By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation works patience; And patience, experience; and experience, hope: And hope makes us not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.(Rom 5:2-5)
The opening verse to this chapter reads “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” We have peace through our Lord Jesus Christ. And through Him we can rejoice in hope and the glory of God. Yet we are told that we do not just glory in God, we glory in our tribulations. Imagine that, glorying in our trials and our tribulations, in our sufferings. You will not hear that preached in Charismatic circles. Like Job’s friends they would accuse a suffering saint of sin, or lack of faith. They have tried to turn faith into a weapon that destroys and nullifies suffering and trials and tribulations. Yet faith is what gives us access to grace. By trusting in God we glory in His unmerited favor. By trusting in His Son, the Lord Jesus and His work on Calvary we enter into the glory.
In order to flesh out this blessed hope, we have to learn from suffering and tribulations. We learn patience and trust which leads to hope. Therefore tribulations is the birthplace of hope. By patiently enduring our cross, we begin to see how much the flesh dominates us. As we stand there in the fire, the flesh begins to burn away. And yes, if one were to peer into your trials and tribulations they would see the Son of man standing there with you. And this hope that is forged in the fires of trial and tribulation causes us to be strong in the Lord and the power of His might. We are not ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ for we know it is the power of God unto salvation.
Those who patiently endure and overcome shall stand in that day, unashamed of our Lord, for He has walked with us, every step of the way, through the high mountain passes and in the depths of the valleys. The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts for our Lord for He has been our companion through it all. He has stuck closer than a brother. He has been so faithful to us and therefore we could never deny Him. This is our strength. This is our glory, the glory of the God that dwells within us by the power of the Holy Spirit. Our closest companion, the lover of our souls and the one who has never left us not forsaken us. This knowledge, lived out in our lives, is the hope and the glory.
The sands of time are running low
Yet the river still continues to flow
It flows for you and it flows for me
And it still flows from Calvary
His Blood cries out and still it saves
It pulls men out from stormy waves
His Blood shall never ever fail
In the shadow of the Almighty we shall prevail
Who shall stand in the final hour
Who is held by His great power
Who shall rise above the flood
Those who are covered by His precious Blood
His Blood is still a mystery
It echos down through history
Those who are dying they fail to see
That victory was nailed to a Bloody tree
And from that tree it flows still yet
For you and for me and for our debt
We surely owed what we could not pay
Yet our sins were surely washed away
Washed and delivered I know not why
Yet the Son of God He came to die
And on that cross He took our place
Our sins were forgiven, were surely erased
And now I stand high above the flood
Washed and redeemed and covered by His Blood
Who shall take me out of His hand
There is none there is none for In Him I stand.
Thank you Jesus, for you died for me
Thank you Jesus for you set me free
Thank God in heaven that He sent His only Son
Thank you Father in heaven for victory won.
Luk 6:32 For if you love them which love you, what credit is that to you? For sinners also love those that love them.
It is said about free speech that it only really counts when you tolerate speech that is extremely offensive to you. That is actual free speech. If you only tolerated speech that you like, then you are actually devoid of toleration and you are a totalitarian. You are headed down the road of dictatorship, the same road that Mussolini went down, the same road that Hitler and Stalin went down, the same road that every tyrant went down and all of them ended in pure hatred and destruction of whole groups of people. When I first came to America, it was liberals who defended neo-nazi groups and the argument went something like this “I hate what they are saying, but I will die defending their rights to say it.” It was liberals who had the saying “live and let live,” meaning let everyone do their own thing, lets not compel anyone to be something they are not. You do not have to major in political science to know just how much that has turned around in 30 years, the former guardians of free speech have now traded places with those who would have suppressed it. So, only tolerating speech you like is no toleration at all but rather it is the opposite, it is fascism.
For if you love them which love you, what credit is that to you? For sinners also love those that love them(Luk 6:32) Jesus is saying, in effect, “so you love those who love you, big deal, everybody does that.” True love, Jesus love, is measured by how much we love those who do not love us. How do we react to those who do not like us? To those who hate us? To those who reject us. To those who cheat us and harm us? Are we just like the world or do we have something supernatural inside of us, Jesus, that has changed our very disposition? Too often brothers and sisters we are just like the world, it should not be so. The world only tolerates those who agree with them, they do not have love they have hate. How about us? Do we love even when we are not tolerated? Do we render evil for evil? Imagine if God the Father had rendered evil for evil? We would all be dead and rotting in an eternity separated from our Creator.
