Welcome!

Welcome

“FOLLOW ME!”

The command that transforms lives…

 WHAT’S SO IMPORTANT ABOUT DISCIPLESHIP?

Follow Me Ministries came into being during January-March, 2011. Our ministry purpose is: to enhance the training that the risen Lord Jesus (Yeshua), the Messiah of Israel and Lord of all Creation, gives to His personal Jewish and non-Jewish New Covenant disciples. We endeavor to serve those who have received His call to this level of discipleship by providing Bible-based meditations that will serve as ‘training aids’.

Disciples-in-training must develop our Master’s authentic Biblically-revealed world view. And they must learn to live and work upon that basis and proclaim the Salvation Message it contains to the rest of the world.  This Bible-based world view will enable them to recognize and navigate through the myriads of contradicting errors, false claims and agendas that belittle and defy the Authoritative Word of the Creator of all things that these disciples are committed to serve.

The Biblical world view serves as the basis for our ability to begin to understand, with accuracy and integrity, God’s nature and His ways. God will never contradict, deny, or change what He has revealed, commanded and promised by His Word, regardless of how violently His enemies protest, oppose, and defy Him. We now live in the enormously critical and strategic era of human history that Scripture calls, ‘The Last Days’. It’s the era immediately leading up to the Grand Climactic Final Ending and Consummation of what God’s written Word reveals, commands, and promises to us all. That’s why disciples must know their Lord and Commander with authentic, precisely accurate fidelity, regardless of what the worldly unbelieving world around them may say or do to the contrary.

 

We won’t provide scholarly treatises or make dogmatic pronouncements in our material. We intend to offer ‘meditations’ which are the product of years of what we’ve gleaned from personal Bible study and from our efforts to commune and interact with God, abiding in His Spirit’s Presence, seeking to ‘hear His Voice’, and to receive His constant direction. Coupled with that, we share what we learned by our combined years of observation and interaction with scores of other believers, and personal experiences gained form our personal interactions with our Lord.

On this website, unless otherwise indicated, we’ll use the New American Standard Bible translation (NASB) and, at times, the Tree of Life (TLV) version, and others, as found on www.BibleGateway.com  in our quotations throughout this website. And, to help you understand what we’re saying in our meditations, we will identify the version we’re using and occasionally insert our own amplification and points of emphasis into the Bible texts. And we will always notify the reader when this has been done.]

 

When our first parents fell into the state of Sin and mortality, Creation was corrupted and mortally damaged. All of this was due to arrogant pride and rebellion of some of God’s spiritual beings. We call them ‘fallen angels’. They refused to acknowledge that their Creator is Supreme Lord over all other things that exist, including them. And since the fall of the first two humans these angelic and demonic spiritual entities work ceaselessly to try to ‘recruit’ and ‘groom’ all humans, and persuade them to join their rebellion against God and assist their attempts to overthrow and replace His Government. So we humans were all born into the midst of this cosmic War in the heavens that also rages on Earth. This cosmic conflict is sometimes called ‘the War of the Seeds’:

 

Adonai Elohim said to the serpent, “Because you did this,

“Cursed are you above all the livestock and above every animal of the field. On your belly will you go, and dust will you eat all the days of your life. I will put animosity between you and the woman—between your seed and her seed. He will crush your head, and you will crush his heel.”  (Gen. 3:14-15 TLV. Emphasis added.)

 

So because of the enormous fatal damage Sin inflicted on Creation, including the human race, we humans inherited a terribly damaged, distorted, mutated and twisted nature. No longer are we what God originally created the human race to be. We now have a strong innate tendency and desire to rebel against God and His Authority over us, and live radically independent lives of our own, assuming we have a right to be our own gods. That of course makes us enemies of God and it dooms us to be deprived of fellowship and eternal life with Him. He does give us a chance to repent and change our allegiance and our ways, but whoever refuses to do this, will be judged and doomed by God to eternal separation and desolation.

God has most certainly not given us up to eternal doom. In fact, He has already done everything necessary to make it possible for us to be fully reconciled and be fully restored to Blood Covenant union and friendship with Him. He wholeheartedly desires for every human to know that He refuses to leave His devastated Creation the way it is. His nature compels Him to finish everything He begins. And this is why He has prepared the Way to Salvation for us all so He can deliver us from the dismal fallen ‘sub-human’ state into which Sin and Death have plunged us all.

Through His Living Word made flesh, Yeshua, (Jesus), God has done everything necessary to completely regenerate and fully restore us according to His original Perfect Standards of Truth, Righteousness and Justice. So He’s continually reaching out to mankind, to get our attention and inform everyone about the wonderful good news of what He has done to reconcile and redeem and restore us back to the union with Him that He originally made us to have and enjoy with Him.

“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son (His Living creating, redeeming Word) into the world to judge the world, but so that the world might be saved through Him. The one who believes in Him is not judged; the one who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the Light; for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light, so that his deeds will not be exposed. But the one who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds will be revealed as having been performed in God.” (John 3:16-21 NASB.)

