The Missionary Watching by Oswald Chambers

I was reading Oswald Chambers Devotion book today and I truly enjoyed it. Sadly, after 7 years of calling myself a Christian, I was amongst those Oswald referred to as the early stage of Christianity. Until God took me into the wilderness, He opened my spiritual eyes to see further upon my acceptance of the path He forged for me. Until then, my love for Him and my Christian life was at the same level of the limit of my natural capacity. If you are reading this and you understand the difference in a practical way, between the limit of your own natural capacity and the true supernatural Christian life we have in Christ, then I know you have joy mix with gratitude in your heart for having been led by Him to a supernatural life in Him.  

The disciples felt asleep in Mathew 26:36-41 simply because,  while they loved Christ, they could not identify with the supernatural life, supernatural training and the  pain that takes us from the place where they could identify with Him. A place where you truly live in the soul what it means to identify with Him in a supernatural way. One of the beauties of the Christian life is that we can live the daily Christian paradox where the supernatural life  becomes the natural life to us. When we learn to live in Christ and Christ lives His life in us and through us daily, before we know it, His supernatural life becomes totally natural to us. 

I was pleasantly surprised to see that all those things that my church rejected me for, did not matter one bit to God. All those things that I learned to view others through, such as morality vs immorality and the dos and donts list we hang onto so hard within the Church, God could care less. Through the dos and donts list, I used to see myself as a spiritually messy person and my pastor was a saint. My spirituality was anchored in morality, degradation, uprightness and so on. That is what I knew and what I was being taught. At first, I gave the Spirit a hard time and felt that I should hold onto what I knew and appreciated about my Christianity. Through God’s grace and constrained I continued the path and I found out, unless we learn first to identify with Him through practical experiences of this life we do not understand our identification in Christ. Sadly, we do not even know that we do not understand. How can we when all we know is the natural life?

 While all these things I was taught to practice through my Church were good, but as God opened my eyes, I could see that we tend to put the cart before the horses. Hence why the self has to go first, to make room for Himself in us. When room has been made for Him to take over our lives as our Lord not just our savior, then we find the pieces fall into place naturally as He deals with imparted righteousness in our lives. It was somewhat funny when I realized that He was not dismissing our degrading state, uprightness, immorality and what have you. He was dealing with things in the proper manner “HIS WAY.”

I will leave you with a link of today’s devotion

His Disciples - "Fellowship of the Unashamed"

Romans 12:1 

I urge you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice

An African pastor was overwhelmed by rebels who demanded that he renounce his faith. He refused. The night before they took his life, he wrote the following lines on a scrap of paper:I am part of the "Fellowship of the Unashamed." I have Holy Spirit power. The die has been cast. I've stepped over the line. 

The decision has been made. I am a disciple of His. I won't look back, let up, slow down, back away, or be still. My past is redeemed, my present makes sense, and my future is secure. I am finished and done with low living, sight walking, small planning, smooth knees, colorless dreams, tame visions, mundane talking, chintzy giving, and dwarfed goals!

I no longer need preeminence, prosperity, position, promotions, plaudits, or popularity. I don't have to be right, first, tops, recognized, praised, regarded, or rewarded. I now live by presence, lean by faith, love by patience, lift by prayer, and labor by power.

My face is set, my gait is fast, my goal is heaven, my road is narrow, my way is rough, my companions few, my Guide reliable, my mission clear. I cannot be bought , compromised, detoured, lured away, turned back, diluted, or delayed. I will not flinch in the face of sacrifice, hesitate in the presence of adversity, negotiate at the table of the enemy, ponder at the pool of popularity, or meander in the maze of mediocrity.

I won't give up, shut up, let up, or burn up till I've preached up, prayed up, paid up, stored up, and stayed up for the cause of Christ.

I am a disciple of Jesus. I must go till He comes, give till I drop, preach till all know, and work till He stops.

And when He comes to get His own, He'll have no problems recognizing me. My colors will be clear.

Prayer: Lord, develop in me the perseverance and faithfulness to pursue Your goal for my life even in the face of rejection.

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Are We in Reality—What We are in Name?

By Samuel Davies 

"The disciples were first called Christians at Antioch." Acts 11:26

We call ourselves Christians—but do we really understand the MEANING and sacred import of that name? Do we really know what it is to BE Christians indeed? 

Are we in reality—what we are in name? Certainly it is time for us to consider the matter!

What is it to be a Christian?

