Acknowledged Intelligence & Creativity is the End of Intelligence & Creativity!

I Corinthians, 3:18, Do not deceive yourselves. If any one of you thinks he is wise by the standards of this age, he should become a “fool” so that he may become wise.

I must admit that I love the way God works. There is the world and there is God. There is my perception, from my “earth” suit, and then there is His. I probably enjoy this the most in my own life from being an “international speaker.” Can you imagine such folly on the part of God? Michael Wells, a published author! What a joke. That very thought to those who knew me growing up (probably until age 30) would have evoked a justifiable laugh. Add to the mix that it is the support team that makes it possible for me to be like the donkey on which Jesus rode into Jerusalem as I travel from country to country (the singing and palm leaves were not for the donkey). Actually, the donkey has it over me on many counts not worth mentioning. You know me and I see no difference between the believer that published a book and the one that did not, or between the preacher of a “mega church” and the one with five worshippers attending his meetings. This much, despite my stupidity, I have gotten right. What happens is not about man; it is about Jesus. I just wanted to make a point to my friends. I have a witness, and the witness is that I have seen God witness THROUGH me to something He has spent years bringing to the forefront in a believer’s life. I have witnessed the life-changing impact of a witness to the witness of the Holy Spirit. As far as I know, I have not believed that I created anything but merely witnessed to it. This is to say, again, that I (pray for me) will never forget my place in the spiritual “food chain.” In one way, I could say, “Support those with larger meetings and more spectacular reports.”  But honestly, you support ALMI because we reach the weak and the remote with a witness of hope. The point is that much has been done in the lives of believers that, when looking back, we realize we had very little to do with; we were merely a witness to what God was doing. We know that if He gets all the glory then He does all the work. However, here is what I often see: Recognized creativity and intelligence in one’s self is the end of creativity and intelligence in one’s self, for God is only Creative to the one that does not know what to do and gives wisdom to the foolish. If we truly want to remain wise and creative in our lives, we must constantly acknowledge that we are not wise and creative and we need His wisdom and His creativity. I promise that this will change life, marriage, parenting skills, work ethics, and more. When boasting that WE had a revelation, that WE were wise, and that WE watched lives turned around, WE are done! Period! It is a spiritual absolute. When I see men take credit and copyright a revelation of God, it is the last one they will have; they have proven they are not to be trusted with the talents that are given. They bury their talent.

God does give revelation to man, but I must repeat, GOD gives revelation to man, and if that revelation helped you with your family, do not make a program around yourself. Let me expand on this. Let us say that you are talking to someone that KNOWS about the government, he KNOWS everything that is happening. He KNOWS about the news media and KNOWS about what the world leaders are up to. He KNOWS all about abortion, gay rights, people’s thinking, and more. He KNOWS. Well, how would you have a conversation with someone that KNOWS? I would like to know how he KNOWS so much about things that are hidden from the rest of us. Then based on the “absolute” of what he KNOWS, he has a solution. This is really amazing to watch. Here is a statement that I really marvel at: “It is KNOWN that Christians are a people of hate and bigotry.” My, someone needs to double up on the pink pills the doctor gave him. He KNOWS that Christians are a people of hate? When believers in the U.S. alone gave 500 billion in aid around the world, when believers fight against slavery, when believers fight oppression, when believers want the best for a pregnant fourteen-year-old in Haiti? I could go on, but why? The someone’s of the world “KNOW.” Then when they happen to get trapped in a corner because of the illogic of what they “KNOW,” they really do not KNOW, and my statement is that they have been driveling all along if they do not really KNOW but have been telling me all along how they really FEEL. Jesus KNEW, and I would sit at his feet, but for all these people who KNOW, why in the world would I sit at their feet? Is God telling them each night what is happening around the world? Definitely there is a “knowing” in the spirit.  All I “know in the spirit” is that Jesus is the Way and every other way is not the way. However, when talking to someone who “KNOWS” all there is to know about man, I shift to a different topic to keep from going mad. I do not know how shellfish grow. I do not know how a caterpillar becomes a butterfly. I do not know why a hippo hates fires. There is so much that I do not know that maybe he will know about!

