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Our Work = Believe & Abide In Jesus

Michael J. Weiss, Sr.

I have found myself recently with a growing sense of unease about accomplishing the works that God has set aside for me to do.  (Eph 2:10).  What if I miss them?  What if I don’t show up?  What if I can’t do them well enough?

And then I remember John 15 and the message that I preach to others.  The primary work that God wants us engaged in is abiding in Jesus.

The second great visual illustration Jesus gave prior to going to the Cross was at a vineyard on their way to Gethsemane.  Jesus stops (I think) by a large grape plant, takes hold of the large vine growing out of the ground and says, “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.”

The purpose of the branches is to bear fruit.  The concern of the branches is to abide in the vine.  A failure to abide will result in no fruit being produced.  It is the rich life of the vine that allows the branch to bear fruit.  The better the connection with the vine, the better the fruit produced.

You can go to John 6 and the Lord’s response to the people asking Him what must they do to do the works of God?  Jesus said, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him Whom He has sent”.  You can also go to John 14:12 where Jesus said, “He who believes in Me the works that I do he will do also…”

Why do we go so quickly to works?  Maybe because we get glory out of it.  Leading someone to Christ, making a disciple, training a laborer, etc.  We feel good and people applaud.  Leading a class, organizing an event, speaking—we feel like we are excelling and doing good, better than most.

There is little glory in reading the Scripture, hearing the voice of the Lord, walking with Him, engaging in prayer, serving in the background.  And yet, if we will abide in Him, we can have the confidence that God will do in our lives and through our lives that which is pleasing to Him.  So, the application is not to worry about works but focus on abiding in Jesus and trust the works to the HS.

May God give us the grace to stay focused on Him.

Written by David C.,

God Loves Us, Jesus, Mental Health, Personal Reflections, Praying for America, Yahweh

Who Do You Want To Be United With Or Yoked To?

Michael J. Weiss, Sr.

“George P. Alexander is a Christian believer who grew up in India, which is considered the birthplace of yoga. He reveals that yoga poses are ‘offerings to the 330 million Hindu gods,’ and thus, each pose is an act of worship. Westerners believe they are exercising and breathing, but ‘to a Hindu, yoga is the outward physical expression of a deep spiritual belief. You cannot separate one from the other.’”

“. . . yoga’s foundation comes from pantheism, which elevates the worship of everything as god. The word yoga is derived from the Sanskrit root yuj, which means ‘to yoke’ or ‘to unite.’ The question is, what is one uniting with?”

Jesus invites us to take His yoke. “Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. (Matthew 11:29)”

Who do you want to be “yoked” with, The Prince of Peace (Shalom), the One Who is Love, or another?

The above quotes were taken from https://ifapray.org/blog/the-new-age-is-infiltrating-public-schools/, accessed January 25, 2025.

David Coffield, Featured Writers, God Loves Us, Jesus, Messiah, Yahweh

Let’s Be With Father God!

Michael J. Weiss, Sr.

Matthew 11:28-30.  These are verses that I pray for myself and for a number of others as well.  I love the passage.  “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.  Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For My yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

I love that Jesus describes Himself as “gentle and humble in heart”.  It is the only place I know of where He describes His nature, His character.  There are lots of places where He speaks of His titles, His position, etc.  I can hang with a person that is gentle and humble in heart.  Very encouraging.

When He says, “take My yoke upon you and learn from Me” He is inviting us into a specific relationship.  It is a relationship where we are willing to do what He wants us to do, participate with Him in His work, keep our focus on Him.  He is inviting us to walk with Him in life day by day. 

We are invited into a daily relationship with Jesus that results in an easy yoke and a light burden.

It is possible to be mighty in the scriptures and barren in one’s relationship with Jesus.  The Pharisees lived it.  It is possible to labor mightily in the ministry and miss the leading and work of the Holy Spirit.  Matthew 7 speaks of a group that will consider themselves “qualified” based on their performance alone.

“Fixing our eyes on Jesus”, “seeking first His kingdom, His righteousness”, responding in love to the incredible invitation to walk with Him, to fellowship with Him, to learn from Him.  May the Lord so grant!

Your brother,

David

David Coffield, Featured Writers, God Loves Us, Guest Post, J3 Khai Ambassadors, J3 Khai Restoration, Jesus, Veterans, Yahweh

“God is interested in growing us up and it is going to be painful”

Michael J. Weiss, Sr.

Someone should inform new believers (and probably old ones as well) that God is interested in growing us up and it is going to be painful.  The writer of Hebrews informs us that God “scourges every son whom He receives”.  What!?  That is child abuse.  A writer in Psalms says, “You Who have shown me many troubles and distresses…”

Why would God do that?

