From Hiding to Abiding

/in /by

What do you do when you try to hear from God and hear nothing but your own thoughts bouncing around in your head?  How is it that we believe more in the power of the devil to deceive us than in the power of God to lead us? Why is it that we believe the devil or his assistants have spoken to us through temptations but don’t believe that we can hear God? How can we believe that unless God the Father drew us to know Jesus we would never have come to salvation in Jesus (John 6:44) yet not make the connection that the “drawing” utilized were words whispered in the form of thoughts from His heart?

Growing up in a Christian tradition that denied the unique ability a believer was endowed with to “hear” and recognize God’s Voice made it difficult to reach many of the conclusions I teach presently. Yet by God’s Grace He ordered my thoughts and steps revealing the testimony of Scripture. As I’ve gotten older I can’t help but thank Him for this gift. But through this journey of seeking to know God personally, “hear” and recognize the ways that He speaks I have had to face difficult challenges, set backs and my own personal doubts and demons. For example this Sunday I was seeking to connect with God through worship and prayer finding it difficult at best. I was tempted to be angry and annoyed, knowing that God knew, that of all the days I needed His Presence it was on this day. Yet God remained distant. That evening as I lay in bed I began praying about what the Lord would have me teach the following Sunday. While pondering, and “reaching” out to connect again, the Spirit reminded me of something I had been involved with. The event seemed harmless enough, even justifiable. But as Paul says, “All things are permissible for me, but not all things are beneficial.” (1 Cor. 6:12) Through this revelation from the Holy Spirit I realized that in my conversation with another that I had made the individuals offense my own. Once I began the journey down this road it led to anger, and judgment of the guilty party. My anger transformed into a righteous indignation, which resulted in my shooting off my mouth to anyone who would listen, about the perpetuators. God revealed the event which had led to our disconnectedness. I ceased having His heart, and moved into my self-centered, self-righteous stance. My anger, though justified, took a wrong turn when I became judge and jury, pronouncing my sentence of condemnation, maligning their character. One simple, innocent event had led to my being disconnected from God. He wasn’t condemning me, but correcting me. He wanted me to see that His child, His son, wasn’t reflecting the Son. I was being a poor representative of my Father’s Business. When He felt distant it wasn’t He that had moved away. Oh no. I’m the one that walked away from His Side. From His Side the blood and water poured out (John 19:34) for the accused and the accusers. I had walked away from resting my thinking on His heart. I had eaten the forbidden fruit of “doing this or that” to be God. My misstep had led me into the darkness of replacing my Savior with one of my own making – myself.

What do you do when you try to hear from God and hear nothing but your own thoughts bouncing around in your head? Go back to the place you last heard from Him, asking what happened. If that doesn’t seem to loosen the hold the situation has on you, imagine Jesus’ limp body on the cross, blood and water flowing down from His nail-pierced side, and you standing in the middle of it all. Bloodied and stained from your proximity, look up into His wonderful Face, and ask Him to reveal the condition or action that has led to this distance. Look up, wait, and listen. Ask Him to bring you to the place where you can rest your thinking on His Heart, and His love for you. Confess the offense, repent of it – changing your thinking, falling back into His embrace. Let the blood from His side cleanse away the obstacles that block your capacity to hear. Let His Blood get into your “hearing.”

Somethings Wrong?

/in , /by

How is it that an individual can read, and study the Bible and not hear God speak? How is it that they can know about God but not recognize the various ways He communicates personally? Why do millions of church attenders rarely, if ever, compare and contrast their life to the lives of Biblical characters who heard from God – on a regular basis? Why hasn’t the connection been made that somethings missing in their walk with God? 

Within Evangelical Christianity there’s a contradiction between doctrine and practice. We are taught that we have a personal relationship with God. We are taught that prayer should be made  for direction regarding major decisions. Yet the question is, “How do you know God is speaking? How do you distinguish between your own thoughts, the devil and the Spirit of God in you? What prevents us from hearing God? Is there a connection between the Word of God and Hearing God speak? What is it – other than knowing how He has spoken in the past?

In John 15:3 Jesus states:You are cleansed and pruned already, because of the word which I have given you [the teachings I have discussed with you].

