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8/13/24 Do You Really Need God?

OK. Your job is going quite well. Your marriage is as good as any of your friends’ marriages. Your children may not be serving the Lord with all their hearts; but they’re basically honorable, and anyway there’s plenty of time for that to change. In fact, things could be classified as satisfactory. You really don’t need to seek the Lord with all your heart, do you?

Whether you know it or not, you’ve become a blind guide for those around you. You’ve forgotten what your relationship with Jesus is all about. You’ve bought the lie that it’s all about you and how well things are going in your puny world. You have become the center of your relationship with the Lord and are teaching others to do the same by your actions.

Being a child of God and a steward of other people carries with it grave responsibilities - life and death responsibilities. Christianity 101 is being so sold out to Jesus that others see Him in you. Never in the Word is there any hint that your relationship has anything to do with your comfort or complacency other than when God calls those areas sin. You and I are called to be the light of Christ to the world.

I don’t know about you, but I desperately need God and His mercy and power to be anything like Jesus. I believe that’s the bottom line for every one of us. The things that happen in our lives have little to do with whether or not we are to pursue a first love relationship with the Lord every moment of every day and urge others to do the same with our every action and breath. If we persist in pursuing the Lord, our lives will be significant assets for His use.

When people see who we are when we act like Jesus, they will see who they are supposed to be. What happens after that is of little consequence to our mission of knowing God and being where He desires us to be. As we walk as Christ walked because we have been with Him, everything else will fall in place. We really need God every moment of our lives to get to that place and stay there, no matter what others do.

Let’s talk more!

Jim Corbett

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8/12/24 Far from the Heart of God

“Delight yourself in the things that delight My heart. Become deeply involved in the situations to which I lead you. Invest yourself. No longer remain passive about the world around you. I want you to become passionate about your life and the people to whom I send you. Become passionate about My Word.

“You have lost your first love. Your heart has become hardened in a time when I need people to see the heart of Jesus in you. Shake off your complacency. I need your heart of fire about My ways, not your cold, complacent compliance. Wake up or you will miss My purpose for you. The enemy of My ways is not at rest. You sleep while he makes inroads into the hearts of those who have not heard because you have not told them. How can you not care?”

Esther 4:13-14 AMP 

13) Then Mordecai told them to return this answer to Esther. Do not flatter yourself that you shall escape in the king’s palace any more than all the other Jews.

14) For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance shall arise for the Jews from elsewhere, but you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows but that you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this and for this very occasion?

Psalm 106:12-15 AMP

12) Then [Israel] believed His words [trusting in, relying on them]; they sang His praise.

13) But they hastily forgot His works; they did not [earnestly] wait for His plans [to develop] regarding them,

14) But lusted exceedingly in the wilderness and tempted and tried to restrain God [with their insistent desires] in the desert.

15) And He gave them their request, but sent leanness into their souls and [thinned their numbers by] disease and death.

Proverbs 29:1 AMP

He who, being often reproved, hardens his neck shall suddenly be destroyed—and that without remedy.

Proverbs 29:21 AMP

He who pampers his servant from childhood will have him expecting the rights of a son afterward.

 

Most of us become so mesmerized by the cares of our lives that we cease to place our greatest importance on the cares of our Lord. We may appear to be following our Father’s will by fellowshipping or throwing money at some cause; but our hearts are most of the time far from the heart of our Father. Eventually, our first heart zeal becomes atrophied. We spiritually zone out and cannot be moved by anything other than those things that directly concern us.

Sensitivity toward the heart of God is the inward desire of the compassionate heart. This heart cannot be satisfied until God’s heart is satisfied upon the completion of all things. It drives a person to whatever end will satisfy Father God’s heart and allow others to see Him. Those with a compassionate spirit unconditionally surrender all control of their lives to the Lordship of Jesus and joyfully embrace a life of self-denial.

Wake me up to Your ways, Lord,

Jim Corbett

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8/12/24 Distractions

Nations rising and falling, threats of economies crashing, terrorist threats world-wide, reprobate thinking abounding, Christian persecution being given a more prominent platform, and many more disruptions fend for their place in our minds on a daily basis. Any thinking believer can see that the world is changing at a rapid pace. Formulas that used to flourish during normal, much easier times no longer work. Procedures and plans that brought relative safety only a few years ago will not help our families survive if things progress in the direction they seem to be heading.

