Our Great Need - Intimacy not Loyalty

Many of us seem to end up yoked more to Christ's work than to Christ. 

There is no strength or persistent faith-source in that.

There is no lasting joy. Joy is from koinonia with the Spirit of Jesus.

There is no appealing life. Life is knowing God. "Ginosko" is being a close acquiantance.

We are called as sons and lovers. Not servants and workers.

Why do we all have so many moments like the crowds of John 6:66? They departed from Him and no longer walked with Him...

Why?

I can know all the theory of grace and justification and the finished work of Christ on the Cross.  I can know deep in my heart that I am saved, but still I find something within me that wants to settle for that - salvation alone. 

A bride happy only to have her Husband carry her across the threshold.

We need the potency of the gospel to pierce our hearts daily.

We need Him to ravish us, lest we be ravished by another.

We need a few good friends, who inspire us like Peter at times... "Lord, to whom else can we turn?"

We need to let ourselves off the hook quicker, when we have fluctuated in our intimacy.

We need to be part of a church that centers everything on Jesus, truly. Not firstly His mission or fellowship or meetings or an expanding influence.

We need to beat our bodies and make them our slaves, sometimes.

We need to speak to our souls, and develop honest mindtalk.

We need to find a place for times of meditation. for the busy 21st century worker, that is not always possible every day.

For those of us who "lead and feed", our passion needs to infuse and encourage every saint. For those once or twice a week moments, we need to make them count.

We can also keep people free by more honesty and vulnerability from the pulpit too...

In the presence of the Lord, there is joy and power and hope and clarity. Yes, Jesus dwells within me, but the way of the Spirit still requires that I exercise my faith to fellowship with this gentle God within.

Let's exercise our faith in Jesus together, lest we draw back and faint - and God is not pleased with that. All the great saints of Hebrews 11 did not firstly do great works of faith; they firstly found inner fellowship and held the door of their hearts open, no matter what.

“Let love and faithfulness never leave you;

bind them around your neck,
write them on the tablet of your heart.”
(Prov 3:3 NIV)

Lover of my soul, draw me back to you, hold me in Your arms, Lover of my soul.

Bless you

Nick

We can all cast pearls and we can all be pigs

Matt 7:4-7 “How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye. “Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you. “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.”
Matt. 7:12 So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.

To understand the pearls and the pigs, we need to understand the order of the scriptures, and the flow of our Messiah’s wisdom. He is dealing with the flesh and its willingness to judge and slay others, to justify and make place for itself.

• Firstly Jesus bans all forms of judgmentalism for Christians, except looking for the gospel to judge us (“the log in my eye”). Let me say, ALL squabbles, envies and jealousies in the church and in leadership forums stem from a disobedience to these words.

• Second, Jesus speaks of the fact that you waste your wisdom on men who refuse to deal with their own logs. They will nit-pick my revelation, savage it, or dismiss it because of the shortcomings they look for in me (these are the dogs and the pigs).

• And then thirdly, Jesus reminds us that our first port of call should be with the Father, not before men (ask…seek…knock). God can help you remove the mote from your eye and ignore the beam in another’s. God loves your pearls and wants to give you more. God can give you discretion and power in life, so you can enter eternity “in glory”!
  

Without God active in my life through His Spirit, I notice specks and I can bark like a dog and snuffle like a pig. Excuse the crudeness. 

Pigs are those who notice specks but ignore pearls. I am a pig when I:

• Keep score against my brother

• Always want to have the wiser word and the final say

• Struggle to say “well done” with enthusiasm

• Cast a jealous eye over others who have what I do not have, who are promoted to profile that I do not enjoy

• Advise others to do things I am not doing, or aiming at doing with sincerity

• Neutralize another’s revelation with my own experience and formulas (“drawn from my perfect past”, said he sarcastically)

• Am not honest about my own weaknesses and sins

• Preach without vulnerability towards myself

• Always pray, “Lord help THEM, change THEM, let THEM become holy” (instead of holy Daniel’s prayer, “OUR sins and iniquities have made Jerusalem an object of scorn...”)

• Use my humor to put down another, outmaneuver my colleague, trump an argument

• Use my anger to crush another

• Or anything else whereby I use adamic powers to elevate myself at others’ expense.
  

How opposite this is to humble Jesus, dying so others may live! How strange the scripture, “esteem others higher”, must seem to a swine.

