Jesus Overcomes That Hideous Strength

Christ is King. Luke 10:27 is my goal. Gab: @ca3du5

[Jesus Overcomes That Hideous Strength @hid30usstr3ngth]

Hey all! I have created another account and substack to cover the issue of end times interpretation. There's a lot to go over and I think a substack would be the best way to approach it. If you are interested please give the account a follow and subscribe to the substack (free).

[That Glorious Strength @tht_glry_strgth]

Hey all! Check out my first substack post. I look forward to broaching this subject in more depth as I find time. https://t.co/1VYPWmHHN2

[Faithfulness Okom @AttorneyF_]

Very well said. I think it goes even deeper than most people realize.

All abortion is the taking of a human life; it is murder, plain and simple. Even when an individual commits an abortion with full awareness of God’s creative role and simply disregards it, the act remains a violation of the commandment against taking life.

But what we have done culturally and legally opens humanity up to an entirely different, unprecedented category of sin.

We often talk about abortion as "interrupting God's work," but even that understates the reality. God does not work like a human craftsman, slowly assembling a piece over nine months as if it were incomplete until birth.

When God told Jeremiah, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you," He revealed that His creative act is already complete in His mind before time even begins.

The womb is not where God tries to make a human being; it is where an eternal, finished divine decree unfolds in history.

To abort, then, is not merely to interrupt an evolving, incomplete process. It is to assault the mind of God Himself. It is to look at what God has already fully conceived, known, and willed into reality, and declare: "Your decree is void."

What makes our modern condition uniquely terrifying is that we haven't just tolerated this act; we have enshrined it under the banner of pure "choice and autonomy."

What began as an agonizing debate over hard, tragic cases, where people still implicitly wrestled with the heavy weight of life, has degraded into an assertion of absolute personal sovereignty. We no longer even pretend to negotiate with the Creator. We have built a cultural and legal framework that claims human authority over the divine mind itself.

That isn't just a political disagreement or a civil failure. It is a formal claim to human sovereignty over creation, displacing God from His own eternal decree.

Even for someone on the fence about God, what happens if you are wrong?

Imagine standing before the Creator of the universe, the One who knew and willed every human soul into being before the foundation of the world, and offering the defense that you weren't quite sure He existed, or that individual autonomy took precedence over His eternal mind.

There is no clever political argument or legal rationale that can withstand that moment. There is no answer to it.

If there is even a fraction of a chance that this is what is actually taking place, it should keep us awake at night. Given what is at stake, no human being can afford to be wrong about this.

[Austin Smith @TheHustleCritic]

One of hardest things to remember as Christians is that you shouldn’t do the right thing because it’s right.

You should do the right thing because you love God and others.

If you remove the relational element, it’s automatically self serving and religious.

[Jesus Overcomes That Hideous Strength @hid30usstr3ngth]

@HiPlainzGrifter @OwenBenjamin @RealCandaceO Classic strategy.

[Ekaji @ekajiibe]

I do not fear the Lord as I ought, and yet His unfailing mercies continue to pursue this undeserving sinner.

There is nothing in me that commends me before God except that I am clothed in the perfect righteousness of Christ. Apart from Him, I have no plea and no merit of my own.

My works are not always born of pure motives, nor is my zeal always governed by a singular desire for your glory. Too often, my heart is divided, and I grieve that I fall so far short of what I ought to be.

Lord, I still need your refiner’s fire to cleanse my heart of self gratification and conform my life to your holy word, that I may faithfully herald your glory in my generation. Hear my prayer, O Father, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.

[Gonz @FaceLikeTheSun]

@ShadowofEzra 33

[Khoi Ngo @khoingo]

I find in almost every assembly of gospel believers that hold to men's traditions of the "Sunday service" / "worship service"

...there are at least a few brethren who thirst and hunger for mutual edification according to the pattern and instructions of the Scriptures.

