Feb 9th, 2002: Fiery Trials

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The Staff and Sword Ministry

February 9, 2002

FIERY TRIALS

L4J

PART IX

By Nancy-TONI

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Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange

thing has happened to you. But rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings; that, when iris glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy.'

(I Peter 4:12-I3)

BEING CHRIST'S BODY CHRIST ABIDING IN US As I reflect on the direction the Holy Spirit has taken these articles, it may seem to be a bit far afield of their o ri ginal intent and purpose which was/is to prepare God's people to come through the fiery trials we all may face through persecution, hunger, cold, economic crisis, earthquakes, war, occupation and whatever else lies ahead. But then as I beg an to write these art icles I began to see that the key to being prepared spiritually and to being able to come through with one's faith intact and to emerge victo ri ous in Christ came down to having a close relationship with Jesus Christ and working in prayer to live and walk in that relationship with

Jesus Christ as Jesus did with our Heavenly Father while He was on eart h.

As part of this exploration into developing a relationship with Jesus Christ, I sta rt ed by writing about the impo rt ance of abiding in Christ. However, that is only half of the picture,

half of the relationship. In John

15:5 Jesus

says, "...He that abideth in me, and I in him..."

In other words, it is not sufficient that we go to Jesus and abide in Him alone but that He too wants to come abide in us!

As a matter of fact, we are His Body and as such, His chosen mode of expression in this world. So then the question could be raised, just what does it mean to be a member of the Body of Christ? How does one relate to that personally? More importantly, what kind of relationship does that require? With these questions in mind, and in light of these two aspects of our Christianity, Christ abiding in us and being a member of Christ's Body, I would like to take a closer look at what these involve for each us as Ch ri stians.

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A MEMBER OF CHRIST'S BODY As I was nearing the end of Andrew Murray's book entitled, The Blessings of Obedience (Whitaker House, 30 Hunt Valley Circle, New Kensington, PA 15068),1 came to a paragraph that seemed to jump out at me. Here is what it said: "lam a member of Christ's Body. He expects every member to be at His disposal, to be animated

by His Spirit, to live for what He is and does. It is the same with my body. I carry every healthy member with me day by day in the assurance that I can count on it to do its part. Our Lord has taken me so completely up into His body that He can ask and expect nothing else from me. I have so completelyyielded myself to Him that there is no thought of my wanting anything except to know (Page 101) and do His will."

This idea that just as when my brain sends a signal to some part of my body and I can count on it to work as I want it to being like Christ's relationship to His Body struck a chord with me. After all, how would I like it if I sent the signal to my hand to write this article and it didn't respond. Well, there would be no article. Or what if it waited, resisting my signal or even deciding to do something altogether different — how upsetting that would be!

I also thought of how beautiful and seeming effortless it is when my body does what I want it to. Of course, unlike a member of our physical body like a hand, we are a bit more complicated with our mind, will and emotions but should we really be all that different as a member of the Body of Christ? I don't think so.

As a part of the Body of Christ, Christ is our head and is also supposed to be our brain --teaching and telling us what to do, believe, what is good and what is evil. The Holy Spirit is then our nervous system or the signal transmitter to us, letting us know what the Will of Christ is and what He wants us to do. So then the question remains, how willing are we to receiving and acting out the signals being sent to us?

You see, as a hand or member of the Body of Christ (which we are all a part of) to operate as God intends, we need to be: Surrendered to Christ Not seeking our own will Dead to our self-nature Obedient Believing -- not doubting Trusting When we fail to be any one of these inwardly, we risk breaking the signal of the Holy Spirit

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A MEMBER OF CHRIST'S BODY continued and may fail to respond as we should. Doubtless, if we hesitate or have a slight resistance to do as Christ asks, that will be normal at first and is far better than not obeying at all; however, ultimately our relationship with Jesus Christ should be as easy and effortless on our part as any normal, well-functioning part of our physical bodies is for us. To me, this is a dimension of what we all are to aim for — an easy, comfortable, trusting, loving relationship with Jesus where the works through us to accomplish God's Will on earth. Our walk in Christ is to enter

into this kind of relationship.

WHERE WE ALL START As much as we may want and desire a closer relationship with Jesus, the truth is that it more often than not happens gradually. The reason it tends to happen or develop gradually has less to do with Jesus Himself and more to do with what is within us. Honestly, if Jesus were to come to abide in us completely as soon as we come to accept Christ, we just wouldn't be able to handle it. Our soul would be like a computer who just had all of its circuits fried and the overload would result in a meltdown. You see, abiding in Christ is one thing to us mentally and is often acceptable to our sinful, carnal side as it seems to like going to Jesus if it means being able to get what we want. We hold onto the illusion that we can keep all of our "stuff' intact. However, talk about Jesus abiding in us, in you personally, and the reaction can be quite different.

