Written Word

My Unusual Journal 60

My Unusual Journal

My Unusual Journal 60, Monday, January 23, 2012, 1:12 AM

Consistency in Spiritual Growth

“When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus.” (Acts 4.13 NIV)

Change by osmosis. Osmosis is “…2 the diffusion of fluids through a membrane or porous partition; 3 an apparently effortless absorption of ideas, feelings, attitudes, etc., as if by biological osmosis.” (Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia © 1999 The Learning Company, Inc.) Osmosis, used in a spiritual context, can occur when a vessel (you or I) is drawn by the strong magnetic attraction of a Master Vessel (Jesus Christ) and opts to place itself in close contact with the Master Vessel. There occurs then a dynamic exchange of “ideas, feelings, attitudes, etc.,” between the two. Needless to say, the subsidiary vessel benefits tremendously by this act of aligning itself with the Master Vessel.

Now, about this little elementary lesson on biology (osmosis): Paul wrote on one occasion to the Corinthians,

“I do not want to seem to be trying to frighten you with my letters. For some say, ‘his letters are weighty and forceful, but in person he is unimpressive and his speaking amounts to nothing.’” (2 Cor. 10.9-10)

Believe me; I am not attempting to impress anyone with a show of knowledge. I lack the academic credentials. All I want to do in this particular “My Unusual Journal” is to show you how we can grow in Christ. It is by osmosis or by getting close enough to God to absorb some of His glorious Self into our spiritual beings. God made us deliberately incomplete without Him as part of our person. No person is the person he or she should be without their God to supplement them. We have to be in close contact with the Master on an ongoing basis, not by occasional spurts such as revivals. Don't misread me: revivals are the periodic renewal of the Church's faith by special efforts like fasting and praying and study of the Word of God; but often these efforts are followed by relapses on the part of the congregation into the same old habits.

Our habits as a congregation are not sinful nor are they necessarily bad habits, but there is always higher ground for which we have to strive. When we are content with the “good old ways” or have to look backward for the blessings of God in the days of old – it is not a sign of good spiritual health. Instead of falling back on the blessings of yesteryear, let’s look ahead and reach forward to making new memories that are just as good as, and better than, the past.

I can remember with pleasure how God used to bless us "way back when,” but I am looking ahead to even more and better blessings, blessings to which I can look backward as those good ol’ days – while still striving to make more blessed memories by getting closer to my God. The key to this good ol' days syndrome is to deliberately make the present days that are going past us at blinding speed, memorable. At present you may be undergoing a severe trial of your faith, which you think could hardly be memorable at some future day. But when that future date rolls around, you may find yourself looking back at this day as one of the good ol' days. Why?

You will recall how God kept you from losing your sanity in the midst of the furious attacks by the adversary. You will recall your sweet communion with God when the fierce assaults would let up for a while before resuming their ferocity. You will remember that you had been taught you would experience days like that and also recall the wonderful recuperative grace of God that kept you through the violent struggle. The same grace that held you up during the battle soothed and renewed your strength after the battle.

Yet you will not want to go back to those blessed days. You will have grown spiritually since then and your state at that time will be more blessed than the former days. For instance, I still miss my father/pastor after these forty years since his passing, but I have no desire to go back to that time. It is past and God is much sweeter to me now than He was then. He never changes, but my perspective of Him does as He draws me closer and closer to Him.

A true revival of a church or an individual worshiper can only occur when God sends a spirit of revival. We don't animate or motivate ourselves; God does that and we then should follow up on the increased zeal and spiritual drive that come only from God. When God begins a rustling and shaking among us, He expects us to follow His leading and engage in the special efforts such as fasting and praying and the like. But here is where we drop the ball. After the special period of consecration has passed – as it must in time – we relax our special efforts and ease up on our zeal for the house of God. We go back to the old manner of living; we take up again the former less than ideal ways of following God.

Now God does not expect you to continue your fever-pitch efforts; that would not be realistic as we are only human and we have a natural life to sustain. We must work and pay bills and maintain a marriage and a family (God expects this of a godly person). These things take time. But when we have made our spiritual gains by a special effort blessed by God and when the time for that effort has passed, we have to be careful not to relax overmuch. Do what you can by the grace of God to hold onto the ground you have gained by His grace and your diligent efforts. Why should we slide back onto the old ground when God has said He would give us all the land we have thus far conquered? (Jos. 14.9)

We are only slightly pleasing God by our jerky efforts of pushing ahead three paces and sliding back one. The secret to making sustained progress in God is by applying a steady pressure on the forces of darkness and on our own carnal selves. Serving God is not a natural trait; it goes against our nature, which is to do as we please without regard for God and the creatures He made in His image and after His likeness.