The Amplified Translations choice of words, “cleansed” and “pruned” come pretty close to the original meaning. The Greek word,“ka-tha-ros,” means to be: “purged, cleared away, purified; pruned and cut back from worldly idolatry, adulteration, and admixture; cleansed from dirt.” If the word sounds familiar it’s because it is. Our English word  “cauterize” is derived from it. It’s defined as “to sear; burn away; deaden; render insensible” The Hebraic understanding of cleansing conveys a similar idea. Holiness, sanctification and burning were words chosen to describe the process Christ spoke of. At the “burning”…. bush, God told Moses to remove his sandals because he was standing on holy ground. Hebrews 12:29 states: “our God is a consuming fire.” Pentecost describes tongues of fire that came and rested upon the people’s “minds” as they were baptized in the Holy Spirit and with…Fire.

So is there a connection between being cleansed, pruned, “burned” or sanctified by the Word that enables us to hear and recognize the ways that He speaks? In other words, will how you relate to the Word insure your ability to remain in a relationship, communing, or conversing with Jesus? When you allow the Word to “burn” your life, thinking, actions, and intentions to the ground does that bring greater clarity?

What’s puzzling to me is that our generation has greater access to the Words of God yet seem much duller in hearing and recognizing the ways that He speaks. How did New Testament believers have a greater relationship with God while not possessing a written copy of the Bible? Even more puzzling is the fact that even though the Word has the power to connect it’s readers and listeners with the Voice of God there are so many who read, and even teach it, yet don’t hear God. How is it that you can read, study, and even memorize it and not have an intimate relationship with God? How is it that when we reached the conclusion we needed to embrace Jesus as our Savior and Lord that we heard His Still, Small Voice? Even though we were anything but holy, and our minds were elsewhere – we still recognized our need for Him. Was that a sovereign act of grace?

Church attenders for centuries have been distancing themselves from making connections between their lives and the Words of God. But what’s startling is that less and less people are reading it presently. In a comprehensive fashion our generation seems to be sealing their fates to ever knowing God. Romans 1 speaks of the Last Days in which the people do not think God worth the knowing. Can there be any doubt that we are living in the Last Days? I believe that cultural ways of believing and thinking are trusted more than God’s Word leaving church attenders unable to recognize how far they have fallen from God. Our spiritual senses simply grow duller and duller. May we all have an awakening, calling for a new reformation, leading to the transformation of the Body of Christ. Jesus is coming back for a Bride that is equally yoked to Him. Why would we ever entertain the idea that He wants a Bride that doesn’t know Him, or long to know Him?

Last Adam?

/in /by

Other than losing their “lodging” in the Garden what was the primary thing Adam and Eve lost in the Garden of Eden? Was it that they were going to be slaves of satan and sin? Read on to find out.

1 Corinthians 15:45 Thus it is written, The first man Adam became a living being (an individual personality); the last Adam (Christ) became a life-giving Spirit [restoring the dead to life].

What was really lost in the Garden that day that Adam and Eve took a bite out of the forbidden fruit? (And, No it wasn’t an apple) Was it that they had now sealed the fate of the entire human race to slavery? Was it that they had traded places with satan making him the god and guardian of this world? Was it that they now had to make a living by the sweat of their brow, and Eve had to endure child birth?

Some would offer that it was the fact that they had been separated from God. That would be correct but the statement has been made so often that many in the church fail to get the full ramifications. Genesis 3:8 And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. What’s implied here? Adam and Eve walked with God in the Garden – in the cool of the day. They were in His Presence having conversation, communion and fellowship with God. In other words, they had a personal relationship with the Creator of the Universe. Jesus, being the Last Adam, walked with God on earth as a Man, having relationship with Him. Scripture records that Jesus only did what He saw His Father doing. It also records that Jesus was hearing the Father speak, and on occasion others heard the sound, but didn’t recognize what was being said. Jesus, according to Phil. 2:5-7 emptied Himself of His divinity. The passage states: Let this same attitude and purpose and [humble] mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus: [Let Him be your example in humility:] Who, although being essentially one with God and in the form of God [possessing the fullness of the attributes which make God God], did not think this equality with God was a thing to be eagerly grasped or retained, but stripped Himself [of all privileges and rightful dignity], so as to assume the guise of a servant (slave), in that He became like men and was born a human being.

Thus Jesus became the Last Adam, who walked as a man walked, yet filled with the Holy Spirit, and cut off from the curse of sin through the virgin birth. Jesus came to accomplish what the first Adam failed to complete. He redeemed what had been robbed and stolen, by walking in complete dependence upon the Father, and vitally connected to Him in relationship. Jesus as a Man, heard the Father speak. Jesus as a Man, walked in communion with the Father. Jesus has redeemed this for us as believers. But what do we believe?

