I recently heard a man, who was promoting a men’s ministry group say “come and be a better version of your self.” I shuddered in my spirit when I heard that. Not because the man was not well intentioned but because he was. Do you know what the best version of your self is? It is filthy rags before the Lord. The best version of your self would not even allow you to mount the first rung of the ladder of what God wants for you. Jesus said that unless your righteousness exceeds that of the Pharisees, considered to be the holiest men in all of Israel, you will in no way enter the Kingdom of heaven. This would have caused the people to despair, because they had it all wrong.
Imagine someone said that unless you were better than Mother Teresa, you would never get into heaven. Most of the world would groan (for they consider her to be holy) just like the people did when Jesus stated that truth about the Pharisees. What Jesus was actually telling the people was that these religious people were not holy at all, in fact, quite the opposite. What you could see on the outside had no bearing on what Jesus could see on the inside. Dead men’s bones. Men and woman who loved to be greeted as something special, something holy. Men and women who loved to be called “teacher, pastor, nun,” and any other title you can think of. Hypocrites who actually conceal the Kingdom of God from men through a cloak of holiness and righteousness and religion. Who travel the world and make converts who are twice the children of hell than they are.
The outside of the cup and the platter is clean, they are the best versions of their self. Yet, inside they are full of hypocrisy and idolatry and uncleanness. Rotten to the core. Polluted in everything that they do. And how could it be otherwise? They have taken self and promoted it. Their best selves are living their best lives now. And this is the hook. Come and live the best version of your self now and live your best life now. Consider the calling of God. He bids you come to die. He says that the best that you have to offer is rotten to the core but He has the cure. A cross. Who will crucify their flesh to the cross? How many men would show up if that was how it was advertised? Not too many I would imagine. Your best self leads to eternal death, and the death of your flesh leads to eternal life.
We live in a world where it is all about self. It is the idolatry of the age. Its not a new thing in our time, it has just reached dizzying heights. The high place of self has exalted itself up beyond the heavens. Whether it is the worse of self or the best of self its all self righteousness and it is filthy rags before the Lord. So called men and women of God try to make people feel better about themselves. It becomes mutual exaltation. It is reciprocal in nature. The only cure is death to self, and the only instrument of death for self is a cross. This is why the Lord bids us to take up our cross daily. To follow the commands of the Lord in this is to walk to the narrow path and to thin out the crowd. The broad road to destruction has a banner over it which reads “follow this road for the best version of your self.” The narrow path has a banner over it which reads “this way to Calvary.” Shall you take the broad road or the narrow path?
God is longing to speak to His people. If He is outside the camp, will you go outside the camp and look for Him? If He is outside the four walls of your church or denomination will you just stick with “what you have?” What a tragedy. The modern day church is like a bustling city where everyone is rushing to and fro, each going their own way. Look at any busy street scene in New York or London and you will see tens of thousands of people going in every different direction. They are all Londoners, they are all New Yorkers, but that is where the distinction ends. They are part of a metropolis and the one thing you know about any metropolis is that it is noisy. It is full of distractions. It is inhabited by individuals.
In the day of the Lord there is darkness, not light. There are feast days and special days within our church calendars and in our age God says He hates them. The offerings that we make to God in the days of our darkness, the Lord will not accept. Our songs of praise, nothing more than the noise of a city. The Cain spirit offers up sacrifices of its own efforts. It give the minimum that it can give and it gives out of a desire to receive. It is utterly rejected by the Lord. God sees the idols from Egypt that you have hidden away, they are covered by your feast days and offerings and noisy worship, they shall be uncovered. For in the days of the Lord’s darkness, His light shall penetrate every last motivation.
The praise of God and the worship of God is our sacrifice to Him. Our lives, crucified, is our acceptable worship of Him. Without genuine sacrifice, without a genuine desire to seek Him where He may be found, without this one singular desire to dwell with Him, then we shall simply dwell with one another. Fellowship gathers around the Lord. It is the gathering of the called out ones. There is no other fellowship. He is in the midst of those who seek Him and who desire to dwell with Him. Those whose greatest desire is to behold His beauty. The tabernacle is an intimate place, away from the noise, away from the clamor of the world. It is a place that is found by those who seek.
If our focus is on the finite then we cannot see the infinite. Our focus must be on God alone, He is our exceeding great reward. We must see our lives in the context of who we are in Him or we can never see Him at all. God is calling and He is calling with a still small voice. His voice is not in the thunder or the earthquake, His voice is heard on the breeze. If we would hear Him, then we must fall silent. Worship begins in the heart as a small whisper in the wind. Can you hear a whisper on the wind in the midst of a noisy city? Can you hear The Lord calling? In the end we are consumed by Him, ruined by Him for this world. The beauty of His Holiness and the train of His robe slowly fill us and overwhelm us until we are fully consumed. This is the light that speaks to the darkness of our day, the day of the Lord. The darkness that He brings discovers the light. We shall be one or the other, but we cannot be both.
