arisewithhope

Unpacking Philippians 3:1-12

Author: Lisa Groen Category: Unpacking the scripture To start this study, let’s begin with Philippians 3:12, and see how the previous verses 1-11 get us to this point. We will begin by looking at Philippians 3:12 in 3 different translations in order to unpack it. NASB Not that I have already grasped it all or have already become perfect, but I press on if I may also take hold of that for which I was even taken hold of by Christ Jesus. CEB It’s not that I have already reached this goal or have already been perfected, but I pursue it, so that I may grab hold of it because Christ grabbed hold of me for just this purpose. ESV Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. I like to ask questions of the text as I am studying. What is Paul pursuing/pressing on for? What did Paul mean by pressing on? Or in the CEB version, what did Paul mean to pursue? and how does he press on in the ESV for something that seems as intangible as being made perfect? Being made perfect if we take a closer look in verse 12 is not exactly the phrase that tells us what Paul is pursuing, although people might believe that at first blush. We have to back up to previous verses to get a clear picture of what Paul is pursuing that he has not already obtained yet. Verse 11 tells us “that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead”. And what does verse 11 tell us if we want to get the whole story? “That” is the word in the very beginning of this verse—really, it is the shortened version of “so that”. So what came before the “so that”? We must now find out what it is from previous verses 1-11 to get a clear picture of what verse 12 is talking about. In this passage, Paul is speaking of some of the big-ticket items of what it takes to live the type of life in Christ that Christ will cause to attain the resurrection from the dead. When I say big-ticket items, I am speaking of being of the true circumcision group—or in other words, the being born again group. Paul lists some things that are either prerequisites, or for him disqualifiers. That is the simple way of understanding this. Everything Paul does or becomes prior to his telling us of his hope to attain the resurrection of the dead he lists in verses 2, 3, 7 and 8. I do not believe this is an exhaustive list, but that many items in it will automatically imply other elements or duties or states of being for the resurrection-bound Christian. In verses 5-6 Paul tells us of fleshly dispositions which he does not put confidence in. In verses 7-8 he tells us why he gave up his fleshly actions in order for Spirit led better things. Let’s break this passage down into Spirit-led actions and confidence, and into the opposite fleshly dispositions which are reasons for fleshly confidence Paul says he counts as dung. The right understanding and placement of these things in life sets Paul up so to speak for being a recipient of the resurrection from the dead. Philippians 3:1-11 Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things to you is no trouble to me and is safe for you. ²Look out for the dogs, look out for the evildoers, look out for those who mutilate the flesh. ³For we are the circumcision, who (do the following 3 Spirit-generated actions) (1) worship by the Spirit of God (Spirit led action of Paul) and (2) glory in Christ Jesus (Spirit led action of Paul) and (3) put no confidence in the flesh (Spirit led action of Paul) — ⁴though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also. (Paul will go on to nullify some fleshly confidences that could cause flesh-led actions he wants to avoid as we continue). If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more:⁵ circumcised on the eighth day, (Paul nullifies this because it is not a Spirit-led action) of the people of Israel, (Paul nullifies this because it is not a Spirit-led action) of the tribe of Benjamin, (Paul nullifies this) a Hebrew of Hebrews; (Paul nullifies this) as to the law, a Pharisee; (Paul nullifies this) , ⁶as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; (nullified) as to righteousness under the law, blameless. (nullified) ⁷But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. (Paul has just now nullified everything in verses 5-6 in order to establish the following Spirit led actions in verse 8 for the sake of Christ) ⁸Indeed, I count everything as loss (action of Paul to nullify the flesh) because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things (action of Paul to nullify the flesh) and count them as rubbish, (action of Paul to nullify the flesh) in order (in order that 5 Spirit led things may happen. Paul now has 5 Spirit led actions coming up in verses 8-11 where he now says “that I may” which fall into place because he has just counted the fleshly gains as rubbish in verses 5-6. These things are indicators that he is now in position of one who is able to receive or attain to things that happen concurrently with the resurrection from the dead)(1) that I may gain Christ ⁹and (2) that I may be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith ¹⁰(3) that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and (4) that I may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, ¹¹(5) that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead Now having put those clarifications in place for the groupings of Spirit led actions and the groupings to see what Paul tells us is of the flesh, my goal is to put us in position to be much better off to know the difference between fleshly and Spirit-led positions and actions to hopefully see the conditions of life they are joined with. As we can expect, the fleshly actions or states of being are joined with Paul’s life prior to his conversion, and the Spirit led actions and states of being are joined with Paul’s life after conversion. When we keep in mind the differences, we can steer clear of the traps of legalism that we all can face which tempt and threaten a believer’s trust in Christ alone through grace alone, and we can pursue the Spirit led actions and states of being Paul clarifies for us that go with our life in Christ and with the resurrection from the dead. When we have these things clear in our mind, we can see then how we should press on to attain to making the resurrection our own, without it becoming a legalistic pressing or fleshly striving, by clothing ourselves with Spirit led actions and states of being. The pressing on Paul speaks of in verse 12 is for pressing on to not trust in the flesh, our seeming advantages, and not trust in “our own abilities or fleshly position” and press against these temptations. Like Paul we should also count them dung, by pressing on to do Spirit led actions, and to remember the spiritual position of grace Christ has placed us in by faith to know Him more, through pressing away from the flesh, and pressing towards the living knowledge of Christ. Let’s end with Philippians 3:12 again with these things in mind: NASB “Not that I have already grasped it all or have already become perfect, but I press on if I may also take hold of that for which I was even taken hold of by Christ Jesus.” And to end our study with grace—isn’t it good to know we were taken hold of by Christ Jesus, which is the grace to see glimpses of WHY Christ desires us for himself; it is to His glory, and not our own, that He draws us to Himself, as we press on to take hold of that!! Prayer: Lord, may you teach us how to walk in the Spirit and steer clear of legalism and trusting in the flesh. May areas where we have been tempted into legalism and the complacency caused by the flesh be exposed in our lives so we can turn away from these faulty trusts, repent of them, and press against them through the Spirit. May we make room for your Spirit to live and move and breathe in us, and make us flexible, pliable clay, Oh Lord, in your all-Wise hands who has given us circumcised hearts before You Oh Lord! Continue to work in us, and may we see you ever more clearly, Amen! Keep growing in the Word! LG

