The Spirit Of Lawlessness

 For the mystery of iniquity doth already work (2 Thess 2:7).

The Greek word Paul uses for iniquity in this passage means,
literally, "lawlessness." Therefore, the mystery is one of lawlessness, meaning that multitudes are going to act without law or restraint.

Yet, this lawlessness is not simply a rebellion against the rule of
man. It is not about rebelling against civil authority or committing robbery, rape or murder. These things do provoke God's wrath, but the mystery of lawlessness goes much deeper. It is an outright rejection of the truth that is in Christ, a casting aside of God's Holy Word and rebellion against the restraints of Scripture!

This spirit of lawlessness is rampant in our nation today. It is the
force behind the legislation that seeks to banish God from our
society and the same spirit that Satan used to deceive Eve when
he told her, in so many words, "God is easy; He won´t punish you for disobeying. You can eat the fruit and indulge your lust and you won´t have to pay for it!"

Today Satan is using this same lie to convince masses of believers that they can indulge their sins without paying any penalty. It is a demonic scheme to pervert Christ´s gospel of grace and turn it into a message of licentiousness. Tragically, many lukewarm Christians are succumbing to this spirit of lawlessness.

Paul says the Antichrist will rise to power because people will be blinded and deceived by their own sin: "After the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivable-ness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved" (2 Thessalonians 2:9-10).

Satan will deceive masses of people by convincing them of a subtle but powerful lie, just as he convinced Eve: "God doesn't punish sin!"

Paul says this deception will come "with all deceivableness . . .
because they received not the love of the truth, that they might
be saved" (verse 10). He then adds, "For this [reason] God shall
send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie"

(verse 11).
 
The apostle is saying, "Those who refuse to obey or respect God's Word will fall under a powerful delusion. At first they will wink at their sin and justify it. But soon they will actively seek out a message of easy grace. They will invent a grace that is far beyond what God intended. His grace never leads to license-it always leads to repentance."

~David Wilkerson~

Handed Over To Death Daily

The godly apostle Paul was full of the Holy Spirit and revelation knowledge. He prayed fervently and walked daily in intimate communion with Jesus. Yet he admitted he was continually buffeted, defamed, despised and reviled. He was gossiped about, his character was attacked, and his name was reproached.

Paul suffered so much so often, even his spiritual children wondered why he constantly faced trouble and persecution. Every time they saw him, his face was bruised, his bones were broken, or his body was covered with marks. Of course, this hurt Paul deeply. 

Here was a powerful, sincere preacher of God's grace and deliverance and everywhere he turned, he was reviled and defamed.

The apostle said he had one friend left, Onesiphorus, who “was not ashamed of my chain [bonds]” (2 Timothy 1:16). Paul said of his friend, “This man is not ashamed of my imprisonment. He knows better than to think there's some hidden sin in my life!”

Paul also said he was encouraged by a group of believers who had compassion of me in my bonds (Hebrews 10:34). He was saying, “These people feel what I'm feeling.” 

They stood by Paul in his trials because they themselves had
been “made a gazingstock both by reproaches and afflictions . . . whilst ye became companions of them that were so used” (verse 33).

These believers had become the apostle's “companions in afflictions” because the same thing that was happening to Paul had happened to them!

I know a deeply spiritual minister who endured years of satanic buffeting and persecution from other believers. Every time I saw him, he asked me to pray for him about his troubles. I gladly complied but over time, as his trials persisted, I grew bothered. 

Finally, I asked him point-blank: “I don't understand why you're always so harassed. You're one of the godliest pastors I know. You're intimate with the Lord, always in prayer, continually studying His Word. Why would He allow you to face such constant trouble?”

But now I understand that this godly minister was handed over to death situations daily because he was full of resurrection life. 

God wanted to use him in a mighty way so He kept handing him over to death in every area of his life.

God wanted nothing to remain that would hinder the beautiful
manifestation of Christ in him.

Satan was set on destroying Paul because he knew a great manifestation of Christ was about to shine forth in his life!

