Devotions should bring you to God - not man . . . including yourself.
You cannot stand upon the wisdom of man to glimpse God.
Devotions do not have you at their centre: not your relationship to God, nor your faith, nor anything prefaced with 'your'. Devotions should exist to bring you into the life of God and should therefore take you out of your own life, so that what concerns you or what you are holding clatters to the ground as you forget what is behind. These true devotions do not preoccupy you with a new set of problems; they do not rake over old ground; they do not require you to solve problems; they do not require you to use your wisdom. These are all bleached and rolled by the confontation with God.
Anything: any writing or any speaking that is not taken with the Lord only deals with peripheral things. Devotions do not stroke your self-worth or your gifts or your ministries. Devotions have at their centre Jesus in His risen glory or in His manly life. Your ears are not cluttered with quotes from from others or interjections from well-qualified third parties. You are with your beloved. Any other noise is sandled feet on holy ground; this is why the door to the prayer closet is closed: to disallow interruptions. It is you and His voice.
You have an anointing that is not counterfeit but true and therefore He teaches you Himself. There is no intermediary, no High Priest to represent you to God continually. He has done it once and for all, the way is cleared: you are the Priesthood to minister directly to God. Anything else will muddy the water. Any figure of Moses in your life must be sidestepped; the Lord will lead you Himself from the pillar of cloud and fire, day and night. The old categories of this life and psychology will mean nothing to you. Worldly ways to diagnose the troubles of your ailing heart will prove of no value, they can only observe symptoms from afar; they can only modify the behaviour.
God is not interested in your mental health or your inconvenient behaviour, but He is interested in you; He wants you for Himself. Why let anyone or anything stand in the way? God does not call us on out of our own self-interest but out of obedience to Him. God does not bargain or barter with you, it is always on His terms. He is not interested in our dignity before men or ourselves, but our status before Him. He is not interested in you becoming 'more yourself' or being 'more human'. These so-called devotions should not try to get you back to the comfortable Garden of Eden but into the blood-sweated dark Gethsemane. We no longer become God's original intention but His greatest intention: to lift us up into God himself, wherein before we were below the angels - now we are in Christ. He is not intereseted in a 'better world' or helping you to 'cope' or to avoid suffering. He Himself is our Peace and our Truth. The reality is always found in Christ and nowhere else. God does not want you to be what He first designed you to be, the first creation of man has been abolished just as the first convenant has been surpassed. He wants you to be what He created you to be in Christ. This is the first of the last creation. We are the firstfruits that supplants the previous age, for only in Christ does the new age begin.
Showing posts with label the thing about the thing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the thing about the thing. Show all posts
Thursday, 3 November 2011
Saturday, 24 September 2011
What is true fellowship with God?
It is not the tingling of the hands or the hairs of your neck standing up. It is not the flitter of your closed eyelids or any relaxed respiration - though all these things maybe present while in the presence of something 'other'. However, this is still not fellowship, it is not even the signs of fellowship. It is not by the flesh, it never starts with the flesh - it is always by His Spirit.
We must not confuse His Presence with His Fellowship. It is possible to be near God and not know God; it is possible to enjoy His Presence but never let His essence and character possess us. We can be tourists looking for another experience, another march up to the top of the hill with the Grand ol' Duke of York with the trumpets in tow - but never enter the holy citadel. We may admire its imposing gates of pearl and its immense walls of pure crystal from the outside, but then it's just an object in our lense and the conceit of the eye is to control what it sees; what should be truth to us suddenly becomes a lie in our own mind, and we deceive ourselves. We say: I have experienced God. We might as well have dipped our finger into the still waters rather than go down completely into the River Jordan. Our world is saturated with synthetic and simulated experiences of one kind or another. We go from one meeting to the next looking to re-live something past and it becomes nostalgic and if we ever experience it again we reminisce; we look over our shoulder at something we should flee from: the reduction of God to a series of senses. It is not by flesh . . .
God is not in the earthquake nor in the storm, nor even in the dark clouds that shroud his immense light from the known universe. These are all 'things about the thing'. We must concern ourselves with the Root and not the leaf, the cause and not the symptom. We could build a whole life around these 'things' and never know the 'thing' itself.
God is light; in Him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with Him . . . we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship . . .. (1 John 1:5-7)
There is no fellowship without light; light that searches and knows; light that deals and exposes the shadows of the heart we have long since been blind to; light that prepares and prepares; light that reveals every secret. Fellowship with God is exposure to God's searching and testing, standing still for His plumbline to stop swaying, falling upon Him to be broken, being spun to be moulded, being poured out to be refined in the fire. Fellowship is not knowing God's secrets but allowing God to deal with yours so there is nothing between you. God longs to remove from you all that stains and casts a shadow so that there is nothing between you, that He might enjoy you for Himself. This is the highest calling of man, not that you might enjoy God in your flesh but that God might enjoy making you like Himself for darkness has no fellowhsip with light; only light fellowships with light.
We must not confuse His Presence with His Fellowship. It is possible to be near God and not know God; it is possible to enjoy His Presence but never let His essence and character possess us. We can be tourists looking for another experience, another march up to the top of the hill with the Grand ol' Duke of York with the trumpets in tow - but never enter the holy citadel. We may admire its imposing gates of pearl and its immense walls of pure crystal from the outside, but then it's just an object in our lense and the conceit of the eye is to control what it sees; what should be truth to us suddenly becomes a lie in our own mind, and we deceive ourselves. We say: I have experienced God. We might as well have dipped our finger into the still waters rather than go down completely into the River Jordan. Our world is saturated with synthetic and simulated experiences of one kind or another. We go from one meeting to the next looking to re-live something past and it becomes nostalgic and if we ever experience it again we reminisce; we look over our shoulder at something we should flee from: the reduction of God to a series of senses. It is not by flesh . . .
God is not in the earthquake nor in the storm, nor even in the dark clouds that shroud his immense light from the known universe. These are all 'things about the thing'. We must concern ourselves with the Root and not the leaf, the cause and not the symptom. We could build a whole life around these 'things' and never know the 'thing' itself.
God is light; in Him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with Him . . . we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship . . .. (1 John 1:5-7)
There is no fellowship without light; light that searches and knows; light that deals and exposes the shadows of the heart we have long since been blind to; light that prepares and prepares; light that reveals every secret. Fellowship with God is exposure to God's searching and testing, standing still for His plumbline to stop swaying, falling upon Him to be broken, being spun to be moulded, being poured out to be refined in the fire. Fellowship is not knowing God's secrets but allowing God to deal with yours so there is nothing between you. God longs to remove from you all that stains and casts a shadow so that there is nothing between you, that He might enjoy you for Himself. This is the highest calling of man, not that you might enjoy God in your flesh but that God might enjoy making you like Himself for darkness has no fellowhsip with light; only light fellowships with light.
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