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Wednesday, August 26, 2020
Taken Away
In Matthew 25.29 we have a man losing all that was given him -
losing, due to the simple fact that he had not used it,
losing because fear had tied his hands,
losing for lack of faith in the possibility of increase.
This passage comes near the end of Jesus' ministry,
a time of leaving last words of guidance to His followers.
It is the answer to the question:
"what is wisdom and what is foolishness?"
This whole chapter speaks of the kingdom of heaven.
Its application is for our lives.
What is at stake is the kingdom of God within us.
Today, the kingdom of God can be, and is, taken from many.
And we can so easily lose what we have - what has been given us,
not merely by sin but:
by trying to hold on to the past -
holding to a belief that God has withdrawn Himself from active working in our midst ...
"The Bible is complete and God no longer works in His people as of old".
or by holding on to something future -
"There is coming a great, earthshaking manifestation of God ... tomorrow".
Faith does not seem to extend to the working of the Spirit of God in His power in our midst today.
Rather, today seems to be a stagnant period,
of either looking back and waiting for the end of life here below,
or waiting for a future which is a fruit of our imagination.
So much of today's "teaching" is only a defence of what needs no defending.
So much of today's prophetic message excuses the reality that God is not in the midst right now.
In our childish reasoning, and ramblings, we lose out on Infinite Life;
on infinite promises of infinite possibility.
But the weight of spiritual things in our time is more real than all our deliriums.
Can we awake, and cry for a Light that will illuminate all our existence?
Can we cry until the darkness surrenders,
and God shows us that kingdom which is BEYOND it all?
There is all to gain - and there is all to lose.
The Author of our faith will be the Finisher of our faith, if we cease to depend on any other thing and trust the One Who will guide into All Truth. (Jn. 16.13)
This is God's promise - this is our Certainty.
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Amen brother! God bless you!
ReplyDeleteAgreed! The Spirit will not be bound by man's traditions or conceptions of what church should look like. He is sovereign, and as such, He goes where He pleases, comes upon who He pleases, and leaves when and if He pleases, to go someplace else or do something else, for reasons we cannot know, as Jesus explains in John 3:8 "The wind blows where it pleases. You hear the sound of it but cannot tell where it comes from or where it's going. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit." The sooner we come to terms with this aspect of the Holy Spirit, the more the Church will begin to look like what it's supposed to look like: an equally empowered spiritual partnership with no visible hierarchies, without regard to race, gender or social status, with no ties to the world's ways of doing things, but moving instead in the greater power of love which is given in order to support and strengthen the Body and to attract the unbeliever to its shores. When Christian 'leaders' desire to maintain the status quo or to live off of their past spiritual victories, they become stuck, and the result is a lifeless and ineffectual ministry. This is partly due to their dependence on their monthly salaries to support themselves and their families (or "fear of lack" as E.W.Kenyon put it), and partly because they are not fully in touch with what the Spirit is doing or wants to do in their congregations and ministries. Perhaps the pastor should leave his church for a while and bag groceries in order to become the humble servant of the people that he/she needs to be, and in order to get in touch with God once again without the need to 'perform' in church services that must occur on schedule every week. He may never go back once he realizes how God uses even the most lowly person, perhaps even more so, in the most powerful ways imaginable! Unfortunately, it is as you said. The result of not recognizing the Spirit and His ways is a Church that is defensive, self-absorbed, and self-reliant (instead of God-reliant) and which is unfruitful with regard to the expansion of the Kingdom because it is trying to do things in its own strength instead of in the power of the Spirit. In its true form, the Church is an Organism, not an Organization which it has sadly become, and as such, She is a living, dynamic entity reflecting God who is, Himself, infinitely creative and will not be bound by any man or man-made tradition of past or present. As you also said, our negligence in seeking, recognizing and obeying the Holy Spirit leads to a spiritual deficit and a price that is too high to pay in these last times, and Now is the essential time for the Church to cry out for the Spirit of God!
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