Lust is defined as a passionate desire for something.
Lust of the soul eventually becomes lust of the heart, provisioning the heart for a deeper evil, or greater righteousness. Even empowering it to dictate over the soul.
I John 2:16 says, For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eye and the pride of life is not of the Father. But it is of the world.
We have a natural yearning and even a lust to understand the things of God. But because we have not conquered our feelings, we’re easily guided into the direction of everything that looks like God because it makes us feel good.
The purpose of religion is to point you away from the truth while at the same time making you believe that you’ve found it. And once we fall into that trap, we end up embracing the lie with everything that we are, because the truth is now too uncomfortable to fathom. Now we will only accept something that makes us feel as good as the lie does. You’ve heard me say this before, but the scriptures say to confess Jesus with your mouth and believe in your heart. But many of us, we haven’t even manifested the second step.
The heart is where we establish a solid foundation on the things that we truly believe. That’s why the scripture tells us that from the mouth the abundance of the heart speaketh. Lust begins in the soul and whatever the nature of your lust is, be it good or evil, it makes its way to the root of the heart. Let me give you some scripture that actually points out how lust within can actually serve God’s purpose. Pay close attention because it will be halfway through this that my point will be made.
In Leviticus 14:20-26, I’m not going to read the whole thing, but I will say that it was confronting the city of the tithe. It talked about how year to year that you were to bring all of your increase for the tithe to the city of the tithe where God had chosen for the tithe to be submitted for the dispersal. And starting at verse 24, it says, and if the way be too long for thee, so that thou are not able to carry it, or if the place be too far from thee, which the Lord thy God shall choose to set his name there within when the Lord thy God have blessed thee, then shall thou turn it into money and bind the money up in your hand. So the Lord spoke of the things that we were going to give in a tithe. And he said that if you couldn’t carry it, sell it for money, bind the money up in your hand, and you shall go unto the place which the Lord thy God shall choose.
In verse 26, it says, and thou shall bestow that money for whatsoever thy soul lusteth for, for oxen, for sheep, or for wine, or for strong drink, or for whatsoever thy soul desireth, and thou shall eat there before the Lord thy God, and thy shall rejoice, thou and thine household.
In these verses of Leviticus, it was talking about how to prepare the distribution of the tithe. To begin with, it made it clear that if your goods that you were carrying were too much for the distribution, too much for you to carry, sell it for money. But it never said anything about taking that money to the temple. It said to purchase whatever you lust for in your soul.
In other words, prepare to provision the life of another with the things that you would desire for yourself. The things that you lust for, let them also be what you would lust for, for another, that they may have.
There’s a lot of points that I could make with these verses in reference to the order of the church and the deception that it now places upon the people. But that’s another subject for another day.
Reiterating on 1 John 2, 16, for all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life is not of the Father, but it is of the world. But lust can in fact serve God’s will as well, according as a man purposing his own heart. In 2 Chronicles 1, 8-13, King Solomon expressed to God that the only thing that he really lusted for was wisdom to lead his people. And because the one thing that he desired more than anything was the will of God, God gave him riches and wealth beyond measure.
Let me give you an example of earthly lust restrained to the perimeters that still respect God’s authority.
A friend had said to me, Apostle Morton, how can you feel comfortable buying a lottery ticket? Isn’t that gambling? My response was, do you still buy that candy bar and potato chips on your way home a couple days a week? You say, yeah, why not? I asked him, how much more does it cost you now than it did 10 years ago when we used to tease you about it? He said, probably three times a month. So I asked him, do you think that’s a fair value for what you want to have? He said, yeah, I guess. My response to him was, I don’t buy a lottery ticket because I’m expecting to win the lottery. I buy a lottery ticket for the opportunity to win. It would be gambling if I chose to buy 5, 10, 15 or 20 tickets, but I only buy one because I’m sure of one thing, if God has something for me, I’m going to receive it and it wouldn’t
take but one ticket. That’s why every time that I buy a lottery ticket, I ask him, Lord, can you trust me yet? The smaller things I know he can trust me in, but the absolute power of money can change a man. I’m aware of the places where he can trust me, but what about the places where he can’t and I’m unaware?
Here’s an example. We were driving across a gas station and I saw a homeless guy walking on the other side and the Lord said, I need you to give him a message. I told my wife to pull over there by him. We pulled up, I put the window down, I simply told him, I want you to know that God has not forgotten you and I gave him $20. It was then that he nearly broke out in tears and he lifted his head and said, I was just praying and asking the Lord to send someone to help me.
