Category Archives: death of self

June 5, 2009 · 12:45 pm

A Simple, Sincere Prayer Away from “The Answer”

This world is in trouble.  America is bankrupt.  It is all teetering on the brink of destruction.  Families and homes are being wrecked through unemployment, brought on by insidious, covert forces.  And yet, all of us earth-dwellers are a whisper away from receiving real answers to our problems.

Humankind is one simple sincere prayer away from contacting The Answer, who is the Author of the Book of Life.  One simple, sincere communique to the Great One.  Just one prayer, one humble request based in true knowledge would yield a release from the stresses and fears plaguing us.

But which god?  “For there are gods many.”  We need to ask the one true God.  But we are to “ask in faith–nothing wavering…Ask, believe, and you shall receive.”  That is the scriptural Rx for answers.  But the catch is that we cannot ask God for things for our self, “to consume it upon our on lusts (desires).”  He doesn’t hear the prayers of the selfish or prideful.

The Renunciation of Self

First, then, there must be a renunciation of our own selfish desires, and then we are to ask the Father and petition Him with our “simple, sincere prayer.”

But man is so full of himself that one of two things happen as he stands so close to receiving The Answer to Life’s Problems.  He either is consumed with his own ego (old self), or he would pray to another god or another concept of the true God, which cannot give him The Answer.

Only One Religion Gets Rid of the Old Self

Only true Christianity–not Churchianity, not the watered-down pablum of Christendom–provides a way for a person to get rid of the old selfish heart we are all born with.  It is done at the cross, which is not taught anymore in denominational churches like it once was 100-200 years ago.

At the cross, we surrender up to God in revelation our old self, identifying its sinful ways with Christ, who took our sins upon Him and actually died as a lost man that day at Calvary.  When He died, our old self died; when He was buried, our old life was buried; when the Spirit entered into Him and raised Him from the dead, we, too, were “raised to walk in a newness of life” by His faith now entered into our new heart.

Now It Is All About Him

And now, after this experience, we communicate with that God, who walked fully in the man Christ.  We call on Him with a simple, sincere prayer, asking for more light that He may reveal to us how better we may serve Him, how better we may be of help to Him as He fashions His earth and the people in it.

We then in our simple, sincere prayer seek to help Him bring in His government  into this old earth.  His soon-coming kingdom–this is His plan and purpose, which is contained in His book, that He, the Author, has already written.

We, then, are a simple, sincere prayer away from touching the heart of the very Creator of this entire universe!  He knows our “frame is dust.”  He knows we are weak and have great needs that only He can fill.  And He is only a simple, sincere whisper away from us.  We need only to take that first step.  Kenneth Wayne Hancock

See also:

“He Who Commits Sin Is a Slave to Sin”

Q: What Is Sin? A: The Transgression of the Law

“But Deliver Us From Evil”–From the Evil Within the Heart


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May 30, 2009 · 10:17 am

“He Who Commits Sin Is a Slave to Sin”–Part II, or How to Be Free from Sin

Man comes into existence with the old nature, the old self, and he is a slave to sin and its carnal fleshly lustful desires.  God bids us to come to the cross to let that old sinful spirit within us die a sacrificial death with the Savior.  This is our repentance from sin and the washing of regeneration in which our old sinful self dies and we are cleansed by the blood of the Lamb and given a new spirit from the heart of God.

Then we will desire to come to the light so that the world will know that the good clean deeds we do now are actions derived from His spirit within us.  We will know that He is the one actually doing this miracle of change within us.  And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.  For every one that does evil hates the light, neither comes to the light lest his deeds should be reproved.  But he that does truth comes to the light that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God (John 3: 19-21).

Condemnation Comes by Not Believing in His Name

The truth is that God has provided a way for man to change his ways, and that way is Jesus (Yahshua), the Son of God.  When one persists in living in the darkness of sin, then that person is “condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.”

A person is condemned because he hasn’t believed in His name?  Yes, for they have not believed in the meaning of His name.  And His Hebrew name Yahshua means “Yah, the Self-Existent One, is the Savior.”  His name says it all in the Hebrew.

How He Saves

He saves His people by first coming down in human flesh and being Emmanuel, God with us.  Then He takes that Lamb to the sacrificial altar (the cross) where all of our sin was placed, and when He died on the cross, then our sin died.  When He was buried, our old nature was buried.  And when He was resurrected, then we were also raised to walk in a newness of life.