Prayer of Dependence on God-6

Author: Lisa Groen

Category: Christian prayer aiming for true Christian growth

Dear Heavenly Father, we come to you today seeking your face, seeking to lift up your name and to ask your will to be done. We surrender our hearts. You have taken us your people through some painful times. At times we have faced insurmountable odds, extreme situations that seemed to press on our hearts as much as an olive press would press the olives in Bible times, and found your grace pulling us through tricky situations that show us that your ways are not our ways but are keeping us ever so dependent upon you. We praise you that we have seen your hand of love move on our behalf. We give you praise for your unmerited favor. We praise you for bringing us through fire, deep waters, things like hailstorms, windstorms and spiritual earthquakes. We give you praise for taking our brokenness, our inabilities, our failure, our weakness, our griefs and doing something with them we could never do that point to your shaping ability, shaping our lives to praise you through our pains and suffering. We praise you Lord for how excellent you are at getting your will done, and we get to go along for the ride, and you are placing your fingerprints more deeply into our lives. We praise you for showing your goodwill toward men, and for somehow making something of us that we never could have become without you, till something else in our lives points to your glory and goodness. We praise you for the fact that it is you alone who sustains us, provides for us, grants hope to us, for putting into us personality characteristics, gifts, talents, potential and limitations that you are somehow sovereignly shaping by your goodness to shape us into the image of your Son, and for giving us the Holy Spirit Comforter to bear with us in our weaknesses and to somehow bring something through our lives that will reflect your light, bear witness of you, and spark hope, endurance, perseverance, virtue and the stamina of your Spirit by your heavenly power. We praise you for the Comforter, who cries with groaning that words cannot express to bring or birth something into our lives, or out of us for a witness to the world that will in hope make us vessels fit for your use, and endue us with your heavenly garments, as we are sown a mortal body, and one day we believe we will be raised a spiritual body. We are sown in dishonor, but one day we will be raised in honor, we are sown in weakness, one day we will be raised in power, we are sown in corruption, and one day we will be raised in incorruption… I believe the following passage will greatly encourage those of us who are going through the pains of the death of the flesh, so let us consider carefully the words that Paul has written, and stay encouraged, friends.

1 Corinthians 15:37-58 reads, “And as for what you sow—you are not sowing the body that will be, but only a seed, perhaps of wheat or another grain. 38 But God gives it a body as he wants, and to each of the seeds its own body. 39 Not all flesh is the same flesh; there is one flesh for humans, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. 40 There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the splendor of the heavenly bodies is different from that of the earthly ones. 41 There is a splendor of the sun, another of the moon, and another of the stars; in fact, one star differs from another star in splendor. 42 So it is with the resurrection of the dead: Sown in corruption, raised in incorruption; 43 sown in dishonor, raised in glory; sown in weakness, raised in power; 44 sown a natural body, raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. 45 So it is written, The first man Adam became a living being; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. 46 However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural, then the spiritual. 47 The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. 48 Like the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; like the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. 49 And just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we will also bear the image of the man of heaven. 50 What I am saying, brothers and sisters, is this: Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor can corruption inherit incorruption. 51 Listen, I am telling you a mystery: We will not all fall asleep, but we will all be changed, 52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we will be changed. 53 For this corruptible body must be clothed with incorruptibility, and this mortal body must be clothed with immortality. 54 When this corruptible body is clothed with incorruptibility, and this mortal body is clothed with immortality, then the saying that is written will take place: Death has been swallowed up in victory. 55 Where, death, is your victory? Where, death, is your sting? 56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ! 58 Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the Lord’s work, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.” Amen!

Keep on growing in the Word! LG

Is It Our Weakness, Or God’s Opportunity?

Author: Lisa Groen

Category: Devotional and prayer

Jeremiah 9:23-25 “‘This is what the Lord says: The wise person should not boast in his wisdom; the strong should not boast in his strength; the wealthy should not boast in his wealth. 24 But the one who boasts should boast in this: that he understands and knows me—that I am the Lord, showing faithful love, justice, and righteousness on the earth, for I delight in these things. This is the Lord’s declaration. 25 “‘Look, the days are coming—this is the Lord’s declaration—when I will punish all the circumcised yet uncircumcised:

So having a circumcised heart goes right along with knowing the Lord who delights in faithful love, justice, and righteousness on the earth. The Lord shows that he overrides a person’s strength, money, and wisdom to put them level on the same playing field as the man or woman without these things that still knows the Lord. It is a true blessing to be able to come to God without wisdom necessarily, without strength per se, without wealth as a prerequisite, and to receive the benefit this scripture speaks of which is the privilege still of being able to understand and know God, and to be among those who have a circumcised heart.

Isaiah 40:28-29 Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary; His understanding is beyond searching out. 29 He gives power to the faint and increases the strength of the weak.

So, the Lord overrides the weak man’s weakness and faintness, and he blesses them with strength. It is a true blessing to be able to come to God being on the verge of fainting, and to receive the benefits this scripture speaks of which is the privilege still of having your power and strength to be increased.

Romans 9:16 So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy.

What else could it be but the mercy of God to override our lack of will and lack of taking action and grant us something good we don’t deserve? It is a true blessing to be able to come to God being on the verge of not having your own will set for action, and without your body set for performance and this scripture speaks of the privilege still of being a candidate for God’s mercy.

2 Chronicles 20:12 O our God, will You not judge them? For we are powerless before this great multitude who are coming against us; nor do we know what to do, but our eyes are on You.”

So, Jehoshaphat had faith that God could override the power of his enemies and level the playing field and take the powerlessness of his own army, and “work something out on their behalf”

I am not one to promote lack of wisdom, poverty, lack of taking action, weakness, or a lack of battle strategy or to say we don’t need to apply ourselves in our faith-walks. But it is encouraging to know that in all these situations it was clear the messages God is showing us are that when we feel like we have absolutely nothing to give out or draw from out of our personal reserves, we can lean upon our God, and his strength will be made perfect in our weaknesses.

2 Chronicles 20:3-4 Jehoshaphat was afraid and turned his attention to seek the Lord, and proclaimed a fast throughout all Judah. ⁴So Judah gathered together to seek help from the Lord; they even came from all the cities of Judah to seek the Lord.

In Jeremiah 9:23-25, Isaiah 40: 28-29, and the Romans 9:16 scriptures, what we see highlighted are the wonderful transcendent virtue attributes of God, based on God’s initiative and willing action on his people’s behalf. But when a little bit of fasting gets involved, then this happens: In 2 Chronicles 20:3-4, Jehoshaphat was afraid and turned his attention to seek the Lord, and proclaimed a fast throughout all Judah. ⁴So Judah gathered together to seek help from the Lord; they even came from all the cities of Judah to seek the Lord. Then later in vs. 21-23 When he had consulted with the people, he appointed those who sang to the Lord and those who praised Him in holy attire, as they went out before the army and said, “Give thanks to the Lord, for His lovingkindness is everlasting.” ²²When they began singing and praising, the Lord set ambushes against the sons of Ammon, Moab and Mount Seir, who had come against Judah; so they were routed. ²³For the sons of Ammon and Moab rose up against the inhabitants of Mount Seir destroying them completely; and when they had finished with the inhabitants of Seir, they helped to destroy one another. 25When Jehoshaphat and his people came to take their spoil, they found much among them, including goods, garments and valuable things which they took for themselves, more than they could carry. And they were three days taking the spoil because there was so much. 30 So the kingdom of Jehoshaphat was at peace, for his God gave him rest on all sides.

