Spiritual Truths To The Indwelling Spirit Of God

1Corinthians 2:16  

"For who hath known the mind of the Lord, 

that he may instruct him? But we 

have the mind of Christ."

    Paul says it like it is! He simply says; "the only person who can tell us about God is the Spirit of God."  There are feelings which are so personal, things which are so private, experiences which are so intimate that no one knows them except a man's own spirit. Paul says that the same is true of God. There are deep and intimate things in him which only his Spirit knows; and that Spirit is the only person who can lead us into really intimate knowledge of God. 

    Even then it is not every man who can understand these things. Paul speaks about interpreting spiritual things to spiritual people. There are those who are spiritual, and the man that is spiritual is the man who is sensitive to the Spirit and whose life is guided by the Spirit. 
    Paul speaks of the man who is "natural." He is the man who lives as if there was nothing beyond physical life and there were no needs other than material needs, whose values are all physical and material. A man like that cannot understand spiritual things. A man who thinks that nothing is more important than the satisfaction of the sex urge cannot understand the meaning of chastity; a man who thanks that the gathering of material things is the supreme end of life, cannot understand generosity; and a man who has never a thought beyond this world cannot understand the things of God. To him they look mere foolishness. No man should be like this; but if he embraces "the immortal longings" that are in his soul he may make himself so that when the Spirit of God speaks  he will not hear.
    It is easy to become so involved in the world that there exists nothing beyond it. We must pray to have the mind of Christ, for only when he dwells within us are we safe from the invasion of the demands of material things. 
Amen!

Reading: (1Cor. 2:10-16)
Ref: (HG SB, DSB)

May God Bless You

And Your Family

Minister Robert A. Lail Sr.

The Cross Life Ministry

 

A Life Worth Living

1Corinthians 1:26  

"For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many 

wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, 

not many noble, are called:" 

    Remember when the sons of Jesse passed before Samuel, and the King says, "The Lord hath not chosen these. And Samuel said unto Jesse, are here all thy children?" (1Sam. 16:10-11). So does the successive regiments of people, on which the world relies pass before Christ. The wise, the mighty, the noble, the great, the things that are! The warriors with whom He will win the world to Himself are the nobodies, the ciphers, the people who the world hates. Do not depreciate yourself, but give yourself to Him; He will find a niche for you and make your life worth living. 
    My Friend, God has put you into union with Christ Jesus. Everything we need for life and godliness is in Him; only let us make all that we can of our wonderful position and possessions.
  As Paul entered Corinth, he appears to have deliberately determined that his theme would be the crucified Lord, and expressed in the simplest phrases. When we speak the truth as it is in Jesus, the Spirit is ever at hand to enforce our testimony by His demonstration and power. 
Amen!

Reading: (1 Cor. 1:26-31)
               (1 Sam. 16:1-13)
Ref: (HG SB, DSB)

May God Bless You

And Your Family

Minister Robert A. Lail Sr.

The Cross Life Ministry

  

A Divided Church

1Corinthians 1:10  

"Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, 

that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions 

among you; but that ye be perfectly joined together 

in the same mind and in the same judgment." 

    He softens the rebuke which is given, not as from a schoolmaster with a rod, but as from one who has no other emotion than love.  It should have shown them how wrong their  disputes and divisions were. They were brothers and they should have lived in brotherly love. He bids them to make up their differences. He wishes them to be joined together, like joining together bones that have been fractured or joining together a joint that has been dislocated. The disunion is unnatural and must be cured for the sake of the health and efficiency of the body of the Church 
    There were those who claimed to belong to Paul. No doubt this was mainly a Gentile party. Paul had always preached the gospel of Christian freedom and the end of the law. It is most likely that this party were attempting to turn liberty into license and using their new found Christianity as an excuse to do as they liked. They had forgotten that the representation of the good news brought the essentials of the Christian ethic. They had forgotten that they were saved, not to be free to sin, but to be free not to sin.

    It was Paul's claim that he set before men the Cross of Christ in its simplest terms. To decorate the story of the Cross with rhetoric and cleverness would have been to make men think more of the language than of the facts, more of the speaker than of the message. It was Paul's aim to set before men, not himself, but Christ in all his Glory! 

