We Would See Jesus - Chapter Five

Chapter Five - Seeing Jesus as the Door

Last week we looked at our need to see Jesus as the Truth and how, in His light, we see our true condition even after we have come into the Kingdom. Seeing this about ourselves can leave us with a sense of despair unless we understand that Jesus is not only the Truth but He is the Door by which we can enter into God's life and fullness and out of our lostness.

Jesus as the Door is a reality that we believers need just as much as those who enter in initially to His kingdom through Him. We keep entering in to all that God has in store for us through Christ alone, no other way; so we need to see Him as the Door throughout our entire journey in this life.

The fact that Jesus calls Himself the Door implies that there is a barrier, a wall, that hinders us from access to all that God is and has. Anyone who has seriously gone after God has encountered this wall.

I was struck by the authors' language about how often believers encounter this wall between the soul and God, because lately I've been pondering the fact that being a "prodigal son" doesn't just apply to those who have wandered away from God through blatant sin but also to those of us who wander away from Him in more respectable or disguised ways: "Though we have been restored from the 'far country' of original sin, sin may yet come in, perhaps in more subtle forms, and we find ourselves as a result in other 'far countries', smaller but none the less real - the 'far country' of jealousy, or of resentment, or of self-pity, or of compromise with the world. And there always arises 'a mighty famine in that land' (as it did for the Prodigal Son), and we begin to be in want.

It is not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord (Amos 8:11). Who of us does not know the coldness of heart towards the Lord, the apparent deadness of the Sacred Page and the accumulating defeats in other areas of life..."

The authors point out that the way back is not through trying to stop the sinning but through humbling ourselves and turning to Him as the Door into fellowship with God: "Jesus does not merely show us the Door; He Himself is the Door. This is God's great gift of love to a prodigal world - a never-failing Door back to peace and satisfaction, if we will but turn and see Him standing so near and accessible to us. And such a Door is He, that neither preparatory steps nor subsequent steps are necessary to enter into what we need. In simply coming to Him we have passed from one spiritual condition to another, for He is Himself both the blessing needed and the Door to it."

Although this sounds academic to those of us who have been around the Gospel a long time, it is a profound and offensive truth to the flesh! It takes the revelatory work of the Spirit for this to renew our mind related to the Gospel and God's ways. The words "neither preparatory steps nor subsequent steps are necessary to enter into what we need. In simply coming to Him we have passed from one spiritual condition to another" are profound. As fallen and sinful humans we want to present ourselves as deserving to God and then come to Him for salvation; or once we have entered through the Door initially, we keep wanting to fix ourselves before approaching Him. The irony of this is that only He can "fix" us, so we must come to Him just the way we are without being fixed if we are to receive His life and blessing and fullness.

The last part of the chapter presents four essential things that we need to understand about Jesus as the Door in order to experience Him as such:

1. We must see Him as the open Door. Through His death, He ripped open the veil that separated the sinner from God. "What appear to be the obstacles - man's coldness, unbelief, and such sins, are the very things that qualify him for this Door, provided he will acknowlege them, for it is a Door for people who are characterized by just such sins..."
2. We must see Him as the Door which opens on street level. In other words, "...open for the failure as a failure, and not merely for us when we have become a little more successful. The Jews in the New Testament could easily believe that there was salvation for the Gentile, if he was circumcised and became a Jew. What they could not and would not believe was that there was salvation for the Gentiles as a Gentile, without becoming a Jew at all."
3. We must see Jesus as a low Door; in other words, we must bow low in repentance in order to enter through this Door. "So often the way in which we repent to God and sometimes apologise to another shows that we have not truly judged ourselves. We betray the fact that we feel...that we have acted out of character with our true selves...The truth is we have not acted out of character but in accordance with our true form, as declared to us by that Figure hanging on the Cross for us!"
4. We must understand that this Door is a narrow Door. "As we get nearer to that place of repentance the path gets narrower...We can no longer be lost in the crowd...At last when we come to the One who is the Door Himself, there is not room even for two...If you are going to enter, you will have to stand there utterly alone.

