By J.Farrell Fisher, June 3-5, 2018

I don’t know how this title question hits you, but I’m convinced large numbers of “religious ‘professors of faith’, pastoral leaders, ‘faithful’ (?) church folk, modern-day teachers, denominational leaders, national ‘religious’ devotees, are going to be absolutely shocked and amazed when, before the eternal throne of glory Jesus sits, then says to them, Matthew 7:21-23,

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I NEVER KNEW YOU; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!”

Jesus affirmed Himself “Lord” twice through the false professors saying that there are those who know His name without being united in the Spirit of His mission! It’s not simply knowing His name by even affirming His Lordship; many have that record and acknowledgement ‘without submitting to His authority’, allowing Him to do His work in them, or obeying His commands.

In fact, many living in ‘religious fantasy’ rather than “redemption’s reality” are void of the importance of truly ‘taking heed to themselves’, just as Jesus spoke in Luke 21:34-36 when He said them and, yes, TO US: “Take heed to yourselves, lest your hearts be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness, and cares of this life, and that Day come on you unexpectedly. For IT WILL COME AS A SNARE ON ALL THOSE WHO DWELL ON THE FACE OF THE WHOLE EARTH. Watch therefore, and pray always, that you may be counted worthy to escape all these things that will come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man.”

Dare I tell you? Believe I will! “Carousing and drunkenness is more than careless indulgence in alcoholic beverages and ‘strong drink’, but even, yes, the ‘indulgence’ in religious activity apart from being “born again”, apart from being vessels of Holy Presence, apart from being instruments of His righteousness, or commissioned under His authority allowing Him to be Himself in you and through you! God isn’t interested in what you do ‘for Him’ but only in what YOU allow Him to be and do in you and through you as, yes, His temple of Holy Presence!

The validation of true disciples is not in what they allow themselves to do ‘for Christ’, but for them daily taking the sentence of death to themselves that give Him the open door to manifest Himself through them! It’s a matter of availability for Him to be Himself through yielded, surrendered, opened doors of the heart for Him to walk in and through! How many have you known who owned pianos but never learned to allow the “Master Pianist” to play through them? True Christians are not defined by what they do for Jesus but by being individuals who allow Him to be Himself in them and through them! True Christianity finds its eternal identity in allowing Jesus’ Resurrected Presence to find ‘open doors’ for His Eternal Presence to be Himself in them and through them as Holy God has found them to be available vessels of His Holy Presence!

Much of supposed Christianity across our world today is ‘pretense’ of the true revelation! Most of the modern Christian world today sees their faith as ‘church membership’ apart from Resurrection Presence and, yes, Christ being Himself through them! What did Paul say in Colossians 1:24-28, “I now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ, for the sake of His body, which is the church, of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from God which was given to me for you, to fulfill the word of God, the “mystery” which has been hidden from ages and generations, but now has been revealed to His saints. To them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Him we preach, warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus.”

Are YOU aware of, yes, “the mystery of the glory” of the church at large, which IS “Christ IN Jew and Gentiles who make themselves available to all Jesus IS and always has been – the Conquering, Victorious, Reigning Lord over sin and death”? In the known world of today how many have you witnessed who truly grasped “Christ in me my hope of glory”?

Our known world is barren of true redemptive faith; it is bewildering by those who challenge them to be free of ‘self’ as Jesus crucified it and therefore gladly and continually rejoicing yielded themselves fully to His Resurrection Presence! Most of the known religious world of today is embittered that God saw them worthy only of crucifixion with Christ! They’ll privately and publicly blaspheme His Holy Name when they learn the Truth of “crucified with Christ”, from the strongest intellectual to the limited mind, from the strongest of human flesh to the weakest physical body trying to be spiritual, from the fleshly proud learning life without God’s Resurrection Presence is nothing more than the ‘stench of death continuing to die’!

Though ‘fallen humanity’ has been deeply wounded and ‘fallen away from God’, the truth of the Word of God is that Holy God reached down, out, and around to the fallen, knocks on their hearts’ doors, unveils the awareness of their need of “new life, new hope, new power, and new purpose”, seriously wounded by their native, fleshly, self-fulfilling natures, but by the grace, mercy, and love of God, through Holy Spirit conviction and by the ‘gift’ of repentance offered as the ‘door opener’ between God and man, and ‘the gift of faith’ gladly given, one grasps the full, true meaning of the work of Christ at Calvary’s Cross, with sinners becoming saints in and through Christ alone! A ‘saint’? One set apart as “His temple pf Holy Presence”!

God isn’t interested in religious or spiritual robots that have no say in a choice or lack of it when it comes to spiritual devotion. Every human life must decide “on their own they choose to serve Me or not – I will not stamp mankind’s devotion to Me unless it is only in and through their response to Christ’s knocking at their heart’s door and the offering by Him of the gift of His shed blood, the blood of the Lamb of God, crucified so that they may desire by Me my offering of grace, mercy, and love through My Son’s finished work at the Cross.”

A few words I’ve written for hopefully greater enlightenment for sinners and the saints. I wrote:

“Though wounded we may have been by our natural, native, fleshly sin, by the grace and mercy of God through the Spirit-conviction and repentance, we receive inheritance of the gifted Presence of Holy God, through Christ’s blood, and now sealed by the Spirit as sons and daughters of God!

Christ in you the hope of glory – what an amazing, eternal reality! Though having strayed and become ‘lost’ on our own ‘self-ordained range,’ God sought us out to bring us to His home through divine ‘heavenly change’.

Christ’s Resurrection Life is man’s eternal hope, but how many do you know who live as if the Savior doesn’t exist? Once again, even often, they will sense “His knock at the door,” but because of unbelief and religious rationalization they will not soar in heavenly places, but sorrow in tears and sadness forever – because they know, “We didn’t answer!”

Some have discovered: “To Be Is To Live For the Purpose and Plan and Power of God”, but never ask about “The Door” to His Holy Presence, and are spiritually illiterate about His “keys to the Kingdom”!

Yet some know of the keys to the Kingdom yet hidden them away in their personal heart-deception, never desiring to take and insert the keys of repentance and faith into His everlasting Kingdom!

But it’s time to awake, time to arise, time to surmise, how to stand up and look into His merciful, gracious, loving eyes, repenting of your sin, resting in His blessing, turning to His promises of one’s eternal residence.”

But does pride, prejudices, or personal persuasion speak to you identifying afresh the reality of sad but certain ‘godless living.’? Or, possibly, is there in YOU the comforting, strengthening, enlightening, assuring Word in you, “Christ in Me, my hope of glory”, authored by the convicting Holy Spirit?