Amen!

Reading: (1Cort:10-17)

Ref: (HG SB, DSB)

May God Bless You

And Your Family

Minister Robert A. Lail Sr.

The Cross Life Ministry

Christ' Commission To The Church

John 20:21 

"Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you: 
as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you." 

    It is most likely that the disciples continued to meet in the upper room where the Last Supper had been held. They knew the bitterness of the Jews, and they were afraid that their turn would come next. So they were meeting in terror, listening fearfully for every step on the stair and for every knock at the door. As they sat there, Jesus was suddenly in their midst. He gave them the normal everyday eastern greeting: "Peace be unto you." Then Jesus gave the disciples the commission which the Church must never forget.
    He said that as God had sent Him forth, so He sent them forth: "as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you." It means that Jesus Christ needs the Church which is exactly what Paul meant when he called the Church the body of Christ. "For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ," (1Cor 12:12).
    Jesus had come with a message for all men and now He was going back to his Father. His message could never be taken to all men, unless the Church took it. The Church is to be a mouth to speak for Jesus, feet to run His errands, and hands to do His work. Therefore, the first thing this means is that Jesus is dependent on his Church. 

    It means that the Church needs Jesus. A person who is to be sent out needs someone to send him; he needs a message to take; he needs a power and an authority to back his message; he needs someone to whom he may turn when he is in doubt and in difficulty. Without Jesus, the Church has no message; without Him the Church has no power; without Him the Church has no one to turn to when up against it; without Him the Church has nothing to enlighten her mind, to strengthen her arm, and to encourage her heart. This means that the Church is dependent on Jesus! 
    The sending out of the Church by Jesus is parallel to the sending out of Jesus by God. But no one can read the story of the Fourth Gospel without seeing that the relationship between Jesus and God was continually dependent on Jesus' perfect obedience and perfect love. Jesus could be God's messenger only because He rendered to God that perfect obedience and love. It follows that the Church is fit to be the messenger and the instrument of Christ only when she perfectly loves Him and perfectly obeys Him. The Church must never change His message. She must never be out to follow man made policies; she must be out to follow the will of Christ. The Church fades whenever she tries to solve some problem in her own wisdom and strength, and leaves out the will and guidance of Jesus Christ.
Amen!!

Reading: (John 20:19-23)
Ref: (HG SB, DSB) 

May God Bless You

And Your Family

Minister Robert A. Lail Sr.

The Cross Life Ministry

   
 

The Night At The Garden Of Gethsemane

John 18:11  

"Then said Jesus unto Peter, Put up thy sword into 

the sheath: the cup which my Father hath

 given me, shall I not drink it?" 

    When the last meal was finished and when Jesus' talk and prayer with his disciples were ended, he and his friends left the upper room. They were bound for the Garden of Gethsemane over the brook Cedron. Often Jesus and his disciples had gone there for peace and quiet. Judas knew that he would find Jesus there and it was there that he had decided it would be easiest to engineer the arrest. There is something extremely surprising about the force which came out to arrest Jesus. 
    John said that there was a company of soldiers, together with officers from the chief priests and Pharisees. The officers would be the Temple police. The Temple authorities had a kind of private police force to keep good order, and the Sanhedrin had its police officers to carry out its decrees. The officers, therefore, were the Jewish police force. But there was a band of Roman soldiers there too. Even if we take this word to mean the smallest force, what a force to send out against an unarmed Galilean carpenter! 
    Few scenes in scripture show us the qualities of Jesus as does the arrest in the garden. It shows us his courage; when they arrived, Jesus stepped out. "Whom seek ye?"  "Jesus of Nazareth," they said. Back came the answer: "I am he." The man they had thought they would have to search for was standing before them with glorious defiance. Here is the courage of the man who will face things out.  It shows us his authority. There he was, one single, lonely, unarmed figure; there they were, hundreds of them, armed and equipped. Yet face to face with him, they retreated and fell to the ground. There flowed from Jesus an authority which in all his loneliness made him stronger than the might of his enemies. 
    It shows us that Jesus chose to die.  Here again it is clear that he could have escaped death if he had wished to. He could have walked through them and gone his way. But he did not. He even helped his enemies to arrest him. He chose to die It shows his protective love.  It was not for himself that he took thought; it was for his friends. "Jesus answered, I have told you that I am he: if therefore you seek me, let these go their way:" (John 18:8).  Jesus' protecting love surrounded his disciples even in Gethsemane. It shows his utter obedience. "Shall I not drink," he said, "the cup that God has given me to drink?" This was God's will, and that was enough. Jesus was himself faithful unto death. My Friends, how can man die better than facing fearful odds and giving his life for his friends?
Amen! 