But this fallen, Humanistic, Self-adoring world and its systems, from the time we’re born, begin to deeply ‘hardwire’ our brains, and program our mental ‘onboard computers’, to believe, embrace and aspire to its man-centered, Self-promoting worldview, values,  agendas, and aspirations. These things defy, and oppose God’s revealed will, plan, and purposes. And that presents a tremendous conflict that rips and tears at the fabric of all of Creation! If it’s true that the Living God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob really and truly is the Creator and Supreme Lord of all things, spiritual and physical, then as long as we continue to rebel and contradict Him, and think and choose in ways that are counter to His Truth and His Ways, then the counter-polarity our rebellion causes, prolongs that terrible state of war that exists between the polarity of the spiritual forces of Darkness and the Polarity of God, the Creator, and His revealing, all-authoritative Living Word!

This deadly War keeps God’s Creation captivated in terrible violent turmoil, destruction, devastation, and chaos. And as long as we remain part of what opposes God, we are condemned to total eternal failure, frustration, and desolation!

“Then to Adam He said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’;

“Cursed is the ground because of you; with hard labor you shall eat from it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; yet you shall eat the plants of the field; by the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, until you return to the ground, because from it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” (Genesis 3:17-19 NASB.)

 

The rebellion and its Anti-God counter-polarity prevent Creation from working and producing the results that its Designer and Creator intended for it to produce. So human societies have become like an enormous Machine, made up of countless numbers of parts that are misaligned and out of synchronization with God’s intentions and with each other! And as long as this state of conflict and contradiction continues, the parts of ‘The Machine’ remain bent and misaligned, and as long as the Machine operates, the parts continue to clash and tear into each other, doing more and more damage, and creating more and more failure, frustration, disappointment and rage to permeate and curse everything and everyone concerned! And this is why it’s so essential for every one of us to hear and obey the voice of our Creator, God’s Living Word made flesh, and embrace Him and allow Him to save, redeem, regenerate and reconfigure and restore us to what God originally intended us to be.

“This is what the Lord says: “Cursed is the man who trusts in mankind and makes flesh his strength, and whose heart turns away from the Lord. For he will be like a bush in the desert, and will not see when prosperity comes, but will live in stony wastes in the wilderness, a land of salt that is not inhabited.

Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, and whose trust is the Lord. For he will be like a tree planted by the water that extends its roots by a stream, and does not fear when the heat comes; but its leaves will be green, and it will not be anxious in a year of drought, nor cease to yield fruit.

The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it? I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind, to give to each person according to his ways, according to the results of his deeds. (Jeremiah 17:5-10 NASB.)

 

So where do disciples fit into all of this? Well, they are chosen by God to assist and expedite His World-redeeming Mission. This is why God’s Word chooses and summons them and separates them from their former places in this world. He set them apart,  and reserves them for His own personal service. And this is why those of us who heed His call and step forward, ready to follow Him, need to receive some very specialized intense training that will enable us to successfully embark on, and successfully complete, the awesome Exodus trek we must make from the rebellious God-ignoring worldly mindsets and lifestyles we formerly embraced, to the intimate interactive oneness with God’s Living Word that we are now commissioned to live, demonstrate, and share with others, on into the future.

Our intensive counter-training will require massive repetition so that the new brain-wiring and mental reprogramming the training will install in us can gain hold and grow and multiply like new good seed that begins to be sown into a field that was previously filled with weeds. The ongoing process of repetitive sowing will enable the good seed to take over the field in due time.

Disciples need brand new Christ-compatible, God-approved identity, action and reaction patterns. These new patterns will equip us to allow God’s Spirit to make us to become as one with Christ. Then He will be free to live and operate within us and reveal Himself to the world, through us! This is how He can fulfill His Father’s will, and Plan on Earth, and make good on everything that His Father has revealed, commanded and promised to His Creation.

So the disciples’ basic training must enable new ‘recruits’ to understand why they must die to whatever they believed and thought they were, while they were part of this world and its anti-God systems. God’s Spirit is given to us to take us through a ‘resurrection-type process’, that frees us from the living death state into which we were born, and transfer us into the resurrection new life and identity and future destiny that await us as soon as we successfully absorb our training and identify fully with our indwelling Lord. So there you have it: this Follow Me Ministry Family is geared to help those our risen Lord has chosen to become part of His Last Days Invasion Force, by forming us all into His own, ever-growing and developing earthly Body:

“Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be as wary as serpents, and as innocent as doves. But be on guard against people, for they will hand you over to the courts and flog you in their synagogues; and you will even be brought before governors and kings on My account, as a testimony to them and to the Gentiles. But when they hand you over, do not worry about how or what you are to say; for what you are to say will be given you in that hour. For it is not you who are speaking, but it is the Spirit of your Father who is speaking in you.”  (Matthew 10:16-20 NASB.)

“Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep. Be of the same mind toward one another; do not be haughty in mind, but associate with the lowly. Do not be wise in your own estimation. Never repay evil for evil to anyone. Respect what is right in the sight of all people. 

If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all people. Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written: “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord. But if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him a drink; for in so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” DO NOT BE OVERCOME BY EVIL, BUT OVERCOME EVIL WITH GOOD! (Romans 12:14-21 NASB. Emphasis added.)

