“CHOOSING GOD IN CHRIST FOR HIS GRACIOUSNESS AND KINDNESS AND MERCY!”
JUNE 24-25, 2018, by J.Farrell Fisher
In Kurt Bruner’s book entitled “Inklings of God”, between his introduction and Chapter One, he recorded a statement of H.W. Webb-Peploe; it was: “Joy is not gush; joy is not jolliness. Joy is perfect acquiescence in God’s will because the soul delights itself in God Himself.”
And I certainly agree, but must add: “Joy is a fruit of the Spirit as the Holy Spirit unveils Christ fully to us, blessing us with our Lord and Savior’s gracious giftings, for those who desire to BE “the Potter’s House”!” Yet, I am afraid that there are those ‘believers’ (?) who are naïve to the spiritual dynamics of a Spirit-birthed, Spirit-presence, Spirit-guidance, AND Spirit-empowerment of a disciple’s pilgrimage! For many ‘Christian believers’ it’s as if the Holy Spirit doesn’t exist and isn’t necessary for the “illumination of true salvation ‘in Christ’!”
Plus, are there options ‘professing believers’ hold, or dismiss, related to Holy Spirit giftings, since ‘in and of themselves’ they sense no need of a ‘higher power’ to guide their spiritual pilgrimage: “We’re capable without the Spirit’s oversight”? Isn’t there in many ‘disciples’ a spiritual state of faith in living with a ‘spirit’ of ‘naivety’, void of Holy Spirit instruction, and unveiling of the ‘spirit-life’, a ‘journey’, a spiritual pilgrimage, apart from THE indwelling Holy Spirit who IS called our “Guide”, our “Tutor”, our “Equipper”, who is able to do, in us, exceedingly abundant and beyond what we dream or think to be possible in the spiritual journey of faith, obedience, and “Christ-revealing discipleship”!
Please understand! The Holy Spirit even begins the opening of our understanding of, yes, the “need” of trusting Christ’s saving grace, convicting us, appropriating for us and awareness of His eternal forgiveness of our sin and sin nature within us, and desiring to “open” the doors of our hearts to Christ so He may establish the Holy Temple in a repentant heart in eternal partnership with the Holy Spirit! Has He: “knocked”, but you didn’t truly “open the door” for His entrance IN YOU as His earthly dwelling, you “Choosing God In Christ”?!? Didn’t Jesus say, “I and My Father are one”? And dare I tell you? Believe I will! There IS NO choosing God in Christ for His graciousness and kindness and mercy apart from the Holy Spirit “guiding us into all Truth” under Father-God’s anointing of the Holy Spirit and the Spirit’s “conviction”, “converting”, “transforming”, “INDWELLING”, and “divine-fruit-bearing”!!
Highly interesting words from King Jesus when in Matthew 7:13-14 He said: “Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.” Later, in Verses 21-23, the Lord Jesus said:
“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven (on earth!!!!), but he who DOES THE WILL of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And THEN I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!”
Have you ever heard ‘professing believers’ say to you: “It’s OK, I’m OK, even though as a ‘believer’ (?) I still live with a bent toward and an appreciation for my old sin nature and sin often, but I thank God He doesn’t see or hold me accountable any longer, because ‘I believe in Jesus’ mercy’.” Really? It’s in John 8:11 where Christ Jesus said to the former, but redeemed adulteress woman, “Go, and sin no more.” A suggestion or a biblical command?
Jesus says: “Sin no more”! – And that’s because the Lord Jesus says, “Sin no more!” “Sin no more” because Christ Jesus KNOWS what willful sin does in the human soul, human life, AND to the human body! “Sin no more” because willful sin ‘promotes’ and honors ‘fleshliness’ and the old sin nature, AND “IS NOT” THE “NEW LIFE OF LIBERTY AND FREEDOM AND UNVEILING OF THE SPIRITUAL NATURE OF DIVINE, HOLY LIVING”, honoring God alone, without a silly ounce of ‘sinful-self-acceptance and sinful -self-appreciation’! THAT WAS CRUCIFIED WITH CHRIST AT THE CROSS!
In John 8:12 the Lord Jesus said: “I am the light of the world. He who follows Me SHALL NOT WALK IN DARKNESS, BUT HAVE THE LIGHT OF LIFE.” Darkness? “Falling short of the glory of God”! Darkness? “Choosing sin in place of the Light of heavenly glory”! Darkness? Leaning on Lucifer’s lie rather than TRUSTING in the Lord’s Truth! Darkness? Settling to co-mingle spiritual death with spiritual life, hoping, in time, maybe, the “Life” will crowd out the “spiritual death”! Darkness? Flawed, scarred, dis-eased nature, a world-spirit of rebellion against God, but convinced the Holy Spirit world overlooks one’s own rebellion because “he, she, at least tries to overcome it, as he, she does her ‘best’ in both worlds he/she has chosen to “live” in”! Really?
