This will make us stop trying to change it and put it on the shelf called flesh.

We believe that if we have a negative in our lives, others can feed enough positives to make it go away. Therefore, we are always trying to make a positive out of others or hope they will admit the negative that they have put in our lives. In reality we need another negative to feed the negative in order to make the original negative become so large that we will, by revelation, see the stupidity of trying to get undone the negatives in life. This will make us stop trying to change it and put it on the shelf called flesh. I see many dissatisfied believers, and often they are motivated not by need but want. They see their lack of goods as a negative and want to get a positive. Some cheat to do so. After their accomplishment of milking a positive out of someone, they remain a negative. I have a friend in Africa; to many it appears that he has many negatives. He asks for nothing. He is not materialistic but is Christ-minded. He is very positive, for he doesn’t see his situation as a negative, he sees Jesus. One time I gave him a computer, and later I was erroneously thinking that I had sent two. I wrote and asked that he give one away to another brother. He immediately wrote that he would. Then I discovered my mistake and explained it, told him to keep the computer, and said I would purchase one for the other brother. But I asked the question, “How could you so easily give back the computer you need so much?” His response was, “When you mother cooks a large meal and asks for some of it, would you not give it to her?” He is a full and free man not trying to change the negatives. In fact, at the highest revelation of Christ in you, there are no negatives, for He is working all things together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purposes.

We have a history with God that proves to us that His is a better way.

I Cor. 2:12, Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God.
I was talking to a group of the brothers and asked them to do a simple exercise. Take a sheet of paper and draw a line down the middle. On the left-hand side write down all that you thought you would receive in life, and on the right-hand side list what you have actually received. In the end, everyone agreed that the list on the right was much bigger; all had received more than they had ever imagined. That being the case, I asked if their objectives in life were as good as the Lord’s plan. We have ideas of what we want that are often based outside of the love of God. That is, we don’t fully trust that what He gives will be better than what we can obtain in the power of the flesh. I remember a friend, years ago, saying to me with conviction, “I don’t want my own will! I have had it, and it isn’t as good as God’s.” Well, amen. We have a history with God that proves to us that His is a better way. I am getting through with plans and simply saying each and every day, “Thy will, not mine.” Why not relax? He has done a great job up to this point. “Do not worry then, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear for clothing?’ For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

The fearful person is the perfect person in whom God can be creative.

Mark 2:22, No one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost and the skins as well; but one puts new wine into fresh wineskins.
God can only do something creative through a weak, unknowing person. Familiarity with a job encourages doing it the same way and not, in humility, seeking Him for His way. For example, a person with 50 years’ successful experience with missions, teaching, or church building will not, generally speaking, seek the Father for how He wants things done in a new place. It will be done the same way, without thought, and the person will find himself in a rut. The problem with many churches is that they either stay in a rut or go examine other people’s ruts instead of going to the Lord and discovering whether there is something new that He would do. I meet many people fearful to take up the call of God. They don’t know how to preach, they don’t know how to lead, and they don’t know enough about the topic. But here is a secret: water cannot be put in a full cup; new wine cannot be put in an old wineskin. The fearful person is the perfect person in whom God can be creative. If you can’t do something, admit it, and let Him do something new. This message of Christ in you is old, and yet with each generation God would make it fresh. In your weakness, allow Him to do just that, make it fresh.

The facts of the earth and the faith of heaven blend perfectly without conflict.

Well, the Indians say it, and it is an obvious truth: If you go east long enough you will find yourself west, and likewise, if you go west long enough you will find yourself east. Maybe those in the West have yet to travel far enough east, and those in the East have not traveled far enough west. Eastern Religion, in the absence of fact, draws pictures. There was never a boy with an elephant head, and drawing it doesn’t make it so. Please, travel a bit further to the West. On the other hand, no one in the East would question the existence of God, and when I say that Jesus spoke to me, no one questions it, for God must be alive. However, in the West many have yet to believe that there even is a God, and to say one has heard Him is to border on insanity. Those in the West need to travel a little more to the East. In the East miracles are an accepted part of life, and yet they have opened the door to the false and the deceiving. In the West, those without an inner awareness that Jesus is actually alive and active IN them seek miracles OUTSIDE them as proof that He exists. Move east a little and discover the greatest miracle: Christ is in you. In the West it is believed that the flower must be dissected to be understood, and yet the beauty is destroyed. In the East the flower must simply be smelled. In the West a bridge made out of water is unthinkable; in the East many have walked on ice across a great river. In Christ East meets West. The facts of the earth and the faith of heaven blend perfectly without conflict. In Him everything created on the earth and in the heavens merges without contradiction. This place many believe is impossible to find–the place where East meets West–is not a place but a person, Jesus!