Reading: (John 18: 1-11)
Ref: (HG SB, DSB)

May God Bless You 

And Your Family

Minister Robert A. Lail Sr.

The Cross Life Ministry

    
 

Jesus Life Was The Cross

 John 17:4-5 

 "I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which 

thou gavest me to do. And now, O Father, glorify thou me 

with thine own self with the glory which I had 

with thee before the world was." 

    Jesus life had a climax, and that was the Cross. To him the Cross was the glory of life and the way to the glory of eternity. "And Jesus answered them, saying, The hour is come, that the Son of man should be glorified." (John 12:23). What did Jesus mean when he repeatedly spoke of the Cross as his glory and his glorification? Other say there is more answers than one. However I do not agree! Jesus Life Was The Cross!! Because The Cross Was His Glory. Amen!!
    It is one of the facts of history that again and again it was in death that the great ones found their glory. It was when they died, and how they died, which showed people what and who they really were. They may have been misunderstood, undervalued, condemned as criminals in their lives, but their deaths showed their true place in the scheme of things. Abraham Lincoln, Joan of Arc, Apostle Paul, John The Baptist. I could go on writing names down, but there is a lot of people that has given their life for others.      
    Again and again a martyr's majesty has appeared in death. It was so with Jesus, for even the centurion at the foot of the Cross was left saying: "Truly this was the Son of God" (Matt 27:54). The Cross was the glory of Jesus because he was never more majestic than in his death. The Cross was his glory because its magnet drew men to him in a way that even his life had never done, and Christ is still drawing men to him through the Holy Spirit of God. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends," (John 15:13).
Amen!

Reading: (John 17:1-5)
Ref: (HG SB, DSB)

May God Bless You

And Your Family

Minister Robert A. Lail Sr.

The Cross Life Ministry

 

The Test Of Love

John 14:15-17

"If ye love me, keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and

 he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you

 for ever; Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot

 receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth

him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth

 with you, and shall be in you."

    There is only one test of "Love, and that is Obedience." It was by obedience that Jesus showed his Love of God. Therefore it is by obedience that we must show our love of Jesus.We know all too well how there are those who protest their love in words but who, at the same time, bring pain and heartbreak to those whom they claim to love. There are children and young people who say that they love their parents, and who yet cause them grief and anxiety. There are husbands who say they love their wives and wives who say they love their husbands, and who yet, by their inconsideration's and their unkindness brings pain the one to the other. To Jesus real love is not an easy thing. It is shown only in true obedience. 
   Nowadays comfort has to do almost solely with sorrow; and a comforter is someone who sympathizes with us when we are sad. Beyond a doubt the Holy Spirit does that, but to limit his work to that function is to sadly belittle him. We often talk of being able to cope with things. That is precisely the work of the Holy Spirit. He takes away our inadequacies and enables us to cope with life. The Holy Spirit substitutes victorious for defeated living.  
    So what Jesus is saying is: I am setting you a hard task, and I am sending you out on a very difficult engagement. But I am going to send you someone, a comforter , who will guide you as to what to do and enable you to do it. My Friends, do not lean on your own understanding! There is a Comforter for you to lean on "The Holy Spirit." 
Amen!

Reading: (John 14:15-17) 
Ref: (HG SB, DSB)

May God Bless You

And Your Family

Minister Robert A. Lail Sr.

The Cross Life Ministry