"We shall know by this that we are of the truth, and shall assure our heart before Him. In whatever our heart condemns us; for God is greater than our heart, and knows all things." (1 John 3:19-20)

John is telling us that we do not need to fear whether God will get through to us with the answers that we need. This means that you do not need to blank or give control of your mind to someone or something. As You control your own mind and choose by your own will to study and meditate on God’s Word and obey His commands to You in His Word, at His own time and choosing, He will break through with the answer to Your needs. Jesus promises us in his Word in John 14:21,

"He who has My commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves Me; and he who loves Me shall be loved by My Father, and I will love him, and will disclose Myself to him."

God never asks us to surrender our minds to anyone or anything, not even to Him. When He does reveal the answer to our need, even then He does not take possession of our minds or our souls. We are always the masters of our will, mind and soul. God reveals to us what He wants us to do, but never makes us do it. We then decide with our souls whether we will obey Him and carry His will out. God will only tell you what you need to do, He will not make you do it. Only Satan tries to take possession of the souls and wills of men and women so He can carry out through their bodies his evil intentions.

This is one of the greatest deceptions when it comes to the issue of Evangelism. Christians will say to me over and over that they do not feel moved of the Holy Spirit to do so. God in His Word already clearly commands us to do so. God’s Holy Spirit will never try to push you to do Evangelism. God in His Word has already told You that this is His will. Now it is up to you, the master of your will, mind and soul, to make the decision to walk in obedience to Jesus to do these things.

Why have I covered all this? When the Bible teaches that we are not to speak or act out of our own initiative, but only out of God’s initiative through our spirit in union with the Holy Spirit, it does not mean that we are to blank our minds or go into a trance or surrender our wills and mind to anyone. It means that we come to Him with our needs and the needs of others and then while waiting for the answer to that need we meditate on and study His Word and go about our business until He chooses to reveal to us by His initiative and in his way and time the answer to that need. This is just the opposite of what cults ask you to do. They want you to blank Your mind, chant and visualize until a spirit contacts and possesses you. Once you are contacted by and possessed by an evil spirit, you are no longer in control over your life. you are under the control of the evil spirit.

What is the problem then? The problem is being patient enough to wait on the Lord and not take things into our own hands until the Lord chooses to reveal His answer to our need. The problem is how do we break ourselves of taking things into our own hands, how do we keep ourselves from giving advice to others when we have not yet received God’s revelation to us, always needing to be confirmed by his Word to be truly of Him, before opening up our big mouths and laying trips on people? As we examine the Scriptures, most of us will agree that this is Jesus’ desired will and plan for our lives: that we wait for His initiated answer to our need. But that is the problem: How do we get to a place of not acting out of our own initiative or speaking out of our own initiative until we get God’s answer to our needs?

Acting out of God’s initiative means not only not doing anything about a matter sought about until we receive the answer He has for us, but also only doing what He commands us to do. This is a very hard and very important lesson to learn. The best example in Scripture of the importance of waiting on God and obeying what God tells us to do is the stories of King Saul and King David in the book of 1 Samuel.

In 1 Samuel Chapter 13 the Philistines had gathered 30,000 chariots and 6,000 horsemen and people like the sand on the seashore in abundance against Israel. King Saul, however, was commanded by the Lord through Samuel to wait in Gilgal until Samuel arrived and gave the sacrifice before going to war against the Philistines.

King Saul waited seven days and Samuel had not yet arrived, so Saul forced himself and gave the sacrifice himself so he could go to war against the Philistines. As soon as he was finished, Samuel arrived. God speaking to Saul through Samuel said to Saul in response,

"You have acted foolishly; you have not kept the commandment of Yehovah your Elohim, which He commanded you, for now Yehovah would have established your kingdom over Israel forever. But now your kingdom shall not endure. The Lord has sought out for Himself a man after His own heart, and Yehovah has appointed him as ruler over His people, because you have not kept what Yehovah commanded you." (1 Sam 13:13-14)

In 1 Samuel 15 God commands Saul through the Prophet Samuel to utterly destroy the Amalekites including all their animals that were probably full of disease like the rest of the population. Samuel did not obey God completely. He spared the life of the King of Amalek and the best of the sheep. His rationalization, an activity of the soul, not a revelation of God’s Spirit through our spirit, was to use the sheep to sacrifice to Yehovah. Samuel tells King Saul in response,

"Has Yehovah as much delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of Yehovah? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of divination, And insubordination is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of Yehovah, He has also rejected you from being king." (1 Sam 15:22-23)

These two stories illustrated clearly and graphically that the Lord wants us to wait on Him until we receive from Him the answer to our needs and then to obey only what he tells us to do about those needs, nothing else.

The problem remains: How do we bring our soul and flesh into this kind of obedient walk with God? The Apostle James states that no man can tame his tongue. He writes,

"For we all stumble in many ways. If any one does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to bridle the whole body as well. For every species of beasts and birds, of reptiles and creatures of the sea, is tamed, and has been tamed by the human race. But no one can tame the tongue; it is a restless evil and full of deadly poison." (James 3:2, 7-8).

James states that no man can tame his tongue. If man could tame his tongue, James says, he would be a perfect man with complete control over his body.

If we are to be effective in ministry outreach and release, control of our tongue is paramount, because our use of our tongue, James says, controls our actions as well. Therefore, getting control of our tongue first is of greatest importance if we are to control our actions as well in submission to the Lordship of Jesus in ministry outreach and release. But if we ourselves cannot tame our tongue, as James states, then who can? Jesus can. Jeremiah the prophet wrote, "Behold, I am Yehovah, the Elohim of all flesh; is anything too difficult for Me?" (Jer 32:27). Nothing is impossible with Jesus. He knows how to help us get control over our tongue and body. How does He do it?

Back in 1972 I was actively involved with an evangelical organization that gave me my foundation in Christianity and taught me the importance of sharing my faith with others and gave me the tools to do it.

After having worked with this organization for two years, I got to a point in my Evangelism where I saw that just having all the Scriptural, apologetic, and scientific reasons for why a person should receive Jesus Christ did not always convince a person of his need to make the decision to receive Jesus.

The problem was, how do I get this information to go from the person’s head to his heart to bring them to Jesus as Savior and Lord? I daily surrendered the control of my life to Jesus and asked Him to fill me with His Holy Spirit and I believe He did. Though this was important and necessary, it still did not seem to be or appear to be enough to help me successfully get to the person’s heart in Evangelism or whatever the topic centered on at the moment spiritually.

As I began to seek Jesus for wisdom as to how I could communicate His love and forgiveness more successfully, He led me to a passage in 1 Corinthians. Paul states,

"And I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. And my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God." ( 1 Cor 2:3-5).