arisewithhope

Traits of True Saving Faith:

The Faith is from God, and not of the self. There is no way a man or woman, boy or girl can save themselves. Salvation only comes from God. Therefore, we must receive saving faith under God’s terms, and it must be the kind of faith God approves for us and accepts from us for it to save us from our sins.

Saving faith understands the need all mankind has for being saved from their own personal sin. And that personal sin of yours and mine has offended The perfectly, pure, innocent, holy and without blemish Jesus of Nazareth, The Lord of Glory.

The faith is active, alive, and fed by God—It is fed primarily by the Word of God itself-The Bible. Dead faith is in danger of being withered and burned up, along with the person possessing the dead faith.

Will the sermon you hear inspire faith? If the message brings glory to Jesus, it will focus on his qualities and characteristics. The focus of the message will not just be about blessings, health and prosperity. It will be balanced and talk about both the free gift of salvation from God, but also the way God changes us in our hearts, disciplines us when we do wrong, trains us in righteousness, and challenges our faith to grow according to God’s plan revealed in His word. Some of His plan involves some measure of suffering for each of us.

It recognizes Jesus as Lord, and Him Alone as Lord (in unity with the Father and The Holy Spirit).

It understands the difference between what it means to be affected by the Lordship of Jesus rather than just thinking you’re saved because Jesus is “the Savior”.

It wants to understand the requirements of God. The 10 commandments were called the 10 commandments, not the 10 suggestions. And we can say there is much instruction in God’s word that is not a suggestion but are commandments other than the 10 commandments.

It understands that there is no salvation without repentance.

True saving faith brings gladness and thanksgiving to the heart and mind, and inspires our true praise and worship of God, even as we go through times of difficulty and through the all too common pains of life.

With it we bear good fruit for the kingdom of God that will last through the suffering, and difficulties, and hardships we may go through in this life.

These are some basic traits that come to my mind. Leave a comment if you can think of any I may have missed. LG

In His Service,

Lisa Groen

Fruit of the Spirit Part 1 –Self-Control; What is Growing In Your Garden?

It is widely known that the Bible encourages the Christian to cultivate a healthy relationship with God. In following Christ well and being a productive Christian, we are going to encounter situations and opportunities to shape us either to become what the Bible calls a person filled with the fruits of the Spirit, or one who bears bad fruit. A third, fourth, and fifth group of persons which scripture mentions in Mark 4:1-20, are additional groups. The third group of people is one in which the seed is sown beside the path. They hear the word, Satan comes immediately and takes away what was sown. The fourth is a group in which the seed is planted in rocky soil and the seed sprouts but they have no root because there are rocks and the soil is shallow, so they can’t endure affliction or persecution and they wither; the fourth group are like seed sown among thorns, and are those who hear the word but the cares of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches enter in and choke out the word and it becomes unfruitful. In this article I will be discussing groups one and two. For groups three to five, I will be saving the discussion for a later time.

In particular, Christian fruit is categorized in Galatians 5:22-23. It says, ^“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.” Of these nine virtues, self-control is the last one mentioned, and in today’s culture it seems to widely be seen in diminishing quantities possibly due to several reasons. Some reasons most likely could be things such as the internet where everything is at your fingertips, with easy access for the consumer to obtain a wide variety of common vices and distractions, and the instant access we have to literally thousands of categories of purchasable things that were much harder to come by a mere 100 years ago. Because of instant gratification that is used as a replacement for God by the wayward, the wayward become moved off a course to exercise patience. The distractions come pouring in either because at worst I seek them out, or at best my defenses are low and I find it hard to fight an enemy that seems so compatible and likeable and so unassuming. I find myself believing the lie that what comes easy must have my best interest in mind, and should be what I should pursue all the while. Yet I find myself having failed again to pursue the development of self-control. I think I am growing stronger but I am paradoxically growing weaker.

These things give rise to the exercise of low tolerance, dwarfed patience, piercing impulsivity and the me first push for success. We end up with little room for the appetite for and practice of self-control. Sound familiar? The cultural scarcity of self-control has been amplified by the cultural advances in every avenue of science and industry which makes available more vices and distractions, as well as what seem to be practical and useful inventions. In spite of this the Christian in the Bible over and over is admonished to challenge him/herself to pursue holiness which includes embracing the fruits of the Spirit, which we without the help of the Spirit, cannot develop in our Christian life.

What are the implications today then on the Christian as the virtue of self-control clashes with our cultural style and approach and encroachment of secular norms? Christians are called to navigate various rocky rapids in our situational rivers in small boats with Jesus. And the widespread phenomenon in the last 50-100 years or so of a depleting of the cultural norm to see the exercise of self-control as a healthy daily expectation of oneself related to habits and business and in our entertainment choices could possibly point to the subjective value of the virtue of patience rising at least among those who seem to be depleted of it. We can assume its development in the lives of Christians who struggle with self-control could be highly desirable to them. It is the simple theory of supply and demand where the supply and demand have an inverse relationship. This states when the supply is high the demand is low and when the supply is low the demand is high..

