Saturday, June 30, 2007
Heavenly Commerce
Friday, June 29, 2007
Serious Allegations
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Never Look for Justice
In a side note, I would like to pass along a resource that I found last night on the web if any of you are interested in utilizing it. As you can probably tell by now I am a great fan of My Utmost for His Highest and have been interested for some time in purchasing more material by him. I came across a web site that not only provides each day's readings on its cover page so anyone can read it, but also has links for purchasing all of his other materials. The version of My Utmost that they use for this purpose is the “updated edition” which is worded differently than the older one I prefer. But many people prefer the newer addition and say that it is much easier for them to understand. At any rate, I ended up ordering a volume that has all of the things he ever wrote plus a CD containing all of his materials as well.
This is the part of today's reading that brought conviction to me and really got my attention.
The Sermon on the Mount indicates that when we are on Jesus Christ's errands, there is no time to stand up for ourselves. Jesus says, in effect, Do not be bothered with whether you are being justly dealt with or not. To look for justice is a sign of deflection from devotion to Him. Never look for justice in this world, but never cease to give it. If we look for justice, we will begin to grouse and to indulge in the discontent of self-pity – Why should I be treated like this? If we are devoted to Jesus Christ we have nothing to do with what we meet, whether it is just or unjust. Jesus says – Go steadily on with what I have told you to do and I will guard your life. If you try to guard it yourself, you remove yourself from My deliverance. The most devout among us become atheistic in this connection; we do not believe God, we enthrone common sense and tack the name of God on to it. We do lean to our own understanding, instead of trusting God with all our hearts. (MUHH 6/27)
I have been reminded many times over the last couple of weeks to be very careful about getting focused on defending myself instead of trusting in truth to vindicate itself and letting God be my defense. I have been learning a great deal about this and wonder if that is not one reason why I have not finished my writing about self-defensiveness – because I had a lot more to learn before I put out my thoughts on it. I will say that I am learning some of the benefits of letting God be my focus instead of indulging in self-pity and resentment. But I have to also be honest and say it is extremely tough to keep that kind of thinking when feeling very misunderstood and alone and under suspicion by many of those who I want to love me.
I have sensed throughout this experience that the more I try to justify myself and indulge in pointing out the errors of those who are against me and the problems with their arguments, the less credible my own words become and the more doubt I end up casting upon my own integrity. As I have repeatedly noticed, my temptation is always to imbibe of the spirit of those who have misread me and are creating suspicions about me. This is always the case because of our natural response to act like mirrors toward other people. We always see our own faults most intensely in others and are in danger of using them to avoid facing them within ourselves.
While I have been learning that in principle over the past few years, putting it into practice in the tough arena of the down and dirty real world is a much harder lesson. I cannot say that I have always taken the higher road in this matter consistently. There have been times when I feel that I crossed the line and began to indulge in accusing my accusers. But the Holy Spirit has been faithful to convict me and I want to stay in right relationship to God more than anything else. I know in my heart that this is really a golden opportunity for growth and maturing in my life if I am willing to endure the pain and depend on God.
I must also acknowledge that I have been blessed with a number of people in my life who have come forward over time and supported me by believing in my heart as well as challenging me to to experience more healing. They have helped give me perspective when tunnel-vision threatened to distort my view of reality and they remind me of what they see in me when I forget or cannot see clearly through the fog of emotions and the pressure of temptations from the spirit realm. I deeply appreciate these people and value them as genuine friends in my life, and I hope to become more of that kind of person myself through this experience.
I also want to keep very high in my priority the love that I still have for those who have misunderstood me and still cling to their dark suspicions about me. I deeply care for them and want them to experience the peace and healing that is the real desire of their hearts. They mistakenly believe that they can find satisfaction through creating doubt and suspicions about me in the minds of others. But that road is always a false trail that leads only to more pain and emptiness for those who choose it. But I want to keep the trail clear of any obstacles that I am tempted to create that would hinder their return journey to joy in reconnecting with those who really love them.
But most of all I want to become totally devoted to Jesus Christ much more than to finding justice. I have to repeatedly choose each day to remember and practice the things that God is showing me and teaching my heart. I have been receiving coordinated messages from Him every day through different avenues that are synchronized around the same themes and I want to assimilate them as quickly as my heart can grasp their value and integrate them internally. I sometimes feel very confused, but I trust the One who is coordinating everything behind the scenes and is faithful to finish the work that He started. I choose not to indulge in guarding myself and thereby removing myself from His deliverance. God has been pretty clear in some of these things to me but I easily forget sometimes when I am distracted and have to be reminded either internally by my conscience or through others who remind me to continue trusting and believing in God's faithful love for me no matter what circumstances look or feel like.
I do not want to “enthrone common sense and tack the name of God on to it.” I choose to avoid leaning on my own understanding and I want to learn to trust God with all of my heart. His heart can always be trusted and His promises, not only to me but to anyone desiring to lean on them, contain the power of self-fulfillment inherent in them from the infallible Source of Life and genuine satisfaction.