If we can recognize the truth of what free speech means, then surely we must recognize the truth of what true love is? It blossoms not on decadent beds of roses that we ourselves made, no, it blossoms in the fire and the dungeon and the heat of hatred. True love finds its expression when it is reviled. True love finds its expression in the arms of forgiveness. It is cradled in a cot of mercy. When it is attacked it has the opportunity to render its attacker of their true power, the power they have over you. True love stands alone atop the highest mountain for all to see. It is unsullied by the rage of human emotions and is grounded in the will of man surrendered to the heart of God by the power of the Holy Spirit. As the days darken, true love, the love of God, will be assaulted on every side and if we respond correctly then God shall be filled glorified around the world “for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of God as the waters cover the sea.” Let us glorify God in this manner.
Mat 5:28 But I say unto you, That whoever looks on a woman to lust after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart.
God does not give a person a new body when he or she is saved, the body is the same, but a new disposition is given. God alters the mainspring-He puts love in place of lust. (Oswald Chambers)
He alters the mainspring. The mainspring in a clock regulates the workings of it. It’s the central force that propels all of the gears and wheels within the mechanism. God alters the force that drives us. Lust is a powerful force. Rage and anger is a powerful force. Greed and desire is a powerful force. They all rage against the spirit and demand to be heard, demand to be obeyed. It must be satiated. It knows it’s time is short and its moment will pass quickly. Love is sacrificial and is patient and kind and it waits. Lust is self serving and demanding and simply takes what it wants. It is blind to the consequences of its actions. Rage is the same. Adultery and murder, they both take what they want in the heat of the moment and so many times there is a lifetime of reckoning. Esau with his appetites sells his birthright and Jacob waits patiently for seven years for Rachel.
Love is always the antidote. The sermon on the mount is a breakdown of love and how is actually operates. For God so loved the world……..Jesus being the expression of that love. He loved us when He created us and He created us in His image. We are designed to love as He loves. It break the bonds of murder and lust. It does not rage that it is compelled to carry a load a mile, it carries it two miles. It does not rage that it is assaulted rather it loves the one who assaulted it. “So that the world will know that You sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” What manner of love is this? God sent His only Son to show us what love looks like. He walked out the sermon on the mount and completed it on Calvary as He cried out “forgive them Father.” Only through Jesus can we know this love. Only through the Holy Spirit can we love as He has loved.
This is our calling brothers and sisters. The Holy Spirit is the mainspring of our lives. It is by His power and His force alone that we can sail upon the ocean of this life. We can have sails but without the wind of the Spirit where are we going? We would founder and die in the doldrums where there is no wind. In order to wind up the mainspring there has to be a key, Jesus is the key to everything and the Holy Spirit is the power. The word of God alone will not give us the power to walk as we have been taught to walk by Jesus, the word must be combined with the Spirit. Look at the word “word.” Now add an S to it. It becomes “sword.” The S is the Spirit and when we combine it with the Word then we have the power of the s-word which pierces even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.
Many evangelical churches and most pentecostal or charismatic churches you go into today, raise their hands in worship. Like everything else in Christendom, there can be the mechanical act of doing something because it is supposed to be done, or there can be the true living dynamic response to the very presence of the Living God. Every single aspect of the natural worship of Christianity can be reduced to some dusty empty ritual that has long since replaced the living reality of God’s manifest presence. It is interesting when you watch secular concerts that you see arms aloft all over the stadium or concert hall, swaying to the rhythm of the song. Good music entertains us and can move us, Gods manifest presence invades every part of who we are and never leaves us the same. It creates in us a thirst that can never be quenched by anything other than His presence. It tears down and builds up, it raises us up from the dark valley floor to the lofty heights of His glory.
