Tribulation In The Will Of God

Hello everyone.  Praise the Lord!

BEING IN THE WILL OF GOD DOESN’T GUARANTEE EASY CIRCUMSTANCES.

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Remember, Paul and Silas weren’t in Philippi on a vacation. They were there to do the Lord’s work. They weren’t out of the will of God. Sometimes when things don’t go right, people think, Well, I must be out of the will of God!

I’ve had people say to me, “What awful sin have I committed to cause God to put this on me?” I tell them that God didn’t send the test or trial they are facing; the devil sent it: “The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy . . .” (John 10:10). It wasn’t God who whipped Paul and Silas. It was ungodly men who did it. God didn’t stir up these ungodly fellows. It was the devil who stirred them up. Some say, “Well, God permitted it. What awful sin have I committed to cause God to permit this to happen to me?”

But if you think you’re going to determine whether you are in the will of God by whether or not everything runs smoothly in your life, then you are mistaken. A life of ease, with no rough or difficult places to endure and no sacrifices to make, does not indicate whether or not a person is in God’s will. If it did, then Paul never did get in the will of God in his entire ministry! He missed it from beginning to end. No, you can’t judge being in the will of God by whether or not you have tests and trials in life and obstacles to overcome.

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I was on the field as an evangelist for many years, and I would sometimes get amused at pastors. I have had them tell me, “I tell you one thing! If I can just get my Sunday school attendance back up where it was at its highest point, I am leaving!” Some pastors were upset because the Sunday school was down and things weren’t going right. Well, you don’t judge whether or not you’re in the will of God just because the Sunday school isn’t what you think it should be. That kind of thinking would be funny if it weren’t so sad.

I have also had pastors say to me, “If I can just get the finances of this church to the place they were when I came here, then I’m going to resign and leave.” They felt that because the finances had fallen off it indicated they weren’t in the will of God. But a church is made up of individual people, and just as individual people go through phases in their lives, so do churches. A pastor can’t determine that he is out of the will of God just because his church is experiencing some difficult circumstances.

When I pastored, I never did try to ascertain whether I was in the will of God by whether or not things ran smoothly. I would determine the will of God by listening to my own spirit, and by doing just what they did in Acts 13:2. I would wait upon the Lord and minister to Him until I knew in my spirit what God wanted me to do. 

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I only missed it one time, as far as pastoring the right church was concerned. I missed God concerning this particular church because I put out a fleece. You see, I hadn’t been in Pentecostal circles very long. It had only been about three years since I’d received the baptism of the Holy Ghost and had become Pentecostal.

I never had heard anything about fleeces before then. I had never heard anyone in my former church say anything about putting out a fleece. But I began to hear certain preachers and others talk about putting out a fleece, so I decided to put out a fleece too. I decided

maybe I’d like to change churches and pastor another church. So I put out a fleece about whether or not I should take another church.

A certain church opened up, and I was invited to preach, so I went. Before I left, I put out a fleece. I told the Lord if a certain “sign” occurred, I would accept it as His confirmation that I should accept this new pastorate. And according to my fleece or “sign” I had asked for, I was to change churches. I did, and I got fleeced! 

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When I was finally able to leave that church, I was never so glad to get away from a place in all my life as I was that place! I should have left that church a long time before I did, but sometimes when you miss it, it’s hard to get back on the right track again. And yet, I went back there afterwards to hold a revival meeting and had one of the greatest meetings they had ever had in the history of the church. But I went that time in the will of God, when God said, “Go.” I missed it

previously even when I followed the fleece instead of following God, waiting on God, and ministering to Him, until I knew what to do.

However, as I said, just because I was in the will of God pastoring those other churches doesn’t mean everything always ran smoothly. It doesn’t mean we broke the Sunday school record every Sunday. And it doesn’t mean the finances topped out every Sunday above anything that we had ever received before.Yet in pastoring those churches, I knew in my spirit, in my heart, that it was the right thing to do because I had taken time to minister to the Lord and to wait upon Him.