How? Well, for example, it's like the difference between going to a palace for dinner with a King and the King coming to dinner at your house. It's one thing to go to King's palace to see the King in his nice, beautiful, elegant home and be served an extravagant dinner where all you have to do is to dress appropriately (which can be no small thing of itself depending on your circumstances.) But, if the dinner is at your house, that tends to be a different thing altogether. Now, it is housecleaning time! It's no longer just getting dressed up and looking good, but now your life is exposed to some degree and preparations must be made for the meal itself. Now a meal has to be planned out, groceries bought and the meal prepared.

Someone else doesn't fix it, you do. This is your house and how clean you want to make the house and how much time you spend on the droner is up to you. Everything you do or don't do will reflect on you personally to some extent or another. After all this is the King and you would like to make a good impression.

For another way of looking at the state we are in, I like the way Watchman Nee put it in

his book, The Riches of Watchman Nee ,(published by Barbour Publishing, Inc., PO Box 719, I hrichsville, Ohio 44683 -- http://www.barbourbooks.com ) on pages 28-29.He writes: "Since we are of the flesh, the Lord Jesus cannot dwell in us. We are like the world under judgment at the time of Noah. After the water subsided, Noah released a dove from the ark (Gen. 8:8-9). But the dove found no place to rest; it could not abide anywhere. In the same way,

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WHERE WE ALL START continued Quote from Watchman Nee continued "we are full of sin. The Lord Jesus can find no place to abide in us. That being the case, God gave to us the Holy Spirit. The Lord accomplished everything objectively. Now the Holy Spirit gave us a new spirit subjectively (for us personally), so that the Son of God can abide in our spirit. The Holy Spirit came first to prepare a dwelling for the Lord Jesus. Then the Lord Jesus came to live in us."

This is where we all start when we come to Jesus, repent for our sins and accept Him as our Savior -- we are still full of the inclination to sin. From there, we can then choose to continue to put our sin under the Blood and allow the Holy Spirit into our hearts and being or we can choose to stop there, leaving all our unrighteousness and sin nature untouched. However, if that is the case, then you will only remain a believer with Jesus as Savior but you will not truly become a Christian (meaning little Christ) with Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior and to whom you belong as a member of His Body.

I also know that for some of our readers the topic of having to clean up one's self-nature and sin areas may seem like an old subject which they weary of hearing but the fact that our soul groans at the mention of the subject tell us that we have a problem. The fact that our soul or heart squirms at the thought of more cleaning out or if the thought of Jesus abiding in us causes us to fear, then these serve as evidences of the work of the Holy Spirit yet to be done in us for it is that which groans, squirms or cringes that must be dealt with.

CHRIST'S BODY IN SPIRIT In I Corinthians 15:45,47 is says, "The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit... The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven. " Next we have what Jesus said in John 3:5-7: "Except a man be horn of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of flesh is flesh; and that which is born of Spirit is spirit Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born

again."

What I see about these two Scriptures is that we have two births - one of the body which includes flesh and soul under Adam and the other is of Spirit through Jesus Christ. The first birth occurs when we are born into this world and our soul comes into existence but because of the Fall of Adam, we are born into sin and a sinful nature which occupies our flesh or soul.

When we come to Christ and repent for our sins, our sins are then forgiven but our salvation must be worked out as we seek to die to this sinful nature and seek live and operate in our new body in Christ which is a spiritual body.

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CHRIST'S BODY IS SPIRIT continued

This is important to understand and to learn to make the distinction within yourself as to what is of your soul and sinful nature through Adam and what is of Christ. Until you can really make the honest distinction, then you can not clearly know if what you believe you are receiving from Jesus and the Holy Spirit is indeed of God or not.

You see, Satan/Adam is sneaky and subtle. He knows that before we were saved, he could present himself to us as our lord because in our flesh, our soulish-carnal state, he was our lord but not anymore unless we let remain in that position. So, as Jesus said, we must be born again. We must die to Adam/Satan working through our sin areas and be born of the Spirit the Spirit of Christ. The two are separate and cannot be mixed. Jesus tells us in Matthew 6:24, "No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other."

