As Little Children

This is from the blog A Word in Season:

“Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven…”

Matthew 18:3

The exceptions of God are non-negotiable. Apart from the new birth, we are bereft of the power to become child-like. His coming into our hearts is the means of our conversion and growth into the wonder of His kingdom.  Childlikeness is the nature required to enter the depths of the kingdom of heaven.

Simplicity of trust is the bedrock of a faith that glorifies our heavenly Father. Too many have missed the call of God through their own reasoning.  Like Naaman in his own wisdom almost reasoned himself out of God’s healing, we too may miss God if we do not learn to be weaned of our own understanding and inclinations.

“Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? may I not wash in them, and be clean? So he turned and went away in a rage.”
2 Kings 5:12

The stipulation for Naaman’s healing was bound to his compliance with the Word of the Lord. Its fulfillment was hidden within the simplicity of God’s way. So, it is with us. God often hides His power within the mundane. The five loaves and two fishes, the oil in the widow’s house, and the walking stick of Moses became the means for the display of God’s power.

To the widow who was about to lose her son to the creditors:

“And Elisha said unto her, What shall I do for thee? tell me, what hast thou in the house? And she said, Thine handmaid hath not any thing in the house, save a pot of oil.”
2 Kings 4:2

The Word of the Lord to Moses:

“And the Lord said unto him, What is that in thine hand? And he said, A rod. And he said, Cast it on the ground. And he cast it on the ground, and it became a serpent, and Moses fled from before it.”
Exodus 4:2-3

The salvation of God is offered freely to all who in sincerity of heart call upon His Name. However, entering the Kingdom of God is an entirely different matter. There is a cost involved, a deep work of His Spirit within, by which we enter its dominion. Read afresh the Parables of Jesus; they hold the keys and truths of His Kingdom.

There is something both unnerving and awe-inspiring in God’s ways. It is to the pure and the humble in heart that He chooses to unveil His majesty.

“but to this man will I look,
even to him, that is poor and of a contrite spirit,
and trembleth at my word”
Isaiah 66:2

The heart is the lens through which we “see” God.

His work of grace is to purify, humble, and transform us from the wisdom and pride of this world into the same mind that was in Christ Jesus, who “humbled Himself” and became obedient to the will of the Father (Philippians 2:5). Only a true child of God can obey the heavenly Father.

“The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ”
Romans 8:16-17

May we read anew the language of God and feel within His Words the invitation to become child-like in the reality of our hearts!

See Related Post: “Seeing God”

†

“…the simplicity that is in Christ”
2 Corinthians 11:3

Arguments or Obedience

“Simplicity is the secret to seeing things clearly…  You cannot think through spiritual confusion to make things clear; to make things clear, you must obey. In intellectual matters, you can think things out, but in spiritual matters, you will only think yourself into further wandering thoughts and more confusion. If there is something in your life upon which God has put His pressure, then obey Him in that matter. Bring all your “arguments and…every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ” regarding the matter, and everything will become as clear as daylight to you (2 Corinthians 10:5). Your reasoning capacity will come later, but reasoning is not how we see. We see like children, and when we try to be wise we see nothing (see Matthew 11:25).

Even the very smallest thing that we allow in our lives that is not under the control of the Holy Spirit is completely sufficient to account for spiritual confusion, and spending all of our time thinking about it will still never make it clear. Spiritual confusion can only be conquered through obedience. As soon as we obey, we have discernment. This is humiliating because when we are confused we know that the reason lies in the state of our mind. But when our natural power of sight is devoted and submitted in obedience to the Holy Spirit, it becomes the very power by which we perceive God’s will, and our entire life is kept in simplicity.”

--Oswald Chambers

Brian Troxel

The Idolatry of Intelligence - Leonard Ravenhill

Breaking off the Greek Mindset

This is from the blog Sons of Issachar:

Mike Parsons

Last time I shared with you a couple of PowerPoint slides relating to the Greek (Western) and Hebrew (Eastern) mindsets. This week I want to look just a little more closely at the contrast between them, and then I would like to pray for God to reveal where we are being robbed by our Western way of looking at things, and break it off us.

Separation vs unity

Here is the first of those slides again.

Let’s take these a line at a time.

In our Greek understanding, the goal of salvation is to escape this world and go to God’s dwelling place in heaven. So everything is focussed on what will be: very little about what is now. In Hebrew thought, the goal of salvation is to prepare a place fit for God’s dwelling here, among His people. He wants His kingdom to come on earth.

