We sent three GNs in January focusing on: (1) God’s reigning grace; (2) The walk of the believer contrasted to merely living in Christ, and finally, (3) A summary piece on Sanctification, focusing on our choices within God’s reigning grace.
Our life, as a believer, is only possible because God is agape Love. Our full salvation message is woven into God’s Love fabric. We can talk about grace and faith, truth and righteousness but these are just threads. Together they weave God’s fabric of Love. God is grace, truth, righteousness and He gifts us with our faith. All He is, is woven into this fabric on which we all stand, God’s Love! It is a fabric extending into and beyond visible space.
It is not fair to separate God into woven pieces but it is how our feeble frame approaches Him in order to respond with understanding and love. Our frail disposition forgets to put these woven parts back into in their completeness. If we are looking at righteousness, for example, we may try to respond with our own righteousness, forgetting His love is guiding us into His righteousness. When we focus on a single aspect, His love can evaporate from our view. We not only stand on His love, it is created in us as believers. Grace releases it into our being and we, thru grace, exercise God’s Love in our breath and behavior.
We need to understand the whole in order to appreciate the parts of our Holy God’s sovereign being; they are all interrelated within each other making a picture for us to see and grasp. God is God because we are finite and He is eternal; we are vulnerable while He is pure and complete. He is Holy and we are not … unless we are in Him!
We are created spiritually in Jesus! This is who we are created to be! Understanding what this means is contained in scripture. It takes time to move away from our natural physical state in soul and flesh while trusting self; we need to move from there into God’s rest, in the reality of our new “born again” spiritual identity. This is our goal: to be who we are created to be! This requires growth in grace and knowledge in Christ Jesus. It starts with Milk!
This is why God communicates to us is in shadows and types, in signs and miracles. We need help grasping, not only grace and salvation, but real living in His Spirit. Our degenerated state is hopeless without His grace and Love.
It is man who walked away from God, tainting His perfect gift of life with corruption and self-aggrandizement. Man separated himself from God and continues seeding his existence with a deception of self-importance. Man separates himself to find his own values in life based on finite experiences and distorted values. Man’s self-reliance peers toward God but cannot see clearly into the places God lives and has His being! This is why we need, and are given, God’s grace!
God did not leave man in this eternal predicament. God choose a people giving them His righteousness, written into law reflecting His character and person. He provided a leader, a spokesman to show them the way. He provided a physical cloud to lead them by day and a pillar of fire by night. They experienced His presence and faithfulness. They saw, they believed, but they would not faithfully walk the walk of law. Instead, they created their own gods and idols.
Israel demanded a king like other people. God gave them Saul by their own poor choice. God anointed a shepherd boy to become King and gave him many years of leadership training. First, it was with sheep who needed the protection of someone who could kill a lion and a bear. Then it was playing music in the King’s court followed by dodging King Saul’s spear in the same court. This followed years on the run under persecution. Finally, David was confronted with many new choices being anointed King. He was God’s man but he still endured years of suffering mixed with blessing even after becoming King; as King he also grew in wisdom and faith. God tests faith to make it strong within us! It was with this long perspective, looking back at his anointed experience, David wrote Psalm 23.
Remember the pic of Redwoods in our first GN of 2020? On first glance it looked like there were only two large redwoods, but closer examination reveals several trees blended into the front two. There is much more than meets the eye!
We are venturing into spiritual worlds of “New Birth,” into the spiritual venue of eternal realities, where light comes out of darkness, where “living water” flows out of the Rock. These are Redwoods we cannot discern without spiritual vision. But this is why we drink the blood of Jesus and eat His flesh! This is why we dwell in His Word and allow it to process from our spirit into our soul. The only way we grow in this vital relationship of love and life and light, is “in Christ Jesus.” He provides the Love, the Life and the Light into us while still in our flesh. How much do we have?
We have the benefit of looking back into the history of Israel; if, like Israel and Judah, we neglect Him in preference to our own reason or bias, He permits our willfulness until we come back into our spiritual senses. We have the benefit of seeing His living resurrected presence active in us. Israel did not! We must live and walk acknowledging our dependence in His active shepherding and Love.
“Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation.” -1Peter 2:2.
We need to grow up into salvation! We have the resurrection power of Jesus in our lives! To know it by experience requires our devotion to Him and His Word. It is not just the ritual of reading verses, its seeking Jesus in His Word. Our mission, along with Paul, is to “know Jesus and the power of His might.” But this also requires the testing of our faith. Just as the soldier is tested in boot camp, so we are tried and tested in the discipline of spiritual training; it is required for growth and deep faith.
When a newborn girl comes into this physical world, she craves her mother’s milk. Her readiness already knows to find a nipple fitting eager lips to receive milk into her craving little body. Nestled in the comfort of her mother’s soft skin, she knows she is where she needs to be! Here, she is safe; here, she can receive the nutrients to develop her tiny body into bones and tissue developing her growth into maturity.
A spiritual babe or even a spiritual child knows the comfort of God and the joy being fed by the Holy Spirit when, we are not just feeding, but consuming the Word. There is within us a contentment, a sense of righteousness when we are meditating in the Word or drinking in a truth out of God’s word.
Our newborn baby girl is not ready for meat. She can’t digest a strong diet until her body is ready. She needs not only physical structure in her body, but security in her loving mother’s protection, nurturing her into adult womanhood!