When we aim to add fasting, praise and worship, to our seeking God out of our weaknesses, we can expect him to magnify his gracious attributes before us despite our weaknesses, however ugly they may seem to cling to us or cover us, and His glory is shown in spite of what we are not.

Let’s be encouraged in who our Gracious Heavenly Father Is— “the Lord, showing faithful love, justice, and righteousness on the earth, for I delight in these things”, He says.

Prayer: Dear Heavenly Father, as we meditate upon your Godly attributes which you possess in your reliable self-autonomous self-existence, you shed your grace upon us. How wonderful it is that you are so unchangeable, and your steadfast love and your loving-kind ways are often magnified before our very eyes. Your desire is towards your people Oh God, and you draw us with chords of compassion. May we meditate this week on the countless ways in which your strength is made perfect in our weaknesses, and may those who are led to do so fast, pray, and worship you Lord! For you are worthy above all else and above everyone else, Oh God our Gracious Rock and Redeemer! Amen!

Keep growing in the Word! LG

Yokes Broken By Our Carpenter Jesus

Author: Lisa Groen

Category: Devotional and prayer

Maybe you have seen those special glasses that people are giving to their color-blind friends and family of late that help the red-green color-blind folks to see reds and greens in bright vivid color. This is a perfect illustration of what it is like to become a Christian. It is right to say God gives us something comparable to real, tangible “glasses” to use for viewing the world around us. Let’s take stock of that! What was it like when you first became a Christian? Did the world become more clear to you? Did colors become more vivid to you? If we think about it—I would venture to say that seeing in color for the saved person in a real and tangible way is only a little slice of the pie of change that happens for the saved person with how we encounter the world around us once we start comparing before salvation to after salvation changes in perception. Joe is a minister friend who told me of a dream he had one time in which he was sitting at the foot of a tree trunk smashing eggs with a hammer. The next thing he knew is he was inside the tree, that was tipped over and the top was leaning towards the ground, and he was coming out of it, like he was being squeezed out of it down to the earth. When he came out, he saw everything in color. Everything was pale and black and white before he came out of the tree trunk, but everything he began to see once out of the tree was in vivid beautiful colors.

When talking with him about this dream, it seemed to be that he became born again when he was as it were “birthed out of the tree trunk” and began to see everything in color. When I thought about the eggs he was smashing, the idea of “breaking every yoke” came to mind—and that is a play on words, which I have found the Lord to use sometimes in visions and dreams he has given which I have heard related to me from other Christians. Did we or could we take stock of everything this entails for us? What are the implications truly for each of us becoming born again, and shall we not relish the changes God has wrought inside of us? Are these types of changes in perception not the very reason we sing praises to our Great God and Eternal Father of Lights?

Is not the roaming grazing and pastureland abiding with the Lord as we walk through his word, and not a walk to the inside of a rainbow of marvelous lights when we stroll through, gazingly at the word to soak in every morsel and every droplet and eat the delicacy of the finest of wheat which is saturated with the water of life itself? Take some time to relish the droplets of the water of life and soak them in deeply. Soak them in as you read the word until your constitution is changed and you begin to bubble up with praise songs for God allowing you to take in the hearty morsels of the richest of fare. They are not only hearty, but delightful, and beautifully orchestrated words of life that sing with a melody all their own! God tunes our ears as well! We can somehow see the vibrating words of the Love of Jesus melting over the very people around us and giving us a different disposition of love towards them and awakening something in our hearts that might somehow have lain dead within us prior to our being born again, and now alive toward people who may have somehow seemed unloving if we were in our pre-Christ state. Now our love can melt over them and the scent of Christ is left in our relationships when before we may have left blandness and staleness, now the aliveness of Christ is tasted, as we overcome our blandness, our previous lukewarmness, even overcoming our prior coldness as Christ leads us in our redeemed walk with him full of those discerning real life as we have been born again and made alive with Christ!

Here we get just a smidgen of the pie of the perception of being born again and see it written about in 1 Cor 2:9 which says, “but just as it is written: “Things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard, And which have not entered the human heart, All that God has prepared for those who love Him.” NASB

Let’s take the time to unpack this and relish in every drop of the goodness of God through his word we can discern! The downward tipping of the tree trunk shows the Lord “stooping down to make us great” or perhaps Jesus kneeling down to wash our feet. Maybe that is just what we need the Lord to do for us today—to wash our feet. And along with that, most of us could tolerate to have a few yokes broken, because as we are all aware we are at the moment on this side of heaven where the Lord is in the business of smashing yokes in whatever places we find them showing up. Just remember to take your hammer, hammer in the morning, hammer in the evening, all over this land. It’s a hammer of justice, it’s a bell of freedom, it’s a song about love between my brothers and my sisters…(circa Peter, Paul, and Mary). But seriously, Joe is a building trades worker who does remodeling, and assignments like this for a living. His business is to “swing a hammer”. My take on the dream is God wants us to “Make it OUR business to hammer away at our yokes” until we see clearly, until we see vividly, until we see colors not yet discerned by us, and until we see through the eyes of the Spirit. Make it OUR business until we are so done with sin in our lives that we want to see it crushed through the Spirit. Jesus too was a Carpenter, so through HIS WORK as he lived in the form of a man, and as He lives through us, WE, as men and women should SWING that hammer upon our sin in the natural as Jesus works in us swinging his hammer in the Spirit, making it his business to kill our sin, and us swinging our hammers along with him until the sin yokes we had in our lives are broken and gone! If our eyes have gotten blurry, we can ask the Lord to renew our vision as well! Crush our yokes, and open our eyes, Oh Lord again, I pray!!

Singer/Songwriter Steph Macleod had a similar experience as my friend Joe in that when he got saved, he went outside and saw colors he never saw before, everything went from drab grey to bright and lively, and he said he actually noticed people smiling at him for the first time that he could remember. He wrote a song about it called “Light Beams” and I share the link to it below. Hi full testimony on the writing of this song can be seen in his full-length online concert YouTube videos, (which I highly recommend, but I didn’t have time to find the specific videos– there are at least 2 or more recorded testimonies that yes make me cry). I am also sharing a link to Peter Paul, and Mary’s “If I Had A Hammer”, from the 60’s if you are part of the young crowd and have no idea what real good American folk music is like!