To be a Christian, in the popular and fashionable sense, is no really difficult or excellent thing. It is to be baptized, to profess the Christian religion; to believe, like our neighbors, that Christ is the Messiah, and to attend upon public worship once a week, in some church or another. In this sense, a man may be a 'Christian'—and yet be habitually careless about eternal things. He may be a 'Christian'—and yet fall short of the morality of many of the heathen. 

He may be a 'Christian'—and yet a drunkard, a swearer, or a slave to some vice or other. He may be a 'Christian'—and yet a willful, impenitent offender against God and man.

But is this to be a 'real Christian'—in the original and proper sense of the word? No! that is something of a very different and superior kind.

To be a Christian indeed—is to be like to Christ, from whom the name is taken!To be a Christian indeed—is to be a follower and imitator of Christ!To be a Christian indeed—is to have Christ's spirit and temper; and to live as He lived in the world!

In short, to be a Christian, is to have our sentiments, our character and our practice, formed upon the sacred model of the gospel.

Untroubled Relationship & Those Bible Thumpers With Their Shallow TV Ministries

Lately, I have been so preoccupied with some of the TV evangelists’ responses to their followers on Facebook and Twitter that my heart is breaking.

As I read Oswald Chambers's devotion today, I decided to address those Evangelists directly because it is a plague. We are infested with them and most of them are concerned only with their bottom line and everything they do and say on Social Media is to keep their followers blissfully happy in their ignorance.

Sometimes I feel, these pastors are so preoccupied with fame and status to maintain their lifestyles, they tend to forget that what we read in the Old Testament the God that we see there, is not left in history. Whether we read the Old or the New Testament, they are the word of God and they are there for our benefits and for us to know the unchanging God.   So, when we read the books of Kings and Chronicles, we see that God always punished the Israelites for following after their rotten king’s way in abandoning God’s word and law. Then He deals with the kings for their own sin plus for causing Israel to walk away from Him.  

It is amazing how many pastors are out there, that are thinking FOR God and they have no shame. In fact, they have managed to believe in their lies and what they use for excuses, (which really work well with their marketing scheme) that the reason they keep answering to those faithful followers, with those lame answers, is because they know people are not ready to hear the truth.

Their marketing scheme is the following: keep the people where they are, do not rock the boat, do not tell them any deep truths that they cannot deal with and they will keep following you. In the meantime, those pastors convince themselves if they give their followers a few lame words of advice like “God loves you” these followers will not be wiser and they are kept happy. Some said “well at least they are there with me and they keep hearing the word of God and eventually the Holy Spirit will change their hearts. These pastors really convinced themselves that is the best course of action for their ministries and the people. Strangely, they believe their lies so much that they would pass a lie detector test. Anyone who is walking in the Spirit, you can see so blatantly the work of the devil through those greedy, rotten, hungry for fame and status pastors. They have been blinded by the devil, along with their followers, all the while they are convinced it is all for God. This is alarming. It is so dangerous and so many souls are at stake. IT IS PAINFUL TO WATCH.

One of my nieces who are following one of those greedy, nice, and well spoken TV pastors told me that her pastor does not talk about intimacy with God in the way I do. So, obviously it is okay for some Christians, not to have intimacy with God.  She even went further by saying that my intimacy with God does not have to match her intimacy with God. Even while she is saying something so stupid, evil, and so low, she still believes, somehow she has some sort of intimacy with God. Why not when she is taught that much by her pastors?

Oswald devotion for today reminded me of three things

1)      If God saves you and He did not zap you to heaven right away, He wants you to remain on earth to get to know Him, and to use your life for His divine purpose. You have to keep in mind that any work that you do for God has to be through your deep abiding love and faith in and through Him. I was reminded how much I was like a broken record while I walk with Him in the wilderness because I kept saying “oh this is what you meant?” I could see because they eyes of my heart were opened to Him and the work of the Holy Spirit. I could see because I was being taught directly by Him. This does not mean that I am not learning. I still learn from some great TV evangelists, pastors who were really called by God. But, all of us need to be so given to this life within that in our oneness with Him, we stop living this kind of second hand Christianity. Christianity is not passed on. Our faith that brings us to this place where we are real followers of Christ has to be passed on to us by the triune God through living our oneness with Him. 

2) Those greedy for fame and status pastors will be dealt with severely by God. One of the things that I learned directly from God is that when you are taught the real thing and when you are truly following after Him, you cannot in all conscience keep finding excuses as to why you cannot tell your followers the hard truth. He also showed me some of those pastors do not even know the hard truth because they are not walking in the spirit. Please do not let yourself be fooled just because they have a flourishing ministry. Do not let yourself be fooled into thinking just because so many people are following those pastors they must be doing the work of God. When you have a deep love for God, you understand what His love means, and you truly fear Him, not in word only, but in the depth of your heart, you tell people the truth no matter how hard it is for them to hear it. You tell the truth, whether this means your ministry might suffer and most of them would leave you and you might have to downgrade the mansion you live in. 

