Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy. Jude 1:24.
Today your LORD (יהוה) God (אלהים) says:
The sanctified life is a life of pure motives. Pure motives bring healing and life. Pure motives are the best protection against evil and harm.
I look at your heart, but so does Satan. I look for hearts that are inclined to Me. He looks for hearts that are inclined to him. And by saying that, I mean that are sinning. When you sin, I do not punish you by making bad things happen to you. Do not be deceived in this, all the comes from Me is good things and perfect gifts. I will discipline you and clean you up by My Word. I convict you by My Word.
“Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving and pay your vows to the Most High; Call upon Me in the day of trouble; I shall rescue you, and you will honor Me.” But to the wicked God says, “What right have you to tell of My statutes and to take My covenant in your mouth? For you hate discipline, and you cast My words behind you. When you see a thief, you are pleased with him, and you associate with adulterers. You let your mouth loose in evil and your tongue frames deceit. You sit and speak against your brother; you slander your own mother’s son. These things you have done and I kept silence; you thought that I was just like you. I will reprove you and array them before your eyes. Psalm 50:14-21.
I reprove them and show you where you have gone wrong.
The Holy Spirit teaches you and guides you to all truth. And My Word is truth. The best discipline is when you examine yourself to see if your thoughts and actions line up with Mine and if they do not, to get out of your mind and life what does not line up, for whatever goes against My Word is sin, for it is lawlessness.
But let Me go back about bad things happening. These are never of My making. If a bad accident, illness, pain, financial attack is upon you it means you have in some way opened the door to the devil, and once you are on his territory he has jurisdiction there and I do not. Then when he brings one of his evil things against you, often people, in fact, most the time, say I did it.
And that is precisely what the devil wants, he wants to stay under the cover of darkness in his activities against you and get people bitter at Me for not preventing the accident, illness or pain. I did not bring it and I did not will it, but often I get the blame for it. This ought not to be, at least in you who proclaim to know Me.
When something happens in your life contrary to My promises, the first thing you must do if you want to be healed and made whole is to come to Me. Draw close to Me and I draw close to you. And then you must ask Me what the door was that you opened which gave the devil the authority to bring that evil into your life. A curse without a cause does not alight. This is a very important question because if you do not know what door you opened, you will not close it and the next attack will be worse than the first.
People do not like to look at themselves first, they want to blame others and often Me for the evil. That is what Adam did.
Often, in fact, most of the time, and many of you have done this too, they ask Me why I did not prevent it. I would be happy to prevent it, that is what Psalm 91 is all about, but you must stay in My jurisdiction if you want perfect protection for if you choose to open your door to the devil you have a free will that I will not violate. Just as I did not violate the free will of Adam and Eve.
For the protections of Psalm 91 to be in your life you must take Me as your refuge and fortress, trust in Me, and tread on the devil. You also need to learn My Names and cling to Me in love. You must make Me your dwelling place, that is, your place of abode by remaining in My Word and My Word remaining in you. Then all the promises therein are activated and I have been given authority by you to perform them in your life. But you cannot serve two masters. You either go with Me or with the devil. There is no middle ground.
Primarily, I am talking about motives for doing the things you do. A pure intention will keep you out of harm’s way. Pure motives are the best protection against harm. These keep you entirely out of Satan’s territory.
Satan, the covering cherub, was perfect on the day of his creation but there came a point where he became proud of that perfection and beauty with which I had created him, and the many skills I had put in him, and he turned to seek his own glory in his actions and not My glory as the holy angels do. He sought to make others worship and bow to him. He even did this with Jesus. And in doing so, unrighteousness was found in him, and then this led to violent rebellion and every evil work on his part.
“You were the anointed cherub who guards, and I placed you there [Eden]. You were on the holy mountain of God; you walked in the midst of the stones of fire. You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created until unrighteousness was found in you. By the abundance of your trade you were internally filled with violence, and you sinned; therefore I have cast you as profane from the mountain of God. And I have destroyed you, O guardian cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire. Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty; you corrupted your wisdom by reason of your splendor. I cast you to the ground; I put you before kings, tThat they may see you. By the multitude of your iniquities, in the unrighteousness of your trade you profaned your sanctuaries. Ezekiel 28:14-18.
Selfish-ambition to be the most high leads nowhere but to sin for it is impossible to be higher than your source. Adam and Eve found this out when they followed the same path as the devil and became unrighteous. Their eyes turned from Me to themselves.
This is a subtle temptation, but it is so successful that it is always the first place of attack on you by the devil. He knows that even good people who love Me can fall easily into this trap. And then he can make bad things happen to good people.
