It's that personal touch

The Bible term Holy Ghost is really God + Host combined into one word.

“It’s not talking about Casper and ‘Booooo,’ throw a sheet over it,” explains Jordan. “But even if you threw a sheet over it and say ‘It’s a spook!’ you’d do that to try and give identity to a person.

“The references to Holy Ghost are references to the person. You know where God resides in you when He comes to live in you? ‘Your body’s the temple of the Holy Spirit,’ but what part of you anatomy does He connect with? God is a spirit and you have a spirit, soul and body, and He would have to reside in your spirit because that’s why He gave you one—so He could touch you, connect with you. The connection you have with God is in your spirit.

“The references to spirit and Holy Spirit are references to the function of the person. That’s kind of a close thing but you’re looking for the emphasis of the text and that’s why it’s that way.

“When that term is used about this third person of the godhead, the emphasis every time in the text is on His person. The person who dwells in you that’s connected to you. When you find Him referred to as the Holy Spirit, and the spirit’s being talked about, you’ll find the text will be referring to the third person of the godhead and His activity in relationship to you.

You know how you discover that? You start looking at where it’s referred to as ‘it’. Why would He say it? It; it’s that that’s function. ‘The spirit itself maketh intercession.’ You say, why would He say it? Because its spirit to neuter. What’s He talking about? The function of the Holy Spirit.

“By the way, He doesn’t CAUSE you; you’re filling isn’t one of instant ‘speak as the Spirit gives you utterance,’ but it’s as you appropriate by faith God’s Word to you. So it’s an indirect empowerment with us through faith in His Word. It’s important to follow those things.”

Spirit comes, Spirit goes?

I guess I need to stop making ANY promises. I still don’t have internet service as there’s apparently a problem with the phone-jack wiring in my little studio. My efforts to connect last night were unsuccessful. AT&T won’t be able to come out and fiddle with things until Sunday.

*****

In I Sam. 10:6, Samuel says to King Saul, “And the Spirit of the LORD will come upon thee, and thou shalt prophesy with them, and shalt be turned into another man.” One chapter later, Samuel writes, “And the Spirit of God came upon Saul when he heard those tidings, and his anger was kindled greatly.”

Once you arrive at I Samuel 16:13, we’re told “Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the midst of his brethren: and the Spirit of the LORD came upon David from that day forward. So Samuel rose up, and went to Ramah.
[14] But the Spirit of the LORD departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the LORD troubled him.
[15] And Saul's servants said unto him, Behold now, an evil spirit from God troubleth thee.”

Notice the Spirit DEPARTED from Saul and suddenly he was troubled by an evil spirit!

“Can you understand why people believe you can lose your salvation?” says Jordan. “I mean, if the Spirit of God came and regenerated Saul, and planted eternal life in his spirit and justified him, and then he lost it?! If he was sealed by the Spirit, like you and I are, then he lost the seal. If God’s dealing with Saul the same way He deals with us, what does that tell you about your sealing? Is it permanent? It wasn’t for Saul. How can you know it is with you?”

Of course, many misinformed Christians under the all-too-popular “performance system” would answer, “The way you know is if you don’t do all the bad things Saul did.”

Jordan says, “But what if you try hard to obey all the rules of the Bible and then break some? God might take His Spirit . . . you see what kind of conundrum you get into when you don’t put things where they fit?”

*****

Another example is in Judges 16. Samson was a Nazarite who had the Spirit of God come on him, giving him tremendous power and ability, but then Delilah cut his hair, and the sad verse in Judges 16 says, “Samson wist not that the Spirit departed from him.”

It was just like with Saul, but with Saul the Spirit came on him, left and never came back. With Samson, the Spirit came on him, left because of his disobedience, but then came back on him and empowered him and he brought the house down, if you remember.

*****

Then you have David. I Samuel 16:13 says the Spirit of God came on David and never left even though there were times David thought it might.