To explain the cultural challenges we today face a little more deeply for the Christian, with our duties, jobs, chores, and schedules we may seem to have in pursuit, it seems to some as an unreachable goal, or at least impractical, although as well as can seem unrealistic, to crucify sins or the hindrances in our lives to our self control developing. To those who mean well but entertain its scarcity the hinderance of doubting its progressive development can set that the average person might prize simply because the fail to pursue self -control if loose living and it brings a great deal of peace when patience levels are high. parents and teachers and professions in which service work of any kind is involved can benefit God’s people, but self-control has value and virtue in interpersonal and business relationships even for the non-Christian. And under these conditions the Bible explains it is not only possible for the Christian to develop self-control in the midst of our dark generation, but it is also God’s delight to cause this fruit to grow and develop in our lives.

As it says in Psalm 35:27b which reads, “The Lord be exalted, Who delights in the prosperity of His servant.” It is speaking of spiritual prosperity notwithstanding material prosperity. Another virtue of Self-control is that it helps the Christian to follow Christ in living a life God can be pleased with. God is looking for open hearts to plant His word still more in them.

According to cornerstone.edu self-control is “The war between impulsivity and doing what is right or beneficial. It’s the ability to control emotions, impulses or behaviors to achieve a greater goal.”

According to Jerry Bridges, “Self-control is the exercise of inner strength under the direction of sound judgement that enables us to do, think, and say things that are pleasing to God.”

According to whatifearning.com in an article entitled “self-control and peace”, “Self-control is a societal issue (Proverbs 16:32): lack of self-control leads people to not accepting limits on their behavior and harming others through their choices. Patience is one of the keys to self-control and involves actively experiencing the time we are in, not rushing on to the next thing. It is not a passive virtue.”

Self-control is a form of inner strength because Proverbs 25:28 tells us “Like a city that is broken down and without walls is a man whose spirit is without self-restraint.”

2 Timothy 1:7 says, “For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline.”

Two main kinds of self-control are self-restraint and self-discipline. Both are parts of Biblical self- control. Self-restraint has to do with stopping oneself from doing a sin or thinking sinful thoughts, while self-discipline can be more about completing a healthy habit or doing an action or step that Christ has trained us in for following Him in the pathway of righteousness.

Proverbs 29:18 says “Where there is no revelation, people cast off restraint; But blessed is the one who heeds wisdom’s instruction.”

1 Corinthians 9:24-27 Do you not know that in a race all the runners run but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive aa perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So, I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.

Titus 1:8 But hospitable, a lover of good, self-controlled, upright, holy, and disciplined.

How Does God Prepare His People to Live for Him?

Titus 2:11-14 For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.

God in His word calls people to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions. What does renounce mean? According to Dictionary Definitions from Oxford Languages, it means to “formally declare one’s abandonment of (a claim, right, or possession). Similar: refuse to abide by. Reject and stop using or consuming. “he renounced drugs and alcohol completely”. In law: “refuse or resign a right or position, especially one as an heir or trustee.” Similar: to refuse to recognize or abide by any longer.” “declare that one will no longer engage in or support.” To renounce something, we declare with our actions we chose to abandon our sin and turn to God, we reject and stop using or consuming; we refuse or resign a right or position; and we declare that we will not longer engage in or support the sin, whether the sin involves action or inaction, such as in a sin of commission or omission.

We must know what sin is, or as Titus puts it, what ungodliness is and worldly passions are in order to renounce them. We must accept God’s definition of ungodliness (i.e. worldly passions or sins) if we are to be accurate in our renouncing for two main reasons: It is God Himself who lives out and knows and explains His qualities of godliness better than anyone, and He does so in the Bible, so God is the only One to accurately define and categorize the traits of ungodliness, or sin, or worldly passions, whatever you would like to call them. God warns us about sin. That is His nature because He loves us. Sin does damage and causes death, both spiritual and physical.

Over the course of about 1500 years, God chose men to write His words down, and those writings later were gathered together into a single book and became the Bible. Therefore, by reading and understanding the Bible we can know God and His traits, and we can identify and renounce things that are contrary to God, which are sin, ungodliness and worldly passions with confidence that we are renouncing real sin, real ungodliness and real worldly passions.

Does the Bible say we receive redemption from lawlessness passively or with action? It is not entirely with passivity, because we are at least thinking about that truth of salvation that it is God’s gift to us when we exercise our faith in the completed work of Christ in his work of redemption. We are moved by God to follow Christ. However, it is not our actions that cause the redemption, but redemption received by faith in Christ that results in acts of goodness coming through our lives that we have a zeal for. The zeal for good works that He gives us motivate us away from lawlessness or sin, giving us power and inner strength to renounce our sin, and point us toward godliness and holiness.

The self-control spoken of in Titus 2:11-14, which again says, “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.”, has self-control pictured as a spiritual meat, giving us spiritual strength in our Christian lives which God has combined with many other virtues like contentment, and moderation, wisdom, and gentleness, sweetness, consideration toward others, keeping in step with the Spirit, and with love, to name a few.

Let’s give a few examples of self-control to round out the picture of it in our minds.

Self-control is pictured with contentment that Moses was directed to show when he was told by God to not smite the rock but speak to it. He didn’t speak to it alone but also smote it and erred in this way and missed entering the promised land.

Self-control is pictured with moderation that Joseph showed to his brothers when they were brought before him when he planted a metal object in the supplies their horses were carrying that belonged to him, and made it look like they stole it from him to put the fear of repercussions happening to them from him as needy as they were, and he let them think about the strangeness of that mystery to haunt them about their sin of selling them into slavery, but yet He didn’t turn them away from him or kill them but provided food for them and for his father and Benjamin his brother who was left behind.