If we do not invite Him today to live His life through us, we will discover that we have not changed, and God will use the ensuing failure to bring the point home.

Romans 7:18, For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not.

Because of how religion infiltrates the Church, so few have a doctrine of failure. There is one very big problem with this: We all will fail! Most are emphasizing a one-time fix, meaning that some understanding or some conference will free a person from all future conflict. It is not so with us. Our system not only allows for failure but plans for it. The Epistles are written because Christians are failing, they are not getting it, but most importantly they have moved away from their focus on Jesus. Without their failures we would not have those books. We have all learned as they did through their failures. If they learned through theirs, is it not true that we will learn from ours? Do any believe that the early Church didn’t have failures? Paul uses the occurrence of believers’ going to temple prostitutes to explain the principle of oneness. He didn’t tell them they were hopeless; he told them why they should not be doing it and to stop. Peter was a tremendous failure after being taught by Jesus for three-and-one-half years. What do we learn about soul strength in our attempts to serve God from his example? What did he learn? If you are prepared for failure, when it comes (and it will) you will not have to enter into condemnation, unbelief, and become a Galatian. The flesh doesn’t change, but that really is a beautiful thing, because if I don’t want to walk with Jesus, I will be the same mess I was before . . . well, actually worse. With Adam’s life in me, wearing sin was natural. With Christ’s life in me, wearing sin is very abnormal and miserable. The hardest thing to get across is that we are not improving, but only abiding longer. I know a man that was in a mental institution, came to see Christ as his life, and as Christ flowed from him, people could see Jesus. However, he believes in a one-time fix, and now when he isn’t abiding he still acts very psychotic, but now it is more of a Christian psychosis and more “acceptable.” Well, amen. An elephant can live up to 100 years, and the reason it dies is this: It has six set of teeth. As it wears out one set of teeth, the next set comes in, and so on until it has no teeth, can no longer eat, and it dies. We, like the elephant, have many sets of spiritual teeth for eating at different stages of our life. There are teeth for the milk of the early things and teeth for the later things, and one day we will leave this body. Until then there is always something to chew, and if we chew long enough we need a new set of teeth. We have chewed long enough on heaven vs. hell. It is time to chew on the fact that Christ is in us. As we by choice invite Him to live through us, He will today, but for today only. I am not saying He is coming and going; I am saying we must choose to relate to Him in a certain way. If we do not invite Him today to live His life through us, we will discover that we have not changed, and God will use the ensuing failure to bring the point home.

No one can be born again by the will of the flesh, insidious in its ability to take the eyes off of Jesus.

