Is God Invisible To You?

I watched my granddaughter the other day as she took markers with invisible ink and colored a page of flowers in her coloring book. I smiled as the color appeared on the flowers out of thin air, or so it seemed. Of course the color was already on the page, but without the special liquid inside the markers, the colors on the flowers would not have shown up. That got me to thinking. Sometimes God is just like that. If we were honest with each other, we would all have to admit that there are times that God seems far away or invisible to us. Yet, He is really not.

More times than not, it is us, not God that moves away. In the scriptures, we are told that our sin is what separates us from God. When we are separated, we are not at peace with Him, nor do we feel His presence, and often times it is our pride in some form that keeps us from the sweet fellowship that He freely gives us. Psalm 138:6 tells us that “… the haughty he knows from afar.” Often times one of the primary reasons for God’s apparent “disappearance” to us, is our human pride. Pride repels and repulses God to be near us. For the lost, it will inevitably keep them separated from God eternally. For the saved, it breaks fellowship with Him. No matter how desperate we want Him in our lives, like the young man in Mark 10, “Jesus looked at him and loved him. "One thing you lack," he said. "Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me." At this the man's face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth”. What kept that young man from coming to Jesus? His pride. He was unwilling to surrender all that was his to have all that God would offer him.

 

The Lord will remain invisible to us as long as He sees within our hearts an elevated opinion of ourselves. Proverbs 16:18 says, “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” God will allow us to bang our heads against the wall, experience the pain of life and do whatever it takes until we figure out that we really do need Him more than anything else in this life. I Peter 5:6 tells us to “Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time.” When we do this, then just watch Him show up like never before. He is there, but to see Him, we must obey Him!

 

Loving on you today,

Bren

LET THE FIRE FALL

 

The purpose of desiring the fire of God in our lives allows God the freedom to refine and purify us from our old ways of thinking and being, into His likeness and image. In the purification of metals, fire is applied to separate the impurities from a substance. In the book of Malachi, God reveals that under the New Testament coming, people who would draw near him would be refined by fire Malachi 3:1-3. The difference from being changed by the power of God in our lives, than trying to change ourselves by our own power, is that God’s fire and power in us changes our very nature from self-consciousness to God-consciousness, whereby we are transformed into the very nature of God. God’s refining fire, removes whatever elements that affects our fleshly strength, durability, flexibility, consistency and our very integrity as well as the substance of who we are. The fire of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer is to remove anything that is not consistent with the nature of Christ in us. That is conveyed by his word in our lives.

In an Old Testament story from 1 Kings, we are told about how God’s people had been led astray to entertain and fill their lives with everything evil and false. God used His prophet Elijah to reprove them, His purpose was to break up their fallow hearts and open their eyes. He challenged the false prophets to build an altar and sacrifice. They were to call on their god’s to come down and accept their sacrifice. They built their altar and all the people watched, but nothing happen. Then Elijah built his altar to God in front of all the people and cried out to God “…let it be known this day that you are God in Israel, and that I am your servant, and that I have done all these things at your word. Hear me, O LORD, hear me, that this people may know that you are the LORD God, and that you have turned their heart back again. Then the fire of the LORD fell, and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench. And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces: and they said, The LORD, He is the God; the LORD, He is the God.” I Kings 18. When the fire came they instantly knew the truth of who the true God was. The fire of God turned their hearts and set them back on the right path toward Him. If will begin to consistently worship the Lord and meditate on all that He is,  then  we are overtaken by a power and strength not of our own; and we find that we are able to overcome those things that we have tried in the past to overcome but could not.  The fire of God in us will burn the desire for the ungodly out of us. This is how true purification and refining happens. It is not a mind over matter kind of thing. For mind over matter, somehow implies that our mind is strong enough to take control and master everything we put our mind to do. That is a lie! If we could overcome sin ourselves by using our minds, we would not need a Savior. Sure we can overcome a few bad habits on our own, if we discipline ourselves enough. But the nature of sin in us is very different, it has control over us and we need an intervention that empowers us to say no. That breaks that power over us and that means comes to us through the cross of Christ. (Continued next week)