Lord, grant us revelation of our need of you always and the grace to simply come to you as we are. I ask you for an increase of grace in my own life to enter into the fullness of God through the Door, Jesus Christ, and not through my own self-righteousness. Thank You that this is what You do so well! Thank You, Lord Jesus, for being the Door and for being so accessible because of Your blood and sacrifice. We love you!

Next week - Chapter Six: Sinai or Calvary?

We Would See Jesus - Chapter Four

Chapter Four: Seeing Jesus as the Truth

In the previous chapter, the authors spoke of Jesus as the One Who fills every human need; in this chapter they begin to focus in on what some of those human needs are.

"What, then, is our first and basic need? It is to know the truth - about ourselves and about God. Until we do so, we are living in a realm of illusion and we are impervious to the word of grace; it seems largely irrelevant to our case. The breaking in of the truth about ourselves and about God, and the shattering of the illusion in which we have been living, is the beginning of revival for the Christian as it is of salvation for the lost."

The writers go on to speak at length of the self-deception that we live in and how much we need a revelation both of our own sinfulness and of God's love for us. They give a brief study on the Old Testament sacrifices and of Jesus being crucified "outside the camp" (Heb. 13:11-13), and the implications of that related to the profound fallenness and sinfulness of humans. (I hope you have the book and will read this chapter, because I'm not going to try to summarize it much this time.)

I want to focus briefly on the opening quote above from this chapter; I'm finding increased desire within me to be filled with light, the light of God in Christ Jesus. And so I've been asking the Holy Spirit for the gift of conviction and of contrition, true godly sorrow over my condition apart from Him.

As the authors suggest, truth must break in by the power and grace of the Holy Spirit, or we "live in a realm of illusion" and grace seems irrelevant to our situation. Why would I need the grace and mercy of God if I have no revelation of my need and my lostness even as His child?

I've lived many years in the Lord without a deep appreciation and desperate sense of need of His grace because I have ignorantly lived in the world of religion, my mind darkened by the illusion of being right because of adherence to the law (religious conformity). I'm grateful for the measure of light I've had but am increasingly desirous to know Jesus (the Truth) more fully.

Getting a doctrine correct is not the same as knowing the Truth, Who is Christ Jesus; I've discovered that any clever person can manipulate truth when it's just words. But when I encounter Truth as a Person, I find He cannot be manipulated and won't be conformed to my image.

And so I love how this chapter ends with John 3:20,21 "...everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does the truth come to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen..." The authors point out that while we would expect the contrast of "practicing evil" to be "doing good", Jesus doesn't say that. He says that the contrast of practicing evil is to "do the truth," in other words, it's to be honest in regard to our evil.

This honesty about our evil must be the work of the Holy Spirit; we can be just as religious about saying how bad we are (when there is not true conviction by the Holy Spirit) as when we deceive ourselves about not having sin.

And so we are happily at the mercy of God, and the best thing we can do is to cry out for His break-in of truth, and He will do it in His time and in His way. All He asks of me is that I obey whatever I believe He is saying to me (within the boundaries of His Word and of His nature).

So, Spirit of Jesus, Spirit of Truth, come and fill us with Light...once again I ask you for the gift of conviction of sin and a godly sorrow that empowers us to "do the truth" so that we are a people who can more fully receive and celebrate Your grace and love! We love You, our Lord...thank You for hearing our prayer.

Next week's chapter is chapter 5: Seeing Jesus as the Door.

We Would See Jesus - Chapter Three

Chapter Three: Seeing Jesus as All We Need

Roy and Revel Hession write wonderfully about the name of Jesus in this chapter. They draw from the Old Testament revelation of "Jehovah" and the two-fold meaning of that name:

1. The "I AM", the Ever-present One, "who stands outside of time and to whom there is no past nor future, but to whom everything is present...To Him our lives with their past and future are all present; our yesterdays as well as our tomorrows are all now to Him"
2. The grace of God...in other words, while "I AM" speaks of His utter completeness in Himself, the further revelations of Him in the Old Testament (the name "Jehovah" compounded with another word, such as Jehovah-Shalom, etc.) reveal Who He is related to humans. "...the moment human need and misery present themselves, He becomes just what that person needs...The name 'Jehovah' is really like a blank cheque. You can fill in what he is to be to you - just what you need, as each need arises..."

