The Cross Points Us To The Power Of True Followship! More Of “Being” Wholly-Holy God’s Servant Warrior, Like Jesus, And Less Of Self-Centered Human Doing, Is True Followship! Quote By Kimberly Mac

To know Christ is the way to grow in holiness. Christianity is not a religion of rules. It is the religion of the divine example. Try to follow the blessed steps of the most holy life. Take His advice. Ask yourself, in the moment of perplexity or temptation, what would He do if He were here? Nothing else will so surely lead us into the way of holy living. Author George Hodges

Faithful God, We Look To You, To The Wisdom Of Your Ways, Your Cross Always Reminding Us Of Your Faithfulness To Us. We Pray Today To Learn To Be Your Faithful Servants, Living Lives Lesser And Lesser About Ourselves And Resembling More And More You And Your Faithfulness To Love Us In Ways We Can’t Even Begin To Imagine. Teach Us Holy Spirit This Day, To Be A Servant Just Like Jesus, Give Us Hearts That Resemble This World Less And His Kingdom More. AMEN! Prayed By KimberlyMac

Less Of Me And My Conniving Is A More, Better Followship Of Jesus.

We all have a “human condition” some of us walk in it and out of it more than others of us. What does that mean? Well, the less of us that is active as we serve God, leaning into His Sovereign Sway, then the more of Who He is breaks through our human characteristics, with His personality coming into play in our lives. Me, personally I have always struggled with the “fix it” myself human tendency. I want to do it. I want to do it my way. I want to do it quickly. I have a tendency to be impulsive. Many times in my life, I have kindled my own fire and I have walked by the light of this fire that never lasted too long, that always flamed out, leaving me in worse condition than before. I tried to make the way comfortable by my cultural viewpoint, I always failed. Because this impulsive nature has worked itself into my personality, God purposefully makes me wait longer. God knows as I endure through long seasons of waiting, there is less of me and more of HIM active. With God charting my course, at the helm of my life, I grow through things better, gaining a Kingdom perspective that is much more valuable than getting the worldly things that I want, that are influenced by cultural say so.

Less Of Me Leading-More Of God’s Perspective=True Followship!

Less of me leading myself and more of God’s perspective guiding me, leading me is true followship. I see that in Jesus’ life, true followship. I try to imagine what it was like for Jesus, the King of heaven, the GOD WHO gave up His kingly rights to leave heaven and come here to this earth, to walk among us as God Incarnate. Not only did He come in our flesh, but He came to earth as a vulnerable new born baby, the Spirit of God in our human flesh. I can’t even begin to imagine why He would put on our flesh, and trust us, becoming so vulnerable to our human care. But, in heavenly hindsight I see the Kingdom power behind it, the why of it and how the incredible God purpose in it was greater than the challenge of it. God fooled the enemy with the antonym of the enemy’s viewpoint of lust for power and the pride of life, trumping these with the revelation of a Kingdom perspective of the power of meekness, a very unlikely characteristic to win a championship with. Meekness and humility is not our natural tendency. As our spirit inhabits a temple of flesh, we must learn from God Who did the same, who is our model of followship of Kingdom characteristics that can win over our human condition. We must learn to tap into this resurrection power that revealed itself through meekness, where humility was leaned into and pride was subverted. These characteristics of God will spring forth in our lives as we submit ourselves to His Holy Spirit, Who is the power behind the doing of these God ways and truths. More of Jesus is all about a followship of less of our natural ways and more of His supernatural Kingdom perspective.

Less Shallow-More Living Deeply From Godly Motive=True Followship

God became personal to us, coming here made Him personal, real, and vital to us. Eve was tempted to be like God, to know more, to not be held back in any area by anyone. She wanted it all, she did not want to be told no. She wanted to be independent, be in full command of her destiny. Where did these thoughts come from? The enemy of her soul, whose true motive was not to help her get what she wanted, but to position her in a sin cycle that would eventually destroy her fellowship with God. That is the difference between God and our enemy. God wants to better us, wants us to grow in Him and our enemy wants to kill, steal and destroy us. It is all about heart motive. It is all about our God living deeply with us. This is why Jesus came, because He wanted us to know the heart motive of God and He knew we would get it better if we experienced it through our viewpoint. How did He know that? Because He created us. I think we have a tendency to forget that. God created us. He knows us through and through. He knows our nature, He knows our strengths and weaknesses. He knows us from the inside out, better than anyone could ever, ever know us. He knows our thoughts, He knows the motive of our doings, He knows the condition of our hearts. God Knows. We need to think deeper, past our way of our shallow thinking that leads to impulsive reaction. We need to live deeper from the inside out, led by our pure heart motives that are responding to God’s way, truth and life.

