Do troubles and trials push you toward God – or away?
Today, look back over your week. How is your spiritual health?
Has it been a week with trials, troubles, or struggles?
Did pressures increase at work, at home, in your health, or finances?
And then what happens inside of you?
Did you cry out to the Lord, fall upon His grace, and turn from any wicked way?
Or did you seethe in anger, wallow in self-pity, or worst of all harden your heart to spiritual things?
The test of pruning (which is affirmative) and chastening (which is disciplinary) is in our response.
That is one of the simplest ways to test what is going on in your life.
Pruning always draws us closer, chastening initially can push us away.
TEST #1: When troubles came this week, did you remain joyful, did you read God’s Word with hunger, and talk to Him often in prayer? A fruitful believer that is experiencing the nearness of their Heavenly Father pruning rises to God’s challenge. We move toward the Lord.
TEST #2: Or when troubles came this week, did joylessness fill your heart, mind and life? Did your relationship with the Lord, seems blighted by sadness or lethargy? Did the Word of God seem unimportant, boring, and dull? We often initially move away or grow cold toward the Lord.
OUR FATHER WANTS THE BEST FOR US
With His heart full of love and mercy, OUR Father the Vinedresser is trying to bring into our lives this morning, the greatest possible blessing. Listen to these words from a paragraph entitled “Obedience” from Chastening, a booklet by James H. McConkey. God comes to us in the positive discipline of pruning, or in the negative discipline of chastening. How does He do that?
It may be through the suffering of your seeing carefully made plans replaced by keen disappointment.
It may be through the suffering of bereavements that tear from your presence – precious loved ones.
It may be through the suffering of temporal losses and broken fortunes.
It may be through the suffering that stalks into your life through the willfulness and sin of others.
It may be through the suffering that sometimes seems to bring you to the brink of a broken faith and a broken heart.
It may be that out of your very agony of heart and soul the eternal God of love and mercy is seeking to bring into your life the greatest blessing that can enrich and glorify that life – the blessing of your human will yielded to the will of God.
And to be yielded to the will of God means more than silver and gold, more than gratified desires and ambitions, more than the pleasures of friendship, more than all the praises of men, more than all the prizes of fame, and more than the attainment of all your highest earthly aims and strivings. This is the richest and deepest of all blessings – to be swallowed up in the will of God.
(ESH-09a)
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32 Comments
I appreciate Pastor Barnett's messages. He's not trying to be entertaining, as some others do. Im always watching his channel.
Thank you, Dr. Barnett. Two years ago I lost my only child to suicide and my faith has been crushed.t's refreshing to know that God loves me and continues to seek me. Blessed be His Name.
I saw this in my feed and decided to listen to see what you had to say. I only gave of my time, but I surely received truth from the Word of God.
Please pray for me. I need chastisement from God.
Besides the chastening, pruning and scourging, there are also attacks from the enemy that can very easily be mis understood and mis interpreted if we are not continually coming to the Lord and being filled with His Word and His Spirit. The Spiritual War that we ARE in is growing in intensity. The Human Race is under attack from every direction imaginable!
May God help us all to walk in and live in His Spirit EVERY Day!
Learned so much from this thank you Jesus
Maybe this is just me and someone let me know if you feel the same. But when I think of being in sin ! I think of not being saved by the Lord ,not believing, not being born again, never trusting that Christ is enough to the point where you rely more on what you do than what has been done for you . When you do believe you are no longer in sin ! Ans I’m a strong believer that the sacrifice of Jesus was our redemption. I believe every word when God calls us new creatures, his heritage, that he chose and ordained us. That by belief in the Lord alone we are saved and when we do grow away from the old things it’s because of and understanding of his love and not the fear of being condemned. I think the real lie, is that sin is still and issue. And I feel like people still sin, because they are not in agreement that the battles been won and that it ended in victory. I hope everyone here knows that you are saved because of the work of God which was sending Jesus, not your ability to do works. Never forget Jesus is the true redeemer and no one can say they’ve earned the grace that was given Ephesians 2:8-9
Demons believe.
1 John 2:27
Sorry, but you are deluded. Jesus is with God now. It is God that deals with sinners not Jesus. Jesus was a messenger a prophet a messiah. Jesus was not God. Give credit to the lord of the universe.
I love how all these pastors never bother to learn what "Lord" means in Hebrew. Every time they call Yahuah or Yeshua "Lord" I cringe. Satan has made it so they forgot God's name. Instead, they call him Baal.
They removed God's name from the Bible thousands of times & replaced it with "LORD".