Self-control is pictured with wisdom in Solomon saving the baby’s life and discerning the liar from the real mother and giving it to her for good, and winning the respect and trust of the mass of people in his kingdom.

Self-control is pictured with gentleness and seen in Jesus many times. One such time is when the woman who was caught in the act of adultery was brought before Jesus who had many accusers. He bent down and wrote in the sand. He stood up and said He who is without sin, cast the first stone. One by one her accusers left, from the oldest first to the youngest. He said to her “woman, where are your accusers? Has no one condemned you?” she said “no one Lord” He said “neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.

Self-control is pictured with sweetness in the way Jesus was speaking to the 5,000 men plus women and children who had the benefit of hearing him speak, then seeing him provide bread and fish by multiplying it supernaturally, which was a lot better than a free audience giveaway on Oprah, because they got to see the Son of God in operation Himself, filling a need, giving a good talk which they would chew on and digest, and then a free lunch on the house.

Self-control is pictured with consideration toward others when Paul planed on visiting the Corinthians who accused him of being weighty in his letters but contemptible in person in 2 Corinthians but this is the same Paul who wanted to go visit them to provide them some spiritual gift that they could grow by it earlier in 1 Corinthians. He recognizes he is pictured by some as the refuse of all things, but he is doing his job as an apostle, anyway, because he loves Jesus and loves others more than he loves himself it so seems.

Self-control is seen in keeping in step with the Spirit as people were carred about to do unusual things to fulfill a plan or part of the plan of God for large numbers of people. Phineas who grabbed a sensor and offered an offering for the Israelites and stopped the plague. And it was seen in Paul and Peter’s witness among the mob who was shouting “great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” and who were a threat to becoming violent as they began their shouting match. And they kept their cool and witnessed to them. And there are many other examples of self-control used in keeping in step with the Spirit, not the least of which is Moses speaking to Pharaoh and doing miracles by the power of God which gave him time to repent and then leading God’s people out of Egypt safely to the promised land. And Daniel following the Lord’s lead instead of what his leaders wanted and keeping true to the Lord and being adaptable to God in prayer, even when it wasn’t comfortable and being thrown in the lions den, and Ezekiel having to lay on his side and be ill in prayer for 390 days as a sign to people and also perhaps because of the spiritual intensity of what principalities and powers he was fighting in prayer, strengthened by God to oppose the will of the enemy and be in favor to the will of God.

What better example of love coupled with self-control than when Jesus upon the cross saw them hurling insults at Him and saying “if you are the Son of God call the angels of God to come and take you down off the cross! And He forgave them and said “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” He offered forgiveness to the ones inflicting violent pains upon Him. And another example of self-control coupled with love, which was Noah preparing an ark for his family was moved with Godly fear and humility, and prepared an ark for himself and his family and witnessed to the people of his day that God was going to judge the earth with a flood, even though it got him many many insults and mockery.

Self-control when coupled by the people of God to different virtues was often successful to strengthen them to follow Him and keep them safe from harm, deliver them from dangers and perils, and cause them to bear fruit and aide them in the process of trusting God as He was leading and providing for them. Every Christian needs this virtue in operation, and if it is not there or weakly appearing in our lives, God will make sure we have opportunities for our exercise of it. Self-control is akin to patience because when we think about countering our fleshly indulgences that in spite of our best intentions sometimes flare up we discover the need to crucify them as scripture instructs. Our fleshly indulgencies such as overeating, gambling, swearing, stealing, lust and others, may be found are often engaged in with impulse, and to counter an impulse you must practice self-control, patience and initiative.

The Christian life is a challenging one without argument and involves self-sacrificing of comforts, conveniences, pleasantries, sometimes our plans and even sometimes other advantages for the sake of knowing Christ, and His role among the Triune God’s work upon the earth. The securities we feel like things are always going to be familiar for us in our paths of faith giving us a false notion they will always be available can be sometimes had by Christians. God may take one or more of these comforts by God’s prerogative out of the lives of His people. For instance, Elijah’s brook that dried up, and the manna that God provided to the Israelites one day stopped when God was ready to bring them in to the land He had promised them along their journey homeward. To keep this in mind helps us to be patient and self controlled if those comforts for some reason are taken away or removed by God to give us a chance of growth or pruning God may be doing.

As we see this virtue of self-control in operation through Biblical example, let us make room for it’s use in our hearts, and for it’s virtue coming from God Himself to minister to us, and hold Christ as set apart in our hearts as Lord and sanctified giver of the true grace of self-control, so that it’s operation to reflect the glory of God may be seen as a true witness by those we encounter wherever God may lead us to go. LG

To Those Who Feel Trapped as an Abomination to God Because of LGBTQIA+ Attractions

Quotes to Encourage You

by Lisa Groen

How Can You Obey God’s Word if You Don’t Read or Hear God’s Word?

God is full of so much love for individuals in the world that He would rather let Jesus undergo the suffering of dying on a bloody cross than to be without those he saves for eternity. With this kind of devoted love from God, that should peak the interest in hearing what He has to say, yes?

Even though many have apprehended this reality, many who are aware of this put the word on the back burner. What God has spoken through His word, because of who he is alone, makes His words worth being read, studied, and applied!

