Spirit Life Bible church

21/07/2026

Who Is Saved?

Luke 13:23-24 'Then said one unto him, Lord, are there few that be saved? And he said unto them, Strive to enter in at the strait gate: for many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall not be able.'

LUKE 13: 22-27
Jesus said that many will seek to enter salvation and will not be able to. There are many reasons for this, but it is not because God refused salvation to anyone. 'The grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men . . .' (Ti. 2:11) and God 'is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance' (2 Pet. 3:9).

There is effort involved in obtaining salvation. The effort is not for the purpose of earning salvation. That is a free gift (Rom. 5:15); but we do have to fight the good fight of faith (1 Tim. 6:12). Faith in Jesus' goodness is what saves us - not our own goodness - and Satan is constantly trying to destroy our faith. We have to earnestly contend for the faith. True salvation is not just mental assent, but a real heart-felt commitment.

Many people today think that going to church and associating with Christians will provide them with salvation. Some people think that they are Christians because their parents were. But salvation is having a personal relationship with the Lord. You cannot inherit salvation through the natural birth process. 'You must be born again.'

We can rest assured that all those who hunger and thirst after righteousness shall be filled (Mt. 5:6). 'Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.'

10/07/2026

Grow In Grace

Luke 11:38 - 'And when the Pharisee saw it, he marvelled that he had not first washed before dinner.'

LUKE 11:37-41
A sure sign of the error of legalism is misplaced priorities, as we see here with these Pharisees. It is not recorded in Scripture that the Pharisees marveled at the wonderful works of Jesus. They were too busy looking for something to criticize (Mark 3:2). But they marveled at Jesus not washing His hands. This is a classic example of straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel (Mt. 23:24).

Those who seek to earn righteousness through keeping the Law are consumed with 'doing,' while those who receive righteousness by faith are simply confessing what has already been done. This is a simple and yet profound difference. If we are still 'doing' acts of holiness to get God to move in our lives, then we are still operating under a 'Law' mentality that is not faith (Gal. 3:12). When we simply believe and confess what has already been provided through Christ, that's grace.

A person who is living under the Law and a person who lives under grace should have very similar actions of holiness, but their motivations are completely opposite. The legalist has their attention on what they must do, while the person living by faith has his attention on what Christ has already done for him. For instance, the Scriptures teach us to confess with our mouths and believe with our hearts, and we will receive from God. The legalist thinks, That means I can get God to heal me by confessing, 'By his stripes I am healed.' However, the person who understands God's grace will not confess the Word to get healed. They will confess, 'By His stripes I am healed' because they really believe it has already been done.

Analyzing our 'mind set' is the simplest way of discerning whether we are operating in true Bible faith or a legalistic counterfeit. If the motive for our actions is to be accepted with God, that's legalism. If we live wholly out of faith and gratefulness for what God has already done, that's grace. Grow in grace!

09/07/2026

Be Filled

Luke 11:13 - 'If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?'

LUKE 11:13
The Holy Spirit is a gift (Acts 2:38). You cannot be good enough to earn the gift of the Holy Spirit, but you do have to ask. This is speaking of the baptism of the Holy Ghost, which is subsequent to the born-again experience.

The Holy Spirit resides in our spirits, and once He comes, He doesn't leave (John 14:16). There is an initial filling when the Holy Ghost first comes. However, His control and influence over our souls and body does fluctuate proportionally to how well we have our minds renewed to His will (Rom. 12:2).

In that sense, we can be more full of the Holy Ghost than at other times, although in our spirits the presence and power of the Holy Spirit does not come and go. Therefore, even after we receive the baptism of the Holy Ghost, there will be times when our souls and bodies stray from the leadership of the Holy Spirit and we need, once again, to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

In Ephesians 5:18 believers are commanded to 'be not drunk with wine...but be filled with the Spirit.' Being filled with the Holy Spirit is in the present tense, making it a continual command for the believer. In the book of Acts, the same people who were filled with the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost were filled again. Most people don't get drunk on just one drink.

Likewise, being filled with the Holy Spirit is not just a one-time experience. There is an initial filling of the Holy Spirit, but many subsequent fillings. Just as drunkenness can change a person's personality and make him or her act totally different, so being filled with the Holy Spirit can make us act just like Jesus. Be filled with the Spirit today.

27/06/2026

Grow In Grace

Luke 9:55 'But he turned, and rebuked them, and said, Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of.'

LUKE 9:54-56
Jesus was constantly being accused of breaking the law of Moses. He taught differently than the law of Moses (Mt. 5:21-48), and now He rebukes His disciples for desiring to do what an Old Testament prophet did with God's blessing and power. However, Jesus didn't come to destroy the law but to fulfill it.

Jesus came not to destroy men's lives but to save them (Jn. 3:16; 10:10).

'God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them' (2 Cor. 5:19). Jesus was just in doing this because He bore our sins (Isa. 53:4-6) and the accompanying wrath of God (Mt. 27:46; Heb. 2:9). Jesus didn't reject God's judgment against sin; He bore it (2 Cor. 5:21). Therefore, He was able to extend the grace and mercy of God to those who would have been doomed under the law of Moses (Acts 13:38-39).

The Old Testament law was like a judge passing sentence upon sin. Jesus became our advocate (or lawyer). Even more than that, He became our substitute, bearing 'our sins in his own body on the tree' (1 Pet. 2:24).

He didn't destroy God's judgment; He fulfilled it in Himself, so that we could go free. This forever changed God's dealings with sinful man. In light of what Jesus has done in the New Covenant, we would be rebuked for trying to release God's wrath upon others as was done in the Old Covenant. Likewise, if Jesus would have been on the earth in His physical body, reconciling the world unto Himself in the days of Elijah, then Elijah would have been rebuked for his actions, as recorded in 2 Kings 1:9-15. There is a difference between Old Testament law and New Testament grace. 'For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ' (Jn. 1:17). Grow in grace.

