I need your prayers for His guidance. As I mentioned previously, I have considered going back to school following my retirement from the VA in a few years. I love to teach. I also love to Preach. I have never lost the desire to do it. I am a pastor not by my own devices but by a gifting from the Spirit of God that has been squelched much of my adult life. Sometimes all I want to do is move back to Alabama or some other rural area and pastor a small church. The older I get, the less all the hustle and bustle mean to me. My greatest fear is reaching the end of my life, whether in near or distant future, and having not fulfilled my life’s purpose or destiny. Don’t get me wrong, I am confident in my relationship with my heavenly Father. This is due to my reliance and trust in the worthiness of His Son, Jesus Christ. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever and he makes me a child of God. However, I want to have fulfilled my destiny in this present realm. Glimpses of that life come to me as I work in the profession that I currently work in. There are times when I can reach out to someone and even pray for someone in my current context. Those are the times I fill most fulfilled and that I believe that my life has the most meaning. To minister in this realm however, means that people must have confidence in your ability to lead. Often my decisions have affected peoples confidence in me to lead. What I am learning, however, is that God’s design was never determined by our choices, it was and is determined by His wonderful plan.
Watchman Nee, who I consider a great Chinese Christian Philosopher and anointed teacher, stated in his book The Normal Christian Life, “We are not sinners because we have sinned. We sin because we are sinners.” In other words, we are lost (born into) and can do nothing about it but God through Jesus Christ made a way.
As in one man, all die. So in one man (Jesus) shall all be made alive. (1 Corinthians 15:22)
That takes care of the “standing” problem. Salvation (simple faith and trust in Jesus Christ as the only way to the Father) takes care of the fact that I am a sinner. However, it does not put to death the flesh. That is my struggle. My flesh is very much alive. As long as it is, for me to live the way that I am describing above, it must be crucified (according to the Bible). The cross provides for that. My problem often has been my reluctance to allow the “good” parts of my flesh to be crucified daily on the cross. I just want the “bad” crucified. So, I have lived much of my adult life in frustration. The things I want to accomplish, I find myself not doing. The things that seem right to me, which lead to disappointment and unfulfillment, are the things I do. They are not necessarily “bad” things, they are just not the best things. They are not the God Breathed and Holy Spirit Anointed Things. As I am writing this I am remembering the countless times I have sang the congregational hymn, “I surrender all.” While I have sang this, I have often thought about all the “bad” things that need to be surrendered, but not the “good” things. The song says, I surrender ALL.”
What about my intellect, my wit, my personality? Not to mention my career (livelihood), my marriage, my children, my hopes, my dreams? Will God not bless those “good” things? Doesn’t he NEED them? The answer to that question is NO. He never has and he never will. Those are simply earthly characteristics that were derived from my time in this realm as an earthly man. They are the result of genetics and environment. They are the natural progression of my earthly abode. The inner man, where true change takes place, needs no personality or vehicle of communication other than the Spirit of God. The only way that I can access the Spirit of God fully is to die to everything else daily. I can’t make it die. Jesus provided the way when he died on the cross. I am to take up my cross daily and my flesh will be crucified. So simple, so profound. Jesus said that it would be easier for a camel to go through a narrow space (a needles eye-which is a narrow-short doorway) than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. The reason is that for those who are rich, they may nobly want God to use their riches and deem that to be good. No. God wants them to give up OWNERSHIP of their riches. Now that is extremely difficult to do. It doesn’t mean just telling God that it is all his, it means becoming unattached to it so that one is free to be molded into whatever the Father deems is needed and purposed. Surrender.
I’m not rich, so it is not my riches that interfere with my relationship with God but the principle is still the same. My issues are those characteristics that I am praised for in my life: my personality, my ability to talk with people, my intellect, my security. Yours may be the same or different. Anything that I depend on must suffer crucifixion if I am to be what God intended me to be. It is not an exchange that takes place in this physical realm that we live in but one that takes place in the heavenlies. That is why sometimes when people truly “give things to God” they don’t lose possession of them IN THIS REALM, (although they often do), but if they have been truly given to God, they lose all ties to them in the spiritual where true transactions take place.
We have it backwards in our scientifically influenced minds. We think that the physical controls the spiritual. But in reality, the spiritual controls the physical. I know we theoretically “know” in Christian circles that the spiritual controls the physical, however, the way we live determines whether or not we are aligned with that truth and it reveals what we truly believe.
An example may be prudent here. Have you ever ridden into a community and “sensed” the evil there? Have you actually felt the oppression and knew that the spiritual forces in operation there were mainly evil? In those kinds of places, the physical world follows the dominion of whatever spiritual forces are in power there. The conflicts and solutions to problems in our world are often truly hidden from us because we can’t see the spiritual because of the issues I outlined in my own life above. There has been no daily alignment with our death on the cross. Notice I said, “Our death on the cross.” We don’t have to put our flesh to death, it has already died in Christ. We just have to walk in that “flesh death.” I have tried to put my flesh to death many times and been unsuccessful. Th Bible doesn’t tell me to do that. I have assumed that I must put it to death but the Bible tells me otherwise. The Bible tells me that I have already been cruicified with Christ and it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives within me. What I am told to do is to walk in the Spirit. My flesh died on the cross. If I walk in the Spirit, I will be agreeing with what Christ ALREADY accomplished on the cross. It is not a question of standing (salvation). It is an issue of fruitfulness. Surrender. That is truly the problem. The Battle is truly over. All that is left is surrender. Without it, our senses are dulled to only discern what is in the physical realm. Surrender means no understanding of what we are surrendering (who can discern the mind of the Spirit?). It means just that, Surrender. When we surrender, we are led in the triumph of our Victor. We were NEVER supposed to know where we are going but we can TRUST our victor to get us there!
The prophet Elisha asked God to open the eyes of his servant so that he could see the spiritual realm (2 Kings 6:17-20). Jesus asked that the disciples and those listening would have “listening ears and seeing eyes.” (7 times and only Jesus said this). He wasn’t talking about eyes and ears attuned to the cries of “crucify him” but rather ears that hear, “Lo I am with you always, even to the ends of the earth.”
This is the answer to my struggle: The gulf between what I could be and what I am is a question of surrender.
What about you?
