Category Archives: humility

June 5, 2010 · 8:24 pm

My Mother’s Prayer and Testimony of Her Vision of One God

God, our Father, please help me write this.  I love You and want to be a good  witness for you.  I thank you for keeping me all these 84 years.

Times have been hard, but I never wanted to give up.  I loved the feeling of your reminding me to hold on.  I am so sorry for the times I was not waiting for your reminders of what you had done for me.

I realized I was in need of more of your truth to be taught to me.  But the others around me were in the same shape as I, and they were not able to teach me more of your truth. 

Through all the dark days and hangups, I finally realized I couldn’t depend on anyone but You.  I realized finally that all of us need those rough times in our lives in order to feel a greater need for You.  Thank You.

As I look back over the past six decades, I’m glad that I kept in your word, for therein is the only true help we can find. 

In the beginning of my journey here on earth with You, times were really hard.  It was the Great Depression.  My mother died when I was two, and without her to guide me, it was difficult.  My dad tried to raise us three little girls.  We were so poor that we had to live in tents in a graveyard at times, living on mostly gravey and bread made by hand.  But we survived.  And we were not the only sharecropper families there in East Texas. 

It was a struggle for our father, but being young children, we didn’t notice it much.  We just knew we were poor.  Later on in life after I came to know You, poor didn’t seem too bad, since Your word taught that we do not “live by bread alone, but by every word” of Your mouth.

As I got older, I wanted to work, but jobs were hard to find.  I got my first job at 15.  That would have been in 1941.  It was working in a laundry in Corsicana, Texas for 22 cents an hour.

Time went on, and I became of age to wed.  So after the War was over in 1945, I married, not knowing what true love was, but willing to learn to be a good wife and mother.  Then you gave me the greatest joy of my life.  You blessed me with a firstborn son.  Right out of your best mold.  Created in your image.  Thank You! 

My son brought great joy to my heart.  When he was five weeks old, we were lying down in the sun, and I was reading to him.  I did not know You or have your word at the time.  My neighbor across the path came over to visit us.  And she spoke to me of You.  I had never heard much about You at 21 years old. 

But You had prepared me to receive Your word from her because of the wonderful thing that happened five weeks earlier at childbirth.  I was under the sleep that the doctor had put me under, and I had this dream.  There was a kind of swinging ladder to heaven, and people were going up this ladder two together, but I was going up alone.  When I reached the top, there was ONE of You holding your hand out to help me get off the ladder.  I then woke up. 

That gave me the truth about there being just one God.  Ever since that day, when I read Your word, I can see one God–even when it reads “and Jesus Christ.”  Once you get the revelation, you can see it.

Well, the great son you gave me also has the truth about one God.  He has a wonderful brain, Father, and I am so happy to serve You with him.

As time went by, I longed for a baby girl.  I so wanted the two children to be not so far apart.  By then I had read about  Hannah and how she prayed for a child, a boy baby.  And God answered her prayer.    So after waiting a year and a half, I knelt by the bed, and I reminded You, Father, that You had given her a boy child, Samuel.  Now I am asking You for a baby girl.  And the very next month she was on the way. 

At that time I was very shy and had never talked to any one about You.  I had studied and gone to church, but I was so shy.  I remember that while I was in the middle of giving birth to her, You stopped everything and asked me if I had witnessed to anyone about You.  And, of course, I said no.  You very distinctly told me that if I was not going to be a witness for You that the baby would not finish coming.  So I started saying, “Yes, Lord.  Yes, Lord, I will.”  And suddenly, I was wide awake, and I asked Dr. Mamulia if he knew You.  He thought for a minute that I was out of my head.  And I said, “But do you really know Him?”

And he said, “No, Louise, I don’t really know Him.”  The nurse was very angry with me, but I was really not afraid anymore to speak out about You. 

The next morning the doctor asked me, “Louise, do you remember what you said to me last night?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Oh, she was just out of her head,” the nurse interrupted.

And then the doctor said, “Oh, no, she wasn’t.”

The night before, after I asked him if he knew You, I crawled off the table with no help.  You made me so strong at the  time.  You gave me a beautiful son and daughter, and I thank you.    [Written by my mother, Louise Billups, last week.  I am so blessed to still have her and be able to talk to her everyday.  Love your mothers while you still can…]

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December 3, 2009 · 3:54 pm

The Cure for Depression

I have found a surefire cure for depression.  It is simple, natural–well, it is really spiritual–and it is free.  No money, clinics, or doctors needed.  The only physician involved in this cure  is the Great Physician.

The cure?  Depression is cured when the sufferer just sits down and thanks God for his blessings.  For a state of depression and a grateful heart cannot co-exist.  There is no such thing as a depressed praiser of God.