What can we infer from John 6:46? It reads, “Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?” Can we expect God to take into consideration how we respond to His Lordship when He judges us at the end of time? We who hear God’s word and have confessed Jesus as Lord, should we not judge ourselves ahead of time in this life and answer with honesty the question “are we LIVING in proper response to His Lordship??”

In order to live according to His Lordship, we must know what God tells us about how to live in His Word. What should be said to a person who finds little pleasure in God’s word in this life? According to Psalm 119, King David spent 176 verses expressing his delight in God’s word. King David’s reflection on God’s works, precepts, commands, decrees, judgments, ordinances and the words God used to express Himself was one of affection, honor, and reverence. David’s approach inspires all who read it the same kind of delight and honor of God’s word.

Not in replacement of faith, but in combination with faith, certainly the element of obedience to the word must get factored into the measurement God will use to distinguish the people who belong to Him at the end of time from those who don’t. The only obedience to God that there IS in existence anywhere on the part of a person who says they follow God, is to obey God’s Word, the Bible, and not to follow merely the commands of men! Obedience is not the method of salvation, but obedience is found in every life where Jesus is truly Lord.

There is NO REPLACEMENT for reading or listening to the word of God! The more we know God’s word, the more His word will challenge us to obey Him, prompt us in our growth, and become a living part of us. We will be in awe of God because we will have made room in our hearts as Mary and Joseph sought a place to abide with Jesus in the Inn. Our hearts can easily become filled with the business this world offers, like the Inn that was full of other business as Mary and Joseph first found. Let us learn from the Biblical example given to us, and work at making room for Jesus to have a proper place through his word to be laid in our hearts! Let us prepare ourselves to have value for and affection for His word that shows His Lordship over us and that we belong to Him! LG

Why it is Absolutely Imperative That The Christian Read The Bible Regularly–Reasons #1 and #2

by Lisa Groen

#1 You can’t overcome sin in your own strength

It is nothing less than spiritual work to overcome sin. Sin is a spiritual illness with moral implications. You need spiritual food for spiritual strength. The word of God is bread from heaven or spiritual food God intends for us to read and take in like food and ingest it until it becomes a part of us and shapes us.

Can sin be overcome by a means other than spiritual work? Temporary means or natural means to overcome sin gives only temporary or non-eternal success. Someone might overcome a sin by their own natural self-control for a while. The fruit of lasting self-control only comes from God. This overcoming of sin is only possible after a person is born-again from God. John 3:3 says, “…“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless someone is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” God says He gives us fruit that will LAST to eternity. A person must be born again otherwise their fruit won’t last to eternity. The person must be saved out of the kingdom of darkness before their fruit will last. Jesus was speaking to His followers when He said, (in John 15:16) ““You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My name He may give to you.”

One such fruit is self-control which comes from God and is of a purer sort and of a supernatural sort different than any self-control that can be mustered up from a person’s own human strength. God has never sinned so his self-control was never tarnished by sin or spiritual illness. A list of common fruits of the Spirit is found in Galatians 5:22-23. This list has elements found in God’s own personality. The NASB reads, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, ²³gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.”

When God’s word speaks of fruit of the Spirit, it is speaking of a fruit coming from the supernatural life of God which comes from an eternal God and has properties of eternality itself. These properties are found in the purest form in God’s personality and are properties he shares with those who trust Him to make them Christlike.

We cannot do a better job than Jesus did to overcome sin. Jesus had no sin, and he never let it creep into his life. But Jesus who is the Son of God Himself used the word of God as a sword of declaration to overcome temptation and the devil. In Matthew 4:1-11 Jesus used the very word of God to fight the temptations of the devil. This is how he overcame it—he gave no place to the devil or to temptation. It is THIS Jesus that gave us His words, the one who never sinned and is our Savior, that has given us His words, and the words of the Heavenly Father and Holy Spirit are in Scripture to arm us for the battles we face in life.

Reason #2 Why it is Absolutely Imperative That The Christian Reads The Bible Regularly Builds off Reason #1: You Must Be Killing Sin or Sin Will Be Killing You

You can only kill sin in your life through a saving relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ, because we kill sin by the Spirit of God. The same power that was there to crucify our sins that God the Father placed upon our Lord Jesus our sacrificial Lamb, is there to crucify the sin in our lives, and raise us up to walk a spiritually empowered life for God. Romans 8:13 GNT reads, “For if you live according to your human nature, you are going to die; but if by the Spirit you put to death your sinful actions, you will live.”

If you are not killing sin in some way through the help of God’s Spirit you might not be a Christian and you should check yourself. God gave us an example to show how he would kill our sin, first upon Christ, then in our lives, but without us having to die for our sins in the process. Hebrews 10:10 reads, “And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.”

If you are not killing your sin by the Spirit of God, you should stop, pray and get right with God! Our sins were placed upon Jesus, then Jesus was killed for our sins. Isaiah 53:6 NIV reads, “We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” 1 Peter 3:18 NIV reads, “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit.”

We must follow through with what God demonstrated as His approach to sin. By the Spirit, we must crucify sin in our lives, which means to deprive it of food, strength, and opportunity. Jesus did all these things with perfection and His victory becomes ours as we put our faith in his life, death, and resurrection of pure, harmless and sinless obedience. Praise God for His word which He has made available to us so we might know what God has destined to be killed out of us because of the resurrection of Christ, and that declares and shares His victory! LG

Can God Change the LGBTQIA+, the Non-Binary Person, or Person With a Different Gender Identity Than What They Were Born With?

by Lisa Groen

I use the pronoun “he” or “they” many times to describe heterosexual men and women, LGBTQIA+, binary, non-binary, and people with a different gender identity than what they were born with throughout this post.