Less Sin Cycle-More Pure Hearted Motives=True Followship

God wanted us to see firsthand, flesh to flesh, the motive of His heart. He wanted to show us that He was all in with us. God was not afraid to sacrifice all for us. He purposefully wanted to leave an empty cross embedded in the eyesight of humanity, a cross that spoke of His great love from generation to generation. He gave us a free will and with this free will, He wanted us to have a choice from His Kingdom perspective. We saw our ancestors and how they were stuck in the sin cycle. They would serve God when it was easy and good, but then when it got hard and they did not understand the why of what they were experiencing, they would become discontent and leave God to serve other gods who they thought would do things the way they were comfortable with, but they ended up being defrauded by a substitute who could do nothing for them but incite every bad thing in their flesh, throwing them into a dysfunctional human condition and eventually leading them to destroy each other. We cry out to God in the midst of our man made trials because of our sin choices and their awful consequences, and we say: “Lord, if you get me out of this one, I promise YOU, I will never do this again, I will serve You always. But our hearts are not truly in it, we are just trying to save our flesh. God sent Jesus to break this sin cycle, showing us that His Heart was truly with us, sacrificing His only Son, giving us His all. There is no greater love ever shown than by our God, Whose heart motive was pure love, all for us.

Less Worldly Focus-More Gazing Upon The Cross=True Followship

We do not understand His ways, but when we look at the empty cross and what it purposefully accomplished for all of humanity, we know we can trust Him in our life situations, we know He has a plan, a good plan, we know that there are Kingdom purposes in play that are far reaching, beyond anything we could ever accomplish. His ways are Kingdom in perspective, never born from an earthly viewpoint. He told us and showed us that Jesus was the way to truth and life, and He left us with the vision of an empty cross. Do you realize over every generation after Jesus died, that no enemy, no evil intentions has ever been able to stomp out the vision of Jesus’ Cross? The cross has been in every generation as a symbol of a Kingdom perspective. We choose to see things from an earthly viewpoint, BUT God continues to draw our attention to the cross of Calvary, which was the display of His great love and it is constant in reminding us, as it continues to point us to a Kingdom Perspective of our God. The cross of Jesus has been etched into our soul. God’s ways are NOT our ways and they always, faithfully produce miraculous outcomes that can never be undone, we see this perspective in the cross.

Less Living Externally-More Living Inside Outward=True Followship

The change of a kingdom perspective is internal and forever. The effect of a worldly viewpoint is temporary as it presses inward from the external, lacking the power to make a lasting inner change. The perspective of God is inward, it is a heart perspective and that is why His ways are different from our ways. The difference begins at the origin of our point of view. Our expectations are born out of external things, temporary things and they produce desires that flow into human production of plans that we can’t determine the outcome of. That is why it is so important to put our expectations in God’s hands and let HIM safely hold on to them. God is the One Who determines our steps and puts our expectations, the desires of our hearts, purposefully into play for our good, according to His perfect timing, will and heart’s desire for us. This is how our destiny plays out. Our viewpoint is transformed into a kingdom perspective at the cross of Jesus. Jesus was not living out of an external flesh that He took on, He was living from the inside of His Spirit to the outside. Was God faithful to us? Can we trust Him? Is God Faithful today? The answers to these questions are seen from generation to generation in the empty cross and the eternal outcome that the suffering of God in the flesh, did not kill His spirit, but did kill the flesh. Jesus lived from the inside out and when He shed the outside, laying down His flesh, His true inner man defeated death for us all. True followship is living less for the external world from the temporary flesh and living more powerfully from the inside out, from our spirit, connected to God’s Spirit in us. True followship is “fleshed out” heart to Heart and spirit to Spirit life that is consumed by an inward passion for Jesus.

