Sunday, February 24, 2019
What Made Me Weep Made Me Rejoice!
The son said to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” --Luke 15:21
The situation that makes us weep can, with a change in our attitude, make us rejoice. We say with the Prodigal Son that we are “no longer worthy.” Those three little words can be the source of pain or joy. It is the source of pain if we are trying to create worthiness. However, it can be the source of joy when we see that Jesus came to be our worth. It is interesting that so many sought to take the life of Elijah. He would not let any take it. Yet he wanted God to take his life upon this one discovery: “It is enough, take away my life, I am not better than my fathers!” He had discovered that he had no worthiness and wanted to die. We do the same thing when we fail, but God wants us to see that we lack worthiness so that we can recognize that Jesus has become our worthiness. When we see this, we will wonder why we ever sought to have worth of our own. We must see that Jesus is everything we need. Greater things than He did we will do. Can we believe it? If not, it is because we are looking to ourselves--our flesh and our efforts--for its fulfillment. We have no worthiness, but we can give up on ourselves, for Christ is in us. He is our worthiness, our strength, our holiness, our righteousness, and when we see it, He will flow through us. Seeing that which we are not must always be followed by seeing just what He is in us.What initially caused us to weep will make us rejoice.
- Mike Wells
The situation that makes us weep can, with a change in our attitude, make us rejoice. We say with the Prodigal Son that we are “no longer worthy.” Those three little words can be the source of pain or joy. It is the source of pain if we are trying to create worthiness. However, it can be the source of joy when we see that Jesus came to be our worth. It is interesting that so many sought to take the life of Elijah. He would not let any take it. Yet he wanted God to take his life upon this one discovery: “It is enough, take away my life, I am not better than my fathers!” He had discovered that he had no worthiness and wanted to die. We do the same thing when we fail, but God wants us to see that we lack worthiness so that we can recognize that Jesus has become our worthiness. When we see this, we will wonder why we ever sought to have worth of our own. We must see that Jesus is everything we need. Greater things than He did we will do. Can we believe it? If not, it is because we are looking to ourselves--our flesh and our efforts--for its fulfillment. We have no worthiness, but we can give up on ourselves, for Christ is in us. He is our worthiness, our strength, our holiness, our righteousness, and when we see it, He will flow through us. Seeing that which we are not must always be followed by seeing just what He is in us.What initially caused us to weep will make us rejoice.
- Mike Wells
Monday, February 18, 2019
Saturday, February 16, 2019
Wednesday, February 13, 2019
Patterns in the Bible
God gives us patterns in the Bible. All the patterns point to the central truth that God wants a people for Himself — a special, purified, prepared, developed, matured, loving, and capable people joined in union with Himself. All other revelations and truths are secondary to that — just as all other considerations in life should be secondary to a man’s relationship with his wife. God’s desire for such a people is the thrust of the entire message of the word of God! Everything must revolve around that truth. It was not good for man to be alone, and it was not good for GOD to be alone! He wanted offspring, and Paul tells us in Acts 17:28-29 that WE are the OFFSPRING OF GOD! Nature itself teaches us that pigs have little pigs and dogs have little dogs. And I do not hesitate to tell you that God has little gods! That is the great mystery of our sonship. “As many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the children of God” (Jn. 1:12). “Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth forever” (I Pet. 1:23). “Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I (God) said, Ye are gods? If He called them gods unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken; say ye of Him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God” (Jn. 10:34-36). Oh, yes! As children — offspring — of God, made in His image, after His likeness — we are COMPARABLE! When once we learn this one grand truth we discover our true identity and state of being and all the word of God begins to fall into place. My beloved, it is therefore in keeping that as the very first act of His sonship ministry our Lord should go yonder to a wedding in Cana of Galilee! There He went and put His seal of approval and His blessing upon it. He was there by His very presence and power to proclaim that UNION between God and man is the grand theme and purpose of God in creation and redemption!
Robert Browning poetically tells the story of Andrea del Sarto, a famous painter in Florence, Italy. In his youth, del Sarto married a woman of rare beauty. She was, however, a shallow-minded, superficial creature. She was the woman, who, with a careless swing of her skirt, smeared the noble picture he had painted in hours of great spiritual ecstasy. She filled his life with disappointment. Not because she robbed his hand of its deftness, or his mind of its genius, or his soul of its inspiration — the tragedy was this: she was heart blind; she never understood the moral majesty of his mind; she never genuinely entered into the great spiritual hunger and depth of his heart. Consequently, he could not disclose to her his noblest and best self. In like manner, the yearning of God is able to reveal Himself to us only in proportion to our spiritual development, capacity, and maturity. Methinks that many Christians have not reached the stage of growth and development in Christ which prepares them for being a bride. They have little understanding of the majesty of the mind of Christ, or the loftiness of His great and eternal plan and purposes, nor have they even begun to enter in to the deepest yearnings of His heart. Multitudes are spiritually childish — heaven to them is a vast celestial playground where they can frolic and dance and shout throughout eternity without a care or any responsibility beyond strumming a harp and polishing their crown!
