Going to Jesus

Gospel Tracts

 Select a tract to read:

• Tracts 1-50

  1. How I Received the Holy Ghost 2. Jesus Is Coming Again 3. You Must Be Born Again 4. Stir Up the Gift of God 5. The World’s Most Dreaded Hour 6. What is Salvation? 7. Stand Still in Jordan 9. Grieved Hearts 10. The Second Death 11. The Father and the Son 12. Suffering and the Saints 13. Cancer Conquered 14. The Church? 15. How Shall They Preach, Except They Be Sent? 16. Have You Received the Holy Ghost Since You Believed? 17. Patience 18. Alone With God 19. Tithes and Offerings 20. Prayer 21. The True Sabbath 22. The Besetting Sin 23. The Cry of the Righteous 24. What Will the Harvest Be? 25. Marriage and Divorce 26. Taking the Name of the Lord 27. The Keys of the Kingdom 28. Works 29. Politics and Believers 30. Unequally Yoked in Marriage 31. Coming Out of Babylon 32. The Forgiven Woman 33. The New Earth 34. The Sin of Silence 35. Freedom 36. Gods of the Gentiles 37. Why Some Are Not Healed 38. The Seven Pillars 39. Life, More Abundantly 40. Fear 41. The Comforter’s Testimony 42. This is My Friend 43. Conversion 44. The Time Is Drawing Near? 45. Songs in the Night 46. The Master’s Net 47. Trials are Opportunities 48. Receiving the Messenger 49. Seven Messages to the Seven Pastors 50. Keep Yourself Pure

• Tracts 51-100

  51. The New Birth 52. John the Baptist and Jesus 53. Denying Jesus 54. Bruised Reeds 56. The Wise and the Foolish 57. Holiness 58. Is Jesus God? 59. Christ or Christianity 60. Have Faith In God 61. Worthy to Suffer 63. Four Kinds of Soil 64. Communion 65. The Fullness of Time 66. Baptism 68. No Room 69. Crucified With Christ 70. Homosexuality and the Bible 71. The Kingdom of God 72. The Gospel of Christ 74. Perseverance 75. The Resurrection 76. Salvation 77. Sanctification 78. New Commandments 79. The Sacrifice of Christ 81. The Sound of the Spirit 82. The Wrath of God 84. God’s Compass 85. Perfection 86. The Abomination of Desolation 87. Antichrist 88. The Way of Grace 90. Relationships 91. The Vineyard of God 93. Subdued 94. The Spirit of Christ 95. The Blood of Christ 96. Spirit of a Serpent, Spirit of a Dove 97. Gluttony 98. The Lost Lamb 99. Scripture Burners 100. Bleating and Lowing

 

Righteousness is all about relationships.  Every commandment God has ever given was designed for one purpose; that is, to guide us into right relationships, either with God or with one another.  From Genesis to Revelation, every story, every prophecy, and every commandment serves this one purpose.  Holy life is a life of right relationships.  There can be no righteousness where there are no right relationships.  No one but God can be holy by himself, including the Son of God, but even God chose not to be holy alone!

The law that God gave Moses revealed to man how to live with God and with others.  When God said, “You shall not make for yourself an idol,” He was revealing how to have a right relationship with Him.  When He said, “You shall not kill” and “You shall not steal,” He was revealing how to have right relationships with others.  Righteousness is all about relationships. 

Both the Old and the New Testaments give us instructions concerning relationships with people who occupy specific places in our lives, such as husband, wife, parent, child, as well as with such people as prophets, pastors, and teachers.  There is a right relationship to be had with each person who is in your life.

The places that people occupy and the spiritual conditions of people vary so widely that the Bible cannot tell us how to have a right relationship in every circumstance with every person.  That is why Jesus suffered and died.  We needed the holy Spirit to guide us into a right relationship with every person, in every circumstance.

Paul told us to “encourage the faint-hearted” and to “warn the disorderly”.  He also said, “Let  the elders who rule well be counted worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in word and in doctrine.”  Now, if instead of warning the disorderly, someone comforts them, or if someone warns the elders that do well instead of honoring them, or gives double honor to the faint-hearted instead of comforting them, that person doesn’t have a right relationship with those people.  The Spirit must reveal to us who is “disorderly”, who is “faint-hearted”, and who is “an elder that rules well” so that we can conduct ourselves appropriately toward them.

Once you realize the value of having right relationships, you will strive to have a right relationship with everyone.  You will even strive to have a right relationship with the Devil.  God has a right relationship with the Devil, and we can, too.  God cast him out of heaven, and Paul exhorted us to be like God and make no room for the Devil (Eph. 4:27).  Sometimes, having a right relationship means having no relationship at all (“Not even to eat with such a one” – 1Cor. 5:11).  Paul told certain congregations to cast out unruly members because of their stubborn and rebellious conduct (e.g., 1Cor. 5:13).  Jesus also mentioned cutting off members of the body so that the whole body could be preserved (Mt. 5:29–30).  So, there is no such thing as a man having a right relationship with God but a poor relationship with God’s people.  Jesus said, “As often as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.”  John said, “For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?”  I recently spoke with a man who thought that his relationship with God was fine, even though his relationship with the body of Christ was almost non-existent.  He is fooling himself.

There is no relationship with God that excludes His children.  This means that if you have a relationship with God, then you have right relationships with members of the body of Christ.  This is why no loners will escape damnation.  They may judge themselves to be godly, but without right relationships, they will be cast into the Lake of Fire.

The Triangle

It is unwise to be closer to someone than that person is to God.  It is unwise to trust anyone more than that person trusts God, or to follow any person unless that person is following God.  Even the great apostle Paul said, “Be followers of me, just as I also follow Christ.”  Only those who are led by the Spirit of God have a right relationship with anybody.  That is why Paul said that only those who are led by the Spirit of God are the real children of God (Rom. 8:14).  It is wise to love and trust those people.

All right relationships in the kingdom of God can be described as a triangle.  The three corners of the triangle are you, God, and another person – with God in the middle and over all.  No one has a right relationship with anybody unless God is in the middle.  My father taught that God is so jealous over His people that He even wants to sleep between a man and his wife – and that if He did not, there was bound to be trouble between them. God’s commandments are expressions of His love, written out.  They teach us how to love others the way God loves.  In other words, they teach us what true love is.  That’s why Paul wrote, “Love is fulfillment of the law.”

One man asked Jesus, “Which is the great commandment in the law?” Jesus told him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” And then Jesus volunteered what was the second greatest commandment.  He said, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  Then Jesus added, “On these two commandments hang the whole law and the prophets.”  Think about that.  The whole of our lives, as life should be lived, is summarized in two commandments which direct us to love God completely and to love others as ourselves.  True righteousness is, indeed, all about relationships.  How are the relationships in your life?