“WONDERING? WANDERING? OR WILLFULLY WORSHIPPING?”
By J.Farrell Fisher, March 23-24, 2017
Ravi Zacharias, formerly of India, as he reflected on his past life without Christ, stated: “Life with all its hurts and pains squinted at you, squatted before you, and stared you down daily. This was the street where I grew up.” And, no doubt, in those early days he ‘wondered’: “What is life all about?” Is there today, still, a spirit in fallen men, alienated and separated from God of ‘squinting’, ‘squatting’, or ‘staring you down daily’ with “What is this fleshly, earthly life all about?” Some don’t even ask – they ignore eternal purpose and live in their ‘fleshly indulgence’ acknowledging and bowing before continually their “idols” of self-importance and self-awareness and self-pumping of the fallen sin-nature!
It was Theodore Parker, in his writing “Critical and Miscellaneous Writings: A Discourse of the Transient and Permanent in Christianity” who said: “Silence the voice of Christianity, and the world is well-nigh dumb, for gone is that sweet music which kept in order the rulers of the people, which cheers the poor widow in her lonely toil, and comes like light through the windows of morning to men who sit stooping and feeble, with failing eyes and a hungering heart.”
But before coming to “Wondering? Wandering? Or Willfully Worshipping?”, are you aware of those Francis Thompson wrote about in his writing “The Hound of Heaven”? He wrote: “I fled Him down the nights and down the days; I fled Him, down the arches of the years; I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways of my own mind; and in the midst of tears I hid from Him, and under running laughter.”
But some have “no tears” about God because they are consumed by “me, mine, my way – and your God means nothing to me!” Yes, there are those consumed by “there is no God,” because they live in their cocoon of self-indulgence and are guided and motivated only to be what their minds agree to – and the atheists willfully denounce one’s faith in God as they submerge themselves in a sea of unbelief!
And, of course, there are those “on the edge of belief in God”, but all that they can agree to is, “if there is a God, He’s UNKNOWN – and WE cannot KNOW Him.” How sad is that? At the same time there are those with ‘religious, magical wands that they wave’ convinced they can mentally reject ‘superstitious spirits’ and ward off being confronted by a caring, merciful, loving God!
Have you ever crossed paths with an agnostic?? The Random House Collegiate Dictionary of 1975 defines an agnostic as “a person who holds that the ultimate cause (God) and the essential nature of things are unknown and unknowable, or, a person who denies or doubts the possibility of ultimate knowledge in some area of study…”, adding ‘agnosticism’ as “an intellectual doctrine or attitude affirming the uncertainty of all claims to ultimate knowledge.”
Dare I express eternal truth? I believe I will! Christ Jesus said, John 14:6, “I AM the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to Father-God except through Me!” And that eternal truth has never changed, regardless of the mindless, heartless denial of His Eternal Life!
“Wondering?” It was Sir Winston Churchill who, in his writing entitled “Information”, said: “Truth is incontrovertible. Panic may resent it; ignorance may deride it; malice may distort it; but there it is.” In Galatians 1:1 Paul describes himself as “an apostle (not from men nor through men, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father Who raised Christ Jesus from the dead).” And Resurrected King Jesus is still “guiding us into all truth;” YOU don’t have to ‘wonder’! It’s best you bow before Him and worship!
But even the prophet Isaiah said in Isaiah 53:1, “Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” He was fully aware, even before Christ was miraculously, supernaturally birthed to Mary, that, Isaiah 53:3, “He(Christ Jesus) is despised and rejected by men,” the prophet seeing Him as “a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we (Israel, and even some Americans today!)) hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.” Has that changed in the hearts and minds of many who “wonder”?
There IS a strong force called ‘doubt’ that IS a ‘spiritual grave-digger’! Enoch Fitch Burr once said: “In the hands of unbelief half-truths are made to do the work of whole falsehoods. – The sowing of doubts is the sowing of dragon’s teeth, which ere long will sprout up into armed and hostile men,” who choose godlessness as their false armor! I love what Samuel Taylor Coleridge once wrote! “Never be afraid of doubt, if only you have the disposition to believe.” So true! There has never been any person void of questions about his/her doubts or fears – but the battle is: “In what, in who, or why do YOU personally ‘rest in’ God’s revelation rather than fallen mankind’s bankruptcy of the ‘soul-life’ at its best but short of the manifested glory of God in a “blood-bought” heart?”
