Holy Desire

1 Cor. 14:1 Pursue love, yet desire earnestly spiritual gifts, but especially that you may prophesy.

When I Had first returned to the Lord I went on a winter retreat with my church. it was a lot of fun, on the bus ride up we were all talking with each other about what we were hoping God would share with us and speak to us about. I was blessed that trip and I got to see God in action. The minister who was speaking that weekend was heavily gifted in the prophetic. Without fail he went to every person and told them God’s perspective on exactly what they had been talking about on the bus ride up. It was amazing to me. I remember thinking, “Why is this something I've never seen in action before? Why don’t we do this every day at church an not just here?” It was then and there I began to seek God for the gift of prophecy. I’d get to see it in bits and pieces here and there but never on the level that I was seeking after and to be honest I had just about all but given up.

I began thinking, well maybe God wants to bless me in another area and that was just what He used to get me excited about my faith and help to get me close to Him. Fast forward a few years and I’ve finally come to see how ignorant of a view that is. God does not trifle with His children! When you have a desire for a spiritual blessing, especially one which you are commanded to seek after in scripture, you can be sure it is the Spirit of God stirring it up inside of you. How often, after all, when left to our own devices do we desire what is good? We either lust after the things of the flesh or the things of the Spirit. When Holy Spirit excites us desire His gifting or any blessing for that matter we can be sure it will be given to us and we are bound by obedience to pursue and seek after that blessing until God, who is a good God, gives it to us. after all, it was His idea to give it to us in the first place.

The Promise & The Prayer

Daniel 9:2,3 “In the first year of his reign I Daniel understood by books the number of the years, whereof the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah the prophet, that he would accomplish seventy years in the desolations of Jerusalem. And I set my face unto the Lord God, to seek by prayer and supplications, with fasting, and sackcloth, and ashes.”

For the longest time I was under the impression that once a thing was prophesied, that was it, it was done. I then began to wonder why I was seeing so many people with promises over their lives that were seemingly going nowhere. Promises that had been given to them years ago; just sitting there, dormant. I’ve seen people grow bitter toward God or confused thinking why hasn’t this come to pass. Maybe the word was wrong or, even worse, maybe there is no such thing as prophecy today. These people, myself included, were part of the unfortunate group of people perishing for lack of knowledge. You see just because God has declared something doesn’t mean He has taken our responsibility out of it. Remember, we are the ones He has given authority to (Psalm 115:16 “The heavens are the heavens of the LORD, But the earth He has given to the sons of men.”) and therefore He will not do anything unless we come into agreement with it through prayer. Daniel understood this which is why when he read a promise from the scriptures about the end of the desolations of Jerusalem he began to pray and seek God to see it through. This was not just some word given by a random prophet or someone from his local church they were the words of Jeremiah understood to be scripture; i.e. their Bible. so these words were known as authoritative words from God but Daniel still felt the need to pray that God would bring them to pass. If even the prophecies of scripture need to be prayed into being how much more should we be praying for the promises God has given us?
What are you waiting for? Break out the prophecies that have been given to you and read the promises you have written down. Pray to God until He gives you the release and says it will be done. If you don’t yet have any promises of your own go to your Bible and read until one jumps out at you and take that as your own. Seek the Lord for His blessing because He has promised it and is faithful.

the true call

Mark 1:17-20 And Jesus said to them, "Follow Me, and I will make you become fishers of men.” Immediately they left their nets and followed Him. Going on a little farther, He saw James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, who were also in the boat mending the nets. Immediately He called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants, and went away to follow Him.

These passages are in a stark contrast to what happens later in the ministry of Jesus once He has gained some popularity. People begin asking Him if they could follow Him (Luke 9:57-62) with a very different result. They were not turned down as much as shown where their hearts where not yet ready for the call to follow Christ. When your heart is not ready or, to put it another way, when you say, “I will follow you… but first” then you already prove you are not truly following Christ but your own path which you have decided would be good alongside the path Christ is on. You see you are still your own boss when you come to Christ with stipulations. Christ will have all or none of you. There is no in between for Him. Are you holding back? What have you told Christ you must do before you are ready to follow Him? It is that very thing which is keeping you back from the kingdom of God.

