When the Lord felt compassion for the sheep without a shepherd, He became their Shepherd. When He felt compassion for those who lived in darkness, He became their Teacher. All true spiritual authority is founded upon love. We will know the place of our calling and destiny when we know God’s love has been shed abroad in our hearts.

     Because God created us before the foundation of the world, He is the One who put within us the desires of our hearts. Jesus taught that living water comes from the “innermost being” or the heart. Therefore,...

      The immature and unstable tend to see and act in extremes. Granted, there are extreme truths. To see them and walk in them means you will be acting in an extreme way compared to others. However, those who cannot see anything but extremes are usually the most deceived of all. The path of life is almost always found between extremes.

      The ditches on either side of the path of life are almost always legalism on one side and lawlessness on the other. Some will take virtually every truth to one of these extremes. Many...

     The Christian disciplines, such as daily reading of the Scriptures, prayer, worship, witnessing, etc., are all crucial for a healthy, balanced Christian life. While we should never neglect these disciplines, they alone are not enough. In the Scriptures, we find that experiences, encounters with the Lord and even angels, changed people more radically and propelled them toward their destiny far more than any amount of study could have done.

     Many foolish ones do not do anything but wait for such encounters. We cannot neglect study and the other basic disciplines, because they prepare us for the...

         You do not need to be a prophet to see that we are in the times that the apostles and prophets spoke of when the kingdoms of this world would be collapsing and the kingdom of God growing. However, even many Christians who see how shaky the governments of this world are becoming do not yet see the signs of the coming kingdom. To understand the times, we must become increasingly discerning of these two kingdoms. Now there is one more factor we must consider as a basis for this study, which is declared in Revelation 11:15:

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          The Great Commission will be fulfilled. This commission is to make disciples of nations, not just individuals. To do this, we must understand the times.

          One of the most basic revelations of the times is found in Daniel 2. This is when Nebuchadnezzar dreamt of the statue that represented all of man’s kingdoms through the ages. At the end, a stone struck the feet of this statue and it began to collapse. Then the stone grew into a mountain, and it kept growing until it filled the entire earth. As Daniel said of the little stone that struck...