Our God is a personal God

Dear Children we know by now that our God is a merciful God. Like none other He is full of tender mercies and always long suffering and kind towards us not wanting anyone to perish.

He is not only our Father in a plural sense, but that He is also a personal God with compassionate care towards each one of us. In His covenants He remains faithful to all His righteous decrees and always guiding us “His remnant elect” through the advices of His Holy Spirit. He never changes in His attributes of love and care.

In His New Covenant He sent us His Holy Spirit to guide and direct us in all His ways, and in His sovereignty He always seeks to find those who would be willing to be led by Him in all things. Do you all agree to all of these infallible truths?

The Bible also teaches us by the illumination of His Holy Spirit that we are sealed by Him for the day of redemption and His Spirit also lives in us to guide and protects us. Amen? The word also teaches us in the New Covenant readings that we could grieve His Holy Spirit by our actions and make Him grieve over our sin when we desire to live apart from His guidance. This in a way can hinder us from reaching the best He has for us in pursuing all He intends to do for us in this life.  This means choosing our own will over His sovereign will for us. Does this sound like an oxymoron to you? Him being sovereign and then we still having our free choice to do what we want? Yes and no. You must know that His perfect will be accomplished in us, but if we chose our own way it can really hurt us in many ways until we agree with His? It still does not make sense to you? It is ok do not be overly anxious you will get it along the way. To grieve the Spirit of God living in us also means to leave us with a dry and grievous spirit along the way. This also will work to our disadvantage.

To ignore the guidance of the Holy Spirit means to live in a confused world being saved, yet wondering in the desert of our own illusions. It is likened in having a friend available at all times who could lead us the way, but to refuse His leading for our own earthly mindedness. Having the Counselor living inside of us, yet looking for council in all the wrong places. It also is a sign of infancy and complete immaturity. That is why the Bible says “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God those are sons of God”. (Rom. 8:14) Amen?

Do you see the highlighted difference of the sons and the mere followers of their own ways? That is why in the same scripture the apostle Paul says “If you live according to the flesh you will die”. Pay attention he does not speak to the unbelieving, but to those who profess to be Christians. This is why the Spirit of the Lord could be grieved in us by our mere wrong choices.

Many of us are standing on crossroads of life and are in the possession of the most valuable navigation system. Not one that is created in the hands of man. The Creator who is the true navigator of our lives has decided to come and indwell us for our own safety, yet we turn to our own crooked ways instead. Our carnal nature cries out “Not His way, no chose your own”, and this is where all the problems start. We like Balaam love to inquire even, but are set in doing our own ways. This reminds me of a story of a man who was stopped at a two way ending road and there were two who were at the dividing section of these two roads. One man was dead and another alive. Which do you think could give him the right direction he needed to go. The dead man or the living one? All other religions in the world their leaders are all dead, but ours not only is a living God, but that He individually dwells in each one of us. Isn’t this amazing and awe inspiring enough for you in wanting to follow Him?

Some unfortunately proclaim we cannot hear His voice or even recognize it. Why do you think that might be? Could it be that we might have grieved Him in our choices or even quenched His Spirit all together through our own stubbornness of sin and lawlessness? To some the Bible says that they have even smeared their conscious where the Holy Spirit lives and are no longer even able to hear His voice anymore. This is where I am reminded of the story of Jeremiah chapter 42. Here a group of the remnant of Israel who had escaped God’s judgment come to the Seer of God and asks him to inquire God on their behalf. They show themselves to be very sincere in their inquiry of him and were even saying they have settled in their hearts that whatever God’s response would be for them that they would obey it. All they wanted supposedly was to hear God’s direction for their lives. Folks the amazing thing is that they pretend to be very sincere and God fearing people. People who were seeking God’s will.

Guys doesn’t this sound like many of us today? We seem to be God-fearing people saying oh Lord let Your will be done in my life and when God speaks His will we turn quietly and do what we were going to do anyway. My God that scares me of our spiritual apostasy in following the lead of His Holy Spirit. Jesus in the letter of Hebrews says being a Son learned obedience through His suffering, but we all hate the name of it when it is spoken to us. In the Garden of Gethsemane where He was praying to His Father Jesus spoke of His own fears in the flesh and His own weakness of His fleshly disposition, and even asked if it was possible that cup would be removed from Him, but He also said not My will, but Yours be done Father. Jesus in His final inquiry still preferred the Fathers will over His own. That is the biggest difference between us and those who truly are committed to obey the voice of their God.