If that is you, ask the Lord to show you the other brethren who have the same desire, to find them, and assemble with them outside of the "Sunday service" to edify one another.

Just focus on Christ, and expressing Christ and His love to one another.

The brethren will be encouraged and refreshed, as though they had their first sip of water after almost thirsting to death in the wildernesses.

That's what happens when other members in the one body do their share.

Even after a few visits to churches in various regions, if there are gospel believers, and they are willing to assemble outside of men's traditions, the Spirit supplies for mutual edification and enjoyment of Christ together.

[Khoi Ngo @khoingo]

You hear that you have sinned against God whom you already know.

The Spirit convicts you of sin, righteousness, and judgment.

You conscience is pricked and quickened.

You see that you have no excuse before Him who is holy, holy, holy.

You see your great need of God's mercy and forgiveness.

"God, be merciful to me a sinner!"

This is repentance, a necessary change of mind that must happen before you can even believe the gospel.

You hear the gospel of Christ, that in God's great love and mercy, He gave His only begotten Son, Christ died for our sins, He was buried, and He rose again the third day for our justification and reconciliation to God.

That Christ's blood is the propitation (atonement) for our sins.

You have hope for the first time.

You trust, believe with all your heart on the Lord Jesus Christ and is fully convinced that Christ died for your sins, He was buried, and He rose again the third day.

You instantaneously and immediately saved, cleansed, forgiven, justified, reconciled, and adopted as a child of God, sealed and indwelt by the Holy Spirit.

The Spirit bears witness with your spirit that you're a child of God.

When you start to read the Scriptures, the indwelling Holy Spirit confirms His Scriptures to you, leads, enlightens, teaches, reveals, shines, gives the understanding, reminds, and guides you into all truth.

You hear the Good Shepherd's voice.

That's how we know with absolute certainty.

It's not a probability.

[Faithfulness Okom @AttorneyF_]

You cannot ruminate on a promise you do not trust. And you cannot trust a promise without intimately knowing the person behind it.

Scripture doesn’t just invite us to hold God’s promises; it commands us to dwell on them, to let our imaginations run wild with them, presenting this deep meditation as an antidote to our pain. Yet, most of us find this impossible. Why? Because we try to claim the promise without studying the Promiser.

A promise is only ever as strong as two things: the promiser's capacity, and the promiser's heart toward you.

I learned this as a kid. A wealthy woman in our church told me she was going to buy me a gift after hearing about my good grades. Because I knew she was rich, I let my mind race. A new bicycle? A brand-new football?

When the gift finally arrived, it was a pack of honey-coated peanuts that cost less than a dollar. I was crushed. It wasn’t that she was a bad person; it was simply that she didn’t care about me all that much. She had the immense capacity, but I didn't have as much of her affection as I thought I did.

Capacity without a relational investment still delivers disappointment.

This is exactly what 1 Corinthians 2:9 is challenging us to understand: “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard... the things which God has prepared for those who love Him.”

To truly receive a sentence like that, your imagination needs somewhere to go. But your imagination will only go as far as your knowledge of God allows.

If a wealthy stranger promises you an extraordinary gift, your mind immediately calculates a rational ceiling based on how little you mean to them.

Resource has limits, and so does casual interest. But if that same promise comes from someone of staggering, unimaginable wealth who is fiercely, extravagantly devoted to you, then the ceiling completely vanishes. You stop calculating, and you start imagining.

God’s capacity is entirely without boundary. And His heart toward you is generosity at the root; it is the very substance of His nature.

The Apostle Paul settles the relationship question before we even have the chance to ask it. He writes, “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?”

The Son was the costliest gift in existence. If the cross is the floor of God's generosity, then there is no ceiling. You are not petitioning a wealthy stranger who is sitting back, casually deciding whether you have earned a fraction of their abundance. The depth of His investment in you was answered forever at Calvary.