The Old Testament reveals seven compound names for Jehovah, and these are known by those of us who love and know God. But the focus of this book is to fix our eyes on the "supreme compound of Jehovah - JESUS."

The name Jesus means "I am your Salvation." This introduces the idea that man is not only in need of help in our weakness and brokenness but in our sinfulness. Our greatest need is for a Savior and Lord in our sinful state. The authors go on to say,

"...where there is sin, there is always Jesus - seeking to forgive sin and recover all the damage that it has caused. He is not shocked at human failure; rather He is at home in it, drawn by it, knowing what to do about it, for he in Himself and in His blood is the answer to it all...God, in giving Him to be the answer to our sin, has given Him to be the answer to all our other needs, both spiritual, moral and material, for 'how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?' (Rom. 8:32)"

And so we must see ourselves as sinners (not just theoretically but under the Spirit's conviction) if we are to have a revelation of the beauty of Jesus..."Apart from seeing ourselves as sinners, we shall see no beauty in Jesus that we should desire Him."

This week as I re-read this, I fell in love with the Lord Jesus once again (this is a lifelong experience with each fresh illumination from the Spirit about Jesus). In recent years I have come to realize how hopelessly lost I am without Him and how I need Him to save me every day from sin and selfishness. And He does it as I lean heavily on Him. Because of my life history within the "holiness" movement (both in upbringing and in the mission that I've been a part of), I lived many years of my life in God with subtle spiritual arrogance about my condition in God. I love what the Spirit has given me through the holiness movement but realize now that it is only a piece of the truth of the living God.

Now I'm much "happier" in a fuller revelation of my need and of the One Who satisfies my every need, whether it be forgiveness of sins or strengthening of my inner life or my physical body, etc. I'm no longer surprised at my sin and weakness and am learning more each day to run to Him immediately rather than stay afar from Him in my spiritual pride.

Like the Shulammite in Song of Songs, I am discovering Him to be "altogether lovely (beautiful)"! He is the "I AM", fully complete in Himself while He is also the grace of God poured out lavishly in being the "I AM _____ (the name that answers whatever the need is)". The cross is more meaningful and beautiful to me as I realize my condition as a sinner saved by grace and my need for His salvation every moment.

So my prayer for us this week is that the Lord would give us the wonderful gift of conviction of sin; without that, we could take what the author says in this chapter and come under a lot of false condemnation and accusation, or we could try to make ourselves feel badly about our sin. Only the Holy Spirit can convict of sin, and only in true conviction are we empowered to leave the sin behind. Holy Spirit, come and reveal sin as You interpret it and reveal JESUS, the answer to my sin. Oh, thank You, Lord Jesus, that You are attracted to sinners and weak people. Manifest Your jealous love for us and Your power to deliver! Thank You...

Next week will be chapter four: Seeing Jesus as the Truth.

We Would See Jesus - Chapter Two

Chapter Two - Seeing God in the Face of Jesus Christ

"...we realize that our goal should be God Himself, but He seems far off, unknowable. The fact is, God is unknowable, unless there is an easily appreciated revelation of Himself. Apart from that revelation, men have groped for Him in vain and have had to say with Job, 'Oh, that I knew where I might find Him!'...Left to themselves, men arrive at a false knowledge of God, a knowledge that begets fear and bondage, and which repels rather than draws them to Him."

The authors go on to say that the full and final revelation of God is in His Son Jesus. Jesus Himself told His disciples that seeing Him, they were seeing the Father (John 14:9). God is light but light is "invisible unless it shines upon some object...The object upon which He has shone is the face of Jesus Christ, and as we look into that face, there shines in our hearts the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, which we can see nowhere else."

II Cor. 4:6 says "...it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." This, at first glance, sounds wonderful and beautiful until we realize that the glory being referred to here by the Holy Spirit through the Apostle Paul is the ugliness and shame of the cross (John 12:23, 32).

"We are always falling into the mistake of thinking God is one like ourselves (Psa. 50:21) and therefore that His glory consists in much the same things as that in which man's glory consists, only on a bigger scale. Man's glory is normally thought to lie in his ability to exalt himself, and humble others to his will...How often have we coveted the glory of being able to sit at a desk as a high adminstrative chief and at the touch of a button command men to do what we want!...In Jesus, however, we see that God's glory consists in the very reverse - not so much in His ability to exalt Himself and humble man, but in His willingness to humble Himself for the sake of man..."

