Motivated by a new life…

 

Today’s reading from Charnock’s amazing book describes how God reaches those who are not yet His people and uses their ‘nature’ as part of His offer. He begins by saying how the devil tempts us by offering that which appeals to our corrupt nature. For instance, if a person is violent, the temptations will fit that temperament. If they are gentle, the temptation will not be the same, but more suited to the nature already in that person.

He then says that the wisdom of God does not destroy a person’s nature or try to change it to a radical opposite, but makes it correspond to our faculties. His example is Saul, who wanted what he thought was right and vigorously went after it. Then on the road to Damascus, God confronted this man and revealed to him what genuine rightness was (Christ) and this man vigorously went after it, not in His own strength but in the power of the Holy Spirit. His motivation was still there but transformed to God’s will.

I’ve taken courses in spiritual gifts that say those seven motivational gifts in Romans 12 are present before salvation — a part of human nature but corrupted by sin. When Christ comes in, these motivations are activated, and in the power of the Holy Spirit, they form the way God uses that person.

Charnock describes the process of God in clearing our understanding of dark principles so we may see his truth, our own misery, and the source of true happiness. He bends our wills according to this light, to desire and move to this end of our calling “efficaciously, yet agreeably; powerfully, yet without imposing on our natural faculties; sweetly, without violence, in ordering the means; but effectually, without failing, in accomplishing the end.”

Charnock says the Scripture calls it teaching, alluring, and calling. Teaching is an act of wisdom: “It is written in the Prophets, ‘And they will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me.” (John 6:45).

Alluring is an act of love: “And there I will give her her vineyards and make the Valley of Achor a door of hope. And there she shall answer as in the days of her youth, as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt” (Hosea 2:15).

Calling is an act of authority: “You have said, “Seek my face.” My heart says to you, “Your face, Lord, do I seek.” (Psalm 27:8).

He says, and I agree, that none of these are violent constraints. God moves in them and the human will concurs. He changes the moral nature but not the physical. He lets the nature remain, but changes the principle in it: the understanding remains understanding, and the will remains will. But where there was before folly in the understanding, He puts in a spirit of wisdom; and where there was before a stoutness in the will, He forms it to a pliableness to his offers.

There is more, but this is enough to fill me with awe. A book on spiritual gifts lists what appeals to each of the gifts. For instance, those gifted as teachers are information gatherers and want to know facts that make sense. Those gifted in compassion are concerned about feelings rather than logic and want to experience God’s love.

This information hits me as I am praying for many who do not know Jesus. However, they are motivated in various ways. I know the servers and exhorters among them, and now God shows me how He works with these motivations so giving me ideas for how to pray for them.

PRAY: Jesus, there are times when You answer my prayers about how to pray for others and Your answers leave me stunned, yet eager to get at it. This is one of those times. My heart is almost dizzy to see the connection between human nature and the varying ways that You teach, allure and call people to Yourself. My desire for information and for knowing the right way to do things, has always been part of who I am. Now I understand much more about who others are and how to pray for them in ways that fit with Your wisdom. This is amazing, and I’m so thankful.

Become what you love . . .

A quilt is usually made of many pieces of fabric intricately joined together with considerable thought concerning color, shape, values and other design elements. It is not finished at that point, although many quilters stop there and commission someone else to do the quilting. In that process, the completed top is layered over backing fabric with a filler called batting, then stitched together in a plain or intricate pattern. As many say, it is this quilting that makes the quilt.

I love the process. I also love the parallels of the process to the spiritual formation in the lives of God’s people. All the bits work together to make a life pleasing to the Lord and a comfort and blessing to those around them.

Tozer says that we are becoming what we love. Our first love must be Jesus Christ. He tested Peter on this matter, looking for a love that would be obedient to His commands:

When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Feed my lambs.” He said to him a second time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Tend my sheep.” He said to him the third time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time, “Do you love me?” and he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep. (John 21:15–17)

Jesus knew that serving Him would bring out the best in Peter. This man was just like many Christians. He began with a love for the plan of God, even though he didn’t really know what it was. He was zealous and vocal, hasty, bold, and sometimes terrified. But in his heart, he loved Jesus and stayed as close to Him as he could.