 

Flesh vs Spirit

Galatians 5:15, 17 “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please.”

Often I hear the complaint, “I hate the war against the Spirit. If only I could stay in the Spirit.” These complaints lead to a common teaching in the Church, one that attempts to encourage us to “fight the good fight” and to “look forward to heaven, where this battle no longer takes place” . . . a heaven, I presume, where there is no choice. (It sounds as though we will all mindlessly be singing praises to the Lamb, and not because we choose to. Of course, choice seems to be a curse in the minds of many, and they would relish the thought of ridding themselves of that troublesome capacity.) Well, I would like to go on record that I do not hate the battle between the flesh and the Spirit. There are certain topics that definitely need to be settled. Is God attempting to oversee chaos, or is God the God of order? If He is overseeing chaos, then there is a great battle between good and evil, and Satan (in the minds of many) has equal power, we are caught in the middle, and we must somehow muster up the spiritual, emotional, and physical to side with God and win this great battle. Wow! Honestly, this thinking, which is not hard to find, is one of the enemy’s greatest coups. It can be subtle, but we hear it in e-mails that plead that believers all over the world pray for protection, healing, and blessing and pray against the advance of the enemy, disease, and poverty. Actually, if you are a believer and no one prays for your cancer, do you believe that your chances of being heard personally by Him or enlisting His activity in your life are lessened? Do you believe that if no one prays for your unbelieving mate, and yet you in your belief pray, God does not hear you? Do you believe that when you pray in your loneliness and isolation for your daughter, who is living with someone who definitely does not appear to be good for her in any way, that God does not hear you? There is one mediator between man and God, and it is that man Jesus. We need a paradigm shift. God is in charge! Satan is not! Disease is not! Man is not! Financial markets are not! Doctors are not! Ship captains are not! Your pastor is not! Your employer is not! Your children are not! God is in charge. Period. Well, you get the point. Prayer is a participation in what God is doing, and we must get over the notion of an arm-twisting fight against a defeated foe. Honestly, from Genesis to Revelation, God is in charge. Yet, with the wrong glasses, which seem to be handed out in many Christian religious circles like 3D glasses at the movies, it looks like God is attempting to win, Satan is gaining, and we are the determining factor. Our flesh is not in charge! Our flesh is not the problem, period! The flesh is permitted by God as the means of pushing, even driving us into the life of the Spirit. It might sound odd, but I like my flesh; I like what it does for me. If I do not like the expression of my flesh, then I must simply allow it to accomplish the goal God intended of driving me to the Spirit. Sometime today I will get angry, so what will be my response? “Oh, my rotten flesh! If only the flesh did not make me angry!” Or this: “Oh, my flesh always acts the same way, and now it is reminding me that I began this day somehow believing that it could live just fine without an active submission to the Lord. Who do I think I am? Jesus was God among man and yet said that of Himself He could do nothing. Jesus, You are welcome here; come and be my joy and peace today. Thank You, Jesus, for giving me a body of flesh that reminds me that life can be Life on this earth.” What glasses are we wearing? Better yet, what eye surgery have we been given? Heaven held some hellishness when angels, who are not even created in the image of God, decided they were gods in and of themselves. What kind of world would this become if no one had flesh? More specifically, what kind of person would you be without flesh? You would be a monster living in the midst of monsters. My flesh has been an ugly mirror that has made me take my assessments, my treatment of others, and my disdain down a notch, or rather, three, four, five, and one hundred notches. A man was bemoaning what his former alcoholism had done to his family. I looked him straight in the face and delivered this word, “You are an ass! If you had not become an alcoholic, the flesh–your pride, arrogance, drive, and self-righteousness–would have done a thousand times more damage to your family than the alcohol.” There was no argument in his eyes; the flesh had humbled him. We all need humbling, and the flesh is sent by God to do it. The world idolizes men who are a 1% success at playing God, but then the facts of their flesh become known: they were thieves, drug addicts, perverts, adulterers, self-centered, and all of this is attempted to be hidden through threats, courts, and disclaimers. The fact is that the flesh is bringing them down to the level of admitting their need for Jesus in order to live just one day, something humanists do not want to acknowledge. There is a famous man whose picture appears in nearly every Christian home on a particular continent, though he is an atheist and has participated in murder; in short, he has flesh, and yet any mention of that fact is avoided and met with shock. The “positive” side of his flesh is attested to as something to be idolized and worthy of attainment. Those that hate the flesh will look for the good in the flesh. The most unrighteous will become the most self-righteous. Those who despise the negative will attempt to obtain the positive. However, when someone sees God, he gets off the rollercoaster and understands that the flesh is not there to be hated or loved; it is there to drive man to Life. In hating or loving it, a person will become a monster, nothing short of a distortion. I saw a woman who was obsessed with the “Barbie doll” and had all the plastic surgery to become an exact replica; she had become a monster. I saw another man who had obsessed on the art of Salvador Dali; in the end, he became a monster. It is all relative, but flesh, good or bad, will make anyone a distortion, a monster. I have seen men on the platform at Christian conventions that were monsters. The flesh, if not seen as something that drives us to Him to allow Him to be for us what the flesh can never be, will distort us. I do not hate my flesh, I do not love my flesh, but I see it as a marvelous tool in the hand of God, who is in total control and has my very best interests nestled in the deepest part of His heart.

