The Light Is Growing

THE PURPOSE OF GOD

What is the purpose of God? What is God's end? And I think it can be put in one way amongst others. We can say that God's purpose is that there shall come a time when He has a vessel in which and through which His glory shines forth to this universe. We see that intimated in the case of new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, having the glory of God, her light like unto a stone most precious, as it were a jasper stone, clear as crystal. "Having the glory of God!" That is the end which God has in view for a people; to be, in a spiritual sense, to His universe of spiritual intelligences what the sun is to this universe; that the very nations shall walk in the light thereof, no need of sun, no need of moon, for there is no night; and that is only saying that God wills to have a people full of light, "the light of the knowledge of the glory of God." That is the end, and God begins to move toward that end immediately a child of His is born from above; for that very birth, a new birth from above, is the scattering of the darkness and the breaking in of the light.

All along our way in the School of Christ, the Holy Spirit is engaged upon this one thing, to lead us more and more into the light, "of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ", that it shall be true in our case that "the path of the just is as the shining light which shineth more and more unto the perfect day" (mid-day) (Prov 4:18) Many people have thought—and, thinking so, have been disappointed—that that means it is going to get easier and easier, brighter and brighter, the more cheerful as we go on. But it does not work out that way. I do not see it to be true in the circumstances and outward condition of saints anywhere at any time. For them the path does not become brighter and brighter outwardly. But if we are really moving under the Spirit's government, we can say with the strongest affirmation, that in an inward way the light is growing. The path is growing brighter and brighter; we are seeing and seeing and seeing. That is God's purpose; until the time comes when there is no darkness at all, and no shadow at all, and no mist at all, but all is light, perfect light: we see not through a glass darkly, but face to face, we know even as we are known. That is God's purpose put in a certain way. Does that interest you? Are you concerned with that?

And that has a crisis and is also a process in spiritual life with a glorious climax in rapture. What I am especially concerned with now is the process.

Rich

The Resurrection is the Basis of Light.

The Ministration of Life

Life and Light expressing itself in and through us as us is something that is capturing my attention. The following is from something I am reading from T.A. Sparks.

Rich

We pass to the second point, namely, the ministry of life. In the fourth verse of the first chapter of John's Gospel we read: "In him was life, and the life was the light of men." Mark the words of the second half of the verse: "the life was the light of men." The life was the light! That is the ministry of life. We might very well in this connection re-read that difficult passage from Acts 26:22-23.

"Having therefore obtained the help that is from God, I stand unto this day testifying both to small and great, saying nothing but what the prophets and Moses did say should come; how that the Christ must suffer, and how that he first by the resurrection of the dead should proclaim light both to the people and to the Gentiles."

It is the closing statement that is so significant - "that he first by the resurrection of the dead should proclaim light..." The first proclaimer of light was Christ, and the ground upon which He proclaimed light was resurrection. That is but a different way of expressing the second half of John 1:4 "the life was the light." The resurrection is the basis of light.

The point to be noted is that the life expresses itself in a certain way. It is seen to do so as light. If you follow through John's Gospel you will note other things: for instance, the life expresses itself in liberty: "If the son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed" (John 8:36). But here the inclusive thought is that life has its own ministry, and that ministry is a matter of life. As we have said, ministry is not first in word, but is firstly a question of life through the word: it is not doctrine. Ministry is not merely the imparting of truth, but the imparting of Christ through the truth. If the truth does not minister Christ then it is dead, it is valueless. All truth, all doctrine, teaching, must be a ministration of the living Christ, and not a ministration of information about Him. The test of everything is as to how far it ministers Christ in a living way. When any given bit of ministry has been concluded, the question is not as to whether it was interesting, edifying or instructive, not whether it was beautiful to contemplate, not whether it was orthodox - those may be important factors, but they are altogether apart from the issue - when all is finished the vital question is, Am I standing possessed of a further measure of Christ? Has Christ in a fuller measure livingly become available to me through that ministry? Am I confronted with the question of Christ as my life in a way that has not been so before? That is the test of ministry. Christ may come to us through explanations, through definitions, through truth, but when these things remain something in themselves then that is not true ministry. All must minister Christ, and that ministry is not just the ministry of certain individuals called ministers. The whole Church is called into the ministry or ministration of Christ. All the members are to minister Christ to one another, and when believers are gathered together it ought to mean life to all who are present. That place ought to be a place of life. Going to that gathering of the Lord's people such as are feeling spiritually, mentally, or even physically spent ought to go away saying, I feel wonderfully better! That has been life to me! This life we have in His Son.

