Pain of the Gospel

My heart has been stirred as of late through the reading of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea and Micah.  I have also listened to the passionate pleas of AW Tozer, EM Bounds and Leonard Ravenhill.  I am convicted of how much noise is in my life and the subtle lies that the world tempts me as a believer to conform to.  I struggle to think of the last time I have shared the transforming power of the gospel with another person one on one.

This past week I shared my personal inventory with my closest earthly friend. I say that because he knows me deeper than any other and only by God’s grace can he love me and walk with me.  After sharing the deep and darkest secrets of past sins and exposing the lies that the enemy wants me to believe in, he made a precise cut to my soul.  I will paraphrase his words of wisdom, the pain you feel is the tearing out of roots you have in this world and the grip it has had on you.  This past Sunday was another refreshing time with another brother in Christ.  I heard his heart about prayer and sharing others burden’s.  We talked about being unified in the Spirit and how that is only possible when we cry out, “Have your way in us and as it is in heaven let it be on earth.”

When is the last time it truly hurt to have the grip of this world pried from the hand?  Warren Wiersbe notes in his study of Lot and Abraham that God tested Abraham but Lot was so spiritually low that God need not test him.  All Lot’s tests and temptations came from the world and his own heart.  That hits me to the core.  I look back at most of my wounding and scars that are either self-inflicted or from the worldly desires.  AW Tozer preaches that modern believers are comfortable and no longer wish for the pain of God’s Word to plow the fields of the heart.

It is a true blessing to have the fellowship with several men who serve Christ with a limp and who love the Lord enough to speak some uncomfortable truths into my life.  Ravenhill would ask how much you really love someone if all you tell a person is what they want to hear.  How deeply am I convicted by what I hear on Sunday and in my daily time alone with the Lord or what I sing that I am compelled to action and intercession both for the world and for my local body of believers?

It is very difficult most days and a struggle to ask God to continue the painful process He is doing in my heart but I shake within my soul to think of standing before Holy God and realizing all the riches I had in Christ and the embarrassment and mourning that will overtake me while what I did with it is judged.  I cannot even finish typing this without praying for you.

Is there too much noise in life?  Are the desires and temptations of this world your greatest source of pain?  What has God spoke to your heart today?  Are you driven to repentance and time quietly before Him listening and begging for revival?

I am.  My life has not testified to the power of Christ.  I have fashioned some false teaching that somehow what I want or plan affects or shapes his desire and plans.  I hate you world.  I hate what you stand for.  I hate the lies you tell.  I hate the values you portray.  You are a whore who is exposed in broad daylight with nothing hidden from God.

God forgive me today for the feeble faith of my life’s testimony.  I have made a mockery of your name.  I have profaned you.  My heart has offered unacceptable praise that bounces off the basement of heaven.  I long for you to intercept my plans today.  I want you to be glorified in me.  I want to die for the cause of Christ.

Sowing Seed

No matter what has ever happened to me or who has hurt me, I am not excused from my sin or sin nature that makes me a splinter in the cross of Jesus Christ.  God has been nurturing my heart recently to receive some fundamental truths of faith in Christ Jesus.

Sin has consequences, whether they are sins of the intentional or unintentional.  Sin affects those I love, the church, and me.  The consequences may not be instant but they are seeds that are planted in my heart that will be made evident after the next rain.  We are constantly planting seeds; the way we treat our spouse, what we watch, the things we believe, the words we hear and say, the books we read and the daily choices to act or not act are all seeds.  The parable of the seed found in Luke 8. http://read.ly/Luke8.5.NIV

In the same way, when I read the Word of God, meditate on His truths, spend time in prayer for my weaknesses, sin, and desperation for Him, I am planting seeds of righteousness that will spill over into the lives of those I love, the church, as well as myself.  As I have written past sins and lies in my inventory and journal, a constant theme in my unhealthy behavior has been the times that I was not consistently in the Word of God or spending time in prayer.  God used this to resonate the idea that seeds are revealed after the rain.

There is another storm coming into your life.  It is guaranteed.  Christians are promised suffering.  It may be in your spouse’s life.  It may be your deepest sin revealed.  It may be a storm that brings about purification breaking up the old soil and tilling your heart for a new crop that God desires for your life.  For your sake, for the sake of those you love, for the sake of the church, and for the glory of OUR Risen Savior do not forsake time alone with God today in prayer, meditation, and the treasuring of His Word.  It is the life source for our lives.  We cannot live apart from it.  God will reveal himself first in His Word.  The psalmist describes God as the shade he depends on Psalm 121:5 http://read.ly/Ps121.5.NIV.  We can grow the most in the cool of the day under the shade of God.  Continue to plant seeds of righteousness in your life and allow God to cultivate and grow them according to His plan for His glory alone.