You tell the truth, because the truth is the essence of who you are and you cannot compromise or use feeble excuses that leave God out of the equation.  You stop seeing yourself like a god and trust the triune God to use you to keep a remnant for Himself. When you use excuses to keep in their ignorance and shallow faith, don’t kid yourself, you are not doing it for them or God, but for your wallets and to keep up with your lifestyle.  It your excuses were true, that would mean, God has no power to work in the hearts of those you are dealing with. THE BOTTOM LINE IS, YOU DO NOT TRUST THIS GOD you claim to be doing all this hoopla for. It means you do not love with the agape love either. At the end of the day, it is all about you. IT DOES NOT MATTER HOW BEAUTIFUL AND HOW AWESOME YOU LOOK NOW…..GOD WILL DEAL WITH YOU SOONER OR LATER. In the end, you are an actor, a pretender, a people pleaser, and you are wearing a mask so none of those lost sheep following you can see what you are made of but, God will not be mocked and your mask will come off in due time.

3) The third thing I was reminded through Oswald Chambers’s devotion is that deep intimacy with God is a real and universal truth for all of us. What Oswald Chambers explained in today’s devotion is a simple as one two three for some of us, simply because we KNOW GOD and we KNOW the truth directly from Him, so we speak the same language and through the Holy Spirit, we can recognize each other. Oswald said: “In that day you will ask in My name . . . ,” that is, in My nature. Not “You will use My name as some magic word,” but—”You will be so intimate with Me that you will be one with Me.” “That day” is not a day in the next life, but a day meant for here and now. “. . . for the Father Himself loves you . . .”— the Father’s love is evidence that our union with Jesus is complete and absolute.” 

You do not get to live out this union with God, in your head. It is not some empty words that you say to yourself to appease your conscience. It is a real life in oneness with Him. It is a life where you keep growing spiritually. How do you know you are a true Christian after years of claiming that you are one? The evidence is in what you are becoming on the inside. Living this oneness with God demands that you actually start living and walking in the Spirit to begin with. And if as a pastor you have the same followers living in their blissful ignorance years after years and you keep patronizing them over and over again it means one of those two things. One is that as a pastor, you are not doing a good job at all. The second thing could be that these people were never Christian to begin with. Either way, as a pastor, you are lousy. Your shallow preaching, your shallow popular written books and every word that proceeds out of your mouth is to keep these people as ignorant as possible and to appeal to the mass. SHAME ON YOU!

READ OSWALD CHAMBERS DEVOTION FOR TODAY MAY 29, RIGHT HERE

Transformed by Beholding

It is important to remember, God always wants us to join Him in what He is doing in our lives; since the beginning of time when He created Adam & Eve and throughout the whole Bible. While He taught me how important our participation is to Him, He did not tell me why. In my opinion, some of the reasons He wants our participation is so our free will is not violated. He wants our participation because it forces us to be more aware of Him. When we participate we can see His majestic power at work. We learn to appreciate Him, love Him and revere Him much more because of the magnitude of seeing His grace at work in our lives.  It is also a way to personally relate to us and He also finds pleasure in us when we voluntarily participate. An example of that would be Adam & Eve choosing not to listen to the serpent simply because God had already given His directives.

In the same way, God wants us to be transformed all the way, to the point where we behold Him. This beholding work really depends on us a lot. Let me explain. Try to picture the process of taking a picture. The process resembles to the lengthy work that used to happen in the old days with the old camera when we had to wait weeks to finally see the picture fully come to life. (Go to the internet and read about the lengthy process of the old days) Remember this is the same God who took the Israelites in the wilderness by the long road, instead of taking the path that would take them a few days.

Beholding Him is about becoming like Him. Like I kept saying in my book apprehended & Apprehending, the awareness of beholding Him makes you understand that His goal is for us to become “little Christ.” While the work will only be completed when we die, and it starts right when we have truly received Salvation in our heart through our first encounter with Him but, there is so much to do to in order to get us there.