Ambition

So today I was talking to Jesus. Just trying to get to know Him better; on a more personal level. I was chatting with Him and He asked me why I wanted to know Him more. My honest answer was because I want to be a more effective minister. Not for greater intimacy or my love for Him. Now at first I was rather upset with myself because it was such a seemingly cold answer but as I was telling my wife about it I realized that’s kind of how I am. I tend to be very practical in my affection, not so much emotional. It’s my family’s fault really. love has always been shown for me by providing or “doing” for one another. my family was never too big on emotional support and I guess it’s carried over into my relationship with God. So I asked Him if this was ok or if I was wasting my time because my heart was wrong. He reminded me about what He’s been teaching me “that He wants me to love people with the love He deserves.” So long as I am doing that I am fine.

Being the stubborn person I am that wasn’t quite enough. I kept thinking about the scripture where Paul was writing and made some reference about “running in vain” so I had to look it up. The chapter really had nothing to do with Paul being worried about himself rather he was expressing concern for the Philippians and whether or not he had wasted his time bringing the gospel to them. There is however right before that portion of scripture which talks about Christ and His equality with God and how He gave that up to become a man and a servant and in doing that God then exalted His name above every other name. This then inspired me and reminded me that every time the disciples asked Jesus who would be the greatest in the kingdom Jesus would tell them what they had to do to become the greatest. He would actually encourage their ambition. He said to be the greatest you have to be slave to all. So the way I see it... Christ is not concerned about my ambition to “do” for Him as long as I understand that the actions He values are my lifting up others above myself and seeking to serve and benefit them and loving them as I would love Him.

faith... first steps

Lord I repent for my unbelief... my lack of faith which has shown up time and again. Even when I see God working miracles right before my eyes I find that doubt can slip in. Did you know that you can have doubt even as you see a tumor melting away... it’s true. I know this because it’s happened to me... seeing is not believing. Believing is believing; and unfortunately in the Christian faith we must often believe before we are allowed to see.
At some point we must decide what we are going to believe. What will we use to decide what “truth” we will live by? Do we rely on our own knowledge apart from God or do we trust His word and the promises He has given us. Remember that He is all powerful and cannot lie. When we know what it is He has promised and we doubt what He says because of our own understanding we are essentially calling God a liar. We would never directly call God a liar but what else can we call it when we don’t believe what He has said?
Hebrews 11:1 “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” the word translated “substance” in the greek has the idea of bringing something into being... perhaps a better word would be substantiating. What that scripture is saying is that our faith in what God has promised is what, in fact, brings these promises into our reality. Even better than that it is our faith in what God had said that pleases Him. After all what is the point of being able to move mountains if you are not pleasing God in the process.

Mary Jesus and the atonement

I just wrote this for a forum regarding the necessity of the virgin birth and how that all works for our redemption to see the topic in full go to http://theos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=3083&st=0&sk=t&sd=a


Lets do a little bible study to find out what “man“ is in order to find out who Christ had to be in order to be “a high priest who can sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin.” (Heb. 4:15)

In the beginning… (wish I could do Star Wars style scrolling)
Gen. 2:7: And the LORD God formed man [of] the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
You see the creation of man comes in 3 parts.
1 - man’s body from the dust (the part that relates to the natural world).
2- the breath of life a.k.a. the man’s spirit (the part of man that relates to the spiritual world and God)
3- the man’s soul. This part is not formed until the sprit enters the body. It is the seat of the will and our personality. This is why throughout scripture we are referred to as souls.

Adam and Eve in their pre-fallen state were the only people who we can say had a truly “free will” because they were undefiled by the sin nature because their souls were truly free to choose to obey God or not (they were not yet “slaves to sin” Rom 6:6).

Lets now look at what they chose in tree of the knowledge of good and evil and why that was such a “bad” fruit to eat.

Gen 3:4,5 The serpent said to the woman, "You surely will not die! For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

Man was already like God, being created “in His image” (Gen. 1:26,27) so what was it that would change? The change was that we would now have a sense of good and evil apart from what God says is “good” or “evil.” We would be independently moral creatures whereas before we were amoral because we relied completely on God to tell us what was right or wrong.

This brings us to Gen 3:6 where we see temptation in all 3 of its forms (lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, pride of life) first become sin.
“And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, (lust of the flesh) and that it was pleasant to the eyes, (lust of the eyes) and a tree to be desired to make one wise, (pride of life) she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat (sin), and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat (sin).”