To be “in Christ” is no longer one’s identity in the register of all fallen sinners, blinded mankind, or Satan’s fallen and conquered captives, but one “in Christ” who knows “blood-forgiven,” blessed with repentance and faith as new-born sons and daughters of the eternal family of God, no longer descendants of Satan’s deceitful clan, captured, blinded, and forever ‘perishing’ but never dying family of Satan’s devotees to faithlessness, indifference, and strong unbelief in the eternal purpose of Holy God, yet gloriously Holy Spirit convicted, convinced, and converted into the “new identity” of divine royalty, sons and daughters of God because, soldiers of the Cross, yes, and truly “washed in the blood of the Lamb of God, Christ Jesus, God’s Son” as “new creations” of His “Amazing Grace”!!

It was Robert H. Coleman of Dallas, Texas, who in 1933 had a hymn entitled “O Happy Day” published by the Broadman Press, written by Philip Doddridge and E.F. Rimbault entitled, “O Happy Day”. It says: “O happy day that fixed my choice on You, my Savior and my God!

O happy bond, that seals my vow To Him who merits all my love! Let cheerful anthems fill His house While to that sacred shrine I move.

It’s done; the great transaction’s done! I am my Lord’s, and He is mine; He drew me, and I followed on, Charmed to confess the voice divine.

High Heaven, that heard the solemn vow, That vow renewed shall daily hear, Till in life’s latest hour I bow, And bless in death a bond so dear.

Happy day, happy day, When Jesus washed my sins away! He taught me how to watch and pray, and live rejoicing every day; Happy day, happy day, When Jesus washed my sins away!”

You need to “get on board”, and never tire as you travel together with Him and His growing ‘family of faith and obedience’, submitted hour by hour, day by day, with the Prince of Peace Presence, with His Kingly Persuasion, and with the Spirit’s Power Anointing, fulfilling your calling as His earthly representative! You no longer are turned to the world’s opinions but to the Savior’s Holy Word, not to self but to the savior, not to appearances but to the reality of His abiding presence in the life of faith He’s chosen to be His earthly Tabernacle!

The Lord Jesus describes the true children of faith when in Matthew 20:25-28 He said: But Jesus called them to Himself and said: “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those who are great exercise authority over them. Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant. And whoever desires to be first among you, let him be your slave – JUST AS the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.”

How different from the man-made philosophies of fallen men who ignore the Eternal Presence of the Resurrected, Reigning, Enriching Savior and Lord! In Romans 1:24-25 Paul wrote, “Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, WHO EXCHANGED THE TRUTH OF GOD FOR THE LIE, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.”

At the same time consider Hebrews 9:14! “How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God!”

And upon His discovery and enlightment to the “Amazing Grace”, he wrote to all believers, Colossians 5:13, For you, brethren, have been called to liberty, only do not use liberty as an opportunity for the flesh (which is your old sin nature!), but through love serve one another.”

What a difference between the “old man” and the “new man in Christ”! The “old man”? Barren of divine life and holy presence, bewildered through indifference to the call of God, bitter in the inner man, easily blaspheming the name of Jesus, blind to the Truth, blotted, bonded and enslaved with a dangerous breach from God’s Presence, definitely breached away from Eternal, Abiding Presence as “the chief musician sang in Psalm 60:1-5, O God, You have cast us off; You have broken us down; You have been displeased; Oh, restore us again! You have made the earth tremble; You have broken it; Heal its breaches, for it is shaking. You have shown Your people hard things; You have made us drink the wine of confusion. (Yet) You have given a banner to those who fear You, that it may be displayed because of the truth. That Your beloved may be delivered, save with Your right hand and hear me.” [Do YOU call out to God to hear you because of your passion concern for the “lost” who surround you?].

THIS IS A “NEW DAY” OF DIVINE OPPORTUNITY TO BE “RESTORED”, “RENEWED”, “RE-BORN”, “REGENERATED”, “REDEEMED BY THE BLOOD OF THE LAMB”, “REFITTED WITH HOLY PRESENCE, HOLY PURPOSE, AND HOLY POWER”! Bow down before Him so He can raise you up, confess so He may cleanse you and wash pure as the blood of the Lamb of God is pure, “RELIGHTENING YOUR MIND AND HEART TO ETERNAL TRUTH”, “RE-EQUIPPING YOU WITH THE CHOSEN GIFTS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT TO SEND YOU OUT TO THE NEEDY LIVES SURROUNDING YOU”, AND “CHOOSING TO BE THE DIVINE REPRESENTATIVE OF HOLY PRESENCE”, YES, FOR THE WORLD AROUND YOU TO WITNESS HOW TO EXCHANGE THE LIE OF THEIR LIVES FOR HIS ETERNAL TRUTH , CHRIST JESUS WHO NEVER CHANGES”!! Amen!

OF HELPLESSNESS IN ONE’S SELF”

I’m not sure that even many ‘evangelical Christians’ will agree with my deep conviction about “suicide”, but I must share my despair over “suicide”, and especially when some “professors of faith” see it as a door to heaven! They say, “One doesn’t lose his/her salvation,” revealing that they don’t believe true salvation is believing in Jesus without any concerns about one’s obedience to Him or not, refuting His Word: “Why do you call Me ‘Lord, Lord’, but you do not do what I say!”

I say to you without any hesitation that “ suicide”, professing believer or not, is a chilling reality of unbelief and disobedience, a ‘cheap imitation of surrender and obedience,’ a dark shadow of death not life in the Spirit, and is nothing more than a spiritual famine, an inadequate supply of biblical faith, and a famine of true surrender and yieldedness to the King of kings and the Lord of lords! It is a devastating picture of the absence of Holy Presence and eternal purpose!

Suicide is a strange word and language to true people of faith, an enemy of Resurrection life, Resurrection power, and Resurrection hope. Suicide is a godless decree of Satan and a sad remnant of either unbelief or a decaying faith! It was Frank T. Marzials, in his writing: “Death as the Fool”, who said: “God help the fools who count on death [or suicide] for gain.”

What does Romans 8:6-11 tell us? Paul had just said, by God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin or because of its ruthless treatment of His created, that He condemned sin in the flesh, {but you believe you can ‘sin in the Spirit”? Give me a break!}.

Verses 6-11, “For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind IS enmity against God; for it (asserting its ‘self-will’) is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. So then, those who are in the flesh (even as a professing believer!) cannot please God.

But you (In Christ) are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, IF INDEED THE SPIRIT OF GOD DWELLS IN YOU. Now if ANYONE does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His. And if Christ is in you {Big “IF”!}, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit {IN YOU} is life because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of Him [God Himself] who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.”

