ACTS 29 TODAY

coming to the knowledge of the TRUTH

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Building Yourself Up On Your Most Holy Faith

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So what happens when I pray in tongues for personal

edification, which I can do at will, anytime I desire?

Why is this, the most “foolish” of all gifts to the natural

mind, so important and so powerful?

Let’s look at Jude 20 and 21 to discover more of our

answer.

But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most

holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost,Keep yourselves in

the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus

Christ unto eternal life.

We know that God is only pleased by and only moves in

response to our faith. In Romans10:17, Paul tells us, So

then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word

of God. But we also know that we can hear and hear and

hear the Word and yet not see any change in our lives.

We still have to get that Word planted in our spirits and

then find some way to release the faith that the Word

has produced.

Thousands of people around the world are filled to

overflowing with God’s Word. Yet still,for the most part,

the Church does not experience the miraculous results

found in the Book of Acts. So there must be a missing

ingredient most believers are unaware of.

The truth is, any minister, no matter how anointed and

full of the Word he may be, can only tell you what he

has learned through experience and as the Holy Ghost

has taught him in his own times of meditation on the

Word. But that teaching will not profit you if you don’t

find some way to mix faith with it. You must personally

get that Word into your spirit and then let the Holy

Spirit teach you.

That’s why Jude says we are to build ourselves up on

our most holy faith by praying always in the Holy

Ghost. It is only as we willingly and freely present our

bodies as a living sacrifice and take the time to endure

in prayer that the Holy Ghost can begin to reveal to us

the mysteries of Christ. Only then can He release the

faith in our hearts that is needed for God’s power to

operate in our lives.

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Hungry for God’s Power

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Ever since I was born again, I’ve been so hungry to

know God in His power. At first, I thought there was

something wrong with me because I encountered so

many groups of believers who just didn’t seem to be

hungry. They just didn’t seem to care that they lived

such powerless lives.

I would wonder, Lord, why aren’t more people hungry

for Your power like I am? Is it the call You have on my

life to operate in miracles that makes me different?

I was so hungry for God’s power when I was first born

again that I would try anything that I was told would

help me walk in more power. If it promised to satisfy

the hunger on the inside of me, I would do it.

One person said to me, “No wonder you’re not walking

in the power of God.”

I asked, “Why not?”“Because of the jewelry you’re

wearing.”“You mean, if I take this jewelry off, I will

walk in God’s power?”“That’s right.”

So I took off my jewelry. What happened? Well, before I

took off my jewelry, I was a powerless jewelry wearer.

And after I took it off, I  became a powerless non-

jewelry wearer! It didn’t make a bit of difference.

Then later when I moved to Oregon and hooked up with

another group of believers, some-one told me, “No

wonder you don’t walk in the power of God.”

“Why not?”“Well, how were you baptized?”“I was

baptized in water in the Name of the Father, the Son,

and the Holy Ghost.”“Well, no wonder!” the person

exclaimed. “You were baptized in the name of three

Gods,and there is only one God!” (This particular group

believed there is only one God, whose Name is Jesus.)

Well, then,” I said, “I’ll just get re baptized!” (As I said,

at that point in my Christian walk,if I thought

something meant more power in my life, I was all for it.

Get re baptized? Just name the place!)

 

We were in the middle of an Oregon winter at an

elevation of 4,800 feet. It was snowing,the ground was

frozen, and the two ponds were covered with a thick

layer of ice. After building a bonfire beside the upper

pond, a group of us were baptized in the freezing water.

Well, in the months that followed, I came to realize that

before I was immersed in that freezing water, I was a

powerless Pentecostal boy supposedly baptized in the

name of three Gods. Then that preacher shoved me

under the icy water and baptized me in the Name of

Jesus— and I became a powerless Pentecostal boy

baptized in the name of one God! Once again, it didn’t

make one bit of difference.

It wasn’t until later — the day I discovered I had

“uncovered a spiritual law” — that I learned a vital key

to releasing God’s power in my life.

“Oh, Brother Roberson, can you teach me to walk in

power?” Oh, yes, I can. And I don’t care if your name is

Susie Wallpaper or Joe Public either. This key isn’t

reserved for an elect few.

Just keep on reading this book, and I’ll teach you how to

walk out of everything that Jesus said you’ve been

delivered from. I’ll also teach you how to walk into

everything He said you could be in your life — on

purpose, just because you want to go there! The answer

is just as available to you who want it as the air you

breathe.

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Contending for the Faith

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When the Holy Ghost began to reveal to me the

treasures hidden in the Book of Jude, I realized I had

discovered an important key in my search to know God

in His power. First, I latched onto verse 3:

Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of

the common salvation, it was needful for me to write

unto you, and exhort you that ye should EARNESTLY

CONTEND FOR THE FAITH which was once delivered

unto the saints.