As David pleads in Psalm 51:11, “Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy spirit from me.” This was part of his confession after the sin of adultery with Bathsheba and the killing of her husband Uriah to cover up his sin. And, of course, the death of the baby.

Jordan says, “You talk about a terrible, terrible thing. You know, we get all mad and fired up about politicians. I mean, here’s the chief executive of God’s nation—an adulterer and a murderer in the king’s palace. And yet David prayed, ‘Take not thy Holy Spirit from me.’ He knew God had every right to do it but He never did. (Confused Bible students read that and say, ‘Bejeebers, what am I going do with all that? How do I decide which one of those fit me?’

“Well, the truth of the matter is none of them fit you because it’s God dealing with Israel in time past. You make a cardinal, fundamental mistake if you take that and try to apply it to us today.”

Take nothing for granted!

Now I can get serious--FINALLY! The waiting will be over tomorrow when AT&T turns the switch on my new UVerse internet service for $14.95 a month. To assure me the long-awaited moment's on its way, FedEx delivered tonight my Installation Kit complete with modem and set-up instructions, etc.

I'm learning more and more as life goes on not to take ANYTHING for granted. My E-Bay "tricked out" (or "street-rodded," as I've also heard it described) Honda Civic DOHC i-Vtec SI is on the blink again. It started making a funny engine noise Sunday morning and then the engine light came on. It will go back into the shop tomorrow.

As far as internet service, I've been without a connection in my home since June. It's been trying. Right now, I'm quickly typing from inside an office of a co-worker (unbenownst to her). The heat is on high and it's boiling hot, so as soon as I finish listenening to Shorewood's evening service, I'm skee-daddling back up to my apartment to put my head out the window for 20 minutes and allow the hurricane-force wind to give me some cool comfort!!!

So, sorry for not yet living up to my new commitment to update the blog daily, but tomorrow I will have an article and then one each day from now on--PROMISE!!!

'Day of' ticket

If you wanted a proper Pauline description for the Rapture it would be “our gathering together under him.”

People get bent out of shape over the use of the word rapture because “it’s not Bible,” but it is scriptural. I mean, what else would you want to call it? Rapture means to be caught up in joy. Surely being caught up to be with the Lord is the ultimate happy experience for a human.

Jordan argues, “We talk about the doctrine of the Trinity and yet the word trinity is not in the Bible. But the doctrine certainly is. It’s one of those unfathomable theological concepts that you really can understand in a sense.

“There are three individual, distinct people in the godhead, all who share equal deity. Just like we are equally human, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are all one in essence and being. But we’re all separate people, aren’t we? It’s important to understand it that way because it isn’t  that God is manifesting Himself as Father and then manifesting Himself as Son and manifesting Himself as Spirit; that’s called modalism. It’s that there is a person called Father, a person called Son and a person called the Spirit, all of whom are as real and distinct in personality as you are from other people.”

*****

Paul uses the term “the day of Christ” in a different way than what you usually hear it described. In I Thessalonians 5, he calls it “the day of the Lord.” Then in I Corinthians 1 he calls it “the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.”  In I Corinthians 5, he calls it “the day of the Lord Jesus.” In Philippians, he’ll call it “the day of Christ.”

Jordan says, “If I talked about ‘the day of the Lord’ and ‘the day of the Lord Jesus Christ’ and ‘the day of Christ,’ would I be talking about the same person all of the time? Isn’t Jesus Christ the Lord Jesus Christ? Isn’t that the full title and His complete name?

“You go through the Old Testament and when you see the term ‘the day of Lord,’ it’s ‘the day of Jehovah.’ But the Jehovah that’s being talked about there, invariably, if you look at the context, will be the second person of the godhead, who is Jesus Christ.