Even the word ‘suicide’ in any man, believer or not, leaves me with the deep conviction that unbelievers or professing believers do not understand, have no conviction about the very sacred nature of physical life but more important the gift of Resurrection Life, and even contemplating ‘suicide’ reveals a ‘train of faith or faithlessness’ both off the “tracks of God” as chief engineer!

Yes, to BE suicidal is the act of rejecting the “Author of Life, the Lord Jesus Christ,” yielding not to Him but the act of imitation ‘priests’, muted, blinded, unyielding to His Spirit and Word! As Christ Jesus is the Deliverer from death, ‘your salvation experience’ is either the modeling of His life and hope, or your oppression, deception, and blindness by the devil.

But, Yes, to be “in Christ” is to possess the Divine Spirit, Life, and Hope within, ruling and reigning, not to extinguish one’s life but extend and express His eternal life in you and through you. There’s nothing formidable or instructive about ‘suicide’ other than ‘pumping up’ the devil and his demons! They celebrate a suicide! Suicidal death is nothing more than an extreme expression of obstinateness and indifference to the will and Word of God and His honor. Suicidal deaths diminish, for far too many people, the Truth of Christ and His victory over spiritual death and spiritual strangulation!

Suicidal death is not a “master-piece” print-out of Resurrection Life but a cheap imitation of His promises. Self-death by human, willful means is one’s rejection of “spiritual life” by Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross. Suicide is not “done with sin” but an open and willful celebration of sin in fleshly cares, woes, and pains!

Suicide is the door to the land of darkness and the shadows of that darkness, the door to the hellish celebration of the dead, the demons, and ALL of Hell’s constituents, plus the absence of any “fruit of the Spirit” but only the “rotten fruit of a misspent life”, honoring ‘flesh’, unbelief, disobedience, rebellion to the good, acceptable, and perfect will of God. Suicidal death is an announcement of darkness and one’s ‘changed mind’ or desire for it, and a rejection of “Life, Liberty, and the eternal Spirit and His fruit: Galatians 5:22-24, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law, AND THOSE WHO ARE CHRIST’S HAVE CRUCIFIED THE FLESH WITH ITS PASSIONS AND DESIRES. IF WE LIVE IN THE SPIRIT, LET US ALSO WALK IN THE SPIRIT.”

Is suicide loving God or loving ‘dust’, loving the Savior or loving the sensual flesh and its never-ending disappointments, or loving the foolish setting aside Redemptive Faith? Suicide “sinks the soul, the spirit, the very life of true faith”! Suicide is being overcome by fleshly domination, being blinded to the God who saves, heals, and delivers; it is the exaltation and submission to the fleshly manifestations of fear, faithlessness, and the futility of ‘self-effort discipleship’ apart from His promises!

James 4:7-10 says, (This is from the brother of Jesus!), “Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Lament and mourn and weep! Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up.”

Please, let me highlight, underscore, enlighten you more about “willful suicide”:

FIRST, IT IS SELF-ASSERTION RATHER THAN TRUE TRUST IN GOD’S CARE. In Jeremiah 29:11 the Lord God spoke: “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not evil, to give you a future and a hope.”

Suicide is, yes, the act of willfully rejecting the Author of Life, the Lord Jesus Christ, and giving the devil himself more right to your life than the blood-redemption of Christ Jesus.

As Christ Jesus is the “Deliverer from death”, your salvation experience and continual event is taking the sentence of death to yourself daily that He might rule and reign in you, with you aware of the necessity of giving room daily to His model and eternal reality of divine life and eternal hope, not your oppression or deception by the devil that suicide is spiritually legal.

Suicidal death is honoring flesh, honoring a misspent life, honoring indifference, unbelief, and hopelessness! It’s the extreme manifestation of ‘self-will’, rejecting divine will, trusting my deception more than His Truth and His Trust, and more trust in my misspent mind than His peace, His design for me, and His future hope for me ‘In Him.’

SECOND, SUICIDE IS SELF-DETERMINATION RATHER THAN SOVEREIGN CARE BY HOLY GOD. Romans 6:23 is so clear! “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

“The gift of eternal life”? But some disregard His gifts, His provisions, and His fruit, and substitute or give way to ‘best effort’ or a slavish indifference to His revealed truths!

It’s so interesting that in Hebrews 4:14 – 16 the author magnifies Jesus, the Son of God, and us ‘holding fast our confession’, then saying, “For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. LET US THEREFORE COME BOLDLY TO THE THRONE OF GRACE, THAT WE MAY OBTAIN MERCY AND FIND GRACE TO HELP IN TIME OF NEED.” Obtaining mercy and finding grace is not God agreeing one’s suicide is “OK” with Him!

There was a time in the psalmist’s life when he found “trouble and sorrow.” Psalm 116:4-9 is a powerful testimony. It says: “Then I called upon the name of the Lord: “Oh Lord, I implore You, deliver my soul!” Gracious is the Lord, and righteous; Yes, our God is merciful. The Lord preserves the simple; I was brought low, and He saved me. Return to your rest, O my soul. For the Lord has dealt bountifully with you."

Further on, in Psalm 118:5-17, there is a song, the psalm, of exalting and praising God for His everlasting, All-sufficient, and never-ending mercy! It says: “I called on the Lord in distress; the Lord answered me and set me in a broad place.

THE LORD IS ON MY SIDE; I will not fear. What can man do to me? The LORD IS FOR ME among those who help me; therefore I shall see my desire on those who hate me.

It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man. It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in princes. All nations surrounded me, but in the name of the Lord I will destroy them. They surrounded me, yes, they surrounded me; but in the name of the Lord I will destroy them.

They surrounded me like bees; they were quenched like a fire of thorns; For in the name of the Lord I will destroy them. You pushed me violently that I might fall, but the Lord helped me.

The Lord is my strength and song and He has become my salvation. The voice of rejoicing and salvation is in the tents of the righteous; The right hand of the Lord does valiantly.

The right hand of the Lord is exalted; the right hand of the Lord does valiantly. I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord.”

And true believers, born the second time through the blood of Jesus, are raised up, not to give in to the devil’s suggestions, but to expose him and his evil ways – suicide IS an evil way of the powers of darkness! “In Christ”, we have the Great High Priest from whom we obtain mercy and grace to help in the times of need and our greatest ‘stress moments’!

THIRD, SUICIDE IS YIELDING TO ‘THE THIEF’ (SATAN) RATHER THEN YIELDEDNESS TO GOD’S PROMISED OVERSIGHT. In John 10:9-10 Christ Jesus declared, “I am the door. If anyone enters (the Kingdom of God) by Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief (Satan) does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.”

