by RobertCummins | Jul 25, 2016 | 30. Awakening
At a camp sight on the road to Haran, God reveals Himself by way of a dream and makes some major promises to Jacob. In his dream there was a corridor of angelic movement between heaven and earth. Above that was God Himself promising to give him and his descendants the land where he slept. God further promised that these descendants will be many and that the earth would be blessed through them. In conclusion of this dream God promises to be with Jacob wherever he goes and fulfill all the promises.
Jacob’s foundations were shaken. He had awakened from his dream with more than just promises. He was now alert and responsible to a world radically different than the one he had gone to sleep in. What he had counted on being true was in fact grossly incomplete. In his fresh discovery Jacob proclaims, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” Are there any parallels between this experience and our own? I think so. Let’s go to the NT and explore.
We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us! (1 Corinthians 13:12 MSG)
The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving that they may not see. (2 Corinthians 4:4 NAS)
According to Paul we, who are destined to see as we have been seen, are suspended for a moment in time with impaired vision. Compounding our vision problem is God’s enemy and ours, the devil. This is surely one of the greatest of all mysteries but In his final unwitting service, he has been given some limited authority by God to mislead by deception. So, in light of this, how are we sight-challenged saints to navigate? Can our vision be improved?
Satan is a liar and the father of all lies. Lies are essentially deceptive ideas and when it comes to ideas, we have choices. As saints, we have the freedom to choose to think the thoughts we want; to own or disown a myriad of ideas. It is especially important to know we can and must choose to reject certain thoughts. Paul believed we have some vision-improvement opportunities. He would probably go so far as to say “responsibilities”.
We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ… (2 Cor 10:5)
And do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good acceptable and perfect. (Rom 12:2)
Note; the disowning of an idea and redirecting one’s life by a truer one is called repentance. As those being transformed into the image of Christ (involving the renewal of our minds) we will be living lives of repentance. This is our responsibility.
So, one thing we have in common with Jacob, is “dreams”. While Jacob’s dream occurred while he was sleeping, our dreams (which in many cases are nightmares) are occurring as we are walking around in a kind of half-sleep in a world satan has intentionally saturated with ideas designed to prevent us from understanding who God is and what He is really like. His mission is to prevent us from understanding who we are and what God has called us to be which, when grasped, will radically alter what we do. Being precedes doing and the responsibility to think effects being.
The other thing we have in common with Jacob is “promises”. We tend to think of Jacob as the great patriarch whose promises are unique and superior to our own. This may be one of the enemy’s greatest whoppers. We need to check out the NT, and review our promises. Jacob would be jealous. We have been promised eternal and abundant life; we have been made co-heirs of Christ and sons of God; we have been given access to the holy of holies; He calls us friends; He has given us His Spirit. It is tragic but the greatest lies are frequently ones satan has sold us within christendom! These lies limit our understanding of our true identity as saints and our high callings.
Here are some questions that might help serve in prying our eyes open. Do we see our essential identity as that of a sinner or a saint? Do we see ourselves as bond-slaves who are serving as best we can, hindered as it were by our fallen nature or; as growing children who are coheirs and partners in an eternal kingdom who are living out of our new natures in Christ? One more question; If the enemy has sown seed that would stunt the spirit’s formation, keeping it at mere bond slave-status, where the slave envisions their approval coming on the merits of their service, what damage has the kingdom suffered as a result?
By the time He is finished in our lives, we will be lovers who work rather than workers who love. (Bob Sorge, Secrets of the Secret Place)
Father, shake us if necessary. Awaken us from our dream-like delusions. Grant that we may see, by way of faith, into the unseen world, where Your promises originate. May heaven’s truths penetrate our present darkness and fill the earth and Your Bride with the knowledge of God. Burn off the fog and awaken us to see with Jacob that surely You are in this awesome place with us and that we ourselves are the dwelling places of God; that we ourselves are portals of heaven and corridors of Life. Amen.
by RobertCummins | Jul 10, 2016 | 27. Letting Go
Having experience with both following and leading, I often think about the nature of authority; Where does it come from? How does it develop? Today’s passage will help answer these questions. We will focus today’s MwM exploration on the idea of legitimate authority and launch from this inspired sentence:
Take now your son…and offer him as a burnt offering. (Genesis 22:2)
The scripture do not record any reaction by Abraham other than his prompt obedience. There just had to be a “You-Can’t-Be-Serious!!” moment in there somewhere, “Slay Isaac! But God, he is the miraculous fulfillment of your promise to Sarah and I. And—need I remind you? He is the means to the fulfillment of your promise to make nations from my seed. Isaac has brought laughter into our lives, replacing the sorrow of Sarah’s barrenness.” It is recorded that Abraham is God’s friend. Has it ever bothered you how God treats His friends? How about His children, each of whom He scourges?
Words like scourging and discipline sound so Old Testament. But it is the New Testament writer of Hebrews who goes so far as to call us illegitimate if we are without them. Here is a question for those of us who lead; What have we said, by way of our words and our lives, that have helped clarify how discipline works itself out? Or, have our notions of grace undermined the place of discipline?
