If there is anything we all want to know as followers of Jesus it is the will of God for our life. The problem as I see it is “Knowing” is often very difficult to identify. Why is it so hard to discern the will of God when both the Lord and we want it badly? Something similar could be said about the 10 commandments in which we are told to love the Lord with all our heart, mind and strength and yet if we struggle to identify what love is we may never really reach the goal of consistently doing so. Knowing the will of God has so much to do with how we “Hear” God or don’t.

Nearly 300 times the phrase “In The Spirit” is used.  Thus, it should be a solid biblical principle and standard we should live by yet I fear not only do we not walk in the Spirit but I think most of us don’t understand what scripture is trying to communicate with those of us who choose to follow Christ.

This is the second article on the subject of heaven so if you haven’t read the first article I suggest you start there before reading this one. I will be attempting to uncover what the world and the church believe about heaven, then see what the scriptures confirms. You may end up finding that your idea of heaven needs to adjusted or I may confirm what you always believed. Either way my hope is to help us know what we believe and how we can help others who are mislead or confused about what heaven is and how to get there.

I have learned there are a lot of people who claim they hear from God or from the Holy Spirit who told them to do something, but often times it’s nothing more than justifying their own desire. It seems they just want to say it’s ok to do something they want to do and God’s voice becomes their “Rubber Stamp” of approval. Granted, there are people who do hear from the Lord but maybe, just maybe, there are more pretenders than practicers in the body of Christ than we realize.

When you read books about Christianity written before the 1900s, or even the early 20th century, they often used different words to described what a person coming to Christ should look like and act like. Generally, they did not use the word “SAVED” or even ”Born again” but rather they used a word like “Converted” to describe the change in a person’s life. Why is this important and and how should we look at our own salvation or the experience of others who have been “Born again?”

These days very few writers talk about the fear of the Lord because I think that they probably don’t understand the topic from God’s perspective in the scripture and because they think it is only an Old Testament concept which is outdated because Jesus came. So, is the topic useful to those who believe in Jesus or is it an outdated concept for Bible believing Christians?

We live in a time in history when we are so attached to our technology that we are losing our ability to truly care for one another in meaningful ways. Our addiction to smartphones have beguiled us into an insatiable hunger to be informed about what’s happening in the world, and people in whom we are interested, that we are unaware of how separated we have become from the people right around us.

How often does Jesus say something that you say you agree with and yet you don’t understand what he meant by what he said ? I want to say this happens more times than we want to admit, yet we gloss over our lack of comprehension. Why do you think we miss so much but don’t dig for more understanding? I hate to say it, but it’s all about how much time and effort we give to the words of God.

When we find ourselves in a struggle that seems we must have a miracle to overcome, I think we often jump to conclusions about what that miracle is meant to look like. All to often God works miracles in tandem with natural means and thus we often don’t think they are miracles at all.

The body of Christ so often seems to have the ability to take a revelation that God gives us about some important spiritual truth and turn it into some doctrine or theology instead of learning how to apply that truth. Shouldn’t we be asking the Holy Spirit to explain how that revelation should be understood and applied? After all, Jesus specifically said the Holy Spirit would be our counselor.