Many many years ago my mother and father attended a Baptist church, and they would go to the prayer meeting. The minister was quite a strict man and gave firm instructions that no one was to pray for “personal,” issues. The prayers were to be on whatever the subject of the teaching had been prior to the prayers beginning. As someone who has”operated,” in the prayer ministry over the years, I understand where the minister was coming from. It can often be frustrating to hear someone pray for what an old friend of mine used to call “aunt Flo’s big toe.” Prayer meetings can devolve into praying for all the different body parts. A long list of peoples ailments. The whole world can be in flames and the church can be falling away, and yet, even if you are fortunate enough to have a prayer meeting, aunt Flo can play a prominent roll in it, or at least her big toe can.
One night at the prayer meeting, before I was saved, my mother “felt the calling,’ to stand and pray for the salvation of her son. It was so strong she could not resist. So, she stood to her feet, trembling, and very clearly breaking the rules, she prayed for something that was very personal to her. She felt what she called “the breakthrough.’ She knew something had happened in the realms of the Spirit. Very shortly after that I got saved, a man on the brink of suicide and ravaged by sin and the lashes of a a dark world.
I think it is great to have structure. I think it is great to have direction. I think it is great to have some kind of instruction. Yet in the end, all of that must be held very loosely or we shall certainly miss the mark. The tension between man’s order and God’s moving is a perilous one. It has to be revisited over and over again. Whether in a prayer meeting or a Sunday morning service, get it wrong and the preeminence of God is usurped. Outside of His preeminence there is only shades of grey at best, which is nothing more than darkness masquerading as something that it is not.
Psa 27:4 One thing have I desired of the LORD, that will I seek ; that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD, and to enquire in his temple.
This is the answer to life and to our walk right here in this verse from the 27th Psalm. One thing I have desired. One thing brothers and sisters. This is what my life will be. That I would seek the Lord and that I would dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life. Its not that I would “get,” to heaven. It has nothing to do with getting anything in that sense, it is all about dwelling. Oh to God that men would seek to dwell rather than seek to get. Get into heaven, get out of hell. Sordid self seeking its own. It is the Lord I shall seek.
I will seek Him to behold His beauty. I will seek Him early in the morning and in the noon day. I will seek Him in the evening and before I retire to bed. I will seek Him as I lay my head upon my pillow. He is my all in all. When we have this singular mind then, and only then, in the time of trouble shall He hide me in His pavilion, in the secret place of His tabernacle. He shall set me high upon a rock.
As I dwell in the house of the Lord, all the days of my life, then I know of His grace. I know of His mercy. I have been delivered by His righteous right hand. He has hid me from my enemies. Even when all have forsaken me, even as it suggests in the Psalm, forsaken by father and mother, then the Lord has been a Father to me. These things I have known in my walk with the Lord. I would have lost my heart if I had not seen the goodness of the Lord in the here and the now. My Father is not watching from some far away distant heaven. My Savior did not simply come and then leave. They are here, right here, right now by the power of the Holy Spirit. What is your one desire? If it is the Lord then you will have an open door to heaven which no man can shut.
Mat 21:44 And whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken: but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder.
The Word of God is immovable, it sits as the cornerstone of all that exists. The arc of our lives must bend towards the Word of God.Time and space itself bends towards the Word. The revealed truth of God establishes the foundations of all existence. In the beginning was the word and God created the heaven and the earth. The spoken word of God calls forth light and the light creates a separation between itself and the darkness. The light of God is still separate from the darkness. And in the end the Word remains and every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
The word of God speaks to the sons and the daughters of light and it calls them to bend. If the arc of your life does not bend towards the word of God then the word of God does not hold sway over your lives. It may intrigue you. It may fascinate you. It may challenge you. You may argue about it and it may be philosophy to you, but if it has not bent you, if your life has not been broken by it and renewed and put back together by it then it does not sit on the throne of your heart. The truly broken shall bend, yet in the end all those who resist and reject the chief cornerstone, that stone shall fall upon them and they shall be ground to powder and be scattered like dust.
Have you been broken? The poor in Spirit are the ones who cry out from the depths of who they are to the One who is high and lifted up. The broken are the ones who cannot even lift their heads in the presence of God. Yet He gently places His hand under their chins and raises up their heads to look at Him. He pierces the souls of the broken and the contrite hearts as they look unto Him, the Author and the Finisher of their faith.
