April, 2001 Wingspread


Return Home	Current Wingspread	Wingspread Archives	Contact Us


	April, 2001- You Had Better Be Sure By Billie Marie Zal I've been around a long time, and I have yet to hear even ONE minister or Christian worker speak on the sixth chapter of Hebrews, verses 4-8. Just to make sure that all of you hear this Word from God, I am sending out this message because we are very, very close to the end of this age and I want all of you to have the chance to understand the danger of taking your salvataion lightly. "For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Spirit, And have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the age to come, if they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance, seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame." This is the plain truth and the reason no one preaches on it is because it puts the fear of God into a person's heart, and the minister stands the chance of losing "his" congregation. People don't want to hear the truth. They did not want to hear it when Jesus came, in the flesh, and they didn't want to hear it when His prophets, disciples, and apostles spoke it, and they don't want to hear it today. Unfortunately, a minister depends upon his congregation for his livelihood rather than upon God Almighty, his Father. This leads to fear, and fear leads to compromise and today we have a dead church. We have million dollar buildings with golf courses, swimming pools, bowling alleys, and piped in music, with velvet lined seats. But we don't have a Church. For the Church is the Body of Christ right here on earth, and He does not inhabit the building if the pure Word of His Father is ignored and overlooked. He has "left the Sanctuary." And because Satan has blinded the eyes of the people (who wanted to compromise the Word of God themselves) there are going to be a lot of surprised individuals standing around when the rapture of The Church occurs, wondering what happened. For too long, those who supposedly "head up" organized religion have turned their backs on the holiness of God. I am sick unto death of hearing messages about our being "the King's kids" and so we have the RIGHT to become millionaires, to keep our money safely invested in stocks, and to enjoy the "good life." You would think, from all the releigious activity that is going on around us, that God is standing around, wringing His hands, and longing for everyone to "get right." The truth is, that God, before the worlds were framed, had an elect group of individuals already saved. With God, there is no time, only eternity, and the doctrine of election is clearly spoken of in His Word (although I seldom ever hear this doctrine mentioned, either). If God had not already elected certain individuals to be saved, how come the Bible says, ""Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ, according as he hath choosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him, in love having PREDESTINATED us unto the adoption of sons by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, through which he hath made us accepted in the Beloved" (Ephesians l:3-6). I checked out the footnote on "adoption" in my Scofield Bible, and this is what adoption means: "Adoption is not so much a word of relationship as of position. In regeneration (being born again) a Christian receives the nature of a child of God; in adoption he receives the position of a son of God. Every Christians obtains the place of a child and the RIGHT to be called a son the moment he believes (Gal. 3:25-26; I John 3:l,2). This is plain English and not hard to understand. There is another very important Word about election and we find it in Romans 8:29: "For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover, whom he did predestinate, them he also called; and whom he called, them he also justified; and whom he justified, them he also glorified." With these verses, it is clear beyond a doubt that God "foreknows" and God chooses or elects us to be saved. Then He leaves the children in the care of those who have been anointed by Himself to teach them the Truth. And that is the problem today. False teachers have come in, just like the Word tells us they would, making converts out of those who want to hear "good things," and explain away suffering. I have actually heard ministers say on TV that God NEVER takes a child's life---it is the devil. This is a lie, and comes from the mouth of God's eternal enemy, Satan. God takes children because they belong to him in the first place. A man and a woman do not create a child, God gives life and when a child dies, my immediate reaction is sorrow for the parents' loss, but JOY in the knowledge that this little one is now "evermore with the Lord." God gives, and God takes away. He is God. False teachers also tell believers (or professing Christians, whether they are saved or not, I don't know, it's God's business), but anyhow, they tell us that God doesn't want anyone to be sick. On what basis do they say this? I don't know. The Bible I have tells me to "endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ" (2 Timothy 2:3) and it was written by the Apostle Paul to his son in the Lord, Timothy, shortly before Paul was beheaded in Nero's prison. The Bible I have is filled with stories of how we are permitted to "suffer for Jesus' sake" and what an honor it is, if we do it by the will of God. Why should this life down here be filled with "filthy lucre," and all the "good things" which pastors preach on, when those who are called heroes of the faith have suffered horrors beyond our imagination. In spite of religious teachers attempting to present Almighty God as a "good ole Boy" who winks at sin and "understands our weaknesses" God is still God. God permitted His only begotten Son to take upon Himself our weaknesses and when we are born again and claim our relationship as His child, we don't have the right to be morally weak and say "we couldn't help it." We CAN help it. We can do what God says is possible, to triumph over the flesh by the working of the Holy Spirit within us. We CAN take poverty and humiliation and sickness and sorrow as part of our heritage because we are human beings, living in a pollutetd world brought about by human greed. The earth is dying, everyone knows this. And it is dying because of the lust of human's for power and money and position in a world that hates God, and has hated Him from the beginning when Adam and Eve turned their backs on God's will and became spiritually dead. If this were not true why does God's Word say, "There is none righteous, no, not one." We are a race that is lost, given over to the lusts of the flesh, and headed for hell. But we don't have to go to hell. And people gamble on the grace of God and that is why we don't hear the message I quoted concerning the possibility of "losing it all" and there is no more grace for repentance. As individuals, all of us have a "code." Usually