OUR TRUE DESTINY

Last month we dwelt with how important it is to be totally connected to the True Vine... Yeshua...for then and only then are all things possible that are possible under heaven and Earth. We learned that Yeshua is the Source of all our nourishment for us to grow in Him and into the Father. We must learn to stay where Yeshua and Father have planted us in order to grow in the manner They intend. We are not to jump from garden to garden... circumstance to circumstance on our own whim. If we do this, we are not abiding in the True Vine and will not learn the vital lessons that Yeshua and Father have for us on our journey with Them.

It is very important to think about the fact that each and every person has a destiny in God and from God. There are many different paths and steps that we all take on our way to our destiny in God and no one can walk out anyone else’s. Your’s is as unique to you as mine is to me and all are called of God. In this issue of Knowing The Times we are going to look at some of these steps and our prayer is that you will open your heart to Yeshua and His Holy Spirit to show you deeply inside of yourself His Truth.

The first step towards our destiny is to allow the Holy Spirit of God to show us our great need for Him and become born again. One of the most important things that Yeshua has taught me in my walk with Him is the desperate need we all have for Yeshua. My Bible study group is currently studying the Book of John. If you have never read it or if it has been a while, I encourage you to re-read it slowly, deliberately, making notes. The author of this book, John the disciple, is clear in his opening statements about who Yeshua is and in verse 4 speaks of the fact that Yeshua is Life and that Life was Light to mankind. John the Baptist makes it very clear in chapter 1 who he is and is not. He also makes it clear who Yeshua is...The Lamb of God (verse 36). In chapter 3 we find the account of the coming of Nicodemus, a Pharisee, to question Yeshua. In verse 3 Yeshua tells Nicodemus what He wants him to see...recognize and understand...that unless a person is born again, from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus did not realize that the kingdom of God was standing right in from of him, talking to him of the things of God. Nicodemus, like ourselves, probably went to see Yeshua with preconceived thoughts about how it would all go and Yeshua took him straight to the truth. Unless God Almighty gives you a new birth in your heart/spirit, you will not see the God or anything of God’s kingdom. This is still true today and is an underlining principle in God’s way of doing things.

If you have never truly accepted the gift of Life from God the Father in His perfect Son and sacrificial Passover Lamb, I invite you to do that right now: Heavenly Father, I come to You out of great need. I have not lived the life that You want me to live and I am coming to see that I cannot live it at all with out You and the Life of Your Son in Me. I desire to give myself completely to You and to repent...turn away...from everything that is not of You in my life. I am a sinner who without You and Your perfect Love and Grace is already dead in my sin. I thank You Lord that You in Your Sovereign and Mighty power have come down to the Earth to make known all of the wonders of Yourself. I accept You now as my sacrifice to God the Father for all of my sins, shame, hurt, anger and everything that is not of You in my life. I thank You that by praying this prayer and confessing my sins to You, I now can believe by faith that You have forgiven me and have accepted me into the Beloved... Yeshua...Your Holy Son. I thank you from the bottom of my heart and I ask that You take my life now and make it everything that is in Your heart to make me. I say with great joy that I am now your son or daughter. Amen (John 1:12)

If you have accepted Yeshua as your Savior and Lord I invite you to use this prayer to re-dedicate your life to God and start with a clean slate.

You are born again from on high and you receive by faith the new birth into God the Father through Yeshua the Son. Read His Holy Word daily, asking Yeshua to open the Holy Word to your heart and life that you may have it burn inside of you from now until you see Him face to face in eternity.

The next step on your journey to destiny is that you really believe in the new you. 2 Corinthians 5:17 tells us:"Therefore if anyone is in Christ, {he is} a new creature; the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come."I recently heard Mark Chironna say "faith is a fact and faith is an act." This is true. The faith that God gives His children is a fact that we can all rely on daily no matter what is taking place in our lives. Faith is also an act. Faith in God, confidence in who God is and what He wants to do in your life is not going to mean anything if you and I don’t use it. We all have to choose to believe that what God has done and says He is going to do is fact and then stand on it and live our lives based on these beliefs. That’s the kind of life that Yeshua lived everyday. He knew who His Father was and who He was in the Father and He lived out His daily life accordingly. We, his children and disciples, are to do the same. The more you read the word of God the more you will find this to be true.

Be joyful over what Father and Yeshua have done and desire to grow in Yeshua by spending time in prayer (communication) with Yeshua and Father, spending time re-seeing creation and everything in your new life through the eyes of Your Savior and Redeemer. Take time often to just sit at the Masters feet, worshiping Him and wanting to be in His Presence believing that He wants you to know Him.

