God Thinking XLIV - Two Agendas 4

"The economy in our society is built on merchandising and marketing products and services that give us what we want and now.

The world portrays everything as fast and beautiful - beautiful women - fast cars - beautiful jewelry - fast food - beautiful mops - beautiful furniture - beautiful everything.
 

The world portrays success as having more than enough: not at all concerned with how it was acquired.
 

The world portrays success based on having plenty of things, as if things brought us peace, joy, hope, financial security and personal fulfillment.

But, the world system was designed by your enemy, your adversary, the one who plans for you to have anything except a personal relationship with God, time to grow in that relationship and the benefits of that relationship.

That is why God gave us His scriptures.  God’s plan is written so that we could identify what is of God and what is from the world.   
 

How can you be sure if what you are doing is of God?
 

How can you be sure if it is the voice of God that you are hearing?
 

Does it keep you strapped to the things it supplies and provides and keep you from the peace that comes with being debt free?
 

Does it keep you worried about the outcome, discontent with everything and everyone?
 

Does it keep you caught up in its glitz and glamour and keep you over extended to its purveyors?
 

Does it keep your mind occupied with trivial and insignificant information and distracted from having extended periods of time where you can study the Word or commune with God?
 

Does it keep you stressed out, in poor health, out of sorts or filled with all kinds of confusion?
 

Does it keep you so busy that it keeps us from seeking the face of God. 
 

Is it void of reference to God?
 

What is from God is good. 

• It benefits you and those around you. 
• When God speaks, He speaks into your soul what you need so that you can be complete in Him. 
• He speaks to you what will glorify Himself. 
• He will lead you and guide into a place where God will be able to work in you and through you.
• What is of God doesn’t embed you in unmanageable debt, but frees up some of your resources to be used as God directs.
• What is of God doesn’t worry you, but brings us peace.
• What is of God doesn’t discourage and cause discontent, What is of God encourages and satisfies.
• What is of God doesn’t require getting overextended.
• What is of God oversupplies exceedingly, abundantly above all that you could ever think.
• What is of God doesn’t occupy your mind with trivial and insignificant information.
• What is of God occupies your mind with the things of God.
• What is of God doesn’t distract you from studying the Word of God.
• What is of God helps you focus and prioritize, so that you have time to study the Word, to pray and to go before God and seek His will.  
• What is of God doesn’t keep you stressed out and in poor health.  What is of God brings peace in your heart and health to your body.  

The voice of God doesn’t fill you with all kinds of confusion?

The voice of God reveals and makes known, opens up and unlocks."

 

Excerpt from God Thinking XLIV - Two Agendas by Keith C. Powell Copyright 2014

God Thinking XLIV - Two Agendas 3

"God designed a plan to give you peace, joy, hope, financial security and personal fulfillment, and the world has an agenda too.

The world’s agenda is to:

Keep you strapped to the things it supplies and provides.

• To keep you worried and discontent.
• To keep you caught up in its glitz and glamour and over extended to its purveyors of things.
• To keep your mind occupied with trivial and insignificant information. 
• To keep you stressed out, in poor health, out of sorts and filled with all kinds of confusion.
• To keep you busy doing anything that will keep you from seeking the face of God.

Instead of a patient, temperate, peaceable, humble, meek, kind, generous, charitable and loving character, nurtured and empowered by grace and mercy, hard work and good common sense, the world says:

Make your own rules

Do what feels good

Take what you want

The world says:

• Get it now, don’t work for it and don’t wait for it
• Get what you want by any means
• Take the lions share
• Harden yourselves against those who are without, they don’t deserve to have anything anyway
• Don’t forgive, get your revengeBe rigid, stingy and angry and blame it on someone else.
• Hold on to what you have with a clenched fist, and give away nothing, except your            leftovers or junk.

We live in a get what you want society and get it now, and if you can’t earn it, you can buy it - If you can’t afford it, you can charge it and if you can’t charge it, just fake it.  Which agenda are you following?"

 

Excerpt from God Thinking XLIV - Two Agendas by Keith C. Powell Copyright 2014

God Thinking XLIV - Two Agendas 2

"Because the world has no real concern for your spiritual well being, it provides everything possible to stimulate you to live out your life without the need for anything from God nor the need for a relationship with God.

But, behind the seemingly godless world system, there is a cunning and wicked power that has spent six-thousand years developing a plan to make it look like there is no God, by blinding the (spiritual) eyes of those who do not believe, and muddying the water for those who do.
 

In 2 Corinthians 4:3-4 the Word says:

“But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost:

V4 In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.”
 