“Now Jehovah is a name that can refer to God the Father. Isaiah 53 says, ‘he was smitten by Jehovah.’ So Jehovah smote Him. But who did Jehovah smite? Zechariah 12 says, ‘They’ll look upon me Jehovah whom they pierced.’ How can Jesus Christ be Jehovah? Well, you understand that in the context of the Trinity. They can have the same name because they’re all God. “

*****

Michigan preacher Tom Bruscha says the “the day of” is really talking about a time that a certain event takes place. “A ‘day of’ doesn’t necessarily mean a 24-hour period,” he says. “The first 35 chapters of Isaiah define 'the day of the Lord.' It means a time period in which a particular event takes place. And you know that just from other terms.

"The Bible talks about ‘the day of atonement’ and ‘the day of first fruits’ (that’s seven days long), for example. Those are certain days in which something is being done and accomplished. An event is taking place.

“There’s certain days of judgment that are expressed just by simply ‘the day of.’ The Bible talks about ‘the day of Midian,’ ‘the day of Egypt,’ ‘the day of Jezreel.’

“When you read a verse like in Zephaniah chapter 1 and it talks about ‘the day of the Lord,’ it says ‘the day of the Lord’ is a day of wrath, a day of trouble, a day of wantonness, a day of darkness, a day of clouds, a day of the trumpets.

“So, if you look at ‘the day of the Lord’ in relation to all those other days, you realize what it’s doing is describing certain events; certain activity in that time called ‘the day of the Lord.’ It’s different aspects of ‘the day of the Lord,’ whether it be ‘the day of wrath,’ or the fact it’s darkness or a time of trouble. ‘The day of the Lord’ is called all of those days, so you realize how you can bring that down.”

Visions of Rapture: Perfect Delight

People are always asking, “Do we have to worry about the tribulation?” Some things don’t change. That, was in fact, a primary worry in Thessalonica during the Apostle Paul’s tenure.

I Thessalonians gives you a real crash course on the type of Believers involved. If you want a see a model church and Believers behaving the way Paul would have them to, the Thessalonians were largely that.

 It isn’t that they didn’t have problems—every chapter identifies some of them—but it’s that they had the solutions to the problems engrained in them. Paul wrote his first epistle to them in Acts 18. The Church at Thessalonica was established in Acts 17.

“They hadn’t been Believers very long but they certainly got the grounding,” says Jordan. “Paul had spent some months there grounding them according to the Pauline design for the edification of a Believer and it took!”

*****

Paul writes to them, “We give thanks to God always for you all, making mention of you in our prayers;
[3] Remembering without ceasing your work of faith, and labour of love, and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ, in the sight of God and our Father.”

Jordan explains, “They’re growing exceedingly in their faith, their charity is abounding toward one another but their patience of hope is under attack. They’re being sustained by their hope but their hope is under attack and you’ll see it chapter 2.”

In II Thessalonians 2, Paul calms them with, “Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him,
[2] That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand.
[3] Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition.”

Jordan explains, “Notice there’s somebody sending out some information to the Thessalonians claiming that it’s coming from Paul. They understood Paul’s apostleship, they understood the authority of Paul in the life of a Believer today, and they’re sending out false information, even counterfeiting God’s Words.

“You know, the Bible version issue didn’t start with you and me. It was a problem in Paul’s day. Here’s some people in the 1^st Century, before the New Testament is completely written, and they’re already counterfeiting Paul’s epistles, corrupting God’s Word.

“When Paul says were not as many, corrupting the Word of God, there’s a lot of people who do that. He’s saying MANY do it. Well, here’s some of them and they’re doing it for the purpose of shaking in mind and troubling the thinking of these saints. They’re trying to make them think the day of Christ is already here; that it’s at hand."

(Editor's Note: To be continued tomorrow and expect a new entry each day from now on!)

Facing the Book

When the writer of Hebrews says in chapter 3:7, “Wherefore (as the Holy Ghost saith, To day if ye will hear his voice,” he’s quoting from Psalm 95 but is really relaying, “It’s not the psalmist who writes it, it’s the Holy Spirit that says it.”