Now Eve was in fact deceived but it is never Eve who is blamed for sin entering the world; it is always Adam. Why? Because he was her husband and therefore the one ultimately responsible for their family (Eph. 5:23, 1 Cor. 11:3). Therefore it was Adam’s sin, not Eve’s, that was passed down and Adam who is responsible death entering into the world (Rom. 5:12-19).

This is how we have “sin” (as in our sin nature) because we are all Adam’s seed. This sin nature causes us to desire sins.

(If I’ve skipped over something important to you let me know… I’m trying not to write a book here)

Now, on to Jesus. Yay!

Why was it necessary for Him to be born of a virgin? It was necessary so that He would not be of Adam’s seed and therefore not tainted by Adam’s transgression. This is why Jesus is called the last Adam (1 Cor. 15:45).

Now we go back to the 3 parts of a man (Spirit, soul, body) and how they come together to form Jesus.
1- Mary provides the “dirt,” so to speak, in her egg. This then becomes His body.
2- Holy Spirit gives it the “breath of life” this is why the Bible says “before they came together she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit.” (Matt 1:18)
3- Then like we learned earlier once the spirit entered the body “He became a living soul”.

This makes Jesus a man just as Adam and Eve were before the fall. An amoral being the Son of man, the last Adam and finally the second man, from heaven (1 Cor. 15:47). Jesus did not have to have the “sin nature” passed down from Adam in order to be a “man” only the three parts of “man,” sprit, soul and body. Because Jesus was a free moral being He had the chance to succeed where Adam failed in living a holy life unto God without sin.

Once Jesus was baptized and Holy Spirit came upon Him (Matt 3:16…) He was brought out to be tempted:
Matt. 4:3 And the tempter came and said to Him, "If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread." (lust of the flesh)

Matt. 4:5,6 Then the devil took Him into the holy city and had Him stand on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to Him, "If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down; for it is written, 'HE WILL COMMAND HIS ANGELS CONCERNING YOU'; and 'ON their HANDS THEY WILL BEAR YOU UP, SO THAT YOU WILL NOT STRIKE YOUR FOOT AGAINST A STONE.'" (pride of life)

Matt 4:8,9 Again, the devil took Him to a very high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory; and he said to Him, "All these things I will give You, if You fall down and worship me." (lust of the eyes)

Jesus went through all this and much more I’m sure especially when the devil returned… but the important thing to know is that He did not fall into sin during these temptations.

Now for the million dollar question… how does that apply to me since I am of Adam’s seed and do have a sin nature?

The truth is that your sin nature cannot be fixed or polished up. There is no remedy for a sin nature. If there was there would be no need for the cross. Praise be to God He has found a solution… He kills us. More specifically He crucifies us with Christ (Gal 2:20) and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.

We are no longer that old person from Adam’s seed. That man is DEAD. He no longer exists. Or as the Bible puts it: Rom. 8:10,11 If Christ is in you, though THE BODY IS DEAD because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead WILL ALSO GIVE LIFE TO YOUR MORTAL BODIES THROUGH HIS SPIRIT who dwells in you.

Or to put it another way
2 Cor. 5:17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a NEW CREATION; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.

You are no longer of the race from Adam but made one with Christ Jesus free of sin and the sin nature.

narcissism could be fun…

So I saw the commercial for iron man 2 and I was thinking about how stark reads that he is a textbook narcissist and he says, “true.” So that got me thinking about how I’d love to be narcissistic. Just thinking how great I am all the time. It would really be a great self promotion tool. I could see how I could easily convince myself of anything and then I’d have no limitations because let’s face it, we tend to be the ones who limit ourselves more than anyone else… but at some point for me it would have to break down because I’m not truly narcissistic and it would only be me pretending like I’m the greatest ever because it gets me a desired end. It’s a much better form of self protection than being shy or degrading yourself so you don’t let yourself down when you fail. But nevertheless it’s still a form of hiding and trying to guard oneself from pain.

One way you make yourself big and strong to intimidate others so you don’t have to feel intimidated or small so you are protected because of your superiority and the other you are small in insignificant so you don’t have to step out and risk getting hurt. I guess in the end it doesn’t really matter I don’t have the energy to puff myself up all the time. It was a fun thought though…