2 Timothy 3:5 states that the Church will be in perilous times in the Last Days. One of the perils will be that many will have a form of godliness but deny the power of God. Was Jesus godly? Absolutely? Did Jesus hear the Father and walk in communion with Him? Thus it can be deduced godly people hear God the Father and walk in communion with Him. That’s godliness with power. Godliness without power denies that man can hear God or walk in communion with Him. That’s having a form of godliness. A form of godliness has “self” as it’s center, and does things by the strength of the soul. What is the soul? Mind, will, emotions, and personality. That’s soul power. The Bible states that this version of godliness hates God: Romans 8:7 Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be.

The word for hatred means to “disregard, detest, postpone love or esteem, to love less, or to slight.” What’s really scary is that in the Greek it also means “to be indifferent; to not care; to be apathetic.” Romans 1:24 states: Therefore God gave them up…” Why did God give them up? It lists several reasons but the top two? Romans 1:21, 28 Because when they knew and recognized Him as God, they did not honor and glorify Him as God or give Him thanks.. And so, since they did not see fit to acknowledge God or approve of Him or consider Him worth the knowing, God gave them over to a base and condemned mind…” A form of godliness without power hates God and reveals that hatred through not being thankful to God, and indifference to knowing Him. Why? Because they don’t think He is worth the knowing. In other words, they practice Church and Christianity as if He is not even there. 

This form of godliness is manifested perfectly in the Church of Laodicea found in Rev 3. They couldn’t see spiritually that Jesus wasn’t even in their worship services. They couldn’t see that they had left Him outside of the building. They couldn’t hear Himcalling – because they couldn’t hear or recognize His Voice. They couldn’t hear Him knocking at the front door of the Church. Why? They had closed the door to His entrance.

Jesus came so we could have godliness with power that sees and hears Him. A godliness that walks and communes with God. That power can only be provided and supplied by the Spirit. Are you practicing His Presence or a form of godliness?

Ghost in the Machine

/in /by

 

In 1981 the British rock band “Police” produced an album titled “Ghost in the Machine.” One of it’s songs “Spirits in the Material World” states the very thing Jesus was seeking to awaken us to. The French philosopher Rene’ Descartes proposed a similar idea when he coined the phrase: “cogito ergo sum” (English: “I think, therefore I am”). Proposing that because he was thinking he existed, and that he was not the product of a dream. The Bible makes references to these distinctions often. Are we simply a machine, or product of chemical reactions, ancient ancestors and an evolutionary process that has pre-determined our personalities and the ways we think and behave? Or are we more than machines? More than animals?

This sounds silly to most but you would be surprised at how much this thinking has infiltrated our society, culture and the Christianity that we practice. In essence our worldview has been determined by the environment in which we were raised. As a result that worldview will determine whether you trust Jesus’ truth, or the “truth” the world system seeks submission, and allegiance to. For example secular humanism’s proponents decided that the best way to rid the world of superstitious beliefs in the supernatural and eternal, other worldly existence was to begin within the framework of the public education system. As the Bible states: “Train up a child in the way that they should go and they will not depart from it.” This belief system has infiltrated our worldview and keeps us from embracing a world that we cannot perceive with our physical senses, or comprehend with our logical mind. This is why Paul exhorts the believers in Rome: “Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mould, but let God re-mould your minds from within, so that you may prove in practice that the plan of God for you is good, meets all his demands and moves towards the goal of true maturity.” (Romans 12:2 J.B. Phillips Translation)

Jesus said in John 15:4-7 “Dwell in Me, and I will dwell in you. [Live in Me, and I will live in you.] Just as no branch can bear fruit of itself without abiding in (being vitally united to) the vine, neither can you bear fruit unless you abide in Me. I am the Vine; you are the branches. Whoever lives in Me and I in him bears much (abundant) fruit. However, apart from Me [cut off from vital union with Me] you can do nothing. If a person does not dwell in Me, he is thrown out like a [broken-off] branch, and withers; such branches are gathered up and thrown into the fire, and they are burned. If you live in Me [abide vitally united to Me] and My words remain in you and continue to live in your hearts, ask whatever you will, and it shall be done for you.”