Scripture goes further still: no human has ever tasted even a fraction of the pure bliss and satisfaction that God Himself permanently inhabits. He is the most replete, overflowing being in existence. When He promises beyond what your mind can reach, He is drawing from a treasury that has never known shortage, and a nature that has never known withholding.

Most people spend their lives holding the covenant with a grain of salt because they are trying to receive the promise without ever studying the One who made it.

[Tammy, follower of Jesus Christ @TammyDoodleDo]

Pride.....It is THE sin that defines Satan & evil itself, THE sin that caused Satan's fall. One can trace back absolutely every sin to its origin of pride.

So why then do so many Christians celebrate a man more full of this characteristic than, it appears, any person in history? Trump operates from it, is motivated by it; every action he takes displays it. Yet instead of fleeing from that, seeing it, many are drawn to it, like a moth to a flame.

[🚨👑 King EJ 👑🚨 @newkingej]

One of my favorite scriptures, because I have been in this place before, rock bottom, even in Christ. It was so necessary, The Lord was teaching me, deep things:

“You do not want to leave too, do you?” Jesus asked the Twelve.

Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life." - John 6:67-68

Notice what Peter says here "to WHOM shall we go?", not WHERE would we go.

Every test The Lord puts us through is a blessing, like gold refined in a fire. Untested faith is worthless, it's just hubris/self deceiving words, count it all joy when The Lord test your faith, pray that you come through shining for Him.

At the time it's never fun, I just pray that my faith won't fail at those times and hold on to Him. After many trials we get to a point of peace in storms, but if you ever feel like you are sinking be of good cheer!

"But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!”

Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. “You of little faith,” he said, “why did you doubt?”"

- Matthew 14:30-31. ❤️🙏

[Austin Smith @TheHustleCritic]

Last night, my wife and I talked about something sobering:

Our own selfishness.

Neither of us wake up and think about how we can serve everyone else.

We get up and immediately think about how to make our day go how we want.

How to accomplish our own dreams, how to avoid discomfort, and how to maximize enjoyment.

Maybe you can relate.

But Jesus woke up each day and only cared about pleasing the Father.

He was perfect.

He lived for the right purpose.

He died to Himself every single day.

But I don’t.

And likely you don’t either.

But we don’t have to stay this way.

According to Peter, we have everything we need to live a Godly life.

We are set free from ourselves.

So boldly come to God, confess your selfishness, and ask Him to renew your mind.

I need to do this everyday.

But here’s our comfort:

His mercy is new each day.

If we come to Him like the prodigal son, He will run to meet us with open arms.

He’s a kind Father.

Come to Him.

[Faithfulness Okom @AttorneyF_]

It hit me this morning while meditating again on 2 Corinthians 1 that God is remarkably selective with his mechanical power and scandalously unselective with his sustaining power.

What I mean is: if for example you cried out to God to change the scoreline of a football match your team just lost, he would not do it.

The game was played, the result is written into history, and no prayer retrieves it.

But if you brought him the genuine hurt of that loss, the specific disappointment of a fan who cared deeply, he would not turn you away on the grounds that football is too small a thing for his comfort. He would meet you there.

That contrast is very structural because mechanical power operates on the external world. It moves circumstances, rewrites outcomes, overrides causality. And because creation has integrity, because free will is real and history is not a simulation, God applies guardrails to it.

To intervene mechanically at every human request would be to hollow out reality entirely. Every outcome would become provisional. Every consequence would lose its weight and the created order would collapse into a rigged game.

Sustaining power operates on the person inside the circumstance, not the circumstance itself.

It violates no law of the physical or moral order. It costs nothing to the coherence of creation. And so God applies no guardrails to it whatsoever.

The comfort available to a man who has lost his child and the comfort available to a man whose team lost a football game are drawn from the same inexhaustible source and dispensed with the same unselectiveness.

We call it silence when the mechanical power does not move. But the sustaining power is never withheld. We constantly ask for the one he guards carefully and walk past the one he offers without restriction.