Linked with that, where does the kingdom of God exist? The Greek view says it is in heaven, not on the earth, whereas the Hebrew view is that the kingdom of God is God’s reign among people here upon the earth.

So is Jesus coming in order to take us away from this world? No, Jesus is coming to reign over and through us in this world. We need to focus on God’s kingdom being ‘now’, not separating it out. “Get your ticket now or you might miss the train”: that is, if we are honest, how many of us had the gospel presented to us.

And then: “Now you have your ticket, just hold on tight. In the end Jesus will come and rescue you”, rather than what Jesus preached: “The Kingdom of God is coming! It’s right here, right now! Get ready to serve the King and manifest the kingdom”.


Do you see how each misunderstanding arises from the previous one? Once you begin to go down the route prescribed by Western thought, you find there is more and more separation becoming entrenched in your thinking, and less and less of an understanding of the unity of God’s purpose.

Form vs purpose

If we look at the second slide, we can see how this works out in practice:



The Greek mindset looks at the form of something. For example, let’s take a tree. It has roots, a trunk, branches, leaves – that is what I mean by looking at its form. In the Hebrew way of thinking, it is more about what it is for. What is the purpose of a tree? To bear fruit. They are really not interested in the fact that it might have roots, a trunk, branches and leaves. Does it bear fruit? If not, it is of no value at all. Remember how Jesus cursed the fig tree that was not producing any fruit? It is the difference between an actual, practical outworking and just a mental, theoretical understanding.

So: Greek: what I do; Hebrew: how I do it. We can do lots of things from the wrong motive – but we know that God looks on the heart.

Greek thinking separates out our religious life from our secular life. Family, work, school, friendships on the one hand; and church on the other. But God wants His kingdom to be flowing through all of our lives, with no separation. There is no secular for us. Our lives are a whole, they are unified, and we bring the kingdom of God into everything.

In Greek thinking, the heavenly was separated from the earthly. There was no overlap. Bill Johnson wrote a book called When Heaven Invades Earth. Bottom line is, that is impossible in Greek thinking. But for us, we can live in both places: we live in the realms of heaven, and we bring that spiritual realm into our lives on earth, at the same time: not in the future but now.

‘Knowledge’ to the Greek mind is information. But to the Hebrew, you cannot know anything without experiencing it. It is all about knowledge through spiritual encounter. If all I am doing in this blog is imparting information to you, we are missing the mark. That is why from time to time I also include praying for you, which gives you the opportunity to encounter Him through the Holy Spirit and experience the reality of His truth for yourself (of course you can always pray these things through even when I don’t specifically include a prayer).

It’s not what you know, but who you know! We know God, but it is perfectly possible to read the Bible from cover to cover and have all the information, but never actually know Him. We need to encounter everything in the Word of God for ourselves.

Works, or grace. A creed or the deed. Stating what you believe, or actually living that way? Faith without works is absolutely dead. Jesus said, “If I do not do the works that my Father does, don’t believe me” (John 10:37). You don’t hear too many sermons on that verse.

We don’t analyse: we live. It is about who we are and what we do. God Himself says He is the I AM.
I want to pray now. If you think you may have any mindsets, any of the Greek way of thinking, we want to break that off right now.

[If you would like to hear an audio version of this prayer, click here.]

Father, I pray that the power of Your Holy Spirit will come.
Break any deception off our mindsets
Any way in which we have come under false doctrines,
False teachings, mindsets of the enemy,
Greek thinking that would cause us to separate our lives out.

I come, Lord, with the sword of Your Spirit,
To break that off our mindsets right now
In Jesus’ Name.
To be loosed from any control that the enemy has had over us
Through traditions of men and demonic doctrines
That put things into the future instead of the present;
That put things into heaven instead of on earth;
That have separated us out;
That have caused us to believe and not do.

I break those mindsets right now.

I break any doctrines over us that would hinder Your church
From pursuing and seeing the kingdom of God fill the earth
As it is in heaven.
Holy Spirit, come and reveal to anyone reading this
Anything which is a hindrance, an obstacle, a stumbling block
To our being able to fulfil our destiny as God’s people.
I pray that You would send gathering angels into our lives
To gather any stumbling blocks from us.
Gather them from our mind, gather them from our heart,
So that we believe and stand on the truth of Your Word
That through kingdom and covenant,
You are going to fill the earth with Your kingdom.
You are going to come back for a victorious, overcoming church
That has risen above every other thing.
Because ‘of the increase of Your kingdom there is no end’.

