“POMPOUS PREACHERS, POVERTY-STRICKEN CHURCHES, PARALYZED DISCIPLES, OR BEING PERFECTED SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF TRUE FAITH?”
By: J.Farrell Fisher, August 24-26, 2017
Does humanity change much when it comes to earthly existence but void of the reality of divine truth, God’s purpose, and Christ’s remedy for their problems? I don’t think so! In fact, I’m not sure there are many who ‘tire out’ in their fleshly pursuits, never looking to Holy God as He relates to His Eternal intent in truly available lives, but being unavailable to God and His purpose for their lives, they still, and in spite of an attitude of unbelief in redemptive faith through Another, “feel” they are being fulfilled but are “starved” in their fleshly imaginations concerning what it means to be living a “successful” life, because to live in the “best” of “flesh-will” is to cancel the perfect will of God for their lives, futures, or destinies!
Spiritual unbelief in divine intent is to ‘live’ (?) in a state of exhaustion though active day by day intending to prove their ‘self-lives’ can and are meaningful to them but “starving” God’s eternal plan for their available lives to His Throne-Room designation. Self-will rather than divine will produces a “tiring” that drains one more and more of eternal meaning and eternal purpose being fulfilled through available vessels because they “shut God out”, sure they know best how to be successful in their known, warped, ‘self-created’ world.
A powerful inspired Verse of the Holy Word is found in Isaiah 26:3 that says: “You (God) will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because He trusts in You.”
I pray the title doesn’t offend you – I’d rather it spurs divine conviction in every listener or reader to “Examine yourself whether you be in the true faith or not!” (2 Corinthians 13:5!). Some get ‘drained’ and quit rather than quickened by the Word and the Spirit. Some choose to forget Christ’s purpose in them and through them rather than, day by day, remembering His eternal calling. Some are zeroed in His designation for their journey of faith rather than “zoned in” to Holy Spirit leadership, guidance, instruction, and inspiration!
Do you remember Moses as he met with the Lord before entering the Promised Land? In Exodus 33:13-18 we read, Moses saying first to the Lord, “Now therefore, I pray, if I have found grace in Your sight, show me now Your way, that I may know You and that I may find grace in Your sight. And consider that this nation is Your people.” And God said, “My Presence will go with you, and I will give you “REST”.” Then Moses said to Him, “If Your Presence does not go with us, do not bring us up from here. For how then will it be known that Your people and I have found grace in Your sight, except You go with us? So we shall be separate, Your people and I, from all the people who are upon the face of the earth.”
So the Lord said to Moses, “I will also do this thing that you have spoken for; for you have found grace in My sight, and I know you by name.” And Moses said, “Please, show me Your glory.” Dare I ask if YOU are walking under, in, and through the glory cloud of God’s Presence?
Let me ask you about, yes, God’s unveiling of ‘who’ and ‘what you are about’ as an “unbeliever in anything related to the “God-crowd”, or a “professing disciple”, ‘active church member’, ‘paralyzed ‘disciple’ (?)”, OR A TRUE “BEING-PERFECTED-SON OR DAUGHTER OF THE TRUE FAITH”! And, dare I tell you that the Word says, “By their fruits you shall know them”? Zechariah 4:6 says, “Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit”, says the Lord of hosts! Yet the “crowd” mentioned in the title could care less about Holy God’s “Spirit-provision” of victorious living!
Do you remember Moses and Aaron confronting Pharoah of Egypt about “letting God’s people go”, and he responded in Exodus 5:2, “Who is the Lord, that I should obey His voice to let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, now will I let Israel go.”?
In Psalm 101:1-3 David sang! (I often wonder how many “professing believers” live day by day with a song in their hearts!). He said: “I will sing of mercy and justice; To You, O Lord, I will sing praises. I will behave wisely in a perfect way. Oh, when will You come to me? I will walk within my house with a perfect heart. I will set nothing wicked before my eyes; (Does that mean less TV time in this modern-day?). I hate the work of those who fall away; it shall not cling to me.”
“Falling away”? Is that “the work” of ‘pompous preachers, paralyzed disciples, or poverty-stricken churches’? Or is there in YOUR heart, mind, and will the “resting” in the finished work of Christ as “being perfected sons and daughters of the True Faith”?
