Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered outside the gate. Therefore, let us go forth to him outside the camp, bearing his reproach. For we have no continuing city here, but we seek one to come.
Select a thought to read by choosing a collection, the month, and then the day:
I recently listened to a CD from a prayer meeting in Pastor John’s house that took place on June 5th, 2004. In it, Pastor John was telling of a dream he had in which Jesus was preaching to him. He said that Jesus preached to him in his dream for about half an hour on the glory of the Gospel. This is the third of five TFE’s taken from Pastor John’s sermon in that prayer meeting concerning what the Lord preached to him about the Gospel.
If anyone would like a copy of that sermon and that prayer meeting, let us know.
Amy Pittman
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Jesus told us that the answer to all our problems was the Gospel. “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and all his righteousness and all these things will be added to you.” We have problems here that we want answers for. All we need is the Gospel. The Gospel brings light. It is the Gospel of light. It brings light and life and immortality to light, Paul said. “God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, has shined in our hearts.” That’s the Gospel. It is light, and light is understanding. It’s the Gospel of light. The Gospel of peace. The Gospel of truth. People on earth are ignorant because they don’t have the Gospel. Are you full of the Gospel? John said you would know everything if you were. Everything on earth you need to know is in the Gospel. There is nothing outside the Gospel of Christ that you have to know in order to be happy and secure.
If you know God, you are a happy person. If you know God, you know His thoughts. And He described His thoughts through Isaiah. He said, “I know my thoughts I have toward you, that they are thoughts of peace.” In other words, “I don’t think about you the way you think I think about you. I don’t think about you the way you think about yourself. I know what I think about you.” Do you know what God thinks about you?
Every time God created something, he stepped back and said, “That is good.” When He gave you the holy Ghost, He liked what He saw. “I did a good job on that one”, He says. And He does that every time He recreates one of you. Every time you get a little dirty or fall flat on your face, He picks you up, patches you up, and says, “I did another good job.” Do you want to know if you are in good condition or not? I’ll tell you how to know. Just ask yourself, “Did God do it?” If God did it, it’s good. If you ever think it is not that good of a job, that’s an occasion when you must not go by your feelings. In those times, you go by your knowledge of God. If you don’t like what God did, you just don’t know what He did. He created you and left the instructions on the inside. Read your instructions, they are written on your heart. Praise God!
I like what Paul also called the Gospel. He called it “the Gospel of God”. He acknowledged that there were other gospels, but there is a Gospel that is of God. And it makes people act as if God is the biggest thing going. It makes them act the same way those twenty-four elders in heaven behave in the presence of God.
I noticed some years back that Paul said that his ordination from God, his mission, purpose in life, was to make the offering up or the worshiping of the Gentiles acceptable to God (Rom. 15:16). He wasn’t going around trying to get Gentiles to worship God. They were all already worshiping “god”, many gods in fact, just to make sure they had all their bases covered. Making their worship acceptable to God, sanctifying them by the holy Ghost, was Paul’s mission. If you are not sanctified by the holy Ghost, then not one bit of your offering goes up any further than this ceiling. God is holy, and He doesn’t accept anything but holy worship. And He is the only One that can make us holy so that we can worship Him acceptably. There is no other acceptable worship but that which is “in spirit and in truth”. And every person who is preaching some other gospel is preaching an unordained message; it is not of God, and it is not the Gospel of peace. Not the Gospel of hope. It is not the Gospel of salvation. It’s not the Gospel of God. On Judgment Day, they are all going to fall on their knees and confess that they have sinned by not receiving the Gospel when Jesus gave it to them and that they have sinned by preaching a gospel that God did not give them to preach. On that Day, the power of God will make men confess before they have time to make up a lie. On that Day, the sheer power and terror of the Gospel of God will make everyone confess the truth, whether or not they want to. It makes you confess Christ now if you submit to it. The Gospel of God stirs up the gift of God. It will stir up the Gospel in others if it is in their hearts. If I’m preaching the Gospel that was sent down from heaven, it will stir up the Gospel if it is living in you. If this is the Gospel of God, the God in you is going to say AMEN! He is not ashamed of Himself.
People don’t feel this way about themselves, but I tell you now God loves God. God in me loves to see God in you. And it’s something you can see. This is also called the Gospel of grace. And when Barnabas left Jerusalem and traveled up to see what was going on among those Gentiles at Antioch, we are told in the book of Acts that when Barnabas came in that he “saw the grace that was on them.” You can see the grace of God when it is on somebody. Barnabas was glad because God in him loved the grace of God that he saw on those saints in Antioch. Yes, he saw and recognized the grace of God. That is what is going to attract the sheep, something they can see. If one of God’s lost sheep sees the grace of God on you, they might get hungry for some grass. Don’t you want to help them?