I am broken, I am vanquished, I surrender. Is this your cry? To be broken is to see your flesh for what it is, in the horror of that you will be broken. To be vanquished is to be subdued by a superior force. And in your brokenness you are subdued and you surrender into the hand of God. Do not resist the work of the Holy Spirit in your life and in your circumstances, they are the hammer and the chisel of God. He will shape you.
Psalm 22:1 My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?
Many men and women, down through the ages, have cried out to God in their despair. Day and night David cried out to God, yet there remained silence. Can you relate to this brothers and sisters? Have you cried out to God and the silence only seemed to add to your troubles? What kept you in that season? What keeps you in this season? Matthew Henry says “When we want the faith of assurance we must live by a faith of adherence.” Do you find yourself there today saints? If you have walked through these kinds of valleys I do not have to ask you if you remember. Who can forget the very shaping of their spirits? Who could forget the fall of the hammer upon the chisel that was shaping their lives? If gold had senses, would it ever forget the furnace? It is part and parcel of our creation.
Oswald Chambers says this of the Lord Jesus’ cry which is here foretold and prophesied by David in this first verse of Psalm 22, “The depth of this cry of Jesus is deeper than anyone can go because it is a cry from the heart of God.” No one knows the depths of this cry, no one can ever know. What we can know is that God knows the nature of this cry from His children. He knows it, because He lived it in a way that far surpasses that of any created being. And because we know that He knows this, who better to cry out to? David says this in verse three “but.” But what? “But your are Holy. You are enthroned upon the praises of your people.” He is very near to those who praise Him despite their circumstances. He is just beyond the veil of those who ever trust Him, and who can know when the veil is lifted?
Now listen to David as he nears the end of this psalm…..”I will declare Your name to my brethren. In the midst of the assembly I will praise you. ……..you who fear the Lord, praise Him! …..for He has not despised not abhorred the affliction of the afflicted nor has He hidden His face from Him. But when He cried to Him, He heard. The poor shall eat and be satisfied and those who seek Him will praise the Lord forever, let your heart live forever.” Let you heart live forever brothers and sisters. Trust in the Lord your God and praise Him for in the midst of those praises lies His throne and upon that throne sits Your God. That is how close He is to you. He hears you, He sees you and He sees your afflictions.
The great high point of my life, was my death. When I was born again I stood like Peter , James and John on the mount of transfiguration. And just like them, I mistakenly thought it was time to build something. Little did I know that quite the opposite would be true. It was time to dismantle everything. Or to say it more accurately, for everything to be dismantled. And this would take place in the depths of the valley floor, not on the top of a mountain. Chambers writes “Before sanctification we know nothing, we are simply put in the place of knowing, that is, we are led up to the cross. In sanctification, we are led through the cross.”
Can you say that you life is one of being “led through the cross?” Has it been a process of being crushed and broken in the darkness of the valley floor? Have you spent much of your life trying to scramble up unattainable mountains? Supernatural joy and likeness to our Lord comes not in the building of structures in high and beautiful places. It comes in the midst of surrender to the dismantling process in the depths of the valley of the shadow of death. And the purpose for it all is to transform us into useful servants of the most High God. We too often think of the cross as a place of deliverance, rather than a place of transformation. The transformation is indeed the fruit of our deliverance.
The cross is not the beginning of the life of Jesus, it is the culmination of it. Our transformation begins the moment that we take up our cross. Being brought to the cross is one thing, being nailed to it is quite another. Staying there is one thing when you have no power, staying there when you have the power to come down is quite another. Between the two positions lies a great gulf, on one side is life and on the other side is death. To live in Christ we must die. The mountaintop will come in good time, when He lifts us from the valley floor and takes us home. In the meantime, our business is the business of dying, its the business of the cross. Our calling is to die daily.
Psa 18:28 For thou wilt light my candle: the LORD my God will enlighten my darkness.
What a wonderful promise we see here. God will light our candle. He is speaking to His own. He is speaking to those who walk humbly before Him. Who honor His word in all that they do. Who are merciful and gracious and kind. To them, He will be merciful, gracious and kind. He will honor those who honor Him. He will bring light to our darkness by reviving out spirits. This tells me many things. It tells me that God’s people get discouraged. It tells me that their candle, metaphorically speaking, can go out. And when it does it causes the darkness to press in and surround them. And yet even then, when we sense that our candles have gone out, yet shall we still honor God. Even when the darkness presses in on us from every side, we shall never deny our God. Even when we do not hear from Him, we say in our hearts ” I will honor Him till the day I die even if I never hear from Him again.