Inspiration is God speaking the words so that what is written down is what God says. When He quotes Psalm 95, He’s quoting what’s written down. When He quotes Isaiah 6, He’s quoting what’s written down. The same goes for Psalm 41 and Psalm 110, for just two more examples.

Another great passage for this biblical testimony is in II Peter 1:16-21, when Peter makes reference to being an eyewitness at the Mount of Transfiguration in Matthew 17.

In essence, Peter says, “We were up there and I can testify to the truthfulness of that. When we talk about Christ coming back and His coming in the kingdom, we haven’t just been telling you cunningly devised fables or stories we’ve made up. I mean, man, we were eyewitnesses to all this stuff! We SAW the majesty! We SAW the glory! We HEARD the heavens open and God the Father say, ‘This is my beloved Son in whom I’m well-pleased.’ ”

Verse 19-21 reads, “We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts:
[20] Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.
[21] For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.”

---

Jordan explains, “He’s simply saying that even though you’ve got the eyewitness account and, ‘I was there but I’ve got something that’s more sure than the eyewitness account. You see, the eyewitness accounts mean nothing when you compare them with the Book and the written account of the Word of God. We have a more sure word of prophecy.’

“The Word of God written down is more sure, dependable, steadfast than any eyewitness account. Human experience is NEVER the basis of your faith. Your faith always has to be in the Word of God.”

*****

Jordan continues, “Some of you have probably heard somebody swear, ‘But I heard him speak in tongues.’ Others will tell you they’ve had the experience themselves of speaking in tongues. I’ve told you all about my friend Down South who once bought a book from a guy in California on how to speak in tongues. The friend didn’t believe he could do it, went into the closet, turned the light off, shut the door, did what the book said and did it! While he was doing it, he was thinking, ‘I don’t believe I’m doing this!’ and yet he WAS doing it. And he couldn’t stop! Finally he wound down and got out of the closet and said, ‘Man, I’m gonna burn that book up! That’s dangerous!’

“If you base your faith on experience-oriented things, you’re never going to have any sure foundation. What he’s saying is experience is not nearly as safe. You see, people, if your experience, and what you can see, what’s happened to you, crosses what God Almighty says in that book, throw out your experience! You’re too easily deceived by sight. ‘We have a more sure word of prophecy.’ Eyewitness accounts don’t mean a thing when you compare them to the book.

“Verse 20 says that ‘no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.’ Private means it doesn’t have its own interpretation; it’s not its own idea of what it’s supposed to say. It’s not its own ideas.  ‘For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.’

“In other words, it didn’t come because the men wanted to write it down, it came because God told them to. It didn’t have human origin.

“That guy back in I Kings 13 didn’t even know he was going to do it. He’s sitting there have a meal with this young guy, wanting to get some pointers on how you get the king to do what you want him to do. You see, it’s not of human origin.

“The definition of inspiration as it’s found in II Tim. 3:16 has to do with the fact all scripture comes right out of the mouth of God. There’s a reason god did it that way.”

*****

Hebrews 4:12 says, “For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”

Jordan says, “God has given man a point of contact with Himself and that point of contact is the written Word of God. God’s design in inspiration is to make His word equal to Himself. So that when you’re dealing with God, you’re dealing with His word. And when you’re dealing with His word, you’re dealing with God.

“God’s design is to make the living word and written word equal with one another. That’s the authority of that Book. That’s why it’s called God’s Word. The Word of God is quick, it’s alive--it’s living. Therefore it can work in our lives. It produces things in our lives. You don’t have the Word of God in your heart and soul without it producing. It affects you. You know that.

“It works effectually, Paul says, in you that believe. It’s living and powerful. It’s got energy; it’s got strength. It’ sharper than any two-edged sword with the ability to separate between the soul and the spirit. Sometimes you and I can’t do that. We look at things, and boy I tell you, being able to separate between the soul and spirit without the Word of God—you wouldn’t know there was a difference between them.

