The Price for Spiritual Maturity

21 And Balaam rose up in the morning, and saddled his ass, and went with the princes of Moab.

22 And God’s anger was kindled because he went: and the angel of the LORD stood in the way for an adversary against him. Now he was riding upon his ass, and his two servants were with him.

23 And the ass saw the angel of the LORD standing in the way, and his sword drawn in his hand: and the ass turned aside out of the way, and went into the field: and Balaam smote the ass, to turn her into the way.

24 But the angel of the LORD stood in a path of the vineyards, a wall being on this side, and a wall on that side.

25 And when the ass saw the angel of the LORD, she thrust herself unto the wall, and crushed Balaam’s foot against the wall: and he smote her again.

26 And the angel of the LORD went further, and stood in a narrow place, where was no way to turn either to the right hand or to the left.

27 And when the ass saw the angel of the LORD, she fell down under Balaam: and Balaam’s anger was kindled, and he smote the ass with a staff.

28 And the LORD opened the mouth of the ass, and she said unto Balaam, What have I done unto thee, that thou hast smitten me these three times?

29 And Balaam said unto the ass, Because thou hast mocked me: I would there were a sword in mine hand, for now would I kill thee.

30 And the ass said unto Balaam, Am not I thine ass, upon which thou hast ridden ever since I was thine unto this day? was I ever wont to do so unto thee? And he said, Nay.

31 Then the LORD opened the eyes of Balaam, and he saw the angel of the LORD standing in the way, and his sword drawn in his hand: and he bowed down his head, and fell flat on his face.

32 And the angel of the LORD said unto him, Wherefore hast thou smitten thine ass these three times? behold, I went out to withstand thee, because thy way is perverse before me:

33 And the ass saw me, and turned from me these three times: unless she had turned from me, surely now also I had slain thee, and saved her alive. Num. 22:21-33

Now, what in Hades was this donkey thinking, trying the patience of this great, anointed man of God? Apparently – and luckily for her – the prophet’s bodyguards were not armed, otherwise this particular donkey would have been shot immediately.

But Balaam was a blind prophet. Now, mind, he was a prophet all right, and he could prophesy all that the Lord told him to. But on another even more important level, he was blind. There are many great servants of God who will forfeit their due heavenly reward simply because they were blind to what God wanted to do in their lives.

Spiritual blindness made Balaam not to realize what his ass was doing. For, far from intending evil upon his master, we find out later that the donkey was instead focused on saving him!

I heard the true story of an airplane passenger who kept grumbling about this and that on the plane. When the plane hit a violent turbulence at a high attitude the stewardess approached the man, handed him his seatbelt and asked him to fasten it. The man threw off the belt in anger, let off some steam on the stewardess and stayed put, belt-less. Suddenly, a side door near him blew open with a loud explosion, and this man was instantly sucked out from his seat by the air pressure, never to be seen again.

When we are not seeing in the Spirit, we lash out at the circumstances that seem to come against us. That was what Balaam – and this airplane passenger – did. They did not know that the very circumstances that seemed to chafe them the wrong way were actually set by God to save them. The angel told Balaam:

“… the ass saw me, and turned from me these three times: unless she had turned from me, surely now also I had slain thee, and saved her alive” (vs. 32-33)

That is us. Much of the time we impatiently rush at situations, and there die. We rage and huff and attack the very situation that has come to deal with our carnal nature. But the very situations that were contrary to us in the eyes of our flesh are more likely than not the situations that are working for our spiritual good. Had Balaam known this, he would not have struck his donkey. But because his ways were “perverse” before the Lord, he was spiritually blind, and he could not see in the Spirit.

God is in control of everything. He it is who allows every situation into our lives. Even if a sword were to be raised against us, still God would be in perfect control of that situation.

Whenever I find myself displeased at any situation, I have come to know that it is not the situation that is not right, but it is my heart that is. At that particular moment, I always know that something is not right in my heart. God was in that difficult situation, trying to save me spiritually; but my hard and rebellious heart “kicked against the pricks”, as it were (Acts 9:5).

