The Nelson Newsletter
Turning Many To Righteousness. Starting With Us!
Arthur & Berta Josephine Nelson November, 2009
Look-N-Live!
“But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.” 2Cor.3:18
Dear Saints & fellow believers, greetings to you, in Jesus’ Name! Wow! What a tremendous transformation that is taking place within our lives as we practice gazing upon Jesus! Heb. 12:2 says, “Looking (eyes off of everything else consumed with Him) unto Jesus the author and finisher (perfector) of our faith...” If we are not rooted and grounded in His love (Eph.3:17) through the Spirit and by His word we can easily be carried away with doubts, worries and fears. “And the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of wealth, and the lusts of other things entering in, choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful.”Matt.13:22. Oh, but I thought that His word would never return unto Him void (unfruitful)? That’s right, BUT, according to this scripture, it can return unto us void if we do not do our part in keeping and continuing in it. Is.55:11.
Mat. ..6:23.. says, “But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness.” So how do we keep our eyes from being evil and the light that is in us from becoming darkness, and the word from becoming void and unfruitful in our lives? We believe we’ve been given the key! KEEP OUR EYES ON JESUS! When a problem or temptation comes up, turn it immediately over to Jesus and KEEP your EYES, your attention, your GAZE upon Jesus!! 1Pet.5:7. As we do this, according to 2Cor.3:18 we are TRANSFORMED INTO HIS VERY IMAGE and LIKENESS and CHANGED FROM GLORY TO GLORY! The Holy Spirit told Arthur that most Christians are going from “gory to gory, rather than from “glory to glory.” And that is a shame! We are marring the Name of Christ rather than mirroring it and reflecting its greatness. “Names” always depict character in the Bible, and we are to reflect His character in our lives and actions. This we do by attentively keeping our eyes on Him and off of the lusts, worries and concerns that the world, the flesh and the devil use to distract us. Jesus said He did nothing He didn’t see His Father doing! That means His eyes were ever on His Father in Heaven and never fixed on problems, worries and temptations. John 5:19. Matt.11:28-30 tells us that there are two types of rest, first, when we come to Jesus, we have rest for our Spirit, second, when we take His yoke upon us and LEARN of HIM and His Character, then we find rest for our souls! The END of our faith is the Salvation of our souls. 1Pet.1:9. Our soul is not saved simply by asking Jesus into our hearts, our spirit is, but the soul gets saved as we put our faith in action and begin walking after the Spirit (whose fruit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faith, goodness, and self-control) and away from the pull of the flesh. “The soul that sinneth, it shall die.”Ez.18:20; Whether the spirit of a man has been saved or not, a sinner is a sinner regardless of whether or not he’s received forgiveness of his sin. If he turns back to sin he’s like a dog returning to his vomit and is worse off than if he’d never heard the truth in the first place. The saving thing for “Christians” today is that most of us have not really heard the real truth of the gospel. The truth of it is, as pastor Napoleon Kaufman said on TBN last month, God’s grace IS free BUT it wasn’t given us to make us comfortable in our sin but to empower us to overcome our sin! That type of teaching is so rare that the host of the show could hardly grasp it saying, “Wow! That’s unique!” No, it’s not; it is the basic teaching of the gospel of Christ! Sadly, it is all too rare in the churches today! Some of the early philosophers discovered that our conscious mind was nothing more than a mirror. If we look at problems or temptations we are filled with dread, fear, anxiety, and lusts; if we look at Jesus and believe in Him then we are filled with vision, hope, faith, overcoming power and enthusiasm for life. See the story of Jacob in Gen.30 where the coats of the cattle changed from plain to spotted just by him changing the scenery of what they gazed upon and thus turning him into a very wealthy man!! Miraculous! See Num.21 where the people were healed just by gazing upon the serpent God told Moses to lift up before them upon his staff which Jesus later likened unto Himself being lifted upon the cross in Jn. 3:14. It matters what we look at, what thoughts we accept into our minds. 2Cor.10:2-5 That’s why Jesus said that if a man even looks upon a woman to lust after her he’s guilty of committing adultery in his heart. We must continue to do as 2Cor. 7:1 commands us to do, “...let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh AND spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.” It’s progressive, we know; so let’s be encouraged to continue attentively looking at Jesus and being transformed into His very same image, reflecting His character and glory upon this world more and more! Is.26:3 says, “Thou (oh, Lord) wilt keep him in PERFECT peace whose mind is stayed (as a fixed stare of a dead man) on thee for he trusts in Thee.” YEAH!! Sounds wonderful to US!!
