as He uses sound Bible doctrine to manifest in our behavior our identity in Christ, that we be not Scrooges.

Hark! The Herald Angels Sing #5

Wednesday, December 7, 2022

“For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead: And that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again. Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more. Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Corinthians 5:14-17 KJV).

The final verse of the classic Christmas carol highlights today’s Scripture.

“Adam’s likeness, Lord, efface,
Stamp Thine image in its place:
Second Adam from above,
Reinstate us in Thy love.
Let us Thee, though lost, regain,
Thee, the Life, the inner man:
O, to all Thyself impart,
Formed in each believing heart.
Hark! The herald angels sing,
Glory to the newborn King!”

Religion has done an excellent job (wrongly) teaching us that God likes to rehabilitate humans—that He wants to make us quit doing certain things (“fleshly”) and make us start doing other things (“churchy”). What a very shallow, and actually a false, perception. God wants to do much more than what we could ever do by ourselves.

For good works to reign in our lives, God has to kill us! As sinners, in Adam, we are dead in our trespasses and sins, no life in ourselves (see today’s Scripture). Nothing we can do in our own strength will ever change our (sinful) nature in Adam. However, God offers us death to Adam and a new identity through Christ at Calvary. When we trust that Jesus Christ died for our sins, in God’s mind, we died to sin, too. Christ did not simply die for us but as us. Romans chapters 5 through 8 describe the victory is in Christ, not in Adam or in ourselves. Success is by the power of the Holy Ghost working with the grace doctrines we study and believe, not in our struggles to do right. And so, “Christ [is] formed in [us]” (Galatians 4:19).

Something about which the angels cannot sing, but we can, should, and do! 🙂

Is the God of the Bible “Anti-Intellectual?” #10

Wednesday, November 16, 2022

“And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Genesis 2:16,17 KJV).

Is the God of Scripture “anti-intellectual?”

Bible-haters can methodically prove complex mathematical theorems, wisely dissect and repair human bodies, diligently translate ancient manuscripts, scrupulously draft elaborate blueprints for a megatall building, tirelessly endeavor to be a pioneer researcher in nuclear physics, boldly explore the mysteries of outer space, doggedly acquire a “brilliant” legal mind to obtain a political office, prudently develop budgets for entire nations, creatively sculpt incredible works of art, carefully investigate the ocean depths, and regularly compose technical articles for publication in “scholarly” journals.

As educated, admired, and outstanding as these souls are, until they believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thereby receive the indwelling Holy Spirit, true wisdom will forever elude them. The knowledge of eternal worth is a foreign language to them. Certainly, they struggle to fathom even the simplest sentences in a sixth-grade English Bible. While the human brain is remarkable, it has a Creator or mind superior even to it (and never forget that!). There is the Divine mind, what Almighty God possesses, who gave us the ability to think and comprehend these very thoughts. Why does the natural world exist? Only when we read His Book do we understand and appreciate the real meaning and purpose to what we see, hear, touch, smell, and taste. However, if we are content with just the “how,” we will go no further than natural explanations and natural reasoning, thus overlooking what matters most (1 Corinthians 2:9-16).

“For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe” (1 Corinthians 1:19-21).

Is the God of the Bible “Anti-Intellectual?” #9

Tuesday, November 15, 2022

“And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Genesis 2:16,17 KJV).

Is the God of Scripture “anti-intellectual?”

The Lord Jesus Christ through the Apostle Paul advised in 1 Timothy 6:19,20: “O Timothy, keep [guard] that which is committed to thy trust [sound Bible doctrine, grace-oriented teaching], avoiding profane [common, unholy] and vain [empty, worthless] babblings [drivel, silly talk], and oppositions of science falsely so called: Which some professing have erred concerning the faith. Grace be with thee. Amen.” In Greek, “science” is “gnosis,” translated as “knowledge” 28 times in our King James Bible (for instance, see Luke 1:77, Romans 2:20, 1 Corinthians 8:1, 2 Corinthians 10:5, Ephesians 3:19, 2 Peter 1:6, and 2 Peter 3:18).

Observe how there are “oppositions of science falsely so called.” False teachers fight against sound Bible doctrine by promoting information that is wrongly titled “science” (as in knowledge). In other words, it looks like it profits its hearers and adherents—but it is as advantageous to the Christian (or even lost person) as fools’ gold is to the prospector! What appears to be substance is but shadow, what seems to be treasure is merely trinket, yet the undiscerning mind is none the wiser. Usually, what is advertised as “knowledge” turns out to be nothing more than pointlessness.

Re-read 1 Corinthians 2:9. If we desire to ascertain God’s words and will, we do not appeal to the “eye” (scientific method, empiricism), the “ear” (church tradition, secondhand data), or the “heart” (soul-searching, intuition). Moreover, if we do not have the indwelling Spirit of God to teach us, we have no hope of ever obtaining God’s wisdom. “But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God” (verse 10). We can gain all the “knowledge” we want by attending every world “institution of higher learning,” yet this is but child’s play when we survey the wealth of Divine wisdom contained in the Holy Scriptures rightly divided….

Is the God of the Bible “Anti-Intellectual?” #8

Monday, November 14, 2022

“And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Genesis 2:16,17 KJV).

Is the God of Scripture “anti-intellectual?”

Following the scientific method, we hypothesize (form temporary explanations) concerning the operation of natural events, we observe those phenomena through experimentation and we record our findings/data, thereby allowing us to refine or discard our prior description—ever striving to describe “how” it works. Nevertheless, if we do not look at God’s creation through the lens of the Holy Scriptures, the eyes of faith, we will never see “why” it works (and that is true ignorance)! Moreover, without the indwelling Holy Spirit to teach us, we have no prospect of ever attaining genuine knowledge.

First Corinthians 2:9-16: “But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.

“Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. 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. But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? but we have the mind of Christ.”

Again, Christianity is the opposite of ignorance….

Saved or Lost? #25

Sunday, September 25, 2022

“My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you, I desire to be present with you now, and to change my voice; for I stand in doubt of you” (Galatians 4:19,20 KJV).

Are these people really saved—or really lost?

They were really saved people, just thinking and acting like lost people. Such is still true of millions! Had God’s Word rightly divided actually been received and believed in the heart, we the Church the Body of Christ would be walking in God’s power and will: “For this cause also thank we God without ceasing, because, when ye received the word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe” (1 Thessalonians 2:13).

While the number of genuine Christians has always been low, the percentage of confused Christians has always been high. It is not that “Satan is so powerful,” but rather they have allowed his evil world system to place them into a mold of silly thoughts and unsightly deeds. The Holy Spirit wishes true believers in Christ heed His advice in Romans 12:1,2: “I beseech you therefore, brethren [Christians!!!], by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world [it can happen!!!]: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.”

We close with the following true story. Several years ago, I tried to prevent it but nevertheless witnessed it come to pass. It was the fall of my spiritual mentor, someone under whose ministry I trained for over a decade and whom I still love dearly in the Lord. The entire controversy was painful and devastating beyond words, but, lest I fall with that grace Christian leader, I had to separate from him because of his apostasy (willful doctrinal error and unapologetic dishonesty and treachery). Indeed, we will meet in Heaven and only then will we be restored to fellowship, two saved men whose ministries Satan’s evil world system targeted—one destroyed and the other still not immune from ruin!

-FINIS!-