I said all that to say this; satan knows that he cannot rob you of your salvation, so he has devised a world system to rob you of:
 

Your security - your joy - your hope - your innocence - your peace.
 

In each generation, whatever dream of peace, hope of prosperity and desire for tranquility that the believer sees in His or her life as an outcome or benefit of knowing God, it is tampered with, and falsely imitated by an enemy that has thousands of years of experience in deceiving people. 
 

God knew from the beginning what you would be up against.  And God prepares His people, through the Word, so that  even in a time of uncertainty, even with the tremendous uphill battle to fight for:

• Peace in the household
• Joy at work
• Hope for the future
• Financial security and
• Personal fulfillment

God makes a way where there is no way.

The word says, God’s plan includes:

• Peace in the household - Joy at work
• Hope for the future
• Financial security
• Personal fulfillment and so much more that you cannot even fathom the richness of His mercy and grace toward you, who must be in the world, even though you are not of the world.

God’s plan includes:

Peace in your soul and peace in the household 
“Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you, Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” John 14:27

Joy at work
“But let every man prove his own work, and then shall he have rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another.”  Galatians 6:4

Hope for the future

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to His abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,

V4 to and inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you,

V5 Who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.”  1 Peter 1:35

 Financial security

“Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.” 3 John 2

Personal fulfillment

“Trust in the LORD, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed.

V4 Delight thyself also in the LORD; and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart.

V5 Commit thy way unto the LORD; trust also in Him; and He shall bring it to pass.”  Psalm 37:3-5

 

Just because you are in the world, you should be careful not to buy into the rhetoric of the world that says you cannot have peace and joy and hope, financial security and personal fulfillment."

 

Note: There are two modes of thinking that are erroneous concerning the issue of financial security and prosperity:

1. That if you attain success and have things that you must have attained it without the aid of God - That is foolishness.

2. That only those who attain some level of financial success are following God's plan for their life - Also foolishness.

 

Those who promotes poverty through ignorance and those who promote prosperity through some give-me and God-will-bless-you ministry are both preying on you.  Find your balance of life through prayer and guidance of the Holy Spirit, not from the foolish teachings of those with a personal agenda.

 

Excerpt from God Thinking XLIV - Two Agendas by Keith C. Powell Copyright 2014

 

 

God Thinking XLIV - Two Agendas 1

"How can you be sure if what you are doing is of God?

How can you be sure if it is the voice of God that you are hearing?

 

There are several real issues here.  But, thanks be to God  we have the holy scriptures to provide us with examples that reveal what God blesses and examples of what God doesn’t bless.

 

The only reason we are confused at all about whether what we are doing is in the will of God or if it is the voice of God we are hearing is because of the influence of the world system.

 

The world, as referred to in scripture, (and as I am going to refer to it in this teaching), is a system, set up by satan, where everything is to appear to operate, exclusive of the intervention and active participation of a living, supernatural, Holy, God. 

 

The world is clamoring for your time, your talent, your energy, your inspiration, your creativity and your money, and it is getting it. 

 

The world appears to be running on its own power and energy, apart from any intervention from God.  Even the notion that the world created itself is entertained by many clever and bright minds. 

The ‘world’, as used in scripture, refers to a mind set that excludes the idea of a personal relationship between God and man and entertains rather a relationship where all is relative to what exists apart from how it exists, why it exists or how it came to exist.

 

Let me give you an example:

Turn with me to the book of John, chapter 14, verse 16 & 17.

John 14:16-17

“And I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you for ever;

V17 Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him: but ye know Him; for He dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.”

 

See, the world is blind to the integration of God and man through Christ.

Blind to your union with God through Christ 

Blind to the joining together of God and man, through. Christ.

Blind to the allegiance of God to man and man to God.

Blind to the covenant between God and man.

Blind to the promises from God to man.

Blind to the free gift from God to man.

Blind to the image/likeness of man to God

Blind to the connection between the Father, the Son, the indwelling Holy Spirit, your role and mine, in the performance of the Father’s business.    

 

The world, cannot receive the Spirit and cannot see God and cannot know God and therefore the world, does not recognize the authenticity of your claim to the Christ."

 

Excerpt from God Thinking XLIV - Two Agendas by Keith C. Powell Copyright 2014

God Thinking XLIII - Inspired Tools 8

"If you are doubting the Word, don’t write anything down, because nothing will come of doubt, except more doubt.

But if you believe, don’t be afraid to make note of what God is speaking to your heart, and receive it with thanksgiving.

