Simple Devotion to Jesus

I want to greet you and share one thought this week before we start another book next week (Seven Longings of the Human Heart by Mike Bickle).

A Scripture that is a lifelong light on my spiritual path is II Cor. 11:1-3 in which the Apostle Paul warns the Corinthian church about the tendency in us to subtly move off track from simple devotion to Jesus:

"...I feel a divine jealousy for you, for I betrothed you to Christ to present you as a pure bride to her one husband. But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ."

As in the Garden of Eden, the enemy is ever on the lookout for ways to divert our attention away from simple devotion to Jesus. By diverting Eve's attention away from the Tree of Life (Jesus) onto the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, he succeeded in leading mankind into unimaginable complexities that we were never meant to have to deal with apart from union with God. His intention was that humans would focus on knowing Him in intimacy, and through Him, we would discern all that we needed to know, and there would be a blessed simplicity about profound knowledge.

The way back to God's original design is only through the Cross, through the Christ of the cross, through simple and focused devotion to Him. May the Spirit of Jesus (Whose focus and desire is Jesus) come and empower His people to focus on "this one thing", the Lord of glory, the Lamb of God!

God bless you this week. We'll cover the Preface of our new book next week.

The Pursuit of God - Week #10

Chapter Ten – The Sacrament of Living

“Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.” I Cor. 10:31

This wonderful book ends on the high note of God’s estimation of the sacredness of all aspects of our humanity. No other religion gives such honor and dignity to humanity in its entirety. God most dramatically expresses His endorsement and approval and delight over His creation of a being that is spirit, soul, and body by becoming a human Himself in Christ Jesus. But on top of that, Jesus will be the God-Man forever with a physical (though glorified and immortal) body!

This reality alone should be evidence enough to us that God loves the blending of the unseen and the seen, the spiritual and the natural. We see His pleasure in His exclamation of approval over His creation of the first Adam; then we see this pleasure manifested in His coming in the flesh Himself and in Christ’s eternal identity as the God-Man.

Tozer addresses the common human problem of separating “the sacred and the secular…Our trouble springs from the fact that we who follow Christ inhabit at once two worlds, the spiritual and the natural…Merely to live among men requires of us years of hard toil and much care and attention to the things of this world. In sharp contrast…is our life in the Spirit…we possess heavenly status and enjoy intimate fellowship with Christ. This tends to divide our total life into two departments. We come to unconsciously recognize two sets of actions…”

The two sets of actions Tozer refers to are those actions which are more directly related to the unseen (which, without faith, have no meaning to them), and those actions which have to do with all the ordinary activities of life needed to exist on this material planet.

We commonly think of the actions tied to the visible realm as unspiritual and consequently feel uneasy about spending time with this. We know they are necessary for survival but see them as unspiritual.

“The Lord Jesus Christ Himself is our perfect example, and He knew no divided life. In the Presence of His Father He lived on earth without strain from babyhood to His death on the cross. God accepted the offering of His total life and made no distinction between act and act….”

Tozer emphasizes how this sacred-secular divide is most dramatically seen in the unbiblical hatred of the body seen in some ancient Christian writings and states that one true act of consecration of our entire being (Rom. 12:1-3; Rom. 6:13) makes all our subsequent acts (the exception being sin and the flesh) expressions of that consecration.

Then Tozer addresses the reality that while we may see this truth and embrace it theologically, there are mindsets deeply ingrained in us that will keep us bound to this sacred-secular divide in spite of our doctrinal beliefs, robbing us of the joy of being human in all its dimensions. He states that long-held habits (of thinking) do not die easily.

I find it fascinating how Tozer says that we get free from this sacred-secular dilemma. When read in context, his primary solution for this dilemma is through prayer! I believe this is true because we are born fallen in our thinking and so it’s not automatic for us to think like God. In His presence and through listening to Him, we begin to have the strongholds in our thinking broken so that we align with His thoughts.

