“THE god of COLDNESS AND DEADNESS OR THE GOD OF HEAT AND LIFE IN THE SPIRIT?”
By: J.Farrell Fisher, Sept.9-10, 2017
In Isaiah 44:8, Holy God said: “Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel, and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts: ‘I am the First and I am the Last; besides Me there is no god,” saying again Verse 8b, “You are My witnesses. Is there a God besides ME? Indeed there is no other Rock; I know not one.”
Would you, in your mind, heart, and spirit ever fall into the deception of “many gods”, and that we who are ‘Christians’ should not be concerned ‘who’ anybody else worships? According to the Word of God, 1 Corinthians 10:7, Paul said, “And do not become idolaters as some of them were. As it is written, ‘The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play.” False gods, idols, mind-made gods of marred men are nothing more than cheap, lifeless imitations of God, if even that, because ONLY GOD REIGNS – but foolish men reject Holy Scripture, reject His purpose in earthly life, and reject His Son, the Reconciler of alienated, separated from God men and women who decide ‘religious activity’ is more important to them than the “Blood Atonement”!!
In 1 Corinthians 2:14 we read, “But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God for they are foolishness to him.” And whether ‘unredeemed’ or a part of the “best effort” of fallen humanity and, maybe, even attempting religious activity, ‘the natural man’, does not receive Truth, but rolls around “behaving like mere men”, which the natural man can get one of those ‘Hollywood – award winning’ medals for ‘cheap imitation’, and Paul says they are ‘behaving like mere men.’
Serving in the flesh “the god of coldness and deadness rather than the God of Heat and Life in the Spirit” is voluntarily and willfully choosing by a stubborn, self-sufficient mind to ignore the grace, mercy, and love of God, upholding, insisting, demanding, ignoring, and I say, ‘yes’, never surrendering one’s God-given right to attend the eternal funeral of one’s own independence, denying the need of the mercy and grace of God for a “new life” He longs to give!
But Galatians 5:24 declares: “And those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” Independent, self-sufficient men and women are what I’ve entitled “godless ‘lapsers’”, accepting less than God promises! That’s ‘lapsing’ from grace and mercy and shutting the door of one’s heart and mind in order to fall away spiritually from “Amazing Grace”! God knocks – they refuse!
In Matthew 16:24 the Lord Jesus said, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. Verse 25, For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.” To be lost, to be alienated and separated from God, to be a ‘self-promoter’ at the expense of missing out on Christ, to be the most ‘religious’ man in your community apart from the “New Birth” and a personal relationship with the King of kings and Lord of lords, is to willfully choose to be a part of spiritual coldness and deadness and indifference to the “shed blood of the Lamb of God”!
Oswald Chambers wrote in “My Utmost For His Highest”(p.256), that “it is not a question of giving up sin, but of giving up my right to myself, my natural independence and self-assertiveness, and this is where the battle has to be fought.” That’s: “Who rules? Sovereign God OR my ‘selfish flesh’?” Chambers went on to say:
“It is the things that are right and noble and good from ‘the natural standpoint’ that keep us back from God’s best. To discern that natural virtues antagonize surrender to God, is to bring our soul into the center of its greatest battle. Very few of us debate with the sordid and evil and wrong, but we do debate with the good. It is the good that hates the best, and the higher up you get in the scale of the natural virtues, the more intense is the opposition to Christ’s.”
In Galatians 6:14-15 the Apostle Paul wrote: “But God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but a new creation.” Are YOU “new-born”?
“The ‘god’ of coldness and deadness”? It’s easily bowed to before ‘church-pretenders’ and unbelievers in the world because its instigator is Satan himself who is a ‘master deceiver’ who encourages ‘world opposition’, and then, like meeting Jesus Himself in the Gethsemane garden, he knows YOU have your own ‘garden’, and at stake is your ‘spiritual destiny’ inspired by him, or your ‘spiritual destiny’ designed, declared, and unveiled by Father-God for His Son and the Son’s re-born, regenerated, and released sons and daughters of “Follow Me”! And if the Lord Jesus, yes, suffered in His Garden of Gethsemane, settling His purpose, so you and I will find ourselves in opposition to the very powers of Hell itself – and YOU will have to settle who, yes, gets your heart, mind, and will – your own ‘self’ or a life to the honor of King Jesus!
“The ‘god’ of coldness and deadness” ?– and I say spiritual coldness and spiritual deadness! Dare I tell you that your enemy, Satan, has no desire for you to discover a “fire of God in your bones”! “The god of coldness and deadness” is not interested in seeing any man even turning an ear to the voice or Word of God, but is delighted when he hears that, sadly, there is no fear of God in many lives! So he encourages independent, fleshly walks with no eyes toward God or His Word! His major message to the unbelieving? “Trust yourself – you don’t need God!”
John MacArthur Jr., in his book, “Ashamed of the Gospel”, or sub-titled, “When the Church Becomes Like the World,” wrote: (p.28), having exposed a popular ‘market-driven’ ministry philosophy, said: “It caters to a people whose first love is with themselves and who care not for God – unless they can have Him without disrupting their selfish lifestyles. Promise such people a religion that will allow them to be comfortable in their materialism and self-love, and they will respond in droves.”
