“THE AWARENESS OF A GOD – BLESSED LIFE”
BY: J.Farrell Fisher, August 31-Sept.2, 2017
Really, seriously, personally, even corporately as a church, denomination, individual disciple, family, or international community of faith, consider the title and then consider if the world at large or locally or near-people around you has any understanding or comprehension of “The awareness of a God-blessed life”!
When it comes to a God-blessed life, there is a major warfare in the minds and hearts of men that face stiff opposition from the world, the old sin-natured man, and, of course, from Satan and the powers of darkness who want to blind you to the Truth of a “God-Blessed Life”!
But, at the same time, in immature disciples, there is the significant problem of failing to understand and deal daily with the ‘old nature’ that wants to remain dominant in you even if you ‘believe’. Some seriously do not grasp the tendencies of the old sin nature to be justified to remain around, even if you desire to be a professing believer and active church member! And, of course, in the maturing process from ‘babes in Christ’ to maturing disciples, and, yes, to senior citizens of the Kingdom, it is the blessed, powerful professor of Christ-like ‘citizenry’ and ‘loyalty’ and “royalty”, the Holy Spirit, who “guides us and matures us in the True Faith”!
Some fail to understand what Paul spoke about in Galatians 4:19 when he said, “My little children, for whom I labor in birth again until Christ is (fully) formed in you.” The problem exists of young, immature, untrained disciples, who are unaware of “standing fast in the liberty by which Christ has made us free,” Paul, having said earlier in Galatians 4:5, “For we through the Spirit eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness by faith.”
So, there is for some, in the state of spiritual immaturity, an unawareness of the Sovereign God’s blessing of, yes, “the gift of the Holy Spirit”, who instills blessing after blessing, Sovereign gifting of the necessary arms to equip you in fighting the good fight of faith, AND manifesting in you the victorious nature of Christ, not your old man’s best ‘fleshly giftings’, but the “fruit of the Spirit” of God’s tree of life!
In Galatians 6:22-25 Paul enlightens every believer, saying, “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 (daily!) with ITS passions and desires. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.”
Have you been discipled in, discipling now in others, the reality, the spiritual reality of the “new-birth”, born into the Kingdom of God by the Spirit, Paul saying in 2 Corinthians 6:16b, “For you (“in Christ”) ARE THE TEMPLE OF THE LIVING GOD!” You’re the structure – the Holy Spirit is the “manifested Spirit of Christ in you the hope of glory!” You’re the ‘tabernacle’ – He’s the cloud of Holy Presence!
What was it Paul said in 2 Corinthians 5:20-21? “Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God. For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that WE MIGHT BECOME THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD IN HIM.” And, if the “Him” is not in you, evidenced by the presence, anointing, fruit-producing of the Spirit, releasing God’s power through your crucified life daily, that His Spirit might then manifest Himself in power through our available bodies, or is it ‘try your best?’, demonstrating a ‘failing religiosity’?!?
Or, in the awareness of a God-blessed life, is it your ‘striving, trying, attempting’, or is it faithfully taking the ‘sentence of daily death that His Resurrection Life, Spirit, and Power may be manifested in YOUR mortal flesh’? How shocking did you find it when in 2 Corinthians 6:12 Paul wrote of, yes, Corinthian believers, “You are not restricted by us, but you are restricted by your own affections.”
And that’s so valid across the spectrum of ‘church life’ because “our best” that was crucified with Christ has, by some, Christian people been ‘resurrected’ to inspire them, rather than “to REST” in His Presence through them by His Holy Spirit!
The awareness of a God-blessed life? In 1 Corinthians 1:26-31 we read: “For you see YOUR CALLING, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, that no flesh should glory in His presence. But OF HIM you are in Christ Jesus, who BECAME FOR US wisdom from God – and righteousness and sanctification and redemption – that, as it is written, ‘He who glories, let him glory in the Lord.’”
