Tag: Church

“As I unfold My plans and the events that were promised long ago come to pass, many around you will need what you have. That is why I am taking the time to train you now. You see your present pressures as challenges to overcome. I am using them to teach you to submit. You see your needs as temporary circumstances that you can work your way through. I am teaching you faith in Me. Few of you know how to trust Me, really trust Me. I am taking care of that. Embrace your trials as the eternal work that they are. Begin to see with My eyes. Look past your needs and covet only My presence. Grow past your self-serving hopes and dedicate your entire being to My ways. It is your only place of honest service.”

John 17:15-19 AMP

15) I do not ask that You will take them out of the world, but that You will keep and protect them from the evil one.

16) They are not of the world (worldly, belonging to the world), [just] as I am not of the world.

17) Sanctify them [purify, consecrate, separate them for Yourself, make them holy] by Truth; Your Word is Truth.

18) Just as You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world.

19) And so for their sake and on their behalf I sanctify (dedicate, consecrate) Myself, that they also may be sanctified (dedicated, consecrated, made holy) in the Truth.

Jam. 1:2-4 AMP

2) Consider it wholly joyful, my brethren, whenever you are enveloped in or encounter trials of any sort or fall into various temptations.

3) Be assured and understand that the trial and proving of your faith bring out endurance and steadfastness and patience.

4) But let endurance and steadfastness and patience have full play and do a thorough work, so that you may be [people] perfectly and fully developed [with no defects], lacking in nothing.

 

A good friend called me a while ago. In the course of our conversation, through the obedience of this vessel, the Lord exposed my fickle heart. I had taken on the responsibility to make happen what only the Lord was supposed to do. Repentance was necessary and I did so.

After a while, the Lord showed me where my heart really was and how my sin had affected my relationship with Him. I had taken over the lordship of my circumstances once again, a heart position that deeply offends Him. I had decided that my ways were better than His ways for my life - no small matter. In fact, my foolishness grieved my God the same way that the Israelites offended Him over and over again by not trusting Him after they were delivered from Egypt.

In this time when we, as God’s people, lounge under His astounding grace and mercy, and vacation in His overwhelming forbearance, we must never miss the fact that His heart never changes. This life is all about His ways. He is God, and we are not.

Forgive me, Lord,

Jim Corbett

“What are you not understanding about what I’m telling you through world events and weather patterns all around you? How clear do the times and seasons in which you live have to get before you move from your complacency and begin to live completely for Me? Do you realize that I inform you, My children, first, so that you are ready when I move My hand? It is for good reason. I want you to wake up and be ready to represent Jesus properly when the world is out of answers.

“You are not responding to My clear warnings. You are far from responding to what you see around you with My heart in mind. You are only concerned for your personal safety. Where is the heart of Jesus in My church? I want to place it in you. Come to Me now for what is needed to be formed in you. Come to be made ready for when I need to call upon you to represent the way My children are to live, no matter what is happening around them. Wake up! Listen to what I am saying. Repent of your foolish ways.”

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 111:2 NIV

Great are the works of the Lord; they are pondered by all who delight in them.

Isaiah 30:21 NIV

Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.”

 

One of the reasons that we have been given access to Father God through the blood of Jesus is to be able to discern the times and seasons, so that we can warn others that they may come to Christ. We are never to be date setters or doomsday prophets, but we are to be astute when it comes to Bible prophecy, applying it to the time in which we live. We are also to live our lives according to what we understand and learn from being in the Word and with our Father.

I believe that Bible prophecies are unfolding before us at an accelerated pace. I believe that we have a responsibility to take the knowledge that we are gaining and live the kind of life that will be most advantageous for the Lord to use us. We are to be prepared and ready to be used by Him, no matter what the time or season, or when the challenges come.

Make me ready, Lord,

Jim Corbett

 

“Holiness is not an option for anyone who chooses to sell out to Me. I’m not talking about the striving, struggling kind of holiness. I’m talking about the peaceful, flowing in My presence kind of holiness. You finally need to accept that there is nothing you can do to bring yourself to that kind of fullness in Me. You can only accept My work being done in you.

“You need, however, to really accept My way of developing Myself in your inner being. I am continually refining you, so that My new life bursts forth. Your way of attempting to change by doing and hoping and striving only brings failure, defeat, and discouragement. My way, the implementing of pressures and the use of circumstances that you can’t handle by yourself, changes you from within. My changes are eternal. They not only develop holiness, but also an eternal friendship with Me. I want you to be enthusiastic about the weight of My hand on you. You are too valuable to have Me leave you the same as you were. We will rejoice out loud as you become who I know you will be.”

Hebrews 12:10-11 NIV

10) Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best, but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness.

11) No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.

Rev. 3:19 AMP

Those whom I [dearly and tenderly] love, I tell their faults and convict and convince and reprove and chasten [I discipline and instruct them]. So be enthusiastic and in earnest and burning with zeal and repent [changing your mind and attitude].

 

I know people who have been crushed by infant teachings somewhere in their past. They are afraid that if they are ill, or times are rough, or their lives don’t look “successful” in the eyes of the church, they have done something wrong. Worse still, they have been taught to speak “faith” into a difficult situation so that they can be removed from it. What a sad life, supposedly in Christ.

God’s ways are so different from ours. His longing is to have an earnest, vibrant relationship with those who are His. That can’t happen until we choose to embrace God’s ways and have His heart. Both are accomplished through pressure.

Removal of a pressure of some sort, in itself, accomplishes nothing but temporary, carnal comfort. Submitting to that pressure is actually siding with God against that same carnal desire to remain comfortable rather than becoming like Jesus.

The understanding that difficulties will come your way is not a lack of faith as some proclaim. It is the epitome of faith in the One who is faithful. It takes a vast amount of faith in God when all seems hopeless and you turn to Him for strength rather than your own resources to deliver you. (However, don’t be foolish enough to believe that the consequences of decisions made in ignorance are God’s hand or that the refusal of medicinal help when needed is an act of faith.)

An amazing benefit of turning only to God when you are in a helpless situation is the astounding faith and love for God that is implanted deep within your inner parts - not in spite of the trials, but because of them. After walking through shadow after shadow together, the faithful God Himself becomes our only desire. More of Him becomes our request. Only holiness - so that there is no separation - is the common goal.

Needing to remain long enough to be thoroughly changed,

Jim Corbett