Judge your actions and the test is simple: Are they done to be seen by others so they can be amazed at your greatness? Or are they done with the motive of showing My goodness to others?
John the Baptist summed this up for you. At the time his ministry began, John was extremely popular. Crowds were coming to confess their sins and be baptized by him. But after he baptized Jesus and pointed Him out as the true lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world (as the fulfillment of the prophecy of Abraham on Mt. Moriah), more people started going to hear Jesus than John. John performed no miracles other than leading people to repentance and turning their hearts towards Me in preparation for the ministry of My Son. Jesus, however performed many miracles, too many to recount. So people who once had been out there as “fans” of John now turned to Jesus and the disciples of John thought he would be envious, but he was not. It was joy to him. Being privileged to introduce others to Jesus is a joy. John was not seeking to be great in the eyes of the world but in My eyes.
And they came to John and said to him, “Rabbi, He who was with you beyond the Jordan, to whom you have testified, behold, He is baptizing and all are coming to Him.” John answered and said, “A man can receive nothing unless it has been given him from heaven. You yourselves are my witnesses that I said, ‘I am not the Christ,’ but, ‘I have been sent ahead of Him.’ He who has the bride is the bridegroom; but the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly because of the bridegroom’s voice. So this joy of mine has been made full. He must increase, but I must decrease. John 3:26-30.
There is much wisdom for the wise in these words of John but there is also great joy found herein for those who love Me and are called according to My purpose.
First, you can only receive based on My promises. I promise you good health, healing, prosperity, blessing, favor, and I tell you how to have these things, but I do not promise you that you will win gambling, I do not promise you to harm your enemies, etc. I instead ask you to avoid gambling and any other forms of dissipation that bring no fruitful results and I ask you to do good to your enemies and to pray for them to win them for the Kingdom.
So you can receive nothing from Me except as giving you from Heaven. For every good thing given and every perfect gift comes down from above, from My Kingdom where all goodness is stored for you.
Next, John did not try to be what he was not called to be. He was the greatest of the prophets, but he was not the Messiah. And neither are you. You have one teacher, one Savior, and one mediator between Me and you, and that is Jesus. He is God and man. You will be like Him but you are not Him. He gives you His righteousness, perfection, blameless life, and all He has as His joint heir but you are not the savior of mankind. You are a partner in that but the power is from Me. I entrust you with the great works He did and even greater by you are not the source. And you do not need to try to be, which is good news for you. Healing is not done by your power but Mine but I instruct you to lay your hands on the sick so they will recover. My Spirit is in you and on you and you are the means by which He is released into the earth. Present your bodies as a living, holy sacrifice by using your dominion over the earth to release My goodness, healing, and provision. But know it is not originating out of you, but out of the unlimited source of goodness that is generated in Me as My nature.
Next, John told you that he is My friend, a friend of Jesus, a close one, standing close to the bridegroom and rejoicing to hear His voice, rejoicing to introduce Him to His bride, rejoicing to introduce Him to the lost and show them the Lamb of God who takes away all their sins and shame.
Are you excited and full of joy to be close to Me and hear My voice? I love to talk with you and have you close to Me. It is a joy for Me and it can be a joy for you also for in My presence there is abundant joy, a perfect joy, a joy not known on earth. It is a joy that has no cloud or hurt in it.
John rejoice greatly at the voice of Jesus. He rejoiced greatly at My voice as well. Jesus and I are one, and the Holy Spirit is our breath.
Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip was tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene, in the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John, the son of Zacharias, in the wilderness. And he came into all the district around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Luke 3:1-3.
And finally John summed up: “He must increase and I must decrease.” It is in decreasing that you find your true greatness and then I increase you. I gave Jesus glory at My right hand but all He sought was My glory and not His own. And I gave Him the Name above every other name. You do not have to fight for your own greatness. Promotion is from Me.
You can learn from your mistakes and your sins or you can blame Me and become bitter about them and lose your trust in Me.
Examine and discipline yourself. I discipline every son I receive.
By grace you have been saved through faith, not of yourselves, but as a gift from Me, not as a result of your works but those of Jesus so no one can boast except in all I have done for you. Like Mary. She boasted about what I had done for her, and she called herself My “lowly handmade.” But no more. I have exalted her with many crowns. Honor follows humility. BUT PRIDE GOES BEFORE A FALL. Satan, Adam, and many others have learned this the hard way.
But if we judged ourselves rightly, we would not be judged. But when we are judged, we are disciplined by the Lord so that we will not be condemned along with the world. 1 Corinthians 11:31-32.
I love you. Watch your motives. And My Word will help you do that for “For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” Hebrews 4:12.