 

Faith Believes God

Romans 4: 1-8, “What then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh, has found? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? ‘ABRAHAM BELIEVED GOD, AND IT WAS CREDITED TO HIM AS RIGHTEOUSNESS.’ Now to the one who works, his wage is not credited as a favor, but as what is due. But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness, just as David also speaks of the blessing on the man to whom God credits righteousness apart from works: ‘BLESSED ARE THOSE WHOSE LAWLESS DEEDS HAVE BEEN FORGIVEN, AND WHOSE SINS HAVE BEEN COVERED. BLESSED IS THE MAN WHOSE SIN THE LORD WILL NOT TAKE INTO ACCOUNT.’”

Man can never obligate God; the Sovereign can never oblige Himself to the thing He has created (save out of love). He cannot do that and remain true to His character. Paul makes it clear that what makes the Law appalling is the attitude that can accompany it. As always, it is not what you do but why you do it. When the Law is kept with an attitude that the Creator is now indebted and obligated to the Law keeper, that Law keeper has now become the enemy of God.

I have watched this attitude covertly manifest itself over the years, usually revealed in a hint of frustration. First, do you believe that if your sin, behavior, or flaw were to leave you, God would then do something for you? Rather, do you believe that God would actually owe you something? Why do Christians say things like this? “I did everything the Scriptures said and my unwed daughter got pregnant.” “I went through premarital counseling and prayed, yet my marriage fell apart.” “I have served God my whole life, and yet my mate died and I am left alone.” “I followed the advice in all the books on financial responsibility, and still I lost my house!” “I have done all this myself” goes the assertion, and a close listen reveals there is a hint of the “God owes me” attitude, the attitude of keeping the Law, obligating God, and becoming an enemy of Christ. There are many religious programs that feed this attitude: prayer programs, child-rearing programs, and relationship and church-growth programs. Do this or do that, pray all night every night, and God will owe you a blessing. As we have mentioned, there is a big difference between religion and faith. Religion is man-based, gives man activities, and then asserts that this earns for man the “right” to ask (require) something from God. Faith recognizes and values the activity of God, whose action toward us is what is important, and it is not based on our behavior. Faith is based in our response to His activity. Many wonder why keeping the religious law (whatever flavor that takes today) leaves them depleted, feeling hopeless, and somehow unacceptable. The explanation is simple; the attitude of doing in order to get is anti-Christ. God will never become anyone’s debtor. “God so loved the world that He gave.” God is the initiator; He loves and He gives. There was no arm-twisting by man to get the Father to give His Son, and to think that a created being could do that kind of arm-twisting is error. Remember, if man could twist His arm at one point by keeping the Law, he could twist it at another. Hence, Abraham was accepted by faith; he was not receiving what was worked for. Abraham’s life played out for us that which is in line with the character of God.