Christ also cannot come to live in our soulish-carnal flesh for He will find no place to abide there. If by some chance He did, then He would encouraging and enlivening our sinful state within us which is just the opposite of what He accomplished on the Cross. He died for our sin so we don't have to and so through Him we would have victory over sin and death and not

the other way around. No. Christ conning to abide in our old flesh, our soul in its sinful state, would be like what Jesus spoke of in Matthew 9:16-17, "No man puttetlx a new cloth unto an old garment, for that which is put in to fill it up taketh from the garment, and the rent is made worse. Neither do men put new wine into old bottles: else the bottles break, and the wine runneth out, and the bottles perish: but they put new wine into new bottles, and both are preserved."

HOW DO I DO THIS? One thing that will become clear to you after a period of time is that the more you try to make yourself ready, make yourself perfect on your own effort, then the more stuff you'll see in yourself that is sinful, unrighteous and in need of change. And while I would encourage you to be aware of what is at work within you, you need to also accept the fact that any lasting, deep, inner change is only going to come by the Spirit of God through abiding in and surrendering to Christ and praying for Him to come to abide in you.

Some other helpful words of advice I found in Francois Fenclon's book, Talking with God (published by Paraclete Press, Brewster, Mass. - \vwtiv.paracletepress.comn)_ I'd like to share some of what he wrote here. " Make yourself little in the depths ofyour heart. A humble heart is always gentle and capable of being easily led in its center, even if on the surface it may seem rough through unexpected outbursts of a sharp and irritable temper. Watch, pray, and work at this. Bear withyourself without

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HOW DO I DO THIS? continued Quoting Francois Fenelon continued " flatteringyourseif. Letyour spiritual reading andyour prayer helpyou to knowyourself better, to correct yourself, and to overcomeyour natural temperament in the presence of God." (page 15) Fenelon then goes on to explain later in his book: " We must bear with ourselves patiently, without flattering ourselves, and we must continually subject ourselves to all that can overcome our natural inclination and our inner dislikes, so we may become more adaptable to the impressions of divine grace in living out the gospel." (page 23) Here where he writes, "so we may become more adaptable to the impressions of divine grace" speaks of the subtle and quiet way God works through the Holy Spirit in our lives that we must work to train ourselves to recognize, yield to and adapt to. You see, our soul with the strength of its inclinations, opinions and dislikes is forceful and loud while the Spirit of God is soft, subtle and not forceful —just the opposite of what we are used to. Therefore it is necessary to retrain ourselves and the way we are used to operating and relating to the world and those around us and adapt a new way of relating and operating so we become sensitive to the Spirit of God. I would say that except for extremely rare situations or in the case of a few particular individuals, that God does not generally work to overpower one's soul and will but rather He waits, like a patient Father, for us to quiet ourselves and come to Him. God prefers to operate as that still small voice within. He prefers that we seek Him, His Love and His Will and that He not have to overpower our will to get things done.

Anyway, to go on with what Fenelon was saying "This work (withinyou), however, must be peaceful and untroubled. It must even be moderate, and we must not attempt to do all the work in a single day. We must try to reason little and to do much. If we do not take care, our whole life may be passed in reasoning, and we shall require a second life to practice! We run the risk of believing that we have advanced in proportion to our understanding of perfection. All these fine ideas, far from advancing us in dying to ourselves, may only serve to secretly nourish the old Adam within us by giving us confidence in our own opinions.

Be extremely distrustful of y our intellect andyour own ideas of perfection. This will be a great step toward becoming perfect. Humiiityand distrust ofyourself, with simplicity, are fundamental virtues for you." (pages 23-24 of "Talking with God")

BLESSED ARE THE PURE IN HEART Another way to look at what we as Christians ought to be working towards is seen in Matthew 5:8, "Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. " This list of beatitudes isn't just a list putting different people into different catagories but also a list of attributes for each of

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BLESSED ARE THE PURE IN HEART continued us to attain to, to seek to live out in our lives. But who is pure of heart? How does one define it? Well, I recently read a great explanation by Dietrich BonhoefT'er in his book, The Cost of Discipleship (A Touchstone Book published by Simon & Schuster). He wrote on page 112 We following: "Who is pure in heart? Only those who have surrendered their hearts completely to Jesus that he may reign in them alone. Only those whose hearts are undefiled by their own evil — and by their own virtues too. The pure in heart have a child-like simplicity like Adam before the fall, innocent alike of good and evil: their hearts are not ruled by their conscience, but by the will of Jesus. If men renounce their own good, if in penitence they have renounced their own hearts, if they rey solely upon Jesus. then his word purifies their hearts. Purity of heart is here contrasted with all outward purity, even the purity of high intentions. The pure heart is pure alike of good and evil, it belongs

exclusively to Christ and looks only to him who goes on before. Only they will see God, who in this life have looked solely unto Jesus Christ, the Son of God. For then their hearts are free from all defiling phantasies and are not distracted by conflicting desires and intentions. They are wholly absorbed by the contemplation of God. They shall see God, whose hearts have become a reflection of the image of Jesus Christ."