Legitimate leaders are those whose lives and teachings help clarify this challenging aspect of following Christ. By teaching on pet themes (which often exclude correction), we fail to equip would-be disciples with this essential part of the vision that should be forming in their hearts. Without this understanding of God’s ways, how will the would-be disciple react when the path becomes steep with some discipline from the Lord or narrow with some challenging circumstance?
We should appeal to our pastors: “Please do not just share from the latest book you’ve read (or whatever source of inspiration you depend upon) and expect us to prosper as his disciples.” True disciples will balk at that voice. Unless it is lived truth, it remains a potentially lifeless proposition. Second hand truths do not fan cold embers into fires, nor can they sustain the fires that already glow within hungry hearts.
Speak to us instead from your legitimizing experience with God, those seasons where the Word, through trial and testing, has become flesh in you. Model for us what life with Him and each other is to look like. There are many who are looking and longing for those who can speak to them and live along side them with the authority that only come from life-experience, shaped by God’s Word and His Spirit.
In his becoming a friend to God, Abraham had to let go of the thing that was most precious to him on this earth. Contrary to every fiber of his being, he had to relinquish his rights to God’s promise and entrust that promise back to Yahweh to do with as He pleased. For Abraham and for the author of Hebrews, it boiled down to this:
It is God with whom we have to do. (from Hebrews 4:13)
Those who enjoy friendship status with the Father have been weaned (often through discipline or pruning) from their earthly ambitions. Having let go of their ego-driven agendas they have become equipped with the legitimate authority found only in broken men and women, saints whose false foundations have been demolished, disciples who are progressively resting in Christ alone as their life and are now living for His larger kingdom-agenda.
Father, please raise up authentic spiritual fathers whose lives and words will honor the whole counsel of scripture and help us to understand Your loving heart so that we may process life as You intend us to, so that we might grow up as legitimate children, accurately representing who You are to the world around us. Amen.
by RobertCummins | Jul 9, 2016 | 27. Letting Go
Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world. The world is passing away, and also its lusts; but the one who does the will of God lives forever. (1 John 2:15-17)
The scriptures teach us that we are temporarily located in a body which is located temporarily in a temporary world, so, its not too surprising we are powerfully conditioned by temporariness. This is a real problem since, created in His (eternal) image, we are anything but temporary. The apostle John, an intimate friend to Jesus, knew it was in man to give his affections either to the temporal or the eternal. His Master had taught Him that men are either going to love one or the other and that “If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in Him.”
Religion recognizes worldliness and addresses it by way of laws. “Thou shalt” and “thou shalt not” are the spirit of all systems of religiosity. Consequently its portrayal of the fear of God is centered on what may happen to them if they run afoul of these laws. Contrastingly, those who are resting in Christ’s righteousness are also in this world, but they recognize the futility of religion in dealing with it. They are focused on a promise: “And this is the promise which He Himself made to us: eternal life.”
All things are lawful for me, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful for me, but not all things edify. I will not be mastered by anything. (1 Corinthians 6:12 and 10:23)
So how are we to live out our lives as eternal spirits in a temporal world, one that is passing away before our very eyes? All of scripture speaks to this in one way or another but John gives us a keen insight with 1 John 2:29: “Little children, abide in Him, so that when He appears, we may have confidence and not shrink away from Him in shame at His coming.”
The scripture tells us that Satan has some authority in this temporary world, which he wields through deception. By leveraging the temporal, as if it were all there was, the prince of this (temporary) age, reigns over a network of ideas, which are designed to distract us from the eternal. But… “The anointing (gift of the Spirit) which you received from Him abides in you…. His anointing teaches you about all (these) things” (1 John 2:27). And in verse 17, John tells us if we will do the will of God, we will abide forever. (parentheses mine)
We will succeed in “not loving the world” best by not turning this apostolic command into a law. We will succeed best in loving God by simply abiding in His promises and abiding in intimate fellowship with Him.
As for you, let that abide in you which you heard from the beginning. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, you will also abide in the Son and in the Father. (1 John 2:24)
Father, may we hear and respond to the anointing of Your Holy Spirit within us, Who is helping us renew our minds where we have been conditioned and conformed to the temporal. Holy Spirit, please teach us to reinvest our affections in You. When Jesus appears once again may our abiding have been highly visible. Amen.
by RobertCummins | Jul 8, 2016 | 27. Letting Go
Hopefully you can pause and read Philippians 3:1-14, a description of a transformed heart.
In this passage we see the words losses, gains, and counting. Why is an apostle using CPA language? In Luke 14:25-35, Jesus tells us we must all do some critical math in calculating the cost of following Him. In today’s scriptures, the Spirit gives us a peek into Paul’s heart. We get to see how he processed Jesus’ commands and how the accounting within Paul’s heart worked itself out.
Why did the Spirit include in scripture such a transparent view of Paul? Was it to display his heart as an exception, a bar set so high it could only be cleared with apostolic muscle? I don’t think so. I believe Paul’s heart is intended as a reference point for all Christ’s followers. The apostle’s story, like our own, is intended to be a catalyst to others as we work out our salvation (i.e. living our life).
