Chapter7

For a Christian to flourish in God we need to saturate ourselves in Gods knowledge, word, and truth and we need to abide by and speak Gods knowledge, word, and truth into every situation that we will encounter in our life. We need to learn of Him, and live for Him.

If we daily petition God's Holy Spirit through prayer to train us up in the ways of God, God is able and faithful to teach us what we ask of Him, but we have to be open to receive and we need to make ourselves available to receive all of what the Holy Spirit is attempting to teach us by God's leading. Having said this we need to realize that there are some Christians who are not open to receive, or who are not making themselves available to receive what God is striving to teach them by His Holy Spirit. Some people are not taking their walk seriously enough, or have not made up their mind yet to surrender every part of their life over to God, or do what they have to do to make God number one in every area of their life.

These are those who need to wake up and realize that their walk as a Christian is all about growth and requires much effort on their part to surrender every part of their life over unto the working of God to receive this growth. These are the ones who need to concentrate their every focus on seeking God to develop them into that new creation that He is attempting to make out of them, or else they may miss out on what God wants to do with them. We all, each one of us as a Christian need to adhere our self to every plan that God has for our life in that God can fulfill every promise He has made to us through Jesus Christ.

Yes God has blueprints laid out before Him to do some reconstructive work in our lives and He needs us to make ourselves available to Him to let Him in to do this work. He needs our cooperation, our agreement and our help in doing this work. Some of these Christians who don't try enough to do what God is asking of them will wake up and realize their error in being lax, but some of these Christians will sleep through the last trumpet call and the return of Jesus Christ.

But there is another type of person/Christian who is willing to let the Holy Spirit have His way with them, but who have many stumbling blocks hindering them from receiving the fullness of what God is wanting to do with them. We need to realize that there are many who upon becoming a Christian need some healing, deliverance, and ministering to because life had not been good to them, and we also need to realize that there are many hurting Christians sitting in God's churches who have not received their healing yet. Sad to say but not enough of our churches are ministering churches, and not enough Christians in the body of Christ are knowledgeable enough, or experienced enough to minister to the hurting because their churches are not encouraging them as the body of Christ to go out and do this work.

Unless your church has outreach programs to reach the lost, the hurt, and the suffering and unless you are getting to see, or experience this work first hand then you may not have an example to learn by. There are many Christians who when they first come to the Lord need ministering to, intercession, and prayers of deliverance spoken over them to break the influences and the strongholds of a dysfunctional past from them. Some Christians when they first come to the Lord may have unresolved issues which are hindering the Holy Spirit from doing the greater work in them that needs to be done. These are the heavy laden and spiritually oppressed, which Jesus Christ refers to.

For those who have grown up in a dysfunctional family, home, or neighbourhood many of these people will have many negative influences born out of this dysfunction that are burdening them and holding stronghold's over their life. These people may be carrying around heavy loads of burden and are dealing with many types of oppression, bad memories, and negative thinking which a regular person may not be able to comprehend unless they had went through it themself.

These are those who may want to receive what God has for them and who may want to live for Christ but who first need to be ministered to, healed, delivered, and brought into the knowledge of the ways of Christ. All this can be accomplished through Jesus Christ, but these people would greatly benefit from some good Holy Spirit filled and knowledgeable mentors who would help minister to their needs. Too many new Christians are quietly suffering and struggling along trying to understand what it means to be a Christian and if they had a hurting life will wonder "When is my healing going to start."

Some of these hurting people had been told that if they would accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and their Saviour that their burdens would be covered over and that they would have His peace in their life and joy in their heart, but years later some of these people are still asking "when are these things going to happen?" "Where is my peace?" Why? Because not enough churches have been ministering to the individual, they have been teaching to a multitude, but not ministering to the hurting.

It is hard for a Christian to witness to another person and tell them how good Jesus is if they themself are silently suffering. Many new Christians who are being led to the Lord are being told "ok now that you have made the decision for Christ you are now a new creation go find yourself a church to fellowship in, learn the word of God etc etc," but what a lot of these new converts are needing is some personal mentoring and ministering to.

Matthew 9:35-38 NIV 35 Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. 36 When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. 37 Then he said to his disciples, "The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. 38 Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field."

This type of new Christian needs to be ministered to and may need to see the love of God "first hand" working through "caring" people before they can realize that God is truly real and that God truly does love them for up until now some of these people have experienced more condemnation and different forms of abuse in their life than any true form of love. Some people have never experienced a true relationship of love and don't know what it is like to have another person's love for them for some people came out of unloving homes and feel unworthy of being loved.

If a person came out of a highly dysfunctional home where lots of abuse had been projected toward them then this person may have some real trust issues, and these trust issues can act as a barrier hindering them from receiving the healing that is due them through Christ, and which God has for them. If a person couldn't depend on their own parents to protect them from any abuse that was going on in their home how well will they be able to easily trust a new person they meet? What I am getting at is that some people have not had the benefit to be raised in a loving home but had been raised in much dysfunction by abusive parents, or oppressing circumstances. This being the case a person reared in a unloving, emotionally abusive home will have emotional burdens that need to be unyoked from them.

One thing that you can be assured of is that if this type of person has not received any healing yet from their past then this person will have dark spirits assigned against them to keep the pains and negativity of their past alive in their mind. Those spirits came in through the dis-functionality of their past and the sins of their abusers and have been assigned by satan to keep this person in bondage to negative and irrational thinking and feelings of fear, inadequacy, self hate, unloved, anxiousness, etc. Why? To hold them captive to these feelings so that satan can maintain a hold on them "and" to hold them back from "easily" receiving deliverance from these strongholds of their mind should they come to accept Jesus Christ into their life.

That is our duty as a Christian and should be our desire to show love to those who need to know love, to shine a light for those who are in the dark, to minister to the hurting, to mentor and shepherd the lost etc. Is your going to church one hour a week, or even several hours a week accomplishing this type of ministry? Note: We should not think that the ministry of reaching out to others is the sole responsibility of the church, but we should realize that this responsibility belongs to each person who has Jesus Christ living in them.