From the very beginning of God being with us in human form, it was all about Him saving us from our sins.  Yah says that He alone is the Savior many times in the prophets.  “You shall call His name Yahshua, for He shall save His people from their sins” (Matt. 1: 21).

The word about this is the truth that makes us free from sin and sinning.  He says that He will save us from our sins.  He says it by His word and His word is truth.  And this is the light that shines into the darkness.  This light is His Life that He desires to give His people.  He plans to give His Life to them.  It is His Life coming into us through faith in His resurrection in us that dispels the darkness of sin in one’s life.

When someone shrieks away from this light, they are denying His name and what it means: Yah is the Savior.  “I, even I, am Yahweh; and beside me there is no savior” (Isaiah 43: 11).  Kenneth Wayne Hancock

{For more on this see my books online here:   http://YahwehIstheSavior.com      Please forward this to someone who needs this truth.  Make a comment.  Share your thoughts with the world.  God bless…}

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May 24, 2009 · 10:19 am

Dear Prodigal Son (with Problems with Sexual Lust)

Dear prodigal son,

This is in answer to the problems you are facing in finding the line between being fleshly minded and spiritually minded in your life.  You mentioned that you had problems with urges of a sexual nature and couldn’t see that one could really be totally successful in combating those urges.

You wanted some help concerning this.  I did too many years ago, when a wise man shared with me this truth.  In fact, this truth was life-changing, initiating a personal transformation of a miraculous nature.

He told me that my old self, the old nature that I was born with–it had to die.  “Wayne, you’ve got to voluntarily surrender it and place that old selfish heart on the cross and let it die there with Christ.  When He, the sin sacrifice  died, your old self died; when He was buried, your old nature was buried; when He was raised from the dead, you were raised from the dead, too.”

Although I wanted to get power over the flesh and the sin driving my actions, this truth hit me hard.  I knew that it was game, set, match.  It was over.  God won.  There was no excuse for me to continue the selfish sinful way I was living.  “How do you do it?” I asked him.

“It all boils down to belief in the resurrection.  Not that just Christ was raised from the dead.  Many believe that fact of history.  No, you are the one that needs to be raised from the dead along with Christ.  You must believe that Christ is raised in you, in your body!  By faith in the operation of God who raised Christ from the dead, you, too, can walk in a newness of life {Col. 2:11}.”

It was not the easiest thing to do, but I had a great support system to help the new “babe in Christ”–me.  It was a life-changer, and I’ve walked on from there those many years ago.”

I hope this helps.  This is what you need–to get it settled, where you can confess, “I am dead, and my life is hid with Christ in God.”

I’ve written more about this on my blog, “Immortality Road.”  Check it out at https://ImmortalityRoad.wordpress.com or check out my books at http://yahwehisthesavior.com/ God bless you in your search,                                               Kenneth Wayne Hancock

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May 14, 2009 · 12:59 pm

The Law of Harvest–How God Reproduces Himself

The Eternal Purpose of God: He is reproducing Himself.  The laboratory that He is working in is the earth.  He has created human beings to help accomplish His purpose.  He created their bodies out of the moist clay of the earth.  All things are now in place for this reproduction experience.  But how does it work?

It works through the Law of Harvest.  “Whatever you sow, that shall you also reap.”  Therefore, God, who is the Seed (the Word, the Logos) has planted Himself in these earthen vessels called humans.

To do all this, God created a special creation Adam and his offspring, who He created in His own image.  These are to be vessels of honor, vessels that would house His Spirit, which is the Seed, the Word of God.

“Greater Love Has No Man Than This…”

One might ask, “Why does the immortal God use mortal man to reproduce Himself?”  To express the essence of His nature, which is Love, one must give up one’s life.  For “greater love has no man than this than to lay down his life for his friends.”  Sacrificing one’s life for another is the greatest love.  But the Creator, by His very immortal nature, cannot die. So then, how can God express the greatest Love, which is His essence?

The Great Creator Yahweh, of course, thought all this through.  In fact, in His plan, He scheduled a grand appearance of Himself in a mortal human body.  He chose a special person, Jesus (Yahshua) of Nazareth to house Himself in.  God, the Spirit of Love, would humbly walk among us to show us the way to be like God.  God, the Word, “was made flesh and dwelt among us.”

Christ Is the Seed That Falls into the Ground and Dies

This anointed vessel, called Christ and the Messiah, is the Seed.  He was planted in the earth three days and three nights.  And just like a seed in your garden springs forth, He arose out of the earthy grave and ascended back from where He came.