I can think of 2 reasons.  One would be that we need it for growth.  I was reading in Proverbs 17 this morning, “The refining pot is for silver and the furnace for gold, but the Lord tests hearts”.  We don’t like the process of getting there but we like the end result.  The word “test” in this passage means that God is in the process of refining and developing our hearts.

When we come to Jesus, we are not ok as we are any more than a new recruit off the street is ok to deploy with an U.S. Army Special Forces team.  We are accepted as we are.  We are loved, embraced, and delighted in as we are but because God loves us, He wants to grow us up into the image and character of His Son Jesus.  The Christian life is about growth and growth means change.  We grow as we walk with Jesus.  It is what happens when we engage in a relationship with Jesus through the Word and prayer daily.

We also grow when God looks at our lives and decides to work on developing us.  Pain, trials, stress, troubles, sicknesses, conflict…it goes on and on.  Without the confidence that the sovereign hand of our loving God is ruling over it we can lose hope. [Note from Michael; and that he promised never to leave us for forsake us]

Another reason would be that it expresses God’s glory.  When you are suffering, and you rejoice—God receives glory, and the world sits up and takes notice.  When life goes poorly, and you give thanks—the world sits up and takes notice.  May the Lord give us the grace to give thanks in all things.

Your brother,

David

Featured Writers, Guest Post, Praying for America

History of the American Thanksgiving Holiday

Michael J. Weiss, Sr.

Posted on the Intercessors For America webpage dates November 26, 2024.

O Lord we give thanks to you for your many blessings.Thank you for the Pilgrims and their covenant with youand one another. May their devotion be a shining example for us to live and act in our world today. Amen.

With Thanksgiving upon us, our thoughts turn to turkey, pumpkin pie, football, and family. It’s a special day to thank God for all the wonderful blessings He has bestowed on us personally and as a nation.

Who is praying on the wall?

“O give thanks to the Lord, for He is good, For His lovingkindness is everlasting.” 1 Chronicles 16:34

Thanksgiving is also a time to reflect on our country’s origins and how God led a small band of Pilgrims to the New World. We’re taught the highlights in school. The Pilgrims came on the Mayflower and landed on Plymouth Rock in 1620. The native Wampanoag, Squanto, taught them how to plant corn in the Spring. Then, in the Fall, with Massasoit, the Wampanoag chief, and 90 of his men attending, they celebrated a harvest feast, which we now call Thanksgiving.

But the true Pilgrim story is so much more than a bigmeal. It began a decade and a half before, in 1606.The Pilgrims were members of a religious group called the Separatists who wished to separate from the Church of England, which was a crime.

The Pilgrim Covenant

As IFA founder Derek Prince noted in his book, The Pilgrim Legacy, “The Pilgrim wanted liberty forhimself, for his wife and little ones, and for his brethren,to walk with God in a Christian life as the rules and motives of such a life were revealed to him from God’s Word. For that he went into exile; for that he crossed the ocean; for that he made his home in the wilderness.”

The Pilgrims believed they received their spiritualfreedom directly from God through Jesus Christ, not thestate-run church. To help them live out their faith, they entered into a covenant in 1606 with one another.

William Brewster had opened up his home, ScroobyManor, as an underground house church. Here, thePilgrims agreed to obediently follow Christ and actively cultivate His presence among them.

Dr. Paul Jehle, pastor of New Testament Church andpresident of Plymouth Rock Foundation, in his bookJourney of Faith, described this early Pilgrim churchas a ‘Church by Covenant’. He states, “The Pilgrims formed a church through a commitment to one another by the direct authority of Christ who sat on the throneof their heart.”

Their covenant is known as the Scrooby Covenant, which promises…

“As the Lord’s free people joined by a covenant of theLord into a church estate, in the fellowship of the gospel, to walk in all His ways made known, or to bemade known unto us, according to our best endeavors, whatsoever it should cost us, the Lord assisting us.”

It Cost the Pilgrims Dearly

As a result of their faith, many were put in jail. Whenthe persecution in England grew harsher, the Pilgrim families sold their land, homes, and belongings to livein Holland.

During those 11 years, their children began leaving the Pilgrim faith for, as William Bradford described, “the great licentiousness of youth in that country, and the manifold temptation of the place, they were drawn away by evil examples into extravagant and dangerous courses… and departing from their parents”.

To save their children from sin and with a missionaryzeal to “advance the gospel of the kingdom of Christ inthose remote parts of the world… and be assteppingstones unto others for the performing of so great a work”, they decided to go to the New World.

The Pilgrims undertook a frightening journey. Fierce storms blew them off course, driving them northwardfrom Virginia to the frigid wilderness of New England.They landed in Plymouth on December 21, 1620.

Of the 102 passengers that set sail from England, only 52 Pilgrims survived the first winter – a heavy cost indeed.

