“FORGETFUL MINDS OR FAITHFUL MINDS?”
BY: J.FARRELL FISHER, AUGUST 19-20, 2017
Extremely interesting Verse is the ‘spur’ from the Spirit for this message in Psalm 42:6, “O my God, my soul is cast down within me; therefore I will remember You.” And then in Verse 11 the ‘forgetful mind’ examined deeper as he clearly examined himself: “Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall yet praise Him, the help of my countenance and my God.” And as I read those Verses I had to pause, consider, reflect when the psalmist said, “For I shall yet praise Him, the help of my countenance and my God,” because I see him at that moment still in the grips of a forgetful mind! “Yet praise Him?” Yes, there are times in spiritual immaturity when one has to work through his ‘down moments’ of, yes, devotion to the One who redeemed us!
And, spiritually, forgetful minds are usually the result of neglect intentionally of failing to “be still” before Holy God because one gets wrapped up ‘soul satisfying’ as that person yields to his/her ‘flesh’ and not yielded to the Spirit! If one “thirsts for God,” “hopes for God,” “has known the health and help and holy purpose of God”, how does one get swept away from “the River of Life” into a “down-stream of forgetfulness”?
One of Job’s counselors said in Job 8:11-21, “Can the papyrus grow without a marsh? Can the reeds flourish without water? While it is yet green and not cut down, it withers before any other plant. So are the paths of all who forget God; and the hope of the hypocrite shall perish, (“hypocrites are ‘play-actors’!”), whose confidence shall be cut off, and whose trust is a spider’s web. He leans on his house, but it does not stand. (Is that the problem of forgetful minds? They lean on themselves and ‘fall away’?). He holds it fast, but it does not endure. He grows in the green sun, and his branches spread out in his garden. (His garden? How easy is it for some to choose ‘God’s garden’, their professing lives, but no trust in the God who blesses you with your own garden with insistence of ‘my way’ but not God’s way, will, and awesome wonder of birthing, raising, and using His sons as, yes, He used Christ Jesus?). Bildad continued in Verse 17, His roots wrap around the rock heap, and look for a place in the stones. If he is destroyed from his place, then it will deny him, saying, ‘I have not seen you.’ Behold, this is the joy of His (God’s) way, and out of the earth others will grow. Behold, God will not cast away the blameless, nor will He uphold the evildoers. He will YET fill your mouth with laughing, and your lips with rejoicing.”
Do YOU get the feeling, the sensing, the hoping, that even if a man of faith finds himself overcome by the cloud of forgetfulness that Holy God still shines behind one’s dark cloud, and He is able to blow it away to reveal He had no desire to cut you off, but to pick you up, and kick you in your rear to get you back in His Way? It’s so interesting in studying the history of Israel, God’s initial ‘chosen people’, in seeing them, as Judges 3:7 describes them, “So the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord. They forgot the Lord their God, and served the Baals and Asherahs,” “gods and goddesses” of the ‘brain-dead’ and ‘fleshly-minded’ “chosen of God”, again, yielding to the old sin-nature rather than faithfulness to their divine calling!
Is it any different today in the divine calling of God, in, yes, the “chosen people” sovereignly birthed by the Holy Spirit, being built up as the “temple of Christ’s Holy Presence”? As Israel was fragmented by many, and shame came on God’s Name because of them, does it happen in the Christian community at times that some have no desire to be identified in Christ’s sufferings since they want to, at times, share in the world’s shame? Oswald Chambers once said, “Men have sought to procure the carrying out of God’s order by a short cut of their own. God’s way is always the way of suffering, the way of the “long, long trail.””
And, if according to Romans 8:28-29 that “All things work together for good to them that love God,” or as the New King James Version (Holman Study Bible) interprets it, “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.”
A “forgetful mind” takes no time, moment by moment, daily, some never even weekly, to sit before God the Father, Jesus the Son seated on the Throne by the Father, or the Spirit of Christ within, the Holy Spirit, but certainly have the time hours at a time to “watch” television broadcasters and shows ignoring, “Father, what would YOU have me to do?” A “forgetful mind” has no desire for Holy God to obliterate in them their “personal ambitions” void of eternal will or to see Him wipe out “selfish, fleshly desires, or my personal determinations which are my individual rights”, telling God the Father and the True Master of one’s life for eternal blessing, “I am my own boss – you should, as God, appreciate my personal ingenuity”! Just how stupid is that?