That is why the gospel is all about obedience. Now, you cannot obey if you have a rebellious heart, can you? That is why we need humble hearts, that we might allow God to craft His handiwork in us and make us true sons and daughters in the Spirit through the cross.

[Below: God wants to form us into mature sons and daughters in the Spirit]

Peter, A Humble Apostle (Part 1)

(This post is about the Apostle Peter, but you won’t read about him until Part 2)

30 Then Joshua built an altar unto the LORD God of Israel in mount Ebal,

31 As Moses the servant of the LORD commanded the children of Israel, as it is written in the book of the law of Moses, an altar of whole stones, over which no man hath lift up any iron: and they offered thereon burnt offerings unto the LORD, and sacrificed peace offerings. Joshua 8:30-31

Do you know there is clockwise and there is anti-clockwise? You would be surprised to learn that most of the time we are working in an anti-clockwise manner in our Christian walk with God. While God is trying to perfect and glorify us ‘clockwise’, we are busy trying to seek for that same perfection in an anti-clockwise way!

That’s how funny we are.

I will explain that in a minute, but let me begin by saying that the reason we work against God is because we fear. We fear to expose our failings and our weaknesses. But we should not fear to be who we are, nor should we fear to be seen by people for what we truly are. That is the essence of the gospel as far we are concerned. We are not called to ‘protect our identities’, nor are we called to be ‘politically correct’ either in word or in deed.

Many born-again believers, especially after they have grown in years and find they are still struggling in some areas of their lives, decide to hide their failings. In trying to do this they build up a beautiful façade, putting up an image of how they would like to be viewed.  What they don’t realize is that in doing this they are ‘setting themselves in stone’ and that God will not be able to work in their lives. However difficult or hard or shameful it may be (to us) we are not to avoid confronting the truth and exposing ourselves at whatever cost. That is what humility is all about, and God is concerned with humility in our hearts above anything else.

God told the children of Israel that they should not try to chisel the stones upon which they would offer sacrifices to Him. He Himself would sanctify the stones by His presence.

You remember also that when the angel of the Lord appeared to Manoah, Samson’s father, in Judges 13, Manoah offered a sacrifice unto the Lord upon a bare rock (v.9). The Bible does not say that he chiseled at the rock first, no; he offered the sacrifice on the rock just as it was… and the rock instantly became the altar. These were men who understood the ways of the Lord.

And the Bible says that “19 …and the angel did wondrously; and Manoah and his wife looked on.

20 For it came to pass, when the flame went up toward heaven from off the altar, that the angel of the LORD ascended in the flame of the altar. And Manoah and his wife looked on it, and fell on their faces to the ground” (Jdg. 13:19-20).

What this means for us is that we should go to the Lord just as we are and allow Him to perfect us. We are not to lay even a finger upon our character to try and change it. If we do this it becomes highly displeasing to God and we deny the Holy Spirit the opportunity to work in our lives.

But, alas! many of us try to suppress things. ‘Suppression’, however, has never been a good word, and certainly not for born-again believers. You suppress bombs and those kinds of things, not your spirit. We need to be what we are.

God loves your roughness. Let us say you easily get angry, for example. What a wonderful place to be! Don’t bother hiding it. Simply acknowledge it and allow God Himself to work in you to perfect you and use you for His glory. When we get busy trying to act right we lose flavor with God. God loves us most when we are exactly what we are. He loves to be able to perfect us.

The Danger of Pride – Part 2

Today, in Africa, it does not feel comfortable to not address a man of God without preceding his name with a title. You hear, “Apostle so-and-so” or “Prophet” or “Bishop” or “Pastor so-and-so”. Some preachers are simply known by the title “Bishop” and half their congregations do not even know their names. Preachers love addressing each other by these titles. It is like there is an obligation – an obligation to satisfy each other’s egos! Calling a man by his title is not a problem with God, of course; but the fact that men love this glory thing  is a big problem with God. In other places preachers actually demand it.