Less Human Comfort-More Sacrifice In Our Salvation=True Followship

Yes, we can trust Him, because He is faithful. God is our proof, Jesus is the proven, the Holy Spirit is the prover. Jesus is the proven truth that God does not do things the human way of comfort and sense. God left us His Holy Spirit, so we too could live life with a miraculous edge. The Holy Spirit will lead us into all truth and continually trump our worldly viewpoint with God’s Kingdom perspective. We need a vital-vertical relationship with the Holy Spirit. We need to let go of our wants, hopes, dreams, expectations and all the other things that we human beings use to drive forward our agenda and we need to daily lay them down at the foot of the cross and follow after the wisdom, counsel and lead of the Holy Spirit. Heart to heart and Spirit to spirit, this connection is the beginning of our followship. Do we pursue human comfort more than we pursue God? Are we dutiful? Or are we passionately being God’s. Followship is not duty led, followship is deeper than traditional religious things. Followship is relationship based, it is a mutual respect, submission and love for God. God submitted His Son to us, to save us from the sin cycle, and He has always respected our humanity. God gave us a free will to choose and He set before us life or death and gave us the choices to make. Respectful of our human nature, God gives us the power of decision, He has respected our humanity with a free will. God has loved us like no other, He has mercifully forgiven our stupidity and human foolishness, time after time, and He is the proof that love endures, love bears all, love faithfully finishes successfully.

Less Of Me-More Silently Submitting Myself To God=True Followship

You have not experienced real love, until you have given your heart, wholly-holy to God, the creator and sustainer of an untainted, pure love with a powerful miraculous edge. God has shown us respect, submission and love and in a relationship with Him, we must also do the same. Relationship goes both ways and is a 100 percent, give – give on both parts. Followship is relationship, not duty. It is us being submitted to God, respecting God, loving God, because He has faithfully done so and continues to do so to us. Jesus submitted Himself to us in human form, laying down all His rights. Jesus sacrificed His life for us, respected our broken humanity, lived by its dysfunctional judgement and endured the cost of human error. Jesus respected us, He was crucified by our humanity and silently went as a lamb to the slaughter and humbly sacrificed Himself, even though He was innocent of all charges, of all our sin. Jesus loved us, setting aside all His plans, laying down His rights, desires, dreams, wants and allowed, meekly with His power self-controlled, allowed human beings to torture Him and endured His crucifixion on a cross because of His love for us. Jesus has shown us submission, respect and love and our followship of Him is acting out of the same, reciprocating our submission, respect and love to Him. There is no power in followship unless it is give-give 100 percent because true submission, respect and love in a relationship goes both ways.

Less Human Doings-More Wholly-Holy Being God’s=True Followship

We connect Heart to heart and Spirit to spirit with God today because of the genuine followship of Jesus Christ with His Father God. This was our model. We have seen the results of true submission, respect and love in a relationship and that result was resurrection power. Followship with a heart wholly-holy submitted to God, reverently respecting God with spiritual honor and loving God with sacrifice flowing out of our gifted salvation, is the Kingdom way, It is from this perspective, we live and love on, being God’s ambassadors and pointing everyone to His way, truth and forever life. There is no greater call than that of true followship, a heart to Heart and spirit to Spirit, vital-vertical relationship with God, founded upon Kingdom perspective. This true followship, it is not, nor never will be the natural human way, but will always be a Great God Adventure for all those who travel it’s narrow path. We must persevere and become Christ champions, who endure till the end as His conquerors, who in followship of Him glow His Glory!

Water Your Spirit With These Living Words

We must allow the Word of God to confront us, to disturb our security, to undermine our complacency and to overthrow our patterns of thought and behavior. Quote By — John Stott

Romans 3:23-24 You see, all have sinned, and all their futile attempts to reach God in His glory fail. 24 Yet they are now saved and set right by His free gift of grace through the redemption available only in Jesus the Anointed. The Voice

1 Peter 3:4 let your adornment be what’s inside—the real you, the lasting beauty of a gracious and quiet spirit, in which God delights. The Voice

Isaiah 66:2 Everything is the product of My hand—My being and My doing— that’s how all you see came to be; I made it all. Nevertheless, I am interested in and concerned about even just one person who is humble and downhearted and trembles at my word. The Voice

Zephaniah 3:11-12 When that day comes, you won’t feel embarrassed and ashamed anymore over all the rebellious things you did in the past. As I said I would, I will remove the proud and arrogant among you. Arrogance and pride will never again be tolerated in My holy mountain. But I will leave afflicted and poor people among you who will trust the reputation of the Eternal One for strength and protection. The Voice

Jeremiah 17:10 It is I, the Eternal One, who probes the innermost heart and examines the innermost thoughts. I will compensate each person justly, according to his ways and by what his actions deserve. The Voice

Proverbs 16: 1-3 People go about making their plans, but the Eternal has the final word. Even when you think you have good intentions, He knows your real motives. Whatever you do, do it as service to Him, and He will guarantee your success. The Voice

Proverbs 17:3 Silver is purified in the crucible, gold in the furnace, but motives of the heart are judged by the Eternal. The Voice