And in strenuous times, dark clouds, heavy winds, testy storms, some who ‘professed’, like some ‘church-attenders’, yet, sadly, never ‘possessed’ the resurrected Christ, identified themselves, though loyal ‘Temple-attenders and observers’, as what Jesus described as “sons of the devil”! In John 8:43-47 Jesus said of, yes, the ‘religious elite’ of His day, “You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He (Satan) was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for HE IS A LIAR and the father of lies. But because I tell you the truth, you do not believe Me. Which of you convicts Me of sin? And if I tell the truth, why do you believe Me? He who is of God hears God’s words; therefore you do not hear, because you are not of God.”

FOURTH,SUICIDE IS THE ULTIMATE EXPRESSION OF DISAVOWING THE SACRIFICIAL DEATH OF CHRIST AND HIS LORDSHIP, DETERMINING, THOUGH PROFESSING, ONE IS REALLY HIS OWN AND CAN DO AS HE/SHE PLEASES. In 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 Paul challenges every ‘professing believer’,

“Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and YOU (In Christ) are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.”

No “believer” has the right, the privilege, the choice, of choosing on his/her own what pleases or displeases God, what is “my decision” related to life or self-imposed’ death, or what road or path “I” am to walk on! “In Christ” is not a license to do as one pleases!

FIFTH, IT IS THE CLEAREST ACT OF BETRAYAL OF THE BODY OF CHRIST, OR ALL BELIEVERS, AND AN ACCEPTANCE OF THE WILL OF THE AUTHOR OF DEATH, REBELLION, AND DISOBEDIENCE.

Psalm 33:18-22 declares: “Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him, on those who hope in His mercy, To deliver their soul from death, and to keep them alive in famine. Our soul waits for the Lord; He is our help and our shield. For our heart shall rejoice in Him, because we have trusted in His holy name. Let Your mercy, O Lord, be upon us, just as we hope in you.”

The lack of the reverential awe of Almighty God, Christ’s Lordship, and the Holy Spirit’s authority and power, is the “open door” to what you believe satisfies you, not God, not the Spirit, not the Lord Jesus, and certainly, NOT HIS WORD: “You shall not kill.”

Colossians 1:19-23 is an awesome warning from the biblical word “if”. Do you know that word in your own spiritual journey? Paul said: “For it pleased the Father that in Him [In Christ!] all the fullness should dwell, and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross.

And you, who once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now He has reconciled in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy, and blameless, and above reproach in His sight – (“GET READY”!), IF INDEED YOU CONTINUE IN THE FAITH, grounded and steadfast, and are not moved away from the hope of the gospel which you heard, which was preached to every creature under heaven, of which I, Paul, became a minister [or a Messenger].”

“IF” means “conditional” or “will you show Me your devotion by doing My will?” Paul had explained in Colossians 1:18 that Jesus is YOUR author in life decisions! “And He is the head of the body, the church, [all believers], who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, THAT IN ALL THINGS HE MAY HAVE THE PREEMINENCE.” [And you believe it’s permissible to do as you please as a disciple, even committing suicide?].

SIXTH, SUICIDE IS A SUBSTITUTION OF PERSONAL DEATH FOR CHRIST’S RESURRECTION LIFE, RESURRECTION POWER, AND RESURRECTION HOPE! What did Christ Jesus Himself declare in Matthew 11: 28-30? “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I WILL GIVE YOU REST. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and {by coming to Him rather than the devil, the flesh, or the world spirit!}, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”

SEVENTH, SUICIDE IS A SUBSTITUTION OF FLESH RATHER THAN THE VICTORY OF CHRIST’S FINISHED WORK! There is a dramatic convicting passage of Scripture in 2 Corinthians 5:17-21 where again, Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit, wrote: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses against them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation.”

The old has passed away? The old things of flesh indulgence and self-will, or self-determination of life choices, even suicide, has passed away? Is ‘self’ the controlling spiritual influence or “the Christ in you the hope of glory”? And If Christ is the hope of glory in the “new man” in Him, where does the “new man” find, in Christ, an open door to suicide? If God says that by willingness and obedience to Him, He gives the precious privilege of “eating” the good of His land, then its ‘OK” to indulge in the ‘flesh’, even “feeling good” about ending it all by suicide?

“In Christ” one is not granted the fleshly right to do as he/she pleases? “In Christ” one doesn’t have to discern “divine will”? “In Christ” is a lie and one is allowed, though saved, to choose for himself whether to live or die by his own hand? Even though ‘professing Christ’ is a legitimate expression, having done so, have I then the right and rule to determine for myself whether I choose to live or whether I choose to die by my own hand, and it will please the Savior and Lord and honor Him if I betray His Lordship and shorten, end, or cancel His eternal purpose He determined to fulfill through me?

Suicidal death is not the door to eternal life; suicidal death is not a hymn of one’s devotion to His Savior and Lord, but an ‘off-key’, un-tuned horns, phony words of ‘OK’ by the choir director of darkness, evil, and the satisfactions of all indulgent demons! It is corruptible, it is a devilish substitute for the good, acceptable, and perfect will of God, it is ‘the end of life’, not a divorce from its sorrowful bents and turnings and witness, and it is not ‘debt paid for my failures, my rebellion, my indulgences, my rejection, and my determination, and loving God ought to be pleased that I won’t shame Him anymore, because I end my failing life?

Suicide is the devil sealing his ownership by default of trust, obedience, or honor of the Savior and Lord! Suicide is a “mastered piece of hellish art” by the devil of darkness who claims ‘light’!

“Unashamed the devil stands and claps his hands over the suicidal man. ‘Goodness’ to him is you ending your pain, sorrow and suffering in your estimation of your failures, worthy only of ripping your painting of your life off the wall, and letting him celebrate your rejection of God’s help!’”

If the devil walks about seeking whom he may devour, do you believe his invitations are those by which you dishonor God, destroy yourself, giving him room to celebrate another battle won?

It was Shakespeare, in his “Hamlet”, who once wrote: “The spirit that I have seen may be the devil; and the devil has power to assume a pleasing shape,” and in his “hellish, pleasing shape”, promoting his darkness, ‘suicide’ becomes for ‘doubters’ the open door to rest, peace, and good feelings! Give me a break!

Why not “rebuke the devil and he will flee from you”! Expose him not explain him! Resist his demonic temptations rather than receive his deathly trouble! The “suicide-tempter” IS the “unmasked devil” with the intent of one’s horrific death, dishonoring the God who made him, to the devil’s pleasure! You don’t keep the devil in your house – you kick him out! “In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer – I (Jesus) have overcome the world and the devil!” Amen?

And if the Lord Jesus has “chosen” us, that is not the “choice” of freedom in Christ to do with myself as I please but yielded to His sovereign will in all circumstances of one’s life, and, be assured, Holy God doesn’t give His “Amen” to any believer’s choice of killing himself/herself but challenges all believers to “LIVE” for His glory, His honor, His praise!