God’s Spirit will be living in each disciple. He will teach, train, correct, discipline, encourage, fortify, and develop each of us to operate effectively, and to endure, persevere, and even thrive amid the pall of intense demonic Darkness that will increasingly envelop this fallen world in the days to come. We must master the art and tactic of resisting and ‘swimming against the current’ of all worldly polarity. We’ll do it only if we master the art of allowing our Living God to work from within us. Everything will be done by Christ’s Love Power and Absolute Authority. His Spirit is filling us with God’s Omnipotent Power. So, through the obedience of our faith and personal submission to, and trust in Him, He will be the Fire Power that will blast through and overcome all demonic opposition!

Isaiah 55:8-11

“‘For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,’ declares 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. For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there without watering the earth and making it bear and sprout, and furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater; so will My Word be which goes forth from My mouth; It will not return to Me empty, without accomplishing what I desire, and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it!‘” (Emphasis added.) (See also John 5:19;30.)

Ponder what the Lord Jesus says to those who choose to follow Him, as His disciples:

Matthew 10:34-39

“Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man against his (unbelieving) father, and a daughter against her (unbelieving) mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s enemies will be the (unbelieving, anti-Messiah) members of his household. “He who loves (prefers to follow and obey) father or mother more than Me (God’s Living Word) is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me.  And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me.  He who has found his (worldly, radically independent, self-) life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it.” (Amplification added.)

Beloved, are these not the strongest words you’ve ever seen or heard? Is any of us capable of living such a life? No, obviously not! But God isn’t saying that this is what we must try to do; He is promising that this is what He Himself will do from within us, through His Holy Spirit’s Power! God’s Holy Spirit filled and energized the Humanity of God’s Living Word at all times. And He enabled the Sin-less Humanity of our Messiah to live this way, on every level, throughout His days on Earth. And the Spirit of God is here, through our faith, to impart that same God-obedient, Messiah-embodying lifestyle, to those of us that choose to follow Him. God’s Holy Spirit is the promised New Covenant Gift from God! He will empower us also, and align us with what is written in the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation!

John 3:30

“He (God’s living Word made flesh abiding within me) must increase, but I (in my strong tendency to think and live as a radically independent agent) must decrease!” (NASB. Amplification and emphasis added.)

We follow this unique ‘He must increase’, and ‘I must decrease’ , guideline, in response to the Absolute Authority that we acknowledge that God’s Living Word, our Creator, truly has over us. We do whatever we can, to fulfill the purpose our Heavenly Father gave to this ministry. That purpose is: to enhance and protect the spiritual growth and wellbeing of His beloved Son’s serious Last Days followers. And since we too have been called to serve as the Lord’s disciples, for our Master to truly be able to increase in us… all worldly attachments that we’ve been in the habit of placing above Him… must fade out of our personal priority systems and lifestyles. God’s Spirit must be free to fashion us into a New Covenant Body on Earth for His beloved Son that will actually be His Body, and not that of another!

Colossians 3:3-4

For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God! When Christ, who is our Life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in Glory.” (Emphasis added.)

This call to follow and abide at all times with our Master, as His disciples, is the most unique and exclusive lifestyle imaginable. It is also difficult to maintain and continue to develop, given the determined Anti-Christ, or Anti-Messiah spirit that grips the fallen world that surrounds us, by the throat!

We urge you to take sufficient  time to absorb and digest the meaning embedded within God’s written Word. And, if you use these meditations as tools to help you do that, they will provide some of the massive repetition your brain and nervous system will need… for God’s Word to sink into the deepest regions of your innermost being, and develop a strong, deep root system in your heart.

Because of the underlying disciple-life issues, and because the attitudes, mentality, and spirit of this fallen world are so opposed to God’s Living and written Word, we must face and dig into these discipleship issues now, as God gives us the time and opportunity to do so. Beloved, once we’ve entered eternity, we’ll no longer be able to change anything! We will forever be what we chose to be, while we were still running our earthly race. So God warns and requires us to exercise the free will He gave us and use the time He allots to us wisely. You must choose what you will be and whom you will serve and what you will end up having… before you cross the Finish Line of your earthly journey.

In like manner, even before we are transferred into Eternity by our Commander, even now, while we are in training, we must remember that we are training for battles that we are not yet in. The training has to take place in advance, before the bullets and shells start whizzing in the air and wreaking havoc and destruction. I say this because, once the actual combat begins, it will be too late to learn what you need to learn and practice and develop skills you do not yet have. All of that must have already been accomplished while you had time to train and prepare yourself. So, once the actual warfare erupts across the horizon, you’ll be stuck with what you have, what you know, and how well you have prepared to fulfill your assigned tasks on the battlefield.

Please know that we’re committed to help you in any way we possibly can, as you go through your very important pre-combat preparation time. If you need to communicate with us, you can email us through the ‘Contact’ section on this website. We’re available to communicate with you by email or by Zoom connections as the needs arise. And we encourage and urge you to open your heart to God’s Spirit and resolve to obey and cooperate with Him in the days to come, so that He can finish the beautiful work He is sent by our Heavenly Father to do in you, and through you!