And we have all had our porcine moments.

I smell bacon frying.

I cast pearls when I:

• Share my special thoughts with a pig

• Try to win an argument with my pearls (this is not what pearls are for, and “the Lord’s servant must not argue”)

• Rush from my bedroom to the public address system (shouting what the Lover has whispered in my ear. Not all whispers are for the public domain. That is like putting up a camera in the master bedroom)

• Want to impress my friends and my leaders. That is the oyster opening up way too early, to show the first glimmer of the pearl

• Am zealous in a religious system (pig farm). When Jesus encountered the religious system, He generally did not answer questions, and spoke in parables too
  

Remember that a pearl is only a pearl when it is in our heart and our lifestyle, not just in our head and on our tongue. So enjoy Jesus in secret. That is the secret power of Future Church. Men and women happy with a private love affair. Producing offspring 9 months later, as it were.

In this instant pie, TV dinner age, methinks far too many pearls are being cast in many directions. And not all that is cast are real pearls – millions are fakes, junk revelation. And many also are mere cultured pearls, cultivated in the farms of famous ministries, populated by fans and acolytes content with finding knowledge and repeating it, rather than finding Jesus and being ravished by Him.

Death to the pig within! Life to the oyster within!

Nick

Fleeing the Pharisee that hides amongst the Fine China

““Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean. “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.” (Matt 23:25-28 ESV)

Michael Eaton once told us that there is a Pharisee in every one of our hearts. In the flesh, we love to present an outward appearance that impresses and gains the favor of men. 

One writer once penned that every teenage girl faces the stark choice between inner acceptance or outer popularity. Choosing the one means you need to forsake the other.

So, once you give yourself over to impressing people; to yielding to the torrent of what is vogue; to the audience of the Many, you allow your inner sanctuary to be pillaged by the Saxons of sound and noise and the din of the devil’s dinner table at which you sit as Hypocrite the invited guest.

Once you go the way of Adam, hiding in the garden, covering your own nakedness with the fig leaves of Good Impressions, you are estranged from the God who seeks to live within you; the God who can cover your shame with the Skin of His Son.

And in that place of detachment, you only have the power of self, the help of men, the strength of the soul. And that is just too weak to fend off the ravages of time, mankind’s temperament and the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Sooner or later, psychoses overrun the citadel. And then the only nostrums are medication, moments of pleasure, the filler of technology and a fateful acceptance that the monotony of the Weekly Schedule will end badly.

What is Jesus saying? As ever, He makes things palpably plain. Stop worrying about making good impressions and what the world thinks or demands of you – live before God! Be honest with God! Come to Jesus! Ask for forgiveness! Seek His face and His power! 

God graces the truly humble, not the merely remorseful. Every child is scared of punishment, and so too most men. But that kind of fear is not enough to bring you out from hiding. God loves you! God has a plan for your life! God can clean the inside of your cup – the filth and shame and lewd thoughts that only you thought you knew about. He knows them all – and still He says “come”!

But Jesus HATES religious pretence, and the bondage it brings both to the pretender and to his followers. He is the Way, the TRUTH, and the Life.

Os Guiness said it best, when he quoted this, “without truth there is only manipulation, nothing else”.  DL Moodie said that so many are crying out to be filled with the Spirit, but they must be emptied of all the junk first. We are all wanting revival in the cup of the church, but it starts in the cup of our own hearts. 

In Matthew 11, Jesus compared His generation to kids in the marketplace, calling to their playmates, saying, we played the flute and you didn’t dance; we sang a dirge and you didn’t mourn.  He said an entire generation was living like playmates trying to manipulate each other. 

And that’s the truth today. We are all sheep who have gone astray. Without returning to the true Shepherd and Overseer of our souls, we will follow false shepherds. We will dance to strange music.  When we are wiling to live with filth covered up in our hearts, then we will only have fellowship with other filthy people. But when the bough breaks the baby will fall, and when the cup breaks all is exposed.

I would rather be exposed before the throne of mercy now, than before the seat of judgment on the last day.

Besides, I don’t want to miss out on the power and outpourings of God on the near horizon. I don’t want to be like the guard trampled in the gate, because he refused to believe the prophet that God would end the famine in Samaria on a single day.

God is going to do things on single days, but the many sins in my heart will make me as carnal as the king’s captain, who scoffed at Elisha's prophecy.