How do you dwell in someone Who isn’t physically present? How do you dwell in someone’s words when they aren’t available to speak those words? If your world view has not been shaped by the Word of God, or a supernatural encounter with Jesus, or both, you will quickly dismiss those words as being utter nonsense or you will use some intellectual gymnastics to dilute the truth and the impact of it’s meaning. Many within the church fail to be honest with themselves about these things and typically align themselves with those who believe this is superstitious hogwash. I recall when for the very first time I heard someone question, “Do you have a personal relationship with Jesus?” The question stunned me because I quickly knew that having a relationship involved an interaction. A relationship would involve physical contact or proximity to the person, communication, emotion, and exchange. I knew that I didn’t have that with Jesus. Rather than going to God with my questions I deferred to the religious experts who were more than happy to dismiss my doubts about my own salvation. They explained that it really doesn’t mean that you can know Jesus or interact with Him. You simply need to reassure yourself that you prayed a prayer, you were baptized, joined the church, and tried to be a good person till you died. Never once did an advisor encourage me to pursue an encounter, or experience with Jesus. Yet Scripture repeatedly commands and exhorts us to seek, and pursue God and you will find Him. I was taught quite the opposite. I was taught a relativistic world view. That is you can’t trust experiences, but you can trust your five physical senses and what your brain interprets them to say. Can experiences deceive us? Absolutely. But did Jesus, the Apostles, Old and New Testaments Prophets, Teachers, and believers ever buy into the belief that you couldn’t experience and know God? Notice that I say believers, not adherents. True believers have been experiencing God since Adam and Eve walked in the Garden with Him. And from the beginning of time it’s been the adherents of religion that have sought to dilute and discount the experiences of true believers. If they can’t silence you they will kill you. That’s why Religion killed and still seeks to silence Jesus today; crucifying Him through the doctrines and dogmas of men, empty religious rituals, self-centered, feel good teachings and warm and fuzzy theology. Yet the “rocks” are still crying out that the stone has been rolled away from their hearts, that Jesus has walked into their lives, and they have been forever transformed by the embrace of His Presence. Popular Theologians announced in 1966 that God was dead. Time magazine called Billy Graham asking for his reaction to the stunning declaration. Billy simply replied, “That’s funny I was just talking with Him.”

 

Doubt Your Doubt

/in /by

John 20:25 AMP “So the other disciples kept telling him, We have seen the Lord! But he said to them, Unless I see in His hands the marks made by the nails and put my finger into the nail prints, and put my hand into His side, I will never believe [it].”

We’ve been exploring the Scripture that teaches that born-again children of God hear God. We’ve also seen that those with a relativistic world view have trouble believing this. But I’ve got a proposal for you: why not doubt your doubt? Put it on trial and seek to build a case for it.

This morning I was reading from Timothy Keller’s book, “The Reason for God.” In it he makes the following proposal: “I commend two processes to my readers. I urge skeptics to wrestle with the unexamined ‘blind faith’ on which skepticism is based, and to see how hard it is to justify those beliefs to those who do not share them. I also urge believers to wrestle with their personal and culture’s objections to the faith. At the end of each process, even if you remain the skeptic or believer you have been, you will hold your own position with both greater clarity and greater humility. Then there will be an understanding, sympathy, and respect for the other side that did not exist before. Believers and nonbelievers will rise to the level of disagreement rather than simply denouncing one another. This happens when each side has learned to represent the other’s argument in its strongest and most positive form. Only then is it safe and fair to disagree with it. That achieves civility in a pluralistic society, which is no small thing.”

One such skeptic was a lady by the name of Simone Weil. Born Jewish, she was raised by her parents to be completely agnostic. As she grew old she identified herself with communism, marxism, anarchy, and anything leaning to the left politically. But then something profound happened: In 1938….I was suffering from splitting headaches; each sound hurt me like a blow… I discovered the poem “Love” [by George Herbert], I learned it by heart. Often, at the culminating point of a violent headache, I made myself say it over, concentrating all my attention upon it and clinging with all my soul to the tenderness it enshrines. I used to think I was merely reciting it as a beautiful poem, but without my knowing it the recitation had the virtue of a prayer. It was during one of these recitations that, as I told you, Christ himself came down and took possession of me. In my arguments about the insolubility of the problem of God I had never foreseen the possibility of that, of a real contact, person to person, here below, between a human being and God. – From Waiting for God and The Notebooks of Simone Weil

