Be not deceived!
Know the will of God.
James 3:13-17 Who is a wise man and endued with knowledge among you? let him shew out of a good conversation his works with meekness of wisdom. But if ye have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not, and lie not against the truth.
This wisdom descendeth not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish.
For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work.
But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy.
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If there is envy and strife you will not be pure in making decisions.
Therefore you must be able to recognize both envy and strife and deal with these in a spiritual way, through confessing your feeling to God and asking HIM to make your heart clean.
After God has uprooted the envy and strife, you will be able to see clearly and can go forward. But first you must deal with your feelings of envy and strife for such will lead you to go in wrong direction.
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We have many other STOP SIGNS from God.
If a man lies to us, we know not to yoke ourselves to this man.
If a person flaunts sin in our face, I just leave that person. A recent hair-cutting woman did this to me. I had been going to her for hair cuts for more than 10 years. Then one day she began telling me about her "new" boyfriend. I did not encourage her to talk but she had overwhelming desire to talk about a recent trip she made with "boyfriend". As she continued talking it was obvious fornication is involved. I wrote her, cancelling future appointments and told her I cannot rejoice in fornication.
Sometimes God allows us to see the other person is hypocritical, pretending to feel something when he does not feel this way.
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When trying to make decision, we must consider:
Is this easy to be entreated, easy to be accomplished?
When the idea is from God is it easy to do that work.
And we have this promise from God:
Matthew 10:26
Fear them not therefore: for there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known.
God will often pull out of their mouths exactly what you need to hear to really know those persons and to see whether or not you can work with them.
Though there are many deceivers in the last days, God opens our eyes so we will not be deceived by them.
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The wisdom that is from above is "easy to be intreated."
Ministers are often led by their own egos or by destructive plans by devils ... build an orphanage ... or go all over the world and preach the gospel ... so they begin trying to get money to enable them to do that word.
Devils and our own flesh speak thoughts to us and give us many ideas.
It may be scriptural and seem like the right thing to do. But that work may be a path to your own destruction.
So you really need to pray over ideas and ask God to show you if that plan is HIS will.
And consider carefully, James 3:17, especially is it easy for me to do this.
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We published several books with Amazon.
Was it easy to do this?
It cost us no money at all. Amazon published in both e-book and paperback. Amazon makes the books available all over this world. Amazon even has a "free" e-book program where 5 times a publishing cycle, readers can get the e-book version for free. I enjoy writing exhortations for the church and Pam Padgett has computer skills needed to get books into publication form.
It was fun for me to write these books and needful for the church to have them. Pam enjoyed doing the computer work, so we published everything we felt God gave us.
We also have the option of presenting audio versions of the book.
Should I do that?
Certainly I pray to know the will of God but then I have to examine facts to see if it is the way of God. One of the first things to look at is the ease of doing this.
* I would have to order different type of microphone, moderately expensive.
* The recording requirements set by Amazon seemed complicated to me. Usually complicated shows us this is not the way of God.
* Then there is the subject of who would record these books if we presented them in audio. I could no longer do the recordings at my age. When I was on radio, my voice was very good. Now that I am older that is not the case.
You might want to go through brick walls, showing how great you are, thinking nothing is impossible with God, which is true.
But also the Bible tells us when we have the wisdom that is from above, it is easy to be intreated.
None of the audio facts were easy for me to consider doing.
So I did not do audio books.
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Recently I decided to get a larger size TV screen.
My center channel speaker sits on top of a component table directly under the current TV. A larger screen would need to be hung lower than current TV, but the height of the center channel would not allow this.
I discussed this problem with the sound people who were selling the TV.
Patrick began talking about ways to avoid the center channel. After a few words of his plan, it was so complex I knew it couldn't be the way to go.
A few days later, Pam Padgett, said I could move the amplifier from the bottom shelf allowing me to stack CD player and DVD and remove one shelf from the component cabinet, setting the center channel speaker on shelf lower allowing a TV to be lowered approximate 10 inches.
This was an amazingly simple and inexpensive plan! This fits the ways of God! I knew this plan would work and was from God.
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I receive many invitations to go to other continents, such as Africa, to speak at minister conferences. This idea really stirs up my flesh.