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I knew that was where He wanted me to be. At different times I’d say to the Lord, “Lord, things are not running just right, but I’m not going to worry about it. I’m going to trust You to work it out.” The devil will just try to aggravate you to death with circumstances, if you’ll listen to him. But if you’ll learn how to deal with the devil, you’ll be alright. And if you don’t, then the circumstances of life will overwhelm you.

Because if Satan can get the least edge on you, he’ll just hound you and try to worry you to death. But believers don’t need to be easy prey for the devil. Rather, we need to spend our time ministering to the Lord.

Kenneth E. Hagin

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William James Roop

Hospice Care and Dying

The Trucking Tango

Brother Roop teaches the Bible

Love Never Fails

Hello everyone.  Praise the Lord!

IF YOU WALK IN LOVE YOU WILL NOT FAIL. 

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Love never fails!

We are interested in spiritual gifts and we ought to be. But we ought to be interested in Love first. Prophecies will fail. Tongues shall cease. Knowledge shall vanish away. But, thank God, Love never fails.

Oh yes, I believe in prophecy and prophesying.

I believe in tongues. Thank God for it. But you can exercise these things outside of Love and they become as sounding brass and tinkling cymbal. The thing about it is: Let's have prophecy. Let's have tongues. Let's have faith. Let's have knowledge. But let's have Love with it. Let's put Love first because we are in the family of Love and have become acquainted with our Heavenly Father who is a God of Love.

We ought to want to learn. We ought to want to grow. We ought to want to grow in Love until we are made perfect in Love. I haven't been made perfect in love yet, have you? But did you know the Bible says we can? Not in the next world, but in this world. I believe some of us are going to make it. I'm not going to quit just because I haven't made it yet. I'm going to keep after it. Thank God for His Word! Thank God for His Love!

- Kenneth E. Hagin

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William James Roop

Hospice Care and Dying

The Trucking Tango

Brother Roop teaches the Bible

Beyond the Bible?

Hello everyone.  Praise the Lord!

BEYOND THE BIBLE? - Kenneth E Hagin.

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A certain teacher caused a lot of trouble once for a friend of  mine, a man who had been a Bible teacher for 35 years. My friend had taken his Bible to this man's meetings, but found  his teaching began to be increasingly in error.

Finally he handed the man his Bible, saying, "You're going  to have to give me chapter and verse for that. You're going to  have to show that to me in the Bible." The traveling teacher handed the Bible back to him, saying,  "Oh, you won't find what I'm preaching in that thing." (When  you start calling the Bible "that thing," you're in trouble.)

"Oh, no," he said, "I'm way out beyond that thing." If you've gotten out  beyond  the Bible, you've gotten out  beyond the Holy Spirit, because the Bible says that the Spirit and the Word are one [agree], as John states in First John 5:7.

What was amazing to me was that my friend, a man who was saved, baptized in the Holy Spirit, and a Bible teacher in a  Full Gospel church, got taken in by this false teacher and lost half his class!

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On the other hand, a young Chinese woman, who had been converted only two weeks earlier in a tent meeting, went to the same teacher's meetings one night but realized he was in error. 

She told me, "You know, something on the inside of me told me,  'Don't go back.' So we never went back."

She was just a baby Christian—she didn't even have the  baptism in the Holy Spirit yet—but she listened to the Spirit  who was in her.

I think what happens to us is we go by our heads instead of our spirits after we have been Christians for many years. Often our heads have been educated at the expense of our spirits.

The Spirit of God will teach us. That's what the Spirit of  God was teaching the Chinese woman: "That's not right. Don't  go there."

Of course God put teachers in the Church—teaching is one  of the fivefold ministries, and that's one way God teaches us. On  the other hand, the Teacher is also in us. He'll let us know when it's right and He'll let us know when it's not right. And every believer has that anointing in him or her. We don't need to pray for it. We've got it.

Kenneth E. Hagin- Understanding The Anointing.