Thus my proposal to you today is have you ever taken a hard look at what you really believe and why? Wherever there is doubt there is a corresponding belief in quite the opposite. That belief is faith. So if your faith is in relativism, and not the mystical teachings of Scripture, then why is that? Have you delved the depths of it and explored the X-File Possibility? “The Truth is Out There!?” Have you given listening for God a try? Not in a passive, “If you’re really there prove it” approach. But in an exploratory, experimental, trial period. Let’s say for example, that for the next 40 days you are going to try and explore the possibility that God will speak in and through a consistent quiet time or prayer time. Or maybe you could take some time going away on a hike to listen for God. Or more realistically possibly for the next 40 days you could consistently read the Word of God inviting the Holy Spirit to come alongside of you and teach you what you are reading. The “laboratories” are endless but the challenge is the same: are you willing to doubt your doubt? The Bible says, seek Me and you will find Me. Is it true or not? If you are of a more mystical world view persuasion, when’s the last time you actively sought to encounter God? To go beyond the summit you’ve reached thus far. You doubt that there is anything beyond the summit? Doubt your doubt. Step up, step out and take a stand. Thomas did. Simone Weil did. There are millions of saints surrounding the throne of God that can attest to the same thing. Why not join the cloud of witnesses?

Can You Hear What I Hear?

/in /by

John 15:7 AMP If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.

In the 2016 movie “Copying Beethoven” a fictionalized account is made of the last years of Beethoven’s life depicting his struggle with not being able to hear his own music. In the movie a dialogue takes place between Beethoven and his young assistant Anna Holtz regarding how he creates his music:

Ludwig van Beethoven: “The vibrations on the air are the breath of God speaking to man’s soul. Music is the language of God. We musicians are as close to God as man can be. We hear his voice, we read his lips, we give birth to the children of God, who sing his praise. That’s what musicians are, Anna Holtz. And if we’re not that, we’re nothing.”

You have to listen to the voice speaking inside of you. I didn’t even hear it myself until I went deaf. Not that I want you to go deaf, my dear.

Anna replies: You’re telling me that I must find the silence in myself, so I can hear the music.”

Beethoven: Yes. Yes. Yes. Silence is the key. The silence between the notes. When that silences envelops you, then your soul can sing.

In John 15:7 Jesus makes the statement: “If you abide in Me and my words abide in you…” We naturally assume that the words He is referring to is regarding the Bible. Yet history reveals to us that at that time there wasn’t any written record of Jesus’ words. The New Testament had yet to be written. The Old Testament had been recorded on scrolls with  no chapters or verses, and the only way you could access them was by attending a synagogue service. The book hadn’t been invented yet, and the only people who had access to these scrolls were the religious elite. The question begs to be asked, “To what “words” is Jesus referring?” The answer to that question lies in the original translation of the passage. In that translation the word used for “words” is the Greek word “rhema.” The Greek language had two words for the word. One word referred to written words, called “logos.” We find this word used in John 1:1 “In the beginning was the Word (logos)…” But in John 15:7 quite the opposite word is used, and that word is “rhema.” Rhema words refer to words that are spoken, and revealed. Jesus was teaching His Disciples that if they wanted to abide in Him they had to connect to the internal Voice of the Spirit, or what we would refer to as the “Still Small Voice” of God. Which is very profound. If you were to insert yourself into the story, imagining yourself listening to Jesus give directions to His followers the night before His crucifixion what would you be thinking? I know what I would be thinking. “How are we going to abide in your words if you are not here? If you die who is going to give us Your words? How am I going to remember what You said?” In other words I believe that I would be dumbfounded, shocked, even panicked at the thought. But Jesus comforts them at the end of this chapter with the following words: John 15:26“When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father—the Spirit of truthwho goes out from the Father—he will testify about me.”  Before chapters and verses were created for the Bible this discourse of Jesus proceeded. And in this discourse He was seeking to comfort and address their concerns: John 16:6-15 Rather, you are filled with grief because I have said these things. But very truly I tell you, it is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. When he comes, he will prove the world to be in the wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment:  about sin, because people do not believe in me; about righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see me no longer; and about judgment, because the prince of this world now stands condemned. “I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you. All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will receive from me what he will make known to you.”

Thus you can deduce from this information that Jesus wanted His Disciples to be centered in Him and the Holy Spirit. In our modern day culture that is centered in the written word, more than what is said, this sounds peculiar and strange. Yet it shines light on the fact of how far down the modern day church has been plunged in darkness and ignorance. May we learn from the words of Beethoven that until we become deaf to the outside world we will never hear the “Voice” speaking inside us. May God give us grace to be deaf to the world but listening to Him and for Him.

What Would Jesus Do?

/in /by

John 15:4 Dwell in Me, and I will dwell in you. [Live in Me, and I will live in you.] Just as no branch can bear fruit of itself without abiding in (being vitally united to) the vine, neither can you bear fruit unless you abide in Me.