“It says it’s a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. That word ‘discerner,’ it’s the idea of a critic. In other words, when you read the Bible, it reads you. Now there isn’t any other book around like that. It’s a different kind of book.

“You see when you read the Word of God, God has given to His Word the attributes of God Himself. Therefore the word can discern, it can READ you because God can. When you come to that Book, folks, the motive that you come with it will find out. And it will give you back just what you come for!

“He says in verse 13, ‘Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight.’ That’s God’s sight. ‘But all things are naked and open.’ That’s God. But the antecedent is the Word of God. You see, what He does is He personifies the Word of God and so the reference there is to God and to God’s Word.

“God’s design is that when you’re dealing with this Book, you’re not just dealing with any other book, you’re dealing with God’s Book, therefore it can go inside and read your heart. As they say out in the world, ‘It’ll read your meter.’

“You notice He says the Word of God is ‘sharper than any two-edged sword.’ Come with me to Revelation 19:11. It reads, ‘And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war.’

---

“The person is the Lord Jesus Christ, of course, and He had a name. The name is the Word of God. Jesus Christ is equal to the word. You say, ‘Why would John call Christ the Word of God? The reason he does it is God’s design in His Word is that He’s equal to the Word so John can use the terms interchangeably.

Revelation 19:15 says, “And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.”

Jordan explains, “You see it goes out of His mouth. You see, folks, when you’re facing the Lord Jesus Christ, as these people are, you know what you’re facing? It’s just like facing the Book. Listen, when you sit and read that Book, that’s like God Almighty sitting across the table from you talking to you. And when you read it, don’t you ever forget that! Now, if you won’t forget that, you’ll fall in love with that book in a way you never did before. And it will consume you. It will pull and tug at you and you won’t ever want to get too far away from it.

“But don’t you ever forget that when that Book begins to deal with you, that’s why it’s doing it. If God Almighty were to stand here tonight and say something to you and you’d do it because He stood here and said it to you, and you wouldn’t do it because that Book said it to you, there’s something wrong with you spiritually. It’s the same difference and that’s the design.”

Phocas the Gardener

In the 4^th Century in what is now Turkey, a man named Phocas lived in a little town called Sinope. There were walls around the city gate and he owned a little house with a garden just outside the gate.

Phocas tended the garden and made his living selling its fruits. At that time period, the government sat at the gates and controlled the entrances and exits to the cities. If you were a merchant you had to pay a tariff to go into the city and sell your wares.

So Phocas sat outside the gate, and as people were going in and out of the city, they passed right by his house. He would greet them and offer to let them come and sit in the cool of his garden and enjoy a rest. He had fruit and drink refreshments and was known for his hospitality to strangers.

Phocas used the opportunity to speak to them about his faith and he became known as ‘The Christian at the Gate.’ He did this until he was an old man and was widely respected and jeered alike.

One day things changed. Diocletian, the Roman emperor, instituted a purging of Christians from the empire and declared that all Christians were to be killed. He sent a band of Roman soldiers to Sinope with secret orders to capture and publicly execute Phocas.

When the band of soldiers came, riding across into the city, they arrived at the gate weary and tired and Phocas was there to greet them. Not knowing who they were or what they were sent to do, Phocas treated them as long lost friends, bringing them into his garden and offering them refreshments.

Because they were strangers in town, Phocas offered them lodging and put them up for the night inside his home. During the evening meal, as they all were talking, he asked, “What is your business here?” to which the soldiers responded, “Our business is really a secret but we can trust you seeing as you’re a man of honor and hospitality.”

The soldiers then revealed, “We’ve been sent by the emperor to search out a dangerous person. His name is Phocas. And he’s a follower of that dangerous Jesus that the Christians are all talking about.  He’s a danger to the empire and he must be executed. If you know him, could you please help us find him?”

Phocas immediately answered, “I do know him very well. And he’s very near. In the morning I’ll help you with your business.”