Prayer:

Dear Lord, there is a lot to take stock of in the act of your making us born again! You grant us power to love! Power to us to pray for the Lost for them to see! Power for the discernment of looking with the eyes of the Spirit! You are a great and mighty God Lord, Yet You have bowed down to make us great, giving us the great and invaluable gift of being born again, to be saturated with the good news and the water of life! Saturated with the joy unspeakable and full of glory! To be lifted out of the dungheap, given robes of righteousness, and our feet washed, and we have been saturated with the scent of Christ and seated along with You Oh Lord in the Heavenly Realms! What a Savior! What a salvation! OH Halleluiah! These are the riches of the finest of fares! Praise your name Dear Lord, for all you have done and shown us! Praise You for all you want to show us! Praise you for what you continue to do in us! Praise Your Name Forever, Lord, Amen!

Steph Macleod’s “Light Beams”- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IT2A4KT8IM

Peter, Paul, and Mary’s “If I had A Hammer” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxWTDcP9Y5E

Keep growing in the Word! LG

God is Creating Weakness in Your Life

Author: Lisa Groen

Category: Devotional and thoughts to ponder

One of the most encountered questions people face when doing evangelism is “Why does suffering and evil exist in a world that a good God created?” In fact, this question and others like it are questions Pastors also face much of the time when ministering one on one to congregants, and may be one of the questions that plague the minds of countless people contemplating the decision of whether or not they can trust in a God who created and manages our unique universe. Some go so far as to say –like screen writer and film director Jamie Uys,– “The Gods must be crazy” that the universe looks like it is being managed with a loose and crazy hand!

Due to the broad scope that the question brings, “Why does suffering and evil exist if God is good?” and all its inherent implications, it is in fact the root prompting for other questions that must be answered first, or alongside it, if this question is to be attempted to be answered by any person accurately. Some of those questions are, “If God knows everything, and is Omniscient, how is it that he knows about the pain and suffering I am going through, but allowed it to happen without seemingly doing anything about it?” Or “If God is all-powerful as in omnipotent, why is he able to do something to have prevented the evil in my life and can do anything needed to change it, but doesn’t seem interested in helping?”. “If God IS love, why is he acting in a way that seems contrary to the way an all-loving God should act if he were to care about my suffering?”. “If God is sovereign, and manages everything like a tight ship, why does he seem to be allowing a lot of sloppy problems to be unfolding in my life right now?”, and “if God wants me to have a soft heart, why is he allowing people to be rude, brash, and callous towards me?” Or “If God is righteous, why does he seem to be allowing me to suffer a lot of injustices and unrighteousness at the hands of people that don’t seem to care one whit about God?” We could extend the questions with scores of other questions like these! We think we are describing something that should be appropriate only for one kind of anomaly after another, but these are all sadly too plentiful—at least for our taste!

The utter irony of these questions, seem to have a common theme: “Why isn’t God living up to his full potential for me in my life?”, when we should be asking ourselves the question: “Why am I not living up to my full potential for God?”, and further the irony, when all that is done, Jesus speaks fittingly in Luke 17:7-10“Which one of you having a servant tending sheep or plowing will say to him when he comes in from the field, ‘Come at once and sit down to eat’? Instead, will he not tell him, ‘Prepare something for me to eat, get ready, and serve me while I eat and drink; later you can eat and drink’? Does he thank that servant because he did what was commanded?(it is understood that the answer is “No!”) In the same way, when you have done all that you were commanded, you should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we’ve only done our duty.’”

For some in the body of Christ there is much confusion in what to believe about good and evil, in the way of what health and wealth teachers like Andrew Womack teach—“if it’s good, it’s from God, and if it’s bad it’s from the devil”. He has a whole series on YouTube entitled “How to Receive God’s Best”. Because of the plethora of ideas like this in the world today, ultimately, we must define what we call good, and see if it matches what God may be determining good by looking at God’s actions and preferences in scripture, and what he promotes. His will is “good, pleasing and perfect” as seen in Romans 12:2: “Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God.” Paul Washer has an eye-opening video to enlighten us on this theme entitled “God Is Creating Weakness In Your Life, (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbOzYh9n4OA) and in his video he states:

“Always remember this one thing—there’s only one hero in this story, and that hero is Jesus Christ. There are no great men of God, there are no great men of prayer. There are only tiny, weak, faithless men of a great and merciful God who has granted them grace.”…You’re problem is not—it’s never—that you’re too weak. As a matter of fact God—what he does in our life, from the moment that we’re born again to the moment we die is he’s constantly working to create weakness in us. The problem is not that you’re weak, the problem is that we don’t know how weak we are, because that weakness would drive us to prayer, as being truly incarnate drove our Savior to prayer…..God spends decades seeking to do one thing to a man and a woman—cultivate weakness! Create weakness! Everything that’s put before us—that we can’t—Lord this time you gave me a mountain—I can’t, I -–everyone of those is to convince you of something, that you should’ve been convinced about with regard to the smallest mole hill you’ve ever had to deal with: You can’t, but He can! He can! Remember this, God always uses the runt of the litter…”

If you are facing hardship, weakness, difficulties, trials, inconveniences, pains, suffering, or a dilemma or two today, let us take in the scripture to put it all in perspective for us, that God may have ordained, or even planned your weaknesses and difficulties to shape you into the image of Christ. Do not look at it as punishment, because if you’re not in open rebellion to God you may just be undergoing the pinching, pulling, squishing, rolling, poking, cutting, shaping, molding and remaking of a clay pot shaped by the Master potter who is creating for Himself a vessel “fit for the Master’s use.” (2 Tim 2:21) Let’s end with this scripture James 1:2-12^“Consider it a great joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you experience various trials, ³because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance. ⁴And let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing. ⁵Now if any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God—who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly—and it will be given to him. ⁶But let him ask in faith without doubting. For the doubter is like the surging sea, driven and tossed by the wind. ⁷That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord, ⁸being double-minded and unstable in all his ways. ⁹Let the brother of humble circumstances boast in his exaltation, ¹⁰but let the rich boast in his humiliation because he will pass away like a flower of the field. ¹¹For the sun rises and, together with the scorching wind, dries up the grass; its flower falls off, and its beautiful appearance perishes. In the same way, the rich person will wither away while pursuing his activities. ¹²Blessed is the one who endures trials, because when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life that Godhas promised to those who love him.” Amen!