25/06/2026

Hearing God's Voice

John 10:2-3 'But he that entereth in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the porter openeth; and the sheep hear his voice: and he calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them out.'

JOHN 10:1-21
This verse promises all who are God's sheep that they not only can, but that they do, hear His voice. Many born-again people doubt the truth of this statement based on their experience. They don't think they can hear God's voice. However, the Word of God is true - not our experience.

The harmony between what this verse says and what our experiences say is that it is our new born-again spirit that hears God's voice. Although God has spoken and still does speak in an audible voice at times, very few people experience this. God speaks to our inner person (spirit) and our inner person hears Him. The problem comes when we aren't sensitive to, or controlled by, our spirit but are walking in the vanity of our mind. The Bible calls this walking in the flesh instead of the Spirit (Gal. 5:16-18).

Man is a spirit, soul, and body. Our spirits are as perfect as they will ever be in heaven. If we will change our thinking so that we believe what God says in His Word about who we are and what we have, then this agreement between our spirit and soul forms a majority and our flesh will experience the life of God that has been deposited in our spirits.

Prayer, Bible study, fasting, fellowship, etc. are ways of refocusing our mind's attention away from the voice of this world and back to the voice of our Shepherd who is constantly communicating with our spirit. If we fail to renew our minds, we can live our entire time on this earth without experiencing the abundant life that Jesus provided for us. Listen, and you will hear His voice speak to you through His Word today.

19/06/2026

God Made Flesh

John 8:58 'Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.'

JOHN 8:57-59
Jesus didn't seek to clarify the Jews' misunderstanding of His previous statements. Instead, He made a new statement that those who would not accept that Jesus was God in the flesh (1 Tim. 3:16) could not possibly understand. 'Before Abraham was, I am.' He not only said that He existed before Abraham, but He was again associating Himself with the great 'I AM' statement of Exodus 3:14. This statement could leave no doubt that Jesus was claiming deity in the highest sense of the word.

Jesus proclaimed 'I am.' This is how Jehovah identified Himself to Moses in Exodus 3:14. When spoken under the anointing power of God, Jesus' pronouncement that 'I am he' knocked all of those who came to arrest Him backwards to the ground (Jn. 18:5-6). Jesus was the great 'I AM THAT I AM' of Exodus 3:14 manifest in the flesh!

When the Jewish authorities heard Jesus call God 'my (own) Father,' they immediately understood that Jesus claimed for Himself deity in the highest possible sense of that term. That claim was either blasphemy to be punished by death, or Jesus was who He claimed to be.

The purpose of the fourth gospel is clearly stated, 'that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name' (Jn. 20:31). The object of John's gospel was to show that Jesus is 'the true God' (1 Jn. 5:20) who was 'made flesh' (Jn. 1:14).

17/06/2026

The Old Man Is Gone

John 8:44 'Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do: he was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.'

JOHN 8:39-47
All of us were born in sin and were therefore 'by nature' the children of the devil. That's the reason we sinned. Our sins don't corrupt our nature, but our corrupt nature makes us sin. That's why we must be 'born again' and become new creatures (or a new creation) in Christ.

The scriptures teach that everyone was born with a sin nature or old man. For the Christian, the old man is dead. We do not have a nature that is driving us to sin. If that is the case, then why do we seem so bound to sin even after we experience the new birth? The reason is that our old man left behind what Romans 6:6 calls a body. Just as a person's spirit and soul leave behind a physical body at death, so our old man left behind habits and strongholds in our thoughts and emotions. The reason a Christian tends to sin is because of an unrenewed mind, not because of a sin nature.

Our old man ruled our thinking before we were born again. He taught us such things as selfishness, hatred, and fear and he placed within us the desire for sin. The old man is now gone, but these negative parts of his body remain. Until renewed, our minds continue to lead us on the course that our old man charted.

To experience the resurrection life of Jesus, we have to know that our old man is dead. Then, through the renewing of our minds, we destroy the body that the old man left behind. The end result is that we will not serve sin any longer.

15/06/2026

Sonship Or Slavery

John 8:34 'Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin.'

JOHN 8:34-36
The devil has been deceiving the world about sin since the Garden of Eden when he told Eve that through sin she could be like God. Time has proven, not only to Eve, but to each one of us, that this is not true. Sin brings death and not life. Jesus is making it clear that sin enslaves. We become slaves not only to the sin itself, but also to the author of sin, the devil. We are either servants of God through obedience or servants of the devil through sin.

Jesus is likening the bo***ge that sin produces to slavery, while comparing the freedom that comes through serving God to being a beloved son. No one would doubt that being a son is better than being a slave. Likewise, obeying God is better than yielding to sin. True freedom is found only in serving God. There is a false freedom that Satan has been promoting since the Garden of Eden. He has deceived all of us at one time or another into thinking that God is a tyrant who really doesn't want us to enjoy life and consequently has told us not to do certain things. Because we believe this lie, we disobey God (or sin) in the name of freedom.

However, the Word of God and personal experience conclusively prove that the wages of sin is death (Rom. 6:23). Jesus is stripping sin of any glamour with which the devil may disguise it. Sin brings bo***ge. The only true freedom is found in Jesus. Jesus not only dealt with the original sin that contaminated the human race, but He also dealt with each individual act of sin. Even if an individual could stop all sinning, he could not change his sin nature with which he was born. That's the reason we must be born again.

14/06/2026

12/06/2026

Come one come all. Come and experience Christ and His finished work.