Category Archives: Spirit of God

February 4, 2009 · 1:31 am

Christ Abiding in Us Yields the Fruit of the Spirit

God’s abiding presence in us is really all we need.  When you have all of the Creator, what good is only a small part of His creation.  If  He is indeed abiding in us, all of our physical and emotional needs will be met.

With His Spirit abiding in us, we will have found “the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto us.”

The spiritual fruit will come with the sap of His abiding spiritual presence in us.  Love, joy, and peace will flow through us out to others, and they will marvel when they see this great light shining into their dark, loveless life.

And they will feel the warmth of God’s love as it touches their hearts, and they will long to lie down and rest in our spiritual pastures of peace that our Great Shepherd has led us into.   Kenneth Wayne Hancock

For more, check out my books here:   http://www.yahwehisthesavior.com/

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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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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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October 24, 2008 · 10:13 pm

The Kingdom of God–Not a Worn Out Phrase

    The phrase “kingdom of God” has been used so much by so many people from so many different religious backgrounds that its real meaning may have been lost.  Heretofore, most  have understood the phrase to mean “God’s kingdom,” or the kingdom that belongs to Him.  And this is true, it does belong to Him and His children.  However, there is another way to look at that phrase, and that is “the kingdom of the Spirit.”

    It says in John 4 that “God is Spirit.”  Therefore, “kingdom of God” can be construed as “kingdom of Spirit.”  Or, in other words, it means a form of order and government headed by a Sovereign entity that is comprised of Spirit.  The Master did say that “the flesh profits nothing; it is the spirit that makes alive.”  “All is vanity,” in other words, except the invisible spiritual things.

     We are admonished that we should seek first this invisible spirit kingdom.  Also, the only true worship of the Father is in spirit and in truth.  It is not any old spirit worship, but it must be spiritual and truthful. It won’t be anything remotely having to do with earthly natural things.

     True worship is an invisible connection between our spirit in the human heart and the Eternal Creator Spirit.  It is the connection you cannot see.  You cannot legislate it, tax it, build fine buildings in order to coax true worship into your midst.  It is an invisible agreement between the Creator and His special spiritual creation, Adam.  “The true worshippers must worship the Father in spirit and in truth.”  They must find out the truth about His invisible Spirit reign within, for “the kingdom of God (Spirit) is within you.”

      It is a realm of the heart, an inner sanctum full of true thoughts about the true nature of things.  “The kingdom of God cometh not with observation.”  You can’t see it with your fleshly eyes.  It is not of this earth.  Consequently, when we look out over this earth, anything we see, be it ever so religious, cannot be or have anything to do with the kingdom of Spirit (God).

      “Every good and perfect gift comes down from the Father of lights.”  The kingdom of God is a dimension and realm that our five senses don’t pick up on.  It is not of this earth.  It must first be believed on, and then it will begin to manifest itself to the understanding of our hearts.  We will never see it first with our earthly eyes and then believe.  Faith must be exercised—believing having not yet seen with the fleshly eyes.  The kingdom of God is a government of God, who is Spirit, and who rules in our hearts by His very essence, which is spirit.      Kenneth Wayne Hancock        {For more on this topic see this earlier article  https://immortalityroad.wordpress.com/2008/03/14/not-of-this-earth/ and the one dated 3/17/08 }             

 

 
 
 
 
 

 

 

    

 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 

 

    

 
 

 

 
 
 
 
 

 

 

 

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July 9, 2008 · 10:02 pm

“Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread”–The Bread of God

     We are to ask for the heavenly bread–not physical bread.  Christ told us specifically to not ask for food.  “Do not set your heart on what you will eat or drink; do not worry about it” (Luke 12:29, NIV). 

     Christ in the Lord’s Prayer tells us rather to ask the Father each day for the spiritual bread from heaven.  But what is it exactly?  Some churches believe that a round wafer is magically and     mystically turned into the body of Christ, the bread from heaven.  This practice is not found in the scriptures of truth.

     Christ gives a treatise on the heavenly bread in John 6.  The “true bread from heaven” was not manna which fell for the Israelites in the wilderness.  They all died.  But, My Father gives you the true bread from heaven (v. 32).  The spiritual “bread of God is He which comes down from heaven, and gives life to the world” (v. 33).

     Physical bread is the staff of a physical life that ends.  But spiritual bread is the staff of the spiritual life that never ends.  This bread feeds the new inner spiritual man; it is our sustenance.

     Then Jesus (Yahshua) declares Himself to be that Heavenly Sustenance.  “I am the bread of life: he that comes to me shall never hunger, and he that believes on me shall never thirst” (v. 34). 

     The key word here is “believes.”  It is believing on Him–that is how we partake of His Spirit.  You take into yourself what you believe.  You become what you believe.  You are what you eat. Believing Him and His word about who He is, and what He has done, and what He will do–this is what it’s all about.  Belief.  Belief is not a material thing.  It is a special invisible, spiritual thing.  To believe Him and what His name means is to eat of the spiritual bread from heaven.   

     He would later say that His body is the “bread of God” and encouraged us to eat it.  “Eat” here is to spiritually believe what transpired with His body–the death, burial, and resurrection.  He was saying that His flesh, His actual physical body was going to be presented as the one sacrifice that would purge our sins.  Believing this in truth is eating (taking in) this spiritual, true bread from heaven.

     “I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh which I will give for the life of the world” (v. 51).  Here we see him giving His physical body so that we could have immortality.

     He was teaching us to pray–not for ourselves with things for ourselves, food, material things.  No.  We are to ask for more of His Spirit, more faith, more belief of what He has done for us.  We should recall and thank Him for allowing our old nature to die with Him on the cross, to be buried with Him, and to be “raised to walk in a newness of life” with Him (Romans 6:3-7). 

     The words, Give us this day our daily bread, contain a profound lesson in our learning to pray.  Kenneth Wayne Hancock

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April 10, 2008 · 4:57 pm

“All Is Vanity” Without the Holy Spirit

     Without God’s Spirit dwelling within us, we are only a member of the walking dead who spend a few nightly whispers with loved ones and then bury our dead and wait to be buried in turn.   

     Without the Spirit of God that makes alive whatever it touches and lives in, we are just as good as dead.  Without His Spirit, we walk around breathing borrowed air into the lungs of an incredibly delicate and fragile shell.  And our  shell  will in a few moments, comparatively speaking, go back to dust from where it came, and our brief stint at self-glory here on earth will not be  remembered anymore.  Every thing that man says and does without the Spirit of God is vain and of no profit in the final analysis.

     But, if we ask Him, He will grant us a portion, an earnest, a down payment of His Spirit.  And that Spirit will come into us to replace that old heart and spirit, and it will grow like a tiny seed in a large garden, and we will come alive.  We must water it with our prayers and feed it with our study.  And that little portion of His Spirit will grow up into a full-fledged son or daughter of the King.  And we, the sons and daughters of God, will someday be transformed in a twinkling of an eye, and we “will be changed” when immortality will come down out of heaven to swallow up our shell that can die.

     Without His Spirit, we are the walking dead doomed to dust, unremembered, in the tombs of time.  But with His Spirit dwelling within us, we are destined to be His sons and daughters, sitting with Him on His throne–immortals whose legacy is neverending.              Kenneth Wayne Hancock

{If this has been helpful to you, please leave a comment and/or pass it on to someone who would appreciate it}

 

 

    

    

 

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