“All things are lawful, but not all things are profitable,” 1 Corinthians 10:23.

Profitable = Good in advancing your life on earth.

Profitable here means to work together to advance your life as you were intended to experience life, or as it was destined for you to experience.

It is important to remind ourselves that Salvation has always been for our benefit, not for God’s benefit!

God has always had our welfare in His mind and salvation came to buy us out of circumstances that would cause us pain, distress and that would end up destroying the kind of experience he intended for us to enjoy in life.

Somehow people have confused the idea that salvation is for them, thinking that they were saved for God and to please God. Instead of living with the clear understanding that they were saved purely FOR THEIR BENEFIT!

That God did not want them to experience a life of hardship, pain and destruction, but that He had designed them to be blessed and to enjoy a blessed life and experience on earth right from the very beginning (Genesis 1:28).

Salvation came to redeem God’s original intention for man and to redeem man back to that original idea and reality of experiencing His Blessing on earth.

We do not have to try and impress God to be Blessed, we are Blessed, because He chose us to be Blessed, right from the beginning!

The word “sin”, which we so many times confuse with the fruit of sin, calling the things people do as a result of sin, “sin”, really means – “TO MISS THE MARK”.

This is the true definition of the the word “sin” and what it means is to live your life outside of the original experience of what God had intended for you when He created mankind.

It is to live in a different and untrue experience, other than the one He intended for you to enjoy.

To emphasis this principle, let us consider someone pointing an arrow at a target and let us imagine that they miss the target when releasing the arrow.

We may say, you have missed the target, or we may say, you were just a degree or too out and as a result, you have missed the target!

Any naval officer will tell you that being one or two degrees off course may result in being hundreds of miles away from your original destination.

Jesus speaks of a “narrow way” that leads to the true experience of life and a broad way that leads to destruction.

He rightfully points out that there are few who have discovered this “narrow” way to life, but many who are on the broad way to destruction.

Let us look at this in an unconventional way, understanding that God saved us so that we may know life here on earth, the way He intended for us to live and that Jesus came to redeem us from the false lie of living a life of heartache, sorrow and despair, here on earth.

From this perspective Jesus is telling us that there are few people who have discovered the true way to live, that the life God had intended for us all to know is not recognised by most people, but that most people are just passing through life, experiencing all of the destruction, hardships, trouble and pain, that the enemy brings across their path, completely unaware that there is a life of another kind that God had prepared for them to live!

A life filled with the experience of His Goodness, His Love and His Grace wrapping them up in His Blessings, every day!

How sad this is! So many are just following along, so many that they have become a broad way with millions just following along, believing that what they are experiencing as life, is in fact the life they were meant to live!

In another passage Jesus speaks about the small gate and the wide gate and the principle is the same, so few find that small gate, not because it is difficult to find, but because most are so distracted by the big gate and the masses passing through it, that they miss the small gate all together!

Sin in it’s very essence, is to live your life a few degrees of course from God’s original intent for you, and as a result, to miss the mark, or to end up living and experience here on earth, what God never intended for you to know!

An experience of sorrow, hardship, pain and destruction. When we “sin”, or live outside of harmony with God’s idea for our lives, we begin experiencing the destructive fruits of sin — all of the things that work negatively in our lives and that are not “profitable” or good for us to experience.

The things that cause us harm and cause us to live unhappy lives. The things that cause us to hate ourselves for who we are and for what we do and have become. This is also where we begin to harm ourselves as God’s precious ‘temple’ or dwelling place on earth.

God intended for us to live our lives reaping the bountiful profits of His Blessing that He had planned for us (or predestined) from the very beginning!

Yes, we have the power of choice to do all things by the Law of liberty and by the Law of no longer living under the judgement of the carnal man, but having been liberated to be led by the Spiritual man, but all things do not profit us, when we they distract us and cause us to move our lives a degree or two and when we begin to do things that are not a part of God’s plan to profit us, then we become our own worst enemy!

Living in a way where we are harming our own lives and demolishing our own prosperity and future!

So here is the real principle we should all be living by — seek to find the set course God planned for your life, where you are tuned into the pure frequency of His Blessings for you (live in harmony with His perfect will for you that you know is right for you and where you experience His perfect Blessing, peace and inner joy in your life) and live within that frequency or degree of course, not allowing anything to distract you from that “narrow way”.

In that way you will always live your life on the other side of the small gate and set on the narrow way, that is found by so few and you will always know God’s best for you at all times, living the life and Blessing He intended for you from the very beginning!

You will profit and be profitable to others, bearing witness to His bountiful Blessings and His Goodness in your life.

More so, you will become a living beacon or “a living epistle, (which means “message”), to others, signalling them to find “the narrow way”.

Please note: For those who may view our lives here on earth as temporal and our blessings one day awaiting us in ‘heaven’ ... You are eternal now … as you will be when you leave this planet!

You already have eternal life in Christ. It is not something to be received later…

God is not concerned with how you will live in Heaven, He is concerned about you living a glorious heavenly life on earth!

Imagine heaven and then understand that he imagined you to live that way on earth!

RENEW your mind and you will change your life!

— Selah…

 

~ Johann van der Hoven

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Johann van der Hoven has been in service of The LORD since 1991 and has hosted numerous mass revival meetings. The Holy Spirit is announcing a NEW SOUND from Heaven beginning in 2020 — The Sound of His Glory being poured out!

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