Inside, Outside, Upside down


"therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.  2cor. 7:1 (nasv)

Most of the time I don't want to be cleansed or pure of all defilement.  Most of the time what I want is to be right, powerful, truthful; and to have others honor me for what I want to be.  When times come (and they come several times a day) for me to be what others want me to be, I mostly feel controlled.  I love to be what I want to be and mostly reject what others want me to become.  Do I treat God the same way as I treat others? 

Inside transformation is very difficult.  There is a natural part of this that has us use disciplines and techniques to develop.  We can make and live out holy habits that help us, but this is not the same as being transformed. God uses the natural, but there is more.  So far from our hope is transformation, that we now mostly promote God's love that over looks our sin and mostly avoid all the biblical calls to be holy, pure, perfect; Christlike.  Why give your life to something that is never going to happen - right?

Hey!  What if the desire to be holy was a good thing?  What if "being what you are not" was a way of enjoying life more?  What if the holy that you are seeking to be was a distraction to the wonder of being the holy that the Spirit of God seeks to make us be?

In the above verse we are to cleanse ourselves in flesh and spirit.  Most of us know how to work on the flesh.  We can read and apply the Biblical truth to one of the lists in Scripture.  This is a good work.  We are to cleanse our flesh.  The body is good when it is under the rule of God.

Most of us have little or no skills at working in the realm of the spirit.  Most of us tend to be an extremist.  Either the things of the spirit are all good or all untrustworthy.  We might enjoy a dream from God but not trust it for guidance, or we might tell our friends that this is the will of God for the world. 

The Holy Spirit offers to us a thousand workings and wonders that change our natural and spiritual lives.  Maybe it is time for us to re-discover the Holy Spirit as God again.

I am an 80%

 

I now am in day two of recovery from surgery.  What do we call it when going to the hospital and having surgery is a normal part of our life?  Do we call that “medical restoration” or “mandatory renovation”? 

I thought I might write a book to myself entitled “Reflections from the bathroom floor”.  This booklet could contain my thoughts and emotions about life as seen from lying on the bathroom floor after passing out and collapsing.  Some of my topics might be….

• My family looks bigger from this perspective.
• Why they don’t believe me when I tell them “I’m fine”
• The floor is hard but I don’t seem to mind
• I can hear my inner man praying even while I am mentally out of focus.  It nice to hear my heart is more in love with God than my mind thought.
• Why I am more concerned how others will deal with what is happening to me then I am concerned what is happening to me.
• Will the paramedics be able to pick me up
• I think this cold floor is actually helping to break my fervor.
• Can I have a pillow

Thanks to the love of God, the prayers of many people and the medical blessings of our community, I live to have a 50/50 chance of having this again.  If I apply that to my weather forecasting skills, this means, maybe I will and maybe I wont. 

I any case God is with us on the bathroom floor, in surgery, in the recovery and with us back home.  A lesson that I seem to be learning again and again and again over the last 12 months.   I’m not complaining, but maybe I should apply my life to the prompting I had from the Lord on Sunday morning before all these events unfolded.

Rod, you get it right about 80% of the time, so you are wrong 20%  of the time.  Don’t be so confident in what you know as humble to learn/live what you don’t know. 

 

 

For me just cross out the word “women” above and insert the word “others”.

Don’t Just Do Good!

I have often sought to use my faith so that I would have something to share with others.  I would use faith to produce a miracle, get a prophetic word, obtain some wisdom.  For some, this may seem like a great thing, I feel it is less than “great”.

I now believe that using my faith for such things is good and at times, very good.  But the greatest thing that I can use my faith for is having a relationship with God that is unending.  I know that many think this impossible.  But try and have faith for it.  Try to have faith to live a life always abiding, always connected to the Father.

 

When we want to press on others what kind of person Jesus was, we often bring forth the truth that Jesus did nothing unless He saw the Father doing it.  We stress that connection of the man Christ Jesus and God.  Yet we often neglect this Christ like call when seeking a calling for ourselves.  We want the miracles, signs and wonders but somehow think the burden of unions with God just that, a burden. 

We can do a great many good works in life, but how many of them are in line with the will of the Lord?  We can justify our virtues, our giving and our sacrifice as making them worthy apart from the will of God, but are they truly.  What if “not doing God’s will” was just the same as “doing all kinds of good, but not doing God’s will”?  I have been told hundred’s of times that you don’t need to seek the will of the Lord if it is written in the Bible to do. 

I have discovered that what others mean by this is that they feel you do not need to seek God’s will to do what they want you to do.  If you pray but they are driven by missions, you should do missions.  If you do missions but they promote right doctrine, if they serve the poor but you encourage the wealthy….

Seeing the Father and doing what you see Him doing is your self identity.  Do you know who you were created to be and do?  The Father knows and takes the time to communicate that to you.  The whole of a personal relationship with God rest on seeing our Father leading us.  To be whole, complete, secure; you will need to develop the faith to do what God is calling you to do.  You vision must be more upon the Father than focused on the needs and desires of man or the church.  By doing the will of the Father you release His kingdom in heaven upon the earth.  It matters!