There is the presence of God to be found in glorious, enthusiastic and energetic worship, the kind of worship that lifts your spirit. It can lift up the head and invigorate the heart and fill you full of joy and you leave strengthened. This is good worship. Yet there is another kind of presence of God in worship, the kind of presence that there seems to be such a famine of throughout the land. The first kind of presence we spoke of lifts your heart, the second kind of presence invades every part of who you are. It falls from heaven like a heavy dew, heads are lowered and hands are raised. All becomes quiet, one barely breathes as the Spirit of God slowly penetrates our very being and the ground upon which we stand becomes Holy ground. It saturates our very DNA.
The first kind of presence uplifts us, the second changes us fundamentally. As living waters pour into us then it rises up like a great river that is so full that it overflows its banks. The banks themselves begin to crumble and fall into this river of pure life as it swells up and floods every part of who we are. The landscape is being changed by this flood, the very topography of our lives is being altered by its powers and everything that is not securely rooted to Godly foundations are simply swept away. Changed forever. And when the flood recedes we are left with a glorious afterglow. As the deer pants for the water-brooks, I wonder, do our hearts pant after this kind of encounter.
The Lord Himself does not need professional worship teams. He does not need people to encourage us to stand up, jump up and down and raise our hands. In the Welsh revival two young women singing either acapella or simply backed by a piano typically sang “Here is love, vast as the ocean.” And there was love, in the very midst of them, vast as the ocean, flooding the hearts and minds of all who attended. Brothers and sisters, in all our modernity, what have we lost? In the program of churches and the professional class of worshiper leaders and pastors we have lost the simplicity of it all. And in the losing of it we now have to entertain the people. Spirit led worship is exactly that, it is Spirit led.
In work we have a routine. In life we have a routine. Prisoners in prison have a routine. Oftentimes we are slaves to the routine, it is what gets us through life. Yet, there is nothing routine about the Holy Spirit of the Living God. He is dynamic and you can never know what way the wind will blow next. Have we sold our souls for a routine? Routine in the home, routine at work, routine at church. Routine people do not change the world. Routine people do not do wage war on the battle-fields of life. The Spirit of God is dynamic and those filled with His “dynamis,” change the environment around them because the environment inside them has been filled to capacity and is overflowing its banks. Lord fill us again to overflowing with the kind of presence that invades every part of who we are.
2Co 5:17 Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.
The man that has fallen to the lowest depths of despair over his sin, knows something of the magnificent heights of God’s mercy and forgiveness. The thoroughly broken man, whom no-one can put back together, knows something of the glorious redemptive restorative touch of God. The man who has walked in the gross darkness of this world, knows something of the impenetrable light of God that penetrates and dispels all darkness.
The man who has walked an age with a heart of stone, knows all too well the glory of a new heart of flesh, one that can love and feel the warmth of another’s love. The lame man who could not walk knows something of the exhilaration of having his strength renewed and restored so that he could run and not grow weary.
Each one of these men came to the intersection of their fallenness and Gods glory. When we encounter that glory in the depths of our fallen humanity then we are transformed and transported from a world of darkness to the kingdom of light. Where once we were blind we now have eyes that can see. Where once was the eternal overcast skies that hemmed us in, there now is a perpetual blue heaven that crowns the kingdom skies.
So to you who dwells in despair. Reach out to God. To you who are broken, cry out to the one who makes beauty from the ashes of our lives. To you who are covered in darkness shout out with all of your might to the one to whom even the darkness is light. If you have a cold hard heart, then search for the one who will give you a new one, He shall be found by you. Glory to God.
One of my favorite lines from a President was from FDR in 1933 in the middle of the greatest depression the modern world had ever seen. The whole world was in a terrible depression, lives ruined, people faced a bleak future with no real hope on the horizon. He stood up and said “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” The press of today would have torn into FDR and mocked him for not being afraid. Their focus would have been on the numbers. Daily they would remind people of how bad it was and would ignore any good news. They would accuse him of having no empathy and would be screaming “we’re all going to die man.” It would have been the typical talk of cowards down through the ages.
Just one week after Dunkirk, when the British backs were to the wall. When the might of the British army had to run for their lives from the Germans and all of Europe lay under the gross darkness of the Nazis, Churchill stands up in the British Parliament and spoke these words……………
We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.