You see what the ministry is. Is it not a very blessed thing that when the Lord has a company of His Own children gathered together in Himself and many of them come in tired, discouraged, disheartened, worn out physically, spiritually baffled, mentally bruised, and feeling they have no more resource to go on, He is able in the fellowship to minister life, which is a ministration of Christ, so that such go away lifted up and refreshed. It is wonderful to come together for that alone, apart altogether from expositions and addresses. And that is ministry. When the Lord's people are really together in living relationship with Him as the risen One they do fulfil ministry though perhaps in large measure unconsciously. Others coming in go away saying: Well, it was not what was said, but there was life! I do not understand the teaching, but I am better for being there! That is the ministry, and we are all in that together. Do not think of the ministry as something that is carried out from the platform all the time. You are all in the ministry, and it depends entirely upon whether the Lord's people are living upon the basis of this life as to how far they will fulfil ministry. The life was the light!

Heeding

At times God puts us through the discipline of darkness to teach us to heed Him. Song birds are taught to sing in the dark, and we are put into the shadow of God's hand until we learn to hear Him. "What I tell you in darkness" - watch where God puts you into darkness, and when you are there keep your mouth shut. Are you in the dark just now in your circumstances, or in your life with God? Then remain quiet. If you open your mouth in the dark, you will talk in the wrong mood: darkness is the time to listen. Don't talk to other people about it; don't read books to find out the reason of the darkness, but listen and heed. If you talk to other people, you cannot hear what God is saying. When you are in the dark, listen, and God will give you a very precious message for someone else when you get into the light.
After every time of darkness there comes a mixture of delight and humiliation (if there is delight only, I question whether we have heard God at all), delight in hearing God speak, but chiefly humiliation - What a long time I was in hearing that! How slow I have been in understanding that! And yet God has been saying it all these days and weeks. Now He gives you the gift of humiliation which brings the softness of heart that will always listen to God now. (By Oz Chambers)

"If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself."

"Everything must be made as simple as possible. But not simpler."

"If A is a success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut"

"I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious."

"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift."

"Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid." (Quotes by Albert Einstein)

Rich

Life Versus Light

The Dominion of Opinion

Make it your aim to be one in the Spirit, and you will be bound together in peace. There is one Body and one Spirit, just as it was to one hope you were called. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is the one over all, the one working through all and the one living in all. (Eph. 4:2-6 Phillips)

I would be very interested in any feed back regarding this article by Milt Rodriguez from his blog.

Rich

Christ In You, the Fullness of Hope

“For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

What meaning or purpose is there for anyone as long as they have ‘hope’ in anyone or thing other than Christ? Blessed ARE the poor!

I loved this quote from the OZ man himself (Oswald Chambers).

"We have sinned with our fathers; . . . and have forgotten" - then put a stiletto in the place where you have gone to sleep. "God is not talking to me just now," but He ought to be. Remember Whose you are and Whom you serve. Provoke yourself by recollection, and your affection for God will increase tenfold; your imagination will not be starved any longer, but will be quick and enthusiastic, and your hope will be inexpressibly bright.”

You can read the rest of it here.