At the end of the day, beholding Him is acquired through learning to sit and rest at His feet. When the Holy Spirit first taught me that, I did not understand, and I really thought I had to be literally at His feet all the time. So, to some extend I found it almost an impossible job for me to stop all movement, and learn to rest long enough at His feet so His face, His mannerism, His thought process, His  characters and so on could become mine. Strangely He did not correct my defective understanding. But, not only I tried to stay as close as possible to Him in prayers, Bible and meditation, I learned to be more aware of Him during the day.

A few months down the road, He did something wonderful for me. The Holy Spirit sort of took me backward step by step, to see how I have been sitting at His feet all day long. Through this encounter, I understood that sitting at His feet, did not mean literally my external body sitting. But, in Spirit I could see all the time I was living my busy and painful life down here, while I was going on about my business all day long in this realm, in Spirit, I was living quietly and restfully at His feet. Through the process, He showed me how much more I have grown. It is an amazing thing to see how much work God is doing in us in the background to prepare us for the life awaiting us in Heaven.

If you notice, Oswald mentioned things like

1) Unveiled openness before God

2) The Spirit fills us,

3) Beware

4) Concentrate (on keeping open lives)

5) Maintain the position

6) Keeping our live completely spiritual

7) Let others criticize

8) Abiding etc.

You can read it for yourself and find more. But, each one of these things he mentioned could be expand to become a blog post, some could be expand to become books. This is a life being spent in abiding in Him where you live inside of Him in complete rest and holiness. This is a life where you are living with a spiritually minded mind while you cultivate Christ’s mind. This is a life of complete surrender (not halfway or case by case) it is a life where other people cannot touch you with their criticism because you have learned to make it about Him and live with eternal values in sight. All those words above demand that we participate with full intend to reach the heart of the Father. They demand our full attention, and full commitment to Him. While all these things can be done through the abiding process, Oswald mentioned them for a reason, because each requires some sort of growth process in Him and some take years to acquire.

At the end of the day, a life of beholding Him can be acquired though good old “living a full surrendered life”. Our full surrender does not have to be perfect nor do we need a full understanding of what it is, but to some extend we need to know that we are surrendering to God’s way so, anything is possible. We need to know from the moment we surrender to Him, it is no longer about what we want. We can do it through a hearty and real commitment to Him. Then, as God takes us deeper into the surrendering process we realize the first surrender although it was deep to us, it resembled to Abraham when he left his country, left his comfort zone and all that he knew was left behind, to go to a place he had no idea of what to expect and what was going to happen to him. He went, just because God said so. But Abraham was nowhere near being the man he became later on in life.

Transformed By Insight

01 23,2013

We all, with open face, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image. — 2 Corinthians 3:18

The outstanding characteristic of a Christian is this unveiled frankness before God so that the life becomes a mirror for other lives. By being filled with the Spirit we are transformed, and by beholding we become mirrors. You always know when a man has been beholding the glory of the Lord, you feel in your inner spirit that he is the mirror of the Lord’s own character. Beware of anything which would sully that mirror in you; it is nearly always a good thing, the good that is not the best.
The golden rule for your life and mine is this concentrated keeping of the life open towards God. Let everything else – work, clothes, food, everything on earth – go by the board, saving that one thing. The rush of other things always tends to obscure this concentration on God. We have to maintain ourselves in the place of beholding, keeping the life absolutely spiritual all through. Let other things come and go as they may, let other people criticize as they will, but never allow anything to obscure the life that is hid with Christ in God. Never be hurried out of the relationship of abiding in Him. It is the one thing that is apt to fluctuate but it ought not to. The severest discipline of a Christian’s life is to learn how to keep "beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord."

Courtesy of: www.utmost.org

Commitment To The Faith

 

In my book "Apprehended & Apprehending" I have a small chapter about commitment. The reason commitment is so important to me and I felt I had to include it in the book is because while I had no idea what it meant to walk in the Spirit, the Holy Spirit was hard at work in the background to help me come up higher. I realize He has never let me be satisfied with my own explanations of the Word of God in the Bible. Pushing people to not be satisfied with data tucked away while living in the flesh, makes knowing someone like me, a little bit annoying if you like your comfort zone. It is harder if you are an immediate member of my family. But, in my defense, I have no idea how to live the Christian life any other way because the Holy Spirit targeted me right at the onset of Salvation.  (Although I suspect He targets all of us) I shared almost throughout every chapter of my book how He called me to come up higher over and over again. Since I talked about it at length, I will refrain from going into more details.