As the Savior taught, at the bottom of most maladies we will find a spiritual cause.  Think about it.  When was the last time you saw someone depressed, sitting there on their couch and saying to you, “My friend.  Thank you for coming to visit.  I was just thinking about you.  You know, I thank God for the wonderful friends and family I have.”  That grateful heart cannot utter a depression-filled negative thought.  A depressed grateful person is an oxymoron.  Those two cannot go together.  Impossible.

Depression, sadness, and worry spring from self-centered  thinking.  A depressed person only thinks of themselves.  It all centers on self.  Woe is me! they will say.  Self-pity, fear of what others think, and selfish thoughts cannot exist in a mind and heart that is thankful to God.  It is impossible.

So what can the depressed do?  They simply must stop the negative thinking, just for a moment.  Then think about God and say, “Thank you, God, for _________________.”  Everyone can fill in the blank with one thing.  Sunshine, air, food, a son, a daughter, a wife that has stuck with them through thick and thin, a husband who works and brings home bread and milk.  Hey, fill in the blank with something, and in that very instant of thanksgiving, the depression begins to lift.

The darker the hour, the more need to thank Him.  “In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus (Yahshua) concerning you” [1].  Everything.  The “good” and the “bad.” 

For we must realize that God has diliberately built in hardships and sufferings, so that our belief in Him may be purified [2], and that joy may abound within us.  But most people get down, blame others, or blame themselves, instead of seeing this truth: “Acknowledge Him in all our ways, and He shall direct our paths” [3].

We then, should realize that when negativity attacks our minds through self-centered thoughts bringing on depression,  we should simply thank God.  For depression is caused by a spiritual thought that cannot co-inhabit a grateful mind.      Kenneth Wayne Hancock

  1. I Thess. 5: 18
  2. I Peter 1: 6-7
  3. Proverbs 3: 6

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October 16, 2009 · 4:25 pm

Conversations with the Seer–Heirs of God and Joint-heirs With Christ

(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)

I asked the Seer, the Teacher of Righteousness, “The Scriptures say that we are now heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ (1).  How do we become that?”

“It is all in Him.  For in the end He will be all in all (2).  We must decrease; He must increase in us to the point that He is all (3).  At that time it will only be Yahweh in His fullness walking around in us here on earth.  There will no longer be any more ‘us’ involved.”

“We will cease to exist?”

“In essence, yes.  For we now have the same testimony as the early apostles when we say, ‘It is no longer I that lives, but Christ that lives in me’ (4).  We now live by His Spirit of the anointed truth dwelling within our new hearts.”

“How does this happen?”

The Seer looked into my eyes and on down into my heart, searching for sincerity.  Having found it, he answered, “It is by faith.  By believing, having not seen as yet.”

“How do we step out in faith?”

“We must reckon it so.  We must count it as done (5).  The Creator has revealed His truth to us.  He has said that our old sinful lives are a thing of the past.  They are crucified with Christ on the cross.  We must reckon it so by faith in what He said, even if we don’t understand it fully.  The understanding and comprehension of how it happens takes place after we reckon it done.”

“You mean, Just like that!  Reckon it so and it is done?”

“When we reckon the truth of God accomplished in our lives, we are merely doing  what God has already done.  For He had faith first in His own plan and ability to accomplish it in our pathetic little earthly lives (6).  He gave us this destiny before of old, before we ever came forth from our mother’s womb.  He knew us and pre-destined us for this very purpose: to work out a glorious future in our lives, guided by His very Spirit” (7).

“So we count it done in our lives?”

“Whatever He said in His word concerning our walk with Him on this earth–we have merely to believe it by reckoning it done by His Spirit, not by our own power.  And He will, like He did for Abraham, account it unto us for righteousness.”

“Abraham, the father of our faith.”

“Yes.  But why was he the father of our faith?  Because he believed God, and it was accounted unto him for righteousness by God (8).  God said that He could live a righteous life right here on earth, and Abraham just believed Him, and it was so.  Many promises are made by God to His people, but they don’t believe it, and therefore, it never happens.”

“Like what?”

“Man’s wisdom teaches that a person cannot stop sinning, but the Spirit spoke through His apostles and taught the opposite.  The truth says, Whosoever is born of God does not commit sin (9).  Man limits God’s power through his unbelief in what God said.  They have no faith.  They believe what fearful and unbelieving man says and not what God says.  They believe that man is still a sinner because they teach that natural man with his old Adamic heart retains that old heart after his ‘conversion.’  They never get to the root of the problem.  They never get old Adam to the cross where their old heart can die with Christ.”

“But they say that they believe God.”