John 7:17-19 If anyone is willing to act according to His purposes and is open to hearing truth, he will know the source of My teaching. Does it come from God or from Me? If a man speaks his own words, constantly quoting himself, he is after adulation. But I chase only after glory for the One who sent Me. My intention is authentic and true. You’ll find no wrong motives in Me. The Voice

Jeremiah 17:9 The choices and consequences are clear. Rely on people alone, and life will be tough and brutish. Rely on the one True God, and life will be rich and productive. The heart is most devious and incurably sick. Who can understand it? The Voice

Matthew 10:37-39 If you love your father or mother more than you love Me, then you are not worthy of Me. If you love your son or daughter more than you love Me, then you are not worthy of Me. If you refuse to take up your cross and follow Me on the narrow road, then you are not worthy of Me. To find your life, you must lose your life—and whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. The Voice

1 Peter 2:20-23 For what credit is there in enduring punishment you deserve? But if you do what is right and yet are punished and endure it patiently, God will be pleased with you. 21-22 For you were called to this kind of life, as Isaiah said, He did no wrong deed, and no evil word came from His mouth. Many believers face intense persecution, but western Christians tend not to experience anything beyond social pressure. Are we merely pursuing comfort, or are we willing to swim against culture? The Anointed One suffered for us and left us His example so that we could follow in His steps. When He was verbally abused, He didn’t return the abuse; when He suffered, He didn’t make threats to cause suffering in return; instead, He trusted that all would be put right by the One who is just when He judges.

Deuteronomy 6:5-9 Listen, Israel! The Eternal is our True God—He alone. You should love Him, your True God, with all your heart and soul, with every ounce of your strength.[a] 6 Make the things I’m commanding you today part of who you are. Repeat them to your children. Talk about them when you’re sitting together in your home and when you’re walking together down the road. Make them the last thing you talk about before you go to bed and the first thing you talk about the next morning. Do whatever it takes to remember them: tie a reminder on your hand and bind a reminder on your forehead where you’ll see it all the time, such as on the doorpost where you cross the threshold or on the city gate.

1 Corinthians 6:19-20 Don’t you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who comes from God and dwells inside of you? You do not own yourself. 20 You have been purchased at a great price, so use your body to bring glory to God! In the same way that some seek to reduce Christianity to a philosophy or a set of ideas, others seek to reduce it to a set of rules for living. If true faith is only about eating certain foods, abstaining from others, and avoiding certain practices, then willpower must be more important than the Spirit of God. But following stringent rules is not that easy. Actually, living by willpower is hard—some might say impossible. Paul is preaching about an alternative to a life governed by rules and restrictions, and that’s a life of faith that embraces grace. What Paul is about to describe is a life of freedom that surpasses a life of rule keeping. The Voice Commentary

Matthew 16:24-28 (to His disciples) If you want to follow Me, you must deny yourself the things you think you want. You must pick up your cross and follow Me. The person who wants to save his life must lose it, and she who loses her life for Me will find it. Look, does it make sense to truly become successful, but then to hand over your very soul? What is your soul really worth? The Son of Man will come in His Father’s glory, with His heavenly messengers, and then He will reward each person for what has been done. 28 I tell you this: some of you standing here, you will see the Son of Man come into His kingdom before you taste death. The Voice (VOICE)

Mark 10:28-31 Master, we have left behind everything we had to follow You. Jesus: That is true. And those who have left their houses, their lands, their parents, or their families for My sake, and for the sake of this good news will receive all of this 100 times greater than they have in this time—houses and farms and brothers, sisters, mothers, and children, along with persecutions—and in the world to come, they will receive eternal life. But many of those who are first in this world shall be last in the world to come, and the last, first. The Voice

There is no doubt that we are all called to be “Christian Leaders” in the
sense that we are called to lead people to Christ. But to lead others to Christ, we ourselves, must learn the attributes of being a good follower. Volumes have been written on leadership. Our world is replete with books, tapes, videos, conferences and training sessions on Leadership. But to be a Leader for Christ it is the skills of FOLLOWSHIP that we must master. Jesus has already blazed the trail to salvation. He is the one true LEADER! And the followship skills we need are found in the book we call the BIBLE!
Quote By: Brian Pusateri

God still speaks and I want to be an Author that pens what He is saying now to His Church. I hope that every meal that you partake of will nourish your soul and establish your vital-vertical relationship with God. Please share this meal “True Followship” with as many people as you can, this will help the Body of Christ to be nourished by God. Use social media share buttons below. Please leave a comment to encourage me and others. Thank you KimberlyMac