~David Wilkerson~
 

Conformity To Christ Through Common Trials

 

Rom 8:28  And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.

Go back to the place where, for the time being, the Lord has put you, where He has called you to live your life and do your work in all the trial and difficulty and suffering of it, and do not strain to get out of it.

Do not lose the present value of it by always living mentally or hopefully in a time when you will be out of it, but go back there and recognize that if you are the Lord's, if you love God and are called according to purpose (as you are if you are in Christ), God is seeking to do something with you and in you by means of the conditions of your present situation.

You will only defeat God's end if you try to get out, and will fail to recognize and accept what He is seeking to do.

I can think of few things more regrettable and grievous than that we should look back upon any part of our life and have to say, "I might have realized some great purpose of God in that period of my life if only I had taken another attitude toward it than the one I did take.

I was chafing, impatient, all the time looking for a way of escape; I was rebellious, living in another mental world of my own creating, in which I would do and be this and that; and I missed all that God intended at that time." I say, there can be few things more grievous than that.

So we must go back to the sphere and conditions in which the Lord has placed us, with this attitude – God has a thought which relates to me as one of His Own; and that thought is, that through the conditions and sufferings of my life He should develop in me the features of His Son.

On the one hand, the features of the old creation may be seen to be more and more terrible and horrible, as I recognize them in myself; but over against that God is doing something which is other than myself, not me at all.

He is bringing into being Another, altogether other, and that is His Son. Slowly, all too slowly; nevertheless something is happening.

That sonship is not very much manifested yet, but it is going to be manifested.

What God has been doing will come out into the light eventually – conformity to the image of His Son; "that He might be the firstborn among many brethren."

So we look out upon the people of God on the earth amongst whom we are included, and we have to adjust our ideas as to why we are here. 

There may be things to do, but God is far more concerned with the being than with the doing, and we have to learn all over again what service is.

~T. Austin Sparks~

NO Compromise With The Self~Principle

Now, deep down in Saul there was the self principle active; there is no doubt about it; and, although at times he seemed to rise above it and to have the Lord's interests at heart, that self principle was recurrent, and when put to the final test with Amalek in I Sam. Chapter 15, we find that it asserted itself again.

That was the turning point, where the Lord rejected Saul and finally in intention passed the kingdom from him to David.

The self-principle goes too deep for the Lord to regard it lightly. 

It is not just a matter of the person. It is there that the link with an entirely antagonistic spiritual system is found.

Amalek was such a link. Amalek had stood in the way of Israel when they came out of Egypt and were making for the land.

They had stood across their path in the attempt to frustrate the Lord's intentions of spiritual fulness for Israel, and that very people Amalek were the test case for Saul as to whether he was really wholly set upon the Lord or whether he had personal interests.

When, through Samuel, the Lord commanded Saul to destroy every vestige of Amalek, leaving nothing alive, Saul reserved the best of the herd and the flock.

He discriminated according to human judgment, to keep something that he fancied, that he thought was good.

He set his own judgment over against the judgment of the Lord because of this self-principle that was in him, thus proving that in principle he was one with Amalek, that is, he was not set upon all that the Lord was after.

The Lord was seeking to bring Israel into the land, that is, to spiritual fulness. 

Amalek said 'No'. Saul and Amalek found themselves one in principle. He spared them. 

But see what Samuel does to Agag, king of the Amalekites! - he hews him in pieces before the Lord. There is NO COMPROMISE there. 

~T. Austin Sparks~

Truth Learned In Affliction

Most of the grand truths of God have to be learned by trouble; they must be burned into us with the hot iron of affliction, otherwise we shall not truly receive them. 

No man is competent to judge in matters of the kingdom, until first he has been tried; since there are many things to be learned in the depths which we can never know in the heights.

We discover many secrets in the caverns of the ocean, which, though we had soared to heaven, we never could have known. 

He shall best meet the wants of God’s people as a preacher who has had those wants himself; he shall best comfort God’s Israel who has needed comfort; and he shall best preach salvation who has felt his own need of it.”

~Charles Spurgeon~