As prominent as all these disruptions are in our world, they’re really nothing more than distractions from the real war at hand. In the Word, it says that we are to look past those things that are temporal and on to the eternal. We are to look past what we see and on to what God is doing. All these issues that invade our lives distract us from keeping God’s plan and our real purpose in life from being in the forefront of our thinking. They take up our time by having us worry about them and plan on how to remain safe from them.

The plans of God, the falling away of the church, nations reeling in terror, wars, and rumors of wars are all foretold in the Bible. They will not be avoided. We, as believers, are to prepare spiritually when we see these times and seasons on the radar. We, as husbands and fathers, are to become all that we can be in Christ not only for His glory, but for those we steward. We are to show others the path to safety in Christ by looking past the distractions all around us and on to the real life we have been given because of the cross. We are called to overcome this dying world in the same way Jesus did.  What are you looking at and how are you responding to it?

Let’s talk more!

Jim Corbett

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8/10/24 You Agreed to Submission

“I would like you to join Me in one of My very important projects. I am deeply involved in the elimination of your flesh in all that you do. When you gave your life to Me through Jesus, you promised to do your part in becoming like Jesus, so that the world would see Him in you. That is what Lordship means. Whether you know it or not, you took Him as your Lord over every item of your being. As Lord, Jesus has the right of entire control over all of your thoughts, needs, desires, and actions. He paid the price for that right with His life.

“If you called upon Him for salvation, you have agreed to that price. Your submission is your part of the agreement. The elimination of your old life is part of Our promise to you. You need to join now in the elimination of that old life instead of resisting that work in you. You act as if you have a right to act in the same way you did before you made the covenant agreement. If you go about the business of doing just enough to get by and to feel good about yourself, you miss the wonder, power, and intent of the covenant.

“Instead, you should be a companion in the search for all of your ways that are out of order, seeing them and requesting change as you do. So much time is wasted during the time needed for conviction to have its work in you when you truly do not understand Our covenant together. Our relationship could be much more fulfilling, Our fellowship much more heightened, if you would willingly participate in separating the dead person you once were from the spirit that has been made alive in you.

“Stop resisting the Word at work within you. Stop looking at this relationship as one-sided. We have joined together for the immediate task of seeing Jesus formed in you. A true bride examines her wedding garment for any blemish in order to please her Groom. Join Me in the search. We could be having such fun together in Our quest.”

I Cor. 7:23 AMP

You were bought with a price [purchased with a preciousness and paid for by Christ]; then do not yield yourselves up to become [in your own estimation] slaves to men [but consider yourselves slaves to Christ].

Phil. 2:12-13 AMP

12) Therefore, my dear ones, as you have always obeyed [my suggestions], so now, not only [with the enthusiasm you would show] in my presence but much more because I am absent, work out (cultivate, carry out to the goal, and fully complete) your own salvation with reverence and awe and trembling (self-distrust, with serious caution, tenderness of conscience, watchfulness against temptation, timidly shrinking from whatever might offend God and discredit the name of Christ).

13) [Not in your own strength] for it is God Who is all the while effectually at work in you [energizing and creating in you the power and desire], both to will and to work for His good pleasure and satisfaction and delight.

I Thes. 2:13 AMP

And we also [especially] thank God continually for this, that when you received the message of God [which you heard] from us, you welcomed it not as the word of [mere] men, but as it truly is, the Word of God, which is effectually at work in you who believe [exercising its superhuman power in those who adhere to and trust in and rely on it].

 

When you really think about it, without Lordship or an absolute, full submission of every area of our lives to Jesus, our confession of Christ means little, our commitment to God means less; and our commitment to each other has no true spiritual bond. We would not be much different than any powerless religion.

Uncover any area where I am still in charge, Lord,

Jim Corbett

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8/10/24 The Proper Tools

Remember Tim (The Tool Man) Taylor?  His love for tools and the power they gave him became a continual source of entertainment throughout the run of his television show. Tools were everything to him. Even though his ideas were “slightly” over the top, his love for tools struck a chord with every man who watched the show.

Men love tools, any kind of tool that gets the job done. Hammers, saws, computers, cars, a big home, success in business - they’re all tools that get the job done in presenting who we are to the world. As husbands and fathers, we have been given the job of providing a safe atmosphere where our wives and children can prosper in Christ. Success or failure in this arena impacts many people, and also represents who we are to the world. Our families should be a testimony of our proper use of the tools God’s given us to overcome the world.

Have you ever thought of praising Jesus as a tool? What about worship? When you think of power, does worship of our heavenly Father come to mind? How about prayer, the most powerful tool available to man? Do you see these tools provided for you as a means to truly win the war that’s against your family? If not, why not?

Let’s talk more!

Jim Corbett

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