Yes, we can and should ask God to move mechanically. Bring him the specific request. Name the situation you need changed. But ask for the sustaining power first, and understand why it must come first. That power is not less powerful because it is indiscriminate. It is indiscriminate because it is more powerful.

[Faithfulness Okom @AttorneyF_]

Heaven feels and sounds familiar because we are already living in its ruins.

The Bible’s account of reality begins with a world made perfect and ends with one fractured by human choice. Sin did not obliterate the beauty it was given; it interrupted it.

The peace you feel in sleep you cannot carry into the morning. The deepest intimacy, those rare moments of absolute connection where you feel entirely seen, eventually dissolves back into the noise of ordinary time. The highest joy you have ever known was defined entirely by the fact that it ended. You have never encountered beauty or love in a form that stayed. You have only ever experienced eternity in its broken form.

Similarity to earthly experience is not therefore conclusive evidence that a religion invented heaven. If we inhabit a world that was perfect before it was fractured, the imprint of that original perfection is still here, interrupted and impermanent.

Heaven is recognizable not because men projected it upward from earth, but because earth has always been a broken copy of it. The resemblance runs in one direction.

The right question when evaluating any religion’s description of eternity is therefore NOT: does this sound familiar?

The right question is rather: does this imagination of eternity transcend our perversions or does it ratify them?

Islam’s paradise offers wine without consequence, a whopping 72 virgins, and pleasure without interruption. Islam takes what men crave on earth, removes the cost, and multiplies the supply. It takes the perversions sin introduced and promises them forever. That is a classic example of a gratification of our perversions. It does not answer the human problem; it rewards it.

Christianity does not do this. The gold in heaven is not the prize. It is the floor, the pavement. The substance that has driven wars, funded empires, and defined wealth across civilizations, John describes as the material used for the road. That inversion isn't merely decorative. It is a declaration about where value actually lives.

The prize, the real prize of Heaven is the Presence of God.

Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 reaches for the only analogy capable of carrying this weight. The earthly body compared to the resurrection body is a seed compared to a tree.

The seed cannot imagine the tree from inside its own skin. Everything that makes the tree what it is is latent within the seed but categorically beyond its comprehension. And Paul does not leave this as metaphor. He grounds it in what God already does visibly in the fallen world: the sun carries one measure of glory, the moon another, the stars differ among themselves. If God calibrates glory here, in the ruins, the question of what he does with glory in the perfected state is not for a seed to answer.

Eternity is not the infinite supply of what you craved in the ruins. It is the completed form of what the ruins were always pointing toward. The gold is on the floor because the Presence of God so overwhelms everything you ever valued that the substance men spent lifetimes pursuing becomes the material for the road you walk on to reach him.

In Heaven you will not be impressed by the gold. You will barely notice it and that is the whole point

[Faithfulness Okom @AttorneyF_]

Isaiah 28:24-29 is quietly one of the most reassuring passages in scripture.

If your life feels upended, exposed, or under intense grinding pressure, you need to look at this passage through a completely different lens.

God uses the analogy of the soil and the seed to tell a story.

Verse 24 says:
“When a farmer plows for planting, does he plow continually? Does he keep on breaking up and harrowing the soil?”

Plowing is violent. A heavy iron blade cuts deep into the earth, ripping up what’s comfortable, flipping everything upside down, and leaving the dirt raw and exposed.

If the soil had a voice, it would scream. “Why are you destroying me?”

But Isaiah’s answer is a resounding NO. The farmer does not plow forever.
Plowing is entirely preparatory. The moment the hard ground is soft enough to receive the seed, the blade stops. Your current season of disruption is not your permanent destination. The tearing has a strict boundary line.

But what is even more striking is the precision of the instrument.

“Caraway is not threshed with a sledge, nor is a cartwheel rolled over cumin; caraway is beaten out with a rod, and cumin with a stick. Grain must be ground to make bread, so one does not go on threshing it forever.” (v.27-28)

For delicate herbs, a light stick. For grain, the threshing wheel.