Yahweh had to come in a body that would and could die in order to show the greatest love.  Without Him giving up His human life on the cross, He could not reproduce Himself, for “except a seed fall into the ground and die, it abides alone.  But if it die, it brings forth much fruit.”

We humans, then, can avail ourselves to be used by our Maker in His reproduction process.  But first we must surrender to this purpose.  We must allow our old selfish heart and life to die on the cross with Christ, be buried with Him in revelatory truth, and then, by believing that Christ was raised from the dead, we can begin to “walk in newness of life.”

We then begin to bear much fruit.  And those who do this will become His fully manifested offspring and will rule this earth with Him during the Kingdom Age when Christ returns.  These have surrendered completely and  have Him fully grown up within them.  These are the ones who God has reproduced Himself in.  Kenneth Wayne Hancock

{ You can read more about this in my book The Unveiling of the Sons of God. Request your free copy with free shipping by sending your name and mailing address and the name of the book to my email address: wayneman5@hotmail.com }

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April 5, 2009 · 10:35 am

Overcoming by the Word of Our Testimony

Those who overcome the evil do it by “the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony” (Rev. 12: 11) {See March 30, 2009 post}.

Faith in the cleansing power of Christ’s blood will set us into the position of being a testimony of God’s power in the earth.  First, to overcome we must be cleansed from sin, and then give testimony that God is real in our lives–that He is in control, that He is all powerful.

In other words, we must be a witness as to what He is doing, where He is going and taking us all, what His plan and purpose is, what He expects from His creation, what is His endgame.  We must go on record; we must take the witness stand here on earth and give our testimony as to what God has done in our life, and what He shall do in the lives of His true believers, and to those who will not believe in Him.  That takes surrender, study, and prayer.

It Is All About “Christ in You”

The “word of our testimony” is the same thing as this:  “And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.”  It is all about “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”  It is all about the Spirit of the living God walking around in us.  This is the word of our testimony.  It is when we grow to a point when our actions are the Spirit of Christ living out His life in us.  Then we are poised for the final overcoming, or the final victory.

The first victory is the victory over sin and sinning.  By believing this testimony that God gave us of His Son–that those who have faith and believe that God placed mankind’s sins on Christ, and when He died, our old heart and spirit died.  And when Christ was buried, our old lives were buried.  And when Christ was raised from the dead, we also were raised from the dead! A new life, a new walk, a new way, a new purpose–now poised to receive the ultimate blessing reserved for all of His overcomers–nothing less that immortality!

The Seven Levels of Overcoming

The outline of the seven levels of overcoming are found in the church ages in Revelation 2 and 3.  These two chapters detail what we are to overcome in this new life and what the rewards are for the victors.

And those who are victorious to the end have this astounding prophecy given over them by Christ Himself: “To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne” (3: 22).

Those that are unafraid and go on to overcome all things–they will sit as princes and princesses on God’s own very throne!

And if that were not enough, we who get this  ultimate victory, we who allow God to fully manifest Himself in us–we shall inherit all things.  “He that overcometh shall inherit all things” (Rev. 21: 7).

Who Will It Be?

So–somebody will sit with Christ on His throne and will inherit all things–the greatest of which is immortality.  The question, then, is this: Who will it be?  Is it you or I who have just met on this page?  Will we be there as the immortal possessors of the universe, the sons and daughters of the King of the universe?

Or will we be among the “fearful and unbelieving”–those who will soon be eternally forgotten–those who wind up as just another broken common vessel that the Potter has discarded–broken potsherds having never made it to the kiln, never glazed with glory, never used to beautify His house. Kenneth Wayne Hancock

{Be sure to bookmark this site.  Share it with others.  Make a comment and share your thoughts about  these things with people worldwide.  To read more on this see “my books online” in the blogroll in the right column}

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March 30, 2009 · 12:54 pm

Overcoming by the Blood of the Lamb

People are pressed down by this old world system.  The world’s economies are skidding down into a gigantic depression.  People are under extreme pressure, some even going crazy, killing their families and themselves.  They are losing their jobs, their homes, cars, their lives as they know it.

In lieu of all this, Christ’s words ring with the crystal clarity of truth: “In the world, you shall have tribulation; but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.”

But here is a newsflash:  We shall overcome also!  But how do we overcome the world and all of its tribulation, trouble, and anguish?