This, brothers and sisters, is overcoming. This is enduring. This is our manifestation of our own love for God and it is not conditioned upon anything. We know in our hearts that we worship God, not for what He does for us or will do for us. Not because we desperately desire to be relieved or delivered from our circumstances. Not for any other reason other than He is worthy to be praised. If this is indeed your heart brothers and sister, He will come to you in the night watches and all of a sudden your candle is lit. Your lamp explodes into light and the darkness is held at bay. The way ahead becomes clear and you you put one step in from of another and you keep walking down the narrow path. It is He alone who arms us with strength. He alone is our Rock. He alone is a shield to us and His word is always proven true. We can stand upon it and it is a lamp unto our feet.
Lord, your right hand has held me. You have armed me with strength for the battle. You give me feet like the feet of a deer and you set me on high places. You lift my spirit from the depths of the valley and you raise me up above the darkness. The Lord lives! Blessed be the Rock! May your name be exalted in all the earth. If your candle has went out brother or sister, keep on walking in faith. Keep on honoring Him. Lift Him up, praise Him, be merciful to others. Love as you have been loved. He will light your candle and you will burn again. The way ahead that has been so obscured with darkness will give way as He lights up the darkness, for even the darkness is light to our God. You will find your way forward. God bless you on your journey today and be encouraged.
We read in Isa 19:1 ‘behold, Jehovah rides on a swift cloud and comes into Egypt.” Now, how many of us know that when God visits a particular land for the purpose of judgment, that it will not go well for that land? He sits upon the cloud, meaning, that our God is above all resistance. He will do what He has come to do. No one will resist Him. Now the Lord has come to Egypt on a swift cloud.What does this mean for Egypt? Well, God was going to deal with them directly. There would be no foreign invasion and captivity. God was going to prove something.
The methods that God will employ are truly frightening. He would use their own brutish natures and divisions against them. They would destroy themselves.By a combination of natural disasters and His sovereignty, God would bring Egypt down. As we see how and why God was judging Egypt, I want you to keep America in mind. I am going to suggest to you that God has arrived on the horizon of America on a swift cloud even as you read this. I know that this staggers the mind. Please pray that the Lord will give you eyes to see what is truly unfolding in our time and why.We are, as you read this, bereft of leadership. Judgement from God.
We are slowly but surely turning on each other. Judgment from God. Instead of being united as a nation, we are divided into a myriad of groups. Blacks, whites, Hispanics, gay, straight, liberal, conservative, alt right, alt left, black lives matters, blue lives matters, rich, poor, socialist, capitalist. On and on and on it goes. Judgement from God. It will not end well folks. There is one solution and yet I fear it is beyond our grasp. Repent and fall down and humble ourselves. The truly frightening thing about when” the Lord comes down,” is the fact that He has already assessed the situation and found it wanting. The writing is truly upon the wall when the Lord comes down. He came down and spoke with Abraham about Sodom and Gomorrah. He was willing, for the sake of a very few righteous people, to stay His hand, yet He found none.
Instructions were then given to Lot and his family to leave. God’s people must be prepared. The time of the Lord is at hand. Idols of Egypt shall tremble at His presence. And the heart of Egypt shall melt in its midst. (Isa 19:1) Let not our hearts melt as we see what is unfolding. Stand fast brothers and sisters and stay close to God. That which causes the Egyptians hearts to melt causes our hearts to swell as we draw ever nearer to our God. As we abandon every worldly ambition, then the power of the world over us loses its grip. By the same token, those whose only hope is in the world, its grip begins to choke the life out of them and causes them to thrash around and lash out in the midst of calamity.
I want to say something about Governor Cuomo resigning. This is a cautionary tale of pride and privilege. When everyone around you is telling you how great you are, beware. The crowd is fickle and their spirits are fleeting. Their praise is nauseating, and everyone who lauded this man ( you know who you are) partake in his shame. Do not raise men up on pedestals, you will live to regret it.
We hear so much about white privilege in this country. It does actually exist and one of its princes resigned today. The actual privileged class, who lecture the rest of us, are the ones who practice this privilege with such ease. The Governor, in this case, is the son of a Governor. Power perpetuates itself through wealth and legacy. It walls itself of from reality by living in higher and higher ivory towers. It only deems to come down from its lofty heights to lecture the masses, thus creating a smokescreen for their actual behavior. They gaslight the rest of us by projecting their own privilege onto white men in general who have no such privilege.
Consider other men like Clinton and Weinstein, who surrounded themselves with women and telling us they did this because they are virtuous and champions of women. All the time they are actually predators who surround themselves with women like an all you can eat buffet. Now, think about the most powerful man who ever walked the earth. He walked and lived among the people. He had no possessions to speak of. No money, no privilege, not even a place to lay His head at night. He did not lecture, He taught. And He taught by example. If He was in the company of the prevailing ruling classes, he typically shredded them. He saw through their pomp and revealed the ugliness that actually lay within their hearts.