Empower us with the power of Your Holy Spirit
To take Your kingdom
And manifest Your kingdom through our lives,
Every day of our lives:
In work, in home, in our neighbourhood.
That we would manifest Your kingdom in power and authority
Doing the works that Jesus did.

I loose us from everything that would hinder us
From that fulfilment of Your purposes for our lives
In Jesus’ Name.

Amen.

_____

"Though swordless, these soldiers of Christ fought the might of imperial Rome and won . . .Unlettered they unblushingly declared the whole counsel of God and eventually staggered the intellectual Greeks."

--Leonard Ravenhill

De-Greecing the Church - Part 1 - David Pawson

De-Greecing the Church - Part 2 - David Pawson

Physical Sight and Spiritual Sight

Luke 17: 20-21:  “And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation:  Neither shall they say,  Lo here! or, lo there!  for behold, the kingdom of God is within you.”

Luke 17: 30:  “Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed.”  This Scripture does not say, when the Son of man is seen or observed (revelation knowledge is not the same thing as physical sight).

If someone reads the Bible, a newspaper article or a book with their physical eyes, this is not revelation.  When you come across a certain Scripture or a sentence in a newspaper article or a book and something is quickened in your spirit by the Holy Ghost—this is revelation from God.  The Lord is shining His light (revelation) upon that Scripture or that sentence—it may even be one word—so that we can better understand it.  Some people call this a Rhema Word or the Spoken Word.

“The kingdom of God cometh not with [physical] observation.”  The kingdom of God comes to purified vessels and is perceived by the spirit by the Holy Ghost.  It is a spiritual kingdom; it is not a physical kingdom that you can see with your physical eyes.

The Second Coming is not a physical Jesus coming through some physical clouds for His bride to be seen through the physical eyes.  The Second Coming is the Holy Ghost revealing the Lordship of Jesus Christ to purified vessels (dead to self) who can see with their spiritual eyes.  These people are not into the letter, but the Spirit, because the letter kills and the Spirit gives life.

Let’s say that the natural, unsaved man can see for twenty miles.  Your basic believer in Christ should be able to see for fifty miles (I am speaking figuratively).  The Christian believer is spiritually alive and should have spiritual insights that the unbeliever cannot have because the unbeliever is dead in his trespasses and sins.   Your basic prophetic Christian should be able to see one hundred miles or five hundred miles ahead of him--or you could say that the prophet can see five years or ten years or five hundred years into the future (this is why prophets are hated so much and are thought to be crazy—they see things way before other people see things and their lives and words convict people of sin).

Revelation from God is spiritual, but the Lord uses our physical bodies/senses/eyesight for His will.  The physical body is the temple of the Holy Ghost.  Our physical body/temple is used by the Lord, so that He can reveal His will to us, so that we can obey His will--this is how we develop and strengthen our spiritual sight.

In 2007, I bought my first pair of reading glasses.  As I get older, my physical sight (for reading) is growing weaker, but my spiritual sight is growing stronger.  I must decrease, so that He can increase.

A Prophet's Eyes
The Second Coming
The Kingdom of Heaven
The Prophet by A.S. Pushkin 
Breaking off the Greek mindset

“The man whom Christ illuminates with His message has eyes, and that resolves the old difficulty of blindness; but he must use his new eyes in a blind world, and that creates another problem. The world in its blindness resents his claim to sight and will go to any lengths to discredit the claim. The truth of Christ brings assurance and so removes the former problem of fear and uncertainty, but that assurance will be interpreted as bigotry by the fear-ridden multitudes. And sooner or later this misunderstanding will get the man of God into trouble. And so with many other of the blessed benefits of the gospel. As long as we remain in this twisted world, these benefits will create their own problems. We cannot escape them.
But no instructed Christian will complain. He will rather accept his problems as opportunities for the exercise of spiritual virtues. He will turn them into useful disciplines for the purification of his life and will rejoice that he is permitted to suffer with his Lord. For however severe may be a Christian’s trials, they cannot last very long, and the blessed fruit they bear will last while the ages endure.”

--A. W. Tozer