When we cease our special efforts, which as humans we cannot continue indefinitely, let's relax – but not too much and let's settle down – but not into complacency. Keep that fervent mindset even when it is not there at the moment and continue in your zeal for the house of God.

 

My Unusual Journal 59

My Unusual Journal

My Unusual Journal 59, Sunday, January 22, 2012, 6:44 PM

Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. (Php 1:6 KJV)

Unshakable Confidence

 Does Paul’s assertion above indicate that all members of the Corinthian church would be saved regardless of any misdeeds in which they might thereafter engage? No, it expresses Paul’s supreme confidence in the grace and power of Christ to save them if they continued to follow Christ.

1) First off I have confidence in God’s Word that it will never be a false hope luring us to disaster if we continue in the Word; 2) I personally am sure that I will not fail to reach the blessed Promised Land; and 3) my hope is firm that you too will be in heaven with me, “if [you] hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end.” (Heb. 33.6b)

It is not possible for any outside force to condemn you to hell. "Greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world." Believers are like house renters who have a lease that cannot be broken by any force of darkness. Only the believer can break the lease, and if he or she should do something that is contrary to the terms of the lease, they are not thrown immediately into the street, suddenly homeless and shelterless. They are warned by the Lessor (lease holder, God) of their violation and allowed to continue their residency under the original terms of the lease.

God is by no means seeking for a reason to evict us from our place in Christ. It is not consistent with sound logic that God, in the person of Jesus Christ, would suffer such pain and horror of soul for our salvation and then quickly leave us to our sinful selves at every crook of our smallest finger. Even when we think He has forsaken us for this or that reason or for this or that sin, God is always, always there for us. Cry out to Him from the blackness of you night. If He does not answer right away, keep bellowing like blind Bartimaeus. “Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me!” You know He is there. Where could the One who inhabits all space and time – where could He have gone? Bartimaeus couldn’t see the Lord, but the auditory (sound) evidence was swelling all around him and He called the more urgently, “Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me!”

Now don’t get fussy and complain, “If He loves me as you say He does, why doesn’t He answer me?” I have said it once and again: We are the beggars, HE is the Lord of all Creation. If necessary, let us come, hat in hand, pleading and groveling for Him to turn His face toward us.

But we don’t always see His face – like Bartimaeus. There is a song that has this line in it: "Help me through the darkness thy face to see..." There is another song that says, "The storm is not greater than his grace..." The first song implies that God's face can be hidden at least for a while. The latter flatly asserts that the storms can NOT hide His face. Which statement is correct?

They are both correct; they are metaphors that for the sake of clear understanding compare one thing or situation with another. The fact is we don’t grope through a literal dark night to see the literal face of Jesus and there is no real storm that threatens to defeat the grace of God. (They are in the spirit realm and, for reasons I cannot go into now, I believe they are more than real!) These two statements are vivid descriptions of our daily experiences. The composers of the songs simply chose different ways of expressing one irreversible truth, which is this: Nothing can overcome God’s trusting, obedient child. One way of expressing the thought is to say that no storm can hide His face; another way is to tacitly admit that the face of God may be hidden for a moment, but pray that God will once again reveal that face through the darkness and gloom all around us. And He always does – in His own way and His own time.

The situation is akin to that of the Church, the Bride of Christ, whose individual members often get harassed by contrary elements to the point where they cannot for a time see the face of God and they cry out not only to see His face: they plead for His soon return. The pressure is great and we need relief and we need it quickly.

Hear me speedily, O LORD: my spirit faileth: hide not thy face from me, lest I be like unto them that go down into the pit. (Psa 143:7 KJV)

But in our greatest need and our most perilous situation God gives us a word of hope:

Eph 1:4-5  According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love:  (5)  Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will.

I AM SURELY CHOSEN OF GOD BEFORE EVER THERE WAS A WORLD CREATED. I CANNOT FAIL IF I WILL NOT FAIL.

 

 

My Unusual Journal 58

Our God Is a God of Symmetry and Evenness

My God is an awesome God! Just when it seems that life is really great and I get too attached to it, God lets something slip through the hedge protecting me.  That something hits me squarely in my gut and reminds me I am not yet in heaven.