The First Overcoming

The first overcoming, which leads to all of the overcomings, or victories in Christ, is the victory over sin in our lives.  It is a direct victory of the power of the devil in our lives, for “he that commits sin is of the devil.”  But to get rid of sin in our lives was the “purpose the  Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil” (I John 3: 8).

How is this done?  “They overcame him (Satan) by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony” (Rev. 12: 11).  Our victory over the evil comes through these two things.

Many talk a good Christian ballgame, but few deliver through the lives that they lead.  Many claim to follow Christ, yet they still do secret sins, which emanate from the dark recesses of an unregenerated heart–a heart that is old and carnal–a heart that has not climbed Calvary’s hill to submit to the death of the cross along with Christ.

By the Blood of Christ the Sacrificial Lamb

He is the sin sacrifice–the “Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.”  He takes away the sin of the world. When He gets through, we don’t have it anymore.  But we must identify our old sinful heart with Him that day of the Lamb’s death some 2,000 years ago.  This is how the Lamb’s blood cleanses us.  When it drained out of Him, the life and energy and power of sin died out.  When His blood was all spilled out, then the lifeforce of sin in us drained out as well. This is how we overcame the devil.  It is from this cleansing of sin through the death of our old nature, of our old spirit, of our old heart.

Yet, sadly, chances are very slim that you will hear this in today’s church houses and Sunday schools.  It is “too strong, too harsh.”  It is not politically correct and is a sure fire way for the hired preacher to lose his pastorship.  But the old preachers of past centuries taught these very things I have shared here.  John Wesley taught it, yet you won’t hear this in a modern Methodist church.  Martin Luther taught it, but today’s Lutherans won’t hear it in church.  Spurgeon taught it, but most Baptists won’t hear this stark message in their churches.

But this is how we repent from sin.  The very first apostles’ doctrine was “repentance from dead works.”  Sin, the breaking of the 10 Commandments, is a “dead work,” for it leads to death.  And getting rid of sin in our lives is the very cornerstone in the sure foundation Christ talked about.  Without this start in Christ, the foundation is shaky, and the house will fall when the devil winds blow.   Kenneth Wayne Hancock

{Be sure to bookmark this site.  Share it with others.  Make a comment and share your thoughts about  these things with people worldwide.  To read more on this see “my books online” in the blogroll in the right column}

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February 17, 2009 · 1:51 am

Victory Over Sin and Sinning, Confirms Andrew Murray

I’ve written about the cross experience–how putting our old ego, our old self on the cross and letting it die with Christ, puts an end to our old nature and its sinful ways.  And then by His in-dwelling Spirit, through our belief in His resurrection, we “walk in a newness of life,” where the old life is “passed away” and His new life in us continues each day*.

Sometimes it helps to hear it from somebody else.  Here is a quote from Andrew Murray, a 19th century Scottish minister:

“The question often arises how it is, with so much church-going, Bible-reading, and prayer, that the Christian fails to live the life of complete victory over sin and lacks the love and joy of the Lord. One of the most important answers, undoubtedly, is that he does not know what it is to die to himself and to the world. Yet without this, God’s love and holiness cannot have their dwelling-place in his heart. He has repented of some sins, but knows not what it is to turn, not only from sin, but from his old nature and self-will.

“Yet this is what the Lord Jesus taught. He said to the disciples that if any man would come after Him, he must hate and lose his own life. He taught them to take up the cross. That meant they were to consider their life as sinful and under sentence of death. They must give up themselves, their own will and power, and any goodness of their own. When their Lord had died on the cross, they would learn what it was to die to themselves and the world, and to live their life in the fullness of God.

Our Lord used the Apostle Paul to put this still more clearly. Paul did not know Christ after the flesh, but through the Holy Spirit Christ was revealed in his heart, and he could testify: ‘I am crucified with Christ; I live no longer; Christ liveth in me.’ In more than one of his Epistles the truth is made clear that we are dead to sin, with Christ, and receive and experience the power of the new life through the continual working of God’s Spirit in us each day”         ( http://www.spiritoffire.org/ebooks/the%20new%20life/nlife26.htm ).

Let it be established in the mouth of two or three witnesses.   KWH

*{For more see  https://immortalityroad.wordpress.com/category/death-of-self/  or click the “Category” link  “Death of Self”  in the right hand column}.