Having been both a high school and collegiate athlete – high school for me was football, basketball, and baseball in Bradley High School, Cleveland, Tennessee, but in college only football on scholarship at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. One thing I knew early on: Holy God Himself gifted me as an athlete and He called me, set me aside, anointed me to be His earthly vessel for Christ’s Heavenly Presence – and I’ve never doubted His “perfecting”, “equipping”, and “pouring out more and more of my ‘old man’ in exchange for the fullness of the blessing of the gospel in and through and for the glory of “Jesus Only” in the “new man” of Christ’s blood redemption!!
Whether preachers, churches, or an individual, paralyzed disciple trying his/her best, the lesson, the truth, the only hope, must be learned: It’s “Christ in you the hope of glory.” And, beyond the victory Christ Jesus won over sin, Satan, fallen flesh and their ‘best efforts’, Christ Jesus promised every son and daughter of redemptive faith, saying in John 14:25-27, “These things I have spoken to you while being present with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you. Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you.”
Yet, how many do you know who are “professing disciples, “church related”, and “who sincerely try their best”, but sense something is sadly wrong in their spiritual journeys , good folks, sincere folks, ‘failing’, ‘falling short’, ‘feeble in the journey’, because no one EVER taught them about “taking the sentence of death daily to the old man separated from Christ in order that His Resurrection Presence would be manifested in and through their mortal bodies”! And you’ll hear some say, “You mean my faith in Christ has nothing to do with my ‘trying’, my ‘best efforts’, or my determined mind-set to BE a “successful disciple”?
“Crucified with Christ” doesn’t mean He overlooks your “best” fleshly nature! No! He didn’t overlook it – He crucified it on the Cross several thousand years ago so you, being convicted because of your sin and sin nature, then repenting before Holy God, and willfully putting your “redemptive faith” in Christ alone, can take that sentence of death daily to the old man, and CHOOSE to live “by the Life of Another, even live in, by, and for His Resurrection Life, Resurrection Glory, Resurrection Honor, and Resurrection Ministry and Service in and through Him!
In James 4 the brother of Jesus said, Verses 4-10, “Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you think that the Scriptures says in vain, “The Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealousy?”
But He gives more grace. Therefore He says: ‘God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.’ Therefore submit TO God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you DOUBLE-MINDED. Lament and mourn and weep! Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up.” Christ’s Presence in you is God’s will, God’s Way, and God’s Wisdom in directing your life in Christ as a testimony of His great, abiding, and transforming Life as Jesus brings glory to the Father through you as you yield yourself to His awesome Presence!
How many “successful people” do you know who would willfully look to their ‘old, sin-natured life’, crucified with Christ, and buried in the ‘sea of God’s forgetfulness’, understanding that God rejoices over them, IF, as they lean not to their own understanding, but accept His judgment about their sin nature and its crucifixion, then thank God for His grace, mercy, and love, even praising Him for exposing what they tried to hide for a long time, but now Rejoice over God the Father’s sacrifice of His only Son to reconcile them to Him? Sadly, many worldly, self-centered men could care less about the crucifixion of Christ – they don’t see He shed His own blood for them!
Do I need to remind you of John 14:26? “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.” Nowhere in the Word do you find mankind are instructed to “try your best” but “Give the Spirit His rightful place as your guide, your equipper, your trainer, and, yes, your convincer, ministering deep conviction when you choose a wrong path!
The Holy Spirit is “the spiritual parent” training, equipping, disciplining, inspiring every true “child of the King.” He’s YOUR “tutor”! In fact, in Galatians 5:16, Paul said: I say then, “Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh,” then contrasting the “works of the flesh” and the “works of the Spirit”! In Galatians 5:19-25 the anointed Apostle instructs us:
“Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murder, drunkenness, revelries, and the like; of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. BUT the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law. AND those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.”
The question of the day is: “As a disciple of Christ do you walk day by day under the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit, promised by Christ, to be YOUR equipper in the “Overcoming Life of Christ”, yes, overcoming sin, Satan, the flesh or old sin-nature, and, overcoming the temptations, by the Spirit, of the world, the flesh, and the devil”? Let’s resolve the question right now! “Will YOU receive Christ’s gift of the Holy Spirit to be your guardian of faith and your guide into all Truth”?