How did you learn Jesus?
(Part 2)
You likely know of Jesus’ famous “Lord’s Prayer” example in Matthew 6:9-13, right?
Most of us “Christians” can say it from memory:
“Pray, then, in this way:
‘Our Father who is in heaven,
Hallowed be Your name.
10 ‘Your kingdom come.
Your will be done,
On earth as it is in heaven.
11 ‘Give us this day our daily bread.
12 ‘And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13 ‘And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. [For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.’]
If you know that prayer, just how LITERAL and daily RELEVANT is it in real practical Practice and expected “fruit” in your life?
Did you know that serious Disciples of Jesus have learned something that mere “believers” likely have not learned about that famous Lord’s Prayer?
I am specifically referring to two of the most important TESTS of a “Christian” that are too often neglected or rejected outside that memorized verses 9-13 part of Jesus’ example of a great prayer life with Our Father who is in Heaven.
Did you even know that the one verse before it and the two verses after it can either MAKE OR BREAK your actual Personal Relationship or “experiential knowledge” with Jesus and the Father?
Here are these 3 often neglected and potentially DISQUALIFYING verses of Jesus’ Lord’s Prayer teaching that have “Christians” too often stumbling over Jesus’ example for a LITERAL and RELEVANT Practice of all THE REST of that Lord’s Prayer example in verses 9-13:
8 “So do not be like them; for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him.”
and
14 ”For if you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.”
Can you imagine NOT having absolute faith that God already “knows what you need before you ask Him” as you approach Him in prayer?
Were you even aware that “if you do not forgive others” it can be literally SEPARATING even “Christians” all over the world from “Our Father in heaven” and His desired “spirit and truth” promised Personal Relationship Jesus explained He wants for us in John 4:19-26?
I remember first noticing those 3 passages being neglected or rejected by “Christians” during my time as a new Disciple of Jesus in the 1980’s and thinking to myself, “No wonder these unforgiving and unfaithful ‘believers’ are no longer PRACTICING The Lord’s Prayer on a daily basis like our Master Jesus practiced it with “Our Father …” It’s no wonder they don’t LITERALLY and RELEVANTLY believe and practice it every day because their own personal experience does not even EXPECT the same ‘fruit’!”
Can you imagine Jesus NOT taking His Father LITERALLY and RELEVANTLY every day? Can you imagine Jesus NOT expecting the “fruit” of a real “experiential knowledge” Personal Relationship with the Father?
So called “Christians” in name only or man-made “religion” only may come to falsely believe Jesus did not LITERALLY receive anything real from the Father each day. Why? Because they themselves lack the receiving of any REAL “fruit” and in doing so they have created false doctrines to rationalize why God does NOT require or expect REAL “fruit” as Jesus proved was possible and required of any “children of God” with Our Father in Heaven.
They may even believe Our Father knows what they truly need before they ask Him, but they literally don’t end up RECEIVING anything for lack of faithful Practice (meaning the required RECEIVING faith of a Disciple).
What is worse is they may even come to falsely believe that God is o.k. with NOT FORGIVING others. They believe they can NOT forgive others and still get into Heaven. Oops! How far “Christians” have fallen away from God! How much more do we need to “repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand”!
I can guarantee you that a faithful, “fruitful” devoted RECEIVER Disciple of Jesus is always including verse 8 and verses 14-15 in The Lord’s Prayer! That is because of their obvious “MAKE or BREAK” importance to our faith and expectation PRACTICES of what is truly important to God as we show up every day for “Lords’ Prayer” Personal Relationship with God “on earth as it is in heaven” “in spirit and truth” (John 4:19-26).
In fact, a devoted Disciple learns to take the entire chapter 6 of Jesus’ teaching “to heart” as being absolutely important. We then go much further than that!
We also learn to take all the OTHER examples of Jesus with the Father included in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John as important parts to learn and receive to more maturely learn from Him how to get closer and closer to His perfect ideal.
Of course, a Disciple daily receives His Gift and His great grace to cover us perfectly until we truly learn to be a RECEIVING Disciple and “grow up in all aspects into Him” as Paul put it in Ephesians 4:15 and how Jesus put it in Luke 6:40, “A disciple (student) is not above his teacher; but everyone, after he has been fully trained, will be like his teacher.”
John, the Disciple, went so far as to explain our final graduation day in Heaven when we meet Jesus face to face like this:
“Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not yet appeared as yet what we shall be. We know that, when He appears, we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him just as He is. And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.” (1 John 3:2-3 and see 1 Corinthians 13:9-14:1).
Why don’t more “believers” treat Jesus, and His Lord’s Prayer, like a devoted “Disciple”? I mean one who first of all takes Him absolutely LITERAL and then through daily trial-and-error learning practice (remember, we are not perfect, yet!) we mysteriously but really come to know without a doubt that the Father truly has a “daily bread” prioritized “will of My Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 7:21-23) requirement built into the Lord’s Prayer.
Why don’t we learn to RECEIVE or “enter” more of His Promised Lands of His Gospel today “on earth as it is in heaven”?
Said as Jesus said it,
“Where’s the FRUIT?”
What exactly are the discernible differences to be looking out for between a mere “believer” in Jesus and a devoted and serious “receiver” student or Disciple of Jesus the Christ and “first place in everything” King of Heaven?