I am making these statements based on a fundamental belief that God tells us what the definition of sin is and God is the only one who has the solution to sin.

I am making these statements based on what God gives as the solution to sin for the heterosexual, the binary person, the LGBTQIA+, the non-binary person, and person with identity issues which is something called repentance which God can give freely to any person who agrees with God about his sin.

The person who is willing to repent and wanting to repent must agree with God’s definition of sin and turn from that lifestyle of sin that they have as either an unsaved binary or unsaved non-binary person or as an unsaved person with identity issues.

The Bible states that God accepts everyone who comes to him for help to be free from sin.

This is salvation. God’s salvation is spoken of in the Bible and is available to the heterosexual person and in the SAME FULL WAY to the LGBTQIA+, the binary, the non-binary person and to the person with a different gender identity than what they were born with.

There are conditions for all said people that God places upon them in order for them to have a faith in God that results in salvation and thus results in being in heaven with God for eternity.

The conditions are that God wants everyone no matter the group they are in to leave his life of sin by faith and turn to Jesus the Lord of Heaven and earth who gave his righteousness through dying on the cross for that sinner to receive (Jesus’) righteousness and forgiveness.

FREE GIFTS FROM GOD FOR THIS:

Faith in Jesus The Lord is a free gift of God

Repentance from Jesus is a free gift Jesus gives to sinners

Jesus’ forgiveness is a free gift he gives to sinners

Bearing fruit in keeping with repentance is a free gift but we must mix our faith with God’s command to bear fruit for God.

Following Jesus is a command of God that is a free gift but we must mix our faith with this command and follow Jesus through scripture

God’s word is a free gift we can find in many places on the internet. Abiding in the Word of God is a command that we must follow by mixing our faith with it which simply means to go through the Bible to learn His Word well so we can get a good understanding of what the words of God are we should be abiding in. The more we study the Bible and understand it the more we get better at abiding in it. Abiding in the word is part of the supernatural relationship God gives the believer to equip him to recognize his sin and overcome his sin by the power of the Spirit of God day by day.

What overcomes sin in the believer’s life?—The power of God’s Spirit working through the life of a person who comes to God as any of the above groups of people. The power of the Spirit is a FREE gift.

What will the result be for the heterosexual person who came to Christ and the LGBTQIA+, binary, non-binary person, or person with a different sexual identity than what they were born with who came to Christ? THE RESULT WILL BE THE SAME FOR EACH OF THE HETEROSEXUAL, LGBTQIA, BINARY, NON-BINARY, AND DIFFERENT GENDER THAN WHAT THEY WERE BORN WITH PERSON=EACH WILL RECEIVE AN IDENTITY CHANGE THAT COMES FROM GOD. No group can pursue their old identity and maintain a growing relationship with God; we, all of us MUST PURSUE CHRISTLIKENESS as our new identity. This New Identity is a free gift from God. It is not something we muster up in our own strength. It is a supernatural free gift of an identity change.

1 Corinthians 6:9-11 reads “Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, 10 nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. 11 Such were some of you; (Such were some of you means some were homosexuals, (pursuing same sex relationships–some were full of other kinds of sin, sin is an identity issue in God’s book) but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.” This passage talks about God changing people to prepare them for freedom from sin and gives them a holy lifestyle of Christlikeness for eternity with Him

Can God change anyone? Yes! Can God give us the power to pursue Him? Yes? This is called bearing fruit in keeping with repentance. The identity change God makes in a person through salvation is supernatural, and will result in the person taking on Christlikeness, aligning their pronoun, gender, and sexual orientation, and spiritual pursuits, with the Biblical sexual orientation of Christ-followers, spiritual pursuits of Christ-followers, and becoming binary. Before I came to Christ I had the identity of a thief, I had the identity of a liar, I had the identity of someone who did not respect some authority figures, I had the identity of a person who cursed, I mocked, I was arrogant, I was hostile at my dad for the abuse me and my siblings suffered and mad at my mother for letting it happen. I carried bitterness around and a snarky attitude. Probably a lot of other things! Did God change me? YES! I ended up with a wonderful relationship with my dad before he died. I am not perfect, but I was giving to my mother and helped with her care and was patient with her and overlooked her tendency toward passivity in order to build a relationship with her and realized she needed people to understand her and that there were people she did not trust. I gave up selfishness in a lot of ways and found it is more blessed to give than receive. I still could give more to others around me, but I am growing. I gave up lying to follow the truth and speak the truth of God. I gave up bitterness because I had been forgiven, I gave up cursing because I had been blessed and in order to praise God, I gave up snarky-ness order to be a better friend to people because Jesus was a friend to me when I was not easy to get along with. I gave up pursuing emotions that made me bitter because I saw Jesus had a better way of life for me.