But there is another danger here: the Church is being taught to covet these things. In other words, the sin of covetousness is being taught and perpetuated by church leaders. No wonder, therefore, that everyone wants the big posts. The result is that wars and factionalism have become common in church today.

We Christians, above everyone else, should be keenly aware that the glory belongs to God alone.

In several places in the scriptures we see the apostles – Peter, John, Paul – rushing to correct people’s wrong perspectives of them as great men – or even as gods. They told them, “We are ordinary men just like you. All we have done has been by the power of God, by whose mercy and grace we live and have done all that you see.”

The Apostle Paul says of himself, “I am nothing”.

You don’t hear that kind of language very much in the pulpits today. On the contrary I see many men and women who are perfect examples of pride and arrogance.

Regrettably, just as with Herod, God sometimes moves. In our town there was this very gifted preacher, a young man. He had the gifts of the Spirit and he had charisma, and when some missionaries came from abroad and saw him, they took him under their care. They took him to a Bible school in their country, where he stayed for a number of years.

When he came back, he was no longer the humble man we knew before. He was now a ‘great man of God’ and he made it clear, without speaking so much as a word, that he was a cut above us. He had money and a big car. He lived in the biggest mansion in town. I once asked him whether his house was not too big for him and he said no.

With his charismatic bearing – and the gifts of God still upon him, since God’s gifts are without repentance – he became the most popular preacher in town. He started his own ministry and he preached all over the country and even abroad. Soon you could not address him without appending the title “Bishop” to his name.

After some years he fell into sin. He fell into adultery. Somehow, unfortunately, he contracted the AIDS virus.

The rest, as they say, is history. Before we even knew what had happened, he had vanished from the ‘radar’. He disappeared from town and his whereabouts remained a mystery… until we got wind that he was in his rural village where he was dying. Soon enough he died, and a handful of preachers went to bury him.

It is no secret that preachers today love the glory. But such examples as of this young preacher – and the dissimilar examples of the apostles’ lives – should teach us that the glory belongs to God alone. We are nothing.

The Danger of Pride – Part 1

And Herod was highly displeased with them of Tyre and Sidon: but they came with one accord to him, and, having made Blastus the king’s chamberlain their friend, desired peace; because their country was nourished by the king’s country.

And upon a set day Herod, arrayed in royal apparel, sat upon his throne, and made an oration unto them.

And the people gave a shout, saying, It is the voice of a god, and not of a man.

And immediately the angel of the Lord smote him, because he gave not God the glory: and he was eaten of worms, and gave up the ghost. Acts 12:20-23

Many years ago I used to work in a big farmers’ organisation. The chairman of that organisation was a very powerful man. He spent most of his time far away in Dar es Salaam, simply enjoying the good life, which included visits with our country’s president. Whenever he was around the company’s offices in our town, which was very rare, everything would revolve around him. In the first place, he always arrived by plane, sometimes charted. I was in charge of vehicles at the company and it was my responsibility to make sure that every vehicle was at the airport at the moment of his arrival. He would then be brought to the offices in a long motorcade.

But he had a strange peculiarity. He would get out of his car in the middle of town and walk to the offices on foot. That way, a big procession of his workers and other town folk would escort him, the top managers packed close to him and answering to his every breath.

I would sit in my office and watch the procession approaching. I did not have the heart to engage in such sycophancy. In fact, he and I hardly knew each other personally.

But ours was an organisation that was ruining farmers. The top management and everyone else used the farmers to enrich themselves while the farmers rotted in poverty. (One and a half years later I resigned in disgust).

One day, we heard that the chairman had fallen ill. But it was no ordinary disease. It was what the locals call a ‘bush boil’. It is a boil that simply pulverizes the entire pelvic area and it is known to be unhealable. The locals call it a ‘curse’.  They dread it more than any other disease. Our chairman was taken to an expensive hospital, but no hospital could treat that boil. After some time they brought him back home.

He died a few weeks later, in a witch doctor’s hut, his last resort.