Another part of your daily walk is learning to believe that you are already complete in Yeshua. You are going to have to walk a lot of things out and it is important to remember, that as long as you really want truth and Yeshua, your mistakes and setbacks can be turned into learning experiences everyday. Your completeness in Yeshua does not change when you make mistakes. Give your mistakes to Yeshua immediately and allow Him to teach you through them the principles of His kingdom living. No matter how old you are when you come to Yeshua for the first time or re-dedicate your life to Him, we are all brand new at the cross and that is where we start and that is where Yeshua meets us when ever we need to go there.

Another important step is to realize that satan and your own flesh want you to fail. They have been in control of you for a long time and satan and your own selfish desires are not going to just roll over without a fight. You have done things your own way for a long time and you have been taught things by your family, society, school, culture identity, authority figures that will not be easy to break. Yeshua, through His word and your daily intimate time with Him, will make Himself known to you and lead you and guide you into all truth, if you want it. You have to want it and you have to ask for it. It takes a deliberate act of your will. Yeshua is always a gentleman and He will never force you to love Him or do anything that you don’t want to do.

A line in a song by Dennis Jernigan states "Your Love is too pure to ever force me to love you." Yeshua wants you to choose Him! Surrender to Yeshua is all important in this part of your travels. There will probably be times in your walk with Yeshua that things look dark, or perhaps another way to say this is...thick and dense like in a forest. One of the most wonderful things that Yeshua ever showed me was that He knows everything, and He wants me to learn to trust that and trust the fact that He is the only thing I ever need to know. This is profoundly simple and yet one of the hardest things to walk out in the flesh. We all have a lust of the flesh...the right to be right...the desire to be accepted...to be thought well of...to be approved, etc. All of these things are lies straight from the pit of hell. If you will do a search in your Bible of the words flesh and soul you will find that the flesh is extremely hostile to God. Actually, your flesh and mine hate God and all that He is and does. It is extremely important that all of us see the world of mankind/flesh in ourselves and others for what it truly is and start facing some hard facts about the difference between truth and the world of the flesh. It is also important to see that the flesh/soul of mankind is not born again. What is born from above is what was given away in the garden. The spirit to Spirit relationship that died through the act of rebellion against God and what He had told Adam to do and not do. Read it in Genesis. Our bodies (outer tent) and souls...mind, wills and emotions...are the part of us that must be trained, taught by our choosing to do things God’s way. Remember, if you fall, go immediately to Yeshua and get it straight with Him. If there is another person involved, Yeshua will show you what to do about that, too. Also, learn to forgive yourself and allow yourself to start over with and in Him. All of us make mistakes. It’s what we do with them that is important and remember to forgive others of all their offences to you. (Luke 6:37)

Another step in this process is to see what God has for you in Yeshua and stay there. This is learning to trust God for who He really is and allowing Him to be God in your daily circumstances. We often trust God for our salvation and then stop there. We never learn to trust Him with our daily lives, families, relationships, money, decisions about school, jobs, marriage, things that we need to walk away from, etc. God is interested in every part of our lives and no one knows us like our Creator. He knows our past, present, and future and is in fact our past, present and future. This is part of our destiny...that Yeshua is our everything!

Come daily to His table and eat your fill of whatever you need. Encouragement, hope, mercy, faith, grace, healing, righteousness, justice, wisdom and knowledge, love, truth, peace, absolutely all that Yeshua and Father are and have are in front of you to receive. You just need to know that you need them, sit down at the table and ask for them. The word tells us that God will not withhold any good thing from us. This does not mean that everything you ask for you will get. It does mean that as you learn to trust God with your life and know that He always has your best interest at heart, He will feed you and fill you accordingly and bring you completely into your destiny... HIMSELF!!

Learn and believe and practice the fact that Yeshua is everything and is in everything. Go back and read John 1:1. All of our moments are held in His hands and He does have a plan for our lives. Jeremiah 29: says: " For I know the plans that I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope."

Romans 8:28 tells us "And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them". When you are born again of God you are called according to His purpose and within that purpose is your destiny in Him.As I choose to kill my own flesh desires and live according to Yeshua’s plans and purposes in my life, I find that I decrease and Yeshua increases to the Glory of the Father. We must all remember that Yeshua never did anything, said anything, went any where that the Father did not lead and guide Him, show Him and tell Him, and the same is to be true of us as His children and disciples.