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William James Roop

Hospice Care and Dying

The Trucking Tango

Brother Roop teaches the Bible

Close The Door To The Devil

Hello everyone.  Praise the Lord!

CLOSE THE DOOR TO THE DEVIL.

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The major way believers close the door to the devil is to get their minds renewed with the Word, and by practicing the Word. Many people are trying to cast the devil out of believers, when the problem is not demonic. The believer has just never learned to renew his mind, so he keeps on thinking like he did before he was redeemed when he was under Satan's dominion. Then eventually he will start acting in line with his unredeemed thinking, and soon he'll be dominated by the devil instead of standing in his authority against him.

Actually, the "saving" or the renewing of the soul is the greatest need of the Church today—not casting devils out of believers. Since the believer's spirit is the only part of him that is born again or recreated, his soul and his body are unchanged and still have to be dealt with if he is to successfully withstand the devil's attacks.

If the believer doesn't deal with his soul and body, he will continually be opening a door to the enemy. Only the believer himself can do something about renewing his soul and bringing his body into subjection to his spirit. And this is where the believer's major "battle" is fought.

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There are many Christians who have been saved and filled with the Holy Spirit for many years, whose souls are not yet saved. Some Christians have lived and died and their souls have never been saved, and they've been tossed to and fro by the devil because of it. That's absolutely the truth! Their souls weren't renewed, restored, or made whole by the Word of God, so they couldn't stand successfully against the attacks of the devil.

Now don't misunderstand me. Just because Christians haven't renewed their minds doesn't mean they won't go to Heaven when they die. Of course they will go to Heaven because their spirits are born of God —they're children of God. But Christians who have failed to renew their minds forfeit the privilege to enter into all that belongs to them in Christ while they are here on earth. And even though they have victory over the devil in Christ, they never understand how to successfully stand in that victory because of an unrenewed mind.

- Kenneth E Hagin ( The Triumphant Church )

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William James Roop

Hospice Care and Dying

The Trucking Tango

Brother Roop teaches the Bible

Learning to cast your care upon the Lord

Hello everyone.  Praise the Lord!

Learning to cast your care upon the Lord-- Kenneth E. Hagin.

I started out in the ministry as a young Southern Baptist boy preacher. I got the revelation of divine healing on the bed of sickness, and I was healed. In the early days of my ministry, I was pastor of a community church, a country church. Nearly everyone in the whole community came to church.

 In April 1937, I received the baptism of the Holy Ghost and spoke in other tongues.

In those days when a person received the baptism of the Holy Ghost and spoke in other tongues, he was ostracized by the denominational churches. On the other hand, I know many pastors who received the baptism of the Holy Ghost and still continued to pastor their churches. In fact, many of these pastors led their congregations into the baptism in the Holy Ghost. Most of the people in my church also received the baptism of the Holy Ghost.

Do you know what I found out when I began to fellowship with these Pentecostal people? I found out that they knew more about the Holy Ghost than I did, but that I knew more about faith than they did. We make a mistake when we think we can’t learn from others.

So I switched over and started pastoring a Pentecostal church. I didn’t know church problems existed until I got into a Full Gospel church! We didn’t have any problems at all in that denominational community church I had previously pastored. If a fellow was ever tempted to worry, I was tempted to worry about this Full Gospel church I was pastoring!

Here I was, just a twenty-one-year-old boy, and I was the pastor of a church that was twenty-three years old. There were people in that church who had had the baptism of the Holy Ghost and had been talking in tongues more years than I had been alive! You can understand that one as young as I was would feel a sense of inadequacy.

Also, there were problems in that church. I knew something should be said to the people, but I didn’t know what to say. I was afraid that if I said anything I would say the wrong thing. There were conditions that existed in that church that had existed for twenty-three years. I knew something ought to be done about the problems, but I didn’t know what to do. And if I did something, I was afraid I’d do the wrong thing.

I remember I had gotten up early one Sunday morning, and I became burdened about all the problems in the church. I suppose this was the only time in my life that I momentarily succumbed to a burden or care of this nature. I became so taken up with thinking about the problems in that church and wondering what to do, that when I came to myself, I was out walking in the yard (the parsonage was right next to the church). I don’t remember going out there. When I came to myself, I didn’t even know how I got out there.