Well, I have never been known for rededication services, for asking people to bow their heads and raise their hands. I am not known to motivate people to surrender to the ministry or the mission field. I do not ask that people choose tonight never to have another fight in their marriage, never to take another drink, or never to look at porno. Why? Those activities do not work. However, there is something I would ask the reader to do.

There is a wonderful story of Jacob’s encounter with God in Genesis 28. To paraphrase, God met Jacob in a dream, and Jacob realized that he was dealing with the one true God. Acting on that revelation, Jacob in effect said, “I want to make a deal with You. I see that You are God. I am going on a journey, and if You keep me safe, give me food, clothe me, and make me wealthy, I will do two things for You. I will let You be my God and give you back a fraction of what You give to me.” Wow, what an offer! I can just see God talking to an angel in heaven and saying, “My, how do I pass up that offer?” Jacob was offering nothing for everything! God’s response was, “OK!” Jacob was living in faith, not by the Law. He was not offering something as a bargaining chip and then obligating God. He simply recognized God and let God give freely to him. I wonder if what went through Jacob’s head in the following days went something like this: “My God will not accept anything from a man and yet gives everything. My God does not want anything from me except my recognition. He is a God that loves and gives. This God is not like a man; He is the one true God.” Jacob was justified by his faith. Before he departed, he put a stone in that place and called it, “God is in this place.” He had an encounter with the true and living God who is so outside the box of all the false gods that are claimed to demand activity before they are even reputed to listen. Remember that all false gods live in a contract relationship with man. When man does, then they do. The one, true, living God establishes a covenant relationship with man. He does, period.

Back to what I would ask you to do today, I would like you to make an exchange with God, make the deal that I made with Him. One day I said to Him, “I will give you nothing if You will give me everything.” He said, “OK,” and since that day I have received, received, and received the revelation of Christ in me, the hope of glory. Can you offer Him your nothing? Is there anyone too weak to have a “nothing” to trade? Do it and you will move into faith and an experience of God that is so precious that all other things will be counted as rubbish. Do it and you, too, will say, “God is in this place.” “There you go again, talking about all that God does and leaving us with nothing to do!” Well, I must give you something to do: rest and receive. You will receive not because you kept the program but because God loves and gives. Until the above happens all attempts to keep the Law will end in disaster. He did not give to you because you obligated Him through the keeping of the Law, but because you gave Him your nothing, so what is left in which to boast? “If anyone boasts, let Him boast in the Lord.”

 

Psalm 34

1    I will bless the LORD at all times;

His praise shall continually be in my mouth.

2    My soul will make its boast in the LORD;

The humble will hear it and rejoice.

3    O magnify the LORD with me,

And let us exalt His name together.

4    I sought the LORD, and He answered me,

And delivered me from all my fears.

5    They looked to Him and were radiant,

And their faces will never be ashamed.

6    This poor man cried, and the LORD heard him

And saved him out of all his troubles.

7    The angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear Him, And rescues them.

8    O taste and see that the LORD is good;

How blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him!

 

Coming to Know Him

Numbers 23:19, God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act?

Witnessing, preaching, and teaching are all interesting in that we start out talking about the One we do not know and yet who knows us perfectly. Since we do not know Him we inadvertently preach ourselves in that we tell what we believe God is like, actually making Him out to be in our image. So many times a judgmental person will preach that God is vengeful. The perfectionist will make God out to be all about the Law. The rejected will make God a rejecting God that is impossible to please with more and more work being required. Actually, preaching more often than not reveals more about the preacher than it ever does God. Therefore, God must step in, for we are in His image and can reveal something of Him. Again, “God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?” Often this revealing will take the form of breaking down any false concept that we have attributed to God. For example, if the legalist believes God is all about the Law, God will lift His hand and let the legalist break himself against his own rules. If one believes that God will refuse to forgive certain sins, he may find himself in that very sin. God does nothing that is not redemptive or apart from the context of the fact that He is love. He merely would like us to understand and represent what and whom He really is when we are talking to others about Him. Look at the Apostles. God turned out to be something at the end of their lives that confounded what they thought He was in the beginning of their lives. The Religion makes too much of the Apostles’ and Saints’ sacrifices, because whatever it was they had given—even if giving up their lives—it is not to be compared to what was received.

