Faith | TFRC | The Faith Resource Community

10/14/24 Higher Fences

Fathers, if you continually find yourself putting more restrictions on your children and applying stronger consequences to help them comply with what you feel is best, you’re doing something wrong. You can build higher and higher fences all you want as they continue to grow, but one day they’ll find a way over the fence into total rebellion.

Somehow, your children have been taught compliance under your stewardship. They get in line to avoid the consequences you set in place, but their hearts are wandering or maybe empty. Perhaps it’s time for you to get on your face before God and repent of your ways. Are you also walking in compliance before God, doing things to avoid consequences, rather than doing them because you love Him and want to please Him with your obedience? Is this somehow being communicated to your children and they’re just following your lead?

Fear not. As you spend time with God and your love for Him grows deeper, you will learn to walk in Christ-like obedience. Then you will be able to love and nurture your children into walking in genuine obedience through the love of God and the power of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of God will accomplish in them what the laws you’ve established can never do.

If it seems too late and your children are walking in full-fledged rebellion against you and God, your only recourse is to pray and intercede until they find freedom in Christ. They’re in rebellion in part because your priorities and/or methods have been out of order. Do you care enough to do what is necessary to help them? They need you!

Let’s talk more!

Jim Corbett

10/12/24 Inroads

“Have you noticed that few people are really concerned about being reconciled with Me anymore? Have you noticed that those who are supposedly wise in your world have done little research as to what happens to them after they close their eyes for the last time? Do you see the inroads that the enemy has made into the minds of fools?

“People are joyously rushing to the gates of hell. My concern is that few of you are attempting to stop them! People are flaunting their foolish doctrines and My preachers are raising money for their ministry institutions. They are dragging the Name of My Son in the mud, and few are responding as His advocates.

“The enemy is insidious in his efforts to deceive and most of you feel you are doing enough. What if you, with a little more effort, could bring one more soul to see? Don’t you really care if that person perishes? Jesus did - enough to die for him! I care!”

Romans 1:28 NIV

Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done.

Romans 7:21-23 NIV

21) So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me.

22) For in my inner being I delight in God’s law;

23) but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members.

The verses above convict me of how alive my flesh really is. Most of us really do think of ourselves more than we think of Him. It’s time for each of us to look around and discover, possibly for the very first time since we gave our lives to the Lord, what our priorities really are and do something about them. We need to make some changes.

God hasn’t lost His edge. He is still passionate for souls. Jesus hasn’t let up. His blood is still fresh.

What has happened to us? Where is the weeping for souls? Where is the passion for the work of God? How far behind our own needs and works have we placed the work of God?

Forgive my selfishness, Lord,

Jim Corbett

10/12/24 True Obedience

Jesus learned obedience through the things He suffered, meaning the times that He won over His flesh. Complete obedience means that He willingly and joyfully submitted to His Father in all things, no matter what. The heart of someone who is truly obedient thrives in doing another's will, forsaking his own will in the process.

Please notice that there’s a difference between obedience and compliance. Compliance is doing something because we fear the consequences if we don’t. Our joy will never be complete as compliant individuals. We will always want more for ourselves in our relationship with God. Obedience is doing something we’re told to do out of love. When we cease from doing the right things only because they’re right, and do them only because we want to bless our Lord, we enter into that little known realm of true obedience. When our greatest joy is to do our Father's will, we will walk in true obedience.

As husbands and fathers, it’s impossible to represent Jesus properly to the world and our families unless we take on His heart. He was always obedient. In obedience to His Father's will, He lived, loved and moved as His Father desired. God can’t trust merely compliant men to raise His children and properly care for their wives as He desires. He can only trust Christ-like, obedient servants who understand His heart. Which one are you?

Let’s talk more!

Jim Corbett

10/11/24 God’s Perspective of Ownership

“What do you still own? In the same way, what owns you? Name something that you will not or can’t give up and I will show you how it is not under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Would you like to know how I feel about ownership? It is what stops you from becoming all that you can be in Me. Lordship means that you own nothing in your heart. It means that you covet nothing but more of Jesus and His ways. It really means that you are absolutely free from the entanglements of the world. You are also free from guilt, because you have not robbed from Me what is rightfully Mine!

“You gave Me everything. When you take back what is no longer yours, it is theft and it is sin. Repent and turn from your old ways. You are too important to Me to have you continue in your old life. Turn now! I love you!”

Luke 12:19-21 NIV

19) ‘And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink, and be merry.” ‘

20) “But God said to him, ’You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’

21) “This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God.”

Luke 21:1-4 AMP

1) Looking up, [Jesus] saw the rich people putting their gifts into the treasury.

2) And He saw also a poor widow putting in two mites (copper coins).

3) And He said, Truly I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them;

4) For they all gave out of their abundance (their surplus); but she has contributed out of her lack and her want, putting in all that she had on which to live.

Gal 2:20 AMP

I have been crucified with Christ [in Him I have shared His crucifixion]; it is no longer I who live, but Christ (the Messiah) lives in me; and the life I now live in the body I live by faith in (by adherence to and reliance on and complete trust in) the Son of God, Who loved me and gave Himself up for me.

Ownership is a big thing with Father God, especially heart ownership. Jesus paid a big price to have the Father own our hearts. Heart ownership is pivotal as to whether Jesus is the Lord of our lives or not. When He owns our hearts, we can finally be free to give Him what is rightfully His - everything else.

I surrender all, Lord,

Jim Corbett

10/11/24 A Witness to Many

I once heard a character in a movie state that people marry so they have someone to witness their lives. The more I thought about it, the more I saw it to be the world’s way of feeling valued and needed. People without the Lord continually attempt to find acknowledgment and purpose for their lives. They marry for their own good to satisfy an inner need of some sort.

One of God’s purposes for marriage is for the husband and wife to witness each other’s life so they can help each other become all they can be in Christ. They’re to observe each other’s spiritual needs so they can pray and encourage each other in the things of God. It’s the opposite of the way the world thinks.

We, as believers, are to marry for the good of the other. The world marries for their own good to fulfill their own needs. As Christian men, we are to lay down our lives for the good of our wives. Our obligation before the Lord is to love our wives as Christ loved the church. He died for the church. We are to die to our own desires daily for the good of our wives.

Let’s talk more!

Jim Corbett

1 2 3 … 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 … 665 666 667

Posts navigation