Christianity Basics 101

[saint701]

Hello Christianity Oasis, All...

Blessings!

This Old Saint Has The Right Stuff! Do You?

From Kennard Van Camp Facebook Senior Christians Group

In November of 1976, at the age of 34, I had my very first experience with God. Unknown to me, He was drawing me to Himself and finally, on that day, I told Him that if He was real, I needed Him. He immediately flooded my heart with what I later understood was Himself and I was eternally captured. I bought a Bible, not sure why, and began reading. My business was no longer important. I spent hours each day pouring over the scriptures, asking God to give me understanding. He spoke to me all the time, in many ways answering, revealing, teaching me and even exhorting me. I wonder if you have ever had the Holy Spirit preach a message to you.
Years later, when serving as a pastor, I attended a large gathering of pastors. There was a pastor from another city, who led a large church, who was a guest speaker to these pastors. I did not know what to expect. As I listened to him, he gave simple outlines on Biblical subjects, yet nothing of substance. In his speaking he said, “I know you people are here to get subject matter for your congregations”. What was I hearing? No one objected to this assessment. It reminded me of Bible college, where I attended for a short time. The teaching was so basic and surface oriented that I quit and continued allowing and expecting the Lord Himself to teach me. This was a “full gospel” group, supposedly filled with the Holy Spirit. I wondered why they needed a man to teach them, when the scriptures say that we do not need a man to teach us, and that the Lord has given the Holy Spirit to teach us. That is the first time I realized that the great sin is unbelief; that these men did not trust God to teach them, therefore they could not really help their congregations to be taught by the Holy Spirit. Therefore, people would flock to them weekly and hang on their words because they could not learn directly from the Holy Spirit.
This is still the problem. Unbelief, that sinister sin that drove Adam to disobey God, still hinders people from trusting God completely, while they lean on the understand of a man. We can only know who we are if we know who God really is. And we can’t know Him until He tells and shows us who He is. We are as He is, in Christ.
Example: I hear men squabble over the name of God all the time. Yaweh, or no “E”, or Jehovah, or Jesus, or “I am”, or…… In John chapter 17 Jesus told the Father that He had manifested His name to the men that God had given Him. That is a revelation in itself. Everyone heard and saw Jesus, but only those whom the Father had given Him saw the name. God has many names, all in Hebrew. I’m not going to list them here, but I will tell you one popular name, that even has a song with it. “Jehovah Jireh’, God who provides.
God wants to reveal His name to us so we can live in the reality of His name. Let Him give you completely to Jesus so the Holy Spirit can take the words of Jesus, which are current, not just historic, and reveal His name to you. There is much more to God than we have seen. Let’s continue to press into Him.


Blessings!
Love, In Christ Jesus, Saint701