This manifested love by the mother is not perceived by a growing infant forever. She is happy in the satisfaction and security of her mother’s breast. She excitedly expects this same joy exploring a new world. But frustration interrupts her quest when she doesn’t experience a contentment like being full of her mother’s warm milk and tender embrace.
The baby girl feeding at her mother’s breast perceives who her mother is; they are indeed one when they are together! Only thru discipline does the infant come to realize she must also trust her loving provider and not her own curiosity when she leaves mother’s breast.
The believer is united with their creator always but when the Word is nurturing a new born believer, they experience Oneness! Time is required in the Word to train our soul into Spiritual reality. The Word of God is quick and powerful able to separate our soul from our Spirit and our bones from marrow. We must learn to discern the voice of our Spirit from the reason of our flesh. This requires intentional discernment!
We tend to live at our mother’s breast spiritually being satisfied by drinking milk from the pulpit on Sunday mornings. But we are already of age and must take on the responsibility of training our own soul’s submission to our new identity in Christ Jesus. In Christ we have Spiritual ears to hear Spiritually! Skill comes from practice!
“Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he that is in the world.” -1John 4:4
It is not enough we read the words of the Word. We need to expose our soul to their meaning and put on our spiritual ears. Our spiritual relationship is at issue; its our relationship with God in Jesus we want to grow. This only comes by seeking Him out, by Loving Him!
Our Lord has provisioned us with His resurrected Life. The old has passed away and the new? … It is in us now by God’s own creation of joining our spirit with the Holy Spirit. It is a gift but it comes out of our faith. Faith needs to be tested and proven true. This is how we begin to realize the height and depth of who we have become by a new creation in Christ Jesus. Our faith includes loving our Lord God because His Love places our own self in His grace to learn faith’s dimensions thru consumption.
We are spiritual little children but God’s love provides us with the means to overcome. How? … Love and faith!
Why would God take up residence in our fleshly wrapper?
He gives us the assurance of His presence and Love! Not availing ourselves of His gift of Himself, in our meager self … well, foolish is a mild way of putting it! He paid the price for our judgment, yet, He waits on us to receive His Love and redemption.
Hosea put it this way:
“‘For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God and not burnt offering.’” – Hosea 6:6.
It is true, God is righteousness personified, hence, His severe judgment. But this does not mean He is without feelings. We were made in His Image, this is why we have feelings … and the will to choose. He desires us to choose steadfast love just as He provides steadfast love to and in us!
Often a believer interprets spiritual milk as being fundamental doctrines of faith. This is an important issue but it is not the fundamental issue, desire is the fundamental issue! Knowing GOD as a Person will move us into knowing His doctrine! By knowing Him, we are led into His truth. It is not knowing the attributes, the pictures of God, its knowing His Love. God’s desire is for us to understand doctrinal issues also since it contributes to knowing our Lord Jesus as a Person. The crucial issue is desiring Him, making our Lord Jesus the object of our Love.
God created heaven and earth out of agape Love. He created heaven and earth for mankind to occupy and enjoy. He created man to be a person of fellowship, a person He could enjoy. “The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.”
We possess an untrained “will” requiring our intentional discipline to make Spiritual choices! Our “to do” choices are not spiritually trained without first submitting to the Shepherd of our soul. Self-reliance is ingrained into our natural habit disabling Spiritual faith. We need our “want to” fixed and we are the only one who can do it!
It is easy to fall into the “two nature” trap. It isn’t true, of course, but it so much easier not to judge our own self then to actually put to death the worldliness in our personal biases. After all, “There is no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus!”
This is how Satan uses deception to keep us from growing Spiritually into agape Love. The relationship birthed within us, God’s new spiritual creation, can be idolized into a religion when we allow self to replace God with personal efforts. When we follow ritual, we are doing what Israel and Judah has done. Both were in captivity and won’t see restoration until “that day.”
This isn’t our other nature, this us choosing after we have been set free; it is permitting pride to rule over our Spirit. Jesus is looking for overcomers. He has provided His resurrection power in those created Spiritually. Overcoming is our glorious privilege but we have to drink our milk before we try to digest meat. Our other nature is an illusion we use to justify our poor choices rather than be who we are thru God’s new creation within us! We are now on earth as Jesus is in heaven, 1John 4:17b.
If we do not respond to God’s agape love with the agape love created inside of our new Spiritual being, we cannot grow in grace. Grace is what we need to understand the Word, doctrine as well as ourselves!
God created us with this intent, that we would love Him and fellowship with Him. It didn’t work out with Adam and it didn’t work out with God’s chosen people, Israel. And guess what, it isn’t working out with gentiles either, that’s us! Just look at the USA in 2020, … “In God We Trust?”
The Lord of the harvest is moving among the peoples of the world. It is amazing how many people are responding worldwide. Check out “Thru the Bible” ministry. They are in 120 native languages and people are daily responding to the Word in both radio and tech media. Join the “World Prayer Team” and participate daily in their ministry activity to witness what God is doing globally today!
The age of grace will not last another 2000 years. The political scene is drawing closer to that day when nations will be clashing with each other and the Church will have been removed from the earth.
It is past time to be intentional about our faith. Start new, at the beginning and refresh your self Spiritually by being a MILK drinker again. Make a daily practice of not just reading verses and spiritual thoughts for the day, spend time seeking your Lord. He is knocking on the door of hearts who are already redeemed. Expose your soul to His word and Spirit. Buy some knee pads! He wants your Love! He wants to give you the riches of His glory because He does Love YOU!