 

It is apparent that Herod was a great orator. When he visited the people of Tyre and Sidon, he gave such a rousing speech that the people were overwhelmed by his oratorical powers. They shouted in unison: “It is the voice of a god, and not of a man.” Other factors were in play, of course.

God is so patient that up till then, Herod was without fault in God’s eyes. But then the Bible says that he “gave not God the glory”. In other words, he accepted the glory for himself.

An angel of the Lord smote him immediately and he died – “eaten of worms”. He died a violent, horrible death.

Herod could simply have said, “No, guys, I am not a god” and the angel of death would have passed over him.

But he did not; on the contrary, in his heart he accepted the glory as his due.

In this period of grace that we are living in, it is the easiest thing for Christians to not realize that they are taking up the glory for themselves, instead of giving it to God. When the church is not walking in the revelation of the Cross of Christ, the flesh becomes alive and no one is even aware of it!

Many men of God have been blessed with many extraordinary gifts by God. Some are formidable orators, like Herod was. Others have powerful gifts of the Spirit working in them. Others have been blessed materially. By giving them all these things, God meant for them to glorify Him. But, sadly, many take up the glory for themselves.

Israel, not Jacob!

“But now thus saith the LORD that created thee, O Jacob, and he that formed thee, O Israel, Fear not:  for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name;  thou art mine.” Isaiah 43:1

In the scripture above we see that God is addressing two different kinds of people: Jacob whom He created, and Israel whom He formed. Without going into long drawn-out discussions about the meanings of the words “created” and “formed” here, we at least know that God is more interested with Israel than Jacob because when the angel of the Lord met Jacob on his way back to his fathers’ land, Jacob demanded a blessing from Him, and the Lord told him, “Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel:  for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed.” Genesis 32:28.

Henceforth Jacob would be known as Israel. That is of profound significance.

In all His dealings with man God allows the natural to precede the spiritual, and if we are not careful we miss out on the real blessing that God intended for us to have. That is why we who are called by God under the New Testament cannot simply rejoice in the material and physical blessings that God gives us. They come so easily and naturally we are tempted to think they are an end in themselves. On the day I got saved God healed me of a terrible physical illness. It was such a big miracle, and it could still be the highlight of my life with Jesus.

But we must discover the hidden meaning of God’s true calling in our lives. The Apostle Paul talks about a hidden mystery. When we read the Apostles’ epistles we see they did not talk very much about miracles and material blessings, even though they experienced all these. Rather, they spoke about something infinitely more spiritual – the changing of our carnal selves into spiritual, which is a process!

Nor can we rest in the mere act of salvation itself. We cannot underestimate its importance in our lives (eternal life with Jesus), yet the Bible is filled with proof that this is not the end of the matter. For example, in 1 Corinthians 3:15 we read that “If any man’s work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss:  but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire.”

Elsewhere in Jude 1:23 we read: “And others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire;  hating even the garment spotted by the flesh.”

Paul also talks about “a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day:  and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing.”

There are many Christians today who are so worldly-minded that it cannot be said of them that they would love the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ!

Which means that people will be saved all right, but there will be a distinction: while some will enter in triumphantly, yet for others it is as if they will have barely made it.

The conclusion of the whole matter is that God does not want us to remain ‘Jacobs’. Here I mean carnal, or immature Christians. He wants to form us into the image of His spiritual people, “the Israel of God”  -Galatians 6:16. When we speak of “form” we get the impression of people in whose lives God’s hand has worked to bring out something out of something. He works on what He has created to form something new. It is this which He desires to do in our lives. There is a big difference between the simple calling of God and his formative work in our lives.

Hence the revelation of the Cross. It is of utmost importance to us to understand that the apostolic gospel that has come down to us is a revelation. The Apostle Paul (whose mental faculties we cannot fault) says he received the gospel by revelation. Moreover, in Ephesians 3 he implies that all true apostles and prophets in every generation would be men who would have caught the gospel by revelation, a revelation of the Cross. They would understand what it means to be a Christian: it is to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice, that our minds may be renewed (i.e. put far from sin) and that we may conform to the image of Christ. And this will be accomplished by the work of the Cross in our lives.