Yeshua’s Life in my life is that He is the Sovereign ruler of my heart and every part of my life. Many years ago Yeshua gave me a picture in my mind of a straight chair. In the seat of the chair was a heart. All around the chair in a circle were choices. Family, friends, things I wanted, hopes, dreams, desires, etc. What He showed me was that I had a choice daily of who ruled in the seat of authority in my heart. I could either allow Yeshua to rule or allow my flesh to rule. Slowly over the years He has shown me more of myself that was on that seat of authority and each time I have had to make a choice. Some of them have been very hard on my flesh man, but I have never ever regretted any of my decisions for Yeshua. I still have a long way to go, but it is my heart’s desire to reach my full potential in God the Father through the full life of His Son in me. The new man always agrees with God no matter what the circumstances are for the new man... redeemed man...knows that God is always right.

Yeshua died so that you and I could reach our full potential in and through Him and be a pleasing gift to God the Father. The word of God speaks often of the fact that Yeshua will have a spotless and blameless Bride. That means all God and NO flesh!!!

Remember to see yourself as God sees you. Redeemed, sanctified (set apart to and for God), holy, filled with God and all of His truth one day at a time and one circumstance at a time. Releasing everything to Yeshua allows His Power to operate in your life not picking up the old things of the flesh again. If you are not moving forward with Yeshua daily, you are going backward. There is no stagnate place in Yeshua. Rest and stagnation are not the same thing. We are always to rest in Yeshua and Father and what They have done and are doing. Stagnation is like a pool of water that never moves, never activates any of its natural attributes and it becomes covered with horrible, smelly junk. Even if you are on a plateau in your growth, you are still actively using your faith in Yeshua concerning the daily choices you are making.

Remember, you are a child of God and as a child you do have a destiny in God that is as personal to you and your Savior and Father as each snow flake is completely different. This is your destiny and my prayer is that you will walk it out completely and fully, bringing great pleasure to your God and Creator.

Trust God and put a smile on His face today.

Each one of us are part of a greater Plan: individually and collectively. Each has a destiny in God. Each destiny placed together with other destinies are the greater whole of God's Plan. We all fit somewhere in His Divine Plan for us. Each of us needs to be aware that we are important because God planned it that way.

Each one of us is loved by God. How much? His Son died for you and for me. Is that loved enough?

Each one of us is valuable to God. How valuable? His Son died for you and for me. Is that valuable enough?

Each one of us is accepted by God...just for who we are and who we are becoming. How accepted? He meets each of us right where we are...not waiting for us to get to where we "hope we will get someday". Is that accepted enough?

Your destiny in Yeshua awaits you. As we worship the God of new beginnings, let us remember that the only one who can stop us from reaching our destiny in Yeshua is we ourselves. We hold the key in our hearts to our hearts. We can choose to unlock our hearts and open them up to His Will, or we can keep them locked, locking out the Father from receiving what is the Joy of His Heart...your heart!

As we are getting ready to go to press with the April newsletter, we find that suicide bombers have struck again in Israel. The bombing on Passover Eve which claimed 22 lives, so far, is another example of the people the world wants Israel to make peace with. And yet, still another bombing in Tel Aviv. The fact is, there is peace if their enemies would stop making war. We hear over and over again about the "innocent civilians". Excuse me, but every Jew that is killed by the God-hating enemy is innocent regardless of whether they are in the military or not. The Israeli Defense Forces are trying to protect themselves and the other citizens of their country. They are not looking for war: they are simply trying to live through the one that has been brought against them by the Palestinians and other Arabs.

If we have any care at all for the Jewish People and the Jewish Land, we must stand up for them in every way that we can. We must tell our government's representatives to support Israel and its desire for peace and protection of its citizens...its very existence! We must stand up against the forces of satan in the world and say NO to the enemies of God and the Jewish People! We must speak now before it is too late. If you do not stand for and with the Jewish People and their God-given Land, then you stand against them and against God.

If you are among those who believe in a revisionist Bible with a Revisionist god, you are standing with satan. Read God's Holy Word for yourself. Don't just read portions that some diabolical minds have picked out to "prove" their own point of view. God's Word says "But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. John 16:13

Trust GOD to give you TRUTH! We fail the Spirit of God when we choose to believe man over God. We fail ourselves and our fellow man when we place man higher than the Spirit of God. He will NOT lead us into revision. He will NOT play with our minds as if we were puppets. Satan leads to revisionism. Satan leads to puppet minds. God leads to TRUTH because God IS TRUTH! Study the Word for yourself. Trust God to be God and then let Him BE GOD!

Baruch Ha ba B'Shem Adonai

Blessed Is He Who Comes In The Name Of The Lord