Study Matthew 10 Today w/ Lena's Journalin'

I’d like to center in on a few key scriptures today for greater understanding sake.
Give as freely as you have received!
Received what?
Salvation, the freedom to make the righteous choice, for eternal life.
Healing
Deliverance
Whatever else God has shown you by revelation and has given you by His Spirit.
The things we’ve received are free gifts from our Father God and our Father loves that we have believed and have received them. He’s given us an abundance for the purpose of sharing. God is all about sharing. If one will not share, what he has may even be taken away from Him. If he is unwilling to even speak of it with others, verbally sharing his faith in God, it may be that it is not a genuine reception of the free gift of salvation. Their faith could be weak and not strong enough to hold on to what one has received.
The kingdom of God is all about sowing and reaping, giving and receiving. Not of buying and selling, getting more and more for me and mine only.
“Look, I am sending you out as sheep among wolves.
There is a spiritual warfare that we are already a part of. When we receive Jesus we’ll hopefully have our eyes opened to it. We must know that what we have received, the enemy of God is after, especially our belief in eternal salvation and anything we are told that God has given us.
The enemy wants to steal it away even after we have believed in it. His biggest tactic in any area one’s faith increases in is, to lie to you. “Did God REALLY say that, that way? Did He REALLY mean that for you, or just for others, but it’s not really for you?”
The enemy is a thief and a liar and the truth cannot even be found in him, he is a wolf among sheep, the place he is most found is among those who are attempting to believe and be taught in the ways of the Lord.
When we “get saved” we have come into the very place he sows tares in to try to uproot our newfound faith. Be aware, he may look like a sheep, or even a shepard, but he is NOT! (in the mind, he always challenges the very things we are studying in the Bible).
You’ll know him by His lies. The only way to be and stay free of him and his divisive trickery, is to know the truth. This is why older Christians tell younger Christians to read the word of God daily. If you are My disciples indeed- you’ll know the truth – by studying and searching to learn about it, and that truth will set and keep you free!
Don’t be afraid of those who want to kill your body; they cannot touch your soul.
Fear only God, who can destroy both soul and body in hell.
Fear is another area the enemy lies to us in and uses to cause doubt to fill our minds and hearts. Fear opposes faith. Yep, it is the opposition. One must fear the Lord above all else. That means one who desires to follow the Lord, must believe His words above every manipulative lie. Each disciple of the Lordship of Christ must trust the Lord, even above his own mental reasoning. He must relay on the Lord for what he does not see.
Ever notice satan always appeals to the 5 senses, the sense realm? On the other hand, God appeals to the spirit man and the spirit and eternal realms. Think about that. The sense realm is only for here, while we are physically alive on earth. It helps us navigate our physical way around earth, as earth beings. BUT we are not mere earth beings, we are spirit beings, living in earth bodies, and we have clearly seen people live a supernatural way in earth suits. Jesus was one who rose above the mere sense realm. That does not mean we do not use our senses, they were given us by God, we use them, but we do not allow them to govern and rule us, we have a Master who rules above the human senses.
There is another sense that all other senses need to bow to. An eternal sense.
If one gets a glimpse of that, they can endure a whole gamut of attacks on the human senses here.
THE question of all time is... PLEASE get this, for it is a huge Kingdom of heaven key - If they touch your senses, or hurt or harm your physical body, or torment and lie to your soul (mind, will, and the emotional part) will you give your eternal faith up? This is the story of Job. This is our story too.
“You don’t know what they’ve done to me….You don’t know how they treat me…if you only knew what I have to go home to…there are some things I can never tell or describe that I’ll carry with me my whole life….” These are stories we all have. NOT one story is too large an obstacle or too great an impossibility for what Jesus did on the cross to remove the power of it against any human who believes in and receives Him. Not one.
The question is – will you curse God and die?
Or will you say, as Job did, “though You slay me, (Because I think in my mind, as the enemy lies to me and tells me You don’t care enough about me to save me from these diseases of my body or soul) I will forever bless Your name”?
Job got there. So must we.
Every challenge in life is about that. Will you choose to or refuse to forgive, will you love God no matter what happens to your body or soul?no matter the in or affliction?
When you are arrested, don’t worry about how to respond or what to say. God will give you the right words at the right time. For it is not you who will be speaking—it will be the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.
Worry is the enemy of trust. It is the test of faith in God. If/as one worries they do not trust God. There is no measurement. I can’t even worry a little and say I trust God. They do not go together. If I trust God, especially for what I cannot see, I have faith in Him. Whatever is not of faith is sin. God has no pleasure in me trying to work it out inwardly or figure it out. He is all in for faith which works by love. Faith which has demonstrable action.
If I need a job, I should look for one and go to work at one, not worry while I wait for Him to bring one to me!
If you are treated wrongly, you don’t need to argue or prove your point. Do you believe God is for you? If not, why not? Is it based on circumstance or in faith in His word which you have faithfully studied? Have you begun to study His words yet?
Whenever a person is non-trusting or worrisome, it is pretty easy to tell they don’t know God well enough yet, have not read His word much believing it at face value, and haven’t built their faith up enough yet to believe in it yet, taking God at His word period.
Everyone who acknowledges me publicly here on earth, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven. But everyone who denies me here on earth, I will also deny before my Father in heaven.
If we are not changing and showing our faith-walk to the world we live in by daily demonstration, to where people notice we’ve changed, especially in our heart motives and attitudes; then we need to submit ourselves to development. Our witness needs to be so outward that this is our new lifestyle, a visible lifestyle. He is our all in all, our conversation. If He is not that important to us and we are not that consumed with love for our Lord, then the question needs to be asked, “Is He yet become our personal Lord?” If we find He has not been Lord over our choices and actions, because I’ve allowed Him to be, then how do I change that? I become His bond slave. I begin to love, serve, and obey Him, as I do, my love will increase. This walk is not a feeling walk, it is a faith and obedience walk!
I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. Your enemies will be right in your own household!’

