CHECK YOUR HEART AND YOUR FEET!
Where are your heart and feet leading you? If your heart is in love with the seemingly harmless things of the world and enchanted with the programs and ways of the world, your thinking and desires will direct your feet to the “wide gate and the broad way”. God’s word declares that the majority of the people will walk that direction with you, and speaks about the spiritual blindness and darkness that covers that path. Matthew 7:13-14 “Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.” John 8:12 Then Jesus spoke to them again, saying, “I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.”
Light and darkness can have no communion nor can there be concord between Christ and belial (satan). We have to make a choice between Christ and satan, light and darkness, truth and error, and eternity with God or forever lost. 2Corinthians 6:14-18 Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness? And what accord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever? And what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God. As God has said: “I will dwell in them and walk among them. I will be their God, and they shall be My people.” Therefore “Come out from among them and be separate, says the Lord. Do not touch what is unclean, and I will receive you. I will be a Father to you, and you shall be My sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.”
God began to seek me before I even knew about Him. I heard that God created heaven and earth and man upon it. I did not know that He had sent His son. I was nine years old when He first showed me His great love by giving me some very wise advice (which I took) and then again when I was ten He gave me some very wonderful news that all proved to be true to the letter. I learned that you can experience the love and truthfulness of God and implicitly trust Him. The scriptures say that the goodness of God leads you to repentance. Romans 2:4 Or do you despise the riches of His goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance?
I never forgot what a wonderful and miraculous thing God did for me when I was a child. I was sixteen when I first realized that I could forever be a member of the family of God through Jesus Christ and I wanted this loving God to dwell in me and be my God. The day I accepted Christ was the greatest day of my life. I must say, however, that every day since has been a glorious experience and an adventure. If there are any skeptics reading this, I want you to know that everything God says about Himself is absolute truth and He does indeed walk and talk with you.
There are many reasons why the “way of the world” will lead to destruction. The prince of darkness rules over the culture of worldliness and tempts our flesh to sin against God. He wants our destruction and he deceives and lies to us to get power over us. There is no good thing in our flesh. The desires of the heart and the mind are only evil continually. The following are God’s words: Ephesians 2:2 in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, 3 among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others.
Satan knows God’s holiness and His requirements for entry into the kingdom of God. God provided for us the only acceptable sacrifice for our sins through His divine and sinless son, Jesus Christ. In accepting His redemption from our sins and inviting His life and spirit to forever dwell within us, we become children of God, and we are set free from our bondage to sin. Of course, this requires that we choose to put our old desires and flesh to death and walk according to the spirit of God within us. 1Peter 4:1 Therefore, since Christ suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same mind, for he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, 2 that he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh for the lusts of men, but for the will of God.
Many believe that they can partake of the spirit of the world and still be led of God’s spirit. If you allow yourself to be worldly-minded you have allowed satan to declare war on your spirituality. Satan will not give up until he is firmly resisted by the child of God. The only thing that settles the life or death struggle is the death of the fleshly desires and our resistance to worldliness. These two spirits, Godliness and worldliness, are contrary one to the other. The spirits that are in the world are enemies of righteousness and we become the servant of whichever spirit we desire to allow in our heart and follow with our feet. GAL 5:16 I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. 17 For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish.
The scripture says that whoever we yield ourselves servants to obey, His servants we are (notice personal pronoun, meaning Christ or satan). Romans 6:16 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 to death, or of obedience to righteousness?
We can only be made free from sin through the power of Christ in us and our refusal to partake of sin. Romans 6:20 For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. 21 What fruit did you have then in the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. 22 But now having been set free from sin, and having become slaves of God, you have your fruit to holiness, and the end, everlasting life.
Those living and abiding in Christ are new creatures and they will bare the fruit of righteousness. We must never allow sin to lay hold of us and deter us from winning the prize of the “high calling of God” in Christ Jesus. A little leaven leaveneth the whole being! 1Corinthians 15:33 Do not be deceived: “Evil company corrupts good habits.” Galatians 5:9 A little leaven (SIN) leavens the whole lump.
You can always tell a tree by its fruit. John 15:4 “Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me.” We can deceive ourselves as to the quality of our fruit, but the quality of our fruit speaks loudly to others. The only fruitful, abundant, and blessed life is a spirit filled life. As believers, the natural fruit of our relationship with our holy God, will produce the following fruit: Galatians 5:22-25 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.
There are many that are deceived by thinking of themselves more highly than they ought to think. Good fruit is easily tested and should be checked regularly. The vineyard and the quality of its fruit is under our own control and we decide when we need to weed (rid ourselves of sin), require more nutrients (the word of God), and more water (rivers of living water). If we need the master’s help and protection from infestation all we have to do is “ask.” John 15:7 “If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you.”
Before we were even formed in our mother’s womb, God chose us for His purpose. We did not choose Him, He chose us and ordained us to go forth and bear fruit unto Him for His glory. He gave His “all” for us and in return asks us to present to Him the quality of fruit that will remain forever. We must keep His commandments to abide in His love. John 15:10 “If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love.
If we steadfastly abide in Him with our entire being and walk with Him and talk with Him, we are going to bear much fruit. John 15:5 “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.” The Lord gives us a powerful promise: John 15:7 “If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you.”
In these times of total uncertainty and evil on every side, there is only one who is perfect love and reflects all the perfect fruit of the spirit and He (Christ) is our example. No one can pluck us out of His hands. There is nothing that can separate us from the love of God. No one can separate us from the ordained will of God and the things that God has prepared for us. The kingdom is ours, we will reign with Him, and we will overcome the world. We are more than conquerors through Christ. Romans 8:31 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? Romans 8:35-39 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written: “For Your sake we are killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.” Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Anything we give up now for Christ’s sake, we will receive 100 times more in this world and in the world to come with favor and blessings from God. Mark 10:29-30 So Jesus answered and said, assuredly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands, for My sake and the gospel’s, who shall not receive a hundredfold now in this time — houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions — and in the age to come, eternal life.
Mark 8:36 “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?” Let us guard our heart and feet!
