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Pray the Refiner’s Fire Away?

If difficult times are really refiner's fires used by Father God to purify and refine His people, why would anyone want to pray them away? What kind of heart would not want to be the best they can be so the Lord is glorified?

I guess there is an element of the Christian body that avoids any kind of discomfort or inconvenience, but that doesn't work when the Word says that if we say we abide in Him, we are to walk and conduct ourselves as He did. He went to the cross, a pretty brutal place, for us. It seems right to embrace the training we need to help us have that kind of heart.

4/16/20 One Day

Harry Chapin wrote a song called “Cat’s in the Cradle.” It talks of a father who’s always too busy to spend time with his son, even though the son admires him and wants to be just like him when he grows up. At the end of the song, we learn the son turned out exactly like his father, prioritizing everything else above their relationship.

Each of our days is important enough to be numbered by God. He is looking to fulfill His purposes in the people He brings our way through us, especially our children. Our children should desire to be just like us because they experience us being just like Jesus toward them. That hope should be nurtured each and every day. It will not happen automatically one day in the future. It happens conversation by conversation, fulfilled promise after fulfilled promise, with a continual assurance and demonstration of their importance. They need to know you value your relationship with them, which will help them to understand God’s love for them.

God wants your children to grow up to be just like Jesus. The best example He has placed in their lives to show them the character of Jesus ought to be you. In what ways are you showing Him to them?

Let’s talk more!

Jim Corbett

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4/16/20 Free to Own Nothing

“Remember when I told you that you can’t give away what you do not own? The opposite is true also. You cannot own what has not been given to you. Ownership is such an incredible concept in My kingdom. Jesus owned nothing because He chose to give away all that He had, so that you could have everything. You are now asked to give everything away, if you desire to possess all the treasures of heaven. When your heart is empty of any desire, other than to possess whatever cannot be yours unless it is given to you by Me, I will fill it with Myself. When that happens, all that I am and all that I possess become yours. It becomes yours to give away.

"This is not a game; it is a wonderful principle that is beyond carnal understanding. Enjoy it with Me. Ownership in your earthly world causes you nothing but bondage. First, you strive to gain whatever it is that you desire to own. Then you walk in bondage because you fear losing whatever holds your heart. Ownership in My kingdom is exactly the opposite. The single possession of My Spirit is everything that you will ever need. When it is yours, however, your only purpose is to make sure that others receive it.

"By your new nature, you must give it away. It is the nature that Jesus possesses. Seek to rid yourself of all desires that have value in your world. Receive My heart so that you have riches enough to share with everyone you meet. I will then give them the heart of Jesus. They will then have everything, so that they are free to own nothing.”

I John 4:16-18 AMP

16) And we know (understand, recognize, are conscious of, by observation and by experience) and believe (adhere to and put faith in and rely on) the love God cherishes for us. God is love, and he who dwells and continues in love dwells andcontinues in God, and God dwells and continues in him.

17) In this [union and communion with Him] love is brought to completeness and attains perfection with us, that we may have confidence for the day of judgment [with assurance and boldness to face Him], because as He is, so are we in this world.

18) There is no fear in love [dread does not exist], but full-grown (complete, perfect) love turns fear out of doors and expels every trace of terror! For fear brings with it the thought of punishment, and [so] he who is afraid has not reached the full maturity of love [is not yet grown into love’s complete perfection].

 

While I was writing the above message, I felt a joyous, almost playful spirit. It seemed that the Lord was having fun presenting what at first glance seemed like the “foolishness” (in the eyes of the world) of His ways in comparison to the foolish ways of the world. In reality, however, the wealth of the concept of godly ownership versus earthly ownership is astounding. It is the epitome of love. Someone who walks in God’s kind of perfect love owns nothing for himself. It is the heart of Jesus as He endured the cross, so that each of us could be separated from our sin, which separated us from God. Owning everything, He willingly gave everything away in heaven and then on earth in order for that to happen.

If we would examine our lives, we would discover that whenever we have a fear of any kind, it has to do with the prospect of losing something that we own; or more accurately, something that owns us. We fear losing our possessions, our health, our freedoms, and even our lives.

Jesus functioned in such perfect love that He willingly gave all of His life away. The leaders and the rulers of that time couldn’t take His life, because He had already given it away long before they even met Him. All of their power had no power over Him, because He functioned in a realm where true power was exhibited - not through ownership, but through love. No one can kill a person who is already dead.

In these times, the world understands fear, and people use it against each other to maintain control. What is not understood is true love - not the foolish interpretation of love that suggests weakness, but the overcoming power of God’s kind of love. We, as Christians, are not only free from the wrong kind of fear of God, but we can also be free from all the fears of the world if we choose to function in that love. Sometimes it will look like we have lost because of the way we love; but in reality we have won, just like Jesus did.

Needing to function in God’s kind of love,

Jim Corbett

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This is Big and it’s Spiritual

Because of our surrender to the Lordship of Jesus and being made new spiritual creatures, our privilege is to observe all that comes our way from a spiritual perspective. We are to look past what we see with our eyes and zero in on what God is doing.

So, what do we do with the loud voices that proclaim supposedly wise stuff with great zeal? We go to Father God and make our home in the spiritual kingdom of heaven with Him, as we wait for opportunities to help those who don't know Him.

4/15/20 Nothing More Important

We live in a throw-away society where products are geared toward planned obsolescence, newer is supposedly better; and why fix it when you can throw it away and get a new one. Well, that’s certainly not the way God wants us to approach our marriages and families. He asks us to do everything we can to monitor, rescue, rebuild, and help repair the lives we steward as husbands and fathers. He calls us to do it mainly on our knees.

When the enemy attempts to harm those we steward, we must engage in spiritual warfare on behalf of those he’s attempting to destroy with everything we can muster by the power of the Holy Spirit. We’re to minimize other priorities and fight on their behalf until the war is won. Other than our personal relationship with Christ, there should be nothing more important to us than maintaining Christ-like relationships within our families and engaging in the restoration of either our marriages or our children when they are in peril.

As you appraise your marriage and the lives of your children, ask the Lord to show you His perspective. Ask Him to allow you to see them as He sees them. Do they have need of your spiritual intervention? Is it time for you to say, as Paul did, that you are as if in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in others? In your case, that would be your relationship with your wife and the welfare of your children. Is your approach as intense as Paul’s was? It should be!

Let’s talk more!

Jim Corbett

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