His friends were not the rich and the famous and the beautiful people. He surrounded Himself by tradesmen and men who worked with their hands. He was, in fact, the polar opposite of the rich and the privileged. His name is Jesus and His beauty reflected upon man’s ugliness. Look at Jesus and see how actual power conducts itself. It is beautiful and marvelous and a wonder to behold. If you want to laud any man, lift up the one true man, Jesus. You can be sure He will never let you down.
Blow the trumpet in Zion, sound the alarm. God’s judgment is unfolding. The sense of sacredness, the manifest presence of God is so elusive today. In part it is because the locusts of Joel have eaten everything, so to speak. And in their wake there is a devastating famine. I would argue that the locusts have done their work. And here we stand starving to death. Add a drought to the famine and its a double calamity. Most of Christendom cannot repent because they are still blind to what ails them, this also is part of the judgment. For water one must now dig down very deep. And for food one must wander far from the reservation so to speak. Famine scatters people much like persecution.
The darkness Joel is talking about is spiritual and it is literal. There was actually locusts devouring everything. How terrifying to stand and watch everything you have, everything that you need to survive, being devoured before your very eyes. The clouds of locusts blackened out the sun in the midday. In our own day, the days are darkened by the smoke from wildfires. Year after year the fires continue, they grow larger and they darken the land and pollute the air. The sun is turned to darkness and the moon to blood as we watch on helplessly.
Go into your average church this coming Sunday. Where is the sacredness in their midst? Where is their sense of His holiness that causes the people to only speak in whispers, even if they dare to do that? Are holy trembling hands raised to heaven in the glory? Are our heads bowed low by the weight of His presence? Has the locusts devoured everything and left us with nothing? I am afraid that is the truth. We cannot hold a solemn assembly to ward of the disaster, the disaster has already befallen us. All that is left for us to do now is to rend our hearts and not our garments. We must return to the Lord our God with weeping and with fasting and mourning.
This word, of course is to His remnant. The great falling away has completed its task. This thing called Christendom, with all of its garments, its buildings and its programs and its careers now stand barren in the strange noonday darkness. They stand emaciated under a blood red moon. The darkness only grows darker and the hearts are destined to grow more faint until the people will writhe in pain and all the color drains away from their faces. Yet for those who will rend their hearts and seek the Lord their God with all of their hearts, they will find Him, for His own namesake.
The locusts may have devoured the spiritual land but like a refiners fire it has done its work and will do its work. It identifies and marks out those who seek Him with their whole hearts. Whether from the early morning or from late in the day, no matter, the Lord’s hand is open and He is well able to heal that which He has wounded. He will rain down the latter rains of His Spirit upon them. Whoever calls upon the name of the Lord with their whole hearts He will hear from heaven. He will pour out His Spirit upon them in a dry and thirsty land. “There shall be a deliverance as the Lord has said among the remnant whom the Lord calls.”
How long will you hide your face from me? Have you ever asked this question of the Lord? If not, might I suggest you have not experienced the hottest parts of the furnace as of yet. In the middle of a prolonged trial we can often have the same thought as king David did.. David’s trials were not fleeting or even seasonal, but often lasted for years. David has taken refuge and shelter in caves and embraced the darkness of having found a reprieve from his trials. We can do the same. We can run into dark caves and shut our minds away from the troubles that we find ourselves in. That dark cave can look like many differnt things. It could be mindless television. It might even be alcohol or pills. Distractions of any sort can form the basis of a cave. And yet, just like David, the cave that promised safety and a place of refuge, always turns into a place of bondage.
David, in the midst of this, cries out “Consider and hear me oh Lord my God, enlighten my eyes lest I sleep the sleep of death.” This sleep, this cave, this place that we can find ourselves in, in the midst of troubles and trials, can very easily turn into the “sleep of death.” And the first step to awaken us from this place is to cry out to God with everything that is in us. To fall down on our faces and rend our hearts and seek His face. To remember the faithfulness of our Lord and how He has always delivered us and how He alone is trustworthy. His mercy prevails in the midst of trials. As we remind ourselves of these things we begin to rejoice in the God of our salvation. Sing to the Lord brothers and sisters, sing today of His goodness and His mercy. Sing praises unto our God. Awaken the dawn with your shouts as you step out of the darkness, into His marvelous light.
Eze 47:3 And when the man that had the line in his hand went forth eastward, he measured a thousand cubits, and he brought me through the waters; the waters were to the ankles.
There is a river that flows from heaven itself. It flows through our hearts and beckons us to come deeper. This river is spoken of in many places in Scriptures. It is the presence of God and it brings us deeper into the heart of the Almighty. There are trees on either side of this river and their roots are directly connected to the river and they are perpetually green, evergreen trees for the healing of the people and the nations. The river itself brings healing everywhere it goes. To be walking in the Spirit is to be swimming in the river of life.