We always have to be aware of the fact that there are places in the depth of our soul that we have not grown to a point of trust because we still wrestle with the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh and the pride of life. And those things cause us to focus on us, our own endeavor, our own hopes, and our own aspirations.
Personally, I believe that if I reach that point in this life where I lust for the spirit, the will, the order and the things of God more than anything, including life itself, then he’ll give me all things because he knows that nothing will supersede him in my life. But as for now, I still live a life that is fully content in all things, thankful for the grace and mercy of his provision in my life.
The one thing that stops us from ever reaching that place is the aspirations of the soul,
the vile self-endeavored, self-gratifying, self-elevating, self-glorifying tendencies of our emotional endeavors. The part of us that whenever it is confronted with a contrary viewpoint, it rises up with, “okay, yeah but” never being able to transition into a new understanding because it’s standing firm on the corrupt foundation that it has established with its best friend, the heart.
Fact is, if we can’t reign in our self-endeavored motives in reference to the things of life itself, then how are we going to do it when it comes to the things of God? Too often our lacks in correctness is protected with the phrase, well, I feel. That’s why so many marriages don’t make it now, because people want to feel what they want to feel, and they’re not going to let anybody take that away from them, especially after their heart has been configured to validate everything that they, “quote”, feel.
We can have a full awareness of how we feel and how it’s in conflict with what we know to be true, but we still go ahead.We go headlong into our own endeavors. The ability to maintain two conflicting thoughts takes a lot of effort. But when we have become so comfortable with the lie, the truth is uncomfortable to even consider.
What I love the most about giving these messages is being able to recognize the fact that I, as an apostle, am first and foremost responsible to first walk in the revelation of God’s heart. He will not give me anything for his people unless I first endeavor in my own heart to receive that particular message. With that in mind, let me tell you an experience that I had in my marriage that was a prime indication of how we must reign in our emotions in order to cut off supporting the dark endeavors of the heart.
The problems that we have in our behavior is not the things that we do that are contrary to the will of God, but it’s what’s in us, empowering us to do these things that are contrary to the will of God.
I was kind of having a meltdown with the Lord one day in reference to my wife. And I told him, she doesn’t listen. She was a director of transportation. She led so many people that she wants to still be in charge. She wants to still be the leader. And the Lord said to me, John, leave Brenda alone. And I said, but Lord, it’s you, and then me, and then the children.
And the Lord said to me, did I not create you in my own image? And I replied, yes, you did. And he said, why are you not reflecting me to her? Your biggest problem is that you think that I created her to obey you and I didn’t. When I created the woman, I created her for the purpose of seeking the will of God from the man, and reflecting everything that comes from him.
We want to rule over the women with our endeavor. If I were to put a scenario on it, I could see God telling Adam, go and tell that woman everything that I told you. And as Adam ran off across the field, God said, wait a minute. And Adam turned around and the Lord said, and don’t put your spin on it either. I was sure that I was a man of correct stature, but the Lord had just told me there was something wrong.
So often God will give us something and we say the devil is a liar. I know that’s not the Lord. We’ve gotten so comfortable in the lie that we’re walking in, that when the truth comes its too peculiar in the presence of what we trust.
The Lord went on to say, she is designed to reflect what’s coming out of you, but she responds to my spirit, because in my spirit is safety, security, and protection. In my spirit is the clarity of all things that she might need. And as long as she’s receiving those things, her endeavors are committed to having your back, to seeing to your need, to obeying what’s coming from you, but not you.
But you see, when we begin to reflect something other than the will of God in the presence of our mate, our wife, and let me make that clear, the man and the woman. When we begin to reflect, when we begin to reflect something other than God, she’s no longer strengthened.
She has to go into a mode of self-preservation. And in that state, she’s rebellious, she’s resentful, and she has nothing to follow because everything in front of her is contrary to what she was designed to follow. The hardest part of the message that the Lord gave me was if you see something coming out of her and you don’t like what you see, it’s probably the same thing that I see when I look at you.
And without hesitation, I said, Lord, no. He said, you’re going to have to take responsibility for your home. Someone once said that when I hear the words home, I think of the woman that’s there waiting for me, and the love and the comfort and the encouragement and the strength that’s there waiting for me to come and receive it.
When he said that you have to take control of your home, he said every spirit that reaches her either came through you or you let it get by you. And if you’re not going to take responsibility for that, then there’s no hope for the union that I’ve given you because I’m not the pinnacle above it, you are. The things the Lord told me that day hit me hard. And I started watching my wife in all things.
