Joe's word
to the wise
The Lord's people are meant to experience His presence and grow in comprehension of His thoughts. Let's develop our understanding of both!
the necessity of the cross
"A generic message on some sort of religious goodness with no mention of the Lord’s sacrifice usually accomplishes little. A deep, heartfelt conviction to repentance is primarily evoked when the impotency of mankind concerning its religions comes face to face with the unimaginable sufferings the Lord endured for us. The news of this “love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you will be filled with all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:19 ESV), is that primary and primitive message that has the power to change even the most hardened heart.
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Frankly, there are times when we do not need to hear how great we are. We need to hear how lost humanity is…that’s you and me folks…outside of Christ!
When the blood of Jesus, what it took to shed it and why, is not understood and deeply respected, basically Christianity is in name only and relegated to the pile of other religions. This most certainly inhibits the power of God being exhibited through His people. The devil knows this and has worked very hard to keep these things from our understanding and practice.”
“Miracles are a matter of spiritual law. Believing that spiritual powers, demonstrations, and gifts of the Spirit were relegated to specific windows of time, rather than universal graces available to everyone, ignores that these are more a matter of “law,” not dispensation.
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Laws do not stop functioning simply because the discoverer of them has deceased. In the same way, it is critically lacking to believe that miracles passed away when the first century church did. Miracles no more ended with the early church than the laws of gravity ceased with the death of Sir Isaac Newton.”​​​
miracles
for
today
Healing
&
Deliverance
“Save me, O my God! For you strike all my enemies on the cheek; you break the teeth of the wicked. Psalm 3:7, NKJV ​
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Our Lord ministered to, healed, and delivered the sick and oppressed. Jesus, the “image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15, Hebrews 1:3), had finally arrived on the earth, and through His ministry, we observe the purposes and practices of the Father.
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He trained His disciples to do the very same works of power and deliverance so that when He returned to heaven, the mission to free men would continue. He loves people and hates demonic oppression. Period. In every generation.
As long as evil spirits remain on the earth, He still wants to punch their teeth out!”​​​​
“You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.” John 5:39-40 ESV
If there's one mistake I see Christians make on a regular basis, it's they study the Word of God in the same way they would study say, Plato or Aristotle. The scriptures may guide our intellect, but their ultimate purpose is to cause us to encounter, and subsequently be transformed into the very image of Christ.
Jesus could lament that many today are doing just as the Pharisees in His time. Believing that the end game was the completed book they hold in their laps, not an eternal guiding light meant to lead us to an interaction with the God of which the verses reveal.
The Word of God is an instigator for metamorphosis, not simply a filler for our intellect. ​​​​
Encountering the
lord
the
scriptures
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“I bow down toward your holy temple and give thanks to your name for your steadfast love and your faithfulness, for you have exalted above all things your name and your word.” Psalm 138:2 ESV
We are not general editors of the Word of God! The Scriptures do not request or require human endorsements! They do just fine commenting on themselves!
The Lord doesn’t stutter!
“I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully
made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one
of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!” Psalms 139:14-17 (ESV)
We necessarily need to come to grips with the immense value
the Lord has bestowed upon mankind. Furthermore, each of us needs to embrace in our understanding the worth He places
individually upon you and me! The mind boggling events and pains Jesus experienced to return us to His good favor, won’t resonate without a conception of the infinite value you and I are to Him.
God has made us for His particular reasons which ultimately bring Him pleasure, homage, and glory, as He communicates Himself through what He creates. One way we can put it is God is that Infinite Artist and bestower of everlasting love and goodness…
and we are the canvas! ​​​
purpose
&
value
true
goodness
“I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” John 15:5 (ESV) (italics mine)
God alone is the good. Goodness in its essence. There can therefore be no true good unless God Himself authors it through His creation. As impossible as it is for a creation to create itself from nothing, it is that same impossibility that the
creation, including you and me, can be good of itself.
Let us not confuse acts of mimicking some definition of goodness with the root and essence of it. Our free will cooperates with Him, but in itself is ill-equipped to develop its own goodness unaided by Divine Guidance.
None of us were there when He deliberated this period of time in eternity. We have no frame of reference to determine what is genuinely right and genuinely wrong. We are fully dependent on Him for those definitions since He was the only one there when His designs were brought into existence.
Jesus is the “Vine.” Meaning God Himself is the fruit He produces! Since we are not God, it makes complete sense why Jesus said that without Him, “You got nothin’!”
Joe's Quotable Quotes:
"Marriage is so powerful an institution, the world was not going to experience the full impact of mankind without it!"
-JOE JOHNSICK
"The cross of Calvary returns us to our primitive, necessary, condition of submission for God's purposes. Our death to self, becomes the canvas upon which He inundates us with His life and
virtues, truly creating us to be "living letters"."
-JOE JOHNSICK
"When observing the ministry of Jesus, I have learned to not just appreciate the event of the
miracle…but to study and discover the spiritual law that the miracle revealed."
-JOE JOHNSICK
"No longer witness the Scriptures through “dispensations”. Jesus is the final dispensation of God
toward men. How Jesus did things, is how He still does them, and will continue to until the
advent of His return."
-JOE JOHNSICK
"We didn’t write
the Scriptures. We
are not general editors of the Word of God. Our
responsibilities are simple. Study. Believe. Implement."
-JOE JOHNSICK
"The completed canon of Scripture has not replaced miracles. It is the instruction manual on how
to have them!"
-JOE JOHNSICK
"Satan, comparatively speaking as far as Jesus, is inept. Jesus has foiled every one of his
schemes. As well, the Lord continually demonstrates His infinite superiority every time He
delivers us from the foils of the devil."
-JOE JOHNSICK
"The illumined child of God is here to end spiritual confusion, not contribute to more of it!"
-JOE JOHNSICK
"The Scriptures are literal seeds that contain otherworldly virtue and potential. Meaning their
fulfillment has little to do with the speaker or time period of their discovery, but the quality of
ground they are sown into."
-JOE JOHNSICK
"The kingdom of Heaven naturally imposes itself upon human ignorance, malady, and the
kingdom of darkness."
-JOE JOHNSICK
​"The best bible translation is the one that is worded in such a way, that it evokes faith in your heart to pursue Christ for what has been promised."
-JOE JOHNSICK
"​If how you raise your children is determined more by the state than the scriptures, you have already been infiltrated by them."
-JOE JOHNSICK
"​fathers are assigned the responsibility to train their children properly. Our children learn about God the father first through their natural one."
-JOE JOHNSICK
"God alone is good in its essence. There can therefore be no true good unless God Himself authors it through His creation."
-JOE JOHNSICK
​"As impossible as it is to cause the sun to cease producing light and warmth, it is that impossible to stop the love of God from reaching out continually to His
creation."
-JOE JOHNSICK
"​Satan hates us with the same purity of hate that God loves us with His own purity of love!"
-JOE JOHNSICK