Luke 8:22-25a

“Now it came to pass on a certain day, that He went into a ship with His disciples: and He said unto them, Let us go over unto the other side of the lake.  (Is Jesus calling you to the other side of the lake?) And they launched forth.

V23 But as they sailed He fell asleep: and there came down a storm of wind on the lake; and they were filled with water, and were in jeopardy.

V24 And they came to Him, and awoke Him, saying, Master, master, we perish. (Does any of this ring a bell in your life?)

Then He arose, and rebuked the wind and the raging of the water: and they ceased, and there was a calm.

V25 And He said unto them, Where is your faith?...” 

Where is you faith?  Jesus didn’t say this to them to put them down or to discourage them.  He said it to them to build them up and reveal what faith can do.

13 years after Jesus ascended into heaven, others with faith believed what Jesus said and let God work in them and through them.

Acts 14:6-10

“They were ware of it, (the trouble that had been brewing up by rebel rousers), and fled unto Lystra and Derbe, cities in Lycaonia, and unto the region that lieth round about:

V7 And there they preached the gospel.
V8 And there sat a certain man at Lystra, impotent in his feet, being crippled from his mother’s womb, who never had walked:
V9 The same heard Paul speak: who stedfastly beholding him, and perceiving that he had faith to be healed,

V10 Said with a loud voice, Stand upright on your feet.  And he leaped and walked.”

Don’t miss this: The man had faith to be healed, but the man of God who spoke the word, brought about the healing. 

The man had faith to be healed and Paul perceived it.  Perceived as used in this text simply meant, He knew for sure, he was certain beyond any doubt, he had knowledge of in his heart.  Paul sensed in his spirit, by the leading of the Holy Spirit, that the impotent man had faith to be healed - and Paul had the faith to call into existence, this man’s healing.

God brings to pass as our faith in Jesus Christ is exercised.

God does not bring to pass in the name of Buddha.
God does not bring to pass in the name of Vishnu.
God does not bring to pass in the faith of Islam.
God does not bring to pass in the faith of Taosim, Shintoism or any other ism.

God brings to pass, when The Faith, (reconciliation to God by recognition of God’s Son, by revelation of the Holy Spirit), is activated by our faith , (participation in God’s kingdom by yielding our mind, our heart, our spirit, our will, our self), to the Holy Spirit, and allowing God to work His will in us and through us.)

What is God revealing to you?

 

Excerpt from God thinking XLIII - Inspired Tools by Keith C. Powell by Keith C. Powell

God thinking XLIII - Inspired Tools 7

"What does it mean to let faith have its rightful place in your life?

Ultimately, it’s what you let it become.

Hear the Word of the Lord.

Matthew 9:27-30

“And when Jesus departed thence, two blind men followed Him, crying, and saying, Thou Son of David, have mercy on us.
V28 And when He was come into the house, the blind men came to Him: and Jesus saith unto them, Believe ye that I am able to do this? They said unto Him, Yea, Lord.
V29 Then touched He their eyes, saying, According to your faith be it unto you.”

What do you have faith to believe for?

Matthew 21:18-22

“Now in the morning as He returned into the city, He hungered.
V19 And when He saw a fig tree in the way, He came to it,  and found nothing thereon, but leaves only, and said unto it, Let no fruit grow on thee henceforward for ever.  And presently the fig tree withered away!
V20 And when the disciples saw it, they marveled, saying, How soon is the fig tree withered away!

V21 Jesus answered and said unto them, Verily I say unto you, If you have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done unto the fig tree, but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, be thou removed, and be cast into the sea; it shall be done.

V22 And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.” 

Right now, are you believing the Word or doubting the Word?"

 

Excerpt from God thinking XLIII - Inspired Tools by Keith C. Powell Copyright 2014

God thinking XLIII - Inspired Tools 5

"We can thank religion for teaching that salvation is about getting a ticket to heaven, but the truth is:

If God wanted you to get saved just to go to heaven, then when you got saved, He would take you to heaven, because God performs His Word.

But that’s not what faith is all about. 

• God wants to fill you with His kingdom benefits on this side of heaven. 
• God designed a plan for you to follow Christ in this life, not just after this life.
• God designed for you to be led by the Holy Spirit and to walk in the Spirit.
• God designed you to be Ambassadors of His kingdom benefits, to those without.

You are to be about the Father’s business.

Everyday, listening to God’s Holy voice and responding, YES LORD, by faith, as it pleases God. 
 

God has a plan to take each one of us from glory to glory - from faith to faith - truth upon truth.

 

Are you willing to yield your will for His will?"

 

Excerpt from God Thinking XLIII - Inspired Tools - by Keith C. Powell Copyright 2014