- Preston Eby
Robert Browning poetically tells the story of Andrea del Sarto, a famous painter in Florence, Italy. In his youth, del Sarto married a woman of rare beauty. She was, however, a shallow-minded, superficial creature. She was the woman, who, with a careless swing of her skirt, smeared the noble picture he had painted in hours of great spiritual ecstasy. She filled his life with disappointment. Not because she robbed his hand of its deftness, or his mind of its genius, or his soul of its inspiration — the tragedy was this: she was heart blind; she never understood the moral majesty of his mind; she never genuinely entered into the great spiritual hunger and depth of his heart. Consequently, he could not disclose to her his noblest and best self. In like manner, the yearning of God is able to reveal Himself to us only in proportion to our spiritual development, capacity, and maturity. Methinks that many Christians have not reached the stage of growth and development in Christ which prepares them for being a bride. They have little understanding of the majesty of the mind of Christ, or the loftiness of His great and eternal plan and purposes, nor have they even begun to enter in to the deepest yearnings of His heart. Multitudes are spiritually childish — heaven to them is a vast celestial playground where they can frolic and dance and shout throughout eternity without a care or any responsibility beyond strumming a harp and polishing their crown!
- Preston Eby
What Is The Flesh?
Job 34:15, All flesh would perish together, and man would return to dust.
John 1:13, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.
No one can be born again by the will of the flesh, insidious in its ability to take the eyes off of Jesus. It is impossible, for in the flesh are the senses of man that constantly need feeding. One may think of them as instinct gone amok. The flesh constantly screeches for attention and has a thousand methods at its disposal to get it. Senses in the body and soul (mind, will, and emotions) are given attention whether with pain or reward, feeding or starving, or conscious avoidance or obsession. Any consideration given them keeps them alive and in charge. The greater truth is that the senses want to be activated; the lesser truth is how they are stimulated, which is by eating from the tree of good and evil. The desire for food (wish fulfillment or fantasy) will keep senses alive just as much as condemnation from eating too much. Look at the anorexic or observe the obese, and both scream “flesh in control.” Either an overwhelming desire for sex or the self-condemnation from looking at porno will loudly proclaim that the flesh has regained control. The senses in the soul lead to pride, whether in thinking of oneself as intelligent or stupid; both are still flesh, just as is thinking of what one can do or not do or of being caring or not caring. Again, flesh is simply the senses of body or soul being in control. People in the East have a tendency toward denying the flesh in an attempt to appease it, while those in the West feed it in an attempt to appease it. Of course, the Westerners do not come out ahead, in that nothing is enough to satisfy it; like a tick, flesh will feed until it explodes and destroys itself.Nor do those in the East really have an advantage, since there is ultimately no way to withhold from the flesh.
Nevertheless, the flesh is flesh and is hostile to God, which explains why flesh desires to be in control so that man is flesh-centered. If man becomes Christ-centered, the senses of flesh would not be fed but would be subdued before Christ. The flesh can never be more than a slave, and a rebellious one at that, for by the works of the flesh will no flesh be justified. Believers and non-believers alike have flesh. The saddest thing is to witness someone who has abandoned his will to flesh. I meet many Christians that struggle with the sin of homosexuality but are not homosexual, and someone meeting them would never guess their particular deed of the flesh. However, meet someone who has by choice yielded to that area of the flesh, and it is evident in his or her body. Just a few minutes with that person reveals the object of their fleshly leanings.
