Unity # 12 and Dad's Note on Giving

Unity # 12: The Called, Chosen, and Faithful are with the King of kings

Theme Song: Whom Shall I Fear

Dear Father,

     I praise You for the joy of Your Spirit which is our strength. The revelation of Your coming judgment brings us unceasing anguish for the lost. We lift up our hands and cry out for Your children who faint at the head of every street. Fill us with Your Word and Spirit. You command us to rejoice in You always. Please increase our underlying zeal for Your glory so that every evil deed will be overridden. You will surely rescue us from every evil deed and bring us safely to Your heavenly Kingdom.

In Jesus Christ’s Name,

Amen

     If we had no King, each of us would do what was right in our own eyes, going after futile things which cannot profit or deliver. (Jud 21:25), and yet this self-rightness leads to destruction in the end (Prov 14:12). In desiring another king, our wickedness is great and we reject the only King of kings (1 Sam 8:7, 12:17). As we repent, God tells us not to fear. Though we have committed great evil in desiring another king, we must not turn aside from following the Lord, but must serve Him with all of our heart. The Lord will not abandon His people on account of His great Name, because the Lord has been pleased to make us a people for Himself. We must fear Him and serve Him in truth with all of our hearts, as we consider His great salvation. (1 Sam 12:19-24)

     The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against His anointed (Ps 2:2). The kings of the earth took their stand, and the rulers are gathered together against the Lord and His Christ (Acts 4:26). But God tells us to wait for Him. For a day is coming when He will rise up as a witness. His decision is to gather nations, assemble kingdoms, and to pour on them His indignation and all of His burning anger, for all the earth will be devoured by the fire of His zeal (Zeph 3:8). He is the King forever and ever; nations have perished from His land (Ps 10:16) Who will not fear the King of the Nations, for this fear is due Him. Among the wise men of the nations and in all their kingdoms, there is no one like Him (Jer 10:7). He is the true and living God and everlasting King. At His wrath the earth quakes and the nations cannot endure His indignation. (Jer 10:10) At the end, the Kingdom will be handed over to the God and Father, when He has abolished all rule, authority, and power (1 Cor 15:24). He will be King over the earth; in that day the Lord will be the only One, and His Name the only One (Zech 14:9).

     God has installed His King on Zion, His holy mountain (Ps 2:6). The gates lift their heads and the ancient doors are lifted up so that the King of glory may come in! This King of glory is the Lord, strong and mighty in battle. (Ps 24:7-8) This King saves us and answers us in the day we call and sits as King at the flood (Ps 20:9, Ps 29:10). His throne is forever and ever; a scepter of uprightness is the scepter of His Kingdom (Ps 45:6). The Lord Most High is to be feared and praised as the great King over all the earth (Ps 47:2,6). He is our King of old who works deeds of deliverance in the midst of the earth (Ps 74:12). The bird has found a house and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, even in the Lord of Host’s altars (Ps 84:3). With trumpets and the sound of the horn we must shout joyfully before the King, the Lord, for His strength loves justice, He has established equity, and He has executed justice and righteousness (Ps 98:6, Ps 99:4). His Kingdom is an everlasting Kingdom, and His dominion endures through all generations (Ps 145:13). In the Light of His face is Life, and His face is like a cloud with the spring rain (Prov 15:15). When we are skilled in doing His work of believing Him, we will stand before our King (Prov 22:29). He gives stability to the land by justice, judges the poor with truth, His wrath is like the roaring of a lion, but His favor is like dew on the grass (Prov 29:4, 14, Prov 19:12). He sits on the throne of justice and disperses all evil with His eyes, which are as blazing fire (Prov 20:8). In His wisdom He winnows the wicked and drives the threshing wheel over them Prov 20:26).

     Our eyes will see our King in His beauty and we will behold His far-distant eternal heavenly dwelling (Is 33:17). He is our judge, lawgiver, Holy One, Creator, the First and the Last, Redeemer, and Savior (Is 33:22, 43:15, 44:6). Dominion, glory, and His Kingdom are given to Him so that all the peoples, nations, and men of every language may serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion which does not pass away. His Kingdom will never be destroyed (Dan 7:14).

     With a mighty hand, an outstretched arm, and with wrath poured out, He will be King over His people (Ez 20:33). Because He is among us, we must not provoke Him with graven images and foreign idols (Jer 8:19). For when our eyes have seen the King, the Lord of host, we would cry out “Woe is me, for I am ruined!” (Is 6:5) Through His great salvation He has taken away His judgments against us and cleared away our enemies. He has given us His glory and His garments of salvation (Ps 45:13). He desires His righteous beauty that He Himself has given to us. He has rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the Kingdom of His beloved Son (Col 1:13). Jesus Christ is the faithful Witness, the Firstborn from the dead, and the Ruler of the kings of the earth. He loved us and released us from our sins by His blood (Rev 1:5). Because He is our Lord, we bow down to Him. (Ps 45:11) Because He is with us, we will fear disaster no more. (Zeph 3:15) May we rejoice and shout in triumph because our King has come to us, just and endowed with salvation, humble, and mounted on a donkey (Zech 9:9). A child has been born to us, and the government rests on His shoulders; His Name is Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, and Prince of Peace. There will be no end to the increase of His government or of peace. On the throne of David and over His Kingdom, He established and upholds it with justice and righteousness forever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will accomplish this. (Is 9:6-7)

     Our only desire is for His Kingdom to come, His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven, and for our deliverance from evil because His is the Kingdom and power and glory forever (Matt 6:10,13). Soon the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the Kingdom of their Father for He has given them the keys of His heavenly Kingdom; whatever we bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever we loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven (Matt 13:43, 16:19).