Job 34:15, “All flesh would perish together, And man would return to dust.” John 1:13, “who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.”
No one will be born of the will of the flesh. It is impossible. For in the flesh are the senses of man that constantly need feeding. One may think of them as instinct gone amuck. Senses in the body are given attention either by pain or reward, feeding or starving, or consciously avoiding or obsessing on. Either way it is in being activated that they are kept alive and in charge. The greater truth is that the senses want to be activated; the lesser truth is how they are activated, which is by eating from the tree of good and evil. The desire for food (wish fulfillment or fantasy) will keep senses alive just as much as condemnation from eating too much. Look at the anorexic or observe the obese, and both scream “flesh in control.” An overwhelming desire for sex or the condemnation of looking at porno both scream that the flesh has regained control. Thinking of oneself as intelligent or stupid are both still flesh. Again, flesh is simply the senses in control. The east denies the flesh in an attempt to appease it and the west feeds it in an attempt to appease it. Of course, the west doesn’t have a choice in that nothing is enough to satisfy it, nor does the east really choose, since there is ultimately no way to withhold from the flesh. Nevertheless, the flesh is flesh and is hostile to God. Now, why does flesh desire to be in control? It is because flesh desires man to be flesh-centered. If man becomes Christ-centered, the senses of flesh would not be fed but would be sublimated to Christ. The flesh can never be more than a slave, and a rebellious one at that, for by the works of the flesh will no flesh be justified. No one can be born again by the will of the flesh, insidious in its ability to take the eyes off of Jesus. The flesh constantly screams for attention and has a thousand methods at its disposal to get it. Believers and non-believers alike have flesh. The saddest thing is to witness someone who has abandoned his will to flesh. Like a tick, flesh will feed until it explodes and destroys itself. I meet many Christians that struggle with the sin of homosexuality but are not homosexual, and if you were to meet them, you would never guess what their particular deed of the flesh is. However, meet someone who has, by choice, yielded to that area of the flesh, and it is evident in his or her body. Just a few minutes with that person reveal to what they have yielded their flesh. Now, why would God put us in flesh? I am not talking about a physical body, but the desires of the senses that reside in the physical body. Well, it has been said that the greatness of a man is not determined by what he does but rather by what he refuses to do. The man who feeds his flesh through adventure and the procession of praise for victory or the mockery for defeat is not as great a man as he who says, “Not my will but Thy will be done.” Having flesh and its senses allows man the unique opportunity of choice, of living on the earth but not being of the earth, of living to God and not to senses, and the discovery of something higher in this life, spiritual fulfillment. Flesh, or rather the call of the senses to stay alive, is a constant reminder that we must move our eyes to Jesus. It is another stronghold allowing us to stay focused. If God is for us, then who can be against us? Again, the flesh is never a friend; you may buffet it and make it a slave, but it will never be a friend. The flesh is a strange thing in that it cannot live on its own but must live on something that is living. It adapts to resemble the thing on which it lives, but it isn’t really a living thing. When man dies, the fleshly condition of the man dies. It is weird.

Eccl. 3: 11-15”He has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also set eternity in their heart, yet so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end. I know that there is nothing better for them than to rejoice and to do good in one’s lifetime; moreover, that every man who eats and drinks sees good in all his labor—it is the gift of God. I know that everything God does will remain forever; there is nothing to add to it and there is nothing to take from it, for God has so worked that men should fear Him. That which is has been already, and that which will be has already been, for God seeks what has passed by.”
Loving fathers busy themselves making life easier for their sons than it was for them. I remember, as a child, wanting, in the worst way, a little motorscooter. As soon as my boys were big enough, I made sure that they got one. I have known more than one man who, not having a father himself, was driven to be the best father possible. Fathers delight in helping their sons and even sharing in the accomplishments of their sons. In short, fathers want their sons’ lives to be better than theirs. Could it be that God is also this way? Could it be that the life God has for me is actually better than His? It boils down to this: is it easier to be man than to be God? Look at the life of God. Man has never really paid for sin; it has been God that has been picking up the tab all along. His creation pays and He pays. The ultimate payment came when His only begotten Son died. God has taken all the responsibility to cause things to work together for good, to take what He has made and redeem it in every possible way. He is putting together a grand jigsaw puzzle. All the pressure is on Him. Would you really like to be God? Would you like one day to experience what it is like to be driven by pure love? Could you bear up under His sorrow? Would you have the wisdom to govern? I have concluded that my life, as a son, is much easier than my Father’s. I am just going to rest and enjoy all of His work. I think I will just enjoy my inheritance.

“I am the true bread that came down out of heaven.”

John 6:12, “When they were filled, He said* to His disciples, ‘Gather up the leftover fragments so that nothing will be lost.’ 13So they gathered them up, and filled twelve baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves which were left over by those who had eaten.”