FAITHFUL VISION By now there may be a part of you that wonders, Is this life — this walk in Christ possible? The answer is YES ! And everyone, every Christian, has the potential and possibility of operating fully as a member of the Body of Christ. Ultimately however, I know and fully

believe that it will take a move of the Spirit of God to complete His work in us but for our part, we are to "keep our lamps trimmed" (Matt. 25:7), keep our faith alive, and not let God's Love wax cold in our hearts (Matt 24:12) and some day, at some time that only God knows, He will quicken His Spirit within us and we will enter fully into the relationship with Him through Jesus Christ as God intends and is His Promise to us.

In Andrew Murray's book, The Blessings of Obedience , he has a section that I would like to close this subject with. Throughout the book his is sharing about obedience but his words could also apply to the whole experience of being a surrendered, obedient, not self-seeking, not seeking one's own will, believing and not doubting member of the Body of Christ. He writes on pages 75-76 the following:

"I have been trying to showyou the map of the land and to indicate the most important places in the land, the points where God meets and blesses the soul. What we need now is to settle the Question Quietly and definitely in faith. Is there really such a land of promise where continuous obedience is completely possible?

As long as there is any doubt on this point, it is out of the Question to go up and possess the

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FAITHFUL VISION continued Quote from Andrew Murray's book continued "land. Think of Abraham's faith. It rested in God's omnipotence and His faithfulness. I have put beforeyou the promises of God. Hear another of them: "A new heart alsowill i giveyou... And I will put my spirit withinyou, and causeyou to walk in my statutes, andye shall keep my judgments, and do them" (Ezekiel 36:26-27). Here is God's covenant engagement. He adds, "I the Lord have spoken it, and I will do it" (Ezekiel 36:36). He endeavors to cause and enableyou to obey. In Christ

and the Holy Spirit, he made the most wonderful provision for fulfilling His engagement.

Do what Abraham did. Fixyour heart on God. 'He. ..was strong in faith, giving glory to God, And

being fully persuaded that, what he had promised, he was able also to perform" (Romans 4:20-21).

God's omnipotence was Abraham's pillar. Let it beyours.

God gives us many promises in the Bible, promises which reQuire His power in order to come to pass. He promises us a blameless heart and a life which keeps His commandments. His working in us, and our trust that He is working in us will make this life of full obedience possible. Let the assurance that a life of full obedience is possible permeateyou thoughts. Gaze on the vision until your heart says: "it must be true. It is true. There is a life promised that I have never known.

Amen!

DO WE NEED TO KNOW GOD'S WILL? r

On our last t ip in January, Chuck-JOHNEL was asked a question that I thought I' d address a little bit here. The full question was, "Do we need to know God's Will or should we just use our God-given talents?" The question was stated rather broadly although the person asking it had a specific application in mind which had to with a major decision in her life such as whether to move out of the country or to stay.

The first and most direct answer is — yes, you absolutely need to know God's Will for you especially in any major decision such as moving. It is not enough for others to pray to know what the Lord would have you do or to ask a Prophet to get a word as to what you should do, but you must come to know by the Spirit of God for yourself. The reason I say that it is a must that you know for yourself is because once you know what God's Will for you is and you know within yourself you are in His Will, then no matter what difficulties arise, it strengthens and sustains you until all is worked out. If you don't know, then if and when difficulties arise, your faith will not stand and will be easily shaken. I have even seen some people become accusatory towards the person who gave the word, as if the trial they were experiencing was that person's fault. Why? Because they didn't know God's Will for themselves.

The other aspect to that question, do we just use our God-given talents is also worth taking a look at. First of all, the problem with relying first and foremost on our God-given talents is that we are in a fallen state and our carnality, our desires and self-nature are still active parts of our being so how can we rightly know how to use our God-given talents when we are in such a state?

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DO WE NEED TO KNOW GOD'S WILL? continued We must remember that JESUS DID NOTHING EXCEPT WHAT THE FATHER SHOWED f-JIM. So the same goes for us .... we must do nothing except what Jesus Christ and the Father shows us. Jesus Himself had/has "God-given talents", power and authority while He walked this earth but He never used His own power, authority or talents apart from checking with God the Father first. Jesus Christ came to do the will of the Father and we are here to do the same.