As most know who hear my messages or read them, I love Oswald Chambers’ writings in his book, “My Utmost For His Highest”. In one writing (p.231), he highlighted Romans 8:28-29, which says: “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are THE CALLED according to His purpose. For whom HE FOREKNEW, HE ALSO PREDESTINED TO BE CONFORMED TO THE IMAGE OF HIS SON, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren,” entitling it: “The Undetected Sacredness of Circumstances”, saying,
“The circumstances of a saint’s life are ordained of God. In the life of a saint (one set apart to the glory of God!) there is no such thing as chance. God by His providence brings you into circumstances that you cannot understand at all, but the Spirit of God understands. God is bringing you into places and among people and into conditions in order that the intercession of the Spirit in you may take a particular line. Never put your hand in front of the circumstances and say – I am going to be my own providence here, I must watch this, and guard that. All your circumstances are in the hand of God, therefore never think it strange concerning the circumstances you are in. Your part in intercessory prayer is not to enter into the agony of intercession, but to utilize common-sense circumstances GOD PUTS YOU IN, and the common-sense people He puts you amongst by His providence, to bring them before God’s throne and give the Spirit in you a chance to intercede for them. In this way God is going to sweep the whole world with His saints.”
Remember, “saints” are those “set apart” to honor, glorify, praise, by yielding, submitting, obeying, taking advantage of every situation He places you in certain circumstances to testify of His love, His grace, His mercy, His intent for that life in that very situation he/she finds himself/herself in!
“Forgetful minds” are minds of men and women who easily become personal “back-slappers” and forget, omit, or overlook the VERY MIND OF GOD REVEALED THROUGH HIS HOLY WORD! “Forgetful minds” easily proclaim allegiance to “my Savior and Lord”, when in reality their day by day journey ‘in the faith’ is utmost confidence in their own abilities, bowing before their natural virtues, reminding God of how fortunate He is to have them on His team!
Just as it is in our modern-day ‘religious culture’, so it was in Jeremiah’s day as Holy God unveiled the true and the false devotees to the One True Living God! In Jeremiah 29 there is an amazing Word from God for “the captives of the Jewish faith” who’ve been in bondage. Receive Verses 4-14 as a prophetic word for YOU in the life settings, circumstances, and, yes, the divine place of opportunity Holy God has allowed you to be in!! It says:
Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel (the God of the U.S.A., the God of your present location and abiding), to all who were carried away captive, whom I have caused to be carried away from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and dwell in them; plant gardens and eat their fruit. Take wives and begat sons and daughters; and take wives for your sons and give your daughters to husbands, so that they may bear sons and daughters – that you may be increased there, and not diminished. AND SEEK THE PEACE OF THE CITY WHERE I HAVE CAUSED YOU TO BE CARRIED AWAY CAPTIVE, and pray to the Lord for it; for in its peace you will have peace.
For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel (the God of Bedford, Texas, the God of Cleveland, Tennessee, the God of New York, California, all of North America, South America, Europe, Asia): Do not let your prophets and your diviners who are in your midst deceive you, nor listen to your dreams WHICH YOU CAUSE TO BE DREAMED. For they prophesy falsely in My name; I have not sent them, says the Lord.
For thus says the Lord: After seventy years are completed at Babylon, I will visit you and perform My good word toward you, and cause you to return to this place. (GET READY!!!). For I know the thoughts that I think TOWARD YOU, says the Lord, THOUGHTS OF PEACE AND NOT OF EVIL, TO GIVE YOU A FUTURE AND A HOPE.
Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me, and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart. I WILL BE FOUND BY YOU, says the Lord, AND I WILL BRING YOU BACK FROM YOUR CAPTIVITY…”. Dare YOU to examine yourself and your pilgrimage up to this moment? And are you WHAT AND WHERE AND WHO merciful God desires you to be? OR, are you STILL “a captive in a land foreign to the nature and character of loving God?”