     To enter His Kingdom, we must be born of Water [His Word, 1 Pet 1:23, Eph 5:26] and His Spirit (John 3:5) and be converted and become like children (Matt 18:3). To those of His Kingdom, He will call us as blessed of the Father and tell us to inherit the Kingdom prepared for us from the foundation of the world (Matt 24:34).When we seek His Kingdom firstly, all that we need to serve and honor Him will be added to us (Luke 12:31). The extent to which we love His other people, even the least of them, we are doing unto our King Matt 25:40). We ought not to be afraid, we who are of His flock, because the Father has chosen gladly to give us His Kingdom (Luke 12:31). The Kingdom of God is not built in tangible ways that can be physically observed. For flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God; nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable (1 Cor 15:50). The Kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit (Rom 14:17). The Kingdom of God is in our midst, within the hearts of His people (Luke 17:21). This Kingdom does not consist in words but in power (1 Cor 4:20). Christ was born into the world as a King to testify to the Truth. Everyone who is of the Truth hears His voice. (John 18:37)

     We must strengthen the souls of one another, encourage each other to continue in the faith, and tell one another that through many tribulations we must enter His Kingdom (Acts 14:22). These persecutions are a plain indication of God’s righteous judgment so that we will be considered worthy of the Kingdom of God, for which indeed we are suffering (2 Thess 1:5). We ought to walk in a manner worthy of the God who calls us into His own Kingdom and glory (1 Thess 2:12). For the salvation, power, and Kingdom of God and the authority of Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down, he who accuses them before our God day and night (Rev 12:10).

Indeed, He rescues us from every evil deed, and brings us safely to His heavenly Kingdom, to Him be the glory forever and ever (2 Tim 4:18). He has made us to be a Kingdom, priests to His God and Father—to Him be the glory and the dominion forever and ever. Amen. (Rev 1:6)

     We know that the unrighteous will not inherit the Kingdom of God. We should not be deceived; neither fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, effeminate, homosexuals, thieves, the covetous, drunkards, revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the Kingdom of God. (1 Cor 6:9-10). We know with certainty that no immoral, impure, covetous, or idolatrous person has an inheritance in the Kingdom of Christ and God (Eph 5:5).

     To the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen. (1 Tim 1:17) The throne of the Son of God is forever and ever, and the righteous scepter is the scepter of His Kingdom (Heb 1:8). The song of the Lamb says, “Great and marvelous are Your works, O Lord God, the Almighty; righteous and true are His ways, King of the nations !” (Rev 15:3). Though His enemies wage war against the Lamb, the Lamb will overcome them, because He is Lord of lord and King of kings, and those who are with Him are the called, chosen, and faithful (Rev 17:14). He will be our everlasting Light. The nations will walk by His Light and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into His Kingdom. For on His robe and thigh He has a Name written, “King of kings, and Lord of lords” (Rev 19:16)

Love in Christ,

Preethi

May God bless us to be changed from within by the Gospel resulting in generosity towards the cause of the spread of the Gospel and the helping of widows, orphans, and the poor. 

By Moses David:
Could 1 Timothy 6:9-11 apply to organizations or churches?
(JUDGE FOR YOURSELVES!)

1 Timothy 6:9-11 But those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a snare and many foolish and harmful desires which plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs. But flee from these things, you man of God, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, perseverance and gentleness.

Unity and Giving are not necessarily good things if the underlying reasons are to be like the rest of the world, self gratification and making a name for ourselves, which will lead to IDOLATRY!

Exodus 32:1-4 When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, “Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.” Aaron answered them, “Take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me.” So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron. He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. Then they said, “These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.”

WHEN DOES THE CHURCH BECOME THE TOWER OF BABEL?

 1)When they try to make a name for themselves
2)When they try to reach heaven by their own plans
3)When their unity is based on programs rather than upon God
4)When growing becomes more important than God's plan
5)When programs takes precedence over the Great Commission
6)When communication is not enabled by God's Holy Spirit

"One of the greatest crimes of this generation of Christians is its neglect of the gospel, and it is from this neglect that all our other maladies spring forth. The lost world is not so much "gospel hardened" as it is "gospel ignorant," because many of those who proclaim the gospel are also ignorant of its most basic truths. Absent from too many pulpits at home and on the mission

 field are the essential themes which make up the very core of the gospel: justice of God, the radical depravity of man, the blood atonement, the nature of true conversion, and the biblical basis of assurance. In many cases, the gospel message has been reduced to a few creedal statements, conversion has become a mere human decision, and assurance of salvation is pronounced over anyone who prays the sinners prayer. This is a great crime" - Paul Washer