This is not a cliché about God giving you only what you can handle. It is something far more precise. Every soul has a specific composition, a specific vocation, and a specific harvest it was built to yield.

The severity of the instrument is calibrated to the nature of the crop and to the weight of what that crop must eventually become. The heaviness of the tool tells you something about the magnitude of the eventual thing.

Some seeds need only a shallow turning of the earth. But other seeds, the ones destined to grow deep and load-bearing, require the ground to be broken profoundly before it can support them.

People misunderstand this and it breaks them in the wrong direction.

The grain has spent its entire existence inside its husk. It knows no life apart from that shell. So when the wheel rolls over it, the grain doesn't think its capsule is being removed, it thinks it is being destroyed.

This is the central catastrophe of suffering. Not the pain itself, but the misidentification. We become so fused to our pride, our control, and the coping mechanisms we built to survive, that when they begin to crack, we experience it as annihilation. We mourn what was only ever temporary housing.

And what makes this harder to hold is that the grain does not become a purer version of itself after threshing. It becomes bread.

This is not the revelation of a pre-existing authentic self. It is a transformation into something you have never been. The Farmer is not uncovering what you were; He is making you into what you have not yet become. The shell had to go. You cannot become bread while wrapped in a husk.

Everything climaxes in verse 29:
"All this also comes from the Lord Almighty, whose plan is wonderful, whose wisdom is magnificent."

A bystander looking at a plowed field sees a ruined landscape. The Farmer sees a harvest. These are two entirely different frames of reference, and only one of them knows what was planted there.

You can drop your defenses and stop fighting the process. Trust the magnificent wisdom and loving nature of the Farmer.

You are under cultivation, not condemnation. The Farmer holds the reins and His wisdom is magnificent.

[5010 @50ten3]

@ChristandGuitar

[Jesus Overcomes That Hideous Strength @hid30usstr3ngth]

@SacrdCowTipping @FaithReasonJoe You have been on fire lately. No punches pulled and it is glorious.

[Be Better @Be_Like_JChrist]

My own feelings of condemnation were born from judgments I had made against myself. When I’m talking about surrender, this is usually what I mean.

In order for me to get free from the sin of p0rn, I had to let go of a judgment I made against myself that I was unwanted and unlovable. It was God who demanded that I let that go. He told me that my judgment, of unwanted and unlovable, was an unrighteous judgment because it was contrary to him being Lord in over my life. When we judge ourselves based upon our definition of right and wrong, we are making ourselves the Judge and assuming His throne. We are rejecting God‘s judgment.

This is what self-condemnation actually is. It’s you rejecting God‘s judgment in favor of your own self judgment. I had to get off that throne and let God sit there. And He challenged me to repent of judging myself as unlovable and unwanted. He challenged me to accept that He had declared me to be a son. And His declaration of righteousness was more important than my own self hatred.

It didn’t matter how uncomfortable it felt, I had to accept that He was right and I was wrong.

[Jesus Overcomes That Hideous Strength @hid30usstr3ngth]

@HiPlainzGrifter @TheDibsterX Binary thinking destroys people. Glad you’ve not succumbed to it brother.

[𝔇𝔞𝔫𝔦𝔢𝔩 𝚟𝚜 𝔅𝔞𝔟𝔶𝔩𝔬𝔫 @DanielvsBabylon]

The devil will use anything you are desperate for to lead you astray. You desire money, wealth, and status? Satan will tempt you through those desires. Having a rough patch in your marriage and yearning for love and romance? Satan will use those desires to destroy you.

Learn to be content with such things as you already have. Seek first the kingdom of God, and all these things will be added to you. Ask, seek, knock. But now you ask and do not receive, because you would waste it on your lusts. Mortify the flesh.

[John @jnyq1776]

@TheHustleCritic Interesting thought experiment for Christians. What differance is there between living “paycheck to paycheck” and living on God’s daily supply (daily bread)?