Out there walking that yard, I realized what I was doing, and I asked myself, What am I doing out here?

Then I thought, Now, Lord, as the pastor, I have some responsibilities in this church. Something ought to be done, but I don’t know what to do. I feel my inadequacy.

Then I said, “Lord, You forgive me. I know better than this. I know better than to worry. I shouldn’t be overly concerned and full of anxiety about anything. I was tempted and momentarily I succumbed to anxiety, but I refuse to worry.”

I could sense the Spirit of God saying to my spirit, “Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you” (1 Peter 5:7).

I said, “Lord, I know that I have responsibilities as pastor, but I am going to turn all these church problems over to You. I’m not going to worry about them. I can’t fix them anyway.

“Lord, I’m going to preach the Word. I’m going to treat everyone right. I’m going to visit the sick, and I’m going to leave everything else to You. And I’m going to eat every meal and have a good night’s sleep every night because I’m not carrying these burdens — You are.”

 When I said that, it was just like something lifted from me. I went to church happy and singing, and the Spirit of God met us and we had a glorious service. Marvelous things happened in that service.

We would have a district fellowship meeting among pastors on the first Monday of each month. I’d go to these meetings, and the preachers would all be talking about their cares, their anxieties, their burdens, and their responsibilities.

These ministers would say to me, “How goes the battle?” They were all in a battle, but I didn’t have any battle. Praise God! I had the victory! Men in battle haven’t won the victory yet. The battle is the Lord’s, but the victory is ours. As I walked along carefree, here these ministers stood with long faces, talking about cares, burdens, and problems in their churches.

One of them said to me some time later, “I’ll tell you, I got mad about it because your faith really convicted us. You would just wave your hand and say, ‘Men, I don’t have a care! I couldn’t be better,’ and just go right on by.” He said those pastors would just stand there and blink their eyes and look at one another. Some of them would shake their heads and say, “The poor boy. He doesn’t have enough sense to worry.” No, I had too much sense to worry — too much Bible sense, that is.

I want to illustrate something to you. Can you see that if I had cast my cares about the church over on the Lord, I didn’t have those cares anymore? I didn’t have them; the Lord did. I didn’t say that no cares existed. I just said, “I don’t have a care,” because I didn’t; the Lord did. Praise God!

If I had three dollars in my billfold, and I gave them to you, I wouldn’t have them anymore. Then if someone came along and said, “Brother Hagin, I’m a little short on money. Could you loan me a dollar? I’ll pay you back tomorrow,” I would have to say to you, “My brother, I would gladly loan you a dollar, but I don’t have a dollar.” I’d be telling the truth, wouldn’t I? How could I loan that person a dollar if I didn’t have a dollar? Those three dollars I did have existed, all right, but I didn’t have them anymore. I had given them away.

In much the same way, if I cast my cares and anxieties on the Lord and someone says, “How goes the battle?” I’d have to say, “I don’t have a care.” Wouldn’t I be telling the truth? Of course I would!

Some of these preachers said later, “I know better. He is lying. I know he does have a care.” But I didn’t say cares didn’t exist; I just said I didn’t have them. If someone asked me for a dollar and I didn’t have any money with me, I wouldn’t tell them that a dollar doesn’t exist. I would only tell them that I don’t have one. Cares do exist, but I’ve given mine away. I don’t have them; the Lord has them!

One particular pastor, who was a neighboring pastor, would say, “He is lying. I know him better than any of the rest of you. And I know about all the problems in his church.” He’d mention about four or five of the problems he knew about, and they were even worse than anything he had in his church. But I’d still just breeze by and say, “Men, I don’t have a care.” Hallelujah! I didn’t.

 The Lord had all of my cares.

William James Roop

Roop-Crappell Ministries

Hospice Care and Dying

The Trucking Tango

Brother Roop teaches the Bible