When you receive the Cross as a ‘Jacob’ (i.e. without revelation) you will understand that Jesus came to die for your sins so you do not go to hell, which is true. But you cannot go beyond that, and soon you will turn to the weak, worldly materialistic gospel which does not have the power to deal with sin. But when you get the revelation of the Cross, which is only found under the true apostolic ministry, you will understand that the Cross came to work in your life also so that your body of sin may suffer and die with Christ, and to rise to the resurrection from the dead in newness of life; and to become a mature son and daughter of God, worthy and capable to inherit that spiritual Kingdom, as we read in Galatians 4:1-7: “Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son;  and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.”

Note the angel’s words to Jacob: “as a prince hast thou power…”! He had fought the good fight and he was worthy!

In other words you become a man or woman who has died to sin. Many people today are praying for the hand of God upon their lives. Behold, the hand of the Lord is the Cross! If we think the hand of the Lord are the worldly blessings He gives us, the healings and all that, we are doomed to spiritual immaturity and carnality. While in Mauritius, I witnessed the death of a man whom the church had prayed for a long time to get healed. I visited him one week before he died, and he was sitting there, weak in body, but strong in faith, in righteousness and holiness. He died triumphantly, and we rejoiced on the day of his burial.

We need to join ourselves with the true gospel of Jesus Christ, Christ crucified. Then we will know, as Paul says in Romans 12, “that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.” How can we say we are in the will of God while we are walking in sin? It is simply impossible. We are called to a walk of holiness and purity – of body, soul and spirit: “And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly;  and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thessalonians 5:23). Anything beneath that, however flamboyant it might appear, and under whatever name it is called, is carnality!

The Foundation of our Faith – the Pauline Doctrine (Pt. 2)

Let us pause once more and consider the fact that the Apostle Paul, who was no fool, was willing to undergo the same sufferings and death that Jesus underwent in order that the gospel he received could be birthed in men and women’s lives! Why would he want to do this? He realized that the entirety of God’s plan for humankind was bound up in this revelation, and he was willing to pay the price to make that experience become a reality in other people’s lives.

In the Bible Paul does not come out as a very ‘loving’ person, in the way we view love in our fallen human perspective. But let it be known that next to Jesus, the Apostle Paul probably manifested the greatest love for us that any man could manifest. We can praise and thank God for the Apostle Paul!

Lastly, let us consider the fact that Paul himself was a former seminary student, a man who had studied under Gamaliel, the foremost instructor of the Hebrew religion of his day. Gamaliel was a man of great wisdom and integrity. We can therefore conclude that what Gamaliel taught Paul was sound religion, enough to make one a devout man or woman. Yet Paul, then known as Saul, remained “a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious” (1 Tim. 1:13), until he met Jesus on the road to Damascus. In other words, Gamaliel’s theology, although it made Paul a deeply religious man, did not change his character in the least. He held the Torah in one hand and a sword in the other. Gamaliel’s gospel was a powerless gospel.

In Galatians chapter 1 Paul is talking of his experience on the road to Damascus and onwards. His experiences before the Damascus experience have no place in his life any more.

After Paul met Jesus on the road to Damascus he was commissioned to go preach the gospel. The fact that the Apostle Paul received the gospel which he preached by revelation is one that cannot be compromised and whose importance cannot be over-stated. I think I need to repeat that. This reality is one that cannot be compromised, nor can it be over-stated. It is of such grave spiritual importance that the Apostle says that if he or an angel from heaven were to come and preach any other gospel than that which he preached to them, let him be accursed.

“I received it from no man”. It is from this perspective alone that we can hope to effectively express the gospel of Jesus Christ, otherwise we reduce the gospel of Jesus Christ to the level of mere religion, mere education.

It is a telling statement indeed of the times we are living in to see how spiritual matters are being taken so lightly and how easily strange doctrines are being injected into the gospel of Jesus Christ. May the fear of God grip our hearts!

