Renewal and revival counters deception...

Dear Friends, Believers and Seekers, last week's call to discernment stirred us to examine fundamental issues of faith, such as what separates obedient believers from those who are not and who are opening themselves to deceptions.

Many critical discourses of the New Testament address the problem of deception because it is so rampant in the experience of the church.

Passages in Second Corinthians, Matthew and Revelation tell a story of how believers must approach truth, what is the barrier and enemy to being able to see truth, and what this means about deception.

II Cor 4:16-18 reminds us that understanding truth is basically about spiritual insight,

"Though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day for our light affliction which is but for a moment worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory while we look - not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen

Matthew 24:11-13 and 24 warn that we open ourselves up to deception only when we yield to sins and neglect practicing and immersing ourselves in God's truth,

"Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many. And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. But he who endures to the end shall be saved.

For false christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect.

Rev 19:20 tells the final story of how deception takes those who yield to sin,

"Then the beast was captured, and with him the false prophet who worked signs in his presence, by which he deceived those who received the mark of the beast and those who worshiped his image. These two were cast alive into the lake of fire burning with brimstone.

What depths of insight and happiness are in store for those allowing God to seal us in His truth! May your experience in Him and His Word grow deeper every day.

Your life as a witness

Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations baptizing them ... and teaching them ... and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen. (Mat 28:19)

Your life is a witness. whether you are proud of it or not - are intentional or not, your living out of gospel reality shows who you are. It shows what you believe about the Person at the heart of the gospel. God's command to go is given to all those who hear his voice - everyone with the smallest "mustard-seed" faith has this task! And because He extends his spiritual leadership and help to us - because he is with us always, our witness can have His power behind it. 

Clearly though, our lives of witness are not always consistent - they are not always reflections of God's spirit. I say to myself, Take heart, seeking saint, obedience grows as it is practiced:

Lk 24:45, And He opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures. Ac 1:8, But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”

Notice how God intentionally imparts greater spiritual insight to what we know; the scriptural clarity we gain strengthens what we have been doing.  Just as at Pentecost, His Spirit infuses our lives with power - and heightens everything we have been doing.

Final thought: as we become more and more intentional about our witness, we see God's presence more clearly.  Into the intensity of our experiences comes divine intervention. The band of disciples at Pentecost were "all with one accord at the same place."  And this was the time when God's spirit showed up as a sound of "violent breath."  It filled the house.  What an awesome experience that must have been.  

And it is still our privilege to experience Him, as we grow in our lives of witness.

  

Praise the Lord! - is the glad shout of the Christian even as this Season draws to a close:
For unto you is born...a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.
Lk 2 KJV

Our recent study of Galatians has powerfully revealed depths and complexities of belief in Jesus -Messiah, and the message of the gospel for each believer.

How exciting and profound that in the end, after all of these examinations, with Paul, we simply affirm that compared to the transformation experience in the life of a converted sinner, acts of holiness, works of obedience and devotion, are nothing - in themselves:
in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature. (Gal 6.)

A key passage at the end of chapter six, from verse 11 to its close, passionately speaks a credo that invigorates and strengthens my faith and practice: that the Christian's glory lies in the transforming reality of a bloodied Cross, and that our lodestar in this life, and our highest meaning is a changed mind, heart and life - the transformation into a new person.

The Scripture adds these truths: that by the Cross the world is crucified, by the Cross the Christian becomes himself crucified to worldly things, and the light shed by this sacrifice reveals that inner, heart change is the key to this victorious and joyful new existence. There is a fascination in looking at my own changes - some unwanted! - as I allow the Lord to have His way in fitting me for a heavenly future. Yes, the world must be put to death - its unlovely, repellent ways and values must be exposed and become the picture that presents itself, more and more, when I look at it. I see more and more my own awkwardness in the midst of sin, both within me and around me. I become more and more dependent on that cleansing flood to wash me, to cover me and transform me day by day. I must radically, brutally separate myself from a lost world, so that I am more and more open to the life and Spirit of Jesus to work in me.

Out of the Cross experience, that new person becomes a person with peace, a person who understands that they have experienced the mercy of God in heaven, as the scripture says. Not a person following unnecessary and perhaps legalistic rites and rituals, such as circumcision, nor a person ignoring and resisting any guidelines and standards - or, for that matter, making up their own - but a new creature:

Though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet henceforth know we him no more. Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. (2 Cor 5.)

God's way is not our own. We are to follow His leading to enter into newness. The need to follow Him, to plumb the depths of His Spirit reveals the reason that He is our lodestar - it is through His literal Person that we find our way forward every moment. Here is the meaning of picking up our Cross daily, of dependence, and of unceasing prayer. And so Paul's credo is mine, is all of ours, believers, as we go ever forward into God's will. It is not circumcision, or forms, nor is it the simple absence of ritual or new self-created ritual, that moves us forward: it is our deeper experience of the indwelling of God's Spirit, transforming our experience in this world and in him now and forever.