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There are times that we can get discouraged in our walk with God. There are people in the Body that we look up to, can train from, and submit to who disappoint us greatly. God is in charge of His House but He delegates a lot of things to us because of the dominion that He wants us to come into. So often, we want to put all the responsibility on someone else for our well being. Sometimes we think we are supposed to do that because of the way some teach.
But if a disappointment occurs, who is ultimately responsible for what we do, how we act or react and relate ourselves to God? Should we let another person be in charge of our Spiritual life? Do we have a proper understanding of leadership? Does leadership have a proper understanding of itself?
Young Christians need help in getting started in the Christian life. Like youngsters who need a lot of care and oversight, young Christians need to learn order, respect, and knowledge in the things and in the House of God. Not every minister is the same and not every church is the same, nor are their assignments. We have to learn that Christianity is a life process, not just a church process.
People are born, they live and they die and have much going on in between. God made it so that people in society need each other. Even Christians need the heathen in this world to make it function. Ideally we would all live for the Lord but this is a fallen race that needs to be redeemed.
We need to understand the difference between the work of the ministry and the work of society's government. We need to be realistic about this rather than trying to live in Heaven before we complete our assignments on earth. We can grow in our Spiritual revelations but the job isn't over until it's completed. We have the earnest of our inheritance, a foretaste of participation in the future glory, but if it's not used for ongoing plan of God, it is misapplied and will be limited or destroyed.
God is in charge of His House, not man. Sometimes we think we can set up structures of buildings and programs and think all the world should either join us or do it just like us and that they will have the same type experiences because we had it that way. But that may not be so. This sets up the challenge of discerning: "What is God's will?"
Often people will write me asking for a word about what their calling is, but I cannot give a calling to someone, nor would I even try. God would never put someone else in charge of that because a true calling comes from Him. What I do tell people who are interested in something better and something more and to be in service to Him is to pray every day for the perfect will of God in your life. Things may change dramatically, but if you pray it sincerely, you will find your life turning for the better. Challenges should lead to ministry.
There is more in each of us than we have any idea. God has put eternity in our hearts!!! Our lives are not just until we die on this earth but have been programmed for everlasting life. If we do not learn and discern the nature of God, we can be misled. We need knowledge of the Scriptures, as well as having a mentally healthy Christian life. And ultimately, only God knows what all is involved in that.
His view is for the long haul as well as a community view, because He wants us to live as one with Him, with the Body, fully redeemed. A lot of the heathen people you meet may one day, ideally, be your brothers and sisters in Christ. He went to the Cross also for them, suffered and paid the price for them too. Who are we to tell Him, "No, not that one"?
But that does not mean we accommodate sin in the process of global redemption. We just don't find ways to cater to it and we need to seek to find God's way of effectively overcoming it. God has a plan to overcome sin and death! Here and now! We just haven't gotten there yet! But we will!
Jesus healed the sick, raised the dead, delivered the oppressed and broken hearted and taught and exemplified a Godly lifestyle. It is not mentally healthy to only focus on the suffering of the Cross, when suffering is just a part of the Christian life.
If Jesus came to give life and that life more abundantly, how can suffering for the sake of suffering bring forth any good? But if we suffer for righteousness' sake, there is a lot of good that can come forth from that.
Jesus despised the shame of the Cross. So should we if we are mentally healthy. But for the joy of the goodness of life, here and now and here-after, He endured the Cross, despising the shame of it. Because the power of eternity has been placed in us through Him, we have resurrection power available. We need to stir it up!
God wants to restore what the enemy stole from us. He has offered us grace through His Son Jesus and we need to understand that grace. God is good, and He will not change!!!
There is a problem in the Body when Christians do not want to give out the good news to a lost and dying world. There is a serious problem when those in leadership do not want to share the redeemed life with others, enabling and equippinhg, or who want to limit it to a select group of their own choosing.
I am not an evangelist per se, but I am called to do the work of evangelism. I may do it a different way that one who has that specific calling, but some way, every day, I work to work with God in His redeeming Plan. I have sought Him on this and He has shown me my way to do it. Something is wrong if I do not freely give.
If we have talents and abilities and do nothing with them, we fail not only Him but the world He came to save. We also lose out on our ultimate satisfaction, for only in Him will we find full satisfaction and fulfillment. We do struggle to get the good news out. Because it is a war to overcome evil with His good, we suffer, but if we find His Plan, we get the reward.
The other day the Lord gave me a vision of swamp land. He showed me plants that were over-watered with leaves turning yellow and mushy ground and root systems that were easily plucked out. In swamp land, varmits like snakes and crocodiles and alligators prosper. In the Garden of Eden, a mist went up to water the Garden -- representative I am sure of the shekinah glory life of God. There, the plants had just enough without the overkill of abundance.
The Lord showed me that many people and ministries were like swamp lands. They had too much of His goodness they were not giving away, they were just keeping it in their own "inner circles" they had designed for themselves. They were unhappy and were also denying others to whom they were entrusted.
There was a song out a few years back that stated in so many words, "Why are we taking water to the ocean, when the desert is screaming out for it?" It's like witnessing to a saved person when the lost are right there. God's focus is for lost souls, but also that they prosper and are in health, but not at the exclusion of full His Kingdom work.
The well do not need the Physician. They need to get into His Plan!
Later that day, I was praying with a friend and he said I see a vision of a swamp. I was shocked as I had not shared or even hinted of my earlier vision and prayer. At the time I saw it, I knew the Lord was showing me the Pharisees in the Body and that they were under as serious judgment as the lost because they blocked the path of life to others and hindered them. But my heart cried out because I knew they had so much to give! And God wants us to be redemptive, not judgmental.
My friend said, "You know, there is a way to fix swamp land." Incredulous, (as the Lord had spoken so strongly to me earlier), I said, "There is?" Because that had been the cry of my heart in prayer. He said "Yes, there are several ways. What you have to do is drain off the water. You can do that by irrigation, or by enclosing it and pumping the water out. You can fill it with sand, or, you can pray for a lack of rain."
I guess the choice is ours. Don't we want a healthy even distribution of the glory of God? Don't we want a healthy redemptive balance? I think we do. Perhaps if you are not comfortable in your blessings, you are being dealt with for being too rich.
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