The men went to bed as Phocas contemplated what he should do. He could escape; he had 10-12 hours to get away before they awoke and could be 20-30 miles away and out of danger. But if he did, these Roman soldiers, sent on orders of the emperor, would return with their mission unfulfilled and likely lose their lives for not executing their task.

Phocas was in a quandary, and the way the story's been passed down, it only took him a few minutes to decide what he was to do. He took a shovel, went out to his garden and began to dig. All night he dug.

The next morning he had a grave built and was standing in it, leaning on his shovel, when the captain of the guard came seeking him and asked, “What’s going on?” Phocas then told him who he was.

The men were astonished. They were reluctant to execute him but Phocas wouldn’t have it. He said, “If you let me live, the chances are great that you won’t live. I have no bitterness against you. My heart is filled with the hope of heaven.”

Eventually the soldiers executed him, assured by Phocas’ declaration of, “I’m not mad; I’m not bitter. This is the way life is. If you’re a follower of Jesus Christ, this is what you do. My Savior didn’t flee from Gethsemane; He didn’t flee from the Cross and I won’t flee from bearing this.”

The soldiers buried him in his grave and put a monument on top of it and the story of Phocas the Gardener was passed down for 10 centuries. The monument stood until the 15^th century when the Ottomans overthrew the Byzantine Empire in 1543 and destroyed the monument.

For almost a thousand years the monument stood as a testament to the man whose body was in the grave but whose soul was with his Savior.

The moral is the hope of heaven removes fear. It makes life REAL life and we today can dare to live a little more like Phocas and a little less like the way we’re prone to.

Fluency

The Old Testament is quoted in the New Testament about 250 times and is alluded to some 850 times. There are only five books in the Old Testament that are not quoted in the New Testament.

How do the New Testament writers view the Old Testament? As inspired. How do the New Testament writers view each other? As inspired.

*****

Singing, we’re told in the Bible, has a very special design: It expresses the faith of a person’s heart. That’s why Paul says, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts.

One of the methodologies for the Word dwelling in the heart is by singing and one of the ways to hide God’s Word in your heart is to take it and put it in song.

*****

“Love can be understood only ‘from the inside,’ as a language can be understood only be someone who speaks it, as a world can be understood only by someone who lives in it.” Robert C. Solomon

10/2/10

At last summer’s family Bible conference I finally got caught. Before the evening service, a friend sitting next to me at a cramped table in the front row saw a bunch of permanent magic-marker scribbles marring the entire inside cover of my Scofield KJV.

He picked up my Bible and flipped to its title page and found dozens more scribbles. He gave me this look like, “Are you from Mars?!” and then whispered, “I’ve definitely got to hear this story.” Thankfully the service had just begun and I was off the hook. I didn’t have to explain how they were deadline dates I had written down and later scratched out.

This past Saturday I got out my black marker and my Bible for what HAS to be the last deadline. I wrote in it 10/2/10. Earlier in the day, I was working on writings for my book and realized my brand-new HP Pavilion laptop had a defective keyboard. Among other things, the left corner of the board’s inner casing was loose and the left side of the space bar didn’t move the cursor.

This was all very upsetting to me since I had already downloaded all my files, etc. to this new machine and I didn’t know whether I’d be able to get a replacement or wait for it to be fixed, etc., etc.

Thankfully, as per my after-church visit to a Best Buy on

Golf Road

in Schaumburg, I am now waiting on a Dell Inspiron laptop that I hope to pick up Wednesday after their Geek Squad has reloaded all the proprietary software I had purchased for the HP. My new Dell model will be in “lotus pink” color since it was the only machine left from the store’s weekend sales.

******

So, to get back to this date I wrote down in my Bible, it is the last entry of a very embarrassing process begun in 2004, shortly after I quit my Park Avenue office job in Manhattan for the sole purpose of writing a book. The date stands for me devoting at least one hour a day—no matter what—to completing my book. It also stands for me making my life Christ’s life in general. In other words, stop all selfish living and independent decision-making. His will is to be my will.