Paul’s pre-Christ balance sheet was loaded with what he had thought of as stout assets; he was a Jew from the tribe of Benjamin, a Pharisee blameless regarding Law-based righteousness, and he was a zealous persecutor of the Church. Yet, by the time he wrote this letter, Paul’s balance sheet had flipped! Whatever he had experienced since those days as a Pharisee had completely undermined the value of his former assets. His pre-Christ life had become, in his counting, worth less than nothing. It was as though he had experienced a joyful sort of bankruptcy, suffering the loss of all things. Paul lived in awe of his windfall–Jesus Christ, alone.
With Christ Himself as his only remaining asset, Paul has become a benchmark for transformation, capable of assisting us in the calculations we each must make. What happened in Paul’s experience that transformed him from proud Pharisee into the humble chief of sinners? What events, what process, took place that left Jesus as Paul’s sole asset? Just how did God bring about this transformation?
If we are making claims on the name of Jesus, the calculation Jesus instructs us to make must eventually include question like these: In what ways has my own heart been transformed? Am I becoming less and less while He is becoming more and more? When the books are finally opened, will Jesus appear as my sole asset? As my Lord, have I given Him the combination to my heart?
Note. If you believe God held Paul’s heart, in its apostolic-ness, to higher standards than he does yours, please read the balance of our passage. Also note the consequence for those who had replaced the cross with their own preferences.
Let us therefore, as many as are perfect, have this attitude; and if in anything you have a different attitude, God will reveal that also to you; however, let us keep living by that same standard to which we have attained. Brethren, join in following my example, and observe those who walk according to the pattern you have in us. For many walk, of whom I often told you, and now tell you even weeping, that they are enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction, whose god is their appetite, and whose glory is in their shame, who set their minds on earthly things. For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ; who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself. (Philippians 3:15-21)
Father, on that day when you ask us to give an accounting of ourselves, may our books be in order—may our righteousness be that which comes from you alone on the basis of faith, and as it was with Paul, may You alone be our treasure. May we encounter You in our circumstances and may we see Your strong, loving heart’s efforts to transform us and to reveal Christ to us and though us. May Your eyes soon see Your Bride pressing on toward the goal of the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Amen.
by RobertCummins | Jul 7, 2016 | 27. Letting Go
Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. For through the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think; but to think so as to have sound judgment, as God has allotted to each a measure of faith. (Romans 12:1-3)
Paul, as one of the natural Jewish branches, is writing to the unnatural Gentile branches who, by a mysterious and extravagant gesture of kindness and grace, God has grafted into Jesus, the deep and rich root of the olive tree. This was a big deal to Paul:
Oh, the depths of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways! …For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. (Romans 11:33&36)
Anyone who goes from chief detractor to chief advocate, with suffering as his or her anticipated reward, wins my attention. It is doubtful to me his words are mere hyperbole; I believe he stretches language to its limits in an effort to describe even the shallower reaches of Jesus Christ, who has become his all-consuming passion. He is urging us to listen as he explains how this can happen for us as well. Paul carries the burden of a man consumed; by the strength of Christ in him, he proclaims Jesus with all deliberation and all zeal.
When people in Paul’s era heard the word sacrifice, their minds recalled images of sacrificed animals whose blood was offered to appease some god. Paul throws the Romans a major league curve ball when he tells them they are now the sacrifice. He tells them in their living they would become sacrifices, fulfilling their calling as worshipers. No longer was the primary act of worship going to be limited to the attending of ceremonies or observance of rituals. Worship’s primary expression from this point forward was going to be the living of life.
Take your everyday ordinary life, your sleeping, eating, going to work, and walking-around life, and place it before God as an offering. (Romans 12:1 The Message)
Paul goes on to reveal a major roadblock to this transformation God desires. Our hindrance is the false ideas we hold about Him, the world, and ourselves. This collection of beliefs represents our reality. That is why change is so difficult. Our “reality” is our foundation. It is what has become familiar and therefore sacred. From here we have learned to make life work out to some acceptable degree. Threaten these core ideas with new ones and we tremble and retreat, lest our whole superstructure be shaken and topple.
This is another reason Jesus said, “Blessed is he who is not offended with Me.” Jesus’ words and the words of His apostles run counter to the philosophies of this world, which have infected us without our even knowing it. This is the strategy of this world’s prince who oversees a vast network of well-coordinated lies. This is the kingdom of darkness out of which God is calling the children of Light.
But how am I going to abandon the foundational values I have come to terms with and operate by? It is by the renewal of the mind (i.e. repentance) and by that measure of faith which God has allotted to each man. In God’s unsearchable wisdom, in His unfathomable ways, He has given us faith to embrace the values of His kingdom that may first appear to us as unnatural and even threatening.
Father, may we not forget there is still an original place in Your heart for the natural branches, that we gentiles have a season of grace to respond to You. As the beneficiaries and heirs of such extravagant grace, may our daily, walk-around lives bring about your good and acceptable will. May our new lives in You radiate so brightly as to be an attraction to the Jews and a validation of Jesus’ rightful status as Messiah. And may we not so quickly run from the ideas that may both threaten and save us. Amen.