Dare I tell you? “There is no ‘broad-mindedness’ in the true disciple’s eternal world that allows his indulgence in ‘flesh’ or one’s ‘crucified sin-nature’ while he/she professes devotion to the Spirit-world of King Jesus!” That’s like the “fallen humanity’s belief” that marriage to one wife or one husband doesn’t exclude sexual indulgence with another woman or man at the same time. But, yes, we live in the time period of the ‘modern-day’ Christian world where “anything goes”, even contradiction to the revealed will, way, and Word of faith! Do you understand? If you accept, “anything goes in my Christian world if it gives me pleasure and satisfaction”, unaware that is ‘professing’ allegiance to death’s ways, not to Jesus, “the Way” – which means, the world of one’s compromising ‘old man’ or ‘sinful self’ opens the door to God’s condemnation!
IF THERE IS ONE LORD, ONE FAITH, ONE BAPTISM, what happens if I devote myself to a religious world which is nothing more than man’s creation, fallen man’s creation, of a great, enlarged spiritual smorgasbord, that gives me options in ‘legitimate faiths’ to choose from? Dare I tell you? Believe I will: There are ‘religious choices of pickles’- (Sour pickles at best!), while God unveils “THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE”, whose name is the Lord Jesus Christ! There is no other redeeming faith – it’s Jesus Only!! “Pickles or The Pearl of Great Price”?
Most ‘religious activities’, non-inclusive of the Resurrected, Reigning, Royal Christ Jesus, are mythical ‘ideas’ (man-birthed) in order to better align his/her life with his/her ‘best’ of fleshly hopes, sensual dreams, and ‘self-motivated ‘religious’ ideals and tendencies, leaving God in Christ Jesus still ‘up’ on His Throne, not reigning in their hearts! (Doesn’t it ‘shock’ you when you hear some people or read about them in their ‘informative writings’ or newspaper articles asserting their ‘religious activity’, void of even the mention of Christ’s Name and purpose through the Cross and Empty tomb because, “our best at being ‘religious’ is all a true, living God expects”, like those who assert that “Your ‘holy God’ is (as Kurt Bruner wrote about), exposing ‘fleshly, religious ideals’, that “God is not a personal, loving father. He/She/It is the cosmic oneness we all inhabit, not God in flesh – ‘He is one of many enlightened ones who invite us to discover our higher selves.” (Bruner’s book, “Inklings of God”, p.167). He said also, indicting the religious, care-free world void of God’s love:
“Ours is not a world of fallen, sinful men and women. Ours is a world of men and women who have forgotten their true goodness – and their true goodness, learning to lean on our higher consciousness.” The ‘god’ or ‘gods’ of fallen man’s religious activities reveal the depths of their “fallen-away-faith”, being more and more of “satanic lies” and “warped, fleshly, religious ‘best’”, and a “spiritually dead world’s ‘higher concepts’ of ‘a true god’,” but sadly void of “saving grace, the Master’s mercy, and the height and extent of God’s Calvary Love, Grace, and Meaningful Power in Resurrection Life and Resurrection – Never-Fading Hope”!!
Do you remember Joshua gathering “all the tribes of Israel together with their leaders, their judges, and their officers”, exposing their religious indifference to the purpose of God? In Joshua 24:14-15 he said: (The Thompson Chain-Reference Bible, Copyright,1964, B.B. Kirkbridge Com., Inc.), “Now therefore fear the Lord, and serve Him in sincerity and in truth: and put away the gods which your fathers served…;and serve the Lord. And if it seems evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom you will serve; whether the gods which your (worldly) fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites (or the Americans) in whose land you dwell; BUT as for me and my house, WE WILL SERVE THE LORD.”
I think it’s absolutely essential that I have you to read also Deuteronomy 29:14-20! It says: “Neither with you only do I make this covenant and this oath; But with him that stands here with us this day before the Lord our God, and also with him that is not here with us this day: (For you know how we have dwelt in the land of Egypt; and how we came through the nations which passed you by; And you have seen their abominations and their idols, wood and stone, silver and gold, which were among them:)
Lest there should be among you man, or woman, or family, or tribe, whose heart turns away this day from the Lord our God, to go and serve the gods of these nations; lest there should be among you a root that bears gall and wormwood; and it come to pass, when he hears the words of this curse, that he blesses himself in his heart, saying, I shall have peace, though I walk in the imagination of my heart, to add drunkenness to thirst; The Lord will not spare him, but then the anger of the Lord, and His jealousy shall smoke against that man,,. And all the curses that are written in this book shall lie upon him, and the Lord shall blot out his name from under heaven.” Does that sound serious to you? At the same time, IS THERE HOPE?