But, in the reality, worldwide, of “the awareness of self-made lives”, consider those who are “wise in their own eyes”, enormously ‘self-sufficient’, extremely ‘braggadocios’ about their own manifested abilities, their own manipulated mind trained to be above and beyond the ‘lesser achievers’ that surround them, and just as arrogant as Pharoah of Egypt who didn’t know the Lord, didn’t want to know the Lord, and led his armies to their death opposing God and His people! And you’d be surprised if you thought the “pharaohs” were still around trying to expose God? There is a known world AROUND YOU who’d just as soon see attempts on God, on His Son, on His Spirit, on His Word, on His Church, on His sons and daughters of Redemptive Faith – “Let’s wipe them out”, “let’s dumb them down”, “let’s ignore their ministries and bodies and cloud their callings, and seek to expose their dumb, twisted, unlearned ways which are of no benefit in our world of prosperity and fleshly achievements”!
But then, confronted by different ‘world philosophies’ and ‘man-designed religions’, God prophetically unveiled in the Old Testament Holy Word the coming of the Promised Messiah! And Christ Jesus came, born of the Virgin Mary, matured in His true identity as a child, fully equipped by Merciful God to be His reconciler for fallen mankind into, yes, the Holy People of God, who become “salt and light” in their needy worlds around them! At the same time, Holy God knew, understood, and provided for His repentant people the Holy Spirit to “bless” His chosen people, and see that the Resurrected Christ is manifested in them and through them, becoming God’s “fruit producer” in every knew son or daughter of “blood redemption faith”!
In fact, Jesus said in Luke 11:13, “If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!” [Tell me, do you know if your church leads in new discipleship training, and does it include the necessary ministry of the Holy Spirit?]. Let my highlight Biblical Truths about “The Blessed Life”!
FIRST, BE AWARE YOU’RE BEING LED BY THE HOLY SPIRIT! In Romans 8:23 Paul mentioned disciples having “the first-fruits of the Spirit”, yet he went on to say that, “we who have the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves (at times) groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body,” understanding IT IS THE TEMPLE OF THE LORD, and we must daily learn to allow the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, to glorify Christ in us and through us. Are YOU “led by the Holy Spirit”?
SECOND, THERE WILLFULLY MUST BE A “LEANING” ON THE HOLY SPIRIT AS WE NO LONGER TRUST EVEN A HAIR OF OUR BEST IN THE FLESH – WE ACCEPT THAT THAT WAS CRUCIFIED WITH CHRIST, AND THE HOLY SPIRIT DOESN”T WANT YOU FORGETTING THAT HISTORICAL, ETERNAL EVENT: YOU WERE CRUCIFIED WITH CHRIST!
I don’t find it ‘shocking’, but I do find it heart-breaking to learn what we ALL were like void of the presence of Christ in us! In Proverbs 1:24 the God of wisdom allows wisdom to speak! Proverbs 1:24-33 says, “Because I called and you refused, I have stretched out my hand and no one regarded, because YOU DISDAINED ALL MY COUNSEL, and would have none of my rebuke, I also will laugh at your calamity; (I wonder if He’s saying, “How stupid, thoughtless, mindless can they be before My open arms?”).
I will mock when your terror comes, when your terror comes like a storm, and your destruction comes like a whirlwind, when distress and anguish come upon you. THEN they will call on me, but I will not answer; they will seek me diligently, but they will not find me.
Because they have hated knowledge and DID NOT CHOOSE THE FEAR OF THE LORD, they would have none of my counsel and despised my every rebuke. Therefore they shall eat the fruit of their own way, and be filled to the full of their own fancies. For the turning away of the simple will slay them, and the complacency of fools will destroy them; BUT whoever listens to me will dwell safely, and will be secure, without fear of evil.” WOW! THE RICH TREASURE OF EXPOSURE FOR THE FOOLISH WHO REJECT EXPOSURE AND DIE WILLFULLY, SELFISHLY, AND FUTILELY, BUT THE RICH TREASURE OF THE FEAR OF THE LORD THAT BLESSES AND KEEPS ON BLESSING!
THIRD, WE DO “LEARN” FROM THE HOLY SPIRIT AS HE GUIDES US INTO ALL TRUTH! In a “godless life”, a “godless purpose and meaning of one’s existence”, a “civilized leanings void of God’s purposes”, a “manly (?) misleading and misleaning attitude further marring the heart and mind and flesh into deeper darkness away from eternal intent”, and a “self-picking-up of the pieces of a godless live that inevitably shatters into emptiness, frustration, despair, and desperation, as one learns what it means to live without the “Redeemer’s intervention”, facing eternal darkness, eternal death that will not die, and living with eternal disgust with one’s self because they leaned to fleshly stupidity rather than “resting” in the Eternal Savior and Lord!