“Yes, but their words betray them, for they only say, and do not.  They do not believe the simplest of His words, ‘With man it is impossible.  But with God all things are possible’ (10).  Even to live a righteous life.  For you see, we must realize that Christ was made to be sin for us (11) so that we could recieve His Spirit and walk with Him.  They don’t teach the truth of how we must identify our old sinful heart with Christ that day, die, and through faith in the operation of God that raised up Christ from the dead, walk in a newness of life–new in that it is a life that is free from sin and sinning (12).  When He died, our old self died and the sinful core of our being with it.

“Since they never teach the truth that old man Adam dies out at the cross, then they can’t fathom a person living without sin in their lives.  When actually it is no longer our original sinning self that lives, but now the Spirit of Christ that lives in these mortal bodies!  This is what they don’t believe.”

“So then, those that don’t believe this first principle cannot be the heirs of God?”

The Seer looked at me and smiled.  “Precisely.  A vessel cannot inherit God while still thrashing selfishly about the earth, interested only in pumping up their own ego.”

“The heirs of God, then, reach that spiritual plateau through humility.”

“Precisely,” said the Seer.      KWH

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  1. Romans 8: 17
  2. I Cor. 15: 28; Eph. 1: 23
  3. John 3: 30
  4. Gal. 2: 20
  5. Rom. 6: 11
  6. Eph. 1: 12
  7. Eph. 1: 11
  8. Gal. 3: 6
  9. I John 3: 9
  10. Mark 9: 23
  11. II Cor. 5: 21
  12. Col. 2: 12

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July 10, 2009 · 8:59 am

“Let This Mind Be in You”–Thinking the Way Christ Thinks

We are to have God’s purpose in mind.  But therein lies the problem.  How do we know what God’s purpose, plan and priorities are?  The answer is found in the writings of the apostles and prophets.  And they speak of “the elect,” “the sons of God,” and of the wonderful works that God will do through them at the time of the end.

God Will Make It Happen

Because it is His plan and He is all-sovereign and all-powerful, He will make it all happen and come together.  He will call out His sons and daughters, bidding them to come away a while and learn of Him.  He will draw them away from the cacophony of man’s thoughts and rumblings and the vain trappings of the Spirit-less life and feed them with wholesome spiritual food.

Putting on the Mind of Christ

Shouldn’t we be thinking on the things that God is thinking about, too?  We are admonished to do this.  “Let this mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus/Yahshua.”  We have to allow His mind to come into us and take over.

What was in His mind?  He knew that He was in God’s form, that His body was the temple of God, the place for God to dwell in.  Christ knew that His Father Yahweh meant all along to come fully into Him and dwell in Him.  He knew that He was the heir, that He would inherit the Spirit of God Himself!  This was in His thoughts and mind.  And we should have the same mind and thoughts as Christ did.

But Christ humbled Himself, knowing that humility is the way a human should walk on earth.  He submitted Himself unto death.  Now we are asked to follow Him in a “baptism into His death,” where sin and its sin nature dies with Christ.

Doing this, we will the become “blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom you shine as lights in the world” (Phil. 2: 5-15).

Christ is our example, and He was always “about His Father’s business,” which is bringing forth His sons and daughters.  We now should make the “Father’s business” our business.  If we do, you know that He will be pleased.     Kenneth Wayne Hancock

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January 30, 2009 · 12:36 pm

A Broken Heart and Spirit–The Sacrifices of God

The death of someone close to us brings a broken heart and a broken spirit.  There are no braggarts at a funeral–no loud boasters in the “house of mourning.”

I thought of this at Lindsay Stout’s funeral. She was my student, just beginning her senior year.  She died in a one car crash about three years ago now.  I remember that she was just  lying there in front of the church, pale and joyless.

Her mother wanted me to speak that day.  “You were her favorite teacher.  She talked about you all the time.”  But it was difficult to look at Lindsay that morning.

I was broken when I rose to speak.  I told them how blessed I was to have spent some 800 hours with her in the classroom.  Three years of Spanish, two years of English.  I read her last essay that she had written and a poem that I received in a dream about her the night before.  In the poem I re-assured them that we would all see her again at the resurrection.

Death Brings Brokenness and Humility

We were all broken that day.  Death has a way of doing that.  It brings  humility, compassion, and mercy to the heart.

How does death do this?  The Spirit of God uses the dead body to speak to us of our own mortality and the futility of this earthly existence.   In this environment, we are humbled, for we know that we cannot say to our own bodies, “Live on forever,” and they obey us.

It is at this very moment of humbleness that God can enter and be close to those who are brokenhearted.   It is just a shame that it takes the death of someone close to us to get “close to God.”

The scripture says, “The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit” (Psm 34: 18).  God is near them.  He can approach us when our stiff pride is wilted.  The reason that it “is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of mirth” is because hearts in mourning are broken hearts, and God is near to them.  The invisible Spirit of God is palpable to those with a broken heart.