Keep growing in the Word! LG

Prayer of Dependence on God-5

Author: Lisa Groen

Category: Christian prayer aiming for true Christian growth

Lord, we come to you to seek nearness to you. We seek your presence in a deep and profound way. We pray for a visitation from you Lord. (Psalms 80:14 Return, we beseech thee, O God of hosts: look down from heaven, and behold, and visit this vine;) We want to leave behind our fleshly tendencies and actually draw closer to you. (James 4:8 Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded) We are tired of a powerless existence in which there seem to be just a few we are ministering to, and some people seem uninterested. (I Cor 4:20 For the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power.) It is not that it’s about us, and it’s not that we are ungrateful, but we seek you because we believe that you really can move among us through your word, through our seeking you, through our worship, and other ways and we believe that your ministry among us can be greater and more noticeable and we would like to see that shown in fruitfulness in more lasting, deeper and life impacting ways on a broader scale. (Acts 4:13 Now as they observed the confidence of Peter and John and understood that they were uneducated and untrained men, they were amazed, and began to recognize them as having been with Jesus.) My prayer for us is that when people see us they would not see just us,— but you Lord– looming bigger than we ourselves in the light of all that’s happening. I am impressed with the reality of the scripture “He must increase, and I must decrease”. (John 3:30) I pray you would lead us all in seeking that. I ask for you to be magnified, and for us to step back out of the way to get a better glimpse of you. (Luke 19:1-10) We devote our hearts and minds to you Lord afresh today. We devote our attention and thinking processes to you Lord. (Provers 4:20 My son, pay attention to what I say; turn your ear to my words.) I repent on behalf of myself and others for how the daily responsibilities press on us and we are in a battle with both the enemy and with you and the battle is the pull on our attention. Oh Lord, it is right to place our eyes and attention on you when we have things happening that are little things in comparison to who you are, pressing on us. (Hebrews 12:2-3 fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. 3 Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.) I want to lead us all in a surrender of our daily pressures. Lord, we believe you care —the Bible tells us to not worry and to be of good cheer—you care about the whereabouts of our phones, you care about if something was stolen from us today—you care about how much money we will need to cover our next 6 months of bills, you even care about every need for the rest of our lives. You care about our protection—whether we are remembering to put on our armor, or not. (1 Peter 5:7 casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.”) Lord you remind us to put on our armor so we can stand in the evil day and to continue to stand. You care about our transportation, our homes, and everything around us. You care about the people in our lives, you care about what is going through their minds and you care about us and what is going through our minds. You desire truth in the inner man, what a man desires is kindness, (Proverbs 19:22) you care about that we are walking in your Spirit, and you care that we are able and willing to lean upon you Oh Lord! You would have us to recognize that you are fit to run every section of our lives, the parts that we do understand, as well as the parts we don’t understand. (Genesis 1:1, Psalm 146:6) You would have us to grow in our understanding, and grow in our awareness of what you do and who you are. You would have us to be teachable, to receive the impressions of your word being written upon our hearts. (Proverbs 8:32 “Now then, my children, listen to me; blessed are those who keep my ways.) You would have us to ask you: “What is it you want to do with me and in me? With as many weaknesses as I have, and as many insufficiencies as I have—am I seeing it right –what you want to do with me, Lord?”—yes the Lord looks at us differently than we look at ourselves. Can we still depend on God in the same way after we receive a gift as we did before we receive the gifts he will give us? We can pray a very strategic prayer—“Lord how would you have me to minister to you and to other people right now?” and “what would you have me to learn or practice?”. Lord help us to not be so taken with your Sovereignty that we adopt a “whatever will be will be attitude” and not be against your sovereignty that we forget that you fully know everything that we are going through and forget your interest in our lives. May we also not forget the war we are in and the draw from You Lord to fight the good fight of faith in every area. Help us to be pliable clay in your hands, (Jeremiah 18) that we would think on how to please you, but surrender our questions. Help us to not come out of our Christian personality in the midst of the challenges we face. We ask for your nearness and fully bring ourselves to you, our weaknesses, our ugly parts, and our clean and tidy parts. Lord, blow upon us, wash and cleanse us, send your river of life through us and fill us with yourself afresh. May your virtue and strength be infused within us and turn us back to you! May our hearts not waver in our pursuit of you and if it does, strengthen us again until we are more molded into your image. Lord, we lay aside impatience, bitterness, jealousy, exhaustion, and exasperation, and greed, selfishness, overeating, pride, doing things our own way, and looking down on those that we think are not as spiritual as we are. We repent of any of these things that may have jumped off the page and waved hello at us. Please forgive us, wash us, cleanse us, as we lay our filthy rags at the foot of the cross. (Isaiah 64:6) We ask you for the white linens of your righteousness that Jesus paid for with his blood for us to put on and keep upon us day and night, and every day of the week! Please renew us Oh God! Please grant us to draw near to you today and may we really start going deeper into partaking of your spiritual victories, and letting the victory you won Lord on our behalf to change us from the inside out! Amen!

Keep growing in the Word! LG

Man in the Cold

Author: Lisa Groen

Category: Devotional and prayer

Today after I went to Walmart, I took the freeway home and came up to a stop light as I was exiting from the freeway. This corner was less than one block from a friend’s home. He was married to a former roommate of mine from the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. That’s when I recognized him standing on the corner under the traffic light holding a sign that said: “Anything Helps, God Bless!”. When he saw me looking at him he pulled his mask over his mouth and pulled his hood tighter over his head. I had just hired him about 2 months ago for about an hour to move some large boxes of books, a shelf and end table out of my apartment which were a bit awkward for me to manage. He has been a most reliable friend for many years, and he actually loves to pray for people. I have no doubt that his faith is measured in the scales of heaven with favor and the Lord looks down upon him and smiles. This friend of mine serves in church and has basically taken on the role of butler to the pastor of his church. His faith is sincere and sweet, but he honestly has some misunderstandings of what it means to be his pastor’s “Armor Bearer”. He believes that his struggles on the job and loss of employment mean that there is more time to serve his pastor and believes that if he puts his pastor first and does everything the pastor wants him to within reason, then the Lord will count his faith as worthy of rewarding and will promote him with a better paid job because of sacrificing this way in how he “gives to the Lord”.

His own testimonies over the years have testified of his misunderstandings of the Holy Spirit. There have been at least 2 jobs that he has lost in the last 20 years from him falling down, rolling on the floor and laughing hysterically, because he said he got hit by the Holy Spirit with “Holy Laughter” and the people he worked for were not “sensitive to the Holy Spirit”. In addition to this there are at least 2 other jobs in which he got fired from his bosses not understanding why he laughs a bit too long, too hard, and too freely over jokes that are not really that funny. In fact, many of them are not funny at all. He truly acts like he thinks he is experiencing the Holy Spirit every time he laughs. This is why he gets fired, and this is why he struggles financially. My friend is living in the church building as the caretaker of the church he attends, and I am guessing he would be homeless if it were not for his subservience to his pastor. He may have had a short time being addicted to drugs, but that part of his past is more than 18 years old.

I really don’t want to open up a doctrinal can of worms or gravitate to mentioning the false teachings of Rodney Howard Browne, the original “Holy Ghost Bartender”. However, I do think that it is worth mentioning that the belief in many false teachings have cost numerous people a lot of jobs, relationships, and just the plain opportunities for having a “normal life”. In fact, the belief in false teachings have GIVEN numerous people a lot of jobs, relationships, and the unusual opportunities for having a “wealthy life”, up to the “King of The Hill”—even millionaire status. God forbid that and may our doctrine always be checked carefully!

