God comes with the gentle wine of His Spirit--His tender love & reveals His goodness to us. He reveals Himself to us as the tender, loving, compassionate Father. He draws us in with His lovingkindness & teaches us who He truly is so that we can trust that He is good & He cares for us. He delivers us from all our fears with His perfect love, & gives us the Spirit of adoption that we can cry out, "Abba, Father!"
Through this display of His love, we are delivered from a wrong view of who God is. We are given our identity as sons & daughters. It is necessary.
Then, the Lord comes with the fire of His spirit & makes us priests before Him. He teaches us the honor & reverence of a Father.
His problem with the priests in the book of Malachi was that they had no honor or reverence for the Father & it led to living a life of sin--divorce, not giving tithes, not taking care of wives, & children--living for themselves with no respect for God. This was the account that the Lord had against the priests. They had no Fear of the Lord.
The heart response to the revelation of the Father should be joy, but it should also be reference. He shows us different attributes of Himself without suspending any one attribute at any time. He comes down to our level so we can see Him rightly.
Ask the Lord to give you honor & reverence for the Father.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Beholding the Beauty of the King of Glory
Jesus is the King of Glory. He is beautiful. So many times, we hear of Him as the Holy, beautiful King, but we have never experienced His beauty and glory.
David sang songs of the beauty of the king. Daniel fell as a dead man. Isaiah fell crying out in repentance & a response of willingness. John was captured into a whole other realm & received revelation of God's plans. Ezekial was taken up in a whirlwind to see visions of God. He sat on the river bank staring for seven days after his revelation.
Elijah was captured in a chariot of fire. John saw an open door & heard a voice like a trumpet. It's not just apocolyptic literature--it's a real place. These were real experiences of the realm of the glory of the Lord.
Seeing this beautiful realm of the King of Glory will capture our hearts in a way that we have never experienced before. We will be willing to go anywhere, say anything, do anything. Seeing His glory is the way to walk in the Fear of the Lord all the days of our lives.
Let a cry arise in your heart like Moses, "Show me your Glory, Lord!" (Ex. 33). Like David, let a cry arise in your heart to see His face (Ps. 27:4-8).
He is the beautiful King of Glory worthy of all our adoration and worship. Let us behold Him in the beauty of His Holiness (Ps. 29).
David sang songs of the beauty of the king. Daniel fell as a dead man. Isaiah fell crying out in repentance & a response of willingness. John was captured into a whole other realm & received revelation of God's plans. Ezekial was taken up in a whirlwind to see visions of God. He sat on the river bank staring for seven days after his revelation.
Elijah was captured in a chariot of fire. John saw an open door & heard a voice like a trumpet. It's not just apocolyptic literature--it's a real place. These were real experiences of the realm of the glory of the Lord.
Seeing this beautiful realm of the King of Glory will capture our hearts in a way that we have never experienced before. We will be willing to go anywhere, say anything, do anything. Seeing His glory is the way to walk in the Fear of the Lord all the days of our lives.
Let a cry arise in your heart like Moses, "Show me your Glory, Lord!" (Ex. 33). Like David, let a cry arise in your heart to see His face (Ps. 27:4-8).
He is the beautiful King of Glory worthy of all our adoration and worship. Let us behold Him in the beauty of His Holiness (Ps. 29).
Friday, May 6, 2011
"Ought to Walk as He Walked..."
Over the past several months, I have been learning to meditate on scripture line by line & verse by verse by going through a book & praying it back to God one phrase at a time. It has been a very impactful tool for me.
This past week, I have been in I John 1 & 2. Several verses have been striking blows to my spirit. Check this out:
"He who says he abides in Him ought himself also to walk just as He walked..." (I Jn. 2:6)
Wow. I could really end this blog right now. This is such a provoking statement & it really seems impossible--and it is without abiding in the Spirit.
Abiding in the Spirit is not a gray area. It is black & white. You are either in the Spirit or you're not. And those who say they are abiding in the Spirit can be measured by their fruit. Do they look like Jesus or not? Now, before you start looking at other people, look at yourself first.
This verse is meant to slice us. It is that sharp two-edged sword that divides truth from lies, soul from Spirit, & cuts the dead branches from the vine (Jn 14:6, Heb. 4:12, John 15:4).
We ought to walk as Jesus walked, but we must first rest in the Spirit & learn to walk in His strength, not our own.
This past week, I have been in I John 1 & 2. Several verses have been striking blows to my spirit. Check this out:
"He who says he abides in Him ought himself also to walk just as He walked..." (I Jn. 2:6)
Wow. I could really end this blog right now. This is such a provoking statement & it really seems impossible--and it is without abiding in the Spirit.
Abiding in the Spirit is not a gray area. It is black & white. You are either in the Spirit or you're not. And those who say they are abiding in the Spirit can be measured by their fruit. Do they look like Jesus or not? Now, before you start looking at other people, look at yourself first.
This verse is meant to slice us. It is that sharp two-edged sword that divides truth from lies, soul from Spirit, & cuts the dead branches from the vine (Jn 14:6, Heb. 4:12, John 15:4).
We ought to walk as Jesus walked, but we must first rest in the Spirit & learn to walk in His strength, not our own.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
The Spontaneity of Love
Last night, I was reading the devotional for April 30th from Oswald Chamber's classic devotional My Utmost for His Highest. He talked about how love was spontaneous. It is not something that we work up or premeditate for a long time. He talked about how true love flows like a fountain from God & bubbles up out of us to other people.
This really got me thinking. So many times, we find ourselves trying to figure out how to love & how to express love. Sometimes it seems like an obligation to us or our hearts are kept in so much bondage that we cannot receive love ourselves in order to give it out to others.
However, God designed us to freely receive His love & freely give it. When we are grounded in His love, we are able to be ourselves & love flows naturally through the way we express it in our personality.
In the book The Shack, William P. Young writes about the difference between expectation & expectancy. He says that love is fearless but so many times we are afraid to truly love so we try to control the future through expectations. The problem is that when the expectations are unmet, we are dissappointed & even heart broken. However, that is not the way love is intended to be.
Love is supposed to be full of expectancy of what the other person is going to do, & filled with excitement about who that person is. The expectancy of love allows us to enjoy another person for who they are without trying to control them by who we think they should be.
We can even apply this to ourselves as well. So many times, we fail even our own false expectations of ourselves, but when the love of God fills our hearts, we are able to be who God made us to be & live in the way of spontaneous love.
This really got me thinking. So many times, we find ourselves trying to figure out how to love & how to express love. Sometimes it seems like an obligation to us or our hearts are kept in so much bondage that we cannot receive love ourselves in order to give it out to others.
However, God designed us to freely receive His love & freely give it. When we are grounded in His love, we are able to be ourselves & love flows naturally through the way we express it in our personality.
In the book The Shack, William P. Young writes about the difference between expectation & expectancy. He says that love is fearless but so many times we are afraid to truly love so we try to control the future through expectations. The problem is that when the expectations are unmet, we are dissappointed & even heart broken. However, that is not the way love is intended to be.
Love is supposed to be full of expectancy of what the other person is going to do, & filled with excitement about who that person is. The expectancy of love allows us to enjoy another person for who they are without trying to control them by who we think they should be.
We can even apply this to ourselves as well. So many times, we fail even our own false expectations of ourselves, but when the love of God fills our hearts, we are able to be who God made us to be & live in the way of spontaneous love.
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