 God’s word tells us that all have sinned and come short of God’s Glory. That is why is it so impossible in our own strength to quit doing or thinking about something that our flesh loves; but we know is not pleasing to God. You see our flesh loves sin and that is all that it knows to do, is sin, no matter how big or how small, sin is sin and our sinful nature craves and wills us to want to commit it in one way or another. Unless the flesh in us changes or dies, we will not be able to do that which God is calling us to do. We must inherit a repulsion or hate towards sin in order to overcome it. Psalms 97:10 says, You that love the LORD, hate evil: He preserves the souls of his saints; He delivers them out of the hand of the wicked.” Proverbs 8:13 says, “The fear of the LORD is to hate evil: pride, and arrogance, and the evil way, and the perverse mouth, do I hate.” Too many people try to mentally override their flesh to win their battles. It doesn’t take long to figure out the success rate of this way of thinking is very poor, to none. This is one reason people fall back into sin so quickly. The fire of God means divine empowerment to change that which we cannot on our own do. What is the answer to overcoming power? Having fire! Having a passion burn in your heart.

There are few things that put a real fire in our heart but when something does, it can consume us. This is true whether it’s a good passion or a bad passion. You often see this when two people fall in love. It’s like their passion changes many of their behaviors and they begin to think and live differently. Supernatural passion or fire comes only from and directed by God. It helps to burn out the evil and ungodly in the child of God. It comes when we realize we need God and His power in our life and want it more than the breath in our lungs. It comes when we make it the desire of our seeking and as we do, at just the right time we encounter a fresh renewal, a fresh reverence and awe of God that will soon create an intolerance for wrong doing renouncing every sin, reviving the spiritual slumber that we can often find ourselves in, if we are not daily waling in the Spirit of the Living God. Revival invigorates and sometimes deepens a believer's faith, opening his or her eyes to the truth in a fresh, new way. It always involves a fresh start with a clean slate, marking a new beginning of a life lived in obedience to God. Revival breaks the charm and power of the world, which blinds the eyes of God’s people, and generates both the will and power to live in the world, but not of the world. Unlike a person’s original conversion experience that brings about a new relationship to God, revival represents a restoration of fellowship with God, the relationship having been retained even though the believer had pulled away for a time. God’s fire on and in our lives revives us, because it is an extraordinary movement of God's Holy Spirit producing extraordinary results. May the God of revival deliver us from contentment with the ordinary sweet friend, while He stands ready to do the extraordinary for us!

Loving on you today,
Bren

WHO IS YOUR FATHER

In the early part of Jesus’ ministry, He often times got into debates with the religious leaders of His day. On one occasion He was talking with a group of militant devotees of the Rabbinic priesthood who maintained that because they were born of the seed of Abraham, they were automatically God’s children and God was their Father.  Yet, Jesus told them that they were not true children of God but of the devil. John 8:39-47 details His conversation with them. When you think of someone as a father, you usually picture an image of a kind, concerned and caring person who has the best interest of his children in mind. Satan however, is not that kind of father at all. He masquerades as an angel of light and will do whatever it may take to win someone’s favor or trust. But look out! His heart is black and evil, full of hate and bitter revenge against God and all mankind, especially those in the household of God. He is no normal father. He is an evil sadistic creature who imprisons his children in a slave camp with invisible chains, caring nothing for them because of his all-consuming hate for mankind and the God that created them. He only uses them for his purposes and then throws them to the junk pile to suffer the consequences for their actions when he is finished with them. His greatest worry is that mankind find out who he really is and that they come to the realization that they have been ransomed and their freedom paid by the one and only Son of God. Jesus’ comments to those religious leaders drove their holier than thou attitudes into a murderous fury. They sought every evil opportunity that they could to kill Jesus, in hopes that truth would not come to the world in the form that God had chosen; His only Son. There is ample evidence today, that the world has an evil system of thinking and acting which is subtly controlled by satan, to exclude the need for God in people’s lives. I John 5:19b says that, ”The whole world lies in the power of the evil one”. Most people will never know what control and influence the devil had over them. But, they will have, at some point and time in their life, when they are confronted by the truth of God’s Word to decide for themselves, whom they will serve. Joshua 24:15, “But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD." 

 

Loving on you today,

Bren