In Psalm 1:1-3 the psalmist wrote: “Blessed is the man that walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in His law he meditates day and night. And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he does shall prosper.” HEAR ME!!
“CHOOSE GOD ‘IN CHRIST” BECAUSE “IN HIM” WE ARE “GRACED”!! Notice, rejoice in, rest in, Romans 5:18-6:1-3, 5-12, and Verse 14!
Romans 5:18-21! “Therefore, as through one man’s offense judgment came to all men, resulting in condemnation, even so through one Man’s righteous act the FREE GIFT CAME TO ALL MEN, resulting in justification of life. (So, all men then are “saved, born again, guaranteed eternal life”! “NO! Ten thousand times ‘NO!”).
For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one Man’s obedience many will be made righteous. Moreover the law entered that the offense might abound. But where sin abounded, GRACE abounded MUCH MORE, so that as sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Romans 6:1-3, 5-12, and Verse 14! “What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? Or do you not know that as many as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?
Verses 5-12, “For IF we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, KNOWING THIS, that our old (sin-natured) man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. For he WHO HAS DIED has been freed from sin.
Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin ONCE FOR ALL; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God, in Christ Jesus our Lord. Therefore DO NOT LET SIN REIGN IN YOUR MORTAL BODY, that you should obey it in its lusts.” Are YOU “graced” in Christ?
“CHOOSE GOD ‘IN CHRIST’ BECAUSE “IN HIM” WE ARE SOVEREIGNLY GUARDED! I want you to come with me to 2 Corinthians 1:18-22!! Paul wrote: “But as God is true, our word toward you was not yes and no. For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us, even by me and Silvanus and Timothy, was not yes and no, but in Him was YES! For all the promises of God in Christ are yes, and in Him Amen, unto the glory of God by us. Now He which establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us is God; Who has also SEALED US and GIVEN US THE EARNEST (or guarantee) of the Spirit in our hearts.” Are YOU GUARDED?
“CHOOSE GOD ‘IN CHRIST’ BECAUSE “IN HIM” WE ARE SUPERBLY AND FAITHFULLY “GUIDED”!! In “A song and psalm of the sons of Korah”, Psalm 48:14, we read: “For this is God; our God forever and ever; He will be our guide even to death.”
How encouraged are you when in Hebrews 13:5b you read: “For He Himself (Holy God!) has said: “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” Glory!
The old hymn by William Williams and Thomas Hastings, in the very old “The Broadman Hymnal” (pps 181-182) says: “Guide me, O thou great Jehovah, Pilgrim thro’ this barren land; I am weak, but You are mighty, Hold me with Your powerful hand: Bread of Heaven, feed me till I want no more; Bread of Heaven, Feed me till I want no more.
Open now the crystal fountain Where the healing waters flow; Let the fiery, cloudy pillar Lead me all my journey through; Strong Deliverer, You BE still my Strength and Shield; Strong Deliverer, You BE still my Strength and Shield.
When I tread the verge of Jordan (that’s “facing my death”!), Bid my anxious fears subside; Bear me through the swelling current, Land me safe on Canaan’s side; Songs of praises I will ever give to You; Songs of praises I will ever give to You.”
“CHOOSE GOD ‘IN CHRIST’ BECAUSE “IN HIM” WE ARE SACREDLY AND SOLEMNLY AND SONGFULLY GIFTED!! In Psalm 68:19-20, 32-35, we read: “Blessed be the Lord, who DAILY loads us with benefits, the God of our salvation! Our God is the God of (true) salvation; AND to God the Lord belong escapes from death.
Verses 32-35 says, “Sing to God, you kingdoms of the earth; Oh, sing praises to the Lord, To Him who rides on the heaven of heavens, which were of old! Indeed He sends out His voice, a mighty voice. Ascribe strength to God; His excellence is over Israel, and His strength is in the clouds. O God, You are more awesome than Your holy places. The God of Israel is He who gives strength and power to His people. Blessed be God!”
Are YOU rejoicing in “the gift of gladness”? How about “the gift of amazing grit”? And do you live by “the gift of the amazing grasp of holy understanding of His will, His Word, and His ways”?
Maybe you need to sing day by day, “Jesus, be Jesus in me, No longer me, but Thee, Resurrection power, Fill me this hour, Jesus, be Jesus in me”! HAVE YOU “CHOSEN” THIS HOUR FOR JESUS TO BE JESUS IN YOU?