Naked Christians

                                                                          

Moses saw that the people were naked; (for Aaron had made them naked unto their shame among their enemies") Exodus 32:25. The Hebrew word used here for naked is para, meaning "to loosen up, expose, dismiss all restraint." It also means "a new beginning."

The Israelites were saying, "Things are not happening as they should. We're tired of this battle, tired of waiting on God. And now we're going to enjoy ourselves. Out with the old! We want new freedom, a new start—and we want it now!"

Nakedness in the Bible also has to do with not having one's shield for battle. Every man who did not have his shield was considered naked. These Israelites were literally naked—stripped down and dancing before the golden calf, yet they also had laid down their armor.

Can you imagine their enemies, the Amalekites, looking down on this wild scene from the surrounding mountains? The Amalekites once trembled at the very sight of Israel. God had put a dread in their hearts toward His people but now they saw Israel taking off their armor and stripping off their garments. 

The Amalekites were mocking and laughing at them: "Look—they're just like us! Their God has no power. They don't trust Him. See? They're throwing off all their strict ways. They want to lust and party and play just like the rest of us. Some holiness! What hypocrisy!"

In that one act of nakedness, Israel belittled their God in the eyes of the ungodly. They made the Lord seen heartless, cruel, uncaring, helpless. They besmirched His honor, His majesty, His omnipotence. They were no longer an example to the world.

That is exactly what we do when we strip off our robes of faith and let go of our confidence in God. Without childlike trust in God, a Christian stands naked before the world, exposed to all doubts, fears and unbelief!

~David Wilkerson~

Faith Is Holding Out Your Hand

Sometimes when I was a child my mother or father would say, "Shut your eyes and hold out your hand." That was the promise of some lovely surprise.

I trusted them, so I shut my eyes instantly and held out my hand. Whatever they were going to give me I was ready to take. 

So it should be in our trust of our heavenly Father. Faith is the willingness to receive whatever He wants to give, or the willingness not to have what He does not want to give. 

I am content to be and have what in Thy heart I am meant to be and have. (George MacDonald)

From the greatest of all gifts,salvation in Christ, to the material blessings of any ordinary day (hot water, a pair of legs that work, a cup of coffee, a job to do and strength to do it), every good gift comes down from the Father of Lights. Every one of them is to be received gladly and, like gifts people give us, with thanks.

Sometimes we want things we were not meant to have. Because He loves us, the Father says no. Faith trusts that no. Faith is willing not to have what God is not willing to give. 

Furthermore, faith does not insist upon an explanation. It is enough to know his promise to give what is good--He knows so much more about that than we do.

~Elisabeth Elliot~ 

Christian Cripples

Reading: John 5:1-9

In this story of the impotent man the heart of the matter is in verse five: "And a certain man was there, which had been thirty and eight years in his infirmity."

What is the Jewish background? There is very little doubt that it was Israel's journey in the wilderness, the thirty-eight years of their wanderings. What cripples they were!

They could have made the journey from Egypt to Canaan in eleven days, but it took them thirty-eight years and during that time they were really making no progress at all. They were in bondage to their own self-life. 

They were impotent, helpless cripples because the self-life was in the place of mastery. 

You have no need for me to tell you how that self-life governed them in the wilderness. 

They never looked at anything in the light of how it served God and how far it satisfied His interests.

They looked at everything in the light of how it affected them.

All their murmuring and rebellion was because THEY were not getting what THEY wanted.

It was never what God wanted. They were just a self-centered people, and the self-life was their bed, and they were cripples lying on that bed.

They were never really able to get up and march straight forward into God's purpose.

Well, that is the Jewish background, and Jesus takes up an illustration of that right in the presence of the Jews when He puts this man on his feet.

The members of the new heavenly Israel are people who have been delivered from self-interest into God's interest, who have been put on their spiritual feet by Jesus Christ and are walking in strength in the way of the Lord.
 
Do you not think it is a very significant thing that the first miracle after the Day of Pentecost was the raising of an impotent man at the gate of the temple in Jerusalem? 

These are not just pretty stories put together to make an interesting book.