Most of all, I am an example to every LGBTQIA+, non-binary person, or person with a gender identity different from what they were born with out there. I have not pursued romance since 2013. Although I was never struggled with gender identity issues and never been tempted to pursue a same sex relationship for dating or romance, I did pursue heterosexual romantic relationships for a while during my walk with God. I am an example now for how to not pursue romance of any sort for the last 10 years but live simply for God. The Lord Jesus has given me the gift of celibacy and I don’t feel a need to get married, so I don’t date. I have joy and happiness in the Lord although I am celibate. I have a new identity in Christ different than when I first came to Christ years ago with multiple sin patterns in my life that controlled my life until He changed me. It was a free gift! I have a Christ-like identity now thanks to the grace of God which changed me! LG

I Am a Christian and Was Incarcerated, Part 2

By Lisa Groen

I believe if God sees fit to take someone to jail, God is faithful to put the kind of faith in them to match the level of hardship he takes them through!

Perhaps from the sheer boredom and praying that I would learn whatever the Lord wanted to teach me I took on the posture of teachableness. The Bible became very meaningful to me in fresh ways and Jesus became more real to me and showed himself to be my most reliable and trustworthy friend. We get so distracted by the stimuli in the world, and when you have those things stripped away, it’s interesting how your ears get opened and your heart can grow soft to God’s leading. I found a Bible right away and kept my nose in it day after day. I would pray about the stresses of jail, and sought God as to why He let the circumstances happen that led me into jail. I sought God in jail and let Him know I didn’t want be a hard hearted person which is a common stereotype people on the outside of jail have of people on the inside.

I prayed about many things in jail on a personal level because you have time to do a lot of self-reflection. You realize you need encouragement, but many family and friends I had for years never wrote me back after I would write them a 6- or 7-page letter. At the time I wondered why people can’t write back a sentence or two after you pour your heart out to them. I realized to become resentful about that would be not fitting because prisoners by definition have few rights. I found it was best to focus on the people who wanted to be in my life.

As far as jail goes harassment is common. A lot of it is based on power struggles and on who thinks they can dominate. Some of the women in my pod wanted me to get kicked out of the low security part and put in lock down. I was told about 5 of the women who happened to be black misinterpreted something that I said and they thought I was racist. They were saying I was the whitest one in the jail because they used hood language and I didn’t know what they were saying some of the time because I am not from the hood. So, I tried to fit in by dancing like some of them. They thought I was making fun of them by my lousy dance so a few days later one of my friends who was friends with them warned me about the 5 women. It just happened to be a woman who I shared part of my testimony of Jesus with.

The women who wanted me to get kicked out of low security kept doing things like putting their shampoo in my shower stall when I would go to wash my socks and underwear. They wanted me to close the door to the shower stall so they could accuse me of stealing their shampoo, but the Lord directed me as to what was going on, and I kept the shower stall open and nothing happened because the video cameras were just outside the shower stalls recording everything.

Kindness always goes a long way as a Christian in or out of jail, but you have to know who you’re dealing with. Sometimes hardships can pop up when you’re going out of your way to be a generous person. One woman told another right in front of me I was her B- – – – because I was nice and would share snacks and other things I would buy from the commissary. So even though I was trying to be nice, some of them thought I was trying too hard to win friends so they began to “use me” to get free snacks and other things. One girl tried to pretend to be sick to see if I would give her free cough drops without asking for anything in return. It was obvious to me she was not sick but only pretending. I told her she didn’t look or sound sick and did not give her any cough drops. I hate being lied to.

Other conflicts that arose from a power trip happened such as one of the women waved her arms around my head and leaned over me and said something like “whhhhooosh!” so I ducked out of the way and I had to lean over the balcony on the second floor in order to keep from being hit in the head by her. I told the guard about her because I had done nothing rude to her. One of my cell mates would get off her bunk really quick and she kicked me in the head as I sat on the side of my bed. When she did it a second time I told her to quit doing that and she flipped out on me and said I was crazy. She then was yelling at the top of her lungs at me about all kinds of things and fabricating lies about things she said I did wrong but I did none of those things. I thought “there is going to be no peace in my cell because she has flown off the deep end and she didn’t seem to want to be reeled in” by anything I said. I complained to the guard about her wild imagination and her unpredictableness and her verbally and physically aggressive ways for no reason and asked for a different cell. They ended up moving her out of my cell across the pod to a different cell.

I did not realize how quickly a person becomes unpopular when you tell the guards about another prisoner not treating you right. I had no experience in jail before this. That’s when she and several other women wanted to believe I made up lies about her so they began to treat me with dirty looks, suspicion, hostility, and loud rude comments and dozens of acts of mockery. At times it felt like I had a lot of enemies in jail, and little support from outside of jail or from many people I had known a really long time. Jesus helped me make the friends I needed to have in jail, and he protected me from the people I did not need as friends and their schemes. One day God gave me the scripture Isaiah 41:12 which says “Though you search for your enemies, you will not find them. Those who wage war against you will be as nothing at all.” I knew God was promising my jail experience was going to get better. The Lord also gave me hope that I wasn’t going to get beat up by the 5 women when he showed me Proverbs 6:16-19 “There are six things the Lord hates, seven that are detestable to him: 17 haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, 18 a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, 19 a false witness who pours out lies and a person who stirs up conflict in the community.”

God was taking the time to show me he hated their behavior. Because they were devising schemes to make me look like a thief, and were lying about me to the guards, because they had a plan to rush into evil by harassing me daily, and because they were stirring up conflict in the community by constantly mocking me and changing position in line whenever we would stand in line for meds, so they could be right behind me or in front of me to harass and intimidate me, criticize me loudly and trying to humiliate me. In the middle of that, God gave me the assurance that he was going to protect me from their evil plans, conflict, harassment, and pointless mockery, because He showed me those scriptures. I knew some relief was on the way! It was just a matter of His timing!