That veil of life promoting ‘vainness of the flesh’ and ‘self-rule, self- management’ and ‘self-indulgence’ comes about from ‘godless lives, godless professors, spiritual shysters, satanic deceivers, deadly truth-twisters unknown to themselves that they are the very mindless source of their own deception, but, at least and at last, they learn they are rejoiced over by the demons of Hell but rejected by the Eternal God of the Throne who gave His ALL so that they wouldn’t have to face a godless future, but the day does come when they will face that spiritual dilemma!
So Holy God the Father, having sent the Son as the source of eternal redemption, calls Jesus home, and sends the Holy Spirit to reside in your “born-again” life as the Eternal Temple of Holy Presence, plus, God having redeemed, re-birthed, raised up, and Rested the Holy Spirit in new disciples, releases the Spirit to guide our lives of ministry, mission, service, and blessing of the “New Life” in us!
I want you to see God working, not only in early New Testament disciples, but, yes, disciples in our own very day and time-period of God continuing to reclaim His own people to Himself and to His purpose. So He sends messengers and the ministry of the Holy Spirit!
In Acts 9:10-20 we read: Now there was a ‘certain disciple’ (Not a prophet, not an evangelist, not a ‘Bible scholar’, not a ‘well-trained’ senior citizen of the Kingdom!) at Damascus named Ananias; and to him THE LORD SAID in a vision, “Ananias.” And he said, “Here I am, Lord.” So the Lord said to him:
“Arise and go to the street called Straight, and inquire at the house of Judas for one called Saul of Tarsus, for behold, he is praying. And in a vision he has seen a man named Ananias coming in and putting his hand on him, so that he might receive his sight.”
Then Ananias answered, “Lord, I have heard many things about this man, how much harm he has done to Your saints in Jerusalem. And here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who call on Your name.” But the Lord said to him, “Go, for he is a chosen vessel of Mine to bear My name before Gentiles, kings, and the children of Israel. For I will show him how many things he must suffer for My name’s sake.”
And Ananias went his way and entered the house; and laying his hands on him he said, “Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you came, has SENT ME THAT YOU MAY RECEIVE YOUR SIGHT AND BE FILLED WITH THE HOLY SPIRIT.” Immediately there fell from his eyes something like scales, and he received his sight at once; and he arose and was baptized. {Water baptism AND THE BAPTISM OF THE HOLY SPIRIT? Without a doubt!}.
So when he had received food, he was strengthened. (Including the bread of life, the meat of the Word, AND the fruit of the Spirit?). Then Saul spent some days with the disciples at Damascus. Immediately he preached Christ in the synagogues, that He is the Son of God.” Was he Spirit-guided in sharing the Word? If so is true of early New Testament disciples, have we in the modern-day just outgrown the Lord speaking and instructing us? I don’t think so, but, of course, many “church folks” could care less about evangelism and missions in their daily lives – “That’s divisive!”, some say! SO???
If the maturity in true discipleship involves justification, sanctification, and glorification, how and why do so many ignore “being set apart to Christ’s ministry” WHICH IS SANCTIFICATION!
FOURTH, TRUE BELIEVERS “LEARN TO LOVE” OTHERS, (AND I SAY: ESPECIALLY A LOST, NEEDY, ALIENATED AND SEPARATED MANKIND!!) JUST AS FATHER-GOD LOVED US! “God so loved the world”! And you hear some saying: “Just sentimental garbage, not reality! Why should He love me, love us, if He really does?” John 3:16 Eternally declares, Personally shares, Extends the very heart of God, yes, to every man, every family, every nation, saying: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that WHOEVER believes (trusts in, relies upon, adheres to) in Him SHOULD NOT PERISH but have Everlasting Life!”
What you must realize is that Holy God envisioned creating humanity with a choice, a freedom, yes, an option of whether or not they would choose, desire, and sense the need of being reconciled to God on His terms – not forced, but convicted and convinced by the Spirit and the witness of the truly redeemed the need to be reconciled to God. And faithful witnesses, yes, are “LOVING” people into the Kingdom!