It is an astounding story. Jesus had fed 5,000 people, and what was left over, He wanted. But for what? What are twelve men and a teacher on the move going to do with twelve baskets of barley bread? I imagine that they found a few hungry people along the way. There was exactly enough food for all the people, so I wonder if some, like the boy that offered the five loaves and two fish, had food with them. When the bread that Jesus gave came, they simply ate their own food. They didn’t feel the need for His bread. Therefore, He took it back. Matthew 7:6, “Do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.” Jesus then continues with the theme that He is the bread of life. In the same way that some would rather have their bread than His, there are those that would rather have what the world offers than what Jesus offers. To such people the bread is withdrawn. Sometimes I am talking to someone and all I am met with is one argument after another. That person simply is not interested in Jesus, so I say, “I take it back, I take back everything!” They may believe that I am retracting my conviction over what I have said about Jesus. Not so, I am retracting Jesus. A word not received is a wasted word, and there must be no waste. I just pick it up and wait to give it to others who hunger for the bread that comes from heaven. As we journey we will always find a few hungry people. “I am the true bread that came down out of heaven.” I remember being in India. As I left the airport, a band of men were attempting to wrestle my bags out of my hands. I made it clear that I would carry them myself. Since I would not relinquish the bags, they all walked with me touching them. When I arrived at the car they all wanted a tip. Reluctantly, I gave them all one rupee each. They began to curse me and demand more. I responded, “So one rupee is not enough?” I then took back from each man his one rupee. They were expecting me give them something bigger. Instead, I simply got in the taxi and rode away with them following me, now wanting the one rupee back. However, I had taken back what they didn’t like and was not giving it again. Jesus offers the bread of life; if you don’t want it, He will take it back and leave you exactly where you were before you heard of Him.

“to whom God willed to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”
Col. 1:27

Traveling, I hear many stories. Many choose not to believe them. Well, I don’t believe all of them either, but I am just reporting the story. I am not asking any to believe them. Here is a report.

I know a man who says that he was caught up into heaven. While standing before the Father’s throne, he was asked if he had a question. The man said, “What is it in me that makes me carnal?” At that the Father leaned over, held the man’s head between his hands and kissed him on the forehead. He said that next the Father began to gently shake him. As he was being shook, it was as though the shaking was making what appeared to be little drawers all over his body open and spill their contents. All that came out was junk, useless little things. He thought to himself this must be all the useless little things I keep and hold dear that make me carnal. The Father stopped when all the drawers were empty and closed again.

Next, the Father reached toward his heart and opened a secret drawer and took from it a little box. The man said that he became frightened, just knowing that little box held the thing that made him carnal. He watched as the Father took out of the box a grand jewel! It was the most beautiful jewel. The Father didn’t put it back in the box but put the grand jewel back into the drawer and closed it. The man was quite confused when the Father spoke to him. “Yes, there are little things that make all men carnal. That is known. I am not interested in what makes you carnal, I am interested in the grand Jewel that has remained hidden in you. My Son is in you. You must not look for the carnal any longer but examine and discover the Son who is in you.” At that he was sent away.

Believe it or not, I like the story. I believe that too much time is spent in self-absorption and not enough time examining the grand Jewel that is in every child of God.

“So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, ‘If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.’” John 8:31-32 NASB

Isn’t image interesting? If we could be free from image, we would be free indeed. But to be free from image, we must see God, not ourselves. In some Third World countries I am given great respect only because of skin color, dress, and money. People give way on the street, and few would argue with me.

However, if I were, say, a “common” tea picker, people would chase me away with a switch if I crossed their path. I would be dressed differently, my skin would be a little darker, and I’d have no money.

Image dictates a lot when we consider that all of us came out of the womb naked, and naked we will leave in the end. There is no difference in men; there are only images. Image makes us treat the poor man with contempt or compassion, and the rich man with respect or hatred mixed with the desire to be like him. The fear of the loss of image can keep us from taking a risk, making a phone call, looking for a new job, going to a restaurant considered out of our league, or disagreeing with the pastor. Some image groups can’t stand it that other image groups consider themselves better, so they use slander or riches to try to bring the others down and build themselves up.

Do you see why Jesus dealt so little with the world’s system? It is a circle; it is the same, and it goes nowhere. “All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing. What has been, will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say, ‘Look? This is something new’? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time.”

Once we are free from image, we will free everyone else from image. We will neither pander to the rich nor show compassion to the poor. We will minister to the individual! We will see beyond image to the exact need that Jesus saw in man. Our teaching will change; our emphasis will change. How to be free? We must admit where we are, to leave where we are. Admit that you are a slave to image, and ask that He free you. He will do it in a way you had not imagined. Many believe the way to the loss of image is to be humiliated through a sinful defeat. This doesn’t destroy image; it just draws attention to it and gives a person a different image. God’s way is different. You will see. Just ask