The Pearl.

The Bible tells the story of Jacob, and how he wrestled with an angel of God throughout the night.

“And when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Jacob’s thigh was out of joint, as he wrestled with him” Gen. 32:25

Jacob had been running from the Lord all these years, but here he comes face to face with God, and he has to make a decision: he can continue running, or he can allow God to touch his life and change him.

I believe something must have made Jacob to stop and make the decision he made that night. Jacob was tired of running, all right. But more than that, something profound happened to him that night. I believe that deep down in his spirit Jacob received a new understanding from the Lord; a new revelation. He must have seen something that made him want to receive a new blessing from God.

In the materialistic age we live one might well wonder why Jacob, who was so rich materially, would want another blessing from the Lord…!

But, perhaps, it was a different blessing that he now desired, born out of this new understanding that he had from God. A blessing not of material things, but a blessing, probably, of character, a spiritual blessing. Suddenly, most likely, Jacob saw in his spirit far into the future, and the blessing that Jesus would bring into the world through His death on the Cross. And, all of a sudden, Jacob”s priorities were turned upside down. Now it was not Rachel or Joseph who mattered most to him. Nor was it his vast wealth. Now he wanted to get hold of that far, far away blessing – distant indeed, but exceedingly rich. It did not matter to him that he would die long before that blessing would materialize. Somehow, he knew, he would inherit it one day, and it was worth waiting for. It was an eternal treasure – and immeasurably, incomparably bright and clear and true.

It was a spiritual blessing that Jacob saw, and he wanted it infinitely more than all his earthly possessions.

And he was willing to pay the price that he realized he needed to pay in the spirit. I am sure that at that particular time he did not see anything good in the flesh. He did not see cars or houses or the good things that we have today. Rather, I believe he saw the sufferings of Christ. And he was ready to identify with them. He was willing to pay the ultimate  price – he told the angel, “Name your price, but I am not letting you go till you bless me!” He wanted that vision more than anything else in his life.

What God did in order to change Jacob’s character was to dislocate his thigh – probably so he would not have the strength to run again.

The true gospel of Jesus Christ puts us ‘out of joint’. It breaks our strength. It breaks our pride. We grovel and scramble on our knees to get at that spiritual treasure, for only that brokenness can bring the reality of that treasure into our lives. All our pride, our reliance is gone. After Jacob’s thigh was put ‘out of joint’ he had no more pride left in him. Probably he had a certain way of walking before, but he would no longer walk that way. Henceforth he would walk with a limp, for the Bible says his sinew “shrank”.

Humbling, indeed.

In the new covenant we are no longer going to wrestle with an angel, but through Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross we understand how we, too, will need to identify our lives with His suffering and death in order to partake of that same blessing that Jacob partook of. That treasure is the life of Christ in us.

The Apostle Paul, more than any other man, received that revelation – and also knew that brokenness in his flesh. I believe he also, just like Jacob, wanted to do some running. He says that he prayed three times to God to remove the thorn in his flesh. But God told him, “My grace is sufficient, for my strength is perfected in your weakness.”

If Jacob wrestled with the angel of the Lord the whole night; and if Paul prayed three times for God to intervene on his behalf, then we can be sure that it is not an easy journey to becoming spiritual men and women. But this is the road we have been called to take, and we must gladly persevere in it.

Paul says: “Most gladly therefore will I glory in infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” 2 Cor. 12:9

That is not an easy road to take, by any standards. But the reward is priceless. In fact, to put a better perspective to it, the reward is not something that can be explained in human terms; it is too profoundly rich for that. It can only be understood in our spirits.

It all depends, however, on whether we have seen that priceless pearl in our spirit, and are willing to pay the price. The price, as we said, is dying with Christ.

What a challenge to us today, that Jacob, so far down the line in time, could see the very thing that we live with, walk with and sleep with today… What is that thing? Oh! I bet you and I hardly know it well enough… if we knew it we would not be the men and women we are today…

May the Lord reveal it to us like He revealed it to Jacob!