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February 12, 2009 · 6:48 pm

We Were with God in the Beginning–Part II

Why This is Hard to Believe

The children of God were with their spiritual Father in the beginning, so declares the holy scriptures {see Feb. 9, 2009 post).  This message is difficult to receive when a person, dwelling on the earth and its pulls, is full and fat, and is “doing great,” and is living high-on-the-hog.

He has need of nothing, he thinks.  But he does not know that as a selfish earthbound mortal, he is really blind to the heavenly way.  He is wretched in his blindness to spiritual matters, for he can never be happy being earthly-minded.  He is poor, for he lacks the Spirit that was in the beginning.  And he is naked, strutting blindly on the earth, willingly ignorant of the truth about what is really happening “on earth as it is in heaven” (Rev. 3: 17).

This is the state of mankind now in this prosperous 21st century.  And the only thing that will wake up God’s people to Him is that He allows the engineering of an economic fall–one that will strip the toys and gadgets from the lost sheep of the House of Israel.

In the Old Testament stories, it was always an economic collapse brought on by crooked politicians that finally pierced through the hard hearts.  When they became destitute, “then they cried unto the LORD (Yahweh).”

And He heard them and came down by making His Presence known to a prophet, who in turn, led His people away from the moral and spiritual abyss and led them back “to the beginning”–back to the pastures of the Father’s heart.

How to Get Back to the Beginning with Him

We will be restored back to what we had with Him in the beginning.  How?  We believe that we receive His Spirit–after we surrender our old self on the cross and let it die with Christ, who was the sin sacrifice (Romans 6: 1-6).  This is the first step.  Then through just believing God and His love granting us a new life, heart, and spirit, we begin to walk in this new life–His Life now incarnated in us.

We believe that His Spirit within us now cauterizes eventually all connections to our earthly past.  And then by faith (belief), we leave the bars and chains of earthly thinking with its negative demands, and we begin to walk in the Spirit, in the spiritual state that we already “had with Him before the world began.”

The Truth

For the truth is that we were with Him in the beginning.  The “We”  here is the portion of His Spirit that we are now, not our earthly body.

For after receiving Christ, anything we are is “new” to our current earthly reality, but “old” in that our new existence in Christ is one we shared with Him before time as we know it began.

A person instructed in the Kingdom of God will, consequently, “bring forth out of his treasure things new and old” (Matt. 13: 52).  The “old” is our spiritual relationship we had with Him before our earthly sojourn began.  The “things new” is living now through His Spirit within our hearts–right now here on earth.

This sin-free spiritual walk in Christ is “new” and rare, for few have been priveleged to glimpse this; few have been given the eyesalve to anoint the earthen eyes that they may see.    Kenneth Wayne Hancock

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January 28, 2009 · 1:40 pm

“Is Christ Divided?” Asked the Apostle Paul

Obviously  not.  And neither are the true members of His spiritual body, the church.  Yet, in Christendom divisions abound, as they did in Paul’s day.

“We are the true church,” say the Roman Catholics.  “No, we are,” say the Baptists.  “We are the Church of Christ!”  “No, we are following Luther.”  “We are following Wesley.”

Please.  2,600 different denominations, each with a different take on Christ.  Divisions abound.  And they all claim to be following the words of the Bible, yet they do not obey its words: “I beseech you…that you all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you…that you be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment” (I Corinthians 1: 10).

The same mind.  Whose mind?  The mind of Christ.  Since Christ is not divided, then those who really have His Spirit will not be divided either.  “If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His” (Rom 8: 9).  If we are His, then we will have His Spirit.  And if we have His Spirit, we will have His mind, and we will not be divided.

Because of the divisions, Paul said that he would have to teach them the basics: the preaching of the cross.  This is what is lacking in Christians today.  They have not been taught that they must surrender their own egos to the death of the cross.  They must identify their sin with the dying Christ who took upon Him the sin of the world that day at Calvary.

“Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.  For he that is dead is freed from sin” (Rom 6: 6-7).   The old heart dies with Christ, and then He gives us a new heart by faith in His resurrection.  If we can believe that Christ was raised from the dead, can we not also believe that His Spirit is now raised up in us, thus freeing us from sin and sinning?

If all Christians had this experience of deliverance from sin and sinning, then the divisions would evaporate.  We would all join hands in grateful fellowship, sharing His Spirit among us.  For “there is one body, and one Spirit” (Eph. 4: 4).  That one body is Christ’s one body of believers, which have His Spirit.