Because my friend informed me, I knew what to pray for. I used the promises God gave me to pray. As I waited on God to answer, I was harassed by those 5 women for weeks until one of the guards made everyone get out of their cells and come down to the main floor and yelled at everyone and said he wanted the disrespect to stop and then pointed at me and yelled at everyone for their behavior for a few minutes basically saying they need to stop harassing people, and he pointed at me to show them who to stop harassing. One of the main women who harassed me day after day and brushed against me with her giant body calling me the B word decided to be nice to me after a while. (She was about 6 feet tall and weighed about 320 pounds, and I am 5’4”). Others became nice to me when they saw I was a good volleyball player. God prevented them from getting me set up to look guilty when one of them threw a lit match in my cell when the guards were passing out mail and when they got to my cell and smelled the smoke from the match I didn’t get in trouble for it and God prevented me from going into lock down high security.

I knew God wanted me to do something positive other than just trying to “hide” my life in Jesus. I remembered Jesus said he has made us the light of the world, (In Matthew 5:14, Jesus says, “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.”) I knew we should not hide our lights, and that meant I was going to need to keep praying and ask God to help me overlook people’s abuse and nastiness and the mental strength to be kind to them and not look at their wrongs. God never left me but He let me go through hardships while He drew me close in jail when all that negative stuff was happening. I found some of the hearts of the women changed and God gave me what I needed in the midst of a difficult 75 days as long as I was praying about being a positive influence and not hiding my light under a bushel.

Lessons learned:

Pray that God would help you be teachable. God will provide faith to match the level of difficulty of the situation.

Don’t become miffed at people who don’t reach out to you after you reach out to them. Focus on the people who want to be in your life.

People in jail can be hypersensitive. Don’t try too hard to fit in, because people can misinterpret your behavior.

If you get harassed, I believe God cares about this, and God still wants his justice to unfold on behalf of those who trust in Him and seek Him for help behind bars.

Pray about everything. Break out of your shell even if people treat you roughly in jail and take time to be kind to people. Don’t take your relationships for granted even if you just met them because God has a purpose even for the difficult relationships, and they may need the light of Jesus from your faith to shine on them and that can only happen when your heart is right toward them. If God sees fit to put you in jail, let Isaiah 9:2 become a reality for others. When they see your faith is real, and if they can get a needed glimpse of Jesus, and if they are drawn to God, we will be able to tell the testimony “The people which sat in darkness saw a great light.” LG

I Am a Christian, and Was Incarcerated

Hello, my name is Lisa, and I was incarcerated.

That word has a terrible stigma attached to it, but God wastes nothing. I have been saved since I was 18, and I am now 54 years old. I ended up going to jail when I was around 50, but God ended up teaching me through my jail time. I want to write about some different experiences that caused me to change. This is the first in a series of articles in which I will attempt to examine my incarceration and how God used that time period in my life. For those who seek God sincerely there is nothing He can’t do in his help of us, but he doesn’t always do it comfortably. It is always smart to pray according to God’s will but if you are ever in doubt about what to pray for, and your life doesn’t make sense, it is valuable to pray for God’s guidance, and ask Him that we don’t miss the lessons He is aiming to teach us, especially when you encounter a new situation and can’t yet tell what you are going to experience.

During the trial they had for my crime I had a feeling I was going to go to jail even though people were telling me they were almost sure I would not have to go. What happened was, a few years ago I was involved in someone’s accidental death. I was very sorry for my actions that led up to the death of the victim I never met before. People kept telling me that they didn’t think I deserved jail, but I was not surprised when the judge sentenced me to 75 days.

I did not know how to deal with the aspect of committing the kind of sin that took someone’s life. I found it not easy to go to God to find forgiveness because I was fixing blame on myself for having a lot of hardships in life. I was tempted to imagine I was a terrible person for God to decide He wanted me in jail, but I learned later that I was attaching my own old baggage, much I had already asked God to forgive me for, to the fact that I was in jail, thinking God must be really fed up with me to have me go to jail. I realize now that that is a false notion. That the Christian’s life must get easier as our faith grows or easier the more we spend time in the word is not shown to us as the normal life in the Bible for many Christians. These false idealisms I had in my head were distracting me and I was shifting the focus off my current sin, onto old sins, forgetting that God forgave me already in the past for the things my mind was re-blaming myself for.

I simply had to deal with my current sin in a God honoring way. Because of the idealisms I believed I had been working for such as I thought life should get easier with a four year degree and once I got the degree I thought I should be able to settle down into a comfortable job was one of the notions I had that motivated me to get the degree. Now that my schooling was over and the time had come and I had the degree, I thought life was going to get a lot easier. This idealistic concept I held and the fact that this was my first social work job I had gotten with my degree led me into thinking really deep about life. I had the job for less than one month and because the accident happened on the way to work I simply could not understand why at this time in my life God would allow me to get nto an accident. Because of my self preoccupation a couple friends said they wondered if I was sorry for the accident because I was thinking about how the accident affected me instead of thinking about how it affected the family involved. But I like to understand why God allows things he does that we would not specifically choose. We can learn more from God’s choices and plans than we can from our own choices and plans.