Jesus knew Peter’s heart. He might have been thinking of him when He said, “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.” Whoever was on His mind, this is a truth for every believer. Because faith and the blood of Christ has purified our hearts, we can look into the face of Christ. In the looking, we are transformed.

And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. (2 Corinthians 3:18)

Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure. (1 John 3:2–3)

Tozer says we become what we love. We see it all the time. Loving couples begin to mimic one another’s gestures. This mimicry is even related to eye contact, and eye contact effects emotions. I’ve read that friends become lovers when eye contact increases. That is, those who can sustain that intimate gaze, even as an experiment, wind up getting married. Little wonder the Bible connects looking at Jesus with becoming united to Him and like Him!

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Jesus, sometimes I feel as if my vision is fuzzy and my eyes need stronger glasses. That is a problem but only physical. I can look at You through the eyes of faith, and that vision does not depend on clear eyes but a pure heart, a heart that is quick to see and renounce sin, which desires Your will above my own and is not marred by any useless or harmful focus on the stuff of this world. My praise for today comes from two lines of song: “Purify my heart” and “I want to see Jesus.” Keep my eyes on You.

Seek His face

Last week in the hospital, I had several vivid dreams. One involved the Holy Spirit and the devil fighting over me. When I woke up, I felt that this was a war for my life. It was intense.

Another intense dream had me at a church meeting. Two theologians were bantering back and forth over their opposing views of a certain doctrine. At least two people in the room were asleep. Some were ill. Others were nattering about smaller matters. In this dream, I became frustrated with the debate after hearing one of the theologians say that we needed to be united, and unity required thinking the same way.

Really? This statement put me in ‘sermon’ mode! In the dream, I told the two theologians that unity was not about thinking the same, but about loving one another. Of course, the dream was longer than this summary, but I woke up surprised at its events.

In today’s devotional, Tozer says that apart from Christ and the apostles probably no group of believers in history has ever held the truth in total purity. As he quotes, “the truth is so vast and mighty that no one is capable of taking it all in, and that it requires the whole company of ransomed souls properly to reflect the whole body of revealed truth.”

This does not mean that God is the author of our confusion. Rather, our minds and hearts are messed up because of sin and we cannot understand clearly. The goal is to receive the truth without too much interference, yet as sinners, interference happens. We all have ‘holes’ in our thinking and need each other to properly understand God, and even then, we fall short!

Tozer’s last statement says what I ‘preached’ in my dream — it is not union God wants, but unity, and that is a matter of life and love.

How do we get that kind of love? Yesterday’s verses tell how Jesus told His disciples to love Him and that He would send them the Holy Spirit. This strongly suggests that for us to love Jesus, we need the Holy Spirit. Obviously, to love one another requires the same supernatural power.

In my thinking, if I am going to love God’s people and be part of that unity that is not about thinking alike, but about love, then I need to seek the continual help of the Helper that Jesus sent. This idea of seeking the help of God brings me to a verse that I selected as my ‘verse of the year’ a few years back — only today I discover something new about this verse. It says:

You have said, “Seek my face.” My heart says to you, “Your face, Lord, do I seek.” (Psalm 27:8)

The new discovery is that the word ‘seek’ that begins this verse is plural. That is, God says, “Seek my face” to all His people, not merely the psalmist, and not just to me. The context suggests it is a command to an individual, but the word form is plural!

I’m letting the implications wash over me. If all of God’s people are seeking the face of God, then are we not far more apt to have that loving unity that He desires?

Think of a classroom of students all seeking the face (desiring to know and please) the teacher. Are they more apt to get along with each other? Of course. Or consider a family of children seeking the face of their mother. Instead of looking at their own needs or being concerned about their own plans, they are in harmony because they have a common focus.

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Dear Jesus, in context, this verse seems to speak to me as an individual. I’m to seek Your face. Yet a closer look reveals that You have a far greater desire than individuals seeking You; You want all of us to seek You, desire You, reach out to You. In doing this, we draw closer to You and therefore closer to one another. To make this very practical, when I talk with Your people, it is always good to encourage them to be looking for You, seeking You. Nothing else is as important to unity as our desire for You!

Face God now? Or Eventually?