God knows what He is doing, and when He makes the first miracle of the Christian era the raising of an impotent cripple, He is saying that the people of this new Israel are people who have been delivered from this impotence and put on their feet spiritually.
 
There are a lot of Christian cripples about! 

They cannot get on their own feet, nor can other people put them there. You try to pick them up! They may take a step or two, and then down they go again.

There are many like that, and you can spend your life trying to get them up on their feet. 

What is it that is eating the very life out of them?  

What is it that is making them such helpless cripples that they cannot walk? 

It is self-centeredness. Make no mistake about it, it is self in some form.

It is self that wants to be taken notice of. It is self in the form of pride.

This poor man was delivered because he knew his own helplessness and he believed what Jesus said.

He believed on to Jesus Christ, which means that he believed out of himself. 

Yes, that is the secret - that we shall turn from our miserable selves and cease to be occupied with them, saying once and for all: 'I am done with you, wretched self.

I throw myself on to Jesus Christ. I take the one great step of committal. 

Jesus never lets such a person down.

~T. Austin Sparks~

THE PRUNING KNIFE

Joh 15:3  Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you.

What is the pruning knife of this heavenly Husbandman?

It is often said to be affliction. By no means in the first place. How would it then fare with many who have long seasons free from adversity; or with some on whom God appears to shower down kindness all their life long?

No; it is the Word of God that is the knife, sharper than any two-edged sword, that pierces even to the dividing asunder of the soul and spirit, and is quick to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart.

It is only when affliction leads to this discipline of the Word that it becomes a blessing; the lack of this heart-cleansing through the Word is the reason why affliction is so often unsanctified.

Not even Paul's thorn in the flesh could become a blessing until Christ's Word--"My strength is made perfect in weakness"--had made him see the danger of self-exaltation, and made him willing to rejoice in infirmities.

The Word of God's pruning knife. Jesus says: "Ye are already clean, because of the word I have spoken unto you." How searchingly that word had been spoken by Him, out of whose mouth there went a sharp two-edged sword

As he had taught them! "Except a man deny himself, lose his life, forsake all, hate father and mother, he cannot be My disciple, he is not worthy of Me"; or as He humbled their pride, or reproved their lack of love, or foretold their all forsaking Him. 

From the opening of His ministry in the Sermon on the Mount to His words of warning in the last night, His Word had tried and cleansed them. He had discovered and condemned all there was of self; they were now emptied and cleansed, ready for the incoming of the Holy Spirit.

It is as the soul gives up its own thoughts, and men's thoughts of what is religion, and yields itself heartily, humbly, patiently, to the teaching of the Word by the Spirit, that the Father will do His blessed work of pruning and cleansing away all of nature and self that mixes with our work and hinders His Spirit.

Let those who would know all the Husbandman can do for them, all the Vine can bring forth through them, seek earnestly to yield themselves heartily to the blessed cleansing through the Word.

Let them, in their study of the Word, receive it as a hammer that breaks and opens up, as a fire that melts and refines, as a sword that lays bare and slays all that is of the flesh.

The word of conviction will prepare for the word of comfort and of hope, and the Father will cleanse them through the Word.

All ye who are branches of the true Vine, each time you read or hear the Word, wait first of all on Him to use it for His cleansing of the branch. Set your heart upon His desire for more fruit. Trust Him as Husbandman to work it. 

Yield yourselves in simple childlike surrender to the cleansing work of His Word and Spirit, and you may count upon it that His purpose will be fulfilled in you.

Father, I pray Thee, cleanse me through Thy Word. Let it search out and bring to light all that is of self and the flesh in my religion. Let it cut away every root of self-confidence, that the Vine may find me wholly free to receive His life and Spirit. 

O my holy Husbandman, I trust Thee to care for the branch as much as for the Vine. Thou only art my hope. 

~Andrew Murray~

Wounded

All great Christians have been wounded souls. 

It is strange what a wound will do to a man. Here's a soldier who goes out to the battlefield. He is full of jokes and strength and self-assurance; then one day a piece of shrapnel tears through him and he falls, a whimpering, beaten, defeated man.

Suddenly his whole world collapses around him and this man, instead of being the great, strong, broad-chested fellow that he thought he was, suddenly becomes a whimpering boy again.

