HATH GOD SAID...?

By DOROTHY SHERMAN

We all struggle every day with situations we cannot resolve, so we get frustrated and angry and hurt those we love. We were created for a specific purpose and design. The image of God is not a trivial thing but is the greatest design imaginable. It is when we live in that design and we discover the difference between our purpose, our desires, an

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lincoln Publishers
• Release date: Jul 7, 2023
• ISBN: 9781959670377

Book preview

Introduction

Freedom is not being able to do whatever you want whenever you want. Freedom is living with protective boundaries and the rules of those boundaries. A goal of this book is to inform those who are not aware of what and where God has established the rules and want to have a home that cannot fall apart, where Old people are distinguished by grandchildren, and children take pride in their parents. Proverbs l7:6 (MSG). A house is built by wisdom and becomes strong through good sense. Through knowledge its rooms are filled with all sorts of precious riches and valuables. Proverbs 24:3-4 (NLT). This country, America, was founded on rules and Constitutional freedom, with a healthy fear and reverence of Almighty God. Many of its laws were originally established by Moses. The ones that were not wanted were virtually thrown out, but they still remain in the Mosaic law. All the rules have been given for mankind's own good and protection and happiness. The question, Hath God Said...? is the tool that the serpent, Satan, used to put doubt in Eve's mind. She was not there when God gave Adam the command to not eat of that tree, so she was susceptible to his deception. If she had heard it directly from God, she might not have been open to the suggestion that God may not have actually said it. In fact, she added to it when she said, God hath said, ‘Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.' Genesis 3:3 (KJV) God never said not to touch it, but she was understanding that touching it would prompt her to go further. The rest of that passage expresses the way Satan comes into lives and plants that seed of doubt about what God says and what He means. Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, HATH GOD SAID, 'Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?’" Genesis 3:1 (KJV). And then the lie, And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. Genesis 3:4-5 (KJV). The truth buried in a lie! They got the knowledge of good and evil, from which God wanted to protect them, but the consequence was devastating; everything died. You cannot trust your own judgment.

Liberalism, the way it is used today, is not freedom; it is chaos, everyone is establishing their own ideas of what it means to be free. It sets you up as your own god, doing whatever you want whenever you want; you make your own rules and you think you know best, but when the rules conflict it causes friction. People do not have the same rules for themselves as they do for others; some even violate their own standards, and it produces total chaos. This has become the most chaotic nation in the world and all because of liberalism, everybody doing what they want. It is not about right and wrong; it is about desire and self-satisfaction. Liberty or freedom is found in, Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. 2 Corinthians 3:17 (KJV),

There is a defined set of rules given to people by their Maker, their Creator, the One who designed them; it is the Owner's manual, which is also a history book, and a rule book. The Bible has been proven to be reliable; it works. It is God-breathed and has transformed many lives through the centuries, by the transformation of the mind surrendered to God. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. Romans 12:2 (KJV) or Romans 12:2 in the Message, Don't become so well adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You will be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what He wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you. Another verse speaks of us having the mind of Christ. Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men. Philippians 2:5-7 (KJV). Jesus took on the form of a servant. This is the transformed mindset He wants you to have. Imagine how different things would be if everyone had this mindset. You have a sin nature, called pride and selfishness that makes it difficult to do what is right. It always wants what it wants when it wants it. The frustration of life is that you cannot always have what you want when you want it, resulting in anger and frustration, with the tendency to take it out on the people in proximity. The most basic and important fact to ever learn in life is that God is God and He is always good. He controls everything and has an unfathomable and obsessive eternal love for His children! He said that every hair on your head, every cell in your body, along with every atom on the planet is His to control. He gives the freedom to choose whether to remain the children of Satan, the Deceiver, the one who was chosen in the garden to rule humanity, or to change and give God the control and make Him the ruler of life. That is the only way to know that whatever happens, wherever you go, whatever you do, you are in His loving hands. If you have chosen Him, you can trust His judgment and lean on Him. "He is Hope for the hopeless, Rest for the weary, and Help for the hurting, mending the broken, and bearing the burdens!" ("He Is," Crowder, 2021)

It is difficult to know where functionality ends and dysfunction begins. If you do not know what is functional and what works and why, you cannot tell what is dysfunctional and not working and why. There are rules and when you break those rules you become dysfunctional. The rules are laid out in the scriptures very clearly. If you want your family to function the best that it can in this broken world, read the Rule Book and find out what God says. He is the Creator; He wrote the Owner's manual, and He is the authority on what works and what does not work. He said, For the wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Romans 6:23 (KJV). Dysfunctionality, or death, is caused by ignoring the Rule Book. The Author of the Rule Book knew everything when He breathed it. He said, Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon. For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts. Isaiah 55:7-9 (KJV). Therefore, common sense says He is smarter than people and they should listen to Him. So read the Book!!

He became part of His own creation to show who He is and His boundless love! When a person can trust that and can trust that He is Almighty God, that He knows everything because He created everything, they begin to lose their frustration and He replaces it with peace, the peace that passes all human understanding and it is only through Him and because of Him. It is only when you get to that point of trusting Him implicitly and understanding that He is God who knows everything, controls everything, and loves you with an immeasurable, and perfect obsessive love, that you begin to understand that kind of deep peace no matter what the circumstance. Peace, beyond anything anyone could ever understand is impossible until you are totally surrendered to Almighty God. The Lord gives you those things that you desperately long for: all the fruit of the Spirit, especially the joy of the Lord. That comes with acceptance of the salvation that He has provided for each person by His death on the cross, and His victory over death, hell, and the grave by His resurrection, and the Holy Ghost indwelling and leading.

My purpose for writing this book is to encourage people to find their place in the story of God; the place God had in mind when He made them and what it means to know God; to know what HATH GOD SAID...., and more than anything, to develop an intimate, personal, wonderful love relationship with the Creator of the universe, Almighty God, your Father in heaven! He is so much more. There is no greater entity ever throughout eternity and He deserves your total trust with everything. He is the basis for everything and everyone you love and He is the only One who genuinely loves you so much that He became flesh, as depraved as humanity is, but He remains sinless and holy. He walked this earth, a perfect person, a servant, and the Son of God. For His claim on that, He was crucified and, with His own blood, He redeemed mankind from the grip of Satan. When people believe and repent of sin, which is defined as changing their thinking about sin and recognizing their need for the Savior, they are saved from the penalty and power of sin and reconciled to Abba, their Father in heaven. Nobody can save themselves, so He did it. The Creator of all and everything, and the One who holds it all together (Colossians 1 :19) and keeps it working, loves His children with the greatest possible, deepest, obsessive love. He loves the world and is not willing that any should perish but that all would come to Him. When one comes to repentance, understanding they are a sinner in the grip of Satan and need a Savior, they come to Him, surrendering their life to Him, and they become His child, His obsession. He wants everyone on the earth to have an intimate relationship with Him and He brings them into that love relationship where they begin to experience the greatest love ever, on the planet. When they get to heaven that love will become perfect, deeper, and stronger than anything they could ever imagine here. Being loved by the God that created them and the love they will have for Him when they get to heaven is going to be infinitely and unbelievably phenomenal and so powerful that it will overflow on others! All of heaven will be overwhelmed with the love of God between all of the people and the angels. The angels will then understand what the cross was all about and why Abba sent Jesus into the world to redeem humanity. And all the angels and God's children will dance and sing praises to the Lamb on the throne forever and ever on God's great dance floor!!

Chapter 1: The Big Picture

Just thinking about Pastor Louie's sermon this morning being created in the image of God and what that means.

John 1:1:"In the beginning