Let the scoffers continue their scoffing, and let the whole world shake their fists at God, but let you and I draw near in this hour. And let us allow Him by His Spirit to clean the inside of the cup, now and always. When we walk in the light, we have fellowship with one another and there is no cause for stumbling. Then truly we have become pots for noble purposes, having cleansed ourselves of everything that renders us commoners.

Bless you

Nick

You have died to the elemental spirits

“If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations— “Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch” (referring to things that all perish as they are used)—according to human precepts and teachings? These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.
If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming.”
(Col 2:20-3:6 ESV)

I still find this one of my most compelling passages from the Bible. At first read, it is easy to pass it off as Paul rebuking Jewish believers for returning to their rites and rituals, and so forsaking grace and faith alone.

But over the years, this scripture has penetrated deeper into me. It was the passage I was meditating on while on my prayer walk this morning, and I think it fair to say that it speaks to all believers! It speaks to a loss of first love, first faith, first trust. It speaks to a replacement of passion with lesser priorities. It speaks to our service supplanting a sensational relationship with Jesus.

Note firstly the fake, the surrogates, that we can end up serving…

• The rules and traditions of men. Oh, how much momentum has been created by so few in the history of the church! One or two find reformational breakthroughs, and then the majority remain followers and copy-cats. Every surge of faith spawns a new denomination somewhere. Has there ever been a time where the royal priesthood has truly risen up, each one with a first-hand passion and intimacy with Jesus? Maybe. But it was a long time ago and it is what is most needed now! Not a tiny minority raising up big ministries and big churches, but cities and nations remaining unaffected. 

• Things that have an appearance of wisdom. I have come to realize that a man who claims special holiness and access to the Spirit, is unholy and has many private sins. A truly holy man claims nothing, boasts in the Cross, puts others at ease, is un-weird, can enjoy God in all things, and does not have a shred of legalism. So many today are claiming special revelation, angelic appearances (yes, there are angels), prophetic insight and the power of God – and yet has holiness ever been at such an all-time low? Having said that, I can see in my sons’ generation a genuine hunger for God, for truth, and for authentic Christianity. 

• A sense of moral righteousness. The age old curse of the law, which can at moments make me feel better than others, when I deploy my own inner strengths to briefly subdue the voracious appetites of the flesh. Can I not once and for all time realize that only the Cross slays the flesh, and that its power is made effective through faith and repentance, not through activities and vocabularies and postures and meetings? Every time I have given way to the age-old desire for self-justification, the end is more condemnation and less strength against sin and temptation. Jesus is my Hiding Place and Cleft in the rock! He is my great Deliverer! He knows me, He loves me, He has room for me, He makes intercession for me – and above all, He has defeated my enemies! He has fully justified me apart from my own works, past, present and future!!

Note then the cure to restraining sensual indulgence…

• Believe that you have been raised with Christ. I remember an old pastor friend of mine, who would always be reminding us that the beginning of a holy walk and the starting point for all spiritual warfare and victory, was to know that God has placed you in His Son, at His right hand! There is no other true start point! Has God slayed you, and raised you to a new life in His Son? Well, has He?! If so, then…

• Seek the things that are above, where Christ is seated. Indeed, set your mind on things above. This takes effort and practice and a partnership with the immanent Spirit, otherwise the Word would not exhort us to this discipline. But God is telling you and I that we have been raised with Christ, that our lives and futures and eternities are bound up in heaven with Him. So, earthly Lot, it is time to join Abraham in the highlands, and Israel on their desert pigrimage. There is a final Jordan, as surely as the death and resurrection of Jesus was the parting of our Red Sea. We too could fail to mix God’s promise of an eternal resting place, a heavenly Canaan, with faith.

And as we fix our minds on things above and our eyes on Jesus who for the joy set before Him endured the Cross, we too will find new strength. The things of the world will dim. The vicissitudes of men can be left to God. Enemies can be forgiven; comforts can be forsaken; money can be given; prayers can be offered; success can be surrendered; purity can arise; songs can be sung; sins can be dealt with; temptations can be subdued; bodies can be beaten and enslaved.

And the true church can arise. The Royal Priesthood can be consecrated.

And what is the end result of this heavenly fascination?  Appearing with Christ "in glory", and not in shame.

Bless you

Nick