It was humbling to hear that, and I wondered why a couple people couldn’t tell if I was sorry. I learned I had some entitlement issues. I learned it is dangerous to think Christianity teaches that your life must get easier with your spiritual growth. But it does teach that you can grow more like Christ in your attitude. I prayed “Lord, I think there is something wrong with me if certain people can’t tell I am sorry for the accident. I want to express myself in such a way that I communicate my sadness over what I had done to those who needed to hear it.” I was on my own mind too much which kept me “distant emotionally”. I was complicating God’s forgiveness by thinking the forgiveness He would give would be real only if my life was easy. It is never good to think God’s forgiveness is less than what it is, because I believe now God truly wants us to be able to admit our guilt without getting into condemnation. We don’t have to rehearse our guilt before God. God believes us when we are truly sorry. The Bible says in 1 John 1:9 that “God cleanses us from all unrighteousness” when we admit our sins and even says God is faithful in his cleansing of us. So, we don’t have to rehearse the old sins we have already received forgiveness for.

Truths I learned going through jail time:

God wants us to be able to admit our guilt without getting into condemnation.

God is able to hear your heart if you are sorry, even if you seem distracted to others, because God is able to see what is going on in our hearts and can see past our distractions and shed light on our minds which if left to ourselves might complicate the issues.

When we attach old baggage to our current sin or to our time we serve for a crime, we are reducing God’s forgiveness into something less than it truly is. We are making forgiveness more complicated than it needs to be. We have forgotten we were forgiven for our past sins, if we have already told God we were sorry for those past things. God’s forgiveness is real and simple to receive. LG

Original Praise Music: Blessing, Glory, Honor and Love

I am in the process of learning how to upload my tracks, so I appreciate your patience!

Lyrics: By Lisa Groen copy right pending May 2017

Blessing, glory, honor and love

Is what the Father pours down from above

The Father of love, pours on us Jesus’s blood

To give us restoration and love

Healing, mercy, came when Jesus was born

When He became a man and on the cross the veil was torn

He poured on thirsty souls the water

That would make them thirst no more

And this is only the beginning of what’s still in store

Rivers of life flow healing for me

Removing my strife and causing my eyes to see

He poured down the Balm of Gilead on me

This is just one blessing for those who believe.

Wrapping me in his love that sets me free

Knowing he is above all that could trouble me

And he gives the word to us commanding our peace

This is just one blessing for his posterity

Children of Abraham remember whom you have believed,

The one who humbled himself and went for us to calvary.

He didn’t hold back from taking our place

but bought the chastisement of our peace

So all our sin and striving could cease. LG

Repentance From Sin, Unto Eternal Life in Christ

Author: Lisa Groen

There must come a time where we make a conscious choice to turn away from our lifestyle of sin, to live for God who has always been perfectly and completely free from sin. God has never done anything dishonest, immoral, or unrighteous, or any other thing sinful, and we can only enjoy being free from sin if we consciously make a choice to turn from our life of sin and serve God with our heart and life.

The Bible talks about people being a slave to sin.

There is only one way to break our slavery to sin and that is to believe Jesus deserves that you turn from a lifestyle of sin to follow Him. Jesus (and both of the 2 other members of the Godhead, The Father, and the Holy Spirit) have the authority to break up our relationship with sin, because each of them have more power and authority than sin does and then Jesus becomes our Lord. (Lord means Master). We then are enabled to serve God and live a life pleasing to God.

The Bible talks of God purchasing us back from our slavery to sin to belong to Him. This means he “redeems us”. The redemption transaction Jesus went through happened when he gave his blood on the cross to buy us wholly from the slavery of sin to belong to Him and he made it possible to buy us out of the kingdom of darkness. He paid the price with his blood and his own physical death. If Jesus is not your Lord you are in the kingdom of darkness. You need to come to Christ the King in the kingdom of light. He died on the cross to translate us out of the kingdom of darkness and translate us into the kingdom of light. If God is drawing you to follow and serve him in righteousness, you need to believe Jesus as you’d believe someone who holds your life in his hands. He has authority over death. He has more power than sin does to break up your relationship with sin. He has authority over everything that happens to you.

I googled the phrase “what does the Bible mean by the word “redeem””? and this was the first quote that came up from the address https://www.bing.com/search?q=what%20does%20the%20bible%20mean%20by%20the%20word%20redeem%3F&pc=0CAE&ptag=C999N4AE93C7C9D5F&form=0A0505&conlogo=CT3210127 (I removed the hyperlink numbers in the quote): “In the Bible, redemption refers to God’s merciful and costly action on behalf of his people. The term “redeem” means “to buy out” and was used specifically in reference to the purchase of a slave’s freedom. In the New Testament, redemption means that Christ’s life or blood was the ransom price so that anyone who believes in Christ will be freed from sin and the bondage to death. Redemption is liberation from the slavery of sin and is given to us by the perfect sacrifice that Jesus made on the cross of Calvary”. Part of that redemption is that Christ takes death and changes it so that it is not a dead end, but that Jesus takes our death and He through His resurrection and eternal life becomes our open door for us to be with God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit forever and ever in all eternity with all the other Christ followers who have believed in and followed Jesus as Master and Lord.

The following is a promise Jesus makes to those who follow Him that takes place on earth, and continues for Christ followers through eternity in Heaven: John 8:12 reads: “Then Jesus again spoke to them, saying, “I am the Light of the world; the one who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life.” LG