In the Spring, when the Mayflower set sail for England, Captain Christopher Jones offered the Pilgrims free passage back. Not one soul took him up on his offer – so strong was the Pilgrims’ covenantal commitment to one another and to God.

God’s Covenants with Humanity

Covenants are as old as Genesis. God made covenants – or special promises – throughout history. God’s first covenant was with Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply” and to take care of His creation. (Genesis 1:28) Sadly, they broke their covenant with God, and sin entered the world.

God’s Covenant with Abraham was for the creation ofIsrael whose purpose would be to shine God’s light tothe world. I will make you into a great nation, and I willbless you. (Genesis 12:2)

God’s Covenant with Noah is the first Covenant of Grace, in which God promised to safeguard and bless the creation until the creation of the new heavens and the new earth Never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done. (Genesis 8:21)

God’s Covenant with Moses and the Ten Commandments provided a framework for people tolive within the Covenant of God’s love, like this… If youlove me, you will have no other Gods before me… andso on. (Exodus 20:1-17)

God’s Covenant with David was one of hope and thecoming fulfillment of the law and the prophets in Jesus, the true Son of David. Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever. (2 Samuel 7:16)

God then made a New Covenant, His ultimate promise of love, and it was to be written not on tablets of stone but on the hearts of His people. And it cost Him dearly – His very own Son. For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son that whosever believes in Him will have eternal life.. (John 3:16)

The ‘Whatsoever It ShouldCost Us’ Generation

The Pilgrims saw themselves as the ‘whatsoever itshould cost us’ generation who, like Abraham, faithfullyleft their homes and families to follow God to an unknown land. Like Noah, the tiny vessel Mayflower became the ‘ark’ of their salvation. Like Moses, theywere prepared by God to form their church and community around a covenant that God Himself promised to uphold. Like the first disciples, they knew that they were bringing to a new land the great GoodNews of Christ’s New Covenant, that He commandedshould go forth into all the earth.

Today, we are privileged above all the peoples of the earth to live in a nation founded by free people whose freedom came from God. We are the legacy of those free people, not only for the nation but, more importantly, for the Church, which is the hope of this nation.

We have a sacred and solemn duty, as God’s freeCovenant people, to preserve and tell God’s story ofthese Covenant people, who followed God, whatsoever the cost, to plant a churchthat was the seed for a nation and a harvest of millionsof souls.

We’re indebted to the Pilgrims for their legacy as free people before God, who has guaranteed our right toworship him as our Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer freely without any interference from the state.

This Thanksgiving, let us reflect on what it means to be the “Whatsoever it should cost us’ generation for our times. It will take all courage, faith, resolve, and absolute dependency on the Lord, which we must live out in spirit and in truth. Like the Pilgrims, we were born for such a time as this.

Every Thanksgiving, the Brewster clan offers a simple toast written by historian Dr.

Samuel Eliot Morrison…

To the Pilgrims,

A simple people, inspired by an ardent faith in God,

a dauntless courage in danger,

a boundless resourcefulness in the face of difficulties,

an impregnable fortitude in adversity:

thus they have in some measure become the spiritual ancestors of all Americans.

Let’s Pray

Oh Lord, may we as Christians today seek your faceand your will and have the ardent faith and dauntlesscourage to share the light and salvation of Christ to thelost. As your free Covenant People, today rooted and firmly established in your love by the unity of your HolySpirit, may we stand strong so that future generationswill stand on our shoulders.

Lead us as a nation as faithfully as You led the Pilgrims to America. May we boldly embark on the journey you have set for us whatsoever it should cost us, to move into the future of your Kingdom: lookingoutward and sharing the love You have given to us. May your Covenant with our nation, once again, be the cry of our hearts, for such a time as this, for the love of Jesus and for His sake. Amen!

Are you encouraged by the covenant legacy of the Pilgrims? This Thanksgiving, share this article with your friends and family to remind them of this legacy!

Belinda Brewster lives in Plymouth, MA, America’s Hometown, with her husband, Wrestling, an 11th generation direct descendent of Elder William Brewster, the spiritual leader of the Pilgrims. She and Wrestling attend Chiltonville Congregational Church which is the fourth daughter church from the first church established by the Pilgrims. Chiltonville has adopted the Scrooby Covenant as its own. Belinda is a contributing writer for IFA. Photo Credit: Robert W. Weir (photograph courtesy Architect of the Capitol) – Architect of the Capitol.

© 2024 Intercessors for America.

All Rights Reserved

David Coffield, Featured Writers, Guest Post

Do we measure the goodness of God by how we feel?

Michael J. Weiss, Sr.

Written by Dave Coffield:

A friend asked me if I was encouraged.  I am encouraged to the degree that my eyes and focus are on Jesus.

David, the King, is encouraging.  There are days when he is in the pits, distressed, troubled, fearful, despairing.  There are also days when he is delighted, rejoicing, and grateful.