Jesus said the answer ALWAYS includes these foundational parts first:
- “where your treasure is there will your heart be” (because Jesus cares about where “the heart” truly is and not fake “religious” “outward appearances” – found in Matthew 6:21) and especially
- “you will know them by their fruits” (because EVERYONE can be discerned by what comes out from their heart because “the spirit” “fruit” and the “actions” “fruit” are evident for anyone to “see” – found in Matthew 7:15-20 and 7:21-27; John 13:35; 15:1-8; 1 John 2:3-6; Luke 9:55-56; Matthew 16:23-28).
Pokyra cannot do anything about a person’s own secret “heart” issues going on because only God can “know” this most important to God “spirit of the man” aspect of a Personal Relationship with God (Matthew 7:21-23; 1 Corinthians 4:1-5; Romans 14:4; 1 Corinthians 2:9-16).
As Paul explained it best,
“But to me it is a very small thing that I should be examined by you, or by any human court; in fact I do not even examine myself. For I am conscious of nothing against myself, yet I am not by this acquitted, but the one who examines me is the Lord.” (1 Corinthians 4:4-5)
But Pokyra can certainly challenge people to answer for their “fruit” coming out of their lives and wherever and whenever necessary, to “repent for the kingdom of Heaven is at hand”.
Is that a familiar message? Of course it is.
Jesus’ continued challenge to His Church regarding “sin, righteousness and judgment” is nothing new (John 15:26-16:15). But the absolute seriousness that He is currently in this season of HisStory taking with His Church by His Holy Spirit “conviction” regarding
1.) Who is leading His Church “first place in everything”,
2.) How people are learning Christ as “Christians”,
and 3.) How people are practicing Christ as “Christians”
THIS is right now being seriously CHALLENGED by Him like a Master Manager of a Vineyard.
This well-known “vinedresser” role of Father God (see John 15.1-8) is currently (often violently) pruning “good fruit” so it will produce “more fruit” and violently cutting off dead or “bad fruit” that He views as worthy of being “burned up” in judgment (Matthew 3:1-12). How do you view the “pruning” of fruit?
However you view the violent nature of “pruning” by God, it clearly means Jesus and the Father are no longer tolerating or “overlooking” certain important “foundational” areas of “fruitlessness” or “bad fruit” in His Church … His “vineyard” … just as He declared His view of His Church in Micah 7:1-6:
“Woe is me!
For I am
Like the fruit pickers, like the grape gatherers.
There is not a cluster of grapes to eat,
Or a first-ripe fig which I crave.
2 The godly person has perished from the land,
And there is no upright person among men.
All of them lie in wait for bloodshed;
Each of them hunts the other with a net.
3 Concerning evil, both hands do it well.
The prince asks, also the judge, for a bribe,
And a great man speaks the desire of his soul;
So they weave it together.
4 The best of them is like a briar,
The most upright like a thorn hedge.
The day when you post your watchmen,
Your punishment will come.
Then their confusion will occur.
5 Do not trust in a neighbor;
Do not have confidence in a friend.
From her who lies in your bosom
Guard your lips.
6 For son treats father contemptuously,
Daughter rises up against her mother,
Daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;
A man’s enemies are the men of his own household.”
Jesus confirmed this view of His own Church’s “fruit” problem just explained in Micah 7:1-6 but in John 15:1-8 as well:
“15 “I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser.
2 Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit.
3 You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you.
4 Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me.
5 I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.
6 If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire and they are burned.
7 If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.
8 My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples.”
What’s going on right now regarding Jesus’ REQUIREMENT in His Kingdom of Heaven that we who belong to Him, “bear much fruit, and so PROVE to be My disciples”?
Well, we know that King Jesus, who alone has “all authority in heaven and on earth,” is currently taking back His Church from those who have hijacked it from its “first place in everything” “Head” or “Leader” (Matthew 23:8-10).
His goal is to prepare His Church, “prune” it, and train it by His own primary example to bear the expected “more good fruit” of the prophesied “children of God” who are just waiting to “be revealed” within the world as it is prophetically declared in Romans 8:18-21. It’s AWESOME!!!
The “children of God” Jesus desires to lead “first place in everything” are even right now being prepared to take, for example, His famous “Lord’s Prayer” more LITERALLY and with literal expectation of “receiving” the SAME “FRUIT” Jesus expected during His own “daily bread” prayer times with the Father “on earth as it is in heaven”.
This all means being prepared and trained to daily make it a GOOD HABIT to do what Jesus shared a few verses after His Lord’s prayer teaching in Matthew 6:33:
“But seek first His kingdom, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added to you.”
Jesus’ prophesy of how it all works in John 15:26-16:15 will again become “the norm” for His Disciples who are also “the children of God” about to be “revealed” inside the world like never before within these prophesied last days!
Jesus currently looks at His Church and views it (generally speaking) as NOT “spiritually” prepared to RECEIVE the Father’s “daily bread” or “will of My Father who is in heaven” just as Paul described how it spiritually works like this:
“For to us God revealed them through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God … Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. Now we have RECEIVED not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things freely given to us by God …” (1 Corinthians 2:10-16).
So, what exactly is “MISSING” in Jesus’ Church today?
Well, if you are just starting out with Jesus, why not simply start HERE with what Paul just described should be discernible and literally experienced daily with God in 1 Corinthians 2:10-16?
Why not just apply that to any of your own “fruitless” or non-literal and practically irrelevant practices of Jesus’ “Lord’s Prayer” that currently (you are not alone in this “fruit” problem in His Church today) too often has little to nothing to compare with Jesus’ expected “fruit” for His own Disciples.
I am talking about Jesus’ own “fruit” example He lived with and experienced daily with the Father “on earth as it is in heaven” each day while He walked the earth with His original Disciples for our best example of how bearing “good fruit” all works.