It is a major hurdle to embrace, learning to trust the Father when everything within you screams for action when you see a person who is being slowly reduced to nothing. The need is the call, Lord what is the truth in this situation, in this person who ‘appears’ to be so hopeless?
Learning to move, do, say only that which is made know to us by the Father is that which will bear fruit now and through out eternity.

It hurts like hell seeing real suffering all around us and knowing unless He says, sets into motion His directive, the best we can do is carry them in our heart before Him as He brings them to that blessed place of total bankruptcy.

Rich

Bending Toward the Light

“In Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life has set you free from the gravitational (law) pull of sin and death.”

My heart is so full right now, feasting upon this Living one who continues to resonate within me. As I shared with a friend recently, the one thing that continues to captivate my attention is how within the body of Christ, my siblings like wise are catching these inward glimpses of this exceeding and great treasure, Christ in us the hope of glory and how it is furthering their inner transformation.

It’s this inner transformation that I want to try and look at here and its implications of how we have been deeply infected and affected by the invasion of His life. I’m sure I will be writing much more on this, as I said, my heart is so full, much like a beggar child invited into a candy store and told to freely enjoy anything my heart desires.

It never ceases to amaze me how this spirit-union I/we have in Christ has at best been nothing more than great theology-doctrine, a topic of conversation, but so little enjoyed experientially. Please hear me I am neither criticizing nor beating anyone up over this, we have all had more than enough of this brutality and its crippling effects. There is no ability to “reckon” apart from receiving new light (revelation).

It takes what it takes to move us inwardly by Father using outward circumstances and situations to produce a desire to want to be set free from the inside (to be transformed) from those things which have kept us spiritually retarded.
“HOWEVER, BRETHREN, I could not talk to you as to spiritual [men], but as to non-spiritual [men of the flesh, in whom the carnal nature predominates], as to mere infants [in the new life] in Christ [unable to talk yet!]” (1Corinthians 3:1).

It took the better part of 400 years to bring the decedents of Jacob held in bondage to Pharaoh in Egypt to begin to “cry” out! “However, after a long time (And it came to pass in process of time) [nearly forty years] the king of Egypt died; and the Israelites were sighing and groaning because of the bondage. They kept crying, and their cry because of slavery ascended to God” (Exodus 2:23).
God heard their cry, but why did it take 400 years?

Eventually Israel was loosed from their exterior hellishness-bondage and led out for the purpose of being “led” into a “Promised Land,” (which should have taken about eleven days) but apart from only two of that original company-multitude, Joshua and Caleb, the rest all perished, disintegrated (wilted) in the wilderness.

Although this first generation experienced extraordinary-miraculous intervention right from the get-go until their demise in the dessert, there was no evident impartation of His miraculous life altering ability, to transform them from deep within.
This leads me to the thrust of my pondering on what I am beginning to see as “an out of body experience,” experiencing the resurrection reality in Christ that wants to flow out of my/our spiritual union.

"All over the world today there is an inward spiritual groaning for right relatedness to the stream of His will and authority. And what is happening? God has heard this cry! He is raising up those who see as Copernicus saw, and who will dare to challenge the authoritarian religious systems by insisting that man is only a related center, and not the ultimate center of all things. There is a forth coming living expression of proper relatedness unto Him that is making the religious gestalt very nervous. (From, Unto Full Stature). Once we sought deliverance only, but now we cry for inward development (transformation) first.

Rich

Blinded by the Light: Addendum

In my last blog entry, I included a link to Kent’s site, Faithfully Dangerous. I wanted to illustrate some thoughts I had, and it was not intended to be a criticism to what he shared. More to the point, it was an opportunity for me to put forward many new thoughts I had that his comment triggered, so thanks, Kent!

His blog entry was entitled “Hope In Our Brokenness”, and the key word that leapt out at me was ‘brokenness.’ Because of not seeing clearly and by that I mean allowing our Father to open our eyes to the truth of what a ‘nature’ actually is comprised of, it is only natural that we define this. For clarification, brokenness is that which has permeated all of humanity. None have been born into this world escaping that inevitable brokenness - none.