By J.Farrell Fisher, December 11-13, 2016

It’s not an uncommon experience for a person to come under divine conviction, but the circumstances can or will vary for every individual. In the experience of Isaiah who became a prophet of God, during the time period when King Uzziah died, Isaiah said in Isaiah 6:1, “I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple”, and the Holy Presence shook him to his core!

Isaiah said, in Isaiah 6:5, “Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.” Though he was ‘in the Temple’ regularly, only when Holy God unveiled Himself to Isaiah was he strongly and deeply aware of his need of blood redemption and true reconciliation to Holy God.

Isaiah 6:6 says, “Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand which he had taken with the tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth with it, and said: ‘Behold, this has touched your lips; your iniquity is taken away, and your sin purged.” The Random House College Dictionary of 1975 defines a seraphim as “one of the celestial beings hovering above God’s throne…a member of the highest order of angels.”

In God’s office and ministry of Sovereign over men or nations, He’s not removed from His awareness of men and their need of reconciliation, and can or will do as He pleases to bring about awareness of one’s need for true repentance and the way of mind and heart-change in one’s life! In Isaiah’s circumstance, as it must be for any reconciled to God, he/she, in divine presence are brought to a full awareness of his/her uncleanness before God with clear understanding of the need of sin-purging, heart-washing, and the birthing of understanding of availability of one’s self to God in whatever ministry or calling or heavenly role HE ASSIGNS TO US!

In Isaiah 6: 8 Isaiah heard the voice of the Lord, saying: “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” “Us”? The Holy Trinity! Father, Son, and Holy Spirit! And in the midst of a needy world, “THEY” settle on assignments of all true servants of God, from the greatest to the least!

Oh, but then notice in Isaiah 6: 8, Isaiah responded in a truly yielded response, “Here am I! Send me.” How clear does Paul make it for us several thousand years later when in Romans 6:15-18 he, by the Spirit, unveiled the powerful path of holy obedience! “What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? Certainly not! Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one’s slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness? But God be thanked that though you WERE slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered. AND HAVING BEEN SET FREE FROM SIN, YOU BECAME SLAVES (OR SERVANTS) OF RIGHTEOUSNESS.”

Yet, in modern-day American churches, some call obedience ‘salvation by works’, so they ‘rest’ in their compromise, disobedience, and are perfectly satisfied to live their ‘faith experience’ fruitless, self-filled, demon-controlled, but feel “blessed by my religious identity” rather than their “Birth-Marks by the Holy Spirit”!

Don’t you find it so interesting and liberating to hear Jesus in Luke 4:18-19 quoting from Isaiah 61:1? “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”

YOU WERE A SERVANT OF SIN! YOU WERE ENSLAVED TO UNRIGHTEOUSNESS! YOU WERE, APART FROM “BLOOD REDEMPTION”, A ‘SINATRA” FAN: “I DID IT MY WAY,” never understanding walking with Christ on the Highway of Holiness! Dare I ask you if you’ve truly been liberated, set free from the bondage of your old sin-nature, chains broken from demonic allegiance, yet possibly playing an Academy Award – WINNER of ‘Pretense’ rather than “Complete in Christ,” “Perfected by Grace,” and a testimony of “Spirit-anointing”, walking in His control, His fruit, and His power or anointing?

Do you remember Paul sharing his testimony, recounting his conversion experience, with King Agrippa in Acts 26? Beginning in Verse 13-20 we read: “..at midday, O king, along the road I saw a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, shining around me and those who journeyed with me. And when we all had fallen to the ground, I heard a voice speaking to me and saying in the Hebrew language, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.”

So I said, ‘Who are You, Lord?’ And He said, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But rise and stand on your feet; for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to make you a minister and a witness both of the things which you have seen and of the things I will yet reveal to you. I will deliver you from the Jewish people, as well as from the Gentiles, to whom I now send you, to open their eyes, in order to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who are sanctified by faith in Me.” GLORY!! WHAT AN ENLIGHTENING PASSAGE OF THE WORD!

I’m sure you remember, in Matthew 18:1-5, As the disciples came to Jesus, they asked, “Who then is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” Then Jesus called a little child to Him, set him in the midst of them, and said, “Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore whoever humbles himself as this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever receives one little child like this in My name receives Me.” Is ‘humbling one’s self before Holy God and King Jesus and the Spirit of God’ the true and only door to Holy Presence and a Holy Life or have you ‘self-determined how able you are in yourself to please Him’? Willful, self-wits does not line up with “put on the new man”!

It was Oswald Chambers who wrote in his book, “My Utmost For His Highest,” (p.270), “We deify independence and willfulness and call them by the wrong name. What God looks on as obstinate weakness, we call strength.” Does that ring true with you in, maybe only at times, a view of “I’m able! I can be like Jesus!”? No! He crucified you and me with Himself to end one’s conviction that our lives in Him consists of the ‘abundance of spiritual strengths we possess in ourselves’! In Romans 13:14 Paul wrote: “But PUT ON THE LORD JESUS CHRIST, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts,” and spiritual pride apart from Christ is one of the suffocating ‘lifestyles’ of ‘self-made, professing disciples’!

But, did Jesus say, in Matthew 18:3, “Assuredly, I SAY TO YOU, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven”? Oh, and then what was it Paul said in Galatians 4:19? “My little children, for whom I labor in birth again until Christ is formed in you”! And, ‘kids in the faith’ begin to truly mature and grow as they ‘lean not to their own understanding’, but learn to give Him His rightful place as they receive, recognize, and rest in “Christ in me the hope of glory”!

There’s a big “if” in 1 John 1:7 where the beloved John wrote: “But IF we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.” And, please tell me: How does a true ‘child of the King’ ever come to the place where he/she excuses their life of willful sin when the Lord Jesus took the sin and sin-nature to the Cross and shed His own blood that we might be free from its domination, degrading, and darkening impact of temptation and willful surrender to ‘it’ rather than to the eternal freedom of His Lordship?

Come with me now to Luke 2:25-35 which is the eternal track of faith I want our train of faith running on! It says: And behold, there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon, and this man was just and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ.

So he came by the Spirit into the temple. And when the parents brought in the Child Jesus, to do for Him according to the custom of the law, he took Him up in his arms and blessed God and said: “Lord, now You are letting Your servant depart in peace, according to Your word; for my eyes have seen Your salvation which You have prepared before the face of all peoples, A light to bring revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of Your people Israel.” And Joseph and His mother marveled at those things which were spoken of Him. Then Simeon blessed them, and said to Mary His mother, “Behold, this Child is destined for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign which will be spoken against (yes, a sword will pierce through your own soul also), that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.”