While it is true that God has made us His peculiar people, he does not make us peculiar alone, as if “peculiar” was its own reference point to describe us without God choosing to leave his fingerprints on us. However, aside from being a peculiar people, what we all have in common with my friend, is that he and we are all “beggars– before the Living God.” I would remind us that everything we have received from God has always been a gift. We are the beneficiaries of God’s extensive benevolence. It will never be accredited to us as one who has “worked our way to heaven” or “earned a gift from God”. I came to a crisis point several years ago and I became keenly aware that every breath I took was because of the gracious mercy of God. Every beat of our hearts is a gift, every blink of our eyes is a gift, because we can move only by the mercy of God, every thought we can think is a gift, every drink of water, and on up from there. Each day we all literally experience thousands upon thousands of gifts from the benevolent mercy, kindness, and watchful eye of our Gracious Heavenly Father.

Let’s take some time to go through our homes and hearts, look around, and be thankful for what we have received, and been endowed with, with our abundance, and thank God as well for any lack we have, and also pray for those neighbors of ours who are less fortunate than we are. Paul said, “I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound.” It is for certain, that at some time in our lives we will have experienced both.

The links I have attached are of Steph Macleod, a professional singer/songwriter/worshipper from The United Kingdom. He has a testimony of living on the street due to alcoholism and got saved when he went to a shelter/mission for those living on the street. His song “Man In The Cold” is autobiographical for him and you will sense the heartbreak and loneliness in hearing his song. His song “When I found Jesus” is also autobiographical and is a real winner of a song capping off how his life was changed. I added it to complete the picture in his testimony and give poetic justice to say the least. It tells of the way Jesus found him in his utter brokenness and lifted him up from there. My friend who was holding the sign up today is another Jesus has lifted up quite a ways since I met him in 1989, but still needs prayer of course—then again, we ALL need prayer!

Prayer:

Our Gracious Heavenly Father, how easy it is for myself to quickly pray for many things in any one day and keep asking for more, and miss enjoying what you have already done. It is even a gift to be thankful, because we get to magnify your goodness in thinking through things one at a time and mention your name as the one who thought to bring that thing into our lives. How quickly and swiftly you move, like you were dancing through our prayer requests, and showing your glory, and goodness and your kindness. I thank you for what I have seen of You Oh God! How wonderful Lord it is to meditate upon the fact that you think my prayers are worthy of your consideration! And how even greater it is to think that when my prayers are not worthy of your consideration, you move to change my heart to provide for me opportunities to have my prayers become worthy of your consideration! Oh Lord, we bless your name for bearing with us in our brokenness, in our imperfections, in showing you are alive and living through us and blowing your wind through our lives. As cold as it’s been outside, You’re the One to warm the coldest heart! You’re the One to change the most stubborn of us all! How gracious you have been in letting us work, in giving us skills and talents, and gifts to share with the world, for granting us transportation and granting us food, clothing and shelter. Thank you that you grant us friends and family members to love us and talk to and share with, and people to “practice” our loving skills upon. Thank you that you have given us things to be involved with to do with others, to work towards, and people to serve, and songs to sing to you, truths to celebrate, meals to share with one another during holidays, and special times, and some get this opportunity every single day. We are blessed by your hand Oh God! And enriched in countless ways!

We pray for those who are less fortunate! We ask that you would be with them and help them. We ask that you would guide many out of false doctrines, and grant them stability, hope, an anchor for the soul, and grace to grow and learn, and move things out of their lives that they may have been tripping over. We ask you for your heart to warm those neighbors of ours who are out in the cold, just hoping that someone will give them an extra buck or two to make ends meet. We ask for their dignity to not be diminished, we pray that you would speak to them and to sharpen their sense of hearing. We pray you would help meet every need in their lives. We ask that they would lose all their taste for drugs, if that is the problem, and lose their taste for false doctrine if that has been something stealing from them. We ask that they would lose their taste for anything they have been tripping over, anything that gets them fired, anything that keeps them from being a good roommate, anything that keeps people from wanting to work along-side of them. Give them I pray, and us as well, a deep hunger and thirst for you Oh Lord! May you warm us to your love and mercy! May we exude our love and mercy for you in our praise and worship. May we lose our judgementalism for those out in the cold who are begging, maybe life has just gotten so confusing for them they don’t know what else to do. Give them the vision of themselves that you want them to see,–may they truly see themselves in their true spiritual condition—Lord in the light of you. Some are in you, and some are not, and we pray that those that are not would see your love, and mercy and goodness and that it would draw people to you for your kingdom. For those that belong to you, may they see their true spiritual condition in the light of you—we pray for eye salve! We ask for the light of your countenance to shine upon them and enlighten them! Help them all, the unsaved and the saved to overcome the battles they are now in—help them to see the hope they have in you! Renew their faith so they don’t give up and throw in the towel, or commit suicide. Give them hope so they don’t believe the lies they have stumbled over. Help them to overcome! Lord, please grant us as your people, and all our neighbors and spheres of influence to be moving toward you! May you help everyone to throw out whatever belongs to the sinful nature, and really do spiritual house cleaning, so that those who need to get saved will become saved, and so we will put on Christ and together be able to truly present ourselves and those we minister to for eternity in whatever way you have led us, to become “perfect, sanctified, stable, and whole” before you on the day that you return to take us home to be with you, Oh Lord, our God, King, and Gracious Heavenly Father! Amen! And Amen!

Man In The Cold (Live) | Steph Macleod https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6Uu7omVMes

When I Found Jesus (Live) | Steph Macleod https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTUV5G9gLsY

Keep growing in the Word! LG

Praying for Nearness to God– Seek Him With All Your heart!

Author: Lisa Groen

Category: Devotional and prayer

Christianity would be a meaningless religion if it were nothing more than what some say it is—a way to “get on God’s good side with my good works so I can earn my way to heaven”. It would fall apart if that were its depth of reality. It would be a heathen religion if that were its description. Why–you ask? Because there is no eternal or transcendent power in the power that comes from me alone. We become our own idol when we put our works as a ticket to gaining the benefits of salvation. And it offends the grace of God. However, God calls us to seek Him with all our hearts!

Do you feel the tug on your heart to draw near to God? Have you looked at times hoping to see great progress in your witness but the emptiness in your witness calls you to seek him? Have you looked at times hoping to see growth and healing in your relationships, but the brokenness of your relationships calls you to seek him?