Working Your Way Out Of God

Revelation 3:5, “He who overcomes will thus be clothed in white garments; and I will not erase his name from the book of life, and I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels.”

I have noticed that with my ever-increasing age, the strength of my glasses has to be changed frequently. When I increase lens intensity, I can see things that I was missing. I believe it to be true of my spiritual eyes, as well. As I have gotten older, God keeps giving me new glasses with which I can see things previously unnoticed by me. With new spiritual glasses come many changes. I still shudder when I think of Bible School and wearing the glasses of superiority because of what I knew and disdain for the “ignorant” of God’s Word, which was constantly proclaimed. After all, we were becoming “Theologians.” With the glasses that I have had for some time, I see the folly of that and repent of it. To think that a man will “know” God!  My, it is so much nicer to bask in the beauty of the fact that I am known by God. Well, back to my present prescription. Jesus holds all things together (Colossians 1:15-17; John 1:1-3; Ephesians 4:6; Acts 17:28). He is the Life that holds all life together. We all exist in His Life; we are all connected to Him and totally dependent on Him for our existence. Therefore, we are in the Book of Life. The problem is that man lives by Him but refuses to recognize Him. What if God has given us seventy years (plus or minus) to either acknowledge He is our life or to work our way out of the Book of Life? Names are not put in the Book of Life but taken out. So if a man, held together by Life and in the Book of Life, refuses to acknowledge that Life, then with that attitude he is actually working his way out of Life during his lifetime. Finally, at death, that person gets the desire of his heart. All his years on earth were spent working his way out of Life, and now for eternity God gives what he wanted and fought for and removes his name from the Book of Life. I am amazed at how hard this type of man works to get out of Life. Jesus holds him together, and yet the man hates Him with a passion and is anti-Christ in all he does. He goes to the grave as a God hater. God, on the other hand, strives to keep him in Life; His sun shines on him, He provides for him, He heals him over and over, He blesses him, He sent His own Son for him, and yet the man wants away from Him, out of the Book of Life. God is doing His utmost to keep the man, who in turn is struggling to be free. Recognizing Jesus is so easy, and in so doing, one will never have his name taken out of the Book of Life. Working one’s way out of God is so, so, so very difficult. Amen.

Knowing Your Call!

Colossians 1:25, “Of this church I was made a minister according to the stewardship from God bestowed on me for your benefit, so that I might fully carry out the preaching of the word of God.”

The Apostle was very clear on what the call of God was for him. Yet many believers are unsure as to what they are to be doing. The confusion over their “call” is compounded by the onslaught of writings that purport to help believers discover their call. Just as an employer does not hire people when he has no idea what job he has for them, I would assume that God is not hiding from His children the call He has on their lives. I have discovered through my interaction with believers that before they can understand a “call,” they must have a clear understanding of the purpose of the Christian life. If I were to take one digit out of someone’s phone number and place it at the end of the number, the whole thing would be so out of order that I could never use the number to call the person. In God’s order we must first know the purpose of our lives. His goal is the revelation of Christ in us, and once our goal in life also becomes the revelation of Christ within, we will see that these two purposes meet perfectly in our unique sets of circumstances. From working in the yard to working in the corporate world, our life’s goal and His goal remain consistent, the revelation of Christ. We have all had friends for whom nothing seemed to work out; they always have a broken car and are in financial straits, and, though amply qualified, they never get the good job. In the past I was vexed over that, but no longer! Once I could see the purpose of life, I could see that God had permitted them to be placed in situations that would best aid their advance into the great revelation of Christ. Therefore, we first define the goal of life, which will be expressed uniquely through every individual. I believe that this is what many people define as a “call.” On the Vine we are branches witnessing to other branches about the very same Life that flows in all of us. I have said several times, “There are no great speakers; there are only great audiences able to respond to the message.” Perhaps God has not spoken ahead of time into the hearts of the other branches; in that case, a speaker’s attempts to witness to a message that is not in the listeners will not bear fruit. I was visiting a church in Asia where many of the men had taken mistresses. The pastor had chosen the topic on which I was to speak: prayer. It is a beautiful topic, but it was not where the Vine was speaking to the other branches. If I had the “call” of God to teach prayer, this was not the time, and we must be sensitive to our call. It is very simple for a believer to determine what his call is. It is that which, when witnessed to by the leading of the Vine, creates a divine explosion in others. The secret is that since the life flows through the Vine, when there is an explosion in the receiver branches, there is an equal explosion in the witness branch! I am always telling people things that they already know, for God has placed it in them. Yet when I see a spark in the eyes concerning the indwelling Christ, the love of God, the sufficiency of Jesus, and the hope that we have in Him, I never know who gets more excited! For the explosion, by way of the Vine, is taking place in me, also. In short, the “call” is the work of God witnessed to and exciting a believer as he shares it every bit as much as the receiver. “Calls” are different. Paul makes this point to the Corinthians. We are all different members of one body, one Vine. In our “calls” we do not compete with the other branches but complete the work God has for all of us to do.

