Faith or Fairy Tales

Currently, the primary thing that stirs me spiritually is the need to maintain belief and faith in the transforming power of God. That we may, in fact overcome sin, self and the devil. Holding fast to and continuing in the faith to believe that He that is in me is greater than he that is in the world. That in Him, we too shall overcome. When He comes will He find faith in the earth? Will He find faith in us?

Four years ago I experienced a deliverance from sin that was truly the love of God and His miraculously transforming power within me, and within my life. My bondage to cigarette smoking was as solid as anyone else’s bondage to any other sin that has them so locked in there seems no hope, no means of escape, no matter how hard they try (and often because of how hard they try!).

Several weeks ago Ray Boltz came ‘out of the closet’ and confessed to the world that he was gay. Beyond that though, after several decades of marriage, 4 children and obviously a career of singing praise and worship to and about our God and the saving power and grace of Jesus Christ, he said he could no longer deny the way God made him. God made him gay and he was now giving himself over to embracing it, the papers and blogs reported.

But what he really gave himself over to was a lie. He attributed his sin to the work of God. He called what is unholy, as holy. He denied God and mocked Him. Struggling with the temptation was one thing, in fact, the very thing God desired to bring him to overcome. But having struggled with homosexuality most of his life, he became convinced it was who he really was and he was doing a disservice to God to deny it.

Having experienced the transforming power of God to deliver me of cigarettes and yet struggle with the faith that He will bring me to know overcoming in my other struggles, is baffling. I know I am not the only one.

There are temptations and sins we struggle with almost all of our lives and it becomes a part of our lives. So much a part of our lives we can think its normal, and even the way God wants it to be.

Leaning on the Lord, we have to look into the black abyss of the unknown, of doubt and fear, and trust that God has our back, our life and our death. We have to somehow believe in the unbelievable, trust the unknown, and go where few sons have gone before. This is how we grow as a son of God. If we don’t, how can we stand? We are double minded and building on sand. We have little faith and therefore will have very little, if any power, to love and help and save others, which is our calling and purpose, and our mission.

I often ask myself, “Did I come this far, to bail out now? Did I get through yesterday, just to give up today?”

The moment I was delivered of my smoking habit and addiction it was about 23 years coming and I didn’t even know I was delivered at that moment. All I knew was that God gave me what I needed to not buy a pack of cigarettes at that moment. I didn’t know how long it would last. It was a moment by moment discovery of what He had done. Today it is over 4 years and I have absolutely no struggle with it, not thoughts, temptations, memory, fear, nothing. It was an absolute deliverance as extreme to me as the bondage itself was. But it took many months, probably more than a year, before I could trust it was true and lasting and absolute.

I see now that this is also how we may discover His power and life in us to continue to overcome and rise up IN HIM, which means rising up IN FAITH and IN POWER and AS A SON. We may need to learn it by degrees. We may know the victory right away, but we will learn how absolute and true it is in time and through more testing.

I would love nothing more than to be excited about the time we’re in and the victory and glory that’s coming. But I’m still in a struggle of faith. I can’t fight and rejoice at the same time yet. I will. I am determined to lean on the Lord, for all that it will cost me (and I don’t say that lightly), that I may know that victory. Like the deliverance from the smoking. I could enjoy the momentary strength to walk away from giving in to the temptation again, but I couldn’t really rejoice in the deliverance until I had enough distance between me and what I was needing to overcome.

Spiritually I am at about 3 am in the morning. It’s still dark and deep in the night. But I do know the dawn is coming. A joy rises up with the dawn, with the light of day. I know mine is coming. It’s coming for many, but we are first needing to lean on the Lord in the dark of night, against the sense of hopelessness and desperation, against the sense of being forsaken and lost.

I pray for all of us to know the power of God is Love, a love that does not end, a love that is not superficial or conditional. His love is absolute and it absolutely saves. It is His love that holds us in the fire at times, rather than takes us out. We have to forsake and take captive the thoughts that tempt us to doubt and stand in unbelief. This is not a small thing. This faith is our inheritance. This faith is foundational to who we are and what we are called to be.

Our lives are not our own. They belong to Christ. He is faithful. He will not forsake himself, his Life or His body and bride. Against all odds, we MUST believe this.

