Such a joy to be here, if there's a cloud nine, I'm on cloud 10.
Hey, we're above ground.
That's a good thing.
We're alive and here for another day able to share love.
The love, the joy, the peace, the peace that passeth all understanding as our apostle Paul tells us.
That peace that comes with, well, having the understanding that we're saved eternally secure and sealed unto the day of redemption.
Praise God.
Isn't that good news?
It brings a special kind of joy, does it not?
Are you guys affected the same way I am when you read through, when you study out these wonderful, powerful words that were written directly to the body of Christ?
The one in Rome there to all that be in Rome beloved of God called to be saints, grace to you and what? Peace.
That's what we're talking about.
Peace from God our Father, comma, and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Then he went on to do the same thing when he addressed the church at Corinth where he opens up and says, Grace be unto you and peace again.
Grace and peace from God our Father, comma, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Then what happens?
Well, we journey on down through the books and we look there at the book of Galatians and we see he did the same thing all over again.
This is a pattern.
Paul's our pattern, and this seems to be a pattern developing here.
He said, Grace be to you and peace.
There it is again.
Are you experiencing this peace?
That's the question.
The peace of God from the Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ.
As ambassadors, grace and peace, faith should be in everything we do.
Yes.
If we're to follow after the words of Paul, we claim to.
We say, oh, yeah, we follow Paul.
But then we, we don't.
Philippians 1, you can go over there.
You'll see it again.
There goes Paul as his custom.
There again, he says, Grace be unto you and peace.
Oh, I love it.
Peace.
Peace from God our Father, comma, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
You guys, you can't escape.
You can't escape this truth, this knowledge, this wisdom.
God's grace and peace.
You can't escape it when you're reading through the Pauline epistles.
You just can't.
It's peace that passeth all understanding.
It's peace that you can't find.
I can't find.
We collectively, we cannot find outside of our apostle.
I mean, we're to magnify his office.
We do.
Read the entire Bible, but magnify those letters that brings peace to you because of the other, the other epistles are not addressed to you.
They're for you, but they're not to you.
So you want the peace that passeth all understanding to dwell and reign in your heart?
You need to get into Pauline grace, the grace apostle designated, especially for you and I.
When we go to our spiritual mailbox, we have grace letters.
I don't know if, I can't think of any better news than that.
We go to our post office and we get bills.
Oh, coffee is good.
Thanks.
Now we go to our Truth Time post office box.
That's much better.
Much better.
Hearing from you listeners and we love that, but it's still even that nothing like the grace mailbox that's for the body of Christ.
It's so good.
And if you're here today and you're not aware, you know, this is a foreign, foreign lingo, this crazy guy's talking, well, maybe you should consider, decide to be a workman that's no longer ashamed.
There's so many people, Faith, in churches on the pew behind the pulpit that are ashamed, or they ought to be.
They ought to be.
Maybe they're not conscious of that, but yes, they should be ashamed.
This will happen when you begin to rightly divide the word of truth that shame, it'll disappear.
And I think most are aware of the shame.
They just hide it.
They get good at hiding it, too.
Ya, ya.
Well, I was, I was, I was good at hiding it.
I was really good at faking it until you make it.
You, you learn to go along to get along, you know, and so you don't cause any problems.
You keep your head down and you don't ask questions and just move along with the rest of the herd when you're in that denominational or mainstream mentality.
And you learn to do that and you get used to it.
And if it ever dawns on you that these things that the man behind the pulpit's saying are not adding up, you know, that's the first step to being able to step out from under that spell, so to speak, whatever you're in that, because you don't want to make waves, you don't want to start trouble.
Is it kind of like the abusive wife syndrome?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Keep your head down.
Yeah.
Put on a front.
Most people, even some of your closest acquaintances and friends don't even know the abuse that's going on behind closed doors.
Yeah.
And the same thing happens in churches.
Go ahead.
It does.
No, no, you're fine.
No, it does.
It's very similar to that because you have to put on a mask.
You have to hide behind.
Happy little Christian.
Yeah, the, "Christian love club."
You did a podcast on that a few years back, but it's under the guise of love, but it's not genuine love.
It's supposed to look like what the world believes love is.
Yeah.
But it's really not.
It's to the core, evil.
Therein lies the problem when we, as should be bold body of Christ believers, allow the world to define words such as love.
No, our Bible, and more precisely, our apostle, he describes that.
Right.
Right.
And love, I made a Facebook post about this years ago.
But love is not defined by the receiver, but by the motivation of the giver. But often we look at love as being how it makes a person feel, which is the one on the receiving end of that love.
So, if it doesn't make you feel... let's say you offer correction to someone, or you tell them a hard truth.
And for some people it doesn't matter how gentle you say it.
You can say it with, you know, with the sweetest tone and the kind of sound, the smile on your face and you can be loving and caring and show affection,
and it doesn't matter if that's not something that the person wants to hear if they're not in the right headspace to receive that.
So, that is going to be the person on the receiving end, they're not going to define that as love.
But that's not how we define love.
Love comes from the giver.
The giver is the one who determines whether or not it's love.
That's right.
It's your motivation.
So, is your intention to harm this person, to hurt this person, to belittle this person with a correction or that hard truth, or is your intention to help them, to make them see something that they may not see because they're right in the middle of it?
Or something that they haven't, if it comes down to scripture, if it's something that they haven't understood correctly, is your motivation to embarrass them, or is it to help them grow?
How they take that correction or how they take that truth does not determine what your intention is.
Correct.
Genuine Christian love is true love.
That is, I mean, that's going to be the only true love and the only ones who have the ability to show that love are those who know the love that Christ (Ya, good point) has put in us.
So, I mean, we know the love of Christ, therefore we can share.
Just because someone calls themself a Christian or says that they represent Christianity as a whole or, it doesn't mean that they do.
So, we can't let some who don't know what they're talking about dictate what the truth is.
Add comment
Comments