The article below called “Trust and Obey” was written in 1989, but circumstances of late have made clear that we must touch this matter of trusting flesh once again. Do not trust the flesh. Trust God and Jesus. That’s all.
http://lovinglikegoddotcom.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/trust-and-obey.pdf
Love!
There are several places in the Bible that speak of things that can’t be told.
Perhaps the most notable is at the last Supper when Jesus informed His disciples that He had more to say to them, but that they were not yet ready to receive it.
Another example is Mary, when receiving the revelation that she was to be the mother of Jesus. This too was something that could not be told, at least not until there was the confirmation of another witness.
Somewhat later Paul informs the carnal Christians at Corinth that he does speak a word among the mature, but that he could not yet address them as mature.
Still later Paul speaks of having surpassing revelations, “things that a man is not permitted to tell.”
The writer of Hebrews has much to share with them, but can’t do so due to their dullness of hearing at a time when they should already have been teachers.
We could also note that Daniel was told to seal up a scroll which would have to wait until an appointed time in the distant future.
For most of human history the greatest truth remained a mystery, “Christ in You the hope of Glory” to be revealed only in Paul’s time.
While Paul just came right out with it, we are still left to wonder what can this revelation possibly mean. So why the delay in our ability to “Get it”?
People are not ready for the truth. This can be true because of the carnality of the hearers. It can also be the result of the times. There are times before which we just are not capable of comprehending the revelation. In any case, time is an important factor. It may be that a second witness is required to confirm the revelation, and this too is time related.
Perhaps it might help if we reduce and simplify. Assume with me for a moment that all of this that can’t be told is the same revelation. Suppose this revelation was so big it was beyond our comprehension. Suppose this is also a revelation whose time has come or is rapidly coming upon us. Suppose that this revelation has to do with the priority of God, and not our own priorities. Suppose this has to do with the intimacy of the Godhead from the time the world began. Suppose this is not about generic relationships, but about very specific relationships and purposes in God having their origins in and by Him. These are relationships so full of the passion and purposes of Christ, and not some kind of human decisions, born out of religious merchandising by those who are like children sitting in the market place touting their agendas, and clouding the wisdom that is known of her children.
There are signs of late that just such a perversion and misuse is now beginning to descend onto and into the loneliness of God’s people, especially the young people. This brought to us by religious merchandisers, half baked, and bound to cause greater relational disasters than have already plagued the church for generations in the flesh.
Relationships in Christ are not generic, they are born of Him for His purposes, and not as mere religious toys. Beware of the half baked peddlers that are beginning to come on the scene. I hope to spend a little more time here in the days immediately ahead.
Love!
As the days dwindle down to a precious few, and now just hours remain before a rather unique and problematic surgery, I find myself daily recalculating the days of my life. These days have been so full, and, so far from the learning curve going flat, it seems to only get closer and closer to vertical. Not only in physics and engineering is this called an exponential curve, but also in history and in life. See Matthew 24, for instance, as an example of exponential discourse.
As I have already noted elsewhere, “the day Jesus died, He had the best view on the hill.” One of the things He saw, and noted, was a preview of how life would be when He returned in and by His Spirit living in the lives of His followers. How must it have seemed to those who may have heard Him say to His Mother in reference to John, who was standing right there near to her, “Behold your son,” and to John, “behold your mother”?
Perhaps they were the only ones to hear. In any case John took her home to live with him. As likely as not this was one of those new realities that His disciples were not yet ready to hear about at the Last Supper. Indeed, “believers” in our own day are still not ready to hear or see such things. For me, however, this is at the heart of the message that I have heard from the beginning. The resistance to this message is right out of the pits of hell. At the very least, it is the result of the priorities of “flesh.”
There is so much that needs to be said about this, and perhaps it had to wait for a day and time when I no longer had anything to lose.
One of the points to be made is the part about having this mind in us that doesn’t think equality with God as a thing to be grasped, but lets go of more than any other has ever had a right to cling to, and humbles Himself. This must certainly apply to married couples as well.
Do we have certain rights in connection with our spouses’ body belonging to us? Yes, but not so far as clinging to one another in such a way that they are no longer controlled by Christ. Except for covering the expediency of our problem with burning, we must release one another to belong to The Lord, and those He gives to us, and we to them. Given the need to take care of our own in the economy of the old creation, that is the extent of it.
Where personal and conversational time with these others who are ours in Spiritual relationship, these are privileged conversations subject to the parties to those conversations. It’s very strange and even suspect. That this is a matter of course where paid pastoral ministry is concerned, but seen as so unacceptable where the more authentic Spiritual pastoral ministry is concerned. This should not be as it fosters the artificial at the expense of the authentic. We should not have to become merchants to function in The Body of Christ. This too is counterfeit.
The sum total of this message, in it’s expression in the earth is the Church. Anything else is a cheap imitation of the intention of Jesus. This is not something for us to do, but rather something for us to see. Clearly at this time and condition of my life, I have no thought or intention of leading disciples away after myself. My heart is simply that those with ears to hear, and eyes to see, come into an awareness of their inheritance in Christ in this present age.
I have spiritual, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters around the world. My spiritual Fathers have already gone on to be with the Lord. In these days I have been immersed in God’s love lavished on me by my wife, Carleen, and a couple of Spiritual Daughters. Pam has been with us through most of these days, and has done most of the driving once again getting us back here to Bethesda, MD.
While addressing this aspect of our relational inheritance right there at the foot of the cross, this was even before Pentecost. At that point they were likely the only two who could hear and receive that truth. Even after Pentecost the early believers, including the apostles, had no clue about the nature of not knowing each other according to the flesh. The were still very much “rich and poor,” “Jew and Gentile,” and “male and female.” It remained for Paul to come along and make these spiritual and relational break-throughs.
This is not to say, however, that Paul came to see and appreciate all that Jesus was talking about at the Last Supper when He told those disciples who knew the Lord before he did, that there was still much that He had to say to them, but that they were not yet ready to hear it.
By now, the hour is late, the day far spent, and past time for those of us who name the name of Christ, to get it, and stop living in this bankrupt imitation of the new creation that Christ intended.
This ongoing preoccupation with the flesh is anything but what Jesus prayed for, “on earth as it is in heaven.”
God help us to get over ourselves in all our preoccupations with the flesh, which has us so crippled from living the kind of relational life that was designed in the purposes of God to be the light of the world.
Love!
