Be truly sanctified

“But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear.”
An interesting teaching of the Lord today, in that he explained how his Kingdom works. What is expected of us so that we are worthy to enter into his Kingdom. Yes worthy, many teach we can never be worthy, but the truth is we must do the works, the good works we were created to do to be worthy of his Kingdom.
Because once we are in his Kingdom, that is it, we will never be out. But he has to teach us and mold us into what he expects us to be. And once in his Kingdom we will find that even though he has complete power and control, we do not live by control or under his dominant power. We have complete power in this life to live by our own design or way. Or forfeit to live under the rule of the Father and our Lord Yashua. This is our free will, free will is NOT the ability to keep living our own way and in sin and still be with God in heaven when it ends because of our religious doctrine and beliefs. Once in heaven, we will live in perfect union with God, there is no punishments anymore nor power enforced upon us, because we have truly submitted our way to live the way of the Lord in all we do. There is no need for rules or laws to live by. We will know what is expected of us and live accordingly. No one will be looking over their shoulder to see who is talking behind their back, trying to screw them, hurt them… Everyone will only practice righteousness so there will be no problems nor anything for God to even think about with us.
With that said you cannot get to this way of living by living a selfish life style here on earth, and human nature is selfish, what’s in it for me. Many of the teachings of Yashua about walking the extra mile and giving the cloak off your back are about this. These teachings are not because we are supposed to bend over backwards for the other people and give and give and give. It is about not letting others have power over you and for us to not let selfishness have control over us.
We must get to the point of living our lives so freely in Yashua that we do his will without even thinking about it. We all live life without really thinking about our choices. But our choices gives us the end results. You get what you deserve, sounds harsh when you get bad things like major health problems, a divorce, financial problems…whatever it may be. But it is truth.
I look back on my past life separated from Gods will and I experienced these problems, divorce, financial problems, health problems, family problems… And in looking back I see why, as I did many things completely opposite of the way of Yashua and his Father. Seeking what is in it for me instead of what is right. Thinking I could do it my way and prosper in all areas of my life. But it did not work. We are what we eat and what we think. And man is not capable of thinking correctly according to the ways of God. The only way to think like God is to let him be your teacher, teaching you his truth and doctrine. Even Yashua had to learn obdeince through the things he suffered. And we will grow also by the things we suffer. And it all comes because of meekness and fear. A knowing that we are never going to be able to make our own decisions which will make for a great life and in a way pleasing to the Father. Only by living according to the son and what he shows us will we live a good life, and be a Holy and living sacrifice to our Father in heaven. Then we will be worthy but not until.
Yashua made another point using the story of the talents, a parable he has used with me many times over to teach me things. The funny thing is I used to use that teaching in ways totally unlike what Yashua has taught me. It is easy to take doctrine and use it according to your own doctrine to make a point which is not even of God.
His teaching on it this morning is simple. It is not about the growth or money. It is about not being lazy. That whatever task the Lord has put before you, do it in his perfect way. The increase comes because of doing it his way. Then my mind went to where I started with a negative $80,000 net worth or should I say net debt. Along with child support when I moved here. And 15 years latter that negative is long gone, and so is the child support and now we own 6 properties without debt which have 11 units on them for rentals. Worth somewhere around $2,000,000 dollars. So I believe I have learned this lesson of perseverance and hard work. Because also during this time I went through 5 different set backs. One being losing my career as an insurance agent, then starting a new career here in Mexico selling real estate (who says you cannot make money in a foreign country?)
In my life I have started my career over like 6 times, each time taking a zero income and turning it into a 6 plus figure income, including here in Mexico. But it was no until moving to Mexico because Yashua told me to, that I was able to accumulate wealth. And doing so according to Yashuas ways. Which are mostly and simply not spending money foolishly.
I have written before how we saved a lot of money by simply not participating in the “system” they created. We have not had health insurance for the past 15 years. We drive older cars we paid cash for, ones like my prius with excellent gas mileage, and low insurance cost. We did not pay into social security or medicare tax. We did not buy the most expensive home we could afford to make payments on and spend 30 years paying back a mortgage and a lot of interest. We don’t go out to eat much, but instead eat healthy at home. But to sum things up because we are frugal, we turned a negative $80k into $2,000,000. If you add up our savings because of not having the things most of you buy needlessly. We saved over those 15 years roughly the same $2,000,000 we have in net worth.