Oh how sincere we could sometime sound, but God knows the true addenda’s of our hearts. In Jeremiah’s case the people asking him to inquire God about their departure to Egypt they sounded very much sincere and they even dared to say if we do not obey Him on your inquiry let Him become the witness between us. Brothers and sisters in Christ this is a very scary speech before Him who we know is called “Jehovah Shammah” the One who is with us and is hearing all that we think or say.

Yes prophet Jeremiah a true man of God went by promise to inquire before the Lord and came back to them with a very favorable answer, saying. “And said unto them, Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, unto whom you sent me to present your supplication before him;  If you will still abide in this land, then will I build you, and not pull you down, and I will plant you, and not pluck you up: for I repent of the evil that I have done unto you.” Wow do your hear God? And let us continue to hear Him  on

His promises to them. “Be not afraid of the king of Babylon, of whom you are afraid; be not afraid of him, says the LORD: for I am with you to save you, and to deliver you from his hand. And I will show mercies unto you, that he may have mercy upon you, and cause you to return to your own land. But if you say, We will not dwell in this land, neither obey the voice of the LORD your God, Saying, No; but we will go into the land of Egypt, where we shall see no war, nor hear the sound of the trumpet, nor have hunger of bread; and there will we dwell: And now therefore hear the word of the LORD, you remnant of Judah; Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; If you set your faces to enter into Egypt, and go to sojourn there; Then it shall come to pass, that the sword, which ye feared, shall overtake you there in the land of Egypt, and the famine, whereof you were afraid, shall follow close after you there in Egypt; and there you shall die.” 

So shall it be with all the men that set their faces to go into Egypt to sojourn there; they shall die by the sword, by the famine, and by the pestilence: and none of them shall remain or escape from the evil that I will bring upon them. For thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; As my anger and my fury has been poured forth upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem; so shall my fury be poured forth upon you, when ye shall enter into Egypt: and you shall be an execration, and an astonishment, and a curse, and a reproach; and you shall see this place no more. The LORD has said concerning you, O you remnant of Judah; Go you not into Egypt: know certainly that I have admonished you this day.  For you dissembled in your hearts, when you sent me unto the LORD your God, saying, Pray for us unto the LORD our God; and according unto all that the LORD our God shall say, so declare unto us, and we will do it.  

And now I have this day declared it to you; but you have not obeyed the voice of the LORD your God, or anything for which He has sent me unto you. Now therefore know certainly that you shall die by the sword, by the famine, and by the pestilence, in the place whither you desire to go and to sojourn.”

Here in these few verses of the scripture we see how the true Prophet of God after inquiring from God on their behalf and coming back in 10 days of spending in God’s presence through prayer is dishonored and disrespected by the same very one’s who pretended to be so zealous to obey Him. Yes our God being a personal God is not mocked by any of us. He is the Lord of Hosts and all the Hosts of heaven obey His voice. The very same fears they had in Babylon overtook them personally in Egypt. Yes God can make us famish in the land of plenty if we refuse to obey Him.

Oh yes our God is the one who can provide in the land of famine and make us starve in the land of plenty. Where we think there is no chance of survival there He could prepare a table before our feared enemies, and where you and I chose in our own understanding to live,  there He could allow the famine and sword and diseases to overtake and destroy us. That is why in the same book of Jeremiah the Lord says “ My plans are not to hurt you, but to give you a hope and a future”. But when we stop inquiring Him for His will, or if inquire His Holy Spirit and then still do what our stubborn hearts wants to do, then we are left alone to face the consequences of our  own choices. I would even say that it is better not to ask  Him and then to disobey, than to ask and mock Him by doing exactly what we think is right in our own eyes. Now Church we know the choice is ours. The Bible says the choice of life and death is in our hands, then  let us chose life. Amen?