Tozer suggests practical ways that the sacred-secular divide is erased:
• By meditation on this truth, by talking it over with God often in our prayers, by recalling it to our minds frequently as we move about among men…
• It will take intelligent thought and a great deal of reverent prayer to escape completely from the sacred-secular psychology…
• Keep reminding God in our times of private prayer that we mean every act for His glory; then supplement those times by a thousand thought-prayers as we go about the job of living.

I agree with Tozer and his conclusion that without prayer and waiting on God, we cannot come to the revelation that in God there is no dichotomy. To the natural mind this doesn’t make sense to say that it is through prayer that we know there is no divide, and yet I would venture to suggest that the men and women throughout Church history who most understood the sacrament of living were those who prayed the most. Because of their dedication to the God of the place and time of prayer (Matt. 6), they became people whose entire life was a prayer. They were men and women who fully accepted their humanity and its implications and who most enjoyed God and others in whatever setting they were in.

The chapter ends with some clarifying remarks so that the reader doesn’t misunderstand and carry his theme to the wrong extreme:
• (This) does not mean that everything we do is of equal importance with everything else we do or may do…Paul’s sewing of tents was not equal to his writing of an Epistle to the Romans but both were accepted of God and both were true acts of worship…
• (This) does not mean that every man is as useful as every other man. Gifts differ in the Body of Christ. A Billy Bray is not to be compared with a Luther or a Wesley…but the service of the less gifted brother is as pure as that of the more gifted and God accepts both with equal pleasure…It is not what a man does that determines whether his work is sacred or secular, it is why he does it. The motive is everything…

There are seasons of our lives when certain duties ebb and flow, and it’s important to be in touch with this reality as well.

Above all, my admonition to the follower of Jesus in this technological age is to fight for that time in prayer (even if it’s just grabbing 15 minutes here and there through the day) so that the Spirit of God can begin to convince us of the sacrament of all living. As we practice His presence constantly (both in the secret place and in the public place), all of life will take on a charm because of His manifest Presence at all times.

I believe also that as we approach the end of the age, a corporate prayer life will be increasingly significant if we are to enter fully into what God’s mind and heart is for humanity and particularly for His Bride (all of us together). This increasing revelation will free our hearts to enjoy Him and one another in all that we do under His Lordship.

“Lord, I would trust Thee completely; I would be altogether Thine; I would exalt Thee above all. I desire that I may feel no sense of possessing anything outside of Thee. I want constantly to be aware of Thy overshadowing Presence and to hear Thy speaking Voice. I long to live in restful sincerity of heart. I want to live so fully in the Spirit that all my thought may be sweet incense ascending to Thee and every act of my life may be an act of worship. Therefore I pray in the words of Thy great servant of old, ‘I beseech Thee so for to cleanse the intent of mine heart with the unspeakable gift of Thy grace, that I may perfectly love Thee and worthily praise Thee.’ And all this I confidently believe Thou wilt grant me through the merits of Jesus Christ Thy Son. Amen.”

The Lord bless you and may the light and smile of His face shine on you this week!

The Pursuit of God - Week #9

Chapter Nine – Meekness and Rest

“Blessed are the meek; for they shall inherit the earth.” Matthew 5:5

Tozer begins this chapter by pointing out that the virtues in the Beatitudes are the exact opposite of how fallen and sinful humanity lives and functions. Pride, pleasure-seeking, arrogance, cruelty, corrupt imaginings, retaliation, resentment, etc., characterize the world…”Of this kind of moral stuff civilized society is composed. The atmosphere is charged with it; we breathe it with every breath and drink it with our mother’s milk. Culture and education refine these things slightly but leave them basically untouched…”

Into this kind of world Jesus came and not only taught a radically different lifestyle but lived it perfectly. The Sermon on the Mount reveals the lifestyle of the Kingdom of God. In this teaching, “Jesus is not offering an opinion…He never guessed; He knew, and He knows. His words were not as Solomon’s were, the sum of sound wisdom or the results of keen observation…And His words were supported by deeds mightier than any performed on this earth by any other man. It is wisdom for us to listen.”