Dare I tell you that “the sword of the Lord” is double-edged? For unbelievers “the sword of the Lord” is the painful penalty of separation from God, the severing of an eternal relationship with Him because of unbelief, AND the ‘piercing of eternal death that never dies’, while on the other hand ‘the piercing’ is DIVINE CONVICTION that breaks the hardened heart and reveals the need of reconciliation to Holy God through the blood sacrifice of Christ at Calvary’s Cross!

In 1 John 1:5-7 John declared: “This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. BUT if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.”

When YOU professed Christ as Lord and Savior and Master and Lord over your “new-born” life, was there, in you, the understanding and the willful acceptance of your ‘death to sin’ and your ‘faith in the gracious gift of the impartation of His Resurrection Presence’, His total and complete perfection, and His unrivaled power to cleanse you from all sin and the sin-nature? Do you know that 1 John 4:17 declares, “…because as He is, so are we in this world”? You’re the ‘temple or tabernacle’ – Christ Jesus fills you with His Holy Presence!

How clear did the Lord Jesus make it for Nicodemus, a former Pharisee and a ruler of the Jews? In John 3: 3-6 Jesus told Nicodemus and Us, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is BORN AGAIN, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus said to Him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water (the water of the Word of God) and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” Apart from the “new birth” there is no eternal testimony of the “new-born-life- in- Christ”!

In Matthew 10: 32-33 Jesus said: “Therefore whoever confesses (and keeps on confessing) Me before men, him I will also confess before My Father who is in heaven. But whoever denies Me before men, him I will also deny before My Father who is in heaven.” Denying Christ before men can be “professing, church-attending pretenders” who know nothing about “being born again,” transformed, or regenerated by the Spirit of God into a “new creation”, and in Luke 12:56 Jesus described or spoke about some who are “hypocrites” or pretenders, religious ‘play-actors’!

God help us as modern-day disciples of Christ that we preach, teach, witness to, explain, and proclaim the “saving Grace and mercy” of a “new-born life” in and through the Holy Spirit! Jesus explained to the woman of Samaria in John 4:23-24, “But the hour is coming, AND NOW IS, when the TRUE WORSHIPPERS will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.”

You’ll remember that Christ’s encounter with the woman we just read about in John 4:23-24 came about after Jesus came to her, in Verse 7, saying, “Give Me a drink.” In Verse 9 she said to Jesus, “How is it that You, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman? For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.” Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.”

What an awesome declaration of the difference between ‘water’ and ‘living water’, yet many drink from wells of water dispensing selfish satisfactions but have nothing to do with the “living water of the Word” that births new lives, new hearts, new intents to honor Holy God alone!

This may be why the Hebrews author was inspired to write in Hebrews 11:6, “But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently see Him.”

There’s an informative, inspiring, enlightening, liberating word in Jeremiah 29:11-13 for not only the captive Jews but for every sin-bound man or woman across the world today! It says: “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. THEN you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will search for Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.”

In Philippians 3:7-11 we find, not the piercing sword of fleshly awareness and attainment in “our best spiritual endeavor”, but the piercing sword of divine fulfillment as we allow His Word to birth us into “new lives”, signed by God alone! It says: “But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also have counted all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which IS THROUGH FAITH IN CHRIST, the righteousness which is from God by faith; that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, BEING CONFORMED TO HIS DEATH, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.”

Oh, but then Peter truly challenges us who ARE “followers of Christ Jesus,” His sons and daughters of redemptive faith, the appointed, anointed, and assigned disciples who are to touch our world with His saving grace, not to become lax, or possess any spiritual sluggishness or indifference to His calling and assignment of our lives, when in 2 Peter 1:2-15 he wrote: “Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, as His divine power HAS GIVEN TO US ALL THINGS THAT PERTAIN TO LIFE AND GODLINESS, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.

But also FOR THIS VERY REASON, [Because “in Christ” we’re so blessed AND partakers of the divine nature!], giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love.

For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren, nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these things is short-sided, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins. Therefore, brethren, be EVEN MORE DILIGENT to make your calling and election sure, for if you do these things you will never stumble; for so an entrance will be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior.

For this reason I WILL NOT BE NEGLIGENT TO REMIND YOU always of these things, though you KNOW AND ARE ESTABLISHED IN THE PRESENT TRUTH. Yes, I think it is right, as long as I am in this (earthly) tent, to stir you up by reminding you, knowing that shortly I must put off my tent, just as our Lord Jesus Christ showed me. Moreover I will be careful to ensure that you always have a reminder of these things after my decease.”

I turned 80 years of age this past June 12, 2016. My grandfather Fisher died at 78 years of age. My father, Jim Fisher, died at 78 years of age. I see, without hesitation, that I am highly blessed of our Lord and Savior, and thankful for my loving wife, Sue, three sons and a daughter, nine grandkids, and great-grand kids that grow in numbers every year!

And then, in 2 Peter 1:16b- 19, an awesome word of assurance, trustworthiness in the revealed Word of God and Christ’s many promises as Peter wrote: we “were eyewitnesses of His majesty. For He (Jesus) received from God the Father honor and glory when such a voice came to Him from the Excellent Glory: “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” And we heard this voice which came from heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain. AND so we have the prophetic word confirmed, which you do well to heed as a light shines in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts;…”

What has Christ Jesus “confirmed” in YOU? Have YOU heard His voice, seen His ‘star’ of hope and heavenly blessing, and do you live with His “Blessed Assurance”?!?

To the Philippian congregation and the masses in this century who walk faithfully with Christ, Paul said, in Philippians 2:12-13, “Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.”

Is Holy God at work in you, transforming the old man into the “new creation” of the Resurrection Life of Christ in your mortal flesh? Does “the piercing sword of eternal Truth” remind you that it was YOUR SIN AND SIN NATURE that brought about the crucifixion of Christ? Again, what did Paul remind us of in Galatians 2:20-21a? “I HAVE BEEN CRUCIFIED WITH CHRIST; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh (bodily presence) I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God…”! John Newton and B.B.McKinney wrote the hymn, “He Died For Me.” It says:

“I saw One hanging on a tree, In agony and blood; He fixed His languid eyes on me, As near His cross I stood.

Sure, never, till my latest breath, Can I forget that look: It seemed to charge me with His death, Tho’ not a word He spoke.

My conscience felt and owned the guilt, And plunged me in despair; I saw my sins His blood had spilt, And helped to nail Him there.

A second look He gave, which said, “I freely all forgive; This blood is for your ransom paid, I die that you may live.”

It was for me, upon a tree He died in agony, And now I give my life to live, For Him who died for me.” Has the Cross of Christ pierced through your heart and mind to wash you “clean and pure” with His blood?

