Tag: Consecration

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

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

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

Learning the Fear of The Lord as Mentioned in Psalm 34:11

Author: Lisa Groen

Category: Unpacking Scripture

According to Britannica.com, post-modernism is “… a late 20th-century movement characterized by broad skepticism, subjectivism, or relativism; a general suspicion of reason; … (objective, natural) reality as there is, according to postmodernists, is a conceptual construct, an artifact of scientific practice and language. …the rejection of an objective natural reality—is sometimes expressed by saying that there is no such thing as Truth.”

The thinking habits produced by postmodernism—skepticism, subjectivism, relativism, and the rejection of truth are traps that can become direct assault weapons used against a person’s faith, or at a minimum can handicap it—unless those same people learn to stand up with effective thinking habits that can keep our mindsets healthy and free from error.

There is a general reluctance of certain groups of society to have an interest in cultivating an environment in which the fear of the Lord is treasured. There is also in our world today a famine in knowing what the fear of the Lord is–and in knowing what it means to walk in the fear of the Lord.  To try to start a conversation with your unsaved loved ones about the importance of revering God if you have not done so lately, will quickly bring about question marks, and other un-sought-after results! Reactions you might get could range from people getting offended at you for suggesting they need to fear The Lord, because it is a common belief that “God is only loving and does not want us to be afraid of him—he just wants you to feel good vibes from him!” Or you may get people thinking you are some kind of zealous religionist who is in love with the idea of religion and doing religious things with no particular purpose, and who wants to breed a suspicious paranoia of doing “bad things”, to gain control over society or over themselves. You might get the reaction of someone thinking you have more in common with a Martian who recently landed on earth than a citizen of today’s America, which ironically used to be a Christian nation. Or, you might get a reaction of someone thinking you have some kind of strange archaic tradition that is understood to have been outdated simply because they think that you also are behind the times because of your fashion or the age of your car or of your hairstyle and the idea that modern people understand God far better than the uncultured people of Bible times.  Modern people are in touch with their true selves and believe that fear in any relationship is harmful and have the unspoken question rolling around in their minds —“Who out there actually believes God COULD EVER or WOULD EVER WANT us to fear him?” He is after all the big Santa Claus in the sky, giving out hugs and marijuana to smoke—right?” So how do we begin that conversation about the importance of walking in the fear of the Lord—and how do we let them know the fear of the Lord is healthy and keeps our relationship with God healthy?

We must recognize ourselves and so live as ones who know there is a good use for the fear of the Lord as it produces a good posture for us to be able to approach God in the right spirit. It has a function for everyone and can produce benefits in our lives ranging from keeping a person alive and not burnt to a crisp when in communion with The Holy God, (Lev 10:2), to ranging to keeping a person from sinning (Exodus 20:20), and numerous other functions. It enables one to take the right approach in prayer for communion with God (Psalm 22:23), and for possessing a good understanding of people and life (Psalm 111:10), to God ever having his eye upon us for protection (Psalm 33:18). Because of the fear of the Lord we reap the benefit of having the angel of the Lord encamping around us (Psalm 34:7), and because to have been given the benefits of life and peace from God which are catalysts that can also produce the fear of the Lord (Mal 2:5) so God’s goodness is a circular cycle; as we receive God’s goodness it produces the fear of the Lord, and as we are given and live in the fear of the Lord, it positions us to be recipients of God’s goodness. (Ps 112)

Simply having skepticism or unbelief in God are two of the foundational reasons that much of our society is not recognizing or valuing the treasure of the fear of The Lord. Simply having subjectivism—thinking a person’s truth is only true for the person, and having relativism—thinking truth is a moving target, we can never know it–are two reasons we doubt the existence of solid Bible truth today. Yet it is only in the Bible that we are told of this glorious gift that does so much for God’s people and goes along with explaining the identity of our God and creator because by telling us to fear him is actually demonstrating to us the personality of one who is worthy to be feared.

In our world today, now that we live in a postmodern society, many have lost the ability to think through objectively that which for centuries past was believed by ancient Israel. They believed sin was sin because God said it was sin, and they believed sin had consequences, because God said sin had consequences and because of many graphic consequences that followed the warnings  But we fail today  sometimes to get the whole picture of the fear of the Lord as presented to us in the Bible, because we think “those were the sins of those people—I don’t do those sins! Nothing bad will happen to me! No reason to fear God! A proper response to this is that God is worthy of our fear regardless of anyone’s having sinned. On our BEST days God is worthy of our fear. When we read about Moses who went up to Mount Sinai to receive instruction from God in Exodus 19, it is plainly written that “Everyone in the camp trembled.”, and Moses was one of them. How did we get from there, to where we are today? We need to go back and look at the elements that surround a relationship with God based in a healthy fear of God.

Here we will look at the prospect of “learning the fear of the Lord”: Psalm 34:9-11 O fear the Lord, you His saints; For to those who fear Him there is no want. The young lions do lack and suffer hunger; But they who seek the Lord shall not be in want of any good thing. Come, you children, listen to me; I will teach you the fear of the Lord. I firmly believe the more we study the works of God, the more that the fear of the Lord will be implanted within us, and the more we will have a good root system of the fear of the Lord in our hearts, and minds and in our consciences.

Proverbs 19:23 reads, “The fear of the LORD leads to life, so that one may sleep satisfied, untouched by evil.” So, if people are lacking in the fear of the Lord, it can send them AWAY from life, possibly touched by evil, and to places they really and truly are not prepared to go. We must learn from Old Testament examples in which the fearfulness of God has been made known, and one of these examples is in the account of the sin of Nadab and Abihu.