God is Christlike! We see in Jesus a startling meekness and humility that caused Him to be very approachable, and the Father is just like that! As Christian believers we have learned this with our heads, but we need revelation of this to our spirit in order for it to transform us at the gut level. I find that I need ongoing revelation of this truth to my heart and mind in order to not come under the lies of the evil one who is constantly slandering the character and nature of God in subtle ways.

How do we see the face of Jesus? We find His face in the written Word first of all; but we must not be like the Pharisees who knew the Scriptures inside out but couldn't recognize the One Who the Scriptures were talking about when He showed up. It's possible to know the written Word of God better than anyone around you and not know the Living Word intimately.

And so our approach to the Word must be one of poverty of spirit (in other words, coming with a childlike hunger to learn even if it runs cross-grain to what I've believed all my life about Jesus) and a willingness to take the time and effort to fast and pray and study the Word of God under the illuminating power of the Holy Spirit. It means to cry out what the Greeks cried out to Philip: "We would see Jesus." The word "would" in the original language carries the sense of "preference, wish, desire, will", etc. This wasn't a passive wish but a must for these Greeks; in other words, they went out of their way to try to see Jesus.

For us as well, seeing Jesus requires that we go out of our way; it will be inconvenient and mess with our lifestyle but until we seriously seek Him out through fasting and prayer and studying His Word and leaving some things undone, there won't be said of us what was said of the early Church disciples in Acts 4:13, "Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men, they marveled. And they realized that they had been with Jesus."

Before the Lord returns, He will have a Bride across the earth of whom this can be said; meanwhile, each of us can be moving in this direction in our own walk with Him, starting with baby steps: short times of fasting and prayer and study that will grow into longer times, and also inviting one or two others to join in on this because God wants us to do this in partnership with Him and with others rather than try to make it on our own.

God bless you with the empowering grace of His Holy Spirit to seek Him in the face of Jesus this week! Next week we'll look at chapter three, Seeing Jesus as All We Need.

We Would See Jesus - Chapter One

Chapter One: Seeing God - the Purpose of Life

"...there is but one purpose for mankind...(it) is to know, and to love, and to walk with God; that is, to see God. (Deut. 10:12; Micah 6:8; Mark 12:30)" And I'll add Luke 10:42; Phil. 3:8; Psalm 27:4; Revelation 2:4,5; I Cor. 3:18.

With this simple statement, the authors summarize this chapter about what the purpose of God is for every human.

They point out that we modern believers consider the monastics as misguided in their extreme seeking after God but warn that all of our so-called "light" in understanding the Gospel has not given the modern Christian any hunger and passion to see God but seems to have had the reverse effect, making us a driven people that believe serving God to be our primary purpose in life, rather than "seeing God."

He also warns, on the other hand, about what I call "spiritual lust." In other words, in our seeking to see God, we can unwittingly slip into seeking Him only for experiencing good feelings.

Both of these realities (drivenness to activity and seeking only to have certain feelings) can fool us into thinking that we know the Lord Jesus while we may be experiencing a Jesus made in our own image.

Roy and Revel Hession speak with prophetic voice when they say the following of Christian service for God:
"At first sight it seems heroic to fling our lives away in the service of God and our fellows...Service seems so unselfish, whereas concentrating on our walk with God seems selfish and self-centred. But it is the very reverse. The things God is most concerned about are our coldness of heart towards Himself and our proud, unbroken natures. Christian service of itself can, and so often does, leave our self-centred nature untouched. That is why there is scarcely a church, a mission station, or a committee undertaking a special place of service, that is without an unresolved problem of personal relationships eating out its heart and thwarting its progress. This is because Christian service often gives us opportunities of leadership and position that we could not attain in the secular world, and we quickly fall into pride, self-seeking, and ambition. With those things hidden in our hearts, we have only to work alongside others, and we find resentment, hardness, criticism, jealousy, and frustration issuing from our hearts. We think we are working for God, but the test of how little of our service is for Him is revealed by our resentment or self-pity, when the action of others, or circumstances, or ill-health take it from us!"

