by G. D. Watson
If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. Matthew 16:24-25
If God has called you to be truly like Jesus in all your spirit, He will draw you into a life of crucifixion and humility. He will put on you such demands of obedience that you will not be allowed to follow other Christians. In many ways, He seems to let other good people do things which He will not let you do.
Others who seem to be very religious and useful may push themselves, pull wires, and scheme to carry out their plans, but you cannot. If you attempt it, you will meet with such failure and rebuke from the Lord as to make you sorely penitent.
Others can brag about themselves, their work, their successes, their writings, but the Holy Spirit will not allow you to do any such thing. If you begin to do so, He will lead you into some deep mortification that will make you despise yourself and all your good works.
Others will be allowed to succeed in making great sums of money, or having a legacy left to them, or in having luxuries, but God may supply you only on a day-to-day basis, because He wants you to have something far better than gold, a helpless dependence on Him and His unseen treasury.
The Lord may let others be honored and put forward while keeping you hidden in obscurity because He wants to produce some choice, fragrant fruit for His coming glory, which can only be produced in the shade.
God may let others be great, but keep you small. He will let others do a work for Him and get the credit, but He will make you work and toil without knowing how much you are doing. Then, to make your work still more precious, He will let others get the credit for the work which you have done; this to teach you the message of the Cross, humility, and something of the value of being cloaked with His nature.
The Holy Spirit will put a strict watch on you, and with a jealous love rebuke you for careless words and feelings, or for wasting your time, which other Christians never seem distressed over.
So make up your mind that God is an infinite Sovereign and has a right to do as He pleases with His own, and that He may not explain to you a thousand things which may puzzle your reason in His dealings with you.
God will take you at your word. If you absolutely sell yourself to be His slave, He will wrap you up in a jealous love and let other people say and do many things that you cannot. Settle it forever; you are to deal directly with the Holy Spirit, He is to have the privilege of tying your tongue or chaining your hand or closing your eyes in ways which others are not dealt with. However, know this great secret of the Kingdom: When you are so completely possessed with the Living God that you are, in your secret heart, pleased and delighted over this peculiar, personal, private, jealous guardianship and management of the Holy Spirit over your life, you will have found the vestibule of heaven, the high calling of God.
Those who are inebriated on false teaching have the toughest time seeing they’ve been drinking from the wrong well. I have a similar background as you, Mike, and his story is very familiar. May God have mercy on all of us and save us from our own deceptions.
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Manfred, Amen brother.
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Yep! 2006 for my wife and I too! I used to link Willow Creek find a church and Saddleback’s find a church to emails I sent friends and family in our area as well. Most left…to go to another “church” in another denomination installing the same thing in their new “church!”
Warned against Manning and Tickle who both made their tours here, then had to warn against the likes of Bentley ad nausea with not 1 in 100 folks caring…It’s that apathy thing and many passions thing I wrote of earlier…
Honestly, it appears to be that the vast majority of them made a decision for a jesus who might do for them, rather than following Jesus for who He IS!
These are the broad road crowd, and this single elder is merely coming out from the Harlot.
More and more we will see this as more and more reveal their love for riding the beast.
We can’t fix this because it isn’t a broken system, but rather another’s system.
The One True Ekklesia that Jesus is building is just fine. God put you in this Living Stone Fellowship, Jesus is the Corner Stone and only Head, and the Apostles are the foundation.
We are scattered as scripture states, but in one accord thanks to the Holy Spirit.
As time goes on, the labels we once thought important will fall away with those who remain in the Harlot and her many daughters, and all who prefer the broad road to destruction, over the Straight Gate and Narrow Path that few there be which find Him. This all too is His Sovereign Work and merely the progression He foreknew and predestined as are and for His Elect whom He will always keep and deliver through the fiery tribulations… Delivered through the fires like the 3 young Jews, and/or like the many Roman Candles after them.
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Amen Mickey!
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Reblogged this on Ezekielcountdown's Weblog and commented:
Heed this, beloved.
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Mike, thanks so much for sharing the article. As I was going through all of his experiences and his heartfelt plea to his pastors and elders, my heart was devastated and I wept. We have recently experienced something similar with the church we’ve been a part of for 10 years. We tried to be “part of the solution” by hanging in there and trying to help our elders understand. But in the end they rejected this and have doubled-down on the Rick Warren and Bill Hybels conferences, the Spiritual Transformation curricula and the emergent/leftist books that have been infiltrating the church for a very long time.
At first I was excited to see John’s well-documented resources. But then I realized that if his own elders could not see the problem, why would I think my own elders would take this letter for consideration?
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Amy, I am, as you are, astounded at the blindness of those willing to take that step onto the slippery slope of compromise, which this is. This is obviously, at least in part, caused by delusion. Of course, many of these people want what they are pursuing so they are being given it and so their blindness grows even deeper. In my own case, when I had my own encounter back in 2006 trying to keep the PDC out of our church I was utterly amazed at the hardness of heart of those who had made up their minds and would not listen no matter how well some of us proved by scriptural evidence the unbiblical nature of the PDC.
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Reblogged this on Truth2Freedom's Blog.
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Wow…
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