He did not focus on what his enemy was doing, he focused on what the British people were going to do despite their enemy. This is what leaders do, they lead. They do not lead from behind, they lead from from the front. They do not lay down and die, crying in some huddle, they stand up and fight and if they die in the process of that fight then so be it. Never in the history of the world was the battle cry ” we’re all gonna die man.” That is the whimpering cry of the cowards.
Christian, our Lord has said to us that He did not give us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and a sound mind. A sound mind is a disciplined mind. Self control in the face of dire circumstances. That is power, the power of God. Only when walking in that kind of power can we truly love. When others all around us are losing their minds then our own sound minds will stand our like a city set upon a hill. Can people see that power in you? Do not run with the cowards or with the faint of heart.
God says to Job in chapter 40 “Stand up like a man and brace yourself for battle.” The Lord was not talking in a still small voice, this came out of the whirlwind. Brothers and sisters, we are in the midst of a whirlwind. Stand up like a man and brace yourself for battle. Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency; and array thyself with glory and beauty. Who can stand against God? Who can make himself a thing of beauty? The truly strong man is the man who humbles himself before the Living God. The man who who understands his true nature understand that the only beauty that exists is the beauty and the glory of God.
The power that we have, the only power that we have is the power that we have been given by the Spirit of God. When we move in that power, when we move in that love then fear is cast out and we are free to live our lives boldly no matter what set of circumstances that we face. It is time to be bold saints. If you are afraid today, get it right. If certain brave men in the flesh can do mighty things, then what can we do, we who love Jesus? We can do all things through Christ who strengthens us.
” It is amazing how unbelieving a believer can become. One might as well call Christ a liar, and His apostles false witnesses of God, as to deny that God is going to have a Body functioning in absolute unity of the Spirit, with each member in his proper place, and all members working together as one harmonious whole. Here again, there is only one reason why ” believers” refuse to believe it, and it is because we have never seen it wither in our own experience or in the history of the church…….The churches long and bitter history of disunity and strife does not prove that God’s word means disunity when it speaks of unity. If God said it, it is going to come to pass; and if Jesus prayed for it, all the devices of Satan cannot prevent the glorious fulfillment of that prayer of faith.” ( George Warnock)
I read this passage from George Warnock the other day as I was reading a small book by him a friend and brother from Canada sent me. He sent it a couple of years ago and I am just getting around to reading it. It is always exciting when God confirms a word that He gave to you and that is what the above passage was for me. The Lord burned the above truth into my spirit last year. I was out walking in the springtime last year and I came to the entry point of a path that I walk. I was amazed when I looked down the small hill. The path was gone, and had been replaced by a raging river that could not be crossed. The Spirit of God fell on me and He began to show me things.
Jesus says ” In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. ” (Joh 14:2 ) Jesus has already prepared a place for us. Can I ask you if you have taken possession of that place and abide there? This place that the Lord went ahead of us to prepare, is a place in which we abide in and walk in. It takes faith to enter into this place, in the first verse of John 14 Jesus compels us to believe in Him. We must believe in the Lord, we must walk in trust and in faith, this is the walk of the Kingdom.
“And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.” (Joh 14:3) Brothers and sisters, Jesus is the way, the truth and the life and that way and truth and life is found in Him and in Him alone. He has called us to be where He is, this is the place of abiding, this is the place that the Lord has prepared for us. It is not a future event, although it will find its fulfillment then when we are raised in incorruption, it is a present reality. The Lord begins the chapter by telling us ” Let not you hearts be troubled.” This place that the Lord has prepared for us is not a troubled place, it is not a place that is filed with anxiety, it is a place of trust and of rest and of peace as we walk in the place and way that He has prepared for us. In this place we abide in His truth and as we follow His way and abide in His truth we are filled with His life.
And ultimately life is the proof , the fruit, the evidence of the place in which we abide. All those who abide in God , in that place which was prepared for us, will have the life of God in them and they will have it abundantly. Jesus walked in this place when He walked on the earth. Jesus did not say that He had come to show us the way, He said that He was the way. The way, the place of abiding, the place prepared for us is no place at all but is Jesus Himself, He is our place of abiding and in that place, in that perfect place, all fear is cast out. We must not be drawn away from this place, for Jesus is the eye of the storm and in the midst of the storms of life, there is perfect peace when we stay there.