Now, I am not talking of using God to gain a successful life. And I am not speaking of a relationship with God in order to make life easy. But what is God’s goal in telling us to seek him? Do you know God said he would come when we seek Him? How often do we seriously aim to make it a goal to dwell with God verses simply trying to pray for God’s help? What does it mean to “abide with Christ”? Is it something we can swiftly turn on with an “On” switch in our prayer life? This is not simply talking about not rushing through prayers and not rushing through Bible studies. Abiding with Christ is more than a passionate seeking of a God who told us to seek him with all of our hearts. It is a square look at what we are not and a deep surrender of the painful bent of the world’s imprint upon my soul. Again, how do I tell if I have sought God with all of my heart? What am I to wrestle with? I have to come to the end of myself in some way to truly seek him in truth from that barrenness!! I must see the emptiness of my earthly strength and power for a desperation to arise out of my deficits! We put a short in our relationship with God when we cringe away from our barrenness and deficits and run to spiritual band-aids and aspirins, and quick one liner or two liner prayers and short glances at our spiritual bankruptcy as if it had no impact on us and if it didn’t matter that much anyway because “God’s sovereignty would just fix everything automatically”!

We shift off our brokenness quite easily because we think our deficits make us look bad. And they do! But we shortchange God of opportunities to fill us up when we don’t surrender our flesh to his filling us and to his power. Paul Washer tells of how God loves us in his video “The Way God Loves You”:

–”It is so easy to learn principles about holiness, it is so easy to learn attributes of God as they’re set forth in statements, but how many men are so sick and tired of not being in the presence of God that they are willing to depart from absolutely everything and if it means running like a wild man through the woods for a week, throwing rocks at heaven, they will not rest until the presence of God is real in their life. I warn college students all the time Dr. Piper has a tremendous following among college students and I’ll hear college students preaching some of the things that …preaching…lets even go back farther… preaching some of the things Edwards wrote. And I tell them, you’re nothing more than a parrot—You’ve memorized what Edwards says but you don’t know what he knew. And you’ve never been in the presence of God like him, you’ve never tarried in prayer! You know nothing of the prayer life of David Brainerd. Dew has never fallen on your head although you’ve read his diary a thousand times. And one of the greatest reasons why ungodliness even among the people of God is because many times we’re nothing even though we stand in a pulpit we’re little boys parroting things from other men! Our ears have heard about him, but our eyes have not seen him! That would be offensive to you only if it’s true! How much time do you spend in the presence of God?! How much time do you lay before Him? How much time do you pull away from everyone else and even from your studies dear brother do you throw yourself down before him and seek his face?!…You’re going to become nothing but a bunch of cold principles if the presence and power of God is not in your life….Song of Solomon 4:8 says …come down to me…from those high proud independent places of yours where danger lurks…”

From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lo6b4dckj5A

The Song of Solomon Bible book was written through the vessel of a man who ended up needing it quite desperately! Solomon drifted gravely from God! Oh how his life would have been different if he would have sought deeply what intimacy the Lord God was seeking to make known to him! I don’t think he squarely perceived the gravity of the importance of this intimacy God was speaking to him about! On the website https://bible.ucg.org/bible-commentary/1-Kings/Solomon-turns-from-God;-Adversaries-raised-up/ It is explicitly stated that Solomon turned away from God “when he was old” (1 Kings 11:4). First Kings 11 begins by succinctly stating the cause of Solomon’s idolatry: “But King Solomon loved many foreign women, as well as the daughter of Pharaoh: women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians, and Hittites…. He had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines; and his wives turned away his heart.” …many of Solomon’s wives and concubines were undoubtedly the result of foreign alliances, as was the custom of the day. God knew these customs, and He commanded Israel’s kings not to engage in them.” So, it boils down to the customs of the day and his own lusts were taking a toll on Solomon, Solomon had God’s word, and ignored parts of it, and faced the grave consequence of drifting from God.

Let us not make the same mistakes Solomon did! We have more than the tools Solomon had for intimacy with God! Let’s make use of all we have and cry out to God in our real brokenness, barrenness, and desperate spiritual bankruptcy and cry out till we are assured of nearness to our one and only God and Savior! We have no earthly good to travel with us to heaven! Amen!

Prayer:

Lord, as we are recognizing our powerlessness, and the possible danger of just becoming a bunch of cold principles apart from Your nearness and power, may we sense your pull on us to seek you with all of our hearts! May we take serious time day after day, even week after week or month after month till we find you and till we empty ourselves of ourselves, and wait before the fountain of living waters for a fresh and abiding baptism, and seek you with eyes wide open to catch a glimpse of your heavenly face of love! Till we see you and imbibe on you and become utterly transformed in our faith and in the expression of our lives Oh God may we learn to abide in your presence until our zeal and love for you truly becomes fresh and awakened in Your power and might! We pray these things in your gracious name Oh Lord! Amen and amen!