Instead of buying new cars, we made payments on land we bought and then eventually resold with and without homes on them. We used the monthly savings to pay for construction cost more than once, and at times really creating stress as to not knowing how we would pay the bills and continue construction.
And now instead of having a little larger social security benefit of maybe an extra $1,000 a month, we have multiple rentals paying us much more than $1,000 per month. And money in investments paying us more than $1,000 per month. And instead of the social security stopping when I die, these assets will be with my family for ever. We created an estate because we choose to do without the new cars, expensive sun glasses and cell phones and hand bags and clothes and shoes… We choose to be without medical insurance because even if we would get sick with cancer or something serious, we would not do treatment the way of the western medicine anyways so why have it? Plus the Lord Yashua is my doctor, he would not leave me as long as I follow his ways. His ways do not involve cancer or other big health issues. You truly are what you eat, my eating habits around age 35 created health problems, but the day I started to change my diet is the day those issues stopped.
Another thing is understanding taxes, as we have paid very little over the years and in legal ways. For example we sold two homes here in Mexico and paid zero taxes on the gains both times. One time using something called a termnacion de obra, the other using exemptions, both with very nice gains, the second one doubling our money. Also because of using corporations I have paid zero into social security for the past 10 years, saving a lot of money. There is no law which says you must pay into social security, but when you work for someone else you agree to be a part of it. However if you own the correct corp, a s corp, you can legally avoid it.
The point is you can beat the system and turn 4 talents into 8 or even better if you do a couple of different things. First and foremost know the Lord. He gives his light or wisdom to those who seek it. I cannot tell you how many people I talk with and give this wisdom to and they never do any of it or very little of it. They like the new fancy cars and vacations and cell phones more than making a sacrifice for the future and growing the talents. They take the easy path which leads to death and destruction. We choose the difficult path less traveled which leads to life. Which is according to the will of God and his perfect ways which require faith, hope and obedience to him. Faith he won’t allow health issues on us because we are following his perfect way to eat.
There is a book called the millionaire next door. Which basically tells us that most millionaires do not look like it, because they live simple low cost life’s. In my experience as an investment advisor this is true, most of my rich clients lived very simple lives. They looked dirt poor.
Today with free money and low interest loans the people go out and spend money they do not have to have things they should not have and keep running the rat race to poverty, they are a slave to the life style. I was a slave to a life style, but broke free to live a life in Yashua.
One other point, we truly seeked first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and then everything else was given to us. I truly cannot even begin to understand where the wealth came from. It seems lke one day we struggled to survive, and then the next day we had. There were certain points in life where I noticed, like when we paid off our first home. A home we did pay a little interest to the seller direct, but we had a 3 ½ years loan not 30, and the interest was less than paying rent somewhere. Another big point was when I was done with child support and the third when I finally paid back my parents the $80,000 we owed them. It was a great feeling to be debt free, and it allowed us to accumulate even more because we no longer had those payments.
I remember reading once how the second million dollars you make comes much faster than the first and never understood why? But now I know why. Because you earn off the money you have saved. Even if you do not save another penny from your earnings, the million will work for you and should double in about 7 years, so if you are still frugal and save on top of this you will double it in much less, like 3 years for us. But also during this time we sold a home we had $165,000 into it and sold it for $323,000 without any taxes legally because of the exemptions.
Also with our current place in life, with most of our income from rentals, I can make about $50,000 before paying any income taxes because of different expenses and having exemptions or child tax credits. We only need about $25,000 to maybe $30,000 to live on.
What a great place to be in life, with an amazing freedom. And why? Because of choices. The choice to fear God and do what he tells me in his wisdom. To sacrifice many things that most people think are required to live, or because of greed or selfishness are not willing to give up. We get comments all the time how cheap we are, and maybe we are, but we have because of the choice of how we live.
This point needs to be driven home. Your life is either good or bad because of your decisions. You are not poor or unhealthy or in a bad relationship or…because of bad luck or family genes. You are in it because of your choices. Maker your choices in Yashua and live, keep living in your own way and you remain in the dark and death.