Precious Truth

Psalm 141:6

"When their leaders are thrown from a cliff, the wicked will listen to my words and find them true.”

There will come a day when all will be revealed for what it is. Who you are is set; it is a condition of your heart that has already been determined by how much you are God’s. In this life, we can never expect to act or desire or receive reward for anything beyond the measure already determined by the condition of our hearts. One day, none of this crap is going to matter. All the testing and all the trials, all the challenges and all the distractions, all the temporal things and their pleasures will fade into nothingness and we will be left before God with nothing but who we are. In that day we will either be met with bitter tears and solemn regret or the joy of knowing that we did not shrink back – that we did not love our lives so much as to shrink from death. May it be that I live with such a perspective. Life daily is a fight to keep one’s head above the water of this world so that another breath of the truth might sustain him through the torrent of unrelenting waves into which we are dropped merely by having been born. But O, how precious that breath is! It is life itself, and it is worth every tear, every drop of sweat, every painful stroke and crashing blow to which we are subject. Despite what Satan, all those around us, and even our own instincts and inclinations tell us, it is enough to keep us until that day.

The High Life

Psalm 128:1

“How joyful are those who fear the Lord, all who follow His ways!”

Having experienced little joy and much stress this semester, I was thinking earlier today of the qualifications for joy. That is to ask, why do I have, or perhaps why don’t I have joy, if I know God?

Read the verse again. The fearful, the followers are faithful. They just are.

The joy that comes from God is. That’s it. It simply is. Joy is present. It is, because we are Godly. We are His, we are redeemed, all is finished, there’s nothing to be done or worked for. Joy is. There is no prerequisite to joy.

In looking to receive joy, don’t wait for things to get perfect or even ideal. Don’t wait for a small victory to savor. Don’t wait for a reason to have joy. If your joy comes as a result of positive circumstance, of comprehension, or of anticipation of good, it will go just as quickly as a result of circumstance, confusion, or anticipation of bad. But joy is for the Godly, as much as righteousness is, as healing is, as peace is.

What brings it into reality? Faith. Faith is just receiving the higher truth. Receive the joy that is for the godly. It is. Already.

There is no more victory to be won than that already accomplished by Jesus on the cross. “Take heart, I have overcome the world.” He has done it. Death has no hold, sin is condemned in sinful man, the wrath has been borne, the old is gone, the new has come, the power is present.

In my short experience of Life (capital L), I continually forget and am subsequently continually reminded that everything I’ve ever received from God has been received by faith. I don’t mean I asked God to heal granny and she got better after some rest. I mean when I wanted to receive the Holy Spirit, He didn’t come because I tried or prayed hard. When I’ve wanted His presence, He hasn’t come just because I set time aside for Him to do such. It’s been when I have just stopped worrying, stopped trying, and received. "Faith comes by hearing..." It comes. You don't go to faith, faith comes to you. You must simply hear, and receive.

Mark 11:24:

I tell you, you can pray for anything, and if you believe that you’ve received it, it will be yours.

If I am lacking in joy, in health, in wealth, in prosperity, in peace, in righteousness, in victory, in satisfaction – all I must do is receive that which has been made mine, by faith. It already is mine. What freedom there is indeed in the truth!

As a final note, many preach the message of "just receive" whatever you want from God, but their motives are to get you to like them and to appease your itching ears to hear how you might receive the things that you want from God. But God was not made for man; man was made for God, and as such I wish to distance myself from any stigma of this "God, your genie" theology.

Conversely, when I receive from God, it is a result of my enjoyment of, relishing in, and "glorying" in Him. It is not to satisfy what I as a man desire; it is to experience a life that is altogether different (divinely different - ergo by definition, holy) from that which is available to unregenerate man. From such a life God gets glory. That is the kind of prosperity I want. That is the kind of joy I want. Life in the spirit is governed by faith, which constitutes a plane of existence that is altogether different from natural life. And this Life is wrought "from start to finish by faith" (Rom. 1:17).

In summary, it is to the glory of God that I receive Life from Him; and that is why Jesus came. He is the Light that brought Life. Earthly life will never transcend earthly fact; divine Life will always defy earthly truth. It is on us as Christians to live our lives differently, walking in the Light. What a tragedy it is for the untold millions of Christians whose lives -- whose joy, satisfaction, plans, pleasures, peace - never transcend the joys and pleasures and patterns of this world. Be different, for He is different.