The Point

Do we have to literally have someone close to us die in order to get a broken heart and thus be close to God?  No, for He has provided a better way for this to happen.  We can carry around in our hearts “the dying of the Lord Jesus” and let His physical death break our hearts and spirits.  This is how we “show forth His death till He come.”

Paul wrote that “we are delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake that the life also of Him might be made manifest in our mortal flesh” (2 Cor 4: 11).  We think on the Savior willingly giving up his earthly life for us and allow His death to break us, preparing a place for Him to enter.  “Death works in us” [bringing God’s presence], but life in you [His presence in us gives His life unto others around us]” (v. 12).

“The Sacrifices of God…Broken Spirit, Contrite Heart”

This brokenness (through Christ’s death) becomes the only sacrifice  that God will accept.  It is only our broken heart that shows Him our sincerity.  A broken spirit is the only sacrifice we can make to Him that He will receive.

Everything else that we could offer Him, He already owns–money, houses, cattle.  For “the earth is the LORD’S and the fullness thereof.”  What He wants is our broken heart because He wants to be able to come down and dwell in us and be with us more fully.  But first, somebody has got to get broken to provide the environment for His visit.

Yes, our bodies are the potential temple of the Spirit.  But He will only come to dwell in us if we are humble and broken.   Kenneth Wayne Hancock

For more check out my books by clicking the link “Yahweh Is the Savior” in the Blogroll in the right column, or going here:  http://www.yahwehisthesavior.com/

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October 9, 2008 · 11:14 am

Husbands, Love Your Wives–Your Garden of Eden

     I was having trouble in my marriage.  I asked a wise man, “What do I do?”

     “Do you really love her?”

     “Yes, I do, but I don’t know how to live with her.  We are always getting into arguments, and we can’t see eye to eye on anything.”  I looked down and cradled my face in my hands. 

     “There’s no need for all this anxiety and frustration.  There is an answer, but it lies in you and the choice you will have to make.”

     “What choice?”  I look up and he is smiling at me–a smile that hides a secret of the ages, a smile that shields a life-changing truth.  I feel it coming; the problem will be solved soon.

     “The first thing that you must realize is that you are reaping a harvest of the seeds you have sown in your garden.  For, you see, your wife is your precious spiritual garden.  Whatever seeds you sow into her, whatever words you speak to her and around her, they shall come up and grow and come to harvest. 

     “I don’t get it.  She is my garden?”

     “Even in the natural sense, do you not sow your earthly seed into the garden of her womb and in nine months you both reap a lovely child.  Is it a great wonder that your words are seeds that will be harvested in her, for good or bad?

     “The Law of Harvest says that whatsoever a man sows, that shall he also reap.  You are the husbandman of your very own Garden of Eden.  With God’s help, you can make it a garden of delight with joy and peace, or you can make it a garden of misery.”

     “Why is it up to me?  She is the one who is so unreasonable.  She needs to change, doesn’t she?” 

     “Oh yes, she will change.  She already has changed, and she has become in your relationship what you have created in her.  When you express your selfish desires, she languishes and dries up inside for the lack of the water of love that you should supply.  Your sarcasm and cynicism brings forth noxious weeds of doubt in her thoughts toward you.  When you are fearful and anxious, she will be perplexed.  But if you sow selfless love into her heart, she will bear the peaceable fruit of harmony and love for you.

     “Your words to her are seeds that fall literally into your wife’s ears and settle in her heart.  And like the Master tells us, the condition of the heart dictates the thoughts that enter her mind and later proceeds out of her mouth.

     “If you want to see a wife who blooms in peaceful colors of the rainbow, whose smile draws the butterflies, whose song coos, so that songbirds thrill to hear her–then you have to take responsibility for what your garden is bearing right now and what it will bear in due season.”

     “How do I take responsibility?”

     “You can start by sincerely apologizing for an unkind word, a careless jab, a thoughtless snarl.  For it is humility that will melt her heart toward you.  Humble yourself and you will win her.  Remain prideful and strong in your own ways, and you will lose her heart, if not her body.

     “For we husbands are to love our wives, even as Christ loved all of us.  And how did He love us?  He humbled himself, and became obedient unto death.  He gave Himself for us.  Had He not done this, we would all feel lost and hopeless–the way many wives feel in their marriages. 

     “I do not know how to do this,” I confessed.

     “You must seek Him now.  Humble yourself and ask Him for help.  If you cannot express humility to your Creator, you cannot walk humbly toward others on earth.  He will give you the patience to not only reap what you have already sown, but also to replant the peace-yielding seeds of agape love from above.

     “Your wife is your gift from God to help you get back to Him.  Embrace your gift and you embrace Him.” 

     And with that he went his way.  I didn’t get it all then.  But I sincerely tried to put it into practice, and it has made all the difference.         Kenneth Wayne Hancock

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