If we measure the goodness of God by how we feel in our circumstances in this life we will be forever on an emotional rollercoaster.  The tribulations with my neck and head pain in the last 9 months have led me to understand that God uses the pain and the suffering both for our good and His glory and we can rejoice regardless.

There is an element of Christianity that thinks that God wants you to be continually healthy, wealthy, wise, and successful.  Too bad it is not biblical.  Paul writes to Timothy and tells him to use a little wine for the sake of his stomach and his frequent ailments.  What?  Paul leaves Trophimus sick at Miletus.  Paul has his own issues with the messenger of Satan sent to torment him and beat on his body.

You can pack a church with prosperity gospel preaching.  Too bad it is not real life.  God is far more interested in our growth than our being happy.  I am ambivalent about that because I like happy.

If we want to be like Jesus, we should prepare ourselves to do a good job suffering.  The confidence that God is good when the sun is shining, and He is good when it is raining.  He is good when we feel well and when we are sick.  The words of Paul ring in our ears, “In everything give thanks for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus”.  Or “Do all things without grumbling or disputing that you may prove yourselves to be blameless and innocent, children of God above reproach in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation…”

I like the way that the author of Hebrews says it, “Fixing our eyes on Jesus the author and perfecter of faith…”  Our Lord is amazing, wonderful, marvelous, spectacular and worthy of our thanks and praise day by day!

You remain daily in my prayers and on my heart,

Your brother,

David

David Coffield, Featured Writers, Jesus

What’s my focus? Abiding or Fruit?

Michael J. Weiss, Sr.

Written by Dave Coffield

It is obvious as you follow my letters that I am focused on the relationship we have with God by grace as opposed to a focus on works or fruit.  However, I suspect that works will continue to be a strong emphasis of the body of Christ from what I have experienced.

My philosophy of ministry is found in John 14:12.  Jesus said, “Truly, truly I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these he will do because I go to the Father.”

The word for “believes” could easily be translated “the one believing”.  It is speaking of a connected, abiding, ongoing relationship.  It is impossible not to do the works of Jesus if you have a believing, connected, abiding, and ongoing relationship with Jesus.

There is some debate about the works of Jesus.  Simply, He did what the Father gave Him to do.  Ephesians 2:10 says, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.”  The good works are a consequence or the fruit of our relationship with Jesus.  God gets to determine what they look like, when they are produced.

My first concern with my own life and with any believer’s life is whether they have a connected, believing, growing, abiding relationship with Jesus.

You can be involved in activities without bearing fruit.  Jesus continues with this theme in John 14.  “He who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.”  It concerns me when our focus is on Christians “bearing” fruit, doing good works, and not on abiding.

Every day when I drive onto Ft. Liberty I ask the Lord that He would lead me in the good works which He has prepared beforehand for me to walk in.  But He gets to determine what those good works look like, when they are produced.  I suspect that much of what God does through us He does in a way that isn’t obvious to us so that we won’t become proud and take the credit.

May God give us the grace to abide in Him and believe in Him.

Your brother,

David

David Coffield, Featured Writers, God Loves Us, Guest Post, Jesus

God doesn’t need me…He wants me.

Michael J. Weiss, Sr.

The question was raised at the Tuesday night Bible Study on Ft. Liberty, “Once we are saved, why does God leave us here?”  The easy answer is for the advancement of His kingdom.  But I think that leads to the mindset that our value resides only in our labor for the Lord.

I think He leaves us here for our growth in our relationship with Him and all that comes with it.

Jesus defines eternal life in John 17:3.  “This is eternal life that they might know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ Whom You have sent.”  It is also Paul’s passion in Philippians 3:8. “More than that I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord…”.

I tell people on occasion that God doesn’t need us.  Navigators don’t like to hear it because we see ourselves as fulfilling a key role in ministry and the coming Kingdom.  I also occasionally tell Navigators that it is impossible to “make” a disciple, and they don’t like to hear that either.

Salvation is impossible without the work of the Holy Spirit.  A Christian desiring to grow in Christ in discipleship is impossible without the work of the Holy Spirit.  No one labors unless the Father moves them to do so through the work of the Holy Spirit.

God doesn’t need me…He wants me.  We have been adopted into His family precisely because it is a family.  I struggle with God wanting me because I know the dark parts of my life.  I struggle because all of my life performance has been the standard for acceptance and approval.  And yet it is true that He loves us and desires us apart from our performance.

God will on occasion advance His kingdom through us.  But it is never because of us.  If I read Revelation correctly Christians get run over in the tribulation.  We are triumphant in death, not overcoming in this life.  We have to go through the Antichrist and the tribulation to get to the return of our Messiah.

May the Lord grant us the same heart Paul had for knowing Jesus!

Your brother,

David