*****  

Jordan says many years ago he copied out of a book a poem that he then wrote down in the flyleaf of his Bible. It reads:

“My pail I’m often dropping, deep down into this well. Yet never touched the bottom, however deep it fell. And though I keep on dipping, and by study, faith and prayer, I have no power to measure the living water there.”

Jordan explains, “That’s because that book is the written Word that declares and makes known the LIVING Word!”

******

Jordan says that when talking about living in the identity God gives you in Christ, “you’re talking about having a truthful, honest scriptural memory of your past as well as your future.”

He continues, “Because as a believer your past goes back to where? It no longer goes back to Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden; it now goes back to Christ and Calvary. You see that is a memory about your past. That is a way you understand your past history and the radical change that’s been in it. And that does effect the way you think about yourself in the now, doesn’t it, and what’s going to happen to you in the future.

******

In Numbers 11, it says the “mixed multitude among them fell a lusting.” The (Red Sea survivors) complained, “We remember the fish, the cucumbers, the leeks, the melon. All we got’s this stupid manna but boy we can remember those big feasts we had in Egypt!”

Jordan says, “Now what was the reality of Egypt? They were slaves! Was life so wonderful there? Was the food they had to eat; were they eating at Pharaoh’s court? No, they were a bunch of slaves seeking out what they could get. They weren’t getting roast salmon and halibut and grouper. They were getting carp and smelt, mullet, bottom-crawlers, catfish, river buzzards. They weren’t eating high on the hog.

“But they get out over here and they completely readjusted the past. And it made them real dissatisfied with the present. Now, if they had thought properly, what would they have done? They’d have said, ‘We got this manna, it’s like coriander seed. We can make anything in the world out of this stuff! God gives it to us every day!’

“Not only do they get completely bored with what they have but then they reinvent the past. Memories. You got to be careful. What you’ll discover is that the negative memories you create are very, very dangerous to your relationships. So what do you do? Nurture fondness, nurture admiration, nurture love and respect. Focus on the things that make you.

“You need to develop; you need to write out your story. You need to have it written out, memorialized and kept. You need to tell it to your family. You need to have it where you can go and repeat it. For example, have you ever sat down with a picture album? At funerals now it’s the popular thing to put up pictures and remember. That’s just, ‘Retell the story.”

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The biblical definition of the word “submit” is “to give your heart over to another person’s will,” explains Jordan. “Sub is under. You put yourself under them. You give your heart over to your spouse’s will, for example. That’s the challenge; that’s the dare of love. It’s the dare of faith. And if you dare to do it by faith, because God said to do it, you’ve made the decision based upon the truth of what God’s Word is.

“My emotions can follow the truth, the decision, and if they don’t, I’m still doing what’s right. If I’ve allowed my emotions to look at something and say, ‘NO, I won’t follow!’ if they look at your balance and it’s overdrawn, your emotions aren’t going to follow.

“And if you know what God’s Word says to do and you do it by faith and your emotions don’t follow, it’s because that bank account with your name on it is empty! If it has a balance your emotions will look at it and say ‘Oh, hey, there’s a guy/gal that values me, I can feel good about them!’

“But if your will says, ‘Here’s your Savior, you’re to serve Him, submit to Him,’ and your emotions look at a bank account that’s overdrawn, they say, ‘Oh no, that won’t mean me good.’ And they respond that way. This is terribly important for you to understand. You can’t allow the tyranny of your emotions to run your life and make decisions or you’re going to wind up in the can. You’ll wind up in error; you’ll wind up in a kind of destruction. It doesn’t work to let your emotions run you. That’s why some little strategies don’t work. That’s why the selfish demands, and the disrespectful judgments, and the angry outbursts, and the independent behavior, they don’t work. They’re not strategies that get success. They just get more of the same.”