I was so excited when I read that we should earnestly

contend for the devil stomping, mountain-moving kind

of faith that was once delivered to the saints. Why was I

so excited? Well, one thing I had learned about God’s

Word was this: God wouldn’t tell me to contend for the

faith without then going on in minute detail to teach me

how to contend. I was on the right trail, tracking down

my answer!

You see, it wasn’t enough to know I should contend for

the faith. The cry of my heart was,“For God’s sake, can

someone teach me how? Don’t wave a delicious steak in

front of my face and then not give it to me!”

Once I was discussing this passage of Scripture with

another minister, and he asked me,“What is your

background on the subject of faith?”

I answered, “The Word of God is my only background

on the subject of faith. I am a faith man. I take God’s

Word for what it says. I’m not moved by what I see,

hear, or feel. I’m not moved by disease or financial

lack. Only one standard controls my life, and that’s

what the Word of God says about my problem — not the

devil, not the circumstances, only the Word of God.”

“Well, then,” the man said, “if you believe all that, you

already have more faith than the Early Church had.”

“I beg your pardon,” I replied. “If I’m going to have

more faith than the Early Church had,it seems to me I

am first going to have at least as much! If I remember

correctly, during one of Peter’s revivals, people lay the

sick and dying in the streets near the meeting because

those on whom Peter’s shadow fell were getting healed!

“Now, correct me if I’m wrong,” I continued, “but I

didn’t notice anyone laying the sick on the street near

this meeting in the hope that our shadow would fall on

them and heal them! It seems to me that we need to

contend for that kind of powerful faith that was once

delivered to those early saints!

”Then in verse 4, Jude tells us what happened to the

mountain-moving faith in which the Early Church

operated:

For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were

before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly

men, turning the grace of our God into

lasciviousness,and denying the only Lord God, and our

Lord Jesus Christ.

Certain men had crept into the Church unawares.

Whoever these men were, to a large extent they stole

the faith of the Early Church.

So I conducted a study on these men from the Book of

Jude, if for no other reason than to find out what path I

should not take. I didn’t want my faith to suffer the

same fate as the early believers — stolen from me by

dead religion.

Jude compared these ungodly men to raging waves of

the sea, foaming out their own shame…(v. 13). What

was he talking about? Well, a wave rises out of the

ocean, and for a moment, puts on a display of foaming

glory. But just as quickly as it appears, it disappears

back into the sea.

Jude also compared these men to “wandering stars.”

You and I know these phenomena in the heavens as

shooting stars. All of a sudden, a shooting star will flash

in the night sky in a spectacular blaze of glory and then

quickly disappear back into the darkness from which it

came. Similarly, these wandering stars, after appearing

as bright lights of truth for a short season, would slink

back into the “blackness of darkness” that was reserved

for them forever.

These men are also called “clouds without water”(v. 12).

Throughout the Bible, water is used as a type of the

Holy Ghost. For instance, we saw earlier that Jesus

likened the Holy Spirit to rivers of living waters,

flowing from our innermost being (John 7:38).

So these clouds without water were men who stole the

power of God from the Early Church.They crept in

unawares, using doctrines of men to steal the faith of

believers until there was no faith left — until the

Church plunged into the Dark Ages, having lost her

faith to a large extent for hundreds of years. No wonder

Jude compared these men to clouds without water!

In a drought, a cloud without water may come over the

horizon looking promising. It may put on a good show

as it drifts overhead. But when it comes to producing

needed rain, that cloud is powerless to do so because it

has no water.

So the first criterion to walking in the power of God is

that I must be a cloud with water. In other words,I must

be filled with the Holy Spirit. But evidently, just having

the Holy Spirit isn’t enough.

I used to think that the baptism in the Holy Ghost was

all I needed to automatically see God’s power released

in my life. Wrong. I know people who have been

baptized in the Holy Ghost for forty years. But if you

measured the power of the Holy Spirit by the fruit of

their lives, you would come to the conclusion that the

Holy Spirit had no power at all!

I finally came to the conclusion that even though I was

a cloud with water — even though I had been filled with

the Holy Spirit — there still must be something I had to

do to walk in God’s power. Just having the Holy Spirit

wasn’t enough. There had to be a way to release Him on

the inside of me. There had to be a way to get all that

Holy Ghost power out of my spirit and onto the

problems that needed to be overcome.

At times as I sat in a service listening to a minister

preaching the Gospel, I wanted to raise my hand and

say, “Excuse me, Mister Evangelist, but the Holy Spirit

you’re talking about —the One who moved on the face

of the deep — is He the same One who now abides on

the inside of me?”

“Why, yes, Son,” he would say.

“Well, then, Mister Preacher, could you please tell me

how to get all that power out of my spirit and loosed on

the problem? Because until now, the common cold has

whipped me!”

I knew there had to be a way to release the power on

the inside of me — and later, I found out there is! And it

is just as deliberate and as power-releasing as you want

it to be in your life!

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UNTIL NEXT TIME

LARRY