This part of the passage can easily be misunderstood by the natural minded man in each of us. So we start by asking, “Why would God a Father Himself, be against the family, isn’t He the one who set up the very design of family?”
Yes He did, and yes He is a family God, who is called Our Father.
We are all born into natural families with natural blood, that blood was tainted and stained by the sin nature and the unrighteous choices of mankind. Therefore every man must stand before God and be born again, cleaned out of the stains of natural blood and made spiritually and eternally alive in Christ. It is the grace of God that while we are alive on earth we find out about this breech and are actually offered the repair with God as our One and only True and eternal Father.
That has to be the most important thing in all of our lives lived here, is finding out about Jesus and making it right with God as our eternal Father – FIRST. This has to be first.
With some, there is a very strong natural love, for their natural families, so much so, that they’d choose them first, even above considering God as their true and eternal Father and Jesus as Savior and Lord, acknowledging Jesus as the precious Son of God who came to repair the breech between every man and God as their true Father.
All must acknowledge God as eternal Father, with complete loyalty and allegiance to Him in life, first. This decision must be so important in priority, even to the possible separation of a natural family, if in fact that decision would happen to cause that kind of a separation of family members.
The decision for God as eternal Father and earthly Master must be made, and it is imperative to eternal salvation. If we do not love God that much here, we’ll not be with Him in eternity later on.
This could and should be a life altering decision each human makes, even if it means your family disagrees or would think to disown you. It does NOT mean become a person of strife who argues your new found faith with your family.
The cross in demonstration and in the practical application of your faith is this : I love God enough to change my own lifestyle and emanate His great and unconditional love for others, especially those of your own (possibly very hard to live with) households.
I cannot just do with my family what we’ve always done together if it offends my new Father-Master, which is now my God. If my family and I did drugs together each Friday night, I’d separate from them and stop doing that behavior. I would not tell them they need to stop. I’d stop. I’m serving God and it offends Him, so as far as I’m concerned, I do not participate with my family in that anymore.
If my family gets together or we call one another and gossip together about other family members, I must stop choose to that, for I am no longer my own person, living as I deem. My Father is offended when I gossip about other people, so I stop. I steer the conversations to other areas, or I politely tell my family member I need to get off of the phone. I may tell them I have now chosen to speak differently where speaking of others is concerned. If they are angry and choose to stay away from me, then it is a price I willingly pay for in order to please My new Father God, for what He thinks of my behavior is what matters most to me.
I pray that my family will see me changing and desire to be changed by His great love for them also. I do not offend them on purpose. I love them out of their darkness. I love them into His love for them just as they are, so they desire to be changed as I also am changed. Being irritated at them for doing drugs or gossiping does not work His love in them, they are sinners, sinners sin. It is wrong to make a sinner act like a saint when they don’t yet know God. You act as God likes you to act, and love them as you walk out your faith-walk. He’ll use these unsaved ungodly people to develop the loving people part of the cross in us. He’ll use them to develop patience and all kinds of spiritual fruits in us.


“If you love your father or mother more than you love me, you are not worthy of being mine;

or if you love your son or daughter more than me, you are not worthy of being mine.

If you refuse to take up your cross and follow me, you are not worthy of being mine.

If you cling to your life, you will lose it; but if you give up your life for me, you will find it.

Remember the cross represents loving God first, then because of that great love we have for our Father, we love who He loves - people, just as He loved us.
If we only love Him, but have a hard time loving people, our love for Him is not yet strong enough. It needs to be strengthened by obedient actions. If we say we love God, but somehow cannot bring ourselves into a discipline with action to find love for others, we’re liars, His proven truth is not yet in us.
That is clinging to our own lives, lived out our own ways. We must lose that thinking and change our behaviors in order to be faithful ones who are really living now for that life eternal.