On the other hand, just when I am at my lowest of ebb tides, God sends a gentle, rolling wave that buoys me up out of the shallows and the sand and mud and roily water attending them.

And he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver: and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the LORD an offering in righteousness. (Mal 3:3 KJV)

God balances my life out, He is the Great Equalizer. As I have written in a previous post (My Unusual Journal 46, KeepYour Faith in God the Great Equalizer), He has made me a great eagle with two wings, affliction and anointing, that will carry me unerringly home. My God never lets me drown in bitter despair nor does He let me fly too high, getting too close to the hot sun so that the wax holding my temporary wings together melts and I fall to everlasting ruin. There is surely an all-knowing, all-powerful God not just "out there," but within me and all around me, a God who is determined not to let me fail. All I have to do is keep my faith in Him. My faith in God alone gives me the Eternal Security that I need.

This is the first My Unusual Journal I have posted in about five weeks… five weeks of physical and emotional highs and lows on the roller coaster we lightly call life – but this so-called life is not the full reality life toward which we are pressing  – it is nothing more than a shimmering mirage full of tragedy and hardships.

My absence from the Internet was caused by an illness. It was not voluntary; it was a test of my mettle. It was not that God didn’t know whether I had the “right stuff” in me and He wanted to see whether I could live up to all the glowing phrases of faithful, dedicated trust in Jesus I had been spouting like a fountain sending its waters hither and yon on friend and foe alike – although I really don’t know of any honest–to-goodness foes I have.

How did I fare on my test? Well, I didn’t ace it, if that’s what you want to know, and I saw some flaws that I, by the grace of God, have to seriously work on. In fact, again by the grace of God, I have already begun to cast these unwelcome squatters out of my house. Now this is where the love and mercy of God shine their brightest. These unwelcome “guests” in my home were not things that were pleasing to God; in fact, all such flaws are displeasing to Him. But He never dispossesses us of our home simply because it is not perfect. In effect God sent me a notice in my five-week “down time” that He was not pleased with my uninvited guests and told me to evict them. That order I am now in the process of complying with.

Oh, I know there will always be other squatters who will amble in uninvited, but from now on I will have to be on red alert and not let them stay. They gotta go! After all, I am in the house (the spiritual habitation on which I am working only at the pleasure of the Owner – one day it will be mine minus all the flaws and imperfections). I do not have unconditional assurance I can stay if I fail to do my best to keep all unwanted squatters out and to drive out all who somehow sneak by me – again I need the grace of God. He is very patient and will continue to be that way if He sees that I am trying to please Him. He does not demand immediate perfection, only a living faith in Him, and that includes always rebounding after a failure great or small. I – that is, we – must NEVER give up after a defeat.

Several Faults Uncovered by My Test

It has been said that confession is good for the soul, but hard on the reputation. But despite whatever damage it will do to my reputation, here are the mistakes I made – or rather, that GOD uncovered to my shame – in my testing: 1) a shortfall of love, and 2) a lack of patience. I’ll not go into detail and show you how God revealed my blemishes to me. Suffice it to say they were patently a part of me. I will confess this however – and I hang my head in humiliation to uncover this ugly blemish: I who am so quick to say that all godly men should love their wives and that patience is required to be holy, was found wanting in this particular test in both areas, and my patient, dedicated wife suffered for their lack.

But God was good to both of us and in a day or two He told me sternly (no, it was not an actual voice), “How many times have you deplored the conspicuous lack of love in Christians today and yet here you are, clearly guilty of the same blemish you found so offensive in others!” God also laid bare my unwarranted impatience with her for the slightest mistake. This woman was oozing love and patience out of her pores, and I had the temerity to find fault! God saw the unsightly wart on my character and took me to task for it.

This too is what I have said often before: If you follow close after God and search His Word and listen to his prophets who speak forth words of “edification, exhortation and comfort” (1 Cor. 14.3) he will continually give you the edification (building up), exhortation and comfort you need. He stopped me in my tracks and placed my feet back on the pathway of love. There were other things about me that God showed me, things you would term niggling and not worth noting, but if they displease the Savior who died for even the small sins, they are important to me.

I am not completely healed yet (I was sick before this latest bout) and I don’t know if I ever will be, but the discomfort, moderate pain and complete upsetting of my life have been more than worth what He did within me and for me. To be blunt, God chastened me and I am forever grateful for such personal love lavished on me from the Almighty God who didn’t have to do it.