Experience the Impossible: Simple Ways to Unleash Heaven's Power on Earth (13 page)

Faith is evident in the act of obedience.

O
ne of the traps I fell into as a young man was thinking that to be great in God, I needed to measure my faith. I read the stories of the great men and women of God of the past and longed for the same place of significance and impact that they had on the course of history. Although I wanted significance, it was significance from God’s perspective, not man’s. It had nothing to do with fame or a big name. God knows who truly trusts Him. That is what drove me.

All the heroes of the past were people of great faith. It became obvious rather quickly that to have the same impact as they did, I would have to have similar faith, as that was the one absolute ingredient for pleasing God. So I tried to measure my faith and looked inward to do so. But whenever I opened that
jar of faith
to see what was inside, whatever was there quickly evaporated. I never seemed to be able to find it when I was looking for it.

Conversely, there were times when I knew that God had commanded me to do something that I did not think I had the faith to do. Instead of going into self-examination, I just obeyed. I
will never forget my moment of discovery when I felt as though God spoke this to me:
You couldn’t have obeyed
without faith.
I had been looking in the wrong place. Greatness was not found by looking for greatness. Neither was faith found by looking for faith. It was found in yielding to His will and purposes. From that point on I have made obedience the focus instead of measuring my faith stores.

Faith is the result of surrender, not determination. Faith is the normal response of a believer toward the One who is perfectly faithful. That being said, obedience then becomes the most practical way to discover the faith in a person’s life.

Today I have many heroes of the faith. They are highly respected worldwide for their faith and their exploits. I know many of them personally, and each one stands out in my world for extreme obedience. I say
extreme
because they look for opportunities to trust God for the impossible. Being with them helps me. But being with them also makes me nervous, for they reset the standard of what I call the
normal Christian life
. Because of their influence on my life, I cannot stay the same.

Nothing of eternal significance is discovered by looking inward. Looking God-ward is quite the opposite, however. Favor, life, faith and everything else of importance are unveiled in that one glance. Readying myself to do whatever He says to do next is my great privilege and responsibility. And perhaps strangely to some, it is what reveals the actual measure of faith that I live by.

Obedience is the expression of authentic faith, for obedience is what illustrates trust, as all relationships are founded on trust. A moment of learning to respond to His voice will do more to develop my faith than a thousand years of looking inward.

I love and need simplicity. Having only one gauge on my dashboard,
the heart to obey God gauge
, makes this life of trust much easier. By grace I can do this one.

Prayer

Father God, You are trustworthy beyond all imagination. And I honor You for that. Please help me to anchor my heart and mind in Your trustworthiness, because I always want to be found trusting You. I do not want my quest for faith to be tripped up by introspection, so please help me to be aware of those moments when I am prone to fall into the trap of thinking it is about me. Thank You in advance for the grace to live as You have designed me to live—full of faith and completely faithful.

Confession

I was designed to trust God, naturally. It is not complicated to be given the task to trust the most trustworthy One in existence. And this I will do with great pleasure all the days of my life, for the glory of God.

Jesus is returning for a bride whose body is in equal proportion to her head.

T
he return of Jesus Christ for His Church will be one of the most wonderful moments in all of time. As such, it is called the blessed hope. But what is He returning for? A divided Church that is a jigsaw puzzle He has to put together in heaven? Is He returning for a weak, anemic Bride who needs hospital care before the wedding? Or is He returning for a Bride who has made herself ready? Fully ready. Mature and glorious.

I grew up in a church culture that held the conviction that things would get worse and worse in the last days, and then Jesus would return. While I never remember my dad teaching that, it was the Pentecostal culture we lived in. As a result, Jesus’ return amounted to a rescue of His Bride before the devil deceived and destroyed all her members. There are certainly verses that seem to imply that outcome, if you are predisposed to see them.

I remember when I bought my first new car, a beautiful blue Toyota Corolla Fastback. That was in 1978. It had five-speed transmission, air-conditioning and a cassette player; everything
a guy could want. It was so exciting to get something that nice, something brand new. My wife and I and our two little boys fit perfectly into this gift from God.