They conclude this section with this wonderful paragraph:
"We need to...concentrate on seeing God for ourselves and finding the deep answer for life in Him. Then, even if we are located in the most obscure corner of the globe, the world will make a road to our door to get that answer. Our service of help to our fellows then becomes incidental to our vision of God, and the direct consequence of it."

Watchman Nee writes with clarity about this as well saying that much of Christian service is a fulfilling of a lust to be active rather than an overflow of a lovesick heart.

Meanwhile, the overactivity of the Church has caused some who are desperate for Jesus to seek for feelings about Him rather than for the real Jesus. (By the way, A.W. Tozer warns that a there is something wrong with a Christianity that does not experience God emotionally, so the desire to feel His love is not bad at all; but we must not fall for the lie that we can only truly encounter Him when we have surface emotions going on.)

This short life we're given in this fallen world is primarily for the purpose of knowing God intimately, and through obedience to His voice, becoming like Jesus. This life is an internship in which we are being shaped and formed into His likeness so that He can entrust eternal rulership alongside Him to any who are walking in full abandonment to Him as best we know how. The things we may accomplish now are important when done in loving obedience to Him, but they are the overflow of lovesickness for the true God which issues forth from having revelation of His ravished love for us.

Because I have shared simple suggestions a few times in this blog about how to focus on knowing Him intimately, I won't repeat those here. (Please refer back a couple of weeks or so, if you are interested...)

Lord Jesus, send Your Spirit to help us; we are helpless to deliver ourselves from our lust for self-satisfaction whether that be through hyper-activity or through surface feelings. Thank You that You are filled with fiery jealousy over Your Bride and that You will fully capture her heart! We cry out to You to do this, for the sake of the One Who gave Himself to have an equally-yoked Bride for eternity.

Next week we'll look at Chapter 2: Seeing God in the Face of Jesus Christ.

We Would See Jesus - Preface

I've just been worshipping and interceding to the words of a beautiful worship song:
"O my God, You've won my heart by giving me Yours forevermore;
Here I pledge in life or death, I am Yours forevermore..."

I believe with all my heart that we humans are created with a desire to give our all to something or someone, and I believe that the empowerment to do that comes from having been captivated by something or someone outside of ourselves.

As Christians we know this "something or someone" to be the Lord Jesus Christ. I fear that our watered down version of what being a Christian means has deceived us into believing that theological correctness means we have given our all to Him. If that were the case, the evangelical Church would be filled with burning hearts that can't be contained for very lovesickness for the Lamb who will come as a Lion soon to establish His earthly throne in the city of Jerusalem.

And so I have picked the book We Would See Jesus (by Roy and Revel Hession) to review next, simply because I believe that without really "seeing" (beholding) the real Jesus and how He has given His heart to His Bride, there's no hope of my pledging that I am His in life or death.

In the preface of this book, Roy and Revel Hession focus on the bedrock reality that, as important as it is to deal with the various aspects of the Christian walk, when you boil it all down to one simple reality, “it is enough to see Jesus. Seeing Him we are convicted of sin, broken, cleansed, filled with the Spirit, set free from bondage, and revived…He is both the Blessing we all seek and the easily accessible Way to that blessing.”

The theme of this book (seeing Jesus) has been and continues to be foundational for my life and ministry in God. I believe that all of the schemes and strategies of the evil one are ultimately aimed at hindering humans (whether believers in Jesus or not) from seeing Jesus for who He really is.

The authors explain two words that are used many times throughout the book:
1. Grace: in the New Testament “grace is not a blessing or an influence from God which we receive, but rather an attribute of God which governs His attitude toward man, and can be defined as the undeserved love and favor of God….The whole essence of grace is that it is undeserved (Rom. 11:6)...This means that when at last we are content to find no merit nor procuring cause in ourselves, and are willing to admit the full extent of our sinfulness, then there is no limit to what God will do for the poor who look to Him in their nothingness…The struggle, of course, is to believe it and to be willing to be but empty sinners to the end of our days, that grace may continue to match our needs.”
2. Revival: the author points out that his use of this word in this book refers to the possibility of a person living in vital union with Christ as a lifestyle, recognizing his/her need for continual renewal and awakening. He is not downplaying corporate revival, and I want to note here that at the end of this age, the focus will be on our corporate life in God (while not neglecting the private walk with Him), so I'll underscore this all along the way so that we don't miss what God is after as we approach the end.