Thank-you Jesus for this experience that is causing me to grow in grace and in knowing You more intimately. Use these circumstances in my life to bring honor to Your name no matter what happens to me. Cause me to walk in Your ways and use this experience to attract many others to Your beauty, Your trustworthiness and Your goodness. I love You and worship You as my own God, my personal Saviour and submit to You as my Lord. Teach me Your ways and Your wisdom and flood my heart with Your spirit, Your kindness and compassion and Your humility for Your name's sake.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Grace in Humiliation
We make prayer the preparation for work, it is never that in the Bible. Prayer is the exercise of drawing on the grace of God. Don't say – I will endure this until I can get away and pray. Pray now; draw on the grace of God in the moment of need. Prayer is the most practical thing, it is not the reflex action of devotion....
...Manifest a drawing upon the grace of God that will make you a marvel to yourself and to others. Draw now, not presently. The one word in the spiritual vocabulary is Now. Let circumstances bring you where they will, keep drawing on the grace of God in every conceivable condition you may be in. One of the greatest proofs that you are drawing on the grace of God is that you can be humiliated without manifesting the slightest trace of anything but His grace. (MUHH 6/26)
I want this to be a description of my life and be demonstrated through me. Obviously I need to draw heavily on grace from God to do this. It is very painful to be humiliated by those you love the most without manifesting the slightest trace of anything but His grace. But we are not promised freedom from pain but grace in our pain – grace that causes us to transcend the pain into a greater glory, not escape the pain by necessarily eliminating its causes. This is a dimension of Christianity that is not popular but much more authentic and compelling when seen by those around. It is not even something we can take pride in but, like Chambers said above, makes even ourselves marvel at what God can accomplish inside of us.
I choose to continue to fill my mind with truth and grace to counteract the ill effects of all the negative thoughts and emotions the enemy has been pressing in on me. I choose to seek God to surround me with an atmosphere that will neutralize the flaming arrows of the enemy seeking to destroy my connection with God and my family. I choose to trust God with the lives and hearts of all of those damaged in this situation and for Him to demonstrate His marvelous and uncanny ability to work everything together for good to those who love God and are called according to His purpose.
Monday, June 25, 2007
Why Jews First Revisted
Why the Jews first and then the Greek, especially in light of God not having partiality?
Who today are these Gentiles that do not have the law but do instinctively the things of the Law and show the work of the Law written in their hearts? Are they converted Christian Gentiles or are they as yet “unconverted” people externally but internally are responding and submitting to promptings of God's Spirit? We usually assume in our theology that the promises of a new heart and the law written into our hearts laid out in the Old Testament apply now to converted Christians who accept Jesus as their Saviour. But this text seems to go beyond that narrow view.
I believe the reason the Jews are first in line for both the benefits and the liabilities (1:16 and 2:9) is not because God arbitrarily determines it that way but because inherently due to their knowledge and spiritual context they are already closer to “the fire”. Since it is the same fire, always found in the presence of God, that will either cause them to glow and shine with glory or that will create heat, misery, pain and ultimately death from their resistance to it, then anyone who is already in closer proximity to it to start with will experience the natural consequences of exposure to it, either good or bad, before those who are farther away from it.
If this observation is true, then in today's environment this would more likely apply to anyone who has been exposed to more truth about God in contrast to those who have generally been at a much greater distance from a true knowledge of what He is really like. This could very generically apply to Christians verses non-Christians but that is far to broad to really apply in my opinion. There are millions of Christians who know very little about God and have no intimate relationship with Him. They are simply born and raised or possibly convinced and indoctrinated into a set of arbitrary doctrines, external beliefs and an earthly organization that claims the title of Christian. Many of these people are not much different than the Gentiles in Paul's day except that they might have a little more knowledge of the existence of Jesus and know some cursory facts about Him.
It almost seems that possibly today the line of delineation that was so usable in Paul's day between Jews and Gentiles (or Greeks) is far from being so useful in the present condition of the amalgamation of beliefs and the gradients of knowledge about God that can be found in today's world. In those days it was clear that one race of people had been favored and nurtured by God for centuries to have all the advantages possible to know Him and reveal Him to the world much more clearly than any other people on earth. But a transition came at that point that moved from God working almost exclusively with a clearly defined group of people all belonging to the same race, to creating a New Testament family-style church in which there were no racial divisions and the only real distinction left between them and the rest of the world was the internal fire of God burning with love in their hearts.
But as that fire began to cool and be diluted over the years and the centuries, it began to harden into gradients of beliefs mingled with more and more dogma and superstition and false ideas. This has left us today with myriads of ideas and notions and belief systems beyond comprehension without the clear delineation between real believers and unbelievers that was more evident in the Old Testament and in the early days of the Christian church.
That is not to say that the nation of Israel were always true believers. But throughout all those centuries God favored them in spite of that until the first coming of Christ brought about a dramatic transition to the New Covenant period and the superceding of the Old Covenant rules, symbolic restrictions and the concentration of God's focus on one race of people.
But while the clear external lines of delineation are not so evident today, it is still just as true that those who have enjoyed more light of truth, especially truth experienced at the heart level, are closer to experiencing both the positive or the negative results of fuller revelations of God's passionate fire in His presence than are those who are far more unaware of the real truth about Him. Those who enjoy great light have much greater responsibility to stay in sync with that light or risk being burned by the very light that desires to save them. Talk about playing with fire... This fire is the ultimate Fire and will soon become either our source of unimaginable pleasure and satisfaction or will become the power that will expose all of our resistance creating unimaginable pain, anguish and finally eternal death. The choice is ours to make now in how we decide to relate to the light we receive in this life.