“DEPRAVED MINDS RAIN – DIVINE MINDS RULE!”
BY: J.FARRELL FISHER, AUGUST 30-31, 2017
You’re aware of the devastating rains and flood waters of the last week or so of Hurricane Harvey as it rolled across the gulf into south Texas, and now ready to continue rolling across East and North Louisiana into the middle of the south as it makes its way north!
There was a University of Tampa professor who was quoted saying that the widespread devastation was caused by “instant karma” as a result of the conservative leaning of the Lone Star State voters who helped to put Trump into the White House! Thank God, I hear Florida leaders saw to it that he lost his job for his reckless stupidity! I do call him “a depraved mind”! He was one who “fought for” his socialist agenda but, praise the Lord, for those who “fight from” the mind and heart of Holy God!
I was reading this morning from a frequent mailing of James Cook entitled “Market Update” from Investment Rarities Incorporated. In the publication there was a statement by Laura Hollis who said, (p.4), “Ultimately, however, the left’s war, (the Left? That’s the socialist democrats, the communist leaners, the descending fragment-ers of Revelation Truth!), their war isn’t against Trump. It is with those of us who see socialism’s failures, and who refuse to sit back and watch while our freedoms are dismantled and our country is destroyed.”
I also found Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk, so brave and to the point. He commented, “Artificial intelligence is a fundamental risk to the existence of human civilization.” And the problem? It’s the desire of a lot of fallen mankind with ‘artificial intelligence’ to be watched over by irresponsible overseers rather than be managed by Holy God! Depraved minds rain on a lot of communities, states, and national leadership, programs of economic disasters, even mental and moral chaos, and governmental looney tunes, mostly with wrong cords for wrong reasons, producing ‘weird music’ the fallen souls love!
I was so impressed when I read in “The Encyclopedia of Religious Quotations” edited by Frank S.Mead for the Fleming H.Revell Company, Westwood, New Jersey, (pps.196-197), words from Elizabeth Barrett Browning, in her “Aurora Leigh” publication, (Bk.IV, l.499), when she wrote:
“Good critics who have stamped out poet’s hope, Good statesmen who pulled ruin on the state, Good patriots who for a theory risked a cause, Good kings, who disemboweled for a tax, Good popes who brought all good to jeopardy, Good Christians who sat still in easy chairs And damned the general world for standing up. – Now may the good God pardon all good men!” And the last sentence may be a decent request, but I’m not sure Holy God has ever excused ‘fleshly goodness’ of ‘all good men’without the “new birth in Christ”! Most men across our known world just assume it’s OK to tread on God’s ordained earth without any responsibility of being yielded to His divine will, purpose, or pleasure: “We’ll handle our own desires, wants, and pleasures, thank You”, and tread on bravely in their godless worlds!
Do you understand “soul mismanagement”? Do you understand “home construction” without the necessary foundation? Is there “marriage management” that survives for years on end but void of the Lord’s true blessings? Can a good businessman build a prosperous company but void of a business giving glory to and honoring God? Can skilled physicians, surgeons, nurses, and hospitals be blessed of God in “care-giving” but look inward to themselves, patting themselves on their backs, and never even for a moment honor the “God-Gifter” for the skills He ingrained? It blows my mind when I read about schools, colleges, or universities, their overseers, teachers, deans, or boards, rejoicing in themselves for their schools high rankings, yet never consider Holy God as the “equipper, the trainer, the illuminator” of educational success!
Think of the masses of humanity, and especially those who major on common-sense carefulness, yes, apart from God-revealed wisdom, knowledge, and abiding Truth! “Life reviews” for the godless are ‘book reviews’ in infidelity, worries and frustrations, and academy award winners in ‘self-pleasure, self-indulgence, and ‘flesh-boosting’, even ‘honoring’ the best and the worst for what one chooses for himself as a reward winner – he/she is his/her own master and reward bestower, satisfied with his/her ‘life choice’!
The message of the gospel is the eternal hope able to take a sin-bound, natural man and transform, convert, regenerate him into the “vessel”, the “dwelling”, the “tabernacle or temple of Christ’s Resurrection Presence.” One is convicted by the Holy Spirit, convinced of ‘empty-vacuum living’ without Christ, but receiving the “Good News” of eternal life and hope in Him alone, and one turns away from the “depraved minds’ rain” and rests in the Promised “Divine-Mind Rule by the King of kings and Lord of Lords”!
In Matthew 6:25, Jesus speaking, saying to all ‘depraved, unbelieving, failing to trust God minds’, “Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life (Jesus crucified your godless, sinful, unbelieving life and mind on the Cross!), what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on? Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?”
To the “depraved minds” made wettable by the rains of unbelief, fooled by the fallen mind’s forethought of its own abilities, deceived by the sickness of only ‘self-interest’ void of the purpose of Holy God, paralyzed concerning ‘faith’ by Satan himself, and awakened by the Spirit as He exposes and reveals the inevitable result of despair without God as Savior and Lord, darkness in one’s walk on earth and a future destiny in Hell without God’s saving grace, and one realizes, “My best, without God in Christ as Lord and Savior, leaves my eternal destiny as bankrupt, spiritually poverty-stricken, and a subservient to Satan and his demon structure and location!” I’d say, when THAT dawns on you, by the Spirit, it’s time to run to Jesus as fast as you can and miss out on Hell’s hellish ways forever!