Because of the nature of hurricanes, there can be no winds in the very eye, the winds revolve around the center and there is a place created at the very heart of every storm where its devastation cannot manifest itself. Now all around there can be madness and chaos, but at the very heart there is a place of peace, Jesus is our peace and this was His walk on the earth. he too was surrounded by trial and temptation. He incurred the wrath of men as He disrupted the established order of the day, He learned obedience through suffering, He was rejected and despised by men, all around Him there was a constant storm, but He abided with His Father and in that place He overcame the storms of life.
If you are where Jesus is and you abide there, you too will overcome the storms of life. They will follow you no doubt, they will surround you as you walk in Godliness and walk in the Spirit, but they will not destroy you and the life of Christ in you will manifest itself to the world and the world will be amazed at the life you exhibit despite the storms that surround you. It is because of the storms of life that the world is amazed at the life of Jesus in you. To Him who keeps us in His perfect peace, who stands with us through all the storms of life and preserves us in the very midst of them, to Him belongs all the glory.
There is a fundamental shift taking place in our world. God is preparing His children for a paradigm shift in attitude towards them. For many generations in the west there has been a general accepting attitude of Christianity.
And He said to them, When I sent you without purse and wallet and sandals, did you lack anything? And they said, Nothing.And He said to them, But now, he who has a purse, let him take it, and likewise his wallet. And he who has no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one. Luk 22:35-36
When Jesus sent out His Disciples by twos, they encountered many blessings and walked in the miraculous. So much so that Jesus had to remind them sternly that they were not to rejoice in the fact that they had power over demons or signs and wonders but they were to rejoice in their salvation, a fact lost on many today. Salvation is always the focus of those who truly follow Jesus. Now in Luke 22 we see Jesus preparing His disciples for a sea change in attitude towards them. No longer would they find a warm and accepting attitude towards them, in fact quite the opposite.
As the Lord approaches, as we enter into the times of sorrow, as the birth pangs are beginning that marks the imminent rise of the anti-christ and therefore the return of our Lord and Saviour, we must be on guard and heed the warnings of the Word of God. Jesus plainly told us to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of Herod.( Mar 8:15)
Pharisees and Saducees
Now the leaven here is plainly speaking of false doctrine. And so it is helpful to know who are those who opposed Jesus and why. For the same spirits that opposed Jesus ( we do not wrestle against flesh and blood) are still alive and well and will oppose Jesus, in His followers, and all the more so as that day approaches. So those who opposed Jesus were the Pharisees, the Sadducees and the Herodians. As we describe who they are, you must discern who represents these groups today and see if the motivations which existed in the days of Jerusalem , still exist today. I would argue that they do and that the battle will be the same, just set against a different backdrop.
“Our Saviors love would render the deepest ocean to but a single tear from the Masters eye. The sun that blazes brilliantly in the sky, but a spark compared to our Lords burning passion. The universe and all others combined, smaller than the smallest chamber of His heart. This is the God we serve; this is the Jesus of the Gospels; this is Jesus, God amongst us.” Read the rest of this entry »
You have gathered here today in defiance of darkness and tyranny. You have come here to fight as free men and free men you are, for it is I that gave you that very freedom. So you see with your eyes that you are few and they are many, you see that you are vastly outnumbered. Will you fight today? Read the rest of this entry »
In the Old Testament, God poured out fire from heaven and we were touched by His presence. Two thousand years ago, He sent an all consuming fire to walk the earth. And although our Lord Jesus returned to His rightful place at the right hand of our Heavenly Father, the fire of our life came and dwelt in the very midst of our new hearts Read the rest of this entry »
“Everywhere I go I also find that Americans are very proud of their country and rightly so. Yet the pundits that I mentioned above tear into the very fabric of the soul of this country. Day after day spewing out divisiveness and hatred, and for what ? Money, fame , influence? Well they have all that but look at the landscape of their legacy.”
A Call To The Remnant 