Is this idea of God? Would this be easy for me to do?
* I am 80-years-old. Look around you at 80-year-old people. I find I get tired just going to the grocery store. Yet I can easily stay at my house and write exhortations for our blog and send messages all over the world. If I traveled it would likely cause my death.
* Expensive? Very! The men inviting me to come to their countries never offer to pay any expenses.
Then God told me this: Before you consider going any where, check these ministers and see what they are teaching. It will do no good to try to work with ministers who have left the Bible and are permitting all manner of evils to be done inside the church group... such as divorce/remarriage and allowing man to marry divorced woman. If they do these things opposite to scripture, they will not listen to you nor be helped by you.
Matthew 5:32 But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.
All these points show the truth about this situation ... don't go!
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Proverbs 14:12 There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.
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If it seems complex, back off, it is not the plan of God.
If the plan is very expensive and would be hard for you to do, back off, it is not the plan of God.
The plan might be of your own flesh, though it often seems like a good work.
Who doesn't want to be Superman? or God?
Our flesh delights in outdoing other people.
Galatians 5:19-21
Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness,
Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations (to outdo other people), wrath, strife, seditions, heresies,
Envyings, 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.
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3 emails received yesterday from men who identify themselves as ministers.
From man who says he is a pastor in Pakistan.
Hello Dear in Christ,
Greetings in the highest name of Lord Jesus. I am from Pakistan and I am a Christian. I am full time working for God. We are running a ministry which is mainly working on Helping Orphans and street children and we are also supporting poor Christian Families, we are doing evangelism, Distributing Free Bibles. I have been visiting your ministry's Website.
I found that all your material is full of knowledge concerning development of religious faith. . Most of the people in Pakistan are not capable to understand the English language. It’s because our national language is Urdu. My suggestion for you is to create your Books in my language of Urdu . It will bring lots of blessings of the Word of God for the Pakistani Urdu speaking people. For that purpose we as a translator will bring your material into Urdu language and into Punjabi language as well. It will be a blessing for the people of Pakistan because the Bible Studies and Books are full of knowledge in your website. we hope that we can translate your material into our Urdu language and we can hand out your materials to the Urdu speaking people of Pakistan.
Hope to hear back from you soon. Thank you and God Bless you.
Response from Joan Boney:
Feel free to copy materials, translate, and distribute at your own cost.
Joan Boney
Joan Boney
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E-mail from Pakistan
Dear Joan Boney,
Greetings in the precious name of Jesus Christ,
I have viewed your website and observed your ministry work. I have to say that, what a wonderful work you are doing for the glory of God.
It is more appreciating that you are working worldwide. I am very thankful to our lord Jesus Christ for the servants like you.
May God bless you more and more and May He use your services in the every corner of the world. Amen
Life in Christ Ministry is willing to get connected to your ministry.
We are in need of your guidance and support to spread good news in all communities of Pakistan.
Please stand with us to win hearts and souls for the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ.
I will wait for your response. Thank you and stay blessed.
Greetings in the precious name of Jesus Christ,
I have viewed your website and observed your ministry work. I have to say that, what a wonderful work you are doing for the glory of God.
It is more appreciating that you are working worldwide. I am very thankful to our lord Jesus Christ for the servants like you.
May God bless you more and more and May He use your services in the every corner of the world. Amen
Life in Christ Ministry is willing to get connected to your ministry.
We are in need of your guidance and support to spread good news in all communities of Pakistan.
Please stand with us to win hearts and souls for the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ.
I will wait for your response. Thank you and stay blessed.
Joan Boney: No response
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Third e-mail (no country identified):
Dear brethren in Christ,
Receive our greetings in Jesus Christ. I am happy to receive you
website and I was really touched by your teachings so we started our
fellowship recently and we were pleased to connect you in sharing God‘s
word through prayers. In our church we are taking care of young
children who are orphans and help them grow spiritually fit. May God
help you too.
Yours Pastor
Receive our greetings in Jesus Christ. I am happy to receive you
website and I was really touched by your teachings so we started our
fellowship recently and we were pleased to connect you in sharing God‘s
word through prayers. In our church we are taking care of young
children who are orphans and help them grow spiritually fit. May God
help you too.
Yours Pastor
Joan Boney: No response
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