Repent!

Romans 2:4, “Or do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and tolerance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance?”

Many say they are called to exhort people to repent, but their call so often is exhibited as something of a one-off from what we know the Old Testament prophets were; for them repentance centered more in the root than the fruit as they sought to bring people back to God. Today the call to repentance seems to take the form of spreading a rebuke, such as, “’You think you are saved, but you are not! You call yourselves My children but do not act like My own. If you would have loved Me you would have kept My word. I am going to cut you off and give your portion to those that obey Me,’ thus says the Lord.” It is fairly consistent and only ends in condemnation, even though we know that “there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). Men instruct on the topic of discipline with a similar approach and fervor, and that, too, ends in condemnation. The offenders’ sin is pointed out, coupled with a threat to punish. Because of such teaching by the religious who wrongly present God’s judgment, one fellow said, “I wish I would have waited to accept Christ until the last minute, got baptized, and had someone shoot me as I came up out of the water. At least that way I would not have accumulated so much of the judgment of God as a believer.” This man expressed a common feeling that has occurred among Christians throughout the centuries, but this kind of view of judgment is not dealing with the root but rather the behavior, the fruit. There are two types of discipline: one is punishment, which reaps few benefits and is rarely successful, and the other is a self-discipline that takes a person back to Christ. A Christian who finds himself continually in the deeds of the flesh does need discipline, but it is that found within himself that can enable him to begin and end each day recognizing the presence of Christ. It is our job as disciple-makers to pull that person aside and urge him to go to the Lord and abide. The subsequent awareness of the fact of Christ’s indwelling that is living through him will free him from the deeds of the flesh. (“If perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth,” II Timothy 2:25.) It has been proven that continually emphasizing a person’s deeds of the flesh will never set him free from the flesh. (“But the sorrow of the world produces death,” II Corinthians 7:9.) Believers ought to be disciplined in recognizing Christ. It does take time to teach that understanding; Jesus spent three-and-a-half years with his disciples. However, the fruit of taking this approach is verifiable, for Jesus said that the Father prunes. To say it another way, when we abide, the deeds of the flesh fall off of us. Unfortunately, there are those that will refuse this discipline; they willingly continue in the deeds of the flesh, making themselves an unhealthy leaven in the Body, and at this point to disfellowship them is appropriate. As for the call to spread the message of repentance, it generally is meant to be a call to stop a particular behavior, and repentance is seen as different from forgiveness. The hiccup enters in when Christians do repent and subsequently continue in the same behavior. This is again where Jesus is tying the hands of man and forcing us to a life of abiding, for only the living Christ within can make a permanent change in behavior. Therefore, the message of repentance without the message of the indwelling Christ is incomplete and will not be attainable.

If Only I Knew Then What I Know Now!

Romans 7:18-20, “For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh, for the wishing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I wish, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not wish. But if I am doing the very thing I do not wish, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me.”

