True Sight

Paul wrote by the Holy Spirit, that he “no longer recognized any man after the flesh”.  He wasn’t speaking of having bad eyes. To the contrary, he was speaking of a very acute sight, just not the physical kind. He had matured in Christ to the point where he understood that a man’s earthly credentials accounted for very, very little, if anything at all, in the Body of Christ. He now knew that it was what God revealed about an individual that was the determinant factor in knowing who the person truly was and just where they were at in life.

In my Christian life, I’ve seen great, great harm done to the Body of Christ by the failure of leadership to exercise this principle. I’ve seen people with a calling from God, placed in positions of authority, way before their time. Way before their “stuff” had been dealt with and their learning to walk in love. In certain cases, I’ve witnessed what could only be described as “self-validation” by ministries in jumping at the opportunity to have someone with “credentials” associated with them. I know of one case in point, where an individual is very learned, but has very little revelatory understanding of the grace of God, mainly having an intellectual one.

The Lord is calling His Body to get back to its roots in the selection of leadership and ordination. This life in Christ that we subscribe to, is first and foremost a spiritual journey. Not an intellectual one. For that, spiritually mature leaders are needed. They can only be recognized through the eyes of the Spirit. May we have the sight needed to see them.

On Being Judged

The scriptures make it clear that we will give an account of our lives to God, after this life. They also make it clear that our sins were already judged on the cross of Christ, some 2,000 years ago by man’s reckoning, yet before the foundation of the world, by God’s. So what’s the deal? What are we, as believers, going to be examining with Daddy?

We’re told that, “Man looks on the outside, but God looks on the heart”. Man sees the actions, God sees the motives. Therein lies the clue. Why we’ve done the “good works” that we have, will be brought into the light.

“Wood, hay and stubble”, will all be consumed in the fire of absolute truth at that judgement, resulting in loss. Only what is pure will remain and be rewarded for eternity. Only what has been done from love will be so accounted. All else is destined for destruction.

The True Gospel

In reading various blogs that purport to be “Christian”, I am left wondering just how many people truly have a heart knowledge of the subject. Ethical and moral dissertations abound, many deeply intellectual and worthy of Doctoral studies. They do not, for the most part however, arrive at the truth.

On the other hand, Jesus said that in the end, there would be many who would claim to be His, even by virtue of having done miraculous works in His name. Only to be told to depart from Him, as He never knew them.

The true gospel of Jesus lies in the middle. The “Radical Middle”, as a certain well known evangelical movement so aptly puts it. It is where the truth is both expressed and walked out in simplicity through grace, with profound implication and effect, as God himself affirms it by acts of His power. Anything other, is “another gospel” and its teachers are “accursed”, as Paul affirmed when writing by the Holy Spirit.

Financial Freedom

In these times of economic travail, the temptation comes strong to “take the bull by the horns” and “make it happen”. It can be a sure route to nowhere, if not to disaster. Jesus said, “There’s a way that seems right to man, but the end thereof is death”. He was speaking of self effort.

The primary key to God’s blessings then, isn’t in our laboring with everything we’ve got. You can look around you and see people who are doing that very thing, only to have their lives crumbling in on them.

No, the primary key is this: A yielded and compliant heart before God – a heart that is willing to follow after Jesus, wherever He leads. Take a look at Isaiah 58. Read it, meditate on it, get it into your heart. It’s God’s plan for our success.