People do not drift toward Holiness

It still must be Spirit initiated. The desire to pray comes from the Holy Spirit because we don't know how to pray as we ought. If it's any of me, then I have somewhat to boast, but it's all Him. He speaks we obey. It's not what He speaks from the bible we obey, we can't do what the bible says unless we have the provision from the holy Spirit to accomplish it. We can't even love properly, that too must come from the Spirit. God said that He would put His statutes and law in our heart and He would CAUSE us to walk in them. It's not my cause, my zeal or my ambition, it is His good pleasure working in us. Every child that is born again by the Spirit of God prays, but he may not pray the way we want him to. We have a legalistic standard of weeping and crying and repenting and being on our knees all the time, but that may not be what the Spirit is doing in him right now. For you He is, but for someone else it is not. We are not robots on an assembly line, and we all don't laugh like Elmo. We don't even know how to repent, that too must be Spirit driven. We expect people to be filled with the Holy Spirit on par with and how it was done in the bible, however, it is God who decides when. For some it may take a few seconds while others it takes 15 years. We demand holiness, we demand godly living, you are not my God. God will bring us to perfection in His good time, not anyone else. If a Christian is flitting about, up and down, in and out, God is in complete control over His creation. All that come to Jesus, He will in no wise cast out. There will never be any that will be plucked out of His hand. But they can be plucked out of our hands because we don't know how the Father loves. We don't know His tolerance level. We don't know how He endures such things in this world. We think He should wipe out everyone here and now. But Jesus speaks back and says, "You don't know of what spirit you are of". In other words, you don't know what spirit your speaking those words from, they are definitely not from the Father.

Moses acted correctly, He stood in God's way when judgement was pronounced. God says, "Move out of the way that I may destroy this people in a moment", and Moses stands in His way to plead for the people.

And a greater than Moses is here, even Jesus, whom it was spoken of, "behold the lamb of God that TAKETH AWAY THE SIN OF THE WORLD". We either believe that or we don't. It's here that we are divided between what we see and what God sees. God sees all humanity being atoned by the blood of Jesus and sin taken away and grace and truth abounds. God is in complete control over His creation.

All believers, all true believers will gravitate towards godliness, prayer and obedience to what God is saying to them today. It's not important that they obey what is written, if they did, they'd all be worse than their beginning.

Please don't misconstrue my words, yes, I did say, it's not important that we obey the WRITTEN word. To obey the written word will lead to legalism, to obey what the Spirit is saying is freedom. Even the Jews couldn't obey it, nor perform it, thus Jesus came and performed the jots and the tittles. All of what Paul wrote were guidelines, they were stepping stones to help you and I walk closer to Jesus. We still need the Holy Spirit to make the word of God a reality in our spirit that the word will perform it's good pleasure in us.

Those who understand the grace of God will know EXACTLY what I am trying to convey.

God Bless

everything is of the spirit, but some make it out as we can do nothing and just wait and suddenly the spirit will come and it will be automatic and happened without any work or problems or difficulties or labour from us.

Those who think that way must have come in some other way. Because with great difficulty is the gate getting through and with trials the walk is narrow, few there be that find it. We were already singled out as a target before our initial salvation, and afterwards there have been more difficulties, but thanks be to God I didn't know I had a Saviour, but now old things are passed away behold all things have become new.

Now this is where we need great understanding. Coming out of Egypt was easy, but getting Egypt out of us is a work that only the Holy Spirit can do. "If you, by the Spirit make dead the deeds of the flesh you shall live". There is a cooperation on our part. The cooperation is this, is that we continue to believe that Jesus Christ paid for my justification by His death and suffering. This is very important. This is the FAITH that was once delivered unto the Church, that Christ died for our justification, there is nothing we can do to add anything more to that to come into favour with God. We are justified by faith through grace.

What does that have to do with mortification? Anything that we contribute to our mortification is taken away and burned up. Our cooperation has nothing to do with what I can do, it has everything to with what He has. It was God who told Abraham to take the wood bind it upon his son Isaac and to take him to a place that God chose to offer up the sacrifice. All his son did was obey him and walked with him. We must love our LORD with all our heart soul mind and our strength and by this we will endure whatever the holy Spirit does with us. At the end of the journey, there was nothing written about Isaac struggling with his Dad. Isaac must have learned to obey his father that whatever he did was for the best. This is our mortification, this is our obedience.

Believe me when I say that "trusting" Jesus to do the work in us is very trying. Our flesh, our enemy and the religious world constantly badger us to "do", to get us away from "waiting" on God to act. It's hard work staying the course by faith. Trusting in God to provide is hard work, trusting that He will come through irritates the flesh. The flesh looks for all kinds of reasons to excuse us from our trusting in God. There are so many distractions to distract us from our objective. We change when we trust in Him. Daniel trusted in God. He was under the care and captivity of Babylon. There was no temple, there was no works to conduct, but it was said that Daniel prayed 3 times a day. It doesn't say that Daniel asked for wisdom but we know that he was a wise man and that He was greatly beloved by God. Was it his works of prayer time? No, it was His love for his God that conveyed the his incense to the throne room of God's palace on high.

God Bless