As we see in Ezekiel 47, the Lord brings us to through the waters. Always the Lord, compelling His children to come deeper into Him. Not ankle deep, not knee deep or even waist deep but fully immersed in a river so vast that it cannot be crossed, it can only be swum in. We must give ourselves to the river, let go and give way to the current of the Holy Spirit. Whether you are ankle deep, knee deep or even waist deep, you are still standing on your own two feet. In many respects you are still in charge. Yet to give ourselves completely to the river then we are no longer standing.
When we are fully given to our Lord. When we are yielded to the depths and the power of this vast river, the power of the Holy Spirit, only then can we truly be led. All resistance is gone in its depths. It is carrying you towards the sea, the vastness of God Himself. Ever closer, ever deeper into the Father’s heart. And the Lord says to to you “come, I will bring you through the waters into the deep.” “Seek me with your whole heart and I shall be found and you shall be rewarded for your diligence, I am your exceeding great reward.”
Hos 10:12 Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy; break up your fallow ground: for it is time to seek the LORD, till he come and rain righteousness upon you.
There is a time and a season for breaking up the fallow ground. There is a time to sow seeds into that ground and there is a time to look to the skies in anticipation of the rain. I would argue that for the saint that time is every day, this is our lives and the life that we have committed to. Yet, there are also particular seasons. And there is the end of ages. It is time, while there is still time left, to seek the Lord with our whole hearts. Christendom, the Lord is calling to you, He is whispering to your heart that the time is short. Just as the planting season can be short, the sands of time are running out and so the window of opportunity is closing. Seek the Lord while He may be found. While it is yet day.
In order for us to sow righteousness we must first seek it, daily. Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. Live in the paradox of having found yet continuing to seek. And in doing so the seed comes forth and is planted into the broken up ground, the ground that the Lord Himself has plowed. And in this we reap a harvest of mercy and grace upon our lives. Let it rain Lord God, let your rain pour down upon those who panteth for your presence. Who seek not the blessing but the Blesser, who seek not the sanctification but the Sanctifier. Let the rain of your righteousness soak us to our very core and water the seed that comes forth only from you. Blessed be the name of the Lord.
Look back over your life as a saint and you will see how the weaning has gone on from the blessing to the Blesser, from sanctification to the Sanctifier. When we no longer seek God for His blessings, we have time to seek Him for Himself. (Oswald Chambers- Biblical Ethics)
Ponder that for a moment and let it slowly sink in, for it will, perhaps, affect every area of your walk with Jesus. So much of our prayer life is about petition. Our prayer life is so often directly related to whatever set of circumstances we find ourselves in, or a loved one, or a friend. Imagine, if you will, that no matter what your circumstances are, no matter if you are on the mountaintop or in the deepest valley, that your relationship with the Lord is on an even keel. Think again upon the last sentence “When we no longer seek God for His blessings, we have time to seek Him for Himself.
If our primary mandate in our relationship with the Lord is “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness,’ and it is, then how can we ever do that if that vast majority of our communication with the Lord is petition. If the primary object of our prayer life is petition and not the Lord Himself, then He must be our secondary object. This, I would argue, is back to front. When the Lord Himself takes up His proper position within your heart, then, just like when the Ark found its proper place in Solomon’s temple, His manifest presence shall rain down. As the dew falls heavily on the slopes of Mount Zion, and as the oil runs freely from the top of Aaron’s head down to his feet, so too will the blessings of the abundant life fall upon those who seek the Lord for Himself.
Hos 6:1 Come, and let us return unto the LORD: for he hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind us up.
The same God that brings us to our knees, also raises us up. Oh that we had no need to be broken, no need to be smitten, yet in the depths of who we are we are fatally flawed. Adam in us. In the flesh we bear the sin of Adam, we stood guilty before a Holy God. Yet in us too was a light, a smoldering ember in the depths of who we are. It speaks of our guilt. When the wind of the Spirit blows upon this tiniest of embers, the God given conscience, then it bursts into flames. “You crucified the Christ,” Peter cries out as he spoke with the power of God. Men’s hearts were rent and their blindfolds fell to the ground as they gazed upon their crime and saw that their very own sin crucified Jesus. He bore their punishment.
Imagine this. You are driving down the road and you check your phone, or you text someone. And in that split second a child runs out and is run over and killed by your car. The child is dead, and you are guilty. There is no doubt about your guilt. You are racked with that guilt. You cannot think, you cannot concentrate, you cannot live. You come before the judge and you plead guilty and you desire that he throws the book at you for you know you deserve to be punished because you killed an innocent child. Nothing can deliver you from your agony. Now imagine another scenarios, your eyes are opened by the wind of the Spirit. You see that it is indeed your sin that killed a willing and innocent Jesus upon the cross. And why was He willing? To fulfill the will of the Father that He should suffer in your stead. And in the very midst of your guilt, you “know,” that despite this, He loves you. “What must I do,’ you cry out as you heart is ripped open and you are smote with the sure knowledge of your sure guilt and the agonizing realization of His love.