The title, ‘Blinded by the Light’ is a graphic illustration of what actually happened in the garden when the ‘angel of light’ a.k.a. the serpent, offered an eye-opening temptation, that Adam and Eve could become their own god. Funny thing is, this alleged illumination totally blinded them from seeing and knowing just how incarcerated they had become to the flesh.

It is out of this blindness that we have defined our position on what is good and bad behaviour. But wasn’t that the same mind set back in Jesus’ day when He was disparagingly accused of being a ‘friend of sinners’? You know, the ‘broken ones’ - those who’s badly flawed behaviour indicated that they needed professional help. Of course these self-righteous ones were only too obliging to bring these misguided sinners under their imposed control.

Like then, the deception that still keeps us all bound, especially those of us who do NOT see that apart from His nature (no matter how flawless our living appears to be), a bad nature (tree) cannot produce good fruit.

Maybe it’s time to ask the only One who is able, to open our blinded eyes to see unmistakably and NO longer to appraise (judge) anyone after the flesh!

Rich

Moving Forward

I’m following the on going series my friend Art is writing and I wanted to post these two portions that spoke to my heart as I continue to move forward in experiencing His overall unconditional love.

Rich

Is Confession of Sins Necessary in the Ongoing Life of the Christian?

As noted in Part 7, the believer’s confession of sins occurring after salvation is not necessary for forgiveness of sins under Paul’s “gift of the grace of God” (Eph 3:7). This is because ALL sin was forgiven at the moment of salvation – past sins, present sin, and future sins; thus, we were accepted in Christ. The requirement for Christians to practice confession of sins for forgiveness is a false doctrine, as if to say a believer “can fall out of grace”; with the result that one minute you’re saved by grace, and then next you’re not. The grace of God’s forgiveness of our sins is freely given and unconditional, covering ALL our sins for all time.

However, there are a few cases that require our confession of sin(s), but not for forgiveness; rather it is that we might come to “the light” of a restored union and fellowship with the Lord, as well as with those around us. These are serious matters of understanding because they affect our daily walk, not to mention the sanity of our mind.

1) There is a place of confession that is not confession to gain forgiveness of sins. It is confession to God concerning sin toward another, such as forgiveness that we may hold against another. Such an acknowledgment before God releases us from the burden of sin.

2) There’s also a place of confession before another believer that is admission guilt before God for past sin. Such an admission releases us from the choking burden of past sin that we may have long cloaked in the darkness of our hidden self-life for many years. We’ve perhaps been locked into a jail of our own making by some sin(s) that we may think of as unforgivable. Sin makes us fear exposure. Sin wants each of us alone. Sin wants to draw me into myself, and away from God and others. The more isolated I am the more control the Sin nature can have over me. Sin seeks the shadows. Sin holds me in the dark, robbing me of complete fellowship with God and others. Others may sense the wall that keeps me from being genuine with them.

Under such darkness, we are easy prey for the accusations of the Devil, whose goal is to literally destroy us. Though the Devil cannot touch God, he tries to destroy God’s image in us.

Jesus said believers are to be lovers of the light. Jn 12:36 While ye have light, believe (pisteuo, trust in, cling to, and rely upon) in the light, that ye may be the children of light… We have these words from the Apostle James to point us to the remedy. James 5:16 Confess (exomologeo, acknowledge, admit) your faults (paratomah, side slips) one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed (iaomai, cured, made whole). The effectual fervent prayer (deesis, petition) of a righteous man availeth much.

Sin toward others brings pain to our own self. Bringing our hidden life into the light of God is not so we may gain forgiveness, but to heal us of sin’s pain. We may be a Christian who is forgiven of ALL sins, and yet be self-condemned due to our supposed unforgivable sin. We may think we were not lovable, not loved of God or by those who we think should love us – all because we don’t accept our self; so we can’t and don’t accept God’s forgiveness.

