Hardening Our Hearts

And when he had looked round about on them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts….  (Mar 3:5)

More often than not the cause of Jesus grief wasn’t among the unreligious, but among those who have knowledge of the Word and even His disciples. Not among the ignorant, but among the informed. The opposition Jesus had was almost always in everyday circumstances. God will confront us in the daily working out of our lives to see if the knowledge and mountain top experiences lasts and deeply rooted. Spirituality requires an expression in the natural, never to be experienced and left behind at the mountain top experiences.

Few like confrontation, especially if truth is directed toward us. Never say that we will readily believe everything the Lord and His Word says. There is a danger in thinking that believing is a result in knowledge and spiritual experiences. Belief becomes reality when the knowledge is worked out in daily application.

Jesus will come to challenge everything we believe in to see if we believe in Him. Is it prayer, the Word, good works versus Christ and Christ alone? Is He our exceedingly great reward? He will confront us because He is a jealous God. Confronting us to reveal what is our truest affections.

Hardening our hearts is to be unbelieving (Matt 6:14). He will come to right us, are we willing to receive His correction?  Continue in the place of meekness and humility so that when the Holy Spirit brings light into areas of our darkness, pride or poor character which we may never know existed, yielding to allow the Potter to do all that is necessary to transform and conform to His image. Though painful, sons of God are always ready to expose all of their insides to God’s refining fire.

The Night of Weeping 
Horatius Bonar

 

The Cross, True Discipleship

…….. let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him. (Mat 27:42)

The cross is a stumbling block and foolishness; firstly it is an open display of meekness and lowliness void of worldly pomp and glory, secondly, human understanding and reasoning resist the cross (1 Cor 1:23). The cross can be averted on these two counts. It is easy to reconcile that the cross of Christ is the entrance for our salvation, however do we believe Jesus when He says ‘the disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his lord’ (Matt 10:24)? Acceptance of salvation of the cross of Christ is palatable, simultaneously the pilgrims progress requires a cross bearing life.

In denying this narrow and difficult way (Matt 7:14) the devil will be our insurmountable nemesis. If the choice is to follow the cross bearing way of the Master, the devil would not be a problem (Rom 16:20). Very quickly there will be a discovery that self is the greater enemy of the salvation of our soul (Matt 16:22-26). Peter knew the cost of discipleship but desired to avert the way (as we often do), hence daring to rebuke his Lord. Denying the cross is satanic in nature which goes against every grain of the will of God (Matt 16:23).

In order for the manifestation of life of the Son of God, the old man has to be put to death. Remove the filth that the Holy can be poured in. The old man and its lustful appetites wars against Christ nature, how can the two mix and find its homogeneous form? The Christian life is black or white, not gray.

Salvation is free. The cost of discipleship is high. It will cost us everything in exchange for son-ship (Php 3:8).

The Difficult Way to Life / The Broad Way to Destruction 
Matthew Henry

 

Cross Evasion: The Subterfuge of our Modern Christianity
Art Katz

God’s actual visitation, the coming of Himself, and the form that it took, and the way that it was culminated in His crucifixion, death, burial  and resurrection has got to be the single greatest epochal event in the whole history of the human race.  I marvel that the nations are completely oblivious to that fact, and that the Jewish people themselves have found a way to remove the event from their own consideration.  But even in Christendom the event has become modified, sentimentalised, trivialised, cheapened, and rendered almost into a “non-event.”  There are unplumbed meanings in the cross that wait to be unearthed, or we will remain participants with those who seek to modify and remove the cross of its content and power—even in our ignorance. 

“Nothing reveals the falsity of man more than the evasion, the side-stepping of man from God, and from the crucified Christ” (See footnote).  In other words, by side-stepping the crucified Christ, we reveal that man is, in his very nature, a liar, phoney, false, and flees from truth.  What shall I say about my own Jewish people?  The event took place in our history; our Messiah, in our Jerusalem; and yet we rejected Him, and made of His life a non-event, as if Jesus was some kind of pitiful Presumer who ran afoul of the political authorities and had to suffer their judgments.  We missed the entire truth of His coming, as the very Son of God, as Sin-Bearer, fulfilling a necessary sacrifice that no animal could provide, and was Himself both the sacrifice and the High Priest—and we suffered the consequences for our dismissal of Him.