I won't go any further with the book but want to stress this week how critical it is that we make seeing (beholding) Jesus the priority in our life if we want to stand under the end-times pressures that are coming; and so I encourage you to pray as you read this book so that it's not mere facts and information being passed on but rather impartation of life and light and power in the Holy Spirit.

Holy Spirit, come and strengthen in us desire for Jesus, the One You love unashamedly. Breathe on us, Lord, or we have no life-giving breath in us. Show us the real God-Man...we love You and thank You for how faithful and true You are in our lives...

Next week we'll cover chapter one: Seeing God - the Purpose of Life. Blessings on you this week!

Moving Confidently in His Love

In My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers says:

If you debate for even one second when God has spoken, it is all over for you. Never start to say, "Well, I wonder if He really did speak to me?" Be reckless immediately—totally unrestrained and willing to risk everything—by casting your all upon Him. You do not know when His voice will come to you, but whenever the realization of God comes, even in the faintest way imaginable, be determined to recklessly abandon yourself, surrendering everything to Him. It is only through abandonment of yourself and your circumstances that you will recognize Him. You will only recognize His voice more clearly through recklessness—being willing to risk your all.

I think that every true follower of God, no matter how mature in Him, trembles over making a major decision in his/her life, but the trembling is of a different sort when the saint is rooted and grounded in the ravished love of God for him!

As the Holy Spirit is beginning to shake all that can be shaken in His people, there will be more and more significant changes happening all around us. In His kindness He will move people around and change what people are doing in order to situate us in the best possible context to get us into a posture of lovesick obedience to Him. He knows us so well; He knows where we have wrongly placed our hopes; He knows what leads us to wanting Him more than we want anything or anyone else; and He knows that only in that place of wholehearted pursuit of Him is where we are most content and fruitful.

These aren't days for timid and half-hearted steps of obedience to God; however, without ongoing revelation to our inner man of the jealous love of God for us, it's very difficult for us Christian believers to move out of the gravitational pull of the Christian mindsets that are strongly shaped by the culture around us.

The ways we have developed to serve the Lord are so deeply ingrained in us that we think they are biblical and we are unaware that so much of it is basically adopting the ways of men and attaching the name of Jesus to it. I believe the beginning days of the Spirit's dismantling of our ways of serving God are here and that we will see this dismantling increase. He has a fiery jealousy over His Bride and won't let us continue in our deception forever - this is great news!! But it will be increasingly painful as He shakes all that we thought was of Him until it's just Him and His Bride together in the "wilderness".

In that wilderness place, we will discover His love (read Hosea for more on this), and we will return to our First Love; we will fast and pray and mourn over our idolatry, and we will find our prophetic voice to sing and preach boldly of His coming judgments. This, of course, happens on the individual level, but it will be a corporate reality by the time God has completed His work of preparing a pure Bride for His Son.

Watchman Nee, in his little booklet Ministering to the House or to God?, suggests that when all is disintegrating around us, the solution isn't to come up with more solutions but to stop trying to fix things and gather for prayer and fasting and seeking God above all else. (This is what Joel 2 is about.)

Praise the Lord for such jealousy and kindness and tenderness for His own! It's His mercy that causes Him to judge His own first before He releases His judgments on the world.

So how do we live now in light of the beginnings of His judgments for His Church? There are probably a number of answers, but the most obvious one that I know from the Scripture is to fast and pray corporately. If there isn't a group of people in your area that are doing this together, ask the Lord to give you 1 or 2 other people who will begin to fast and pray with you regularly; ask for revelation of the bridegroom love of God for you and for the grace and power to take confident steps of obedience out of the place of trusting in His sovereign love and power.

God bless you this week with a holy discontent related to your experience of His love for you (I continually ask for more revelation of this for myself) and related to the experience of those around you who name His name. Enjoy His enjoyment of you and be empowered by that revelation to take bold steps of abandonment to His leading, whether that be at the level of your ways of thinking or whether it be related to steps of action that He is asking of you.