In 1896, Pastor John Sheldon, delivered a series of sermons to his church in Topeka, Kansas. From these messages the book, “In His Steps: What Would Jesus Do?” was published, which created the resurgence of the phrase in the 1990’s, “What Would Jesus Do?” or “WWJD?” What’s not known about this popular Christian movement is that the book which created the WWJD? movement of the 1990’s was based in Christian Socialism, and the heretical Social Gospel formed in the early 1900’s. Should we abandon this statement simply because of it’s association with heresy? Absolutely not. What the question  belies is that it doesn’t go deep enough.

Jonathan Welton in his book, “Normal Christianity:” Jesus and the Book of Acts are the standard of Normal Christianity. Remember the fad a few years ago when people wore bracelets reminding them, What Would Jesus Do? Christians state that Jesus is the example of how to live, yet this has been limited in many cases to how we view our moral character. When Christians tell me that they want to live like Jesus, I like to ask if they have multiplied food, healed the sick, walked on water, raised the dead, paid their taxes with fish money, calmed storms, and so forth. I typically receive bewildered looks, but that is what it is like to live like Jesus! 

There you have it. To live like Jesus, or do what Jesus would do, was not and should never be limited to us being good, moral people. That is to reduce Jesus, to a good, moral, teacher, and the Gospel, to another nauseating version of humanism, or relativism. And that’s precisely what is wrong with popular, cultural Christianity. You cannot do what Jesus did apart from being born-again of the Spirit. But you can be a good person. You can be a good person and remain a buddhist, or satanist. Being good doesn’t require being born-again, but doing what Jesus does….does. If we dwell in Jesus, we are extensions of Him. As extensions of Jesus or “branches” connected to the Vine you will hear what the Father is doing. Why? Presently, we could make the argument that Jesus is located at the right Hand of the Father. Because of that placement and positioning, those who are truly born-again of the Spirit, are connected to what Jesus is receiving from the Father. In other words, what He hears we hear, because of our connection to Jesus. That is, if we are abiding in Jesus. With that realization comes the responsibility on our part to remain connected. If we are not making the connection then we are simply wearing “WWJD?” bracelets, and we are only doing what we can do. And what we can do is quite simply humanism, and relativism. Which by the way, the Bible says is hatred towards God: Romans 8:7 Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. The word “enmity” is defined as “hatred, and being hostile, desiring ill will against another.” The question that’s begging to be asked? Do you want to wear a bracelet, or do you want to be connected to the True Vine?

Can You See Him?

/in /by

Luke 24:16 AMP Classic “But their eyes were held, so that they did not recognize Him.”

Scholars, theologians, and Christians for the past several years have debated why the Jesus was unrecognizable in His post resurrection body. Many have postulated, myself included, that since Jesus was in His glorified, resurrected body it was difficult for those who knew Him by His earthly body to comprehend that this was the One Who had been born of a virgin, lived, bled and died. But may I suggest to you an even deeper explanation? May I suggest that what kept them from “seeing” Him was the fact that they hadn’t yet accepted that He was their Resurrected and Living Christ. They hadn’t accepted the crucifixion of Christ was for their resurrection and as a result the stone that covered Jesus’ tomb remained rolled into place shutting the followers of Christ from seeing and receiving His resurrection. Mark 9:9 states: And as they were coming back down the mountain, He admonished and expressly ordered them to tell no one what they had seen until the Son of Man should rise from among the dead. Oswald Chambers adds: “As the disciples were commanded, you should also say nothing until the Son of Man has risen in you— until the life of the risen Christ so dominates you that you truly understand what He taught while here on earth…Our Lord doesn’t hide these things from us, but we are not prepared to receive them until we are in the right condition in our spiritual life..We must have a oneness with His risen life before we are prepared to bear any particular truth from Him. Do we really know anything about the indwelling of the risen life of Jesus? The evidence that we do is that His Word is becoming understandable to us.”

As we proceed to Pentecost have we really answered the questions: Are you in the right condition in your spiritual life to receive Jesus as your Risen Savior? Savior from what and who? Do you have a oneness with His crucified life in order to have oneness with His Resurrected life? The evidence lies simply in the fact that His Words are becoming more understandable to us. You now see Him, and recognize the ways that He speaks, because you have been crucified with Jesus, and resurrected to a new, born-again life by the Holy Spirit. This is normal Christianity. This is the eternal life Jesus spoke of and defined in John 17:3. To know Him is to love Him. To love Him is to obey Him.