And such have ever been known, I am told, to cry for their mothers when they lie bleeding and suffering on the field of battle. 

There is nothing like a wound to take the self-assurance out of us, to reduce us to childhood again and make us small and helpless in our own sight.

Many of the Old Testament characters were wounded men, stricken of God and afflicted indeed as their Lord was after them. 

Take Jacob, for instance. Twice God afflicted him; twice he met God and each time it came as a wound, and one time it came actually as a physical wound and he limped on his thigh for the rest of his life. 

And the man Elijah-was he not more than a theologian, more than a doctrinarian? He was a man who had been stricken; he had been struck with the sword of God and was no longer simply one of Adam's race standing up in his own self-assurance; he was a man who had had an encounter with God, who had been confronted by God and had been defeated and broken down before Him.  

And when Isaiah saw the Lord high and lifted up, you know what it did to him. Or take the man Ezekiel, how he went down before his God and became a little child again. And there were many others.

Now the wounded man is a defeated man, I say; the strong, robust and self-confident Adam-man ceases to fight back any longer; he lays down his sword and surrenders and the wound finishes him. 

~A. W. Tozer~

THE WOUND OF CONTRITION

We have reduced repentance to a change of mind. It is a mental act, indeed, but I point out that repentance is not likely to do us much good until it ceases to be a change of mind only and becomes a wound within our spirit. 

No man has truly repented until his sin has wounded him near to death, until the wound has broken him and defeated him and taken all the fight and self-assurance out of him and he sees himself as the one who nailed his Saviour on the tree.

I don't know about you, but the only way I can keep right with God is to keep contrite, to keep a sense of contrition upon my spirit.

Now there's a lot of cheap and easy getting rid of sin and getting your repentance disposed of.

But the great Christians, in and out of the Bible, have been those who were wounded with a sense of contrition so that they never quite got over the thought and the feeling that they personally had crucified Jesus.

The great Bishop Usher each week used to go down by the riverbank and there all Saturday afternoon kneel by a log and bewail his sins before his God. Perhaps that was the secret of his greatness.

Let us beware of vain and over-hasty repentance, and particularly let us beware of no repentance at all. 

We are a sinful race, ladies and gentlemen, a sinful people, and until the knowledge has hit hard, until it has wounded us, until it has got through and past the little department of our theology, it has done us no good.

A man can believe in total depravity and never have any sense of it for himself at all. 

Lots of us believe in total depravity who have never been wounded with the knowledge that we've sinned. 

Repentance is a wound I pray we may all feel.

~A. W. Tozer~

Hostile Forces A Compliment

The more you are in fellowship with God’s ultimate, full purpose, the more intense, and bitter, and relentless will be the activities of hostile forces.

That is perfectly clear, but it is a compliment! 

Perhaps we don't like those kind of compliments, but it is a compliment to anything when the devil hates it and would seek to destroy it.

So, what counts most for God, or could count most for God, will be the target of most of the enemy’s activities, and that's a significant thing.
 
~T. Austin Sparks~

Don't Submit To Influences Interfering With Obedience

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Gal 1:15  But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by his grace  

Gal 1:16  To reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen; immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood:

I do not know what the apostles might have said if Paul had gone to see them, but seeing that they had not had the revelation that he had had and they had not the call that he had (theirs was not an apostleship to the Gentiles), they might have counseled moderation and cautiousness.

They might have told Paul to consider whether he had been deceived or misled, because nothing like this had happened before....

Now, while fellowship is always a good thing, and experience should always be used as far as available, when it is a matter of the Lord speaking to our hearts and making it perfectly clear what His way is for us

We must be very careful that we do not submit that to influences that would in any way limit our response and interfere with our obedience. 

There must be a detachment from all rule that would injure a heavenly revelation.

If others are really under the government of the Spirit they will help, but we must be careful that consultation with flesh is not made in the presence of a heavenly vision.

We may consult with tradition and ask what the common acceptance is. Common acceptance will hold you back.

The Lord is against mere freelancers in every way, His order is fellowship in the Body; nevertheless if we submit to any kind of natural influence concerning what the Lord has been saying to us, and take counsel or take our direction from governing elements of man or things, we shall come under arrest and probably be disobedient to the heavenly vision.