One of the saddest Verses in God’s Word is John 6:66 after the Lord Jesus had spoken about “eating the flesh of the Son of Man and drinking His blood”, because Jesus said, “If you don’t, you have no life in you” – and they didn’t receive that, couldn’t understand it, and certainly didn’t want to appropriate the Life of Another other than themselves! John 6:66 then says: “From that time many of His disciples went back and walked no more with Him, Jesus then saying to the twelve, “Do you also want to go away?” Peter responded, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”
Are Your “thoughts” God’s “Truths” with your journey of discipleship grounded, founded, sustained on the abiding truth of “Christ in you, through you, for you” to His glory and His praise for, yes, His hope of glory through you, humbling people around you because they sense the presence of the Resurrected King of kings and Lord of lords in you? Or is it for you ‘maturity in the faith’ denied, overlooked, abandoned, because one ‘senses’, “How proud God must be to have ME on His team”, rather than you the vessel, the temple, the tabernacle, in which willfully through repentance and faith in Christ alone HE DWELLS, RESIDES, and PRESIDES TO HONOR HIS FATHER THROUGH YOU? Natural virtues, which most men hold onto, were “crucified with Christ”, your good and your bad! Your ‘best’ and your ‘worst’, yes, was crucified with Christ! When your best and your worst finally dries up in you because you see it crucified with Christ, Holy God rejoices and releases all of Heaven’s advantages to be expressed through you.
In Psalm 87:7 there is the psalmist praising God for His blessings and cloud of glory on “the Holy City”, but, for me, I see God no respecter of just cities, churches, or groups of peoples, but the individual, heart-trusting lives redeemed by the blood of the Lamb of God, new “cities”, new “lives”, new “dwelling places” like the Holy Temple where Christ Jesus the King, Lord, and Savior has taken up residence! Psalm 87:7 clearly says” “All my fresh springs are in YOU.”
I pray that you are fascinated by, enlightened by, encouraged by every emphasis Christ Jesus put upon His “new-born servants” coming into His fullness of the blessing of His gospel or His “good news”. And a part of that “good news”? Follow John 4:7-26! A woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give Me a drink.” For His disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. Then the woman of Samaria said to Him, “How is it that You, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.
Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.”
The woman said to Him, “Sir, You have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Where then do You get that living water? Are You greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, as wells as his sons and his livestock?”
Jesus answered and said to her, “Whoever drinks of this (physical) water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.” The woman said to Him, “Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw.”
Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” The woman answered and said, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You have well said, ‘I have no husband, for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband; in that you spoke truly.”
The woman said to Him, “Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet. Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews. BUT the hour is coming, AND NOW IS, when the TRUE WORSHIPPERS will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”
The woman said to Him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When He comes, He will tell us all things.” Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am He.” AND I ASK: DO YOU TRULY KNOW THE TRUE MESSIAH, AND HAVE YOU DIED TO YOURSELF THAT THE RESURRECTED CHRIST MAY RULE, REIGN, AND BRING “ETERNAL REST” TO EVERY NEEDY SOUL AROUND YOU?
I close with words again from Oswald Chambers in his book, “My Utmost For His Highest,” (p.271), saying: “The sign that God is at work in us is that He corrupts confidence in the natural virtues, because they are not promises of what we are going to be, but remnants of what God created man to be. We will cling to the natural virtues, while all the time God is trying to get us into contact with the life of Jesus Christ which can never be described in terms of the natural virtues.”
YES, your ‘natural virtue life’ was crucified with Christ that you may be confronted by the greatness of God’s love for you in exchanging your ‘old man of sin’ for the fullness of the blessing of the gospel of Jesus Christ, which IS: “Christ in you the hope of glory”!
S.Walcott and W.F.Sherman wrote the hymn, “Christ For the World We Sing.” It says: “Christ for the world we sing; the world to Christ we bring; With loving zeal; The poor and them that mourn, The faint and overborne, Sin-sick and sorrow-worn, Whom Christ does heal.
Christ for the world we sing; The world to Christ we bring, With fervent prayer; The wayward and the lost, By restless passion tossed, Redeemed, at countless cost, From dark despair.
Christ for the world we sing; The world to Christ we bring, With one accord; With us the work to share, With us reproach to dare, With us the cross to bear, For Christ our Lord.
Christ for the world we sing; The world to Christ we bring, With joyful song; The new-born souls, whose days, Reclaimed from error’s ways, Inspired with hope and praise, To Christ belong.”
How settled in your heart and mind are you that Christ Jesus IS your Lord and Savior to the glory of God the Father who in His marvelous grace and mercy “CHOSE” YOU? Settle it, if you haven’t!!