Only once you do come to know God's Will for you and what He wants you to do, do you then begin to put your God-given talents to work but even then, you must always be reliant on Jesus to show you when, how and where to put those to use as God intends. It has been my experience that Jesus is often calling or asking me to do things that don't come naturally to me and are outside of what I consider to be my "talents" because I know that God wants me to reliant on Him first and not on my own knowledge, abilities and resources. God's control of our (Chuck-JOHNEL and myself) lives means that He provides for us but He also keeps us reliant on Him -- which is just the way we like it.

So in short, on any major decision you may face, pray and seek to know the Will of God for you — there is no substitute. Once you come to know what that is, then begin to move carefully and slowly with your God-given talents towards that Will but be sensitive to the Holy Spirit's direction in how to best use your talents and to keep you from getting ahead or behind of God's Will. Let Jesus and the Holy Spirit Shepard you through His Will for you.

"IF ANY MAN COMETH UNTO ME...."

In Luke 14:26 Jesus says this: "If any man cometh unto me, and hateth not his own father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. " Have you ever wondered what this means — to hate your father, mother, wife, husband, children, etc. to come unto Jesus. After all, the word hate seems to be such a strong word and, with the way it is currently used in our vocabulary, seems to be contrary to the Spirit of God. With this mind, I decided to check the concordance to see what the word meant in this particular context and what I found out was that while the first tion was "to love less '. This definition was "to detest (esp. to persecute) ", the second definition is the definition that I believe most applies to this Scripture after all, God wants to be fir st and foremost in our hearts and Jesus is to be Lord over all of us, not just part of us. So in this case, to `hate' family members and even ourselves for Christ's sake is to love then less than we love God and Jesus Christ. It is a matter of getting our relationships in proper order with Christ being truly first in our hearts and then from there, letting Him prioritize all the rest.

What got me pondering this in prayer was a chapter I read in Dietrich Bonhoeffer's book, The Cost of Discipleship entitled, "Discipleship and the Individual". It was the first writing I had even seen speaking of the relationship between our walk and call in Christ and our

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"IF ANY MAN COMETH UNTO ME... " continued immediate family members.

He begins the chapter by saying, "Through the call of Jesus men become individuals." This is true. The more Jesus begins to move in your life an d the louder the call becomes, the more one becomes aware that Jesus is calling you and you alone to Himself. Your relationship with Jesus is between you and Him alone and no one else. You may choose to t ry to relate to Jesus through others, but that is not the same as hearing from and relating to Jesus directly yourself.

It would be like trying to relate to a parent by using a brother or sister as a go-between, it just doesn't cut it.

Ultimately, as we answer God's call on our lives, we must face the truth that the call of Christ does and will come between us and our family members. The call of Christ on our lives is one of God wanting absolute ownership of our hearts, to first and foremost in every pa rt of our life and that includes the loved ones that even God has brought into our lives. The point is not that He calls us to walk away from those loved ones but to make sure we have it right in our hearts who we love more and who we love less. This inner commitment and decision may result in an outward break with some loved ones or it may be done in secret within your heart and no one needs to be the wiser. God will know and you will know and that is all that is important, however, it is important to know that this breach (as Bonhoeffer calls it) is inescapable.

In his book, Bonhoeffer goes on to use the example of Abraham to bring this point home.

He points out that first Abraham had to leave his friends and his father's house because Christ came between him and his own. On this occasion the breach was evident. Abraham became a stranger and a sojourner in order to gain the promised land. This was his first call_ Later on he was called by God to offer his own son Isaac as a sacrifice. Christ had come between the father of faith and the child of promise. This time the direct relationship not only of flesh and blood, but also of the spirit, must be broken. Abraham must learn the promise does not depend on Isaac, but on God alone.... Once again, as when he left his father's house, Abraham becomes an individual, a lonely and solita ry figure.... Against eve ry direct claim upon him, whether natural, ethical or religious, he will be obedient to the Word of God. By his willingness to sacrifice Isaac, he shows that he is prepared to come into the open with the breach which he had already made secretly, and to do so for the sake of the Mediator. And at that very moment all that he had surrendered was given back to him. He receives back his son. God shows him a better sacrifice which will take the place of Isaac. The tables are completely turned. Abraham receives Isaac back, but henceforth he will have

his son in Quite a new way— through the Mediator and for the Mediator's sake.... Christ has stepped between father and son. Abraham had left all and followed Christ, and as he follows him he is allowed to go back and live in the world as he had done before. Outwardly the picture is unchanged, but the old is passed away. and behold all things are new. Eve ry thing has had to pass th ro ugh Christ." (page 99) Abraham ended up living the Scripture, "...he that losetlr his life for my sake shall find it. " In giving tip his heart and life entirely to God, he ended up finding it anew. God bless. ,tv

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