Revelation does not come through effort; it will come through life and can take years to arrive. Revelation can never be forced; it is an outgrowth of our lives in a fallen body and in a fallen world. Revelation comes in the fullness of time; therefore, time is essential, and the longer one lives, the more revelation he will receive. Many exit at an early age, having been given the revelation that is needed for a move from this reality to THE reality. Life with a small “l” is constantly teaching us of Life with a capital “L.” That is why revelation waits in the future for life to prepare us for what Life would teach us. In the fullness of time, we will receive what we would not have received at an earlier time. There is no need to be frustrated and make silly comments like, “I wish I would have known that sooner.” At a sooner time we could not have received it and would not have “known” it. This planet and our lives are not made up of random experiences. This world is the womb in which the things of God are made known to us, and just as a baby is methodically formed in the womb of the mother, the child of God is methodically formed in the womb of the world. God is the God of order, not of chaos; therefore, everything comes in order. To say, “If only I had known this sooner” is assuming that “knowing” is what has made the change in us. Rather, it was revelation. Knowledge can come at any time, and yet revelation must come at the fullness of time as our “time” on earth prepares the way. “If only I could go back and make different decisions!” Well, if we could go back, we would be the same persons that we were back then, and we would make the same decisions. However, such a statement does reveal that we have grown, and the new persons that we are today would never have made such decisions. We have mentioned before that there are journey people and destination people. As believers we need to accept that we are all on a journey and enjoy the journey. In the fullness of time, God is teaching us. We cannot hurry up that process (Bible schools and seminaries are the proof of that). If the process cannot be hurried, then we must accept the way of things on the earth and rest in Him. The Holy Spirit will bring the revelation, His teaching that moves from head to heart, in the fullness of time.

Revelations!

II Corinthians 4:7, “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves.”

Often I used to pray, “Lord, I want all of the revelation of You that is possible for a human being to have in this life.” Over, and over, and over again I prayed it. Then one day He spoke: “The revelation of My Son is like a roomful of treasure chests. There is one chest for every one of My children, but no child will receive them all. There is one for you, and that one you can have.” I more fully understood the body of Christ and His love for each and every one of us. Just as the body needs countless cells to express a human being, it takes countless believers to begin to express all that Jesus is. He is way too big for one person, and any one person that believes he possesses it all is deluded. Paul himself said that we are like members of the body; he refused to see himself as the whole body. I am afraid that many believers have succumbed to the Christian caste system, wherein a particular believer or a certain expression of the body becomes the norm or standard for everyone else. In my early days of being a believer I remember attempting to copy another person’s expression of Christ. It was error then and it is error now. I have often said that if I could change anything in my Christian life as it developed, it would be one thing: I would have taken all of the “great” people of God and kept them on the fringe of my life where they belong, leaving Jesus in the center. No one person has it all, and we each have what He has determined is best for us and has given to us.

Time, for God

Romans 8:29, “For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.” 1 Peter 18 & 19, “For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, in order that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit; in which also He went and made proclamation to the spirits now in prison.”

I was thinking recently how God is not in time, but time is in God. He is in the yesterday, the today, and the tomorrow. This is why God is never in a hurry, since He has no place to go. He has already been in the future. He is not worrying over us, for He has been in our future and sees how glorious it is. I was thinking, too, that after His death on the cross, Christ stepped out of time and entered eternity. From man’s perspective, Jesus was gone for three days; but in exiting time (where a thousand years is like a day for the Lord) and stepping back into eternity, we basically have no concept of what all He might have accomplished in eternity, because we cannot impose time on eternity. We know that in eternity He took all those that would have believed from the past and all those that would believe in the future and crucified them with Him in a point in time. If that is true, then when He was preaching to those held captive outside of time and in eternity (He descended before He ascended), He was actually preaching to all of mankind. Therefore, He was preaching to all that would believe and all that would not. Suppose this means that I was there in eternity, and it was in eternity that I believed in Him. Now step back into time to see that at a point in time I confirmed a decision that I had already made in eternity. The proof of this is the fact that the day I believed in Jesus, it was not a strange experience but more of a homecoming. In my spirit I knew that this was the place where I always belonged. I know that you who made the same decision experienced the same sense of belonging.

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