Embark on a spiritual expedition with me, Don Carpenter, as we navigate the often tumultuous waters of faith on Faith Walk. Join us for a soul-stirring session where we confront the inevitable clash between our newfound convictions and persistent old habits. As we delve into the teachings of 1 John, we unearth the profound truth of not being entangled with worldly desires, and instead, embracing God's eternal will. This episode promises to illuminate your understanding of walking in the Spirit and the significance of living with a sense of urgency in what's termed as the 'last hour.'
With each step of this journey, we are called to mature from spiritual infancy to becoming full-grown sons and daughters in Christ, and I'm here to guide you through this transformative process. We'll tackle the dual temptations of survival and self-fulfillment, and how they can impede our spiritual growth if we succumb to them. But fear not, for as we traverse this path, we learn to fortify our spirit and walk by faith, not by sight, just as 2 Corinthians 5:7 urges us to do. So tune in and be inspired to elevate your faith and walk closer with the Lord.
Embark on a spiritual expedition with me, Don Carpenter, as we navigate the often tumultuous waters of faith on Faith Walk. Join us for a soul-stirring session where we confront the inevitable clash between our newfound convictions and persistent old habits. As we delve into the teachings of 1 John, we unearth the profound truth of not being entangled with worldly desires, and instead, embracing God's eternal will. This episode promises to illuminate your understanding of walking in the Spirit and the significance of living with a sense of urgency in what's termed as the 'last hour.'
With each step of this journey, we are called to mature from spiritual infancy to becoming full-grown sons and daughters in Christ, and I'm here to guide you through this transformative process. We'll tackle the dual temptations of survival and self-fulfillment, and how they can impede our spiritual growth if we succumb to them. But fear not, for as we traverse this path, we learn to fortify our spirit and walk by faith, not by sight, just as 2 Corinthians 5:7 urges us to do. So tune in and be inspired to elevate your faith and walk closer with the Lord.
Speaker 1:
If you're listening to Faith Walk. My name is Don Carpenter and I'm glad that you're with me today. If you haven't already done it, why don't you visit my website, doncarpenterca? I'm going to talk to you about the last hour. What's taking place in the church and in the kingdom of god. Basically, you know, when we come to christ, the bible says that we are a new creature. Old things are passed away, everything becomes brand new. And to think about that, when we give our hearts to the Lord, we're thinking well, now it's going to be smooth sailing, but we understand that there's something always that we're dealing with, and one is the flesh, the earth man, and the other is the spirit man, and these two, they will always be in conflict. So, quite quickly, we come to realize that people are engaged, born-again, people are engaged in a godly process and during this process we are faced with two great temptations. In our walk with the Lord and when we try to move by the Spirit, walk in the realm of faith, fulfill the plan and the purpose of God for our life, we are faced with survival. We are faced with survival. That's where the flesh operates. You know our ability to organize, control, manipulate and the other issue that we're faced with is self-fulfillment, things that we planned on doing with our life. But you know, when we give our lives to the Lord, when we allow God to begin to mature us, bring us forth from newborn to adolescence, into maturity, into a full-grown son, along that journey, god makes his ways known to us. Now there's going to have to be a separation, and the separation will only occur the separation for good that is, doing what God plans with your life will only occur If the will, your desire, your revelation, your conscious spiritual awareness. If you will, or aware of your spirit, man, the strongest one will prevail. And that's why the Bible encourages us to walk in the Spirit. And why are we to walk in the Spirit? So that we will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh.
Speaker 1:
In 1 John, this was a book that was written by one of the disciples of Jesus he was the youngest one by one of the disciples of Jesus. He was the youngest one, and he talks about their love, not the world. In 1 John 2, 15, neither the things that are in the world, even any man who well loves the world, the love of the Father, is not in him. It talks there that all the stuff in the world, the love of the Father is not in them. It talks there that all the stuff in the world, the lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, the pride of life, all of that is not of the Father, that's of the world. And it says something in verse 17 of 1 John 2. It says the world passeth away and the lusts thereof, but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever. And you know, sometimes we're going to think well, you know, I'm not obeying the devil, I'm not going to let the enemy guide me and whatnot. But we have another force that is so strong and that is the one where, of survival, you here, the world, is going to pass away, as in verse 18, it talks about the last time in King James Bible, but in some of the other translations I like it where it refers to it as the last hour. We are in the last hour. If we say the last time, we can be lethargic, we can be lazy, we're going to say, yeah, yeah, that could be another 500 years, another generation. But when we understand that it is the last hour, and even in the King James, where they're, in 1 John 2.18, where it says, king James refers to it as the last time. When you look up the Greek meaning of that that word time, it means hour. Only imagine this was written 2,000 years ago.
Speaker 1:
We live in a new day. We're living in a time where the Lord is saying this is what I'm expecting of my people. He's expecting us to walk in maturity. He wants us—this is interesting the Lord wants us to comprehend what we cannot see with our natural mind, and so, therefore, we come back to 2 Corinthians 5, 7, where we walk by faith and not by sight. We know that there's truth waiting, and we are asking the Lord for revelation. Our revelation has to be greater than what we are seeing around us, because we're influenced so much by what we see and hear. The world influences in a tremendous fashion, and anyone who is not standing by faith and believing God that they're going to walk a holy, pure life and that they're going to be open to the things of God they're going to walk by faith it could start collapsing in around them.