Ezekiel 23:1–49, Revelation 11:1–14, Job 35:9–16

A friend once said to me, “I don’t know why people think it is difficult to believe that Jesus died for the sin of the world. I don’t have a problem with that.”

I replied, “But what about your sin?”

There was a long pause, and he said, “Oh, I see what you mean.”

Human nature has not changed. Sin-filled people do not what to hear about it, even try to hide from hearing the truth. When Adam and Eve sinned, they hid in the garden trying to escape God. We all do it, one way or another.

Today’s reading in the OT describes the sin of God’s people in graphic terms. The metaphors make me blush. Near the end of these descriptions, God says to Ezekiel, “Son of man, will you judge Oholah and Oholibah? Declare to them their abominations. For they have committed adultery, and blood is on their hands. With their idols they have committed adultery, and they have even offered up to them for food the children whom they had borne to me. Moreover, this they have done to me: they have defiled my sanctuary on the same day and profaned my Sabbaths. For when they had slaughtered their children in sacrifice to their idols, on the same day they came into my sanctuary to profane it. And behold, this is what they did in my house.” (Ezekiel 23:36–39)

A few verses later, God repeats how He will use their enemies to punish them. He says, “And they shall return your lewdness upon you, and you shall bear the penalty for your sinful idolatry, and you shall know that I am the Lord God.” (Ezekiel 23:49)

We don’t want to see our sin, and we don’t want to go face to face with the Living God. However, as this chapter describe, all who we resist God in this life, we will meet Him eventually.

Sometimes sinners will mask their resistance to God. They seem okay on the outside, even have a pious exterior. Job’s young ‘friend’ Elihu knew about those people. He said, “There they cry out, but he does not answer, because of the pride of evil men. Surely God does not hear an empty cry, nor does the Almighty regard it.” (Job 35:12–13)

He spoke the truth about the way pride keeps us from a two-way relationship with God and how prideful prayers bounce off the ceiling. Yet Elihu erred by accusing Job of being one of those people: “Job opens his mouth in empty talk; he multiplies words without knowledge.” (Job 35:16)

Job may have been without understanding concerning God’s reason behind his suffering, yet God eventually said that Job spoke “what is right” so his words were not empty talk. He trusted God and spoke directly to Him. He was not afraid to let God examine his life or hear his innermost thoughts and fears. Job had not rejected God, even when he felt that God had turned away from him.

Sinners might think that God isn’t looking and He does not care about what they do, but the Bible is filled with descriptions of how God deals with those who reject Him. Even at the end, He speaks of those who mock the people who serve Him. He tells John (who wrote Revelation), “Rise and measure the temple of God and the altar and those who worship there, but do not measure the court outside the temple; leave that out, for it is given over to the nations, and they will trample the holy city for forty-two months. And I will grant authority to my two witnesses, and they will prophesy for 1,260 days, clothed in sackcloth.” (Revelation 11:1–3)

In those final and terrible days, it seems sensible that everyone would turn to God and His people for help. Instead, God continues to describe the attitude of godless people. In this case, it is their attitude toward His two witnesses: “And when they have finished their testimony, the beast that rises from the bottomless pit will make war on them and conquer them and kill them, and their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city that symbolically is called Sodom and Egypt, where their Lord was crucified. For three and a half days some from the peoples and tribes and languages and nations will gaze at their dead bodies and refuse to let them be placed in a tomb, and those who dwell on the earth will rejoice over them and make merry and exchange presents, because these two prophets had been a torment to those who dwell on the earth.” (Revelation 11:7–10)

Three and a half days later, God put life into those two. “They stood up on their feet, and great fear fell on those who saw them. Then they heard a loud voice from heaven saying to them, ‘Come up here!’ And they went up to heaven in a cloud, and their enemies watched them. And at that hour there was a great earthquake, and a tenth of the city fell. Seven thousand people were killed in the earthquake, and the rest were terrified and gave glory to the God of heaven.” (Revelation 11:11–13)

A witness is someone who describes what they have seen. These witnesses told people about God, and to do that, they had to know Him, not run away from Him. Turning from sin and facing the Lord means admitting sin and being honest with God. This is unpleasant at best, but the result is far better than the alternative, for the mockers die and the faithful witnesses live with God forever.