1.19- People learn best using stories that illustrate well.

 1.19-

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People learn best using stories that illustrate well. 

Being productive and fruitful is important, but comparing your fruit to the kind or amount others can be deceitful.  You are you and you cannot be someone else and they cannot be you.  Be careful about comparisons that can be a put down.  Jealousy regarding the effectiveness of other people can be very dangerous.

Those who use things in a way that multiply them for the benefit of themselves and others will be given more and more opportunities.  Those who waste resources will be more and more limited.

God has given free will choice to people.  If they desire to learn and know about God and His ways they can hear, understand, learn and practice His ways.  If they don't desire to learn, they can hear the words, but they don't hear spiritually.  That is their choice.  The blessing comes to those who hunger for the things of God.

Some hear, but the evil one snatches away the word of God from their hearts very quickly and they allow this to happen.

Others hear the word of God and at first they seem to rejoice in it and get excited about it, but when suffering or persecution comes because of the word of God these people stop following God's path.

A portion of those who hear the word of God will not be fruitful because they are distracted by worry and the deceitfulness of wealth.

100 times the seed sown happens in some good soil.  60 times or 30 times the original planting also happens in good soil.  Good hearts cause the word of God to multiply over and over.

Among the good hearted, fruitful people who love God there will be some who are not placed there by God, but placed their by the evil one.  These a lawless people and are stumbling blocks to others.  You cannot get all these people out of the midst of God's children because it will disturb the fruitful work going in there.  God will separate the good from the evil at the harvest time.  We are not to judge people, but rather to love and teach people the ways of God to the best of our ability.

In God's world it is amazing how the small can become large.  As I was praying for my own family this morning I counted the numbers and eight people had biologically produced 91 people just down to the first cousin level in between Sheila and I.  This does not count our first cousins' children and grandchildren. Small becomes large.  We were created to be fruitful and multiply.  If there is good sown in these hearts then much joy can be expanded into their communities.

Attitudes have the same effect as leaven in flower.  It is a quiet effect, but it is a powerful effect.

An understanding of the ways of God is a treasure worth more than all the world.

At the end of the world there is to be a separation between the wicked and the righteous.  People get to choose whether to receive God's love and grow in His ways or refuse them and become more and more wicked.  That is their free will choice.  True love is not forced.

We should not be surprised if people who grew up around us do not extend the respect and honor to us that others who have began to know us after we matured and got into effective work with them.  This is common and normal.

Larry Wishard

1.13.22