Joan Boney ... apostle/prophet
I heard the following from the Holy Spirit ... "My words are not grievous."
I stopped and thought about this. Is there any time in the 30+ years that I have been born again that I have had a word from God telling me to do something that I felt was "grievous"? The answer is, "No ... not one instruction from God has been grief to me." I just considered that what I heard from God was life and the way of life for me and the best way for me to go on this earth. But I am speaking of what I heard after I was born again. Before I was born again it might not have been so. For unless you are born again, you cannot see things of God ...
Jesus says this in Jn. 3 ... Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. And Paul says ... I Cor. 2 ... For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. 12Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. 13Which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual. 14But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
After hearing, "My words are not grievous ...", I knew there was a scripture about this and when I looked it up I found it in I Jn. 5.
I Jn. 5:3 ... For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous.
I have come across people who feel the commands of God are just too much for them to consider. One woman attended church but was committing fornication. She felt she could not be fulfilled in life otherwise. I suspect she was not born again.
For those of us who are born again, we see the commandments of God as "light" so we know the way to walk. We consider the WORD to be life and not death. The people of the flesh go in a way of death. We are able to go in a way of "life" because of the scriptures, THE WORD OF GOD. And each time we hear an instruction from God and go that way, we depart from the way of death and go in the way of life. But to the world it seems hard, unreasonable to go in the way of the WORD.
Thus to us the instruction is life. But to the people of the world who go by their own feelings, their own flesh that same WORD is as death.
Grievous means:
- to feel grief because of
- distress
- harm, oppress, burden, encumber
- grave: giving cause for alarm
WORDS such as:
- flee fornication
- avoid strife & vain glory
- make yourself of no reputation
Fornication, pursuit of personal glory, making yourself to be somebody are actions that delight the flesh ... and are ways of the flesh ... Gal. 5 ... Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, 20Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance (strife & debating), emulations (competitions, trying to outdo other people), wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, 21Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.
But the ways of the flesh which are loved by flesh are ways of death. But these ways seem fulfilling until be are born again and then we are changed. And then we see that the ways of God are a departure from death and God's ways are: Life unto them that find them, and health to all their flesh. Prov. 4:22
The way of the flesh and the way of God is opposite.
But those of us of God see the word of God as life. And therefore it is not grievous for us to consider going in the way of God and abstaining from the way of our flesh. For the way of flesh is death and we who are born of God know this now.
Gal. 5:
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, 23Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law. 24And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. 25If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. 26Let us not be desirous of vain glory, provoking one another, envying one another.