For He is Our God

“Oh come, let us worship and bow down;

    let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker!

For he is our God,

    and we are the people of his pasture,

    and the sheep of his hand.

Today, if you hear his voice,

    do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah,

    as on the day at Massah in the wilderness,

when your fathers put me to the test

    and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work.

For forty years I loathed that generation

    and said, ‘They are a people who go astray in their heart,

    and they have not known my ways.’

Therefore I swore in my wrath,

    ‘They shall not enter my rest.’” (Psalms 95:6-11 ESV)

Cross reference: 1 Corinthians 10:1-22; Hebrews 3:1-19; Hebrews 4:1-13

We who claim to be Jesus followers are warned similarly in the New Testament against hardening our hearts and committing the horrible acts of sinful rebellion against God as did the majority of the Israelites during their 40 years in the wilderness. We are not to desire evil as they did. We are not to be idolaters and revelers and drunkards and those who indulge in sexual immorality. And we are not to put Christ to the test, nor are we to grumble against our Lord. For they were put to death in the wilderness, and they did not enter into God’s eternal rest (salvation and eternal life with God).

For we live in a day and age, at least here in America, where liars and deception are about everywhere you look – in the gatherings of the church (or in the false church), in the media, and in our governments, et al. Preachers lie to us. The news media lies to us. Our heads of government lie to us. Advertisers lie to us. The truth is being twisted and altered and turned upside down, and the lies are being promoted as the truth. Chaos is all over the place. So many people are unruly, wild, and disorderly. And so many “Christians” are not living under the control and authority of God.

Enormous half-truths (lies) are rapidly being spread throughout the church and the world. They are half-way between truth and lies and they are being cleverly disguised as truth, and since they are partial truths, many people are buying into them. And they are intended to deceive the unsuspecting, the naïve, the gullible, the unlearned, and those who do not make it their practice to test what they are hearing or reading to make sure it is truth and not lies cleverly disguised to look like truth. Some of these are termed misimpressions, which are indirect lies and thus much harder to prove.

With regard to the gospel of Jesus Christ, what they are largely doing is that they are teaching the Scriptures out of context and they are making the Scriptures say something that they do not teach when taught in the appropriate context. It is biblical in the sense that they are quoting from the Scriptures, but it is antibiblical in the sense that they are being taught erroneously out of their proper context. But since they quote the Scriptures, many people are believing the lies which are telling them that all they have to do is profess faith in Christ and now their sins are forgiven, done deal.

Right now, in this day and time, I am seeing many videos or still pictures on social media and on YouTube which are showing very large crowds of people (in the thousands) gathering together purportedly to worship Jesus Christ and to share the gospel message, and for revival, where many people are supposedly receiving Jesus Christ as their Savior or making their hearts right with God. But what I am mostly seeing are large crowds of people singing and swaying and jumping up and down to the music. And “the gospel” message I am hearing is the altered and diluted “half-truth” gospel, which is a lie.

So there appears to be a massive movement presently which is spreading quickly (rapidly) across the world, which appears to be based largely in human emotion and diluted gospel messages. I have not been able to verify what is actually taking place in most of these gatherings, but they don’t seem to be communicating much, either, or if they do, it has so far been the diluted and altered gospel which teaches you can “receive Jesus Christ,” all your sins are now forgiven, and heaven is guaranteed you when you die, but without stressing the importance of obedience and true repentance.

Now Jesus Christ and his NT apostles taught that we must deny self, die daily to sin, and walk in obedience to our Lord, in practice, if we want to have salvation from sin and eternal life with God. And they taught what this passage in Psalms 95 is teaching, which is also taught in the 3 above mentioned cross reference Scripture passages. So if we claim to know God and to be in fellowship with him, but we do not obey him, in practice, and we continue in deliberate and habitual sin, then we will NOT inherit eternal life with God. But these liars are teaching something midway to that.

For their goal is to kill, to steal, and to destroy (see John 10:1-15). Their goal is to knock down the truth and to replace it with the lies. They are plotting against the true gospel and its messengers, and they are doing this in secret where most people are not aware of what is really taking place. For it is disguised as truth. And I wonder (I cannot prove) if all or some of these current large gatherings called “revivals” or “worship” gatherings are legitimate or if they are part of the scam to deceive the masses into following after the lie (half-truth) and not after the gospel of Christ Jesus.

But Jesus Christ gave his life up for us on that cross so that we might die with him to sin and now live to him and to his righteousness in walks of obedience to his commands, no longer to live in sin according to the flesh. And that is the message that he has given to his messengers to take to the people of the world who walk in darkness, that they must deny self, die daily to sin, and follow Jesus in walks of obedience to his commands. Our lives must be surrendered to the Lord to do his will for our lives, and we must submit ourselves to the authority and control of God over our lives.

So many professers of faith in Jesus Christ today are being consumed by the mouth of the lion, i.e. by Satan’s lies. So many who profess the name of Jesus are being taken advantage of by the deceitful who use trickery and mind manipulation to spread their lies. And this is taking place via this present flood of lies and deceptions which are all over everywhere. For these liars are thieves and robbers who are out to destroy the church, and who are out to “rape” people’s hearts and souls so that the people will end up in hell on the promise of heaven, because they believed the lie and not the truth.

But there will come a time of judgment one day when we will all have to answer to God with regard to what we did with Jesus. But before that he is going to visit us in a time of great trial in order to bring a remnant to genuine repentance and to true biblical faith in Jesus Christ. That is my hope, not that we should have to suffer, but that the suffering will bring about the salvation of human lives from hell and destruction. For we must all answer to God for what we did (for our deeds), and those who obeyed God will be rewarded. But those who disobeyed will not enter his eternal rest.

So come, let us worship our Lord in truth and in righteousness, and let us bow down to him in humble surrender to him as Lord (Owner-Master) of our lives. For Jesus died to free us from our addiction to sin and he rose from the dead victorious over sin, death, hell, and Satan, to empower us to live holy lives to the glory and praise of God, and to be able to resist the devil and to flee temptation and to walk in faithful obedience to our Lord. We can live in freedom from bondage to sin in faithfulness to our Lord when we submit to his Lordship and we choose to obey him and not to obey sin.

[Matt 7:13-14,21-23; Lu 9:23-26; Jn 10:27-30; Ac 26:18; Rom 2:6-8; Rom 6:1-23; Rom 8:1-14; Rom 12:1-2; 1 Co 6:9-10,19-20; 1 Co 10:1-22; 2 Co 5:10,15,21; Gal 5:16-24; Gal 6:7-8; Eph 2:8-10; Eph 4:17-32; Eph 5:3-6; Col 1:21-23; Col 3:1-17; Tit 2:11-14; Heb 3:1-19; Heb 4:1-13; Heb 10:23-31; Heb 12:1-2; 1 Pet 2:24; 1 Jn 1:5-10; 1 Jn 2:3-6,15-17; 1 Jn 3:4-10]

Fully Surrendered 

By Alfred C. Snead / George C. Stebbins

Fully surrendered—Lord, I would be,

Fully surrendered, dear Lord, to Thee.

All on the altar laid,

Surrender fully made,

Thou hast my ransom paid;

I yield to Thee.

Fully surrendered—Lord, I am Thine;

Fully surrendered, Savior divine!

Live Thou Thy life in me;

All fullness dwells in Thee;

Not I, but Christ in me,

Christ all in all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nkl6j_NMmLM

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