“Depraved minds” are of a ‘fallen world alienated and separated from God’, and are ‘governed by flesh-self-centeredness’, and are ‘deceived by Satan and his army of liars’, and just one of those descriptions just unveils not your death warrant in the future but your ‘death-state’ in the flesh, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”! That’s a “water-soaked-nature” of unbelief with the choice to be religious OR to be redeemed out of sin and death by the Blood of the Lamb of God!
It was Mabel Frost and B.B.McKinney in the old “Baptist Hymnal” of Broadman Press who had their hymn, “Come Home” published. It said: “O soul in the faraway country, A-weary, and famished, and sad, There’s rest in the home of your Father, His welcome will make your heart glad.
Arise and come back to your Father, He’ll meet you while yet on the way; Assured of His tender compassion, Oh, why will you longer delay?
Although you have sinned against heaven, And weak and unworthy may be, He offers you full restoration, And pardon abundant and free.
Come home…come home…Oh, why will you longer roam? Come home…come home…O prodigal child, come home.” Dare I tell you, His arms are opened wide to the truly convicted, broken hearted, sin-bound and now knows it, and senses the needs being met by the Master’s “Great Physician” skills! He says: “Come to Me, and I will give you rest.”
As the Spirit begins His holy work of divine conviction, one of those things to be exposed that Jesus dealt with on the Cross, is the abandonment of self-pleasure, self-will, and fleshly determination to be better on your own without any outside help!
The “flesh-best” men and women are filled with “thoughts”, “dreams”, and “visions” of what awaits them as they determine for themselves their fleshly destiny! That IS the attitude of unbelief in Heaven-revealed purposes and Power in making His vision for one’s life into a practical reality.
In Matthew 13:22 Jesus spoke of men who stumble and fall away from Heaven’s revealed Way, saying, “Now he who received seed among the thorns is he who hears the word, and the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and he becomes unfruitful.” Dare I tell you? THERE ARE NO BUMPER CROPS IN THE BEST OF FLESHLY LIVING WITHOUT GOD!
It was Bill Johnson, the anointed California pastor, in Redding, I believe, who I heard say, “Hosting the Presence of Christ is a man’s greatest calling,” and I thought when I heard it, and quickly wrote in my Bible, “Nothing more valuable than the Kingdom of God in the here and now!!” Kingdom rule is not an afterlife or when you get to Heaven someday experience, but, yes, a daily life of yielding to the Resurrected King and His reign through you in the here and now!
“Depraved minds rain – Divine Minds Rule”! And that’s by the Holy Spirit’s ministry in you! Now, concerning “Divine Minds Ruling”, consider what Jesus said in Luke 24:44-53! Then Jesus said to them, “These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning Me.” And He opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures.
Then He said to them, “Thus it is written, and thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day, AND that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name, to all the nations, beginning at Jerusalem. AND YOU ARE WITNESSES OF THESE THINGS. Behold, I send the Promise of My Father upon you; but tarry in the city of Jerusalem until you are endued with power from on high.”
And He led them out as far as Bethany, and He lifted up His hands and blessed them. Now it came to pass, while He blessed them, that He was parted from them and caught up into heaven. And they worshipped Him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple praising and blessing God. Amen. (OR “so be it”!).
And “Divine Minds Ruling”? Notice in Acts 4:29-31, Peter, having been filled with the Holy Spirit, (Acts 4:8, Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, spoke saying:), but notice also, in Verses 29-31, “Now, Lord, look on their threats, and grant to Your servants that with all boldness they may speak Your word, by stretching out Your hand to heal, and that signs and wonders may be done through the name of Your holy Servant Jesus.” And when they had prayed, the place where they were assembled together was shaken; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they spoke the word of God with boldness.”
Have YOU ever considered whether or not the church in a modern-day world still needs, must have, and faith for, yes, the baptism, the anointing, the in-filling of the Holy Spirit? Is there a word somewhere in Scripture that says, “You have not because you ask not?”
But notice what happened as the early church was anointed with the Holy Spirit! Acts 4:33, And with “Great Power” the apostles gave witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And great grace was upon them ALL!”
A “depraved mind” is a dry creek-bed while a “Divine Mind Ruling” is the reality of Psalm 87:7 “All my fresh springs shall be in you,” meaning in YOU, a repenting, trusting, surrendering, yielding disciple who leans not to his/her own understanding but in all ways, days, decisions, ministries, acknowledges Him, yes, the reigning Holy Spirit who convicts, births, transforms, anoints, and guides whatever the Father would have YOU involved in!
It was Oswald Chambers who wrote, in his book, “My Utmost For His Highest”, (p.271), “The sign that God is at work in us is that He corrupts confidence in the natural virtues, because they are not promises of what we are going to be, but remnants of what God created man to be. We will cling to the natural virtues, while all the time God is trying to get us into contact with the life of Jesus Christ, which can never be described in terms of the natural virtues. It is the saddest thing to see people in the service of God depending on that which the grace of God never gave them, depending on what they have by the accident of heredity. God does not build up our natural virtues and transfigure them, because our natural virtues can never come anywhere near what Jesus wants. No natural love, no natural patience, no natural purity can ever come up to His demands. BUT as we bring every bit of our bodily life into harmony with the new life which God has put into us, He will exhibit in us the virtues that were characteristic of Christ Jesus.” And God does it in and through the Holy Spirit whom Jesus told us would come to inhabit, instruct, inspire every born-again disciple. Have YOU received the ministry of the Holy Spirit since you were genuinely and truly born again with a heart and mind desiring to glorify Christ, but you understand, without the Spirit, you will promote and follow the leadership of your ‘flesh’, ‘best flesh’ or not?