Now, why would God put us in flesh?I am not talking about a physical body but the accompanying anti-God desires of the senses that reside in the physical body and in the soul. Well, it has been said that the greatness of a man is not determined by what he does but rather by what he refuses to do. The man who feeds his flesh through adventure and the procession of praise for victory or the mockery for defeat is not as great a man as he who says, “Not my will but Thy will be done.” Having flesh and its senses allows man the unique opportunity of choice, of living on the earth but not being of the earth, of living to God and not to senses, and the discovery of something higher in this life, spiritual fulfillment. Flesh, or rather the call of the senses to stay alive, is a constant reminder that we must move our eyes to Jesus. It is another stronghold allowing us to stay focused. If God is for us, then who can be against us? Again, the flesh is never a friend; we may buffet it and make it a slave, but it will never be a friend. The flesh is a strange thing in that it cannot live on its own but must thrive on something that is living. It adapts to resemble the thing on which it lives, but it is not really a living thing. When man dies, his fleshly condition dies.
Boy howdy, what a piece of information that can be of such great benefit to so many.
I think of two questions that constantly grieve me:
1. how is it that Believers have Truth that our New Birth is nothing of the old (this and other great verses telling us just that), yet so many will judge the actions of flesh in observing whether they think someone has been Born Again?
2. Why do so many Believers spend so much time focused on “the flesh” instead of moving the eyes to Jesus and staying focused on Him?
What is up with “the church” these days?
John 1:13, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.
No one can be born again by the will of the flesh, insidious in its ability to take the eyes off of Jesus. It is impossible, for in the flesh are the senses of man that constantly need feeding. One may think of them as instinct gone amok. The flesh constantly screeches for attention and has a thousand methods at its disposal to get it. Senses in the body and soul (mind, will, and emotions) are given attention whether with pain or reward, feeding or starving, or conscious avoidance or obsession. Any consideration given them keeps them alive and in charge. The greater truth is that the senses want to be activated; the lesser truth is how they are stimulated, which is by eating from the tree of good and evil. The desire for food (wish fulfillment or fantasy) will keep senses alive just as much as condemnation from eating too much. Look at the anorexic or observe the obese, and both scream “flesh in control.” Either an overwhelming desire for sex or the self-condemnation from looking at porno will loudly proclaim that the flesh has regained control. The senses in the soul lead to pride, whether in thinking of oneself as intelligent or stupid; both are still flesh, just as is thinking of what one can do or not do or of being caring or not caring. Again, flesh is simply the senses of body or soul being in control. People in the East have a tendency toward denying the flesh in an attempt to appease it, while those in the West feed it in an attempt to appease it. Of course, the Westerners do not come out ahead, in that nothing is enough to satisfy it; like a tick, flesh will feed until it explodes and destroys itself.Nor do those in the East really have an advantage, since there is ultimately no way to withhold from the flesh.
Nevertheless, the flesh is flesh and is hostile to God, which explains why flesh desires to be in control so that man is flesh-centered. If man becomes Christ-centered, the senses of flesh would not be fed but would be subdued before Christ. The flesh can never be more than a slave, and a rebellious one at that, for by the works of the flesh will no flesh be justified. Believers and non-believers alike have flesh. The saddest thing is to witness someone who has abandoned his will to flesh. I meet many Christians that struggle with the sin of homosexuality but are not homosexual, and someone meeting them would never guess their particular deed of the flesh. However, meet someone who has by choice yielded to that area of the flesh, and it is evident in his or her body. Just a few minutes with that person reveals the object of their fleshly leanings.
Now, why would God put us in flesh?I am not talking about a physical body but the accompanying anti-God desires of the senses that reside in the physical body and in the soul. Well, it has been said that the greatness of a man is not determined by what he does but rather by what he refuses to do. The man who feeds his flesh through adventure and the procession of praise for victory or the mockery for defeat is not as great a man as he who says, “Not my will but Thy will be done.” Having flesh and its senses allows man the unique opportunity of choice, of living on the earth but not being of the earth, of living to God and not to senses, and the discovery of something higher in this life, spiritual fulfillment. Flesh, or rather the call of the senses to stay alive, is a constant reminder that we must move our eyes to Jesus. It is another stronghold allowing us to stay focused. If God is for us, then who can be against us? Again, the flesh is never a friend; we may buffet it and make it a slave, but it will never be a friend. The flesh is a strange thing in that it cannot live on its own but must thrive on something that is living. It adapts to resemble the thing on which it lives, but it is not really a living thing. When man dies, his fleshly condition dies.
Boy howdy, what a piece of information that can be of such great benefit to so many.
I think of two questions that constantly grieve me:
1. how is it that Believers have Truth that our New Birth is nothing of the old (this and other great verses telling us just that), yet so many will judge the actions of flesh in observing whether they think someone has been Born Again?
2. Why do so many Believers spend so much time focused on “the flesh” instead of moving the eyes to Jesus and staying focused on Him?
What is up with “the church” these days?
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