“Arise in repentance,” the Lord would say “and I shall give you life”. I will bind up your wounds and set you free from the captivity of this guilt. I will raise you up from death to life that you may live. For my going forth is established as the morning and I will come like the rain, the latter and the former rain. Brothers and sisters, this is how we were saved and this is how we shall live. He still tears and He still heals. He molds us in the fires of sanctification. He scourges all those that He loves and the flesh is burned up in the fires and in this He raises us up in Holiness. Who may abide the day of his coming? and who shall stand when he appeareth? for he is like a refiner’s fire, and like fullers’ soap (Mal 3:2) He purifies His sons and daughters and purges them like gold and silver. Come brothers and sisters, let us return to the Lord.
Hos 2:14 Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably unto her.
This is a truly remarkable scripture and a remarkable promise from God. All through the second chapter of Hosea we see threats and declarations from God. “She is not my wife……..Lest I strip her naked and expose her as in the day she was born…….. Make her like a wilderness and set her in a dry land and slay her with thirst…………I will hedge up her ways with thorns and wall her in so that she cannot find her path…………..I will uncover her lewdness in the sight of her lovers and no one shall deliver her from my Hand.” And it goes on. This is powerful threats from God, And after all of that “She decked herself with earrings and jewelry and went after her lovers, but Me she forgot.” Wow, can you imagine what can only come next?
And here we see for a fact that Gods ways are higher than our ways for He says “behold, I will allure her.” not judge her or condemn her, but rather entice her. Now the place of His wilderness enticement will not be a dry land where she will die of thirst but rather a place that she will discover comfort in the valley of Achor. A place of troubled waters and tears which will produce fruit from the vineyard that will blossom from that place. Is this not the story of our salvation? Was not our sins exposed to us? Did we not see ourselves as we truly were? And were horrified. Was the world not our wilderness where we were starving to death and dying of thirst? We were hedged in and held down by the thorns of our own rebellion and sin and there was no way forward for us, only down. And instead of judging us the Lord redeemed us and raised us up.
He became so beautiful to us, the very one we ran from for so long. All of our lewdness became apparent as He came close to us. His magnificent beauty reflected upon our ugliness. I remember crying out for the Lord to look away from me for I was an abomination in my own sight, in the light of the conviction of my God, the lover of my soul. And in this place, this Godly wilderness, we were transformed. Now listen to what God said to us in the last verses of Hosea. “I will betroth you to me forever………..I will betroth you to me in righteousness, in loving-kindness and mercy…….. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness and you shall know the Lord….. then I will sow her for myself in the earth and I will have mercy upon her who had not obtained mercy. Then I will say to those who were not my people, you are my people! And they shall say, you are my God.” Praise Jesus. Our God is the lover of our souls. He has redeemed us from the miry places to lay down with Him in heavenly places. Give Him glory today brothers and sisters!
In the early 1900s at the height of the British empire , at the zenith of its strength and power and influence, we see a creeping shadow coming over the land. Some could sense it, most were completely oblivious to its presence. The hearts of men and women were being prepared for slaughter and they had no earthly idea. In their chests rose pride and haughtiness. They were full of vainglory. There was boastful vanity. What there really was, and this is the scariest part of all, was the hook in their mouths. They were being drawn towards the edge of the abyss and like the followers of the pied piper, they danced towards it. And they were slaughtered in WW1. They were broken. And the youth of that generation was taken, not unlike the judgement of Pharaoh and of Egypt where the firstborn of every household were taken.
I want to say that America has a hook in its mouth. I sense that same shadow creeping across this land. We are being drawn towards the abyss. And we are in worse shape than the British empire was. They would deny being proud. They would hide their sin in the shadows and the alleyways. They had, in a sense, the good sense to be ashamed of those things that they did in the darkness. We have no such shame. Our sin does not hide in the shadows and the alleyways, it marches down Main st. And just when you think it cannot get worse, we hoist a banner over our heads that says “PRIDE.” Yes indeed, we have a hook firmly planted in our mouths and we have no power to resist the force that now shapes our rebellious hearts.