We know of lives that have been marred in this way. 

If there is fellowship in the things of the Lord, let us use it, but let us be quite sure that we do not take things outside and submit them to those influences which are not in the Light, not in the Life, and not in the good of heavenly things, and take our direction from something less than that which is wholly under the government of the Holy Spirit.

~T. Austin Sparks~

Not a Matter of our Soul-Life!

                           

1Co 2:14  But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

When you look at 1 Corinthians what a lot of soulicalism there is: this wisdom of words, this wisdom of the world, these likes and these dislikes and preferences and partialities and antipathies, and then their jealousies. That is no good on this foundation. 

Do not bring your own soul-life into relationship with Christ; it will not tally and it will not go through, it will go up in smoke.

Are you trying to make your Christianity a matter of how you feel?

You will have a composite kind of Christianity of so many varieties, nothing consistent at all, a perfect patchwork.

When you think you have arrived at a very good logical conclusion about a matter, something will come along and upset the whole thing.... You never get through that way.

Your soul in the realm of its mental exercises and conflicts will never tally with Christ. 

And as for our own soul-will, strength to do, we may feel very strong, we are never going again to be caught like that, never going down that street again! It is not long before we are there. 

Oh, how ashamed our souls make us! How ashamed we have been because of the instability of our feelings or our wills or our thoughts. 

Ashamed! Ashamed! Ashamed! 

Our souls are making fools of us all the time. “He that believes on Him shall not be put to shame.” Paul says that this soul-life business must not come on Christ. It is a contradiction.

It is not what you are, it is what Christ is.

When you cannot see and understand and work it out mentally, when you cannot feel anything, no feelings at all, or when they are very bad feelings – that is one realm, that is just what we are. Christ is not that, and we have at such times to say, "Lord, this is my infirmity, this is how I am, but You are Other; I transfer my faith to You from myself and from these things." 

Christ is the foundation, and all that we build on the foundation has to be Christ Himself. 

He is not only the foundation, but He is the whole building in every part.

~T.Austin Sparks~

PERVERTED PRIORITIES

                                                                                

Christians who neglect prayer have perverted their priorities. Many believers pledge to pray if and when they can find the time. Yet each week, seeking Christ becomes less important to them than washing the car, cleaning the house, visiting friends, eating out, going shopping, watching sports events. They simply don't make time to pray.

People were no different in the days of Noah and Lot. Their top priorities were eating and drinking, buying and selling, marrying, and caring for their families. They had no time to listen to messages of God's coming judgment. And so no one was prepared when judgment fell!

Evidently, nothing has changed over the centuries. For many Christians today, God remains at the bottom of the priority list; at the top are income, security, pleasure, family.

Beloved, the Lord does not want your leftovers—those little bits and pieces of time when you have only a moment to toss up a quick prayer request. That isn't a sacrifice of prayer.

The prophet Malachi writes: "If ye offer the blind for sacrifice, is it not evil? And if ye offer the lame and sick, is it not evil? Offer it now unto thy governor; will he be pleased with thee, or accept thy person? saith the Lord of hosts" (Malachi 1:8).

Malachi is saying, "You're bringing just any old farm animals to sacrifice in God's presence—careless, thoughtless, secondhand gifts. Try giving those kinds of offerings to your governor and see what happens!"

God expected His people to go through their flocks carefully, examining every animal, and choosing the most perfect specimen for sacrifice to Him. Likewise today, God expects the same from us. He wants our quality time—unrushed. And we are to make that time a priority!

I once met with the pastor of one of America's largest churches. This man was one of the busiest ministers I had ever seen. He told me without apology, "I have no time to pray." Yet, what he really meant was, "I don't give any priority to prayer." When I visited his church, I sensed no moving of God's Spirit in the congregation. In fact, it was one of the deadest churches I had ever preached in. How could there be any life if the pastor didn't pray?

No Christian will set aside time to pray unless it becomes his first priority in life—above family, career, leisure time, everything. Otherwise, his sacrifice is perverted!


~David Wilkerson~