The problem is our view of our self because we’ve not accepted God’s forgiveness. Since we don’t believe we are forgiven by God, the pain of this is self-inflicted; it’s due to our own forgiveness of ourselves for some sin(s) in our past. The fact is God has long ago forgiven us of ALL our sins, but we have held ourselves as reprehensible.

We are locked into what is a hopeless and helpless condition unless God intervenes. This condition must be brought into the light; therefore God our Father may force the real us to become exposed to our self and/or to others…that we might be healed.

How does the Lord expose us to the light?

The pain rooted in our unacceptance of our self may manifest itself in mental instability and/or physical illness. This may be the end of the road approaching, since our sickness may do for us what we could not do for ourselves, forcing us to be exposed. God does this because He loves us and wants us free of the power of our supposed unforgivable sin(s). The answer is for our self to become exposed, brought under the curative power of the divine radium of God’s light, where it may be confirmed that we are totally forgiven and loved of God, standing blameless before Him in His love.

In the next installment, Part 8B, I will offer my personal testimony of God’s forced exposure of His light upon my needy soul.

Prison Or Prism

As light passes, enters a prism, a spectrum results.

In my previous post, I spoke of the Matrix, in my opinion the Matrix is that which is operative in the lives of all people. It's basis of operation is because of the fall, and man acquiring the knowledge of good and evil.
A person can be born again, and yet still be very much a prisoner to this entity.

The thought occurred to me that much like a prism, light being refracted through a prism can open up a whole new previously unseen spectrum of colors. Maybe in coming to know (experience) the reality of the unconditional love of God the Father, we are released from the prison of the Matrix. In fact, is it possible that we become as a living prism, transmitting the multi faceted colors of His grace, love and acceptance to those still imprisoned within the Matrix, offering then love rather than joining a religion?

I believe it always was the love of God that would ultimately do what no external stimuli could do, fully animate, activate, and energize-release us to BE extensions of His love, aka, lovers. Remember, man was created without a nature. He had to be defined by a nature, and only His love was able to do that very thing.

I so enjoyed what I read today on Jim Palmer's Blog, 'Jim's Blog' (the thoughts and life of just another nobody) http://www.divinenobodies.com/blog/ 'There Are No Steps'.

"i received an email from someone who asked if perhaps in the next book (which i’m currently writing; yikes!) i would focus more on "how" i shed religion and began living in the "wide open spaces." i rolled it around a bit and was hard pressed to identify anything of my doing that could account for how my journey with God has been evolving these past few years. i don’t think i could write a book like "Seven Steps To Shed Religion and Be Free" because it hasn’t been that way for me. well, unless the steps went something like: Step One: Wake up, get out of bed, breathe, do whatever comes next; Step Two: Um…let’s see ahhh…see what happens next; Step Three: oh yeah, try to pay attention to what’s going on inside you; Step Four: and also, pay attention to what and who is happening around you".

So many not knowing the reality of the perfect unconditional love of this Father, will need something, someone to be that mediator between them and God other than the Man Christ Jesus. I am convinced that not knowing (experiencing this pure love of the Father, leaves us with only one other option, and remember there are NO vacuums, therefore, we will be subject to the Matrix, and life will only be defined through that lense, verses His love.
Living within the Matrix, like Jim alludes to in his article today, results in a 'how to, vs a WHO'!

I know I use many quotes and illustrations from the movie 'The Matrix', but I can't help myself, it is one of those things Father continues to give me insight into. One of the quotes that brought special meaning to me yesterday, was the one where Morpheus says to Neo, 'Welcome to the waste land of the real world'.
We are in this world but not of it Jesus says, and it is my contention that the only thing that will make living in the waste land of the real world (so to speak), is an ever increasing knowing of the Father's love, that which I was created for.

As C.S. lewis said, "God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on gasoline, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.'' ~LOVE!

Rich