Go into any back country and see where people dwell. Long before the dark shadow of winter comes there is a busy preparation. Dead trees are felled. Their limbs are removed and they are cut into pieces and hauled back to where the fire is. They are then chopped down further and stacked in chords ready to fuel the fires of winter. Look with your spirits saints, even now the preparation is taking place all around us. The hook is in the mouths and the hearts are being prepared. The deeds of darkness are exposed by the light. The fires of hell shall greedily consume all that it is given. Let us cry out to God that some may be saved. Let us stand amidst the carnage of a proud people who have boldly thrown of God and who bow down and worship the creature. They worship the work of their own hands and so by their own hands they shall destroy themselves.
And in the midst of all that darkness there is a shaft of light. Christ. He beckons to a dying world who has no idea they are dying, and no idea that the abyss is on the horizon. On whom the shadow falls it falls. Those who are consumed by it shall not rise again. Great will be the fall. Like an ancient mighty Oak tree, empires fall with much noise and destruction. And in the falling the Kingdom of God remains. The gates of hell do not consume the children of God, only the children of the world, sacrificed on the altar of pride and arrogance and a haughty spirit.
Psa 32:10 Many sorrows shall be to the wicked: but he that trusteth in the LORD, mercy shall compass him about.
For the saints, the favor of God is the wellspring of all happiness and blessings as opposed to the wealth and wisdom of the world. It is wise men and women who trust in God and follow His instructions. Blessed is the man in whom there is no deceit. Here the Lord instructs us to be honest in all of our ways, before Him and before men. And if we are, there is a blessing in God. David says that when he kept silent his bones grew old and the hand of God lay heavily upon him causing him to moan and to groan in the midnight hours. His vitality, he says was “turned into the drought of summer. “The solution and the blessings lies in not remaining silent. Speak of Him and His mercy while it is yet day, for in this there is great joy.
He instructs us to acknowledge our sins to Him, and not to “hide” our iniquity. “Confess your transgressions to me,” says the Lord. And in this confession you find wonderful pardon, your feet are washed from the filth of this world. When we do this, we are praying to Him while “He might yet be found.” This is instruction from God. If we do this then even in a flood of great waters, even when the sin of this world rises up like a mighty tsunami, it shall not come near you, for He will have raised you up to higher ground and surrounded with you with songs of deliverance. He shall be to you a hiding place in the day of calamity.
He instructs us not to be like the horse or the mule which has no understanding. They require to be harnessed with a bit and a bridle, reigned in so to speak. Rather, simply follow the instructions of our Lord and be led of Him. There is great blessing in this. And finally we are instructed to trust in God. The greatest blessing of them all. Many are the sorrows of those who do not and they are pierced daily with the cares of this world. Death by a thousand cuts. Yet for those who trust in Him, they are surrounded by mercy. Their hearts are glad and they shout for joy. Let your hearts be glad today brothers and sisters. Trust in the Lord and be instructed by His Word and by the Spirit of God. In this you shall see that goodness and mercy shall follow you all the days of your life.
In every trial there comes a moment when we lose sight of the bigger picture. We believe that we have blown it. We believe that we have chased God away and now we feel forsaken and alone. Even our Lord Jesus cries out from the cross in a moment of despair “My God, My God why has thou forsaken me.” Scripture tells us that just before this a great darkness had come across the land from the sixth hour until the ninth hour. Three full hours of what I can only assume was a satanic darkness. A gross satanic darkness had covered the land when the Father gave His Son over into the hands of His enemies. Sometimes, we can feel consumed by the darkness around us and in the midst of certain situations.
Some time later the Lord Jesus speaks His final words from the cross “Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit.” Now He was referring to His Father, a much more intimate term than God. Praise the Lord. He had went from a time of despair to a time of intimacy. And with His last breath He committed His Spirit into the hands of His Father. The answer always lies in the hands of our Father. In Psalm 31:5 we see that David makes the same cry. He is surrounded by enemies. He said that he would rest in the mercy of God and be glad because God knew about his troubles, God saw the adversities of Davids soul. He sees your troubles brothers and sisters, He sees the afflictions of your soul. Wont you too rest in the mercy of God? When we are tempted to run, then instead we must hide under the shadow of His wing.
There is no doubt at all as we journey through this life along the narrow path that we will have many such moments. Moments of doubts and moments of despair. We wonder if we have been forgotten and then suddenly we are back in the arms of our Father in heaven, glory to God. Maybe you are having doubts today about your walk? Perhaps you feel abandoned? Yet the Lord has promised His own, that no matter what kind of situation that we find ourselves in that He would restore us and heal our wounds. Even in the valley of the shadow of death we find that there are green pastures. We have been called to lie down in them. And in that place we come to realize that goodness and mercy shall surely follow us all the days of our lives, especially, in the many dark valleys that the narrow path takes us through.
Psa 31:5 Into thine hand I commit my spirit: thou hast redeemed me, O LORD God of truth.
A Call To The Remnant 