Then I began to see something I had never noticed before: There were many Toyota Corolla Fastbacks in the world. Now that I had one of my own, my eyes seemed trained to spot what had apparently been there all the time. As one who had a vested interest in that brand of car, I quickly noticed them everywhere. Internal values can enable you to see what you did not see before. The opposite is also true. Internal values can blind you to what has been there all the time. This is especially true of reading the Scriptures.

The question we must ask ourselves is, Are my values shaped by His values? When we study the last days, we are prone to come up with all sorts of interpretations. The biggest problem with our last days’ theology comes from our study of the last days. I know that sounds strange, but is it really legal to study that subject separate from the overall theme of Scriptures? Is it a unique point of theology that can be divorced from the redemptive work of Jesus in making us new creations?

But what happens when we study God’s purpose for the Church, or the thorough success of saving grace, or His promise and purpose for planet earth? When the study of the last days defines our overall theology for life, we are allowing the abstract to interpret the obvious. Our interpretations of the symbolic items in Scripture, such as the beast, the seven seals, the seven years and other endless mysteries, shape the things that are obvious. Is the study of those things wrong? Of course not. They have a place. But it is dangerous to allow the abstract to redefine what we know to be true. Jesus did not save us only to save us again.

This quote is actually mixing metaphors, which is often dangerous. I do it in this case to illustrate the combined realities: We are members of His Body, and also His Bride. As members of His
Body, He is the head. As the Bride, we are what He will return for. We would cringe at the thought of an infant’s body trying to hold up an adult-sized head. Yet that picture represents all too well the theology of many. Why is that important? If we do not expect to end victoriously, we will always create a theology that allows for failures and shortcomings and ultimately the misrepresentation of the ministry of Jesus on earth.

We do not need a theology that empowers weakness and failure. The work of Christ at the cross was sufficient in its ability to present us faultless and victorious—triumphant in both purity and power! Jesus is returning for a bride whose body is in equal proportion to her head. The victor will return for the victorious one. The King of glory will return for the glorious one. That is why His return is called
the blessed hope
!

Prayer

Dear Father, I want to live life on this earth in a way that honors You—a life of great joy and delight. But I also want to maintain my longing for Your Son’s return. Please help me to keep my affections pure and established in Your purposes for this life. It is my desire to reign in life in a way that turns people to You through the overwhelming revelation of Your goodness.

Confession

God is my source for all things pertaining to life and godliness. It is my privilege to live from the great victorious triumph of the resurrection of Jesus, that God’s nature would be discovered by people all around me. I will do this by the grace given to me, for God’s glory.

Christianity was never meant to be recognized by its disciplines, but by its passions.

F
or me, it is a tragedy when the Gospel is recognized by discipline and form and not real passion. I believe in structure. But structure should contain something. We know that the Bible talks about new wine being put into new wineskins so that as it expands, the skins will stretch. Make no mistake, the treasure is not the skin; the treasure is the wine. The structure is important because of what it holds. Discipline holds and gives value to the real treasure—love, as seen through passion.

A disciplined life is vital for us to come into our full potential. It is hard to read the epistles and come to any other conclusion. I think it can be said that real passion helps develop great discipline. There is probably no better example than to watch a man and woman who have fallen in love. You never have to tell them to think about each other. You never have to tell them to sacrifice for the other’s benefit. Neither do you have to suggest that they put aside other interests so they can spend time together. Those things happen automatically, which tells us we will do much more naturally when we are in love than we could ever
do through effort because it is required. Passion/love forms the best discipline because it comes out of the heart, and it dictates easily how life will be lived.

The church of Ephesus lost sight of this very kind of love—first love. They were known for so many good things. But the one thing they were supposed to maintain above everything else was this first-love relationship with God. Repentance was the necessary step, but that repentance had to take on an unusual form to lead to true restoration. God told them, “Remember . . . repent . . . do the deeds you did at first” (Revelation 2:5).

Sometimes our lives get so busy with spiritual activities that we lose sight of why we are alive, and what God has assigned us to do. Priorities get rearranged simply because of pressure, and our passion gets replaced with duty. God commands, “Remember!” Memory can be an invaluable tool in helping us to recover lost territory in God. Stop everything and remember what you used to feel, think and live like.