FIFTH, HAVING BEEN BORN AGAIN, BIRTHED INTO THE KINGDOM, LEARNING, LEANING ON THE SPIRIT, TRUE DISCIPLES “LISTEN”!! In John 5:24-29 HEAR JESUS! He said, “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life. Most assuredly, I say to you, the hour is coming, AND NOW IS, when the dead (Physical death or spiritual death?) will hear the voice of the Son of God; and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son to have life in Himself, and has given Him authority to execute judgment also, because He is the Son of Man. Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear His voice and come forth – those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation. I can of Myself do nothing. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is righteous, because I do not seek My own will but the will of the Father who sent Me.”
And the statement of faith and obedience of every true disciple every day should be: “Lord, this Is the day You have made; what would You desire today to do through Me. I AM LISTENING!” And, more likely, you’ll be influenced by those who’ll say in their “self-centered Christian walk”: “Isn’t God blessed to have me on His Son’s team – I can surely enhance His reputation”; AND I WANT TO CHOKE, THROW UP, OR SOMEHOW, SOME WAY, OVERTHROW “RELIGIOSITY OF SELF WORSHIP” in those who deny Christ His rightful, Living Presence within them to, yes, DO HIS WORK! How many do you know who “try to serve”, and that’s not Jesus’ commands! In Matthew 11:15 JESUS SAID: “He who has ears to hear, let him hear!”
Again, what did Jesus say in John 5:24? “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who HEARS MY word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation or judgment, but has passed from death into life.”
SIXTH, HAVING LEARNED TO LISTEN TO JESUS, WE LEARN TO LEAD! I can’t remember the preacher in earlier years who said it, but one stout preacher said: “Clean out your ear wax, your gobbledy-gook eyes, your dim, fleshly mind, grasping the truth that Jesus never said He came to be served, but to serve and lay His life down in the care and concern for others!” And He led His disciples by example of the “servant spirit”, caring for others more than Himself – He was willing, and did, lay His life down as our example!
SEVENTH, AND IN LIVING THE LIFE THAT LEADS IN THE SERVANT SPIRIT OF CHRIST HIMSELF, WE LEARN TO “LAST”, ENDURE, PERSEVERE, OVERCOME WHATEVER WOULD COME AGAINST US FROM ENTERING THE FULLNESS OF THE BLESSING OF THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST!
In Ephesians 6:10 we read: “Finally, my brethren, be strong IN THE LORD and IN THE POWER OF HIS MIGHT,” yet how many “try and try and try”, yes, “falling short of the glory of God”! Notice Verses13-18! “Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having girded your waist with Truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness (Whose righteousness?), and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; above all, taking the shield of faith (What YOU work up or what Christ instills in His Presence within You?) with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one.
And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God; praying always with prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints –!”
EIGHTH, WE LEARN TO “LIGHTEN” OURSELVES AND “ENLIGHTEN” THE GLORY OF CHRIST IN US AND THROUGH US! To “lighten” ourselves is day by day taking the sentence of death to ourselves and seeing the “enlightment” of Christ’s radiant, ruling, reigning, and releasing of victory after victory, Him honoring His Father, the Spirit, and the Word – even you who “rest” in Him alone!
“Christ in you” unveils to the world around you the awesomeness of the Resurrected King of kings and Lord of lords! You see, it’s of God, to “lighten” ourselves and “enlighten” to others the awesomeness of our Savior and Lord! I tell you: “Sing the wondrous love of Jesus, Sing His mercy and His grace; Sing the wonderful words of life in Christ, Sing His song of pardon and peace, Sing Him reconciling us to God!”
NINTH, AND LAST, WE ARE TO “LUMINATE” OUR “BLESSED LIFE IN CHRIST”! In Psalm 67:1-2 the chief musician taught God’s people in song. He sang: “God be merciful to us and bless us, and cause His (Christ’s) face to shine upon us, That Your way may be known on earth, Your salvation among all nations.” I dated the day I read it, and recorded in my Bible about “us”, Farrell & Sue, my wife! And that’s because the two of us in Christ together long to see the ushering in on earth as it is heaven the very Kingdom of God in the here and now!
It’s time to be finished with ourselves, but fulfilled and filled full of the Reigning, Victorious Christ! Amen? At His altar, would you present yourself to Him as His abiding and ministering location on earth? Now is the Time!!