By J.Farrell Fisher, December 11-13, 2016

It’s not an uncommon experience for a person to come under divine conviction, but the circumstances can or will vary for every individual. In the experience of Isaiah who became a prophet of God, during the time period when King Uzziah died, Isaiah said in Isaiah 6:1, “I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple”, and the Holy Presence shook him to his core!

Isaiah said, in Isaiah 6:5, “Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.” Though he was ‘in the Temple’ regularly, only when Holy God unveiled Himself to Isaiah was he strongly and deeply aware of his need of blood redemption and true reconciliation to Holy God.

Isaiah 6:6 says, “Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand which he had taken with the tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth with it, and said: ‘Behold, this has touched your lips; your iniquity is taken away, and your sin purged.” The Random House College Dictionary of 1975 defines a seraphim as “one of the celestial beings hovering above God’s throne…a member of the highest order of angels.”

In God’s office and ministry of Sovereign over men or nations, He’s not removed from His awareness of men and their need of reconciliation, and can or will do as He pleases to bring about awareness of one’s need for true repentance and the way of mind and heart-change in one’s life! In Isaiah’s circumstance, as it must be for any reconciled to God, he/she, in divine presence are brought to a full awareness of his/her uncleanness before God with clear understanding of the need of sin-purging, heart-washing, and the birthing of understanding of availability of one’s self to God in whatever ministry or calling or heavenly role HE ASSIGNS TO US!

In Isaiah 6: 8 Isaiah heard the voice of the Lord, saying: “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” “Us”? The Holy Trinity! Father, Son, and Holy Spirit! And in the midst of a needy world, “THEY” settle on assignments of all true servants of God, from the greatest to the least!

Oh, but then notice in Isaiah 6: 8, Isaiah responded in a truly yielded response, “Here am I! Send me.” How clear does Paul make it for us several thousand years later when in Romans 6:15-18 he, by the Spirit, unveiled the powerful path of holy obedience! “What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? Certainly not! Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one’s slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness? But God be thanked that though you WERE slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered. AND HAVING BEEN SET FREE FROM SIN, YOU BECAME SLAVES (OR SERVANTS) OF RIGHTEOUSNESS.”

Yet, in modern-day American churches, some call obedience ‘salvation by works’, so they ‘rest’ in their compromise, disobedience, and are perfectly satisfied to live their ‘faith experience’ fruitless, self-filled, demon-controlled, but feel “blessed by my religious identity” rather than their “Birth-Marks by the Holy Spirit”!

Don’t you find it so interesting and liberating to hear Jesus in Luke 4:18-19 quoting from Isaiah 61:1? “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”

YOU WERE A SERVANT OF SIN! YOU WERE ENSLAVED TO UNRIGHTEOUSNESS! YOU WERE, APART FROM “BLOOD REDEMPTION”, A ‘SINATRA” FAN: “I DID IT MY WAY,” never understanding walking with Christ on the Highway of Holiness! Dare I ask you if you’ve truly been liberated, set free from the bondage of your old sin-nature, chains broken from demonic allegiance, yet possibly playing an Academy Award – WINNER of ‘Pretense’ rather than “Complete in Christ,” “Perfected by Grace,” and a testimony of “Spirit-anointing”, walking in His control, His fruit, and His power or anointing?

Do you remember Paul sharing his testimony, recounting his conversion experience, with King Agrippa in Acts 26? Beginning in Verse 13-20 we read: “..at midday, O king, along the road I saw a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, shining around me and those who journeyed with me. And when we all had fallen to the ground, I heard a voice speaking to me and saying in the Hebrew language, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.”

So I said, ‘Who are You, Lord?’ And He said, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But rise and stand on your feet; for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to make you a minister and a witness both of the things which you have seen and of the things I will yet reveal to you. I will deliver you from the Jewish people, as well as from the Gentiles, to whom I now send you, to open their eyes, in order to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who are sanctified by faith in Me.” GLORY!! WHAT AN ENLIGHTENING PASSAGE OF THE WORD!

I’m sure you remember, in Matthew 18:1-5, As the disciples came to Jesus, they asked, “Who then is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” Then Jesus called a little child to Him, set him in the midst of them, and said, “Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore whoever humbles himself as this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever receives one little child like this in My name receives Me.” Is ‘humbling one’s self before Holy God and King Jesus and the Spirit of God’ the true and only door to Holy Presence and a Holy Life or have you ‘self-determined how able you are in yourself to please Him’? Willful, self-wits does not line up with “put on the new man”!

It was Oswald Chambers who wrote in his book, “My Utmost For His Highest,” (p.270), “We deify independence and willfulness and call them by the wrong name. What God looks on as obstinate weakness, we call strength.” Does that ring true with you in, maybe only at times, a view of “I’m able! I can be like Jesus!”? No! He crucified you and me with Himself to end one’s conviction that our lives in Him consists of the ‘abundance of spiritual strengths we possess in ourselves’! In Romans 13:14 Paul wrote: “But PUT ON THE LORD JESUS CHRIST, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts,” and spiritual pride apart from Christ is one of the suffocating ‘lifestyles’ of ‘self-made, professing disciples’!

But, did Jesus say, in Matthew 18:3, “Assuredly, I SAY TO YOU, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven”? Oh, and then what was it Paul said in Galatians 4:19? “My little children, for whom I labor in birth again until Christ is formed in you”! And, ‘kids in the faith’ begin to truly mature and grow as they ‘lean not to their own understanding’, but learn to give Him His rightful place as they receive, recognize, and rest in “Christ in me the hope of glory”!

There’s a big “if” in 1 John 1:7 where the beloved John wrote: “But IF we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.” And, please tell me: How does a true ‘child of the King’ ever come to the place where he/she excuses their life of willful sin when the Lord Jesus took the sin and sin-nature to the Cross and shed His own blood that we might be free from its domination, degrading, and darkening impact of temptation and willful surrender to ‘it’ rather than to the eternal freedom of His Lordship?

Come with me now to Luke 2:25-35 which is the eternal track of faith I want our train of faith running on! It says: And behold, there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon, and this man was just and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ.

So he came by the Spirit into the temple. And when the parents brought in the Child Jesus, to do for Him according to the custom of the law, he took Him up in his arms and blessed God and said: “Lord, now You are letting Your servant depart in peace, according to Your word; for my eyes have seen Your salvation which You have prepared before the face of all peoples, A light to bring revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of Your people Israel.” And Joseph and His mother marveled at those things which were spoken of Him. Then Simeon blessed them, and said to Mary His mother, “Behold, this Child is destined for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign which will be spoken against (yes, a sword will pierce through your own soul also), that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.”

