Month: October 2010

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Catching Men and Women

Drawing Hearts to Jesus

One of them was Lydia from Thyatira, a merchant of expensive purple cloth, who worshiped God. As she listened to us, the Lord opened her heart, and she accepted what Paul was saying.

Acts 16:14 NLT

It is our responsibility to tell the story of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection with the forgiveness found therein: it is the Holy Spirit’s responsibility to change and transform a heart. We are not called to count notches in our belts, but we are obligated to share our most precious treasure. The difficulty is learning the most effective way to share the unchanging message of the gospel in a constantly changing world. This message is “good news” for Jesus Christ came to pay the dept of sin, break the chains of sin’s bondage, and empower us to overcome sin’s grip.

In order to catch men for the Lord Jesus Christ, you must love Jesus Christ absolutely, beyond all others. You must have a consuming passion of love, then He will flow through you in a passion of love and yearning and draw men to Himself.

Oswald Chambers, Workmen of God : The Cure for Souls (Hants UK: Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1996, c1937).

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The Right Thing

Communing With God

I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

John 15:5

Abiding in Christ (or communing with God) is holding steady in the presence of Christ trusting his promises by faith irrespective of the challenges, trials, and tribulations of our lives. Remaining in faith and looking to Christ to be our sufficiency in the midst of our inadequacy keeps us in his constant, conscious presence. Only by abiding can our ministry efforts have an outcome that will last for eternity.

Communing [with God] is doing the right thing in the right moment in the right way. Once we get out of communion, we cannot get anything right.

Edward Dennett quoted in His Victorious Indwelling, ed., Nick Harrison (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1998), 364.

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Men and Women of the Fire

 

Are You of the Fire?

For our God is a consuming fire.

Heb. 12:29

Our God is mysterious, holy, and wholly other. Therefore, we have limits in our ability to comprehend the characteristics of his nature and attributes (Isa. 55:8-9). To assist us, the Lord uses human nature (i.e., anthropomorphism), qualities of creation, and ideas (i.e., personification) to describe what he is like.

By example, the Bible describes the Lord as fire (Heb. 12:29). As fire, the Lord spoke from the burning bush (Ex. 3:22); he dwelt above the Israelites as they traveled and camped in the Sinai (Ex. 13:22); he resided in the Holy of Holies as fire between the wings of the cherubim (Ezek. 10:2), and he revealed himself to the prophet Ezekiel as “a great cloud with raging fire engulfing itself” (Ezek. 1:4).

In keeping with God’s own revelation in the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit visits the apostles on the Day of Pentecost as fire. “Then, what looked like flames or tongues of fire appeared and settled on each of them” (Acts 2:3 NLT).

The God who had appeared to them as fire throughout all their long history was now dwelling in them as fire. He had moved from without to the interior of their lives. The Shekinah that had once blazed over the mercy seat now blazed on their foreheads as an external emblem of the fire that had invaded their natures. This was Deity giving Himself to ransomed men. The flame was the seal of a new union. They were now men and women of the Fire (pg. 100).

The exterior God of fire had moved into believer’s hearts bringing “the hope of glory” (Col. 1:27) to live within them, operating through them, and manifesting himself on them. This fire brings about a new union between God and humankind transforming believers into a people of the flame: passionate lovers of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Because of Christ finished work on the Cross, Divine Life has entered our hearts granting us new intimacy with God, enabling grace to live the Christian life, and power for witness to the world.

On the first day of Pentecost He returned, not this time to be with them externally—clothed that sinless humanity that God had prepared for Him, being conceived of the Holy Spirit in the womb of Mary—but now to be in them imparting to them His own divine nature , clothing Himself with their humanity, . . . .

[Ian Thomas, The Saving Life of Christ/The Mystery of Godliness (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1961), 17.]

This divine flame burns within us developing a hunger for holiness and passion for Jesus. This renewed spiritual hunger makes us a people of the burning heart: wholly sold out for his glory. The Holy Spirit’s internal fire actively enables each of us to do ministry by equipping all of us in the gifts of the Spirit. The indwelling flame melts our hearts producing yielded wills ready to do the will of our Lord. “The mark of the fire was the sign of divinity; they who received it were forever a peculiar people, sons and daughters of the Flame” (pg. 101).