Keep growing in the Word! LG

On Repentance

Author: Lisa Groen

Category: Prayer and devotional blend

Dear Heavenly Father, from the time we have heard the Gospel, the true gospel, we heard that in our flesh “nothing good dwells” –Romans 7:18. We need oftentimes reminders that we have no good in ourselves to add to God’s desire to save us. Philippians 4:13 reads “for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.” We have nothing in us that qualifies us for forgiveness, and nothing in us that adds up to meriting Christ’s gift of righteousness—Romans 3:9-20; Psalm 53:1-3. We must realize that all of salvation is an act of the Sovereign grace of God, and as we believe, and are overwhelmed by Your undeserved goodness Oh God, we feel the tug on our hearts to “put to death whatever belongs to our earthly nature.” Through believing we must realize our willingness to repent is a fruit of God already having done something in our hearts to cause us to want to repent. For Psalm 31:19 reads “How great is Your goodness which You have laid up for those who fear You, which You have bestowed before the sons of men on those who take refuge in You! And Ezekiel 11:19 reads, “And I will give them singleness of heart and put a new spirit within them; I will remove their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh”. May we sincerely meditate on Romans 6:1, and 6:15 which state: “What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? Romans 2:4 reads “Or do you despise the riches of His kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance?” We must be renewed in the truth Oh Lord it is You Alone who justifies the sinner based on the perfect and complete work of Christ already having died for us on the cross WHILE WE WERE YET SINNERS. Romans 5:8-9 states “But God proves His love for us in this: “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Therefore, since we have now been justified by His blood, how much more shall we be saved from wrath through Him!” And this giving us a clear hope and solid place to stand at the foot of the cross of Jesus. We must realize Oh God that Jesus is just as the song says the “Joy of my Desire” (In Haggai 2:7 the Lord says, “I will shake all nations, and what is desired by all nations will come, and I will fill this house with glory.”) May we be mindful of Psalm 34:8 which reads “Taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the one who takes refuge in him” and that there is no higher love that we get to taste while on this earth. You are seeking our love Oh Lord, and You are seeking our affection Oh Lord. Colin Smith in his blog https://unlockingthebible.org/lifekey/is-repentance-a-command-or-a-gift/ writes “God grants repentance. So you can ask God to give you a contrite heart. You can ask him to change your heart. You can cry out to him “Lord, restore repentance!” This is the promise of the gospel: God will give you a new heart (Ezek. 36:26–27).” Lord may everyone who comes into contact with this blog/prayer be touched and convicted Oh Lord that You are more interested in our spiritual health than we ever could be in this life and from that place of Your shielding us by providing hope in our deepest needs, we can find the grace to draw near and cry out to you for change from bondage and change in the places we still need to change, for the grace and virtue to both love the things you love –which in short is your truth, and righteousness and goodness, and to hate the things you hate, which in short is our sin, the unrighteous acts we have committed, and our proneness to folly. May we be people Oh Lord who prize the Love of Jesus above our highest Joy, and to Love Your righteousness and Goodness Oh Lord above anything this world may have tried to offer us—Psalm 45:7; Heb 1:9; Psalm 97:10. May we wash out our tastebuds and mouth in the milk of Your Word, Oh Lord, and wash our feet as often as we have come into contact with the world, and know that we may be prone to say at times what the lukewarm have said in their folly in Revelation 3:17 saying, “‘I am rich; I have grown wealthy and need nothing.’” But (as it says in the Word…) “you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked.” Oh Lord!– we ask with one voice Oh Lord, that if this has been so about us, that seeing the reality of it we might be seeking you to do our part in undoing the bondage of the world, and only by Your grace find help to undo our pride, our self-sufficiency, our worldliness and our inordinate loves and that You would do what only You can do! We pray we would be enabled to take off our filthy rags by Your graces, lay them down at the foot of the cross, and put on Christ, (in your armor and in Your Very Sweet Person), and be nourished on the graces of your Word, and find hope in only what Jesus accomplished, and desire the pure milk of the Word, which is able to save and satisfy our souls and grow us up in You Oh Lord! Drain out from us anything worldly, and put in place of it the growth You would desire to see, and fill us with your Spirit, goodness, and truth, Oh Dear Lord! May we truly be done with our sin, and truly make room for You in all the places of our lives we might have held back from You, Oh Lord, we cry out for mercy, growth, cleansing, heart change, and stable progress in You and in all our manner of life Oh Lord! We pray these things for our lives themselves, and for the very lives that you would have us to minister to, as we seek Your abiding presence over those we love, and over those we are called to love, and we seek these things for everyone we are to live out our faith as examples to, and as servants of Yours as we work the field of souls we are called to work for Your Kingdom Oh Dear Lord! Amen! May we access God’s blessings in abundance, and may His grace lavishly cover every need–even those that are not “pretty”, and have no earthly answer! Amen.

Keep growing in the Word! LG

How Fasting Can Cultivate the Fruit of Humility

Author: Lisa Groen

Category: Devotional and prayer

The reality of belonging to Jesus comes with many indications of our new identity in Christ. The reality of Christ’s own personality shows us many unearthly things that are “given” for what the believer will one day look like (Rom 8:29a for those whom He foreknew, He predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son…). He will share certain characteristics with us and these characteristics for those born again have become part of our new nature and were planted within us at the time of salvation and shape the direction of our growth which is from God. From this we can know that to study the personality of Christ is strategic and greatly beneficial for us because it focusses our eyes on the eternal Savior.

The characteristics of God are either incommunicable attributes or they are communicable. The ones he shares with us are the communicable characteristics and those that he doesn’t are the incommunicable characteristics. A short list of incommunicable attributes God possesses are his sovereignty, omnipotence, omnipresence, and his omniscience, which are all traits that as mere people whom God has created we will never possess, because to possess any of those characteristics would make one God-like. However, the communicable attributes from the personality of God that he intends for us to share exist because he has destined us to look like Christ. John 1:12-13 reads “But to all who did receive Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God— children born not of blood, nor of the desire or will of man, but born of God.” So, it is clear that if we are born of God, we should be aimed by God to resemble Christ and to possess those certain attributes of God that distinguish us as his children.

A short list of communicable attributes of God includes his righteousness, (Ephesians 4:22–24), which says we “are created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness”, His love, (1 John 4:16God is love..) peace, (Isaiah 9:6b And He will be called …Prince of Peace) patience, (1 Cor 13:4 Love is patient, Joel 2:13b …Slow to anger) kindness, (Gal 5:22) and humility (John 13:1-17, Jesus stooped down to wash the disciples’ feet, and Ps 18:35b…You have stooped to make me great.)

We have been predestined to the praise of the glory of his grace—the only thing that will praise him is that we would end up looking like Jesus in our hearts. John MacArthur said several things worth quoting in his message “The Benefits of Being a Saint (https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/1811/the-benefits-of-being-a-saint) that “You are sanctified” – it’s the same root word as saint – “you are called saints” – in order to make them aware of the fact that the foundation for his exhortation to their behavior is in the fact that they are saints.”…. “The fact of who we are is the premise upon which the word of God bases the fact of what we ought to act like. You might put it this way: the indicative, you are, is the basis for the imperative, you ought…In fact, it tells us that we are holy because of what Christ is; therefore, we ought to be like Him. We ought to act like Him. Our lives ought to conform to Him.”

I venture to say humility is not natural to any of us, because pride is at the heart of sin. Pride was the sin that caused Satan to fall, and pride just may be what Satan might most often tempt us with. To counter this reality, the motivation to put forth a concerted effort to exercise humility by the act of crucifying our pride through the act of fasting and prayer, can address a very real need and be a part of a very natural way of life for the person who would prize the goal of becoming Christlike.

Because we ought to conform to Him we have a long way to go. Now although we can be assured the fruits of the Spirit listed in Gal 5:22-23 and other communicable attributes of God were placed within us at salvation, and a tree does not strain itself to bring forth its good fruits, but we also can be assured that we must at times put forth our own effort since Christ himself put forth spiritual effort to exercise the fruits of the Spirit being manifested in him. So even more so for us, it is a good rule of thumb to say that if there is an attribute of Christ that is not natural to us, (surely all of them, but some more noticeably not natural!) we ought certainly put forth effort as Christ did that we should aim for whatever in our flesh may be prone to oppose the nature of Christ would be crucified or wounded by the Spirit which opposes our flesh, as we lean on God for the spiritual efforts we must put forth, of course by receiving the Spirit’s help for this warfare.

So based on these things I have written, I challenge us all again to humble our souls with prayer and fasting. (Psalm 35:13, 69:10-20) We should be ready for those days where Jesus calls us to do as he did, to “take off our street clothes, make time in our schedule to get down on our knees, and walk out the humility of washing the feet of the saints”. This was not optional, but a command. Would we discern his voice, if we heard him call us to this humility? If we submit to the training of humbling our souls, fasting indeed can be one strategic way to prepare for such days ahead that will certainly come.

Prayer:

Dear Lord, may we be willing to do whatever you are calling us to do, and may we be preparing for with abandon of whatever you have for us that demands the crucifixion of our pride, and through this steady warfare seek the growth and development of humility in our lives. Amen!

Keep growing in the Word! LG