You see, while some professed Christians are busy separating Salvation, discipleship commitment and grace to excuse their behaviors God showed me they are all one in the same according to His standards at work in us. I was surprised to find out that Christ’s call to us in Mathew 16:24 “to take up our cross and follow” actually meant “make the commitment, come up higher, live like you have a Master and surrender to me at any cost.”  Later on, I was more surprised to find out that not only this is Salvation being worked out in me, but the strength to do all these above were in Him,  through His grace alone.  This walk, the Holy Spirit was constantly working in the background to get me to question what I understood only in the flesh, in order to get to the point where I would make the commitment to follow and step into my discipleship role. Indeed, making the commitment to Him to let Him be the Master of your life it is not an easy thing to do. When you make this commitment you know what you have done is in effect what all the other disciples in the Bible did as they left everything behind and follow Christ on the onset of His ministry. The commitment to follow Him, if it is done with the right understanding, attitude, motive and with the Holy Spirit makes you realize that you are aware you found something that deserve your full attention. You feel, there is a Master in town now, and you have to go with Him to hear what He has to say. Like Paul turning his back away from his honourable position with Gamael, like Peter leaving his lucrative fishing business behind, like Matthew the tax collector who left his booth and lucrative business to follow and so forth.  

Just in case you are wondering what I mean in the paragraph above when I said the right attitude, motivation and understanding it is about understanding we have to do it knowing even though it will hurt but it has to be done. We know this mean we will lose complete control over our lives and we are no longer in charge. It means going forward with His plans, not ours. It means we will have to be broken and the self has to be eradicated etc. The end result will mean fellowship, oneness, pride left behind to embrace humility, deeper worship and love for Him and so forth.

Being compelled to go forward is a work of the Holy Spirit in us. It is a work of grace and there is no way left on our own we would understand the need to go forward with Him. I was pleasantly surprised to find out how all of it relates to each other. Through receiving Him I received the light. If I receive the light and I am no longer the “old me”, then I need to learn how to live the new life. While the Church put together discipleship classes and preaching the Word to get us to understand this new life, but it is my duty to hear His call to come up higher. When we go forward to become His disciple, all we are doing is making a commitment to study with the Master. Why do we need to study with the Master? Because not only He needs us to accept our position as His pupil, He also needs our total commitment so that He can make real in us the work He has started, meaning Salvation.

So, God’s call and wooing to come up higher along with Christ giving us a choice to take up our cross and follow Him, plus we have Romans 12:1 where Paul told us to surrender ourselves to Him, are all the same. Meaning same goal, same purpose and all of it is wrapped up in a commitment to this life through His grace. When you live according to His standards, all of it is there in black and white, there is no need to hold a debate. Everything we have in this Christian walk build on each other. The whole thing is like building a foundation for a house where Christ is the builder and He is putting the materials needed together to build this house. While this house starts with Salvation entering our hearts and souls, but we cannot separate it from the builder and the materials needed to erect the house.

This post was meant to be Sunday’s post. But this morning in my quiet time with Him I read Oswald Chambers, I knew this was not a coincidence and that I had to switch the post. So, instead of ending with a prayer, I will end with copying Oswald Chambers devotion for you.

Keep in mind that the second chapter of my book which is about commitment to this life is available for you to download for free. Go to my website

www.apprehended.ca

Here is Oswald Chambers today's devotion

I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me . . . —Galatians 2:20

These words mean the breaking and collapse of my independence brought about by my own hands, and the surrendering of my life to the supremacy of the Lord Jesus. No one can do this for me, I must do it myself. God may bring me up to this point three hundred and sixty-five times a year, but He cannot push me through it. It means breaking the hard outer layer of my individual independence from God, and the liberating of myself and my nature into oneness with Him; not following my own ideas, but choosing absolute loyalty to Jesus. Once I am at that point, there is no possibility of misunderstanding. Very few of us know anything about loyalty to Christ or understand what He meant when He said, “. . . for My sake” (Matthew 5:11). That is what makes a strong saint.

Has that breaking of my independence come? All the rest is religious fraud. The one point to decide is— will I give up? Will I surrender to Jesus Christ, placing no conditions whatsoever as to how the brokenness will come? I must be broken from my own understanding of myself. When I reach that point, immediately the reality of the supernatural identification with Jesus Christ takes place. And the witness of the Spirit of God is unmistakable— “I have been crucified with Christ . . . .”

The passion of Christianity comes from deliberately signing away my own rights and becoming a bondservant of Jesus Christ. Until I do that, I will not begin to be a saint.

One student a year who hears God’s call would be sufficient for God to have called the Bible Training College into existence. This college has no value as an organization, not even academically. Its sole value for existence is for God to help Himself to lives. Will we allow Him to help Himself to us, or are we more concerned with our own ideas of what we are going to be?