Archive for August, 2010

8-30-10 

How do we cooperate with the Spirit so we may walk in the intimacy and power that the New Testament church walked in? Part of the answer is living a fasted lifestyle. This speaks of walking in the spirit of fasting in food, finances, use of our time, our words, and our energy. Many fear fasting, but the fear of fasting is actually worse than the fast itself.

Fasting is, by definition, the abstaining of food. Fasting should be part of the normal Christian life. It is often thought of as an optional discipline. Jesus said, “When you fast,” implying that fasting occurred in the regular course of a disciple’s life. “When you fast…your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.” (Mt. 6:17-18)

Jesus called us to fast because He knows that its rewards will far outweigh its difficulties. With boldness, Jesus emphasized that the Father will reward fasting. This proclamation alone makes fasting very important. God rewards fasting, yet these rewards are not earned by us.

Some of the rewards of fasting are external, as our circumstances are touched by God’s power. Some of our rewards are internal, as our hearts encounter Him in a new depth. We fast both to walk in more of God’s power to change the world, and to encounter more of His heart to change our heart!

The idea that fasting changes us internally may be a new idea to some. Fasting results in tenderizing our hearts. When this occurs, we make different choices, which lead to different outcomes in the places we go and the people we meet. When our values are different, it affects who we marry, how we raise our children, how we spend our money, and the focus we have in ministry.

Throughout history, men have fasted with a wrong spirit as they sought to earn God’s favor or man’s approval. This is not what God is after. He delights in our pursuit to love Him and to believe His Word. We do not fast to prove anything to God or to deserve His favor. We fast to position ourselves to receive freely from his grace and to be preoccupied with Jesus and His will.

The grace of fasting is a gift to the church. God gives grace to fast. We will receive it as we ask for it. We are called to experience the joy and benefits of a fasted lifestyle. In Isaiah 58, God ordained fasting to (1) loosen the bonds of wickedness; (2) undo heavy burdens; (3) help the oppressed go free; (4) give bread to the hungry; (5) receive the light of revelation in God’s Word; (6) for emotional and physical health, and (7) that righteousness would break forth.

The Lord will delight in any small step we take to draw near to Him and be obedient to His voice.

Blessings,

Gary

8-23-10

The main objective of a believer’s life is to be able to present to Jesus at the end of our life the testimony of a life with complete obedience, thus offering perfect love to Jesus. “If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love has been perfected in us… God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God…Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as He is, so are we.” (I John 4:12-17) We seek to offer perfected love to Jesus, who is worthy of the sacrifices we make to obey Him.

To be poor in spirit means that we know our spirit is deficient in obedience or love. On the last day, Jesus will reveal, or unveil the condition of our inner man, or the measure of love that we developed. Some will have confidence as the condition of their love is made manifest. Others will be ashamed at their lack of the development of their love from this life. “Little children, abide in Him, that when He appears, we may have confidence and not be ashamed before Him at His coming.” (I John 2:26-28)

The pursuit of “complete or comprehensive” obedience includes bridling our speech (Eph. 4:29-5:4), disciplining our physical appetites (I Cor.9:27), managing our time (for service and prayer with the Word) and money (to increase the kingdom beyond our comfort and honor), and making a covenant with our eyes to refuse to look on anything that stirs up lust (Job 31:1) as we engage in communing prayer with the indwelling Spirit (2 Cor. 13:14).

Paul’s main objective in his life was to win the prize of presenting the testimony to Jesus on the last day that his obedience was complete-thus his love was complete. The prize is all that is involved in offering to Jesus a long-term testimony of complete obedience and receiving Jesus’ response back in eternal rewards, which express how He feels about us loving Him in this way. “Those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may obtain it…Therefore I run thus: not with uncertainty…I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest…I should become disqualified. (I Cor. 9:24-27)

Maintaining a fresh walk with God with a sustained reach in our spirit throughout decades is the definition of living radically before God. We are not radical because we do something unusual for a few weeks or months. When we neglect to thoroughly confront sin in our life, we are not loved less by God, but we do suffer loss in minimizing the full gift of our love from this life to Jesus on the last day.

The Lord values our journey to grow in love. The reach of our heart to love Him moves Him. If you do not quit, then you will win. We do not find our identity in our failure but in the fact that He loves us, in the gift of righteousness, and in the cry of our spirit to love God.

Blessings,

Gary

8-15-10

In John 6:63 Jesus said, “The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are Spirit and they are life.” God’s words are spirit and life and they are the means by which God imparts His life to us. Prayer and intercession causes us to internalize God’s Word (life) as we speak God’s words back to Him many times. Each time we say back to God what He has declared to us, it marks our spirit, illuminates our mind and tenderizes our heart.

One way that we are filled with the Spirit’s presence is by singing God’s word back to Him. “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God.” (Col.3:16) God’s word will progressively dominate, saturate and renew our mind and heart as we simply declare His word back to God in prayer as we pursue total obedience. Our inner man is changed by many prayers that also function to renew our minds and hearts.

Intercession draws us into intimacy with God’s heart and unifies us with God’s people as it humbles and transforms us. The result of the Father ruling the universe through intercession is that His people are established in intimacy, community and humility while engaged in governmental partnership with Jesus.

“If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you. By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit”… (Jn.15:7-8). Jesus promised that if God’s words abide in us then we would have power in prayer. The Word abides in us as we meditate on the Scripture and pursue obedience.