Jeremiah 23:27-32
27 who intend to make My people forget My name by their dreams which they relate to one another, just as their fathers forgot My name because of Baal? 28“The prophet who has a dream may relate his dream, but let him who has My word speak My word in truth. What does straw have in common with grain?” declares the LORD. 29“Is not My word like fire?” declares the LORD, “and like a hammer which shatters a rock? 30“Therefore behold, I am against the prophets,” declares the LORD, “who steal My words from each other. 31“Behold, I am against the prophets,” declares the LORD, “who use their tongues and declare, ‘The Lord declares.’ 32“Behold, I am against those who have prophesied false dreams,” declares the LORD, “and related them and led My people astray by their falsehoods and reckless boasting; **yet I did not send them or command them,** nor do they furnish this people the slightest benefit,” declares the LORD.
Baal (also given as Ba'al) is a Canaanite-Phoenician god of fertility and weather, specifically rainstorms. The name was also used as a title, however, meaning "Lord" and was applied to a number of different deities throughout the ancient Middle East
So how does Yahuah deal with believers who constantly call him Baal & never use his name like we're supposed to? When you pray to "THE LORD" who are you really praying to?
Sinning believers aka all of us?
This is AMAZING! l am struggling mightily with a terrible sin, and l want Jesus to do ANYTHING to stop it! Been begging for 3 years now! l DO trust that HE will MAKE me obey! Thank You John! 🙂
l'm sometimes frightened to listen to you John. You have a way of splitting my heart with Gods truth, but this message is PERFECT, and vital right now. l WILL die if l dont repent, and l drank this in and it refreshed me! Thank You!
Perfect and very timely
3 days ago and he already has over 1k likes!
Letters outside the mind (skull) is fake preachers gospel that flesh and blood like milk, temple of God and kingdom is IN MAN still blind looking and waiting for yourself is classic christians after christ outside coming is antichrist and repeated in flesh and blood hands churches. The Bible is about the mind called male and female names in allegories you think is history when no male or female, no jew nor gentile ect,,,,,,,,,,,,,,in heaven your still asleep in.
Thank you. I have a very serious question..i am a baptized believer. Jesus Christ saved me. I am presently being attacked by many things. Some in person. Things in my house get taken and sometimes returned. Things get broken. I caught a family member. . Some supernatural..ex. my phone took pictures when i wasn't touching it. I could hear and see it..i witnessed something unseen pat my pillow. My feelings are this is demonic and witchcraft. I am asking if God would chastise in this manner?
Be filled daily with the power of the Holy Spirit! Left to ourselves, we’ll eventually fail! Confess, repent and move towards Christ
Hello my friends. I'm a backsliding Christian. Please help restore me. Will you pray for me
If you still sin,
You are still under the law.
If you still sin,
Jesus is calling you to repentance.
Philippians 1 : 6 KJV
This is all make-believe
I appreciate your sermons. God is definitely working through you and you speak the truth. This sermon has given me hope that I lacked especially recently. I have been depressed lately to the point of thinking I was unsaveable due to reviewing the sins that I have committed and wished I hadnt. Your sermon showed me how God has worked on me.
you left out alot in this arminian garbage of a "sermon". i pray JESUS opens your eyes to what i mean, because whatever i tell you from what the Bible reveals of JESUS' work on my behalf, you'll just fight against it.
Takes away or lifts up, EXPLAIN IT SIR. You are preaching and you don't understand.
Please pray for me. I’m in the middle of a difficult situation. Im living in sin. Divorced and currently live with my partner of 7years. I just realized I can’t marry him because God forbids remarriage if im divorced. I have formed a family with my partner (no kids) and he is getting close to God more and more. I know I need to part with this relationship but I don’t want to hurt my partner since he is a good man and loves me and he is starting to love God but he is very very new to his word and Ive prayed to God to fix my situation and im very scared of all the outcomes. Jesus help me.
Those who keep on sinning after receiving the knowledge of truth, who trample the Son under foot, who treat the blood of the covenant that has sanctified him, who insult the Spirit of grace will receive a more severe punishment than those who reject the law of Moses.
Based on Romans 8:13, Heb 6:4-6: 10:26-28, tell me if once a person is saved, he's always saved even if that person lives in sin or as some people say "live like the devil."
Respectfully to the teacher, the chastening in Hebrews 12:5-6 is not only done as a response to disobedience. See how God disciplined His own Son in verse 3.
Hebrews 12:3
[3] Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted.
Hebrews 12:7
[7] It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline?
It’s about perseverance in believing God’s promise about eternal life in the world to come. The holiness is gained at the resurrection of the faithful. See how it’s coupled with grace?
Hebrews 12:14-15
[14] Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. [15] See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no “root of bitterness” springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled;
Jesus isnt his father god and he isnt the one who condemns.
His father does.
You stopped sinning? Were going to sinless till the day we die. We just sin less with grace. None are good. Jesus will come get his own and purify them through tribulation. Shalom
Every believer is a sinning believer! Cuz none are perfect!