Faith is not, “it smells good”, but true faith is “looking up to Holy God, looking in to one’s needy heart, and ‘born again’ looking around to a world of “wondering”! A “new-born child of King Jesus” is always baffled by the unbelief of the Creator, Sustainer of all life, and the Savior and Lord over the falseness, futility, and faithlessness of ‘rejecters’ of the King of kings and Lord of lords!
I found Oswald Chambers’ words in his “My Utmost For His Highest” book, (p.128), on target and to the very core and center of a godless man’s need of the Savior! He wrote: “The recognition of sin does not destroy the basis of friendship; it establishes a mutual regard for the fact that the basis of life is tragic. Always beware of an estimate of life which does not recognize the fact that there is sin.” And the eternal truth of every man birthed into human ‘existence’? “BORN IN SIN, BORN WITH THE NATURE OF THE POWERS OF DARKNESS, BORN WITH THE VOID OF HOLY PRESENCE!” Which is why the Lord Jesus Christ, Emmanuel, King of kings and Lord of lords said: “You MUST BE BORN AGAIN! BORN OF THE SPIRIT! DEAD TO ADAM’S NATURE AND CHARACTER, RAISED IN CHRIST’S ‘NEWNESS’ OF RESURRECTION LIFE, RESURRECTION POWER, AND RESURRECTION HOPE!”
I’m sure this is why Martin Luther, in “Table Talk,” once wrote: “Superstition, idolatry, and hypocrisy have ample wages, but truth goes a begging.” So true! There ARE “men of Truth”, but also “men of The Lie – ‘One can sin and not die!’” Malachi 2:5-6 speaks of Levi – hear it! God speaking! “My covenant was with him, one of life and peace, and I gave them to him that he might fear Me; So he feared Me and was reverent before My name. The law of truth was in his mouth, and injustice was not found on his lips. He walked with Me in peace and equity, and turned many away from iniquity.” Why? Because “the soul that sins, and keeps on sinning, abides in sin and death,” not liberty and freedom from sin’s controlling, damaging, suffocating, continually blinding of the love, mercy, and grace of God!
Do you think this might be why Paul said of some Corinthians, 2 Corinthians 6:13, “You are not restricted by us, but you are restricted by your own affections.” What is it or Who is it that has your heart, mind, and will? This just may be why David asked in Psalm 15:1-2, “Lord, who may abide in Your tabernacle? Who may dwell in Your holy hill (or divine Presence!)? He who walks uprightly, and works righteousness, and speaks truth in his heart,” or do you ‘live’ (?), speaking out of both sides of your mouth? A divided heart is not a united heart with Christ! If “God divided the light from the darkness”, in Christ does He still divide? Certainly! There are, will be, times when you are confronted: “My way or His Way, my desires in the flesh or His ultimate intention AND provision in the Spirit?”
What did King Jesus say in Revelation 2:7? “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes I will give to eat from the tree of life, which is in the midst of the Paradise of God.” Paradise living is, without hesitation, being dead to one’s self but fully “alive” in Christ, yes, “our tree of life”, resting in His inspirational Truth: “In the world you will have trouble, tribulation, trials – but BE OF GOOD CHEER, I HAVE OVERCOME YOUR WORLD!” But how many do you know in their fleshly mental state who “frustrate the grace of God”? Isn’t that why in John 5:38-40 the Lord Jesus said to the unrepentant Jewish ‘followers’ (?), “But you do not have His word abiding in you, because whom He sent, Him you do not believe. You search the Scriptures, for in them YOU THINK you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me. BUT YOU ARE NOT WILLING TO COME TO ME THAT YOU MAY HAVE LIFE,” because they were bound in their ‘religious pretenses’!!
Do you remember John 10:25-31? It was the time of the Feast of Dedication in Jerusalem, AND IT WAS WINTER – the Abiding Presence of Jesus among the Jews, but they said in Verse 24, “If You are the Christ, tell us plainly.” Jesus answered them: “I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in My Father’s name, they bear witness of Me. But you do not believe, because you are not of My sheep, as I said to you. My sheep HEAR MY VOICE, and THEY FOLLOW ME. And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of My Father’s hand. I and My Father are one.”