Read full article

Spiritual Journey

They shall abundantly utter the memory of thy great goodness, and shall sing of thy righteousness. (Psa 145:7)

What are the most important milestones of our Christian pilgrimage? It is easy to recall what God has done 'for' me, but have we considered and able to give praise to our gracious Savior for what great things the Lord has done 'in' me? His benefits are tremendous for He commands His loving kindness over us (Psa 42:8), do we recall His faithfulness in the evening years (Psa 92:2)?

.........few and evil have the days of the years of my life been........(Gen 47:9)

What has God done in Jacob’s life to transform him to Israel? He was a man who lived for himself, selfishness and deceitful. His respond to the beginning of God building into him was to build a monument out of his pillow (Gen 28:18). At his return to the same starting point he built an altar (Gen 35:3, 7). First it was a vision of the Lord’s lovingkindness to preserve him, the latter an altar to recall of His faithfulness. First it was a monument of haphazard and shabby from what he had used and the latter an altar of worship. The Lord had stripped him of self confidence, then worship out of deepest recesses of what God has built into Him poured forth (Php 3:3). Out of such a life comes an ability to bless others and not self (Gen 47:10) because he has been dealt with by the Blessor and taken on His imange. He saw the dealings of the Lord in His life as the righteousness of God. Declare of His right doings, for He is not concern with our comfort but desire the fruit that abounds to our account. God only bother with sons (Heb 12:6).

Innocence, the Beginning to Spiritual Victory

Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger. (Psa 8:2)

What are the things that proceed from our mouth? Does it cause a stir to the spiritual environment in which we speak into (Matt 21:15), or the devil isn’t too bothered. The Father is looking for children in His quiver that has the spiritual stature to unashamedly ‘speak with the enemies in the gate’ (Psa 127:5) and to ‘possess the gate of his enemies’ (Gen 22:17).

Babes are not those who have towering physique nor exceptional vocal volume, but a company of believers that have the innocence, not in the sense of ignorance but in the sense of harmlessness (Matt 10:16) or gentleness (Php 4:5). Untainted by the world and living the realm of the Father’s love; whose eyes are fixed and unfazed by the glitter of the temporal (Psa 123:2). Suckling that feed on one life giving source (1 Pet 2:2), whose palate has not touched that which defiles. It is from such mouths that the Lord can use to still the enemy and the avenger unto spiritual victory.

Have we been winning spiritual battles lately? If not, check out what do we regard in our heart (Psa 66:18) and our secret desires (Prov 9:17). Not only God know, the devil does to.

Discipline

Before I was afflicted, I did err; but now I observe Thy word. (Psa 119:67)

Godly discipline or His dealings is a reality in following Christ that we cannot and should not avoid. We have to submit to the boundaries that the Lord has set for us (Gen 3:3). It is for our own good. Disobedience is our choice and so is bearing the cross and following Jesus daily (Luke 9:23). We disobey because we don’t believe the full extent of His Word. God rules by His Word, but if necessary the rod is applied (Prov 20:30). We disobey because it is our will we desire to exercise over His.

…… My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him (Heb 12:5)

It is the ‘flesh’ in us that resist God’s discipline and it should be tested to the very limits of the human soul. That is precisely the work of the cross so we reach the bottom of the barrel and reckon ourselves dead indeed but alive to Christ (Rom 6:11). Whenever we resist and do not submit ourselves under the mighty hand of God we despise the dealings to us as sons (1 Pet 5:6). It takes meekness and humility to accept His dealings. We can avert His dealings, but we also avert being a son.

The cross is a choice we chose to carry. No one lays it on us but our loving Savoir. It is the building in us Christ character and to learn of Him (Matt 11:29). How much are we willing to yield? The more we yield the less the striving. The end is that we observe His Living Word that has been worked in being worked out (Php 2:12, 13). It is His working in, His dealings that will align us to His Word. His Word Who become flesh that ‘as He is, so are we in this world’ (1 John 4:17), now not after He returns.