And that Spirit only comes into us after we believe that our old self  has died on the cross, and then believe that He has been raised up again in us!  That will get rid of all the divisions.   Kenneth Wayne Hancock

{A note to fellow bloggers:  Check out this website in order to get more traffic to your blog:  http://condron.us  }

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December 11, 2008 · 5:24 pm

Conversations With the Seer–“I Am the Vine; Ye Are the Branches”

(Formerly in Israel, if a man went to inquire of God, he would say, “Come, let us go to the Seer,” because the prophet of today used to be called a Seer. I Samuel 9: 9)

“How can we tell a false prophet?”  I asked the Seer.  We were all sitting around the wood stove, enjoying a cup of hot tea.

He opened the door to the cast iron box heater and threw  in another log.  “This I can tell you; the Master said that they will end up like this log, ‘hewn down and cast into the fire.’   This is how you can tell them from the true man of God:  Christ said, You shall know them by their fruits.  A false prophet or a false teacher will not bear good fruit; they will bring forth evil fruit.  A good tree will bring forth good fruit.  A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit (1).

“What is the fruit that He is talking about?”

“The words that Christ spoke were spirit, so it is spiritual fruit that a person brings forth, be it good or bad.  The good fruit is ‘the fruit of the Spirit,’ which is ‘love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance’ (2). ”

“How do we bear this good fruit of the Spirit?”

“It’s a walk with Him.  It takes time to learn to walk with Him.  After our death, burial, and resurrection experience with Him, He gives us a small portion of His Spirit as a down payment towards the purchased possession–us.  He urges us to grow, or rather, allow His Spirit to grow in our mortal bodies by means of prayer and study and putting into practice His way of life.  He frees us from sin and sinning; this is what allows us to grow.  This is when He tells us to abide in Him.”

“How do we abide in Him?”

“Christ likens Himself as being the true grape vine.  The Father is the Spirit, the invisible Sap that flows up through the vine Christ, and on into us the branches.  Christ commands us, Abide in me, and I in you.   He says that those of us who do this will bring forth much fruit–much love from above, much joy, and much peace, and much of all the rest.  We do this by being channels of His love, joy and peace.  We are not the objects.  That is the key (3).

“What’s the first step?”

“We must first reach out to Him and abide and remain in Him.  How?  In our thoughts.  We match our thoughts to His.  Remember: In the beginning was the Word, the Logos.  And the Logos is the Thought or the Concept that the Father had in the beginning.  And that Word/Logos/Concept/ Thought  is Spirit.  And the Word was made flesh and dwelt amoung us.  Christ is the living Thought and Plan of God.  We must make His Eternal Thoughts ours.  That’s the secret.  That’s the Truth.  He is the Truth, and we can handle the Truth because He has ordained us that we should bear this fruit of His Spirit.  And His Thought made flesh is the the Light of the world.  When we have His mind, then we are the light of the world, too, because His Spirit will be abiding and remaining in us for all to see (4).”

“Christ really wants this for us, doesn’t He?’

“He’s all about multiplying Himself throughout a body of people whom He has chosen and elected for this honor.  That’s grace.  But we’ve got to get a hold of what He’s offered to His followers.  We need to abide in Him by thinking on the Word/Logos/Thought of God, which is contemplating His love for us and the whole world.  We can start here: He forgave all of us our sins, so now we need to forgive those who have sinned against us.  This is how we continue in His love.   Christ gave His life, so now we give up our selfish old life and take on His life within our hearts.  He gave us another commandment: Love each other as I have love you (John 15: 12).  You cannot love someone with His agape love without forgiving them first.  Forgive everyone everything.  It is possible with His Spirit helping us.”

“And the bad trees won’t be able to do this?”

“A bad tree won’t be able in the end to forgive, for they will not truly have Christ’s Spirit.  They will come on in sheep’s clothing, looking very righteous, but they are still being motivated from their sinful, selfish hearts–hearts that do not have His Spirit.  Your powers of discernment will grow as you abide more in Him and He in you.  Just remember that we are the branches; He is the vine through which we receive His Spirit, and it’s His Spirit that makes it all possible to grow up into Him.”     Kenneth Wayne Hancock       {For more on this, check out my books here:  https://immortalityroad.com/donate/ }

(1) Matthew 76: 15-20   (2) Galatians 5: 22  (3) John 15: 1-14   (4) John 1: 1, 14

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