Do YOU hear His voice? Are YOU following Jesus wherever He leads? Are YOU “led by the Spirit of God” (?) – Romans 8:14! Do YOU hear God in Christ through His Holy Spirit speaking to YOU, yes, daily, even at times: moment by moment! It was A.W. Tozer, in his book, “The Pursuit of God” (Harrisburg, Penn.:Christian Publications, Inc. 1982, pp.80-82) who wrote:
“The Bible will never be a living Book to us until we are convinced that GOD IS ARTICULATE IN HIS UNIVERSE. To jump from a dead, impersonal world to a dogmatic Bible is too much for most people. They may admit that they “should” accept the Bible as the Word of God, and they may try to think of it as such, but they find it impossible to believe that the words there on the page are actually for them. A man may “say”: “These words are addressed to me,” and yet in his heart not feel and know that they are. He is the victim of a divided psychology. He tries to think of God as mute everywhere else and vocal only in a book…
I believe (Tozer continued) that much of our religious unbelief is due to a wrong conception of and a wrong feeling for the Scriptures of Truth. A silent God suddenly begins to speak in a book and when the book was finished lapsed back into silence again forever…
I think a new world will arise out of the religious mists when we approach our Bible with the idea that it is not only a book which was once spoken, but a book which is “now speaking”. The prophets habitually said, “Thus says the Lord.” They meant their hearers to understand that God’s speaking is in the continuous present.”
HOW AWESOME IS THAT? AND DO YOU LISTEN TO HIS VOICE IN AND THROUGH HIS HOLY WORD? There was a journey Jesus took, led of the Spirit, that every true disciple of Christ must walk through and learn from. It’s found in John 4:1-4 – don’t miss His message to us today!! Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And when He had fasted forty days and forty nights, afterward He was hungry. Now when the tempter came to Him, he (the tempter! The devil!) said, “If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.” But He answered and said, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”
Oh, how thrilling, life-changing, eternally daily reminding us, is John 6:53-58!! Jesus speaks to us now! “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father (now in human flesh!), so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me. This is the bread which came down from heaven – not as your fathers ate the manna, and are dead. He who eats this bread will live forever.”
Hear me, disciples of Christ Jesus! John 14:16-18, spoken by Jesus, says: “And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever – the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.”
Well then : Who are the true sons and daughters within the Holy Family of God? Are you ready? Examine Romans 8:12-14 the Holy Word declares: “Therefore, brethren, we are debtors – not to the flesh (Old sin-nature of devilish driven men!), to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.”
‘Led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God?’ You can tell that I’m a strong fan of A.W.Tozer’s writings! In “Echoes from Eden,” (p.62, Christian Publications, Inc., 1981), Tozer wrote, “Just the words of a Scripture text falling upon a human ear may not mean anything,” saying later: “I believe that God has related these somehow: the voice of conviction in the conscience and the Holy Spirit, the point of contact, witnessing within man’s being. A person has not been illuminated until that voice begins to sound within him…Men and women need to be told that it may be fatal to silence the inner voice. It is always perilous to resist the conscience within, but it may be fatal to silence that voice, to continue to ignore that speaking voice within.” And that voice IS the Holy Spirit!
Are you “an illuminated life” to the voice of Truth, to the tender, yet strongly convicting voice and instruction and guidance by the Holy Spirit? In Chuck Colson’s book entitled “Life Sentence” published by Chosen Books, he introduced Chapter Twenty-two with a statement by Henry Fairlie, Fairlie saying: “It is the characteristic of our age that people want to have God but do not want the devil. People are inventing gods for themselves…their Do-It-Yourself-God-Kits. But they are gods who do not demand much…who [do not] punish, [but] absolve them from conflict and doubt, massage them, pat them on the head, and rather like their [parents, tell them to run along, get stoned if they will, pick marigolds, and love. So easy it is to love! But above all they are gods who will not trouble them with…problems of evil, suffering, and death…The recipes are too easy…Universal harmony has never been offered so cheaply before.”
Do you understand that most Biblical language is unacceptable in the vocabulary of some pastors and a lot of “professing believers” who speak about “joined to Christ” but know nothing about His demands? You are aware that our “so-called ‘Christian nation’ today, governed by ‘voiceless, non-assertive, conscience-less leaders’ are trying to silence God and His Holy Word so the nation can be guided by “men’s best”, asserting “we only want to elevate our nation by man’s best not God’s blessing.” So…we witness the “curse” not the blessing! Fallen men are out to wean our nation from our Lord and Savior’s eternal wisdom and witness. Stand up!
Do YOU ‘wonder, wander, or willfully worship, bow before, surrender to the King of kings and Lord of lords?