He follows that with the command, “Repent!” Confess and turn from any lifestyle that compromises a life of passion for Jesus.

I find His next command the most interesting: “Do the deeds you did at first.” If this word were spoken to a husband and wife who needed to fall in love again, it would look like this: Buy her flowers. Call her from work on your break. Think of ways to bring her delight. Plan surprises for her that will make her happy that you two get to spend your life together. That list is fairly obvious—and the wife has an equal list—but you get the point.

Now transfer that to your first love for Jesus. How much did you talk about Him? What was your prayer life like? What was it like to pour yourself into reading the Bible for the first time? What were the kinds of things you would talk to God about? These are all
first deeds
. He is not saying you need to earn His love; He is leading you into action that can reactivate the passions
of your heart simply through obedience. The nature to love Him with reckless abandon is still in you. By doing what you used to do, you are calling that nature of passion back to the surface, so that it might once again dictate to you how life is to be lived.

There are few things in life more beautiful than an older couple still in love. They have aged gracefully together, enjoying the gift they have been given. And that gift is each other. Such is the life of a seasoned saint who is still living with first-love passion for the Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Prayer

Heavenly Father, help me never to become stale in my love for Jesus. I want to display simple passion that brings You great honor. You have done so much for me that I cannot imagine living any other way than completely for Your glory.

Confession

I love God with all of my heart. My heart burns with affection for the One who loved me first. And it is my honor to be a passionate lover of God every day of my life. I will do this for the glory of God.

In the absence of faith comes disobedience.

T
wo absolutes are required of the follower of Jesus: love and faith. Love is the greatest manifestation of being a disciple of Jesus: “They’ll know you are My disciples by your love” and “The greatest of these is love.” But faith is also an absolute, as the writer of Hebrews declares: “Without faith, it is impossible to please God.” Paul joined the two uniquely in His statement in Galatians 5:6: What matters is “faith working through love.”

Too many believers talk themselves into unbelief by treating faith as a rare commodity that only a few very special folks can attain to. I did that for many years. Whenever I tried to strive for faith, it ended in disaster. Relegating the life of faith to the giants of yesteryear seemed like the only logical response. But I could never settle that issue in my heart—something just did not seem right. When I realized that faith does not grow by striving, but rather comes through surrender, then I saw it was for me, too.

In making faith unattainable, we elevate the expected life of the believer to such a high place that it is out of reach for the common man. And if Jesus stood for anything, He stood to bring the extraordinary into the reach of the one considered
common. His twelve disciples were not the elite of His day. On the contrary, they were common, sometimes embarrassingly so.

It would be cruel for God to require faith from His children, yet make it unattainable. He is not that way. But neither do we enter a life of faith through self-will and selfish determination. It is entirely through surrender, surrender to His will, His heart, His nature and His promises.

Paul wrote the most challenging statement in this regard: “Whatever is not from faith is sin” (Romans 14:23). Once again, if faith is unattainable, God has destined us for sin. This obviously is not the case, as every person has been given a measure of faith. It is a gift from God that enables us to succeed. This is the mercy of God for each one of us. He requires something from us, and then provides that something for us. It is like a teacher requiring you to pass a test in order to graduate, and then giving you the answers. Yes, He is that good.

It comes down to the use of our wills. Will we yield ourselves to His purposes and express the natural fruit of surrender, or will we go our own way and walk in unbelief? In the absence of faith are sin, disobedience and everything that stands against the purposes of God for us.

Prayer

Father, I start this day by declaring my surrender: I surrender to Your will, Your heart, Your mind. Everything about You fascinates me and draws me into the pleasure of serving You. Help me to keep this life of faith simple, as You have given me the answers to the test You want me to pass. I celebrate You for Your ongoing kindness toward me.

Confession

Faith has been given to me as a gift. It is something I possess simply because God willed it so. And I confess and declare that it is my honor in life to demonstrate His faithfulness through my faith. I accept this privilege that God may be honored in all the earth!