Speaker 1:
So I don't want to live a life of containment. I want to be able to walk in what God's been preparing me for. He prepares us, and what he does in the preparation is what we're being prepared for, and we know that it is all in a walk of faith In us, in believers, we incubate greatness, we incubate the mind of Christ, the walk of faith, the living in the Spirit. We are an instrument and we access God by faith. Hallelujah, we're going to step out and we're going to believe that we're going to do and become what God is wanting us to do and wanting us to become. There is a people walking, who are walking in present truth. God has always had a people that are going to move and they're going to stay in tune with what the Father is saying. Because if I am to believe and I do believe it that I am encouraged in the Bible to have the mind of Christ, and so are you as a believer in Christ, I don't believe that God wants us to serve him with a fleshly mind. I believe that it is to be the mind of Christ and spirit-filled believers have the ability to cross over into the realm of the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 1:
Jesus, christ is that gateway. I mean, when you think about it, john on the Isle of Patmos. He said I was in the Spirit and behold, a throne was set in heaven and one set on the throne. This is where we find this reading out of Revelation. We find this reading out of Revelation the Lord took up John and moved him into another time zone, like as far as earthly time was concerned, because he saw things concerning the end of the age Caught up out of time as well, because he was caught up into the throne room of God. Now he sees the open door. He knows the voice of the Lord is speaking to him, because he was a believer of Jesus Christ and the work of the Spirit God had been ministering into John's life.
Speaker 1:
John has been open to what God has to say, just like we need to be today. We walk in new life. We're not the old man. We've been transformed by the spirit of a living God and we are experiencing things, oh my, that are way beyond what most of us could be experiencing. We need to be pressing into that. It's that sin shall not have dominion over you. You know we're thinking well, I can't help this. I'm in the flesh. Bing, there should be some kind of a signal right now. There should have been a wake-up sound to you right now when we say well, I'm in the flesh. Yet the Bible says that we are to walk in the Spirit. I know, I know.
Speaker 1:
The problem is many people don't think that it's possible to walk in the Spirit while they're still in this carnal fleshly body. But did you know, in this carnal fleshly body, when you are a believer, do you know that Christ Jesus lives inside of your fleshly body? When you are a believer, do you know that Christ Jesus lives inside of your fleshly body? Your body is like a tent, it's a container and what it contains is something extremely precious. You have the Lord Jesus there and the knowledge of God, and we understand that we've been set free from sin.
Speaker 1:
Don't use sin, don't use flesh as an excuse and saying, brother Don, we cannot do this. Yes, you can and I can. Is it easy? Not as long as we're in the flesh. It is a struggle when we are in the flesh, but when we're over, moving in the realm of the spirit and talking faith, flesh limitations and flesh restrictions, flesh holdbacks, don't even enter our mind. We're thinking I can do everything, see.
Speaker 1:
That's why when the writer in John, chapter 3, verse 30, john said you know, I must decrease that he may increase. Seek first the kingdom of God. That's what we have to do. You know worth? Do you know that the believer, the spirit, filled in time last hour? Believer is the gateway for the king of glory to come through? Well, that's what it says in Psalms 24, verse 9. Don't you think, if it's ever going to happen, if it's ever going to occur, you'd surely think it would happen in the last hour, wouldn't you See? We contain the Lord. Do you understand that we're a new creature? We're created in Christ?
Speaker 1:
When I read a passage, for example, like Haggai 2, verse 9, the glory of the latter house will be greater than the former, I tell you that excites me and I'm thinking, wow, this is something that God wants me to walk in. We don't feel at home in this world. As a faith-walking Word of God-talking son, we have to understand that we are already dwellers in the heavenly realm. We're already there, hallelujah. And so for me to have to decide do I want to be a soulish walker or do I want to be a spirit walker? If I'm going to remain with limitations of the fallen Adamic nature and if I'm going to allow the flesh to rule and reign my whole, entire Christian life and I'm going to live in the soulish realm, that's where we will stay, or if we believe for just a second that there are spiritual people and that you are a spiritual being, you're already dwelling in the heavenly realm.
Speaker 1:
Revelation 12.12. I'm going to close with this today. It says Therefore, rejoice ye, heavens, and ye that dwell in them. Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and of the sea, for the devil is come down unto you having great wrath because he knoweth he hath but a short time. If the devil is working on the earth because he knows he has a short time, what about you and I? What about the people of God? If we can understand that we are in the last hour, we have a short time, don't you think we should be about our Father's work and our Father's business?
Speaker 1:
So when it says rejoice ye, heavens, how about the people that dwell there and ye that dwell in them? So where do you dwell? Is your mind set on all the horrors of life, all the political turmoil, nations run and ruled by ungodly leaders? And are we thinking that they are going to dictate everything? No, they are not. We believe that there's a God and we believe that God has a plan and a purpose. And I dwell in the heavens. So we spend way, far too much time worrying about what's going to happen on the earth in these last days. Who's the Antichrist? You know how's the end going to really happen? You know we've got all these doctrines and everything. We're in the last hour. Friends, walk in the Spirit. I'm glad you joined me. Check out my website, doncarpenterca. God bless you Until the next time.