Our effectiveness in prayer is dynamically connected to our depth in the Word. The Word abides in us only as it takes root deeply in our mind and heart. It is not enough to only learn the right concepts to pray. The Word must take hold of our hearts if we are to be strong in prayer. The fuel for the spirit of prayer is the Word of God abiding in our inner man. We feed on the Word to keep our prayers from being superficial. We do not want to just “say our prayers” but we want to be filled with God’s heart and a spirit of prayer.

“Lay up His words in your heart. If you return to the Almighty…then you will lay your gold in the dust…Yes, the Almighty will be your gold…for then you will have your delight in the Almighty…you will make your prayer to Him, He will hear you…You will declare a thing, and it will be established for you”…(Job22:21-28)
The saints will decree God’s decrees with power as we fill our hearts with His Word and live a life of abandonment to God.

Blessings,

Gary

8-9-10

God governs the universe. God has sovereignly determined the primary events in His eternal plan. He will surely accomplish what He has determined regardless of what people or demons do. However, He also governs in intimate partnership with His people and He has chosen to give us a dynamic role in determining some of the measure of the “quality of life” that we experience in the natural and Spirit. We determine this based on our response to the grace of God in our partnership with Him.

When we pray the quality of life increases, if we don’t pray, the quality of our life decreases. God opens doors of blessing and closes doors of oppression in response to our prayers. There are blessings that God has chosen to give, but only if His people rise up in the intimate partnership of prayer to ask for them. Much can be averted through intercession, such as judgment, disasters, sickness, oppression, etc. Also, the measure of revelation we receive, dreams and visions, Holy Spirit encounters can increase as we seek the Lord in prayer. Isaiah 30:18-19 says, “The Lord longs to be gracious to you, and therefore He waits on High to have compassion on you… He will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry; when He hears it, He will answer you.” It’s important that we not stumble and give up over the time delay factor in which answers may take months, years or decades, or responses in incremental increases, when answers can be given in small doses, or if we don’t feel the power when we are praying. We conclude wrongly when we think our prayers are ineffective.

Some may trust the sovereignty of God in a non-biblical way of trusting God to do the role that He has assigned to us. This in not truly trusting God, but rather it is presumption before Him. We cannot do God’s part and He will not do our part. God wants to do many things in our life, but He will not do them if we don’t cooperate with Him in obedience and prayer. He will leave them undone. God is sovereign and He wants partnership with human beings. Our decisions really matter and our choices matter for life and death, for time and eternity.

There are three steps we need to take in our partnership with God. First, God initiates what He wants by declaring it in His Word and stirring our hearts. Second, we respond in obedience and prayer to God’s initiative. Third, God answers our responses by releasing more blessing that He would have withheld until He heard our cry. Our prayers matter greatly, even when we do not feel their power.

Jesus says in Mark 4:24, “Take heed what you hear. With the same measure you use, it will be measured to you; and to you who hear, more will be given.” What is it that you believe for your life, and how much do you want of God at the heart level? Don’t make it too small. If we do more of prayer with fasting and walk in obedience, then God gives us more. When is it enough? We cannot measure if we are getting all that God has for us. God delights in us but it is not the same as walking in the fullness of what God has for us. James says, “You do not have because you do not ask.” I want to continue to ask that I may enter into everything God has ordained for me at the heart level by seeking Him and responding in obedience and prayer.

Blessings,

Gary

8-2-10

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength.” (Mk. 12:30) If we are to love the Lord with all our mind we must fill our mind with that which inspires love for God instead of that which diminishes it. What we do with our mind greatly affects our capacity to love. If we fill our mind with the right things, our capacity to love Jesus increases; if we fill our mind with the wrong things, our capacity to love Jesus diminishes.

Paul says in Col. 3:2. to, “set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.” Our mind is an “internal movie screen” that continually shows us pictures and it will never, ever be turned off. We cannot shut down the images in our mind, but we can redirect them. We can replace dark thoughts with new ones. So, we can rewrite the script of the movie in our mind that we continually watch within by reading and meditating on, or praying over God’s Word on a regular basis.

Romans 12:2; “but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – His good, pleasing and perfect will.” If we want to know and walk in the will of God in or lives and overcome conforming to “the pattern of this world”, we first need to renew our minds. We love God with our mind by taking the time to fill our mind with the Word, so that we come into agreement with the truth about Him. This involves refusing lies about His heart as a tender Father and passionate Bridegroom King, as we take time to meditate on God’s Word.

Next, when we love the Lord with all our strength we love Him with our resources (time, money, talents, reputation, and influence). We express our love for God by using our resources in relationship with the Spirit in a way to grow in love. God cares about the love we show Him when we invest our strength in the five activities in the Sermon on the Mount (Mt. 6:1-18). These five areas express voluntary weakness because we invest our natural strengths into the Spirit’s hands. Jesus describes these five grace-releasing activities that position us to receive more. We serve and give (charitable deeds; giving service and money; 6:1-4, 19-21), pray (6:5-13), bless adversaries (forgive, 6:14-15; 5:44), and fast (6:16-18)

The normal use of our strengths is to increase our personal comfort, wealth, and honor. In other words, by the fasted lifestyle, we bring our natural strengths to God as we trust Him to return our strength back to us in a way that enriches us and transforms us with meekness. However, He does it in His own timing and way. This takes faith that God is watching and that He esteems this as an expression of love.

Our devotional lives are the means of appropriating free grace, not of earning it. In these five areas we position our cold hearts before the fire of God enabling grace so as to receive the Spirit’s empowering.

Blessings,

Gary