Dare I tell you that “the sword of the Lord” is double-edged? For unbelievers “the sword of the Lord” is the painful penalty of separation from God, the severing of an eternal relationship with Him because of unbelief, AND the ‘piercing of eternal death that never dies’, while on the other hand ‘the piercing’ is DIVINE CONVICTION that breaks the hardened heart and reveals the need of reconciliation to Holy God through the blood sacrifice of Christ at Calvary’s Cross!

In 1 John 1:5-7 John declared: “This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. BUT if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.”

When YOU professed Christ as Lord and Savior and Master and Lord over your “new-born” life, was there, in you, the understanding and the willful acceptance of your ‘death to sin’ and your ‘faith in the gracious gift of the impartation of His Resurrection Presence’, His total and complete perfection, and His unrivaled power to cleanse you from all sin and the sin-nature? Do you know that 1 John 4:17 declares, “…because as He is, so are we in this world”? You’re the ‘temple or tabernacle’ – Christ Jesus fills you with His Holy Presence!

How clear did the Lord Jesus make it for Nicodemus, a former Pharisee and a ruler of the Jews? In John 3: 3-6 Jesus told Nicodemus and Us, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is BORN AGAIN, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus said to Him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water (the water of the Word of God) and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” Apart from the “new birth” there is no eternal testimony of the “new-born-life- in- Christ”!

In Matthew 10: 32-33 Jesus said: “Therefore whoever confesses (and keeps on confessing) Me before men, him I will also confess before My Father who is in heaven. But whoever denies Me before men, him I will also deny before My Father who is in heaven.” Denying Christ before men can be “professing, church-attending pretenders” who know nothing about “being born again,” transformed, or regenerated by the Spirit of God into a “new creation”, and in Luke 12:56 Jesus described or spoke about some who are “hypocrites” or pretenders, religious ‘play-actors’!

God help us as modern-day disciples of Christ that we preach, teach, witness to, explain, and proclaim the “saving Grace and mercy” of a “new-born life” in and through the Holy Spirit! Jesus explained to the woman of Samaria in John 4:23-24, “But the hour is coming, AND NOW IS, when the TRUE WORSHIPPERS will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.”

You’ll remember that Christ’s encounter with the woman we just read about in John 4:23-24 came about after Jesus came to her, in Verse 7, saying, “Give Me a drink.” In Verse 9 she said to Jesus, “How is it that You, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman? For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.” Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.”

What an awesome declaration of the difference between ‘water’ and ‘living water’, yet many drink from wells of water dispensing selfish satisfactions but have nothing to do with the “living water of the Word” that births new lives, new hearts, new intents to honor Holy God alone!

This may be why the Hebrews author was inspired to write in Hebrews 11:6, “But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently see Him.”

There’s an informative, inspiring, enlightening, liberating word in Jeremiah 29:11-13 for not only the captive Jews but for every sin-bound man or woman across the world today! It says: “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. THEN you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will search for Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.”

In Philippians 3:7-11 we find, not the piercing sword of fleshly awareness and attainment in “our best spiritual endeavor”, but the piercing sword of divine fulfillment as we allow His Word to birth us into “new lives”, signed by God alone! It says: “But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also have counted all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which IS THROUGH FAITH IN CHRIST, the righteousness which is from God by faith; that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, BEING CONFORMED TO HIS DEATH, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.”

Oh, but then Peter truly challenges us who ARE “followers of Christ Jesus,” His sons and daughters of redemptive faith, the appointed, anointed, and assigned disciples who are to touch our world with His saving grace, not to become lax, or possess any spiritual sluggishness or indifference to His calling and assignment of our lives, when in 2 Peter 1:2-15 he wrote: “Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, as His divine power HAS GIVEN TO US ALL THINGS THAT PERTAIN TO LIFE AND GODLINESS, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.

But also FOR THIS VERY REASON, [Because “in Christ” we’re so blessed AND partakers of the divine nature!], giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love.

For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren, nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these things is short-sided, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins. Therefore, brethren, be EVEN MORE DILIGENT to make your calling and election sure, for if you do these things you will never stumble; for so an entrance will be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior.

For this reason I WILL NOT BE NEGLIGENT TO REMIND YOU always of these things, though you KNOW AND ARE ESTABLISHED IN THE PRESENT TRUTH. Yes, I think it is right, as long as I am in this (earthly) tent, to stir you up by reminding you, knowing that shortly I must put off my tent, just as our Lord Jesus Christ showed me. Moreover I will be careful to ensure that you always have a reminder of these things after my decease.”

I turned 80 years of age this past June 12, 2016. My grandfather Fisher died at 78 years of age. My father, Jim Fisher, died at 78 years of age. I see, without hesitation, that I am highly blessed of our Lord and Savior, and thankful for my loving wife, Sue, three sons and a daughter, nine grandkids, and great-grand kids that grow in numbers every year!

And then, in 2 Peter 1:16b- 19, an awesome word of assurance, trustworthiness in the revealed Word of God and Christ’s many promises as Peter wrote: we “were eyewitnesses of His majesty. For He (Jesus) received from God the Father honor and glory when such a voice came to Him from the Excellent Glory: “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” And we heard this voice which came from heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain. AND so we have the prophetic word confirmed, which you do well to heed as a light shines in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts;…”

What has Christ Jesus “confirmed” in YOU? Have YOU heard His voice, seen His ‘star’ of hope and heavenly blessing, and do you live with His “Blessed Assurance”?!?

To the Philippian congregation and the masses in this century who walk faithfully with Christ, Paul said, in Philippians 2:12-13, “Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.”

Is Holy God at work in you, transforming the old man into the “new creation” of the Resurrection Life of Christ in your mortal flesh? Does “the piercing sword of eternal Truth” remind you that it was YOUR SIN AND SIN NATURE that brought about the crucifixion of Christ? Again, what did Paul remind us of in Galatians 2:20-21a? “I HAVE BEEN CRUCIFIED WITH CHRIST; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh (bodily presence) I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God…”! John Newton and B.B.McKinney wrote the hymn, “He Died For Me.” It says:

“I saw One hanging on a tree, In agony and blood; He fixed His languid eyes on me, As near His cross I stood.

Sure, never, till my latest breath, Can I forget that look: It seemed to charge me with His death, Tho’ not a word He spoke.

My conscience felt and owned the guilt, And plunged me in despair; I saw my sins His blood had spilt, And helped to nail Him there.

A second look He gave, which said, “I freely all forgive; This blood is for your ransom paid, I die that you may live.”

It was for me, upon a tree He died in agony, And now I give my life to live, For Him who died for me.” Has the Cross of Christ pierced through your heart and mind to wash you “clean and pure” with His blood?