GOD'S FORBEARANCE AND KINDNESS
Lord God, You have progressively revealed Your person, powers and perfections through the course of Your dealings with people in the pages of Scripture. It is through Your revelation that I can see Your glorious attributes of holiness, love, mercy and justice. I find with the passing of time that Your patience with Your people is astonishing. I give thanks for Your forbearance and kindness and for Your willingness to endure my waywardness. But at the same time, I ask that I would not foolishly test the limits of Your patience and presume on Your grace. You discipline me when I stray too far, and I desire to take the better course of staying near rather than straying far. I know that the way of obedience is life-giving and that the way of disobedience is death-dealing.
THE PROMISES OF GOD
EATING ABSTRACT BREAD John 6:63
Children can understand their own age: "Today is one day. When you live 365 days like today, that's one year. And when you do that five times, you're five years old! Got it?" But when you don your professorial hat and try to explain to a child that God doesn't have an age, that he's always existed, that he wasn't born, that he lives in eternity-you stop when you realize the child is looking at you like a puppy with its head cocked to one side. Moving from the concrete to the abstract is difficult for children- even spiritual children, like Jesus' disciples.
As Jews, the disciples were thoroughly versed in the Old Testament accounts of the miracle of manna in the wilderness (Exodus 16). Though it was indeed a miracle, it was still concrete; the Jews could touch and eat the bread that Moses provided from heaven. But when Jesus began talking to them about "food that endures to eternal life," (John 6:27) neither the disciples nor the Jewish crowds understood. And when he referred to himself as the "bread of life," they were underwhelmed. After all, Moses had supplied bread for hundreds of thousands of people for 40 years; Jesus had done it once for 5,000. Moses' bread was truly from heaven; Jesus' was ordinary bread. They were still focused on the concrete, and it only got worse.
When Jesus began talking to them about eating his flesh and drinking his blood, many of the Jews got offended and left. This was heretical language for a Jew! Ultimately, Jesus had to remind the disciples that physical, fleshly things have no eternal importance; it is only through the Spirit that true life is found. The words he was speaking were "spirit" and needed to be "spiritually discerned," as the Apostle Paul would say years later (1 Corinthians 2:14). Physical bread sustains physical life, but only spiritual bread (words of truth) can sustain spiritual life.
As fleshly people who have become spiritual children, we must learn to comprehend spiritual words in order to obtain spiritual life. In other words, do we live to eat or do we eat to live?
God's Promise to You: "If you will consume my words, you will never be hungry again."
THE PURSUIT OF GOD - PART 14
"Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus." (Hebrews 10:19)
REMOVING THE VEIL OVER YOUR HEART
Tozer reminds us that it is not our job to remove that which separates us from God. The doctrine of self-crucifixion, so widely practiced by most every religion in order to gain salvation, is never successful before God. But neither is it effective for Christians who hope to have intimate fellowship with their heavenly Father. Having removed the barrier of sin that separates us, he is also the one who is able to remove the barrier of self that separates us. The surgery required is something only God himself can be trusted to do right. Whenever we try to do it ourselves we only increase our pain and suffering, but never our spiritual health. Here is our problem. Our heart's desire has been too closely enmeshed with the aspirations of this fallen world. Letting go of that is no easy task. The prospect of losing our false self, even though it has been nothing but trouble for us, is terrifying to us. Yet it must be cut away in order to make room for our truest self, the one God that has treasured in his heart from all eternity.
Are you ready to ask God to tear off that woven veil of hyphenated sins of the self-life, that opaque barrier that separate you from the manifest presence and matchless glory of God? He is able. And he will employ the same instrument of death that purchased our freedom from sin's slavery - the cross. As Tozer says, "The cross is rough and it is deadly, but it is effective. It does not keep its victim hanging there forever. There comes a moment when its work is finished and the suffering victim dies. After that there is resurrection glory and power, and the pain is forgotten for joy that the veil is taken away and we have entered in actual living experience the presence of the living God."
I believe that there comes a point in our spiritual journey where we hit a barrier, a barrier that bars our way to the best of what God has prepared for us. Everything we hope to have in Christ is on the other side. Yet nothing we do can breach that wall. It is the point at which we come face to face with the stark challenge of Romans 12:1, "I urge you therefore, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God, which is your spiritual act of worship." It involves the total and voluntary sacrifice of self, offered to God without condition. Paul is telling you to willingly climb up on the altar and lay down as a living sacrifice. But there's always a problem with living sacrifices, is there not? It wants to keep crawling off the altar. So, this death of self must be followed by a transformation, a new way of living life that is well-pleasing to God. "Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you will be able to test and approve what God's will is, His good, pleasing and perfect will." Then each successive day we must recommit ourselves to the immolation of the self and to the transformation of the self into Christlikeness.
The Romans 12 decision is the only pathway through the barrier of self. If you never choose to break through that barrier, you will consign yourself to mediocrity in your spiritual walk. And because God loves you and is committed to finishing what he started in you, he will take you into the wilderness of consequences where you will experience his severe mercy, with the hope that, in your desperate condition, you will finally submit to his transforming grace.
YOUR PRAYER
God has pardoned you from sin's prison. The doors not only stand wide open, they have been torn down, from top to bottom. You are now free to walk out of your life as a slave to sin and free to run and embrace your Savior and Lord. Why are you not running to him? It is because you are still living an imprisoned existence, free from sin on the outside, confined by self on the inside. Let this prayer be your prayer of liberation.
"Lord, how excellent are Thy ways, and how devious and dark are the ways of man. Show us how to die, that we may rise again to newness of life. Rend the veil of our self-life from the top down as thou didst rend the veil of the Temple. We would draw near in full assurance of faith. We would dwell with Thee in daily experience here on this earth so that we may be accustomed to the glory when we enter Thy heaven to dwell with Thee there." In Jesus' name. Amen.
HOLDING FAST TO GOD
Father, when I read the Book of Judges I see that it is a series of warnings that were written for our instruction. Through it, You teach the awful monotony and destructiveness of rebellion and disobedience, and You warn me that to veer off the way of trust and obedience is to take a path that leads to destruction and death. I see in the stories of Judges that it is difficult to hold fast to You when times are relatively easy and peaceful. In such times, I lose the cutting edge of gratitude and dependence and I hope in the things of this world rather than what You tell me to value. The cycles of sin are so predictable and relentless, and when I get caught in this vortex, I lose my peace. By the power of Your Spirit, I pray that I would hold fast to You, not only in times of adversity, but also in times of ease.