God’s fire overcomes blackness defeating all the powers of the evil one. His fire purifies bringing all selfishness to the surface. Fire destroys thereby burning away all sin.

Deity indwelling men! . . . Man, who moved out of the heart of God by sin, now moves back into the heart of God by redemption. God, who moved out of the heart of man because of sin, now enters again His ancient dwelling to drive out His enemies and once more make the place of His feet glorious (pg. 100).

Quotes not otherwise cited are from A. W. Tozer, God’s Pursuit of Man (Camp Hill, PA: Wingspread, 1950).

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The Battle for the Souls of Men

Spiritual Warfare

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

Eph. 6:12

Spiritual warfare is the battle between God and Satan for the souls of men and women. Satan is the prince of this world (John 12:31) and desires to devour humankind (1 Peter 5:8) in order to bring hurt and pain to the heart of God. Christ has entered this world as God incarnate in human flesh to destroy the works of the Devil (1 John 3:8) and rescue us from the oppression and imprisonment of Satan (Luke 4:18). The weapons of our warfare are intercessory prayer, dedicated fasting, spiritual gifts, obedience to God, intimacy with Christ, sacraments of the church, physical healing, and demonic deliverance.

Ultimately, Christ won the warfare on the Cross, but the full realization of his victory will not be manifested to the world until his second advent. Until then, we fight like the Allies in World War Two: they knew that victory was assured in 1944, yet they needed to take back the ground that the Nazis and Japanese imperial forces had conquered in ’40 and ’41.

In the mean time, Christ has extricated Satan from his advantaged position. Satan can no longer bring charges against us, expose our debt of sin, or keep us living in shame and doubt. Because of Christ’s triumph on the cross, we stand in a position of victory for we hold the spiritual high ground. We hold that ground by faith for we are seated with Christ in the heavenlies. We simply “stand” knowing that we fight from a position of victory (Eph. 2:6, 6:11, 13-14).

What is the enemy seeking to do? To dislodge you. Now Christ puts us into the victorious position, the impregnable position, and He gives us an armour that we might be enclosed in Him, and we must take it by faith, and hold it by faith, and fight by faith from that victorious position. It is the fight of faith. We begin in victory.

Evan H. Hopkins, “Standing Fast,” Daily Thoughts from Keswick: A Year’s Daily Readings, ed. Herbert F. Stevenson (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1980), 212.

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Abounding Abundant Life

Life and Life More Abundantly

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.

John 10:10

Eternal life is life and life more abundantly—it is being alive in the realm where God lives (John 10:10). Life is walking with God in unending communion, enjoying his unlimited blessing, experiencing his unconditional love, and receiving his undeserved grace. The eternal life that Christ offers is entire salvation of the whole person including conversion, new birth, heart transformation, and emotional healing.

Abundant life is overflowing fullness, the unsurpassed quality of the life of Christ active in us. Paul uses the terms “all” and “every” to describe the abounding grace that provides abundant life (2 Cor. 9:8). As we abide in Christ, his life increases more and more enabling us to overcome sin, live the Christian life, and enter in the conscious, constant presence of Christ. The abundant life is the normal Christian life described in the New Testament.

Abounding life is just the fullness of life in Christ, made possible by His death and resurrection, and made actual by the indwelling and infilling of the Holy Spirit.

For, “The Christ, who dying did a work for us, now lives to do a work in us.” However, many believers never experience the joy and fulfillment that can now be their possession in Christ.

There can be a relationship without fellowship: there can be life without health: there can be privilege without enjoyment. One may war and not win, may serve and yet not succeed, may try and yet not triumph; and the difference throughout is just the difference between possession of eternal life and the experience of abounding life . . . .

All quotes from Graham Scroggie, “Abounding Life,” Daily Thoughts From Keswick: A Year’s Daily Readings, ed., Herbert F. Stevenson (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1980), 135.