In Matthew 11:28-30 Jesus applies this simple word on meekness to our lives: “Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

In this portion Jesus speaks of two contrasting realities: a burden and rest…
“The burden borne by mankind is a heavy and a crushing thing. The word Jesus used means a load carried or toil borne to the point of exhaustion. Rest is simply release from the burden. It is not something we do, it is what comes to us when we cease to do. His own meekness, that is the rest.”

Tozer says that there are three sources of such a burden:
• Pride
• Pretense
• Artificiality

1. Pride is a very heavy burden because it brings with it pain and stress over others’ opinions of oneself. “The heart’s fierce effort to protect itself from every slight, to shield its touchy honor from the bad opinion of friend and enemy, will never let the mind have rest. Continue this fight through the years and the burden will become intolerable. Yet the sons of earth are carrying this burden continually, challenging every word spoken against them, cringing under every criticism, smarting under each fancied slight, tossing sleepless if another is preferred before them…Jesus calls us to His rest, and meekness is His method.

“The meek man cares not at all who is greater than he, for he has long ago decided that the esteem of the world is not worth the effort…The meek man is not a human mouse afflicted with a sense of his own inferiority. Rather he may be in his moral life as bold as a lion and as strong as Samson; but he has stopped being fooled about himself. He has accepted God’s estimate of his own life. He knows he is as weak and helpless as God has declared him to be, but he knows at the same time that he is in the sight of God of more importance than angels. In himself, nothing; in God, everything…he rests perfectly content to allow God to place His own values…In the meantime he will have attained a place of soul rest…he will be happy to let God defend him…He has found the peace which meekness brings.”

I can speak from experience that the business of attempting to manage people’s opinions and expectations of me is very draining work; as the fear of the Lord has increased in me (through knowing His unchanging love and affection for me), the need for others’ approval has lost its hold on me, resulting in increasing inner rest.

2. Pretense - the common human desire to put the best foot forward and hide from the world our real inward poverty. “There is hardly a man or woman who dares to be just what he or she is without doctoring up the impression. The fear of being found out gnaws like rodents within their hearts.” Tozer goes on to say that this manifests in our fear that someone will show up who is smarter or richer or more talented than I am. It is the sin of envy and is the opposite of what we see in children and in the child-like. “Little children do not compare; they receive direct enjoyment from what they have without relating it to something else or someone else…”

3. Artificiality - the means by which we conceal our true inner condition; it is closely associated with pretense. Our culture has whole industries designed to help us know how to appear a certain way in order to conceal who we truly are. “Artificiality is one curse that will drop away the moment we kneel at Jesus’ feet and surrender ourselves to His meekness…Then what we are will be everything; what we appear will take its place far down the scale of interest for us. Apart from sin we have nothing of which to be ashamed.”

I recommend a wonderful series on meekness, The Sweet Aroma of Meekness, by Allen Hood from the International House of Prayer. (This recorded series can be downloaded from the IHOP website: www.ihop.org.) In it Allen says that the way to meekness is to look at Jesus, the meek One. In other words, we don’t become meek because we study about it nor because we grit our teeth and decide to act like we are meek; we become meek by beholding Meekness Himself (the principle of II Cor. 3:18 – becoming by beholding). Only Jesus lived and walked this reality in fullness. So once again, taking the time to worship Him, contemplating His beauty in meekness, is where we start and where we continue in this partnership with Him under His easy yoke and light burden. Christ in us is our only hope of living a life of inner rest.

The eternal ramifications of embracing meekness are staggering! It is the meek ones that will inherit the earth!! This momentary, light burden of meekness and self-forgetfulness will result in an eternal inheritance for those that embrace it. Along with the Meek One, we will enjoy rulership over the earth forever! Praise be to Him!

“Lord, make me childlike. Deliver me from the urge to compete with another for place or prestige or position. I would be simple and artless as a little child. Deliver me from pose and pretense. Forgive me for thinking of myself. Help me to forget myself and find my true peace in beholding Thee. That Thou mayest answer this prayer, I humble myself before Thee. Lay upon me Thy easy yoke of self-forgetfulness that through it I may find rest. Amen.”

God bless you the week with His manifest presence! Next week we will finish the book with chapter 10, The Sacrament of Living.