We must believe in God and His love and His power to change us, our lives and others too. Otherwise we just believe bible stories as though they were fairy tales.

 

The Temptations of God as Man

These are 3 devotions from Oswald Chambers devotional, My Utmost for His Highest. I wanted to include these three together because they speak of temptations. The temptations we all face being human, yet greater temptations, the temptations of the Son of God, God in man.

There is much in here to meditate and chew on. I hope you do. May the Holy Spirit speak to you. May He encourage you and empower you through all that the Father brings into your life as temptations of the Son of God in you.

September 17th.

WHAT’S THE GOOD OF TEMPTATION?

“There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man.” 1 Corinthians 10:13

The word “temptation” has come down in the world; we are apt to use it wrongly. Temptation is not sin, it is the thing we are bound to meet if we are men. Not to be tempted would be to be beneath contempt. Many of us, however, suffer from temptations from which we have no business to suffer, simply because we have refused to let God lift us to a higher plane where we would face temptations of another order.

A man’s disposition on the inside, i.e., what he possesses in his personality, determines what he is tempted by on the outside. The temptation fits the nature of the one tempted, and reveals the possibilities of the nature. Every man has the setting of his own temptation, and the temptation will come along the line of the ruling disposition.

Temptation is a suggested short cut to the realization of the highest at which I aim – not towards what I understand as evil, but towards what I understand as good. Temptation is something that completely baffles me for a while, I do not know whether the thing is right or wrong. Temptation yielded to is lust deified, and is a proof that it was timidity that prevented the sin before.

Temptation is not something we may escape, it is essential to the full-orbed life of a man. Beware lest you think you are tempted as no one else is tempted; what you go through is the common inheritance of the race, not something no one ever went through before. God does not save us from temptations; He succours us in the midst of them (Heb. 2:18).

September 18th.

HIS TEMPTATION AND OURS

“For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” Hebrews 4:15

Until we are born again, the only kind of temptation we understand is that mentioned by St. James – “Every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.” But by regeneration we are lifted into another realm where there are other temptations to face, viz., the kind of temptations Our Lord faced. The temptations of Jesus do not appeal to us, they have no home at all in our human nature. Our Lord’s temptations and ours move in different spheres until we are born again and become His brethren. The temptations of Jesus are not those of a man, but the temptations of God as Man. By regeneration the Son of God is formed in us, and in our physical life He has the same setting that He had on earth. Satan does not tempt us to do wrong things; he tempts us in order to make us lose what God has put into us by regeneration, viz., the possibility of being of value to God. He does not come on the line of tempting us to sin, but on the line of shifting the point of view, and only the Spirit of God can detect this as a temptation of the devil.

Temptation means the test by an alien power of the possessions held by a personality. This makes the temptation of Our Lord explainable. After Jesus in His baptism had accepted the vocation of bearing away the sin of the world, He was immediately put by God’s Spirit into the testing machine of the devil, but He did not tire, He went through the temptation “without sin,” and He retained the possessions of His personality intact.

September 19th.

DO YOU CONTINUE TO GO WITH JESUS?

“Ye are they which have continued with Me in My temptations.” Luke 22:28

It is true that Jesus Christ is with us in our temptations, but are we going with Him in His temptations? Many of us cease to go with Jesus from the moment we have an experience of what He can do. Watch when God shifts your circumstances, and see whether you are going with Jesus, or siding with the world, the flesh and the devil. We wear His badge, but are we going with Him? “From that time many of His disciples went back and walked no more with Him.”

The temptations of Jesus continued throughout His earthly life, and they will continue throughout the life of the Son of God in us. Are we going with Jesus in the life we are living now?

We have the idea that we ought to shield ourselves from some of the things God brings round us. Never! God engineers circumstances and whatever they may be like we have to see that we face them while abiding continually with Him in His temptations. They are His temptations, not temptations to us, but temptations to the life of the Son of God in us. The honour of Jesus Christ is at stake in your bodily life. Are you remaining loyal to the Son of God in the things which beset His life in you?

Do you continue to go with Jesus? The way lies through Gethsemane, through the city gate, outside the camp; the way lies alone, and the way lies until there is no trace of a footstep left, only the voice, “Follow Me.”