it's bad--"pay back time, " etc. And if human beings have a code, do you not know that God has an eternal code and He will never have His Son's Name made light of. From the moment you claim Him as Savior, you had better begin to ACT like a son of God and get into the Bible and find out for yourself what God expects of you. I thank God I didn't go to men to teach me. I read my Bible after I was born again and found the verse, "You don't need men to teach you...." I took this as God wanting me to discover His love and His will for me in His Book. I longed for holiness. I loved the verse, "As the deer panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my heart after Thee," because that is an every day experience for me. I MUST know more, love Him more, trust Him more, and refuse to give in to the flesh that will always be tempted until it is redeemed by the Lord Jesus at the rapture. I refuse, In His Precioous Name, to give in to the lusts of the flesh--lying, cheating, stealing, hating, doing all the things which Jesus died for--setting me free from this power of the Self. And if I can live a holy life, then so can everyone else. God doesn't have any favorites and He had mervy on me, because I wanted more than anything else in the world to love Him with all of my heart, soul, strength, and mind---AND my neighbor as myself. He gave me this gift and God forbid that I should ever say "No" when I suffer. I look around me, and the only thing that makes sense is the beauty of God's creation (and the big time oil industry, along with all the other industries are fast ruining that). I planted a bulb last Autumn---a dead looking, ugly thing. But now, outside my porch, blooms a bright red tulip with colors inside the cup which no man can duplicate. My trees, which were so stark and lifeless now have green leaves bursting forth out of their long, cold captivity. And my mountain is aglow with life, directly from the Father of Life--my Father in heaven. Use your minds, then, and THINK about this miracle. If God took the trouble to cause that dead, ugly bulb to bring forth a flower so magnificent it could come directly from heaven, how much more did He expect your dead, ugly life---hidden and burdened with sin of every kind---to burst forth at your repentance and confession of Christ as Savior with every beautiful fruit of the Holy Spirit which are listed in God's Word. Look at them, and consider your own life, whether you have this fruit: "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, self-control...(Galatians 5:22). I found this Word because I WANTED to have that kind of life from the beginning. And I have paid dearly for it. Our salvation is free, but it costs us everything to be sanctified, and finally conformed into the image of our dear Lord. I have, throughout the years since I was born again, lost my home three times--abandoned by evil workers who determined I would not survive if I "kept the faith" and did not compromise God's Word. This hurt me deeply. I lost my furniture, my car, my income, my relationships, but I can say without any doubt at all, the losses were nothing compared with the great grace and the great Love which God the Father has poured out upon me because of my obedience to His Word and my love for His precious Son. It hurts to live the Christian life, IF we are faithful to God. It hurts because people who live in sin (after saying they are Christians) don't like to see the reality of God's Love working in a human heart. It hurts when friends forsake us, when parents hate us, when we are made the laughing stock of the world by our pilgrim walk. But how much more I know God intimately than I would have, had I never suffered loss. He is real to me, a Father who comes when HE knows it is necessary to keep me from faltering. And to have a Father like this in a world like ours is the miracle that He promised when He let His Son pour forth His blood, thus satisfying the demands of Satan and we KNOW that we no longer belong to the devil, but to God. Long, long ago at the time of my new birth, I found the following story. I knew then, that this is what God would do with me. And I thanked Him. I thank Him still. OTHERS MAY! YOU CAN NOT! ...."The Holy Spirit will put a strict watch over you, with a jealous love, and will rebuke you for little words and feelings, or for wasting your time, which other Christians never seem distressed over. So make up your mind that God is an infinite Sovereign, and has a right to do as He pleases with His own, and He will not explain to you a thousand things which may puzzle your reason in His dealings with you. God will take you at your word; and if you absolutely sell yourself to be His salve, He will wrap you up in a jealous love, and let other people say and do many things that you cannot do or say. "Settle it forever, that you are to ddeal directly with the Holy Spirit, and that He is to have the privilege of tying your tongue, or changing your hand, or closing your eyes, in ways that others are not dealt with. "Now when you are so possessed with the living God that you are, in your secret heart, pleased and delighted over this peculiar, personal, private, jealous guardianship and management of the Holy Spirit over your life, you will have found the vestibule of heaven." ---G.W.D., in Living Words. May this be your experience; may you not take the grace of God lightly, and be rejected; and may your life be an example to those around you that YES--there is a God who loves and saves the "lowliest of people" and His holiness is yours if you want it badly enough to face what you are, and turn away from it all, and simply commit to the Father of all Life. **************** "And there are those who give and know not pain in their giving, nor do they see joy, nor give with mindfulness of virtue; they give as yonder valley the myrtle breathes its fragrance into space. Through the hands of such as these GOD speaks, and from behind their eyes He smiles upon the Earth.--Khalil Gibran. \| January, 2001 Wingspread \| February, 2001 Wingspread \| March, 2001 Wingspread \| April, 2001 Wingspread** \| May, 2001 Wingspread \| June, 2001 Wingspread \| July, 2001 Wingspread \| September, 2001 Wingspread \| October, 2001 Wingspread \| \| Year 2019 Wingspreads \| August, 2016 Wingspread \| 2016 Wingspreads \| 2014 Wingspreads \| 2013 Wingspreads \| 2012 Wingspreads \| 2011 Wingspreads \| 2010 Wingspreads \| 2009 Wingspreads \| 2008 Wingspreads \| 2007 Wingspreads \| 2006 Wingspreads \| 2005 Wingspreads \| 2004 Wingspreads \| 2003 Wingspreads \| 2002 Wingspreads \| 2001 Wingspreads \| August, 2001 Wingspread \| November, 2001 Wingspread \| December, 2001 Wingspread \| 2000 Wingspreads \| 1999 Wingspreads \| 2015 Wingspreads \| Year 2017 Wingspreads \| 2018 Wingspreads \| Year 2020 Wingspreads \| Year 2021 Wingspreads \| Year 2022 Wingspreads \| Year 2023 Wingspreads \| \| Return Home \| Current Wingspread \| Wingspread Archives \| Contact Us \|