And reading recently, again, Chuck Colson’s book, “Burden of Truth,” (p.275), he was writing about “Costly Grace”, sub-titled The Legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, saying: “Costly grace led Bonhoeffer to stand against a turncoat church that mixed Nazi doctrine with Christian truth.” But it doesn’t matter if it’s Nazi doctrine or modern-day ‘intellectually elite’s perverted ideas’ (?) who deny the Word or even one’s own parents or family, God’s Eternal Truth still stands – and He bids you “Come to Me, and I will give you rest!”
BUT, ‘the god of coldness and deadness’ still seeks to hold onto what he’s already enslaved! And, are you acquainted with one of his favorite deceptions? “I am seeking to become the ‘best’ version of myself that I dream I may become”! Really? Eternal Truth is the last thing, yes, most Americans want to learn about! Oh, there are those who like the ‘sound’ of the bell of “church attendance”, but to “Take up YOUR cross and follow Me” which Jesus spoke, are words they consider too spiritual, reserved for just a few of the spiritual elite. But no cross, no death, no burial, and then, no resurrection life, hope or power!
Oh, but then in Hebrews 10:14 we read, “For by one offering (that’s Jesus’ death on the Cross!) He has PERFECTED FOREVER those who are being sanctified,” and “sanctified” is a life “set apart” for the glory of Christ alone, one’s Lord, one’s Savior, and the only Master of his/her life!
Dare I ask? Believe I will! Have YOU “in Christ” BEEN PERFECTED FOREVER because YOU no longer look inward into yourself but you “rest” in His finished work at the Cross AND the empty tomb and His ascension, seated at the right hand of God as VICTOR over sin and death and your representative before Holy God? I love Oswald Chambers statement in “My Utmost For His Highest,” (p.255), “Identification with the death of Jesus Christ means identification with Him to the death of everything that was never in Him.” Sinless Jesus took your sin and mine, and though He never sinned, He paid full price in our place for the sinful nature and practice of what killed Him!
And Hebrews 10:19 tells us: “Therefore, brethren, having boldness to enter the Holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He consecrated for us, through the veil, that is, His flesh, and having a High Priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.” And dare I tell you the “pure water” is the water of the Word of God that applies the blood of Christ and washes us clean in the blood of the Lamb of God – Jesus?
Oh, and I do want to scare the Hell out of you! Hebrews 10:26-31 says: Are you ready? Do you have your marking pen out? It says: “For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remains no longer a sacrifice for sins, BUT a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and a fiery indignation which will devout the adversaries.
Anyone who has rejected Moses’ law dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. OF HOW MUCH WORSE PUNISHMENT, Do you suppose, WILL BE THOUGHT WORTHY WHO HAS TRAMPLED UNDERFOOT THE SON OF GOD, counted the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified a common thing, and insulted the Spirit of grace?
For we know Him who said, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord. And again, “The Lord will judge (Who?) His people. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”
Bu around you are ‘some’ who (Verse 39) “draw back to perdition”, rather than trusting, relying upon, obeying, and day by day, yes, forever, yield to the Savior, or daily bow before the King, and moment by moment walk in the fullness of the blessing of the gospel of Christ, fully surrendered to the Holy Spirit to moment by moment guide you in His Truth and expose your enemies!
Do you recall what Christ Jesus said in Matthew 12:25? “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, AND every city or house divided against itself WILL NOT STAND,” and that “STANDING” DIVIDED says to Satan: “My divided, compromising, on-again-off-again ‘romance’ with Jesus is truth – but I hope I don’t get what Jesus says I’m in for!”
Dare I tell you? Believe I will! Only Jesus, only the Christ in you can resist and resist and keep on resisting the powers of darkness because your old ‘flesh’ lives in doubt, defeat, and destruction by a yielded mind and heart to darkness rather than holding on to Eternal Light!
In Luke 11:20 & 23, Jesus said: “But if I cast out demons with the finger of God, surely the kingdom of God has come upon you.” Verse 23, “He who is not with Me is against Me, and he who does not gather with Me scatters.”
Are YOU with Jesus or against Him? Are you “kingdom living” or religiously dying? Are you gathering in or are you a stumbling block to those blinded by the world, the flesh, and Satan Himself?
Are YOU extending His kingdom, expressing His love, and proving His power? The ‘church’, the family of God, the assembly of born again believers, the atoned, the anointed, the appointed are men and women, boys and girls, even young children who’ve met the Master and surrendered to His sovereign control and daily take the sentence of death to themselves that Christ’s Resurrection Life may be manifested in and through their mortal flesh!
It’s “Jesus, be Jesus in me”, or it’s “me being me in me” or “Satan being ‘me’ in me,” or “world, school crowd, neighborhood friends, you have your way in me.” Churches aren’t to be on the things you like about it but on the basis of its faithfulness, commitment, and stand for Eternal Truth!
Do you remember Psalm 23:4? “Yes, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for You are with me, God, and Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me,” and because YOU DO, Psalm 23:6 says:
“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the Lord FOREVER.” Is your room reserved in His eternal house forever? 2 Corinthians 13:5-6 says, Paul the Apostle speaking, “EXAMINE yourselves as to whether YOU are in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not know yourselves, that Christ is in you? – unless indeed you are disqualified. But I trust that you will know that we are not disqualified (the Apostles who all died for the True Faith!!).”
Look also at Colossians 3:3 where we read about “true believers”: “For you died, and your life is hid with Christ in God.” What an amazing, awe-inspiring Word that necessitates taking that sentence of death daily that, yes, His “Resurrection Life” may be manifested IN our mortal flesh! Amen?