BVOV Magazine 2013 - present

**********ADVERTISEMENT ********** Face every challenge with confidence! Gloria Copeland challenges you to check what you’re putting before your eyes, in your ears and in your heart…so you can be empowered to face every challenge with confidence! "Time for a Spiritual Checkup" paperback now $7.99 reg $9.99 #B200203 FREE standard shipping included. Offer price valid until Feb. 29, 2020 kcm.org/mag 1-800-600-7395 (U.S. only) ********************************************* * * * * article from p. 29 continues * * * * As a believer you should have no desire to hang out in the darkness! If you do, I encourage you to start fasting and praying. Spend extra time with the Lord. Get in every Holy Ghost meeting you can find until you get enough of God’s Word in you to separate you from that unholy desire. If you don’t do those things, and you let your heart get cold toward the Lord, the gravitational pull of the world on you will get stronger. You’ll start playing around with sinful thoughts, give place to them in your mind, and eventually start acting on them. This is how demonic spirits do their dirty work. They don’t just swoop down out of nowhere and dominate our lives. They don’t have that kind of power and authority. They must convince us to cooperate with them. Take, for example, believers who get hooked on pornography. That pornography devil didn’t just jump on them while they were in church or walking down the sidewalk minding their own sanctified business. It got in because they opened the door to that devil by giving it their attention. They put the world’s immoral trash in front of their eyes and in their ears. They thought about it and meditated on it until it got into their hearts. Proverbs 4:21-22 says our eyes and ears are avenues to our hearts, and what gets in our hearts will move us in that direction. If we let the world’s trash in there, we’ll become more worldly. But the reverse is also true. If we feed our hearts more on the things of God, we’ll become more filled with Him. We’ll rise up in holiness, cast off the devil’s defilements, and become his worst nightmare. That’s what the believers did who helped usher in the great moves of God in the early 1900s. They weren’t sitting around watching R-rated movies when those great spiritual outpourings hit. They weren’t spending their time entertaining themselves with sitcoms on television that make light of sin and desensitize people to wrongdoing. On the contrary! They’d set their hearts so much on God and separated themselves unto Him so completely they were known as “holiness people.” Literally, that’s what they were called. How long has it been since we’ve been called holiness people? I’d say it’s been too long. Even though there are individual believers in the Church who are living holy lives, as a group we’ve not been known for it like those on-fire saints were in days gone by. Granted, in their quest to be holy, they may have gone overboard in some areas. They may have become overly strict at times when it came to things like acceptable ways to dress. But even so, if they did it because they wanted more of God, I have nothing but respect for them. They were willing to do whatever they thought it took to live a holy life—and let’s face it, they had a move of God! Think about the Anointing of God that was on Smith Wigglesworth, for instance. He walked in so much divine power that people were not only healed and raised from the dead through his ministry, they were convicted of sin just by his presence. “But we can’t be like Smith Wigglesworth!” Why not? We’re citizens of God’s kingdom as surely as he was. We just need to believe it and act like it. To separate ourselves unto God and set aside the sins and works of the flesh about which Galatians 5:21 says, “Those who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God” ("AMPC"). The word translated inherit in that verse means “to obtain or possess.” It’s not referring just to our going to heaven when we die. It’s talking about us possessing and obtaining the power and BLESSINGS of God’s kingdom right now, while we’re here on earth. It’s talking about us walking in the glory of God, setting the captives free, causing the blind to see and healing the brokenhearted. Church, it’s time for us to cross over into the fullness of that glory! God is ready to take us into it, and Jesus is coming soon. So, let’s put our flesh under the dominion of our spirit, as those who as “Christ's have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Galatians 5:24, "NKJV"). Let’s obtain more spiritually than the Church has ever obtained before, so the whole world can see the glory of God! V 30 : BVOV

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