Leviticus 10:1-3 Now Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took their respective firepans, and after putting fire in them, placed incense on it and offered strange fire before the Lord, which He had not commanded them. 2 And fire came out from the presence of the Lord and consumed them, and they died before the Lord. 3 Then Moses said to Aaron, “It is what the Lord spoke, saying, ‘By those who come near Me I will be treated as holy, And before all the people I will be honored.’” So Aaron, therefore, kept silent.

There were more warnings from God in this chapter towards his righteous servants, warning that they WOULD DIE in verse 6, and to prevent the outcome of God’s WRATH BEING POURED OUT on the congregation -MEANING DEATH FOR THEM even though it would be only a priest who’s sin God gave preventative warning about in verse 6, telling them how they should not mourn for the evil priests, or they WOULD DIE another way in verse 7, and that the priests were not allowed to drink strong drink, nor any of their sons or they WOULD DIE in yet another way in verse 9.

Leviticus 10:4-11 Moses called also to Mishael and Elzaphan, the sons of Aaron’s uncle Uzziel, and said to them, “Come forward, carry your relatives away from the front of the sanctuary to the outside of the camp.” 5 So they came forward and carried them still in their tunics to the outside of the camp, as Moses had said. 6 Then Moses said to Aaron and to his sons Eleazar and Ithamar, “Do not uncover your heads nor tear your clothes, so that you will not die and that He will not become wrathful against all the congregation. But your kinsmen, the whole house of Israel, shall bewail the burning which the Lord has brought about. 7 You shall not even go out from the doorway of the tent of meeting, or you will die; for the Lord’s anointing oil is upon you.” So they did according to the word of Moses.

8 The Lord then spoke to Aaron, saying, 9 “Do not drink wine or strong drink, neither you nor your sons with you, when you come into the tent of meeting, so that you will not die—it is a perpetual statute throughout your generations— 10 and so as to make a distinction between the holy and the profane, and between the unclean and the clean, 11 and so as to teach the sons of Israel all the statutes which the Lord has spoken to them through Moses.”

God gives us the medicine of demonstrating his fearful acts “so as to TEACH THE SONS OF ISRAEL ALL THE STATUTES WHICH THE LORD HAS SPOKEN TO THEM through Moses.”

By the fear of the Lord leading us and giving us understanding about these things we are allowed to see God as both the ferocious and terrifying Lion of the Tribe of Judah but still the altogether Good Aslan.

One habit that we can learn from Moses in his search for nearness to God and to hear direction from God for himself and for all of Israel, that showed he possessed the fear of the Lord was that he persistently fasted for 40 days and 40 nights. I believe long-term fasting helps us put our flesh down and put on humility which cultivates a healthy and deepened relationship with God. Numbers 12:3 reads “(Now the man Moses was very humble, more than any person who was on the face of the earth.)” We see that Moses was counted by the God the narrator in Numbers to be humble. God wanted this to get our attention. Moses would not have bragged about this himself.  We can observe from the many different successful occurrences of fasting in the Bible, that fasting helps our minds wrap around the acts of God, and thus CAN develop in us a deepened exposure to God, a deepened understanding of God and deeper fear of God. Because Moses met with God in his fasting and prayers, I believe it bolstered his spirit and submerged him in the Spirit of God to know what to do and what to say in all his leading Israel, when Nadab and Abihu sinned. I believe it enabled him to keep the right reverent attitude in what must have been a terrifying crisis for Israel, and which we can believe it provided the right example for the rest of Israel to follow to keep reverent as well, in the midst of witnessing the wrath of God.

The bottom line is sometimes you will need to fast to navigate successfully around the sins of other people without getting sucked into their sins along with them when the wrath of God falls.

We should be encouraged about Jeremiah 32:40b “…I will put the fear of Me in their hearts, so that they will not turn away from Me.” This gives us the view of the reality of God letting us see the tender desire he has for us in his heart —that He is making us his own and keeping us for himself, so he and we can enjoy a deeper and abiding fellowship of nearness, all simply with his putting the fear of the Lord into our hearts.

Prayer:

Dear Lord, when we look at the vast difference between ourselves and Moses, we can be encouraged about the sustained trait of meekness. Meekness was preserved in the life of Moses, although the people he led were under a covenant of sacrifice. And that meekness you used Oh God was part of what you used to make Moses powerful and successful in his day.  May our hearts be open to cultivating a nearness to you facilitated by fasting and prayer so we may also benefit from the strength that comes with stripping the flesh of indulging pleasures. For we know that if we were to leave our flesh alone and not bother with attempts to crucify it, it would drag us away in ungodly directions! We know that you keep us, and yet there is a mystery in our responsibility verses your sovereignty, and we must be led by you in these areas of growth and sanctification by your Spirit, otherwise if we do it in our flesh power, we gain nothing. Please Lord, guide us in what you see is our responsibility, help us to see it too, and to receive the grace we need for putting off the flesh, and help us to put on the strength of humility, to walk in meekness and gentleness, because I believe it carries the power to draw people to follow you. Preserve us in the attitude of your Spirit, so we can be fruit bearers, if need be among acts of your wrath being poured out, big or small in our days, but may we ever keep our eyes on you Oh God our Heavenly Father, and glorify you forever through our love for you and through our right approach to draw near to you! Oh God, we don’t deserve these things, but you said we could ask and when we seek the kingdom, these things would be added unto us oh God! May your Kingdom come, and may your wonderful will be done Oh God in our midst! Blessed be the name of the Lord! Amen!

Keep growing in the Word! LG