There were times that there were conflicts she brought to me and I would walk in the strength that the Lord had given me to just stand silent and listen and discern the spirits. Most of the time I’d wait till she was sure that I wasn’t walking away from her and I would go off somewhere to discern exactly what I had just experienced. And more often than not, I could think back over the prior days and see how the very spirit that came out of her was something I exposed her to just recently.
And all I could do was ask the Lord for forgiveness and understanding on how to move forward. Not to fix the things that were, because as I said earlier, the problem isn’t the things that we do. Too often the problem is what’s in us causing adverse behavior.
Many of us think that we have forgiveness through the blood of Jesus for the things we’ve done. But how can you be forgiven for the things that you have done that you haven’t gotten out of you?
You’re still committing the same acts every day because the manifestation of those acts live in you.
The scripture said that if we receive Christ Jesus and continue in sin, then we crucify him afresh.
We talk about how great the Calvary’s cross moved us emotionally, mentally and spiritually. But yet we put Him back on the cross every day, because we won’t get rid of the part of us that is committing the things that he purchased on Calvary’s cross. It was not a quick fix in my world. God started showing me the things that I had presented to my wife by proclamation of his word. But being of self endeavored intent, there was no power to change the spirit realm in my home.
I remember one day we were in the car and I mentioned the clouds, how fluffy they looked, and she said, no, they always look like that. Then there was a car coming across the intersection. I said, wow, look at that car. That’s pretty, what is that, sea foam Green? And she said, no, that’s more like a light aqua. A Woman was beside us and I said, hey, look over here, that’s a really nice blouse. She says, it’s probably a dress, you just can’t see it.
And I looked at her with skepticism. Why is she contradicting everything that I’m saying to her? The Lord showed me how just a week earlier when there was something that he told me to do and I said, well, I’m going to get this done and then I’ll call him.
Next day he came to me again and I said, well, he’s probably busy right now, but I’ll call him later. I had exposed my wife to a spirit of contradiction. When God says something, all you can do is contradict what he says. You can’t change what he says because whatever he says is final.
I looked over at my wife and I said, I’m sorry. I owe you an apology. She says For what? I said, I’ve exposed you to a spirit of contradiction and now it’s affecting you. She looked at me and said, no, you didn’t. I said, see, that’s what I mean.
I had to understand something. The same way that I tell you that from the day that you were born, your soul, your emotional aspirations, your hopes, your desires, your pleasures, your joys, your hates, and your animosities, these things were starting to dictate through your heart. It was configuring your heart in the aspect of the things that you believed in fullness, and the things you rejected.
My wife, just like the rest of us, had been configured from the beginning through our experiences, the heart is being configured as to where it’s going to be. I knew for a fact that when she first got with me, she had a problem with a man thinking he could tell her what to do.
God didn’t call us to control the woman. He didn’t call her to obey us. He called us to be evidence of his glory before her, that she might see his presence and all that he is in the man and that she might trust the man to reveal nothing but what God is saying.
That’s not about what we feel. And the only way we’re going to get by what we feel is if we get rid of what’s in us that is supporting what we feel.
There were times that Donald Trump said some of the most egregious things ever to be heard.
And people said, well, he didn’t mean that. You know he meant what he said. There were times that he stood up on racial divide. And again you said Well, he didn’t mean that. Yes, he did.
You want to know who someone is, listen to what they’re saying. But we can become so caught up in our emotional aspirations that we say, no, everything has to be the way I see it. Because in my heart, I want to believe that he’s good. Is he good?
Let me tell you what God told me about Donald Trump. Listen real close.
Those who love him, those of you that hate him. The Lord said to me, leave Donald alone. And I said, but he told him to drink bleach. Doesn’t he know these idiots will do it? And the Lord told me, did I not know Donald in his foundation as I know him in his end? I know every part of his heart that you could never see.
You only judge him by the content of his hand. If there’s anything good that he is doing, you’ll never see it because you despise him. Am I not the Lord thy God who as of now has judged no man to eternal damnation? But the day will come where I will judge all men. But as of now, who are you to judge him to a fiery hell? And I could only drop my head because that’s how I felt. Burn in hell.
God said, but my greatest concern for you is this. Why do you choose to exit the place of peace that we share to express your irritations or frustration with his actions? He said, when you were a Capitol Hill lobbyist and a crackhead, I never judged you by what was in your hand. I judged you from a place of purity that you didn’t even know existed yet. A place where I knew that we would meet one day. Where I would be able to give you the fullness of my desire and the aspirations of my heart, that you might carry out what is pleasing and good to me and not you. The way I felt about my authority in the presence of my marriage had to be done away with.
The way I felt about my wife’s contrary behavior or responses had to be done away with. The Lord looks at us in our contrary times and he’s not angered by us. He knows who we are. He knows how we’re going to behave because he knows the spirits that we have in our life. The things that we have manifested in our soul and anchored in our heart. Things that cause you to not even be able to walk in his will because it’s in the way of what you feel. There are things going on in the fellowship that we look at and the Spirit of God speaks to us to tell us this is not me. This is not my word. And we say well the Lord knows my heart. You’re right he does know our heart. That’s why many of us are on the roadway to condemnation. The fellowships are filled to the gills. Like the word says narrow is the gate and few are they that enter in. Few. A few is three. Three of a hundred. Three percent. If you were to total all of the people in the earth and then look at the statistics for the religions and the amount of people in each religion. Christianity is a religion, the son of God is a call. Jesus never said be ye good Christians. The word Christian was first spoken as a badge of shame. Paul said what love and mercy is this that the Father has bestowed upon us that we should be called the sons of God. It doesn’t appear that we know so.
Because as a son of God we should be a reflection of the family. Not just saying Lord Lord but we should be sanctified and bearing the resemblance of the Father. I went to the Lord again in reference to my wife and I said Lord I don’t know. It doesn’t seem like anything’s changing. It’s probably a year later. Me learning to keep my mouth shut. Me learning to stop rewinding the TV to show her that she said is wrong. Because every time that I rewind the TV to prove her wrong I wasn’t defeating her, I was defeating me because I was cutting my own strength out from under my feet.
The day that I told him it seemed like there’s nothing transpiring the Lord said I will show you, and I had a vision, and in this vision there was a lot a field a massive field, a beautiful green field. And on the far end of that field was a hill and I could see a gentleman standing on the hill it was just far enough that I could actually see his appendages his legs and his arms. And he was standing there with his legs spread in his hands on his hips. And I saw his hand go up to his mouth and a sound came from my side and I looked down and there’s a radio on my side and what he said was I’m changing the color now.
And while looking down I realized there was a small holes about the size of my pinky and there was water coming out of it and that holes was running clear across that field and up onto the hill where he was. He bent down and he did something he stood back up and put his hands back on his hips. The sun was above his head and I watched the sun as it came from approximately five to six o’clock and it just kept coming down lower and lower.
And when we got to the point where the sun was just a small amount of light between his legs the color of the water coming out of the holes changed from blue to clear. And I woke up and I said Lord what is this that I just saw. He said in the endeavor of your wife you’ve labored in the physical to make things the way that you needed them to be. Or should we say the way that you felt they should be. And you saw the error of your ways. When I presented it to you you repented. When you repented you began to trust the spirit realm. When you accomplish something in the physical you must labor every day in the physical to keep what you have accomplished. But when you labor in the spirit it does not appear to be a manifestation. But when things in the spirit come together it heads down the pipeline. And by the time you see the manifestation thereof the pipeline is filled. The only thing you need to do now is just to rejoice in the fulfillment of all that is to come. But we don’t like to wait on nothing.
We won’t wait on God when it comes to a job. We go take the lure. We go take the trap.
But God had something else. But you were too impatient to wait. We won’t wait on the marital partner. When we’re looking we’re looking for the first thing that man I really feel like that’s one. She looks good. She got a good job. We don’t wait on nothing. We act on our feelings.
And whatever we feel we tell our heart, hey hold on to this for me, forge it in your stone. Because the heart is stone. The word said that God will take away the heart of stone and give us a heart of flesh. Something that can be configured by him rather than by our own aspirations, our own emotions, our own feelings.
The most wicked person that I know on this earth that did everything they could to destroy my marriage looked me in the face and said I know this union is of God. But they still fought to destroy it. I guess that’s why they fought to destroy it because the scriptures say you cannot serve two masters you will love one and hate the other. And the one that you love the most you will do their bidding.
Whose bidding will you do today. Will you serve the flesh. Or will you serve the spirit. Our soul will stand before God to make an account for everything that we decided to be in this life. Understand the stone; the stone endeavor of the heart is configured by the soul. Everything the soul sent to the heart and told her to hold on to it. I’m going to stand on this.
We can be caught in anything and deny it. It’s one thing to lie to another person but how do we lie to ourself when we know the truth. It’s not about how we feel. If it was about how we feel, think about when the apostle Paul was on the island of Patmos and the serpent came out of the fire and bit him. God’s whole plan would have been shot because Paul would have felt fear. He would have felt doubt. He would have felt poison pulsing through his veins in the presence of the word of God saying you are going to Rome. But the scriptures say that Paul felt no harm. He shook the serpent off and felt no harm and the people that stood around him and judged him who first said he must be an evil man because even though he’s escaped the sea fate has not left him to live.
But when he felt no harm and shook the serpent off eventually he didn’t drop and they looked at him and said truly he must be a God because they did not know of a God that could deliver you from imminent danger. Therefore they accounted that he must be a God himself. Paul defeated his feelings. He was operating on feelings when he was killing Christians. But now he was operating on the directive of the Holy Spirit.
Letting the soul send nothing to the heart but what we know about God. Not what we feel. We discuss the gospel with friends in the fellowship and we debate over what God is saying.
Well I feel that the Lord was saying what do you mean you feel? Did you go to him and talk to him and Father what were you saying when you spoke this word? I don’t want nobody telling me about what’s in the book that my wife wrote. I’m going to go ask her. A relationship with God will deliver our soul. Not only in the end but it will deliver it now, day by day. When the soul wants to believe one thing because of how it feels. Our mind which is weighing the logic of a thing. Our soul will be able to accept the directive of our mind that has weighed the truth from a lie. And when the soul speaks to the heart it says I don’t like this. It doesn’t work for me but I know it’s the right thing.
Father God today we stand before you knowing that we are short. We truly regret that Adam made the decision to bite the fruit because the woman was tricked. She didn’t tell Adam to bite it. Adam made that decision on his own. She never said this is good here taste it. Scriptures say that she gave to her husband with her and we understand that Adam was right there listening when the devil tempted his home. And he never said a word because he considered the wickedness that fit into how he felt and the lust of his soul.
Lusting for the things of this world. The darkness the evil. We thank you that you protected us. Showing that you cared from the beginning but Adam our brother screwed it all up. But we thank you Lord God that you saw that no matter how much understanding you put in our head we just couldn’t seem to see the truth. We couldn’t seem to walk the way that you wanted us to walk. We thank you that you understood that except that you put it in our heart that we would not have a chance.
Father today we thank you more than we thank you that Christ died for the remission ofour sins that we might have victory over hell death and the grave but more than anything we thank you that you gave him power to return to you that the spirit that he walked with might live in us. That the comforter, the very presence of you might find a church within us that we would not be searching for a church in a building. We thank you this day Lord God that though we may be short that every day you’re watching us, waiting for the moment that we reconsider some of the things that we’ve accepted that are not in tune to what you were saying and doing.
We thank you that every moment of our life you have a plan. Help us to see that with each individual step, you’re watching for the different things that must be removed from us. And when the time is for that things to be dealt with. Help us to see that in those moments, we won’t reject them. Help us to prepare for you coming to us, that we might say Lord what would you have me to do.
Help us that we might be receiving and not in a state of witchcraft rejecting what you tell us. Today Lord God I ask that you send a spirit of comfort to those who are troubled because of the religious formats that have been engrafted into their lives. I ask that you give them strength to develop a relationship with you that proves to them that they need nothing else but your will and your directive. Today we proclaim the majesty might and power that is you and we ask that you aid us. Do it for us. You don’t need to give it to us, because you’ve already given us the power to establish you over all that we are. That you might be sovereign in our lives and that the things of this life, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, that these things might be put down.
Help us Lord God to walk as you designed us to. Help us to stop being without foundational principles. So many of us have been turned over to a reprobate mind and doing the things which are inconvenient because we would not submit to you. We’ve set foundational principles away and caused us to be in places that we have no business being at times that we should not be. Show us where we lack foundational principles.
The simplest of things that will draw us into the fullness of your presence. Show us how we’re failing to be evidence of your glory in a dark and perverse world and how we are failing to redeem our families. There is nothing to be compared to you for you are God above all things. Help us to remove the gods that we have elevated in our lives, in our minds, in our spirit, in our heart, and our soul.
Help us to lay all things down at your feet. These things we pray desiring nothing but to be evidence of all your glory. Evidence of all that you are capable of in us if we simply surrender. This day we say that thou art God. We know not what tomorrow will bring but today let us walk in fullness, fully submitted, fully committed and in full belief of everything that is you.
We praise your wonderful name